I recently spent a day riding around the city. As I assessed the architecture I quietly started keeping count of a certain type of signage, the type that usually includes the word church. I espied the Church of the Disciples, the Church of the Apostles, Church of God, Church of Jesus, The People’s Church, Full Gospel Church, Bible Church, Garden Church, Salvation Church, and there were all the Assemblies bearing variations on the above. There were the Roman and Orthodox establishments with their monopoly on the names of saints. The Anglicans were there with their propensity to tell you where they stand, at least geographically—on the hill, in the field, in the park. The Lutherans seem to likewise like some geographical definition, usually their country of origin. There were the macedoine Methodists, who win the prize for most variations on a denominational name. I was given to question if attendance is really declining or are we merely establishing a church for every dozen or so souls?
Who are the people in these churches? Are they followers of Jesus? Are they members of Christ’s Body? Are these people his? There can be here no maybe, partially, imperfectly, subsistently or any other equivocation. The answer is either yes or no. As you formulate your response, keep in mind that even the most faithful and ardent followers have acknowledged the epigonic nature of their discipleship.
As I formulated my response I pondered how many of these disciples were my opposite in disposition, how many arch-conservative, how many fundamentalist, how many had plucked up a verse or two on some moral prohibition and made it the flail of fury with which to beat down the sinful world? How many of these churches gave rise to the apostles who accosted me in the subway, the inquisitors with the graceless question “are you saved?”, or the artless “does it bother you to know you are not saved?” Which of these bodies inspired the befuddled woman who interrupted my reading of Romans to ask if I knew Jesus? And as I treaded these thoughts my mind drifted to a time in a raucous family gathering when my brain seemed to clench as I quizzed myself as to the origins of the cacogenic catastrophe that had patently execrated my family tree. And there it was—a family tree. Is such varletry the family of Christ? Are these my fellow issue of that barren and bloodied tree on which hung the salvation of the world, the salubrious revelation for all? It may well cause many difficulty, discomfort and pain to reply in the affirmative, and I am not without empathy here. But what other response have we to give? To what other avertment can we possibly be called?
With this exordium, I turn to the question given: what constitutes church?
I humbly confess the church to be the body of them that take up the task of following Jesus the Christ. It does not matter how one understands him–teacher, prophet, lord divine—only that one follow after him. If one is for him, then one is with him. This holds whether one belongs to an organization of the like-minded or not. This is not a matter of an organization or a conglomeration of organizations. It holds no matter how deficient the response or understanding of another may appear to me; neither is mine to denigrate, deny or extinguish. The church belongs to Christ; it is His Body, his presence in post-resurrection time. It is God-in-Jesus Christ who makes the church, faith merely manifests it, and while all manifestations of the Holy are in essence to the greater glory of God, they are all existentially to the capacity of man.
Theology has traditionally given four defining characteristics (termed “notes”) of being church. Anyone familiar with the Nicene creed will recognize them: one, holy, catholic and apostolic.
I find it rather odd that no one takes the first three Notes–one, holy, catholic–as unqualifiedly applicable to the sundry bodies calling themselves church, whether that be the Romans, Orthodox, Lutherans, Anglicans, etc. Yet, when the idea of apostolicity arrives, we suddenly veer out of the realm of the ideal and essential and into the realm of the practical and organizational. Why? Perhaps the situation arises in understanding the first three as being Christocentric and the last as disciple-centered, as discipline. Apostolicity is seen as either passing on authority in unbroken sequence from the first apostles to the present, or as fidelity to the witness of the first apostles. Both these views make this the only note or characteristic of being church rooted in the human. And I think that is an error.
Let us look at these four Notes.
The church is one because of Christ. It is one because all believers are united in Christ. It is one because it is at-oned in Christ by faith. A faith that is not a submission to a set of dogmas or propositions, but a living trust and confidence in Christ.
The church is holy because of Christ. It is holy because in Christ it resides intimately in the Holy One. Its holiness is the grace of divine dispensation and enfolding, residing wholly in that grace, albeit, some would add, and manifest in the living out of that embrace in the embrace of others.
The church is catholic because of Christ. Only in Christ, in whom all is re-created and revalued, has it cosmic, temporal, and eternal expanse. Its catholicity is in the engrafting of the faithful of all times and places in Christ who is the catholicon for the human condition, the declivity to the apotheosis of self.
The church is apostolic because of Christ. Christ calls all them that follow after him, and that call is not merely to sit at his feet, but to be heralds and ambassadors of his vision and his mission to the world. Apostolicity is not a human endeavour or accomplishment any more so than the unity, holiness or catholicity. Apostolicity is not passed on, it is not taken up, it is given. It is the call and charge, vocation and mission to be the living presence of this Christ in the times and places of the world of men until that world is visibly, concretely, transformed into the Kingdom of God. There is here no root in the human. The witness in heart and hand is by grace alone, not works, transmission, or doctrinal assent.
Individual avatars of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church may engage in ritual acts to acknowledge and foster these characteristic, but their dynamics, their essence and heart rest in Christ alone. By Christ and in Christ alone are they given. I cannot see it as anything more than bureaucratic self-interest and organizational hubris to claim otherwise. And it is this self-interest and hubris of institutions regarding apostolicity that actually works to undermine any possibility of exhibiting the unity, holiness and catholicity that might otherwise be manifest.
St. Paul teaches there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. To them that are inclined to add to this caveats and appendices, I caution that here it is true—more perhaps than anywhere else—the devil is in the details.
Everyone moved by the spirit of god is a son of god. Romans 8