The Church of Christ: Yesterday and Today . . .

THE CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH

We believe in the one holy, catholic and apostolic church. —from the ancient creeds of Christendom

Those of us who are heirs of the Restoration Movement have been bequeathed with a rather negative attitude toward creeds. We were, after all, born and bred on anti-creedalism as well as anti-clericalism, so why should the editor of a Restoration journal appeal to a creed, whether ancient or modern, as a starting-point for a series of essays?

This is to misunderstand our founding fathers. They objected to creeds because they were made tests of fellowship and sometimes even terms of pardon. Creeds took precedence even over the scriptures, and they were made the basis of theological systems. So long as creeds served the purpose of articulating one’s personal faith, and were not imposed upon others, there was no objection and should be no objection. Campbell, for example, had great respect for the ancient creeds of the Christian faith, especially the Apostles’ Creed, from which the above is taken.

But this glorious proposition! We (or I) believe in the one holy, catholic and apostolic church, is found in several of the oldest creeds. The old divines that met at Chalcedon in 451 lifted this statement from earlier creedal statements and approved it as expressive of their faith. Those 318 fathers who met at Nicaea in 325 referred to “the catholic and apostolic church” in their creed, as did the 150 divines that met at Constantinople in 381.

A succinct creedal statement like this compels one to state what he believes to be the substance of an idea. What is really important about the church? What are its absolute qualities? The church may take divergent forms, depending on age, culture and circumstance. But what are the marks that must always be present if it be God’s church upon earth? We can hardly say that it must have a certain name, for the church goes without a particular name, if any name at all, in the scriptures. So with organization, worship and mission. We have some information about such forms, but it is clear that even the New Testament churches differed in these regards.

This means that our many sermons through the decades on “The Identity of the Church” are at least suspect, for the emphasis has been more on form than on substance. We have missed the point in stressing the right name (Church of Christ of course), the correct worship (the “five acts” which we presume to be clearly scriptural), the proper organization (a plurality of elders and deacons, but not necessarily deaconesses, which we presume to be monolithic in the primitive churches), and the right mission (educational and benevolent work that we define to our own liking). And we have been very particular, beyond what the scriptures allow, about such methods as choirs and organs and such agencies as missionary societies and Sunday School unions.

All this implies that this is what the church is all about, but we all know that a people can be “right” about all such things and still not be the true church. So, what is the substance of the nature of the church? That is, what are those characteristics without which the church cannot be the true church? The ancient creedal statements about the church take us close to the answer, and this is because they get at the heart of what Christ intended for the church.

How much have we talked about the oneness of the church? Can a people who are content to be divided really be the church?

How much stress have we placed upon the holiness of the church? If we are truly a redeemed people, then we are a pilgrim community whose citizenship is in heaven. Can we be conformed to this world and still be God’s people?

Have we neglected the catholicity (or universality) of the church in our thinking? We cannot be southern, or midwestern, or American; in our faith. Nor white, nor middle-class. Nor sectarian, nor provincial. Nor parochial, nor class. Nor adult, nor masculine. What insight those old saints of yesteryear had in discerning that God’s people must be catholic to be His true church.

And what have we said of the apostolicity of the church, which is to affirm its rootedness in the authority of the apostles, the Master’s own plenipotentiary ambassadors to the world?

This is where I stand when it comes to pointing to the essential marks, of the Church of Christ both yesterday and today. These are the absolutes that which a people must have in any age or in any nation or culture —for the Church of Christ upon earth. I believe in the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church of Christ. Never mind about exactness in name, worship, organization and work, for here differences are allowed. But a divided, carnal, parochial, and anti-biblical people cannot be the church.

And this is our theme for the next few installments —the oneness, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity of the Church of Christ, but not necessarily in that order. It is appropriate to begin with the catholic or universal nature of the church.

The term catholic is used as early as 125 A. D. in a letter written by Ignatius of Antioch to the church in Smyrna, and it probably goes back much earlier. To the Smyrnaians he said, “Wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church.” The term occurs also in the Martyrdom of Polycarp (155 A.D.), referring to all those everywhere who make up the community of believers. It was a long time before the term became a title for a denomination. For centuries it described what is so essential to the character of the church: that it is composed of all those who are in Christ, and that in Christ there is no distinction of class or race or sex, regardless of station in life. But it meant even more, for it pointed to the universal adaptability of the gospel, transcending both time and circumstance. A catholic gospel is a gospel with universal principles, centered in a Person who is indeed the Universal Person. We shall speak to this later on.

That anyone or two sects in Christendom should take catholic as a name contradicts the nature of the term. Roman Catholic or Greek Catholic are satires upon an otherwise beautiful adjective. Anything that is distinctively Greek or Roman cannot, of course, be universal or catholic. But this has been an habitual fallacy in a divided Christendom. A good case can be made for the presbyterial, baptistic, congregational, and even methodistic aspects of the church, but it is folly for a people to be specialists in any of these and thus take unto themselves a distinctive name.

And we should use the term catholic much more than we do in our references to the church. Why I Belong to the Catholic Church would be a better title for a talk than Why I Belong to the Church of Christ, for with that topic one is at once on universal ground, whereas the term “Church of Christ,” since it has been adopted by several groups as a distinctive name, has one treading the waters of sectarianism. Too, there is no reason to forfeit such a meaningful term to those who use it parochially.

Logicians have a way of getting at the essence of a term by establishing its opposite, which the dictionary calls an antonym. In doing this with catholic, we come up with the term particular or particularity. This is significant in discerning the nature of the church, for the church’s teaching and practice must be in universals rather than in particulars. Another way of saying it is that the true Church of Christ can have no characteristic that is not worldwide in its outreach, whereas sectarianism is marked by particularity, with each sect having its own set of particulars that distinguishes it from others. A church with doctrines peculiar to itself is a sect rather that the catholic Church of Christ.

It matters not how large, influential, or prosperous a communion may be, if it has doctrines peculiar to itself it cannot be catholic. Dogmas like the bodily assumption of Mary, transubstantiation, indulgences, papal infallibility may be Catholic but they can never be catholic in that they do not lend themselves to universal application. Whatever is truly catholic we can properly expect of every believer.

We are equally guilty if we come up with notions about “the five acts of public worship,” one exclusive name, one “infallible” interpretation, and exclusivistic notions about methodology in work and worship, especially when they are made tests of fellowship and “the marks of the true church.” One cannot, for example, impose a cappella singing upon all believers everywhere, for it falls into the category of particularity rather than universality. Any church, therefore, that makes a cappella music a test of fellowship cannot be catholic. It has to be a sect in that it excludes other believers from its fellowship over a practice that cannot be universally binding.

Compare this with Paul’s seven one’s of Eph. 4. We can be most catholic in insisting that all disciples of Jesus believe in the one body, the one Lord, the one baptism, the one faith, the one hope, the one Spirit, and the one God.

The catholic features of church cannot, therefore, be any more than what is necessary to salvation. If a cappella music is universal rather than particular, then it is essential to being saved. It is as simple as that. Measuring one’s sectarianism is not difficult. Any peculiar demands he makes of other believers as a condition of pardon and fellowship mark him as a sectarian. An idea that cannot be applied prospectively (to all believers everywhere and all that ever shall be) and retrospectively (to all believers that ever have been in all history) is a sectarian notion and contradicts the principle of catholicity. We can say any professed believer that ever was or ever shall be that denies the Holy Spirit is not a true disciple. But sectarian notions will not hold up under this principle of inclusion, which is the essence of the catholicity of the church. Catholicity means that no particularity can be made a test of fellowship. This does not mean that a group cannot hold views peculiar to themselves, for this is surely inevitable. But it means that such ideas will be held as opinions and personal preferences, and will not be imposed upon others.

The ground of catholicity is the mind of God and its end is fellowship between man and his Creator. Through Christ we are called into fellowship with God, which cannot be other than catholic. Such has always been God’s intention with man. While He did favor Israel as a nation, He was preparing a people in order to give the world a universal gospel. So, the Israel of the Old Testament makes possible the “Israel of God” in Gal. 6:16, a catholic community. While the old Israel was always the people of God, they were never so in the fullest sense. God’s plan of community could never be satisfied short of catholicity.

In order to call all men into fellowship with Himself, God began by calling a single person out of Ur of the Chaldees. But His purpose in Abraham was to make a nation, so that “all nations of the earth will be blessed.” There may have been a parochial priesthood under the old system, but ultimately there was the universal priesthood of believers, the Church of Christ becoming “a kingdom of priests” (Rev. 1:6).

The idea of corporate personality runs throughout scripture. God deals with a man by calling him into a community. Moses and the Israelites are thus described as “the church in the wilderness” (Acts 7:38). The prophets proclaimed God’s purpose for the ages: “I will be to them a Father, and they shall be to me sons and daughters.”

It is as a family that we must come to see the church. It is not an institution or organization, but a family community of brothers and sisters. Jesus came to make men brothers, and this he does by changing their lives, giving them himself so that they can love one another. So the great dynamic of the family of God is love.

The purpose of “the mystery which was kept secret for long ages” was that the Church of Christ would be catholic, made up of all peoples and not only Jewish. God’s “plan for the fullness of time” is expressed in Eph. 1:10 as to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. The point of the gospel is that now in Christ Jesus “you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ” (Eph. 2:13). This makes all men in Christ blood brothers, irrespective of what garb they wear or what infirmity they bear. It is a blessed reality that Jesus came to make men brothers. This is something far different than merely sharing a space on a church roll. Men become brothers only through an inward experience that transcends them both.

The story of mankind is one of war and hostility, man at war against God as well as man at war with man. In giving us Himself the Creator gave us peace. “He is our peace,” the apostle could say of Jesus, and he describes Jesus as making peace between hostile forces: “He has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace” (Eph. 2:15).

We are his creation, one new man in him. Black and white are two, but Jesus makes them one. Jew and Gentile are two, but Jesus makes them one. Male and female are two, but Jesus makes them one. Occidental and oriental are two, but Jesus makes them one. This is the catholic Church of Christ.

The Church of Christ today must seek that fellowship that God creates in human hearts rather than that which results from its own dictation. People are not in fellowship simply because they meet within the same four walls of a building from week to week. Close proximity does not make for unity any more than conformity of opinion. Many a family resides under the same roof without sharing a loving relationship. In evaluating our relationship with a man, we should ask ourselves whether God claims him as a child rather than whether the church claims him as a member. If he is God’s son, tghen he is our brother. If fellowship does not mean this, it means nothing.

And this is the great catholic or ecumenical principle, that God unites all men (and eventually all creation itself) in Jesus Christ. The purpose of the ages is that sinful man might find himself in the fellowship of God’s own son. Those who respond to Christ by obeying the gospel can sing that new song that Rev. 5 tells about.

“Worthy are thou to take the scroll and open its seals, for thou wast slain and by thy blood didst ransom men for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and hast made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on earth.”

If one is “ransomed of God,” then he is in the Body of Christ, no matter what color, or how poor, or even how theologically confused. No matter whether he wears beads and has long hair, or whether he speaks in tongues, or however different from myself, if he is God’s then I lay claim to him as my brother.

John Oxenham captured the meaning of the catholic Church of Christ when he wrote that great hymn about how Jesus is larger than all the shallow limitations that even ecclesiastics would impose upon him.

In Christ there is no East or West,

In Him no South or North.

But one great fellowship of love

throughout the whole wide world.

In Him shall true hearts everywhere

their high communion find.

His service is the golden cord,

closely binding all mankind.

Join hands, then, brothers of the faith,

whatever your race may be!

Who serves my Father as his own,

is surely kin to me.

In Christ meet both East and West,

in Him meet South and North.

All Christly souls are one in Him,

throughout the whole wide earth.

                                              —the Editor