De locis theologicis

WHO THE FAITHFUL ARE, OF WHOM THE CHURCH TRULY AND PROPERLY CONSISTS

Indeed, we have observed three errors about who counts as part of the Church. The first belonged to those who thought the Church had no part where there was no solid purity and integrity of life. The Cathars of old were such, as were the Donatists, who approached their madness. Today among the Lutherans are the Anabaptists, who, with the Pelagians, hold that the faithful possess perfect

righteousness even in this mortal life, and, with the Cathars and Donatists, tolerate no weakness in the Church. Others granted a place in the Church only to those predestined for glory. The chief authors of this error are found to be John Wycliffe and John Hus, condemned in concilio Constant.. More recently, some have thought that only the upright belong to the Church and the wicked in no way do; not all Lutherans affirm this, but their most distinguished writers do. I do not intend to restate in detail here what Catholics have argued against these errors. I shall therefore briefly report the arguments by which each is refuted. The first error is refuted above all by precisely the testimonies with which the Pelagians and Donatists of old were refuted. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Again, “Forgive us our debts”—the prayer Christ taught his Apostles, who were surely members of the Church. Again, “We all offend in many things.” Again, “Every high priest taken from among men is appointed for men in matters pertaining to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. He can have compassion on those who are ignorant and err, because he too is surrounded by weakness; and for this reason he must offer for his own sins just as for the people's.” Again, “Do not enter into judgment with your servant, for no living person will be justified in your sight.” Again, “There is no human being who does not sin.” Again, “Who can say, ‘My heart is clean; I am pure from sin’?” Again, “There is no just person on earth who does good and does not sin,” and other similar passages, which are commonly cited from Job and Daniel. If, then, the Church had to be entirely free from every stain and fault in each of its members, there would certainly be no Church on earth, since, as these testimonies prove, there is no mortal anywhere who is perfect and spotless in every respect. Further, Cephas was undoubtedly a part of the Church and its pillar; yet the Apostle opposed him to his face because he was blameworthy and was not walking uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel. The members of the Church therefore need not be so pure that no stain or blemish remains in them. Moreover, the Apostle recognized the Church among the Thessalonians, yet noted that some of those very people walked disorderly and busied themselves in idle matters. He teaches that they are not to be treated as strangers and enemies, but corrected as brothers. Christ's brotherhood and fellowship, then, include some imperfect brothers and companions. What more? Does the Apostle not affirm that some in the Church are little ones and weak? “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, as to little children in Christ.” And again, “Receive the one who is weak in faith.” What of this? “He gave some to be apostles, some prophets, others evangelists, others pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the building up of Christ's body, until we all come to the unity of faith and knowledge of the living Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of Christ's fullness, so that we are no longer children tossed about.” And immediately he says, “Let us grow in every respect into him who is the head, Christ; from him the whole body, fitted and joined together through every supporting joint, according to the working in measure of each part, makes the body grow ¹

for its own building up in love. Therefore, not all members of the Church are entirely perfected and complete in every respect. But it would be idle to spend more time refuting this error, especially since Augustine and Jerome have worked very diligently on almost the same question. Let us proceed to the rest. Our forebears first rejected the second heresy because several other most pernicious heresies, condemned at the same Council, are necessarily linked to it: if the pope is reprobate, he has no power over the faithful unless perhaps granted by Caesar; no one can reasonably assert, without revelation, that he is the head of a particular Church; present righteousness and grace do not make anyone a member either of Christ or of the Church; even unbelievers predestined for glory are always members of Christ and the Church. Consequently, Paul was never a member of the devil, nor Judas of Christ. All these claims are plainly false in themselves and strongly opposed to the Catholic faith. The commonwealth of Christ would certainly have been established most foolishly if the authority of its magistrates were shrouded in such darkness that it were entirely invisible to the faithful. For since all the faithful are unsure whether the Supreme Pontiff, bishops, priests, and other ministers of the Church are predestined, they must also be unsure whether they are bound by their decrees and judgments. It would follow that all the Church's and Councils' doctrines are doubtful, and all its laws feeble and unfit to restrain anyone. What could be more foolish than to say that citizens cannot know who the magistrates of their own city are? Those who think this way make Christ a foolish founder of the commonwealth and overturn all its ordinances, commands, and decrees, and the entire power of the Church. Among them, it must waver and collapse, since it is hidden, uncertain, and weak. We need no arguments drawn from reason to refute what is not an irrational opinion, but madness, since the clearest testimonies of Scripture suffice. “You,” he says, “are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor do they light a lamp and place it under a bushel.” Again, “If he does not hear them, tell it to the Church; and if he does not hear the Church…” The Church must therefore be manifest and known to the faithful. Christ also taught that the servant who was handed over to the torturers because he did not show mercy to his fellow servant belonged to the kingdom of heaven and his household. Therefore, not only predestined servants are included in Christ's household, which is the Church. Again, “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who held a wedding feast for his son,” into which even the man who was sent into the outer darkness entered. Again, “The kingdom of heaven is like ten virgins,” five foolish and five wise. He does not say it is like five, but ten; and yet the door was shut to five of them. Again, Christ's parable shows the Church to be a mixture of the predestined and reprobate: it is compared to a net that gathers fish of every kind, which are not sorted until they are brought onto the shore, where the angels will separate the wicked from the just and cast them into the furnace of fire. The parable comparing the Church to a field shows the same: the field, sown with good grain, is infected by the enemy's deceit with weeds, and is not cleansed until the harvest has been brought to the threshing floor, when the weeds must be gathered and tied into bundles to be burned. Since we are pursuing all the points, the Church is also that threshing floor where the wheat has been gathered in such a way that it lies hidden beneath the chaff until it is cleaned with the fan and sieve and finally stored in the barn; but the chaff is burned in unquenchable fire.

Moreover, this passage shows that a people, city, or household is named not from God's foreknowledge but from its present righteousness: “You were once not God's people, but now you are God's people.” Likewise: “At that time you were without Christ, alienated from the community of Israel and strangers to the covenants.… But now you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of God's household.” Otherwise everyone predestined for glory would be blessed and just even while wretched and impious. We are properly named, then, not from foreknowledge but from present righteousness. “He gave them power,” it says, “to become children of God.” To whom? To those whom he foresaw would believe? No, but to those who believe in his name. Again: “You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light.” Again: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute?” Again: “The one who practices righteousness is just; the one who commits sin is of the devil.… By this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest.” Again: “We, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another”—which is true of us only by present righteousness. Again: “In one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.” Therefore, we enter Christ's body through baptism and not through the grace of predestination. We have said enough in refuting this error. Let us now refute the third and final error. This is established above all by precisely the same parables of the Gospel that we used earlier. Cyprian, Jerome, and Augustine also argue from them. For in the Lord's field, among the thriving crops, weeds, thistles, and barren oats abound. In the threshing floor, chaff covers the grain. The net encloses good and bad fish alike; in the great house are vessels of wood and clay, for honor and dishonor. In the kingdom of heaven, foolish virgins are found with the wise. In Christ's household there is a wicked servant—not only the one who refused mercy to his fellow servant, but also the one placed over the household who, when he supposed his master was delaying, cast off his former fear and began to beat the menservants and maidservants, to eat and drink, and to get drunk. What? Do we not read in the Apocalypse of Churches whose angels and ministers God urges to repent of the crimes they have committed? Does the Apostle not call them Churches ad Galatas, even though he reproves them for being corrupted by error? Inter Corinthios too there was not just one kind of sin, but many; their errors were not trivial, but shameful crimes. Yet the Apostle not only acknowledges and proclaims them as a Church, but also as the holy fellowship of Christ. If the Church remains inter Corinthios, where factions, parties, rivalries, lawsuits, and quarrels are raging; where a crime that even the pagans would abhor is tolerated; where Paul's name is slandered, though they ought to honor him as a father; where divine gifts serve ambition rather than charity; where some mock the resurrection of the dead; and where many things are done indecently and in disorder—who would dare strip those of the title “Church” who cannot be charged with even a tenth of these crimes? What, I ask, would these people, who rage with such severity against present-day Churches, have done ad Galatas and Corinthians, who all but abandoned the Gospel? The Church therefore has its carnal members, whom the Apostle warns the spiritual not to abandon. It has the sick and weak, to whom Christ's physicians administer the remedies prepared in the sacraments. For the sacrament of penance is prepared for those who are within. It would be useless in the Church if there were no sinners in it. Since the Lutherans wish to evade the judgments of the Church so that they are not forced to admit that the wicked possess ecclesiastical authority, they deny that these people are parts of the Church, and therefore for themselves

they invent a Church that no human being can see, one that dwells in inaccessible darkness—a Church I certainly do not understand. I would be ashamed to say that I do not understand it if those who defend it understood it themselves. But they want to envelop and obscure what Christ set in clear light, lest they seem to have departed from the unity of the Catholic Church. “There is no security of unity,” Augustine says, “except with the Church, which, set upon a mountain, cannot be hidden; therefore it must be known in every part of the world.” Augustine also rightly said that where the Church is not manifest, Christ too cannot be manifest, for through the Church he is made known not only to human beings but also to principalities and powers in the heavens. Therefore the Church is a lamp for us, set on a lampstand for all in the house to see. Such it was to the people of Antioch when they went up to Jerusalem to settle their dispute. Such is what the Lord prescribed when he said, “Tell it to the Church.” Otherwise, what are those to do who consider the Church hidden when they fall into serious controversies about law and religion? Must they remain always in suspense, unable to stand on any firm ground? Certainly, if the Church is among the devout alone, everything will be uncertain. In every judgment of the Church, the person against whom the sentence is given will object that the judges are not devout. Those, therefore, who define the Church as consisting only of the just both deprive wicked pastors of the Church of all authority and weaken the force of ecclesiastical judgments; they can have no firm doctrines of the Church. And if Christ did not understand that the wicked would sometimes be not merely any members but even the chief members of his Church, he certainly would never have warned us: “The scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses' seat. Do whatever they tell you, but do not act according to their deeds.” What of Paul? “It is required here,” he says, “among stewards, that someone be found faithful. As for me, it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you.” If good conduct were necessary for someone to be a member and minister of the Church, the Apostle would not consider it a very small thing to be judged by human beings, since he saw that such judgment was connected with the ruin of apostolic authority. But since he saw that what some Corinthians demanded was not necessary for the steward's authority, he says, “It is a very small thing to me,” and so forth. How many and what powerful scruples and confusions would be imposed even upon the minds of stewards if, because of sin, they were at once made alien to the Church and lost all its authority? The Apostle rightly adds, “But I do not even judge myself,” and so forth. And how rash human judgments would be if the membership and offices of the Church depended on inward virtue! Therefore he added, “Do not judge before the time.” How many schisms we would see every day in the Church, as one person said to another, “You are not of the Church because you are wicked; I am of the Church because I am good!” And if one condemned someone whom another defended, how much material for lawsuits and quarrels do you think there would be? The Apostle therefore concludes very well: “I have applied these things to myself and Apollos, so that no one may be puffed up for one against another.” Let the name of the Church therefore remain broad enough to include all the faithful, both the good and the wicked. This is what we undertook to explain in this chapter.