De convenientia institutorum Romanae Ecclesiae cum Evangelica libertate

1. From what we have defined above, it is not difficult to demonstrate that the Christian Church is one—provided, however, that we first explain what is meant by the name “Christian Church.”

The word church is Greek and, although it has several meanings among Greek authors, in Christian usage it signifies only an assembly, gathering, or convocation. For the customary Jewish name synagogue, which also commonly means a gathering, having been rejected, Christians adopted the name church in order that, just as they differ from the Jews in rite and religion, so too they might be distinguished by the name for their multitude.

It follows that by “Christian Church” we understand nothing other than a multitude of people called together to Christ. Hence opinions about matters pertaining to Christ’s Church are so varied and diverse, just as the name “Christian” has been used in different ways by different people.

Some, indeed, hold that only those elected to eternal salvation belong to the Christian commonwealth, on the ground that they alone have been redeemed by Christ’s blood and obtain the benefit of the Lord’s cross. Others think the name “Christian” should be taken more broadly, and that all may rightly be called Christians who have received from Christ the gift of charity. They therefore draw into the Christian Church all those bound to Christ by a certain common bond of charity. But the common usage of the holy Fathers is that people are called Christians because of Christ’s faith: that is, all who hold Christ’s faith and revere his worship and sacraments are to be called Christians. Since, however, not only those who share in charity, but also many others who depart from Christ in life and conduct, observe the faith and worship of Christ, they say that all such people, both good and evil, belong to the Christian Church—that is, the Church they call militant—provided that they hold and profess Christ’s faith. By “Christian Church,” then, we mean a multitude of both good and evil people called together to Christ’s faith; though usage has also come to call the very place where Christians gather for sacred rites a church.

2. This understanding of the Christian Church is entirely consonant with Christ’s teaching. For in Matthew 13,¹ he says that the Church is like a net cast into the sea, gathering fish of every kind. Gregory, expounding this likeness in a homily,² says: “The Holy Church is compared to a net cast into the sea and gathering fish of every kind, because now the net of faith holds good and evil together, as though they were mixed fish; but the shore—the Church’s end—shows what the net has caught.” In the same chapter he also compared it to the field in which, after good seed had been sown, an enemy sowed weeds over it;³ and earlier, in chapter 3, to the threshing floor, where chaff is mixed with grain.⁴ Augustine interprets this in On Faith to Peter, chapter 4,⁵ as follows: “Hold most firmly and doubt in no way that God’s threshing floor is the Catholic Church, and that within it, until the end of the age, chaff remains mixed with the wheat—that is, the evil are mingled with the good through communion in the sacraments.”⁶ Moreover, in Matthew, chapter 25,⁷ the kingdom of heaven is said to be like ten virgins, five wise and five foolish. On this passage Gregory says:⁸ “The present Church is called the kingdom of heaven; and because the Holy Church is gathered from both sexes in great numbers, it is declared to be like ten virgins. Since evil people are mingled with the good, and the reprobate with the elect, it is rightly said to resemble wise and foolish virgins.” Add that Jerome, both in Against the Luciferians⁹ and in book one of Against Jovinian, says that Noah’s ark, in the Apostle Peter’s account, figures the Holy Church: just as every kind of animal dwelt in the ark, so the Church contains the righteous and sinners mingled together.

3. If you object that Christ’s Church is, according to the Apostle, a bride having neither wrinkle nor blemish,¹⁰ then, according to Augustine’s view in book one of On Marriage and Concupiscence, chapter 34,¹¹ this must be referred not to the condition of the present age but to the splendor of future perfection. In Gregory’s thirteenth book of the Moralia, however,¹² it may be understood of the present Church, but only with respect to the good and the elect. From what has been defined above, therefore, we can demonstrate that the Christian Church in question—the Church in which good and evil are mingled without distinction—is one.

4. We must not pass over this point: since every multitude is constituted under some aspect of plurality, it cannot possess a mode and form of unity unless it is referred to something one. We call a certain gathered multitude of people a single city because all are governed either by the same ruler or by the same laws. But if different rulers govern several peoples, or if they have different laws, they are more properly considered several cities than one. Yet if several peoples are referred to one common king over them all, each may still have its own particular ruler; those multitudes may then be called both several and one. For¹³ if we consider their particular rulers and municipal laws,¹⁴ they must plainly be called several, without dispute. But if we consider that one king common to them and a certain law common to all, the multitude then claims for itself the character of one. The dominions of Milan and Mantua, since they have two rulers and are governed by different municipal laws, may be called two principalities; but if¹⁵ one looks to the Emperor, common to them under the name of Christendom, they are not wholly two principalities but parts of one empire. For just as their rulers are placed beneath the Emperor as certain subordinate dukes, so those dominions are parts of one empire, which the Emperor himself governs by his laws.

Since, then, several prelates have been appointed among the Christian people, each charged with the care and concern of different peoples, while there is one Father common to all Christians, if we look only at the individual bishops of those peoples, we will not deny that there are several Christian churches. But¹⁶ if we turn our eyes to the Father and shepherd common to all, we will acknowledge that there is one Catholic—that is, universal—Church, constituted from several particular churches, since there is one common governor of the Christian people, by whose laws and institutions our Christian commonwealth¹⁷ is governed. For the supreme shepherd of the Church is Christ Jesus himself, who says:¹⁸ I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. The Apostle Paul also says of him that God made him head over the whole Church.¹⁹ After Christ, Peter is the first shepherd and ruler of the Catholic Church; to him it is said:²⁰ I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.

5. Blessed Cyprian sets out this account of the Church’s unity while expounding the words of Matthew 16,²¹ You are Peter, etc.²² His passage is found in C. 24, q. 1, in the canon “Loquitur”: “He builds the Church upon one, he says. Although after his resurrection he grants equal authority to all the Apostles (the source omits an intervening passage), nevertheless, to make unity manifest, by his authority he established the origin of that same unity as beginning from one.”²³ Further below he adds: “Unity takes its beginning from one,²⁴ so that Christ’s Church may be shown to be one.”

Jerome gives a second account of the Church’s unity in his letter to Bishop Evangelus,²⁵ cited in Distinction 93, canon “Legimus.”²⁶ It is the unity of faith, in which all particular churches share—something no one doubts—since all Christians believe in Christ and, enlightened by divine light, hold the same things about him. “For,” Jerome says,²⁷ “the Church of the city of Rome is not to be considered one church and that of the whole world another; the churches of Gaul, Britain, Africa, Persia, the East, India, and all the barbarian nations (understand: those that have enlisted in Christ’s army) worship one Christ and observe one rule of truth.”²⁸ The Apostle likewise says in his first²⁹ letter to the Corinthians, chapter 1:³⁰ All of you should say the same thing, and there should be no schisms among you.

There is also a third basis for this unity: the unity of the sacraments by which the whole Christian people is marked. For through one baptism, the first of the sacraments, we are all reborn in Christ, and we all use the same sacraments.³¹

There is a fourth basis of unity: the unity of the end for which we hope, namely God, the Supreme and Greatest, whose eternal enjoyment Christians strive for. The Lord wished to signify this unity in the parable³² in which he relates that all who had been sent to work in the vineyard each received a denarius. Augustine also touches on this in his exposition of Psalm 85, saying: “Many nations, yet one nation. Why one nation? Because there is one hope. Finally, why not one nation if Jerusalem is one homeland?”³³

Why say more? The Apostle Paul gathers all these grounds for the Church’s unity in Ephesians, chapter 4,³⁴ saying: One Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, through all, and in us all.³⁵ Hence in the Song of Songs, chapter 6,³⁶ it is said of the Church: My dove, my perfect one, is one.

6. This also deserves consideration: our present Church, established within the bounds of the Christian people, is not only one in itself; it is also united with the Church of the ancient Fathers and Prophets. Their faith was the same as ours. For just as we are saved by faith in Christ incarnate,³⁷ so those ancient Fathers were saved by faith in Christ yet to come, although they professed their faith through other sacraments, while we declare ours through different ones.³⁸ Hence Acts 4³⁹ says of Christ Jesus: For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

If you object that those ancient Fathers, although most holy and professing faith in the Christ who was to come, could in no way belong to our Church because they had not been washed in Christ’s baptism, this sacrament alone, as Augustine holds in his letter to Boniface and in his book On the Baptism of Infants—a passage found in On Consecration, Distinction 4, canon “Ad hoc”—incorporates a person into Christ and makes that person his member.⁴⁰

Know that there are two modes and forms of union with Christ. Some are joined to Christ by merit and intention alone, as happens to those who, while being instructed in the faith, die with only a desire for this sacrament, before being reborn in Christ through baptism. For of Valentinian,⁴¹ who died a catechumen, Ambrose says:⁴² “I was about to regenerate him, but I lost him; yet he did not lose the grace he had sought.” There are also those who bear themselves as members of Christ by the public status and expression of the Christian name—those, namely, who are adorned with the Christian sacraments⁴³ and called by the Christian name. Thus the ancient Fathers—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David—when they believed that Christ would assume human flesh for our salvation, were indeed, by merit and in intention, hidden and concealed members of Christ. But because they did not bear Christ’s outward sign, namely baptism, they are not counted among Christ’s manifest and public members, of whom Augustine speaks; nevertheless, they belong to Christ’s Church because they were equipped with the inward sign of Christians, namely our faith.