De Ecclesia Christi

« The name Ecclesia indeed also has a generic meaning, of an assembly of many, insofar as they are considered as called to some unity; but the specific meaning, and from biblical and ecclesiastical usage the most proper, is religious, so that the Church is the society of those united in the true worship of God; and this meaning is again taken either in universal extension or in some particular restriction. »

So that the diverse meanings in which the designation Ecclesia is used in the divine writings and in the other sacred monuments may not seem somehow to disturb our treatment, which, God favoring, is to be drawn from these same documents, it will not be out of place to set those manifold meanings, as is customary with most authors, before the beginning of the discussion itself in a single view.

I. The name Ecclesia, both by its etymology and by its use among sacred and profane writers, has the generic meaning of a multitude gathered into one by summoning; for ἐκκλησις is evocatio, a calling out, and from this ἐκκλησία, in a concrete sense, are those very persons who have come together into a certain unity by being called. According to this generic notion, therefore, the Church cannot be conceived without there being many, and these rational in nature, and some unity of these many toward a common end. For evocatio, in the proper and not the metaphorical sense, can be made only to rational creatures; and when its term is the Church or the unity of many, that calling itself cannot be rational unless some end to be attained is proposed to this unity of many. But in this generic meaning neither the form of the unity nor the end is determined as to what it is; and thus an assembly is called ecclesia not only when it is religious in form and end, but also when it is profane and political. Acts XIX. 22. 39. 40; indeed even « the ecclesia of the wicked » Ps. XXV. 5. More frequently, in this general sense, the name ecclesia, both in Greek and in Latin, stands for a political or judicial assembly in the Old Testament. Judg. XX. 2; Ecclus. XXI. 20; XXIII. 34; XXXIII. 19; XXXVIII. 37; 1 Macc. III. 13; V. 16; XIV. 19. Sometimes in this sense the Greek ἐκκλησία is rendered in the Latin Vulgate as concio (from concieo), Deut. XVIII. 16; as concilium, Judith VI. 19 (Greek 21), and elsewhere ¹.

II. But by solemn and common usage in the sacred books, Ecclesia signifies an assembly insofar as it is religious in form and end, namely holily bound to God (Lactantius, Divin. institut. IV. 28; Hieronymus in Amos IX. 6) and consecrated; and therefore the Church (and by this name, in this religious and common sense, the Scriptures never designate anything but the true Church) is called the society of those joined to God and to one another through true religion as its essential form, or through true worship. Since, moreover, in the present historical order the true religion neither is nor ever has been other than revealed and supernatural, hence the end and form of the Church, its union with God and in its members, the calling of each to it, and finally its whole institution, is supernatural; and accordingly the Church is understood as a supernatural society.

This proper meaning of the Church in sacred usage undergoes certain modifications as to extension.

1°. The fundamental notion presents itself everywhere: the Church is the very supernatural society of all those joined to God and to one another by true religion, and therefore a society universal in destination, which is formed by revealed religion and ordered to its end. In this principal meaning the plural number of Churches is repugnant, no less than in all the other names designating universality or absolute perfection. I say principal meaning, insofar as the usage of speech, both biblical, especially of the New Testament, and ecclesiastical, so determines this sense of the name Church that it must be held the most proper among the other meanings; and unless the context shows otherwise, Ecclesia simply so called is always understood in this notion ². « I will build my Church; Christ is the head of the Church; he loved the Church and gave himself up for her; To him (God) be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus unto all generations of the age of ages; Through the Church the manifold wisdom of God is made known; The Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth; The great mystery in Christ and in the Church; God has set in the Church first Apostles, second prophets, third teachers; In which the Holy Spirit has placed you as bishops to rule the Church of God, which he acquired with his own blood; » and the like, found everywhere. Matt. XVI.; Eph. I. III. IV. V.; 1 Cor. XII.; Col. I.; 1 Tim. III.; Acts XX.

2°. From texts such as those just cited it is clear why, when the government, the magisterium, and the ministry of the Church are in question, those very persons who have been placed in the Church by Christ for these offices, for the building of his body, have principally been called Church, both by the Savior himself and thence by universal ecclesiastical usage. If your brother sins against you, and if he does not hear you nor the private witnesses you bring with you, « tell it to the (tribunal of the) Church; but if he does not hear the Church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Amen I say to you (Apostles), whatever you bind upon earth shall be bound also in heaven » etc. Matt. XVIII. 17. ³. This meaning of the Church, namely as teaching and governing, is inadequately distinguished from the one explained a little earlier; for the Church is signified not only as a part in a whole, but as an essential part, and in some way a visible form, not so much contained in the whole as rather containing and forming the whole. Whence comes that saying of the holy Fathers, as we shall see in its place: « The Church is in the Bishop. »

3°. The Church simply so called, and thus universal, consists by the divine institution itself of many assemblies as members and parts, each of which reflects the image and participates in the nature of the whole, as the property of the parts of an organic whole requires. Thus most often Church is predicated with an express restriction to the notion of a part: « the Church which is at Jerusalem, at Antioch, at Corinth, in Cenchreae, of the Thessalonians, in Babylon » (Rome). Also « the domestic Church » (of Priscilla and Aquila), « the Church which is in the house (of Nympha), the Church which is in your house (of Philemon). » Whence in the plural they are often called « Churches of God, Churches of the saints, Churches of the Gentiles, Churches in Judea, Churches of Asia, Galatia, Macedonia, » and so on. These are everywhere found in the Acts, in the apostolic letters, and in the Apocalypse. « It has been answered by the Catholics that many Churches are also found named in the Scriptures, and the seven to which John writes, which, many though they are, are nevertheless understood to be members of that single one » — Augustine, Collat. III cum Donat. c. 10. « Behold, there are Churches in the Church... but all these are members of one Church, spread through the whole world » — Id., de unit. Eccles. c. 11. See also Chrysostom in 1 Cor. hom. I n. 1. Long ago Cyprian, comparing the seven Churches to which Paul wrote letters and the seven mentioned in the Apocalypse with the mother and the seven sons (2 Macc.), celebrated the many Churches as one family, which is the one Church built by Christ upon Peter. « With the seven children is plainly joined the mother, origin and root, who afterwards bore the seven Churches, herself first and one, founded upon Peter by the voice of the Lord » — Cyprian, de exhort. martyr. ad Fortunat., ed. Baluz., p. 270; L. de Testim. Script. ad Guarin., p. 201.

Sometimes the name Ecclesia signifies not so much the society of the faithful considered in itself as the assembly actually gathered for religious worship. « When you come together into the Church (a little later, when you come together into one place, ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό), to speak, to be silent in the Church » 1 Cor. XI.; XIV. This sense occurs more frequently in the Old Testament: 3 Kings VIII. 14. 22. 25; 1 Chron. XXIX. 20; 2 Chron. VII. 8; Ps. XLVII. 27; Joel II. 16, and elsewhere.

4°. Between the Church universal simply so called and the significance of the parts and, as it were, the members of that one Church, of which we have spoken, there lies in some way an intermediate meaning, by which in the Old Testament the religious society of the people of Israel is called the Church, the Church of the Lord, the Church of Israel (Num. XIX. 20; XX. 4; Deut. XXIII. 1. 2. 3. 8; 2 Esdras XIII. 1; Lam. I. 10; Acts VII. 38). For the Church so considered comprises the divinely instituted society of the peculiar people of God, not however simply the whole people of God. For even before the peculiar covenant made with Abraham, confirmed and amplified at Sinai, there were sons of God justified through faith from Adam onward (Gen. VI. 2; Rom. IV. 10. 11; Heb. XI.); nor was the universal promise made by God to Adam for the whole human race (Gen. III. 15) abolished or restricted by that peculiar covenant, but was preserved more specially, propagated, and more distinctly explained in one chosen people. This peculiar Church of the people of Israel therefore constituted the principal part of the whole Church of God, already promised in the first parents for all posterity; and it was, as it were, the salt of the earth and the light of the world for all nations, among whom God, by his antecedent will, willed the universal Church of the people of God, already instituted in Paradise immediately after the fall. Wherefore God willed that the Gentiles, of whom he commanded, be excluded not from this universal Church or from the people of God simply, but from that peculiar Church of Israel: « not even after the tenth generation shall they enter the Church of the Lord forever; » or two generations of others, of whom he said: « in the third generation they shall enter into the Church of the Lord » Deut. XXIII. 3. 8.

Not rarely, especially in the Psalms, the peculiar Church of Israel is to be understood in the immediate sense, but in a fuller and typical sense the universal Church in the perfection of the New Testament. Thus without doubt in the typical Psalms: XXI (XXII) 23. 26 (cf. Heb. II. 12); XXXIV (XXXV) 18 (cf. 19 with John XV. 25); XXXIX (XL) 10 (cf. 7–9 with Heb. X. 5); LXXXVIII (LXXXIX) 6 (cf. 5, 26–30 with Heb. I. 5).

Here I shall note in passing what Augustine, and after him the theologians, dispute about the name synagogue. What in the Old Testament is called the Church of Israel is in the Greek and Latin versions often also called synagogue: Exod. XVI. 3 (in the Greek, where the Latin has multitudo); XXXIV. 31; Num. IV. 34; XXXI. 31; John IX. 22; Acts XIII. 43, and elsewhere; or also jointly, « in the midst of the Church and the synagogue » ⁴ Prov. V. 14. Hence it has been asked: a) whether anything differs between the meaning of these names; b) whether the Church of the New Testament can also be called synagogue; c) whether in the Scriptures it is ever so called. Augustine, and after him most theologians, observe for the first question that these two names differ in this: Ecclesia, that is, calling-out or evocatio, can be said only of rational creatures, while synagoga, that is, gathering or driving together, can be said properly not only of these but also of irrational things. In the Septuagint: συναγωγὴ ὕδατος (Is. XIX. 6); συναγωγὴ λίθων (Job VIII. 17). Hence to the second question they reply that the name synagogue could indeed be fitted to the Church of the New Testament, just as the faithful are also called the sheep of Christ; but the grace of the calling is better signified by the expressed name Church. To the third question they deny that the Church of the New Testament is anywhere in the Scriptures called by the name synagogue. « Although synagogue is properly said of the Jews, and Church of the Christians, because congregation is more usually understood of flocks, but convocation more of men; nevertheless we find that the former too is called Church, and perhaps it is more fitting for us to say: save us, Lord our God, and gather us from the nations... Nor ought we to disdain, but rather to give ineffable thanks, that we are the sheep of his hand, whom he foresaw when he said: I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must bring them also, that there may be one flock and one shepherd » — Augustine, on Ps. LXXVII. You have the answer to all three questions briefly summed up by the same author: « In the synagogue we understand the people of Israel, since it too is commonly called their own synagogue, although it has also been called Church. But ours the Apostles never called a synagogue ⁵ but always Church, either for the sake of distinction, or because there is some difference between the congregation, whence synagogue, and the convocation, whence Church took its name; namely that flocks are usually gathered... but to be called belongs rather to those who use reason, as men do » — Id., on Ps. LXXXI.

5°. By the significations proposed so far, the Church is directly understood as still tending on the way toward its supreme perfection and its ultimate end; yet by this very fact the Church is also connoted with respect to this term of perfection and glorification, for which it is prepared and directed along the way. For when Christ « loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, cleansing her by the washing of water in the word of life, that he might present to himself the Church in glory, not having spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind, but that she might be holy and without blemish » (Eph. V. 25 f.); this purification and sanctification of the Church is indeed effected in the present stage, but so, and to this end, that it may at last be fully perfected in the term of glorification, where, without spot or wrinkle in all its members, it will be holy and without blemish. Augustine often admonished about this connection and connotation of the Church in the term of glorification with the present stage of preparation, in his books against the Donatists, the forerunners of the Cathar heresy. « Wherever in these books (On Baptism against the Donatists) I have mentioned the Church not having spot or wrinkle, it is not to be understood as if it already is, but as one being prepared to be so, when it shall appear glorious » — Augustine, Retract. II. 18. Now it « makes the increase of the body for its own building, » but then it will be consummated « into a perfect man, into the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ » (εἰς μέτρον ἡλικίας τοῦ πληρώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ) Eph. IV. 12–16.

Now the Church, in the sense with which we conclude this nominal question, is sometimes directly named as considered according to its final perfection. Thus the Apostle celebrates « the Church of the firstborn who are written in heaven » Heb. XII. 23. Let this suffice concerning the name; concerning the thing itself, in what follows.