De Ecclesia Christi

« The Church of God, considered in its most ample notion, is the supernatural society or city of all those, whether angels or men, from Adam to the consummation, who are united to God under Christ the head, adhering to him by faith while on the way and by the beatific vision in the term, into the communion of saints. »

I. All rational creatures were indeed made, by the very essential order of nature, for God, the principle and the last end, the first truth and the highest good, to be known and loved in a manner congruent with their natural faculties, and to attain their own perfection and natural blessedness (that is, not above but according to the exigence of the rational nature), with God known and loved as their ultimate end. Whence also in the natural order all rational creatures would have, or ought to have, a natural union with God as principle and end, and by this very fact with one another, by knowledge and by love, whether still on the way toward the term or already established in the term. This order of natural communion of rational creatures could be called the kingdom of God the creator; it is not, however, the Church of God in the nobler signification, which is now proper to the kingdom of God the sanctifier, namely, according to sacred usage, including the supernatural calling of creatures (τὴν ἐκκλησιν) through superadded gifts to an end which is above the exigence and the power of created nature.

Now indeed into this supernatural order itself the whole universe of rational creatures, namely angels and men, have been raised, and either are being led on the way, by gifts of grace, toward the end of the supernatural vision and enjoyment of God, or have already been brought to this final vision and enjoyment in the gifts of glory.

a) Of the angels, those who, while they were on the way, fell through sin, these, fallen from their end through a perversion of intellect and will and stripped of all supernatural gifts, remain excluded from this order forever; but those who persevered in truth and charity, having now attained the ultimate end in the eternal vision and glorification, constitute, or rather complete, the heavenly hierarchy.

b) The human race, through sin in the first parent, its root according to the physical order and its origin (originating) according to the moral order, inasmuch as he, constituted in original justice, represented his whole race for the inheritance or the privation of those gifts, was deprived of sanctifying grace and of the other gratuitous gifts, and therefore, exiled from the supernatural end, was not, however, abandoned as justice would have allowed, but was restored by the gratuitous mercy of God. For the Word of God willed, from this very stock of the first Adam, to assume human nature and to be born as the second Adam, so that, as head for the members, by satisfying and by merit he might repair grace and glory. In the eternal divine counsel itself of the incarnation of the Redeemer Word, it is therefore clear that the work of redemption, or the redeemed world, has been decreed, which through the application of redemption in the second act (as we shall see in its place) is the Church acquired by the blood of God (Acts XX. 28). « The Lord said to me: You are my son, today I have begotten you; ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession » Ps. II. 7, 8; CIX (Heb. CX).

Accordingly, just as all men by nature are born from the first Adam as children of wrath in the fallen state, so through the grace of redemption they are to be grafted into the second Adam by faith, hope, and charity. « What is written, that there is no other name under heaven given to men in which we must be saved, holds good for saving the human race from that time on from which the human race was corrupted in Adam; for as in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive. For as in the kingdom of death no one is without Adam, so in the kingdom of life no one is without Christ » Aug. ep. 190 (al. 157). The foundation and root of the gifts and supplies flowing from Christ the head, however, is faith (Council of Trent, sess. VI, c. 8), by which, as by a first joining (Eph. IV. 16), the members are inserted into Christ the head of the restored state. Those, therefore, who lack faith are members under Christ the head of the whole restored order only by destination and by what is due; in fact, however, they remain cut off from him in habit, though not in all actual and transient graces ¹.

Moreover, there are two principal and, as it were, distinct stages for the restoration of the whole human race and its insertion into Christ the second Adam, because the great mystery of piety was, from the beginning immediately after the fall, in promise, and over the course of the ages in continual preparation, but was not manifested in the flesh until the fullness of time (1 Tim. III. 16; Col. I. 26; Gal. IV. 4). In the earlier stage the members were formed beforehand for Christ the head, who was the expectation of the nations; in the other they are formed into the same head Christ, who has now been « made perfect for all who obey him, the cause of eternal salvation » (Heb. V. 9). There the preformation is by faith in the promised Redeemer; here the formation is by faith in the same Redeemer now sent. Whence there all sacrifices, sacraments, and institutions were types and a pedagogy leading to Christ; here they are the thing itself and the cause of actual union or insertion into Christ; there shadows, here the body (Col. II. 17); there prophecy foretelling, here the gospel fulfilling. The grace is indeed the same, but there it came from the merits of Christ still future, and therefore more sparingly, here from the same merits now accomplished, and hence more abundantly. « Not by a new plan, says St. Leo, did God provide for human affairs, nor with late mercy; but from the constitution of the world he established one and the same cause of salvation for all. For the grace of God, by which the whole multitude of the saints has always been justified, was increased, not begun, at the birth of Christ; and this great mystery of piety, with which the whole world has now been filled, was so powerful even in its signs that those who believed the promise obtained no less than those who received the gift » — St. Leo, sermo 23 (de Nativ. 3), n. 4; cf. sermo 24, n. 1. The same more clearly in the books On the Calling of the Gentiles: « Nor in the earlier ages did that same grace fail the world, which after the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ has been diffused everywhere... But since in that people, to whom both kinds of instruction were given (through the written law and through the testimony of all creation), no one was justified except by grace through the spirit of faith, who can doubt that those who could please God, from whatever nations and at whatever times, were set apart by the spirit of God's grace? Which, though more sparing and more hidden before, never failed in any age, one in power, different in quantity: by an unchangeable counsel, in a manifold work » — De vocat. gent. L. II, c. 4, 5. Therefore, by faith and grace from the beginning to the end of the ages, all the faithful are joined in Christ and to Christ, and form one Church in the wider sense, in which we now consider it. « The just went before, believing in him as one to come, just as we believe in him who has come... yet the same faith joins both those who believed that he would come and those who believed that he had come » — Aug. in Io. tract. 45, n. 9. « The saints before the law, the saints under the law, the saints under grace, all these, perfecting the body of the Lord, have been constituted members of the Church » — St. Gregory, L. V, ep. 18, ad Io. Ep. C. P. « Our Creator has a vineyard, namely the universal Church, which from the righteous Abel ² up to the last elect, who is to be born at the end of the world, has put forth, as it were, as many branches as it has brought forth saints. » He then enumerates all the ages in which « from the beginning of this world to its end he has not ceased to gather preachers to instruct the people of the faithful. » From Adam to Noah, from Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to Moses, from Moses to the coming of the Lord, from the coming of the Lord to the end of the world, « first through the fathers, and afterwards through the teachers of the law and the prophets, and finally through the Apostles, as through workmen, he has labored in the cultivation of the vineyard (namely of the universal Church) » — Id., in Evang. hom. 19, n. 1.

These are, as it were, a commentary on the doctrine of the Apostle, where he joins the old economy of the remission of « former sins » through faith in the propitiation of Christ still to come with the economy of justification now present through faith in the same propitiation already accomplished. « Justified freely by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as propitiation through faith in his blood, for the showing of his justice (of justifying justice), because of the remission of former sins in the forbearance of God (ἐν τῇ ἀνοχῇ τοῦ Θεοῦ, in the patience of God), for the showing of his justice at this time (of satisfaction already rendered), so that he himself may be just and may justify him who is of the faith of Jesus Christ » (both in the present and in the preceding time) Rom. III. 25, 26; Heb. IX. 15.

If therefore we regard the grace of redemption in Christ Jesus, which justifies through faith (as its root and foundation) in his blood, all who through true faith belong to Christ the head constitute, under Christ the head, one people of God: in the economy of preparation from Adam to the coming of Christ, and in the economy of perfection from Christ to the end of the ages (cf. Tract. de Trad. th. XXVI). Hence, often in the Psalms and in the Prophets, speech about the sons of Abraham, the father of all believers, about Israel, Jerusalem, Sion, is such that the one people of God is regarded according to the twofold economy, and what is said in those oracles applies to it partly according to the one and partly according to the other, or in a less full sense according to the former and in a fuller sense according to the latter. Read, for example, the last chapters of Isaiah, chapter 41 and following. Indeed, very often not only this double stage of the Church on the way is included, but at the same time also its state of glorification in the term, of which we shall now speak briefly.

II. Just as the ancient economy of beginning is joined with the new economy of perfection, so this is joined with the final state of glorification (cf. Tract. de Sacram. in genere th. II). Christ, by satisfaction, redemption, his merits, the supply of all graces, faith, hope, and charity, joins together into one people of God not only the men of both economies, of whom we have spoken (he himself the chief cornerstone, in whom every building, fitly framed together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord), but the people of God on the way toward the term remains joined with its brethren, who are now already consummated in the term through these same merits of Christ, where faith and hope pass into vision and enjoyment, but charity never fails, and is perfected in the enjoyment according to the perfection of vision. By the same reasoning, already on the way, having become fellow citizens of the saints and members of the household of God (Eph. II. 19), they have communion with the holy angels, who are all ministering spirits, sent to serve for the sake of those who receive the inheritance of salvation (Heb. I. 14). « One city of God, of which one part sojourns in us, and the other part, in them, lends aid » — Aug., De civ. Dei L. X, c. 7; Enchirid. c. 56.

All the faithful, therefore, from Adam to the end of this world, while they are engaged on the way amid the manifold variety of charisms, graces, virtues, and merits, and among whom must also be counted the souls of the just after death, who must still be purged by punishments and thus led to the term; all the orders of the saints already consummated, and the choirs of angels, in such a great distinction of degrees of holiness and glory, from the Virgin Mother of God, queen of the celestial and terrestrial hierarchy, to the last saint who reigns there, constitute one supernatural city of God, by vocation, government, beatification, grace and glory, under the one head Christ, who, as in his own person he has united the divine and the human nature, so, as mediator between God and men, he, the God-man himself, has reconciled earthly things with heavenly.

In this way Paul teaches that those things which are in heaven and those which are on earth are joined through Christ, and under Christ the head, into one Church. « He is the head of the body, the Church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he himself may hold the first place; because in him it has pleased all fullness to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, making peace through the blood of his cross, whether those on earth or those in heaven » Col. I. 18. This pacification of things on earth and things in heaven in the one head Christ the Apostle elsewhere calls the recapitulation of all things that are in heaven and on earth in Christ, or the restoration to the one head Christ: ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι τὰ πάντα ἐν τῷ Χριστῷ. This recapitulation is indeed accomplished through the redemption of the fallen race on earth, restoring the ruin which had been wrought in the heavenly hierarchy by the fall of the angels, as the Vulgate interpreter renders it: « to restore all things in Christ, those in heaven and those on earth, in him » Eph. I. 10. Thus Augustine explains the words of the Apostle: « Therefore also for the angels takes place whatever of men is redeemed through his death and freed from evil, since with them in a certain way it returns to grace, after the enmities which sins made between men and the holy angels; and through the very redemption of men the losses of that angelic ruin are repaired. And certainly the holy angels, taught by God, by the eternal contemplation of whose truth they are blessed, know how great a number from the human race is awaited to complete the integrity of that city. For this reason the Apostle says: to restore all things in Christ, those in heaven and those on earth in him. For those in heaven are restored when that which fell from them among the angels is replaced from men; and those on earth are restored (finally) when the men themselves who are predestined to eternal life are renewed from the old age of corruption » — Aug., Enchirid. c. 61, 62. This is the Church of God according to the most ample signification which we now use, in its threefold state of militant, purgative and triumphant, of which the first two belong to those on pilgrimage and are temporary, the third is final and eternal; and all of them are recapitulated in Christ and under Christ, who is the head of the body, the Church, holding the first place in all things. Ambrose, explaining the description of the Church in Eph. IV, argues thus: « One temple of God in all, and one dwelling of the heavenly habitation in the spirit of all. In which, I think, a connection of faith and spirit must be understood not only of holy men but of all believers, and also of all the higher rational Virtues and Powers, so that through a certain harmony of virtues and ministries one body from all the spirits of rational nature may cling to its head, Christ » — Ambros. ep. 76, n. 13, ad Irenaeum. Augustine often explains this most ample universality of the Church under Christ. « Christ is our head; we are the body of that head (the militant Church). Are we alone, and not also those who were before us? All who from the beginning of the age were just have Christ as head. For they believed that he would come, whom we now believe has come; and in his faith they too were healed, in whose faith we also are: so that he might be also the head of the whole city of Jerusalem, all the faithful from the beginning to the end being numbered, the legions and armies of angels being added too, so that it becomes one city under one king, and one province under one emperor, happy in perpetual peace and salvation, praising God without end, blessed without end » — Aug. in Ps. 36, serm. 3; in Ioan. tract. 45; ep. 102 (al. 49); de catechiz. rudib.; cf. St. Thomas, 3, q. 8, a. 4.

Therefore the incarnate Word, Christ Jesus, even considered as man, is the head of this whole Church, joining to himself, and among themselves, with the one and triune God, angels and men ³. For this reason the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, is described in such terms that with that city of those consummated in heaven the supernatural city on earth, with all its spiritual gifts, is connected, as in Paul, or at least connoted, as in John. For « God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places » (Eph. I. 9), that is, supernatural ones (ἐν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις). To the members of the Church still pilgrim on earth Paul says: « You have come to Mount Sion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem ⁴, and to the multitude of many thousands of angels, and to the Church of the firstborn who are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the just made perfect, πνεύμασι δικαίων τετελειωμένων, and to Jesus the mediator of the New Testament, and to the sprinkling of blood » Heb. XII. 22–24. John saw the heavenly Jerusalem coming down to earth, where heaven and earth are joined, and in this joining the state of those militant on earth is transformed into the state of those triumphant in heaven: one holy city, the new Jerusalem, and the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them. This Paul also wrote to the Corinthians: « For you are the temple of the living God, as God says: I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people » (2 Cor. VI. 16). But a preparation of newness in mourning and sorrow, which are the first things, precedes; full newness follows, where the first things have passed away and will be no more ⁵. « And I, John, saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a great voice from the throne saying: Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them, their God; and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor pain shall be any more, for the first things have passed away » Apoc. XXI. 2–5.

This is the heavenly Jerusalem, one Church in heaven and on earth. « The heavenly Jerusalem is called that whose citizens are all the sanctified men who were, and who are, and who will be, and all the sanctified spirits too, whoever in the high parts of the heavens obey God with pious devotion... The king of this city is the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, by whom the highest angels are ruled, and the Word, taking up man, so that by him men too might be ruled » — Aug., de catechiz. rudib. c. 19. Most beautifully in the hymn for the dedication of the Church is the heavenly city of Jerusalem celebrated, in the blessed vision of peace, as the gleaming city of heaven surrounded by thousands of thousands of angels; but at the same time in its building, as stones are polished by the blows of the chisel and by much hammering of the workman, they construct this mass.

III. From all that has been declared so far, the notion of the Church of God, considered in this wider sense, is sufficiently clear. It is constituted by all rational creatures which, subject to Christ the head by a supernatural, habitual gift pertaining to sanctification, are by it either ordered on the way to the end of eternal glorification or have arrived at that end in the term. These supernatural gifts, therefore, are the bond that unites, and the formal cause by which the same creatures, to a degree that varies with the diversity of gifts, are joined as members with Christ the head, in Christ with God the sanctifier, and in Christ and God with one another, into the society of the Church of God: « that you also may have fellowship (κοινωνίαν) with us, and our fellowship may be with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ » 1 John I. 3; 1 Cor. I. 9. Among these habitual gifts for those on pilgrimage on earth, faith is the root and foundation of all, as the first habitual disposition toward holiness; the beatific vision is the consummation and crown of all, as the ultimate term of holiness. If therefore we call the gifts, from the lowest to the highest, insofar as they are the form of this supernatural society, by the common name holiness, expressing this concretely as that which informs rational creatures, the Church of God must be called the supernatural society of saints, or in the solemn formula of the creed, the communion of saints. For although saints, in the fuller sense and by excellence, are those who have been sanctified through the indwelling Holy Spirit and through the habit of grace, in heaven and on earth; nevertheless, by biblical usage all the faithful, among whom are also sinners deprived of justifying grace, are called saints; and so faith itself, as the first disposition to that perfect holiness, is taken as the form through which the faithful not yet justified participate in the name of saints: Acts IX. 32; Rom. I. 7; XII. 13; XV. 25 ff.; 1 Cor. I. 2; XIV. 33; XVI. 1; 2 Cor. I. 1; 1 Tim. V. 10, and elsewhere. The Roman Catechism, speaking of the Church of the New Testament itself: « The faithful are called saints, it says, who have been made the people of God, and who by faith and the baptism received have consecrated themselves to Christ, although they offend in many things and do not fulfill what they have promised » (Part I, c. 10, §15).

The definition by which the Church of God is called communion of saints is not hindered by the fact that in the creeds the holy Church and the communion of saints seem to be distinguished. For a) the Church, in the creeds at least directly, is not taken in that wider sense in which we now consider it, but according to the determined state in which it was instituted on earth by Christ, and about which we must speak throughout this whole treatise. b) If the Church in the profession of the creed is understood, with St. Augustine (Enchir. c. 56), in the wider sense, the article on the communion of saints does not differ in subject from the preceding one on the holy catholic Church; but, as the Roman Catechism says (l.c. §24), it is « as it were a certain explanation » of it.

From the declared sense in which the form of holiness is understood in the definition of the supernatural society or communion of saints, the opposition to the Quesnellian doctrine condemned in the Constitution Unigenitus is clear. By that doctrine, under the name of saints who alone are the members of the Church, from the whole complex of the statement, only the just perfected in charity and predestined are designated (Props. 72, 73, 74, 75, 78); and so it belongs to the errors of the Protestants about the invisible Church, which we shall refute in its place.

If the definition must be stated simply, without explanation, then to exclude ambiguity it can be said that what we called holiness, from true faith on earth to the blessed vision in heaven, is denominated from the act as true and supernatural worship of God, where the habit, as disposition toward the act, is also included. Hence the Church of God, in the sense in which we now speak, will be called the society or communion of those adhering to God by true supernatural worship. See Gregory de Valentia, Analysis Fidei L. IV, c. 2; Wirceburg., T. I, disp. II, n. 79. Thus also St. Augustine, embracing at once « the whole Church, not only from the part that is pilgrim on earth, but also from that which in heaven has always clung to God », says that « it is all instituted to worship the one God » (Enchirid. c. 56).

Corollary. Since Christ, as will be declared in the following theses, instituted his Church on earth with special laws and a special form, besides this Church of Christ there is now no other Church on earth, nor can there be. More is therefore required for someone to belong simply as a member to the Church of Christ, which is one and the only Church on earth, than what suffices for the more general notion of Church, whose essential and sufficient form for those on pilgrimage on earth we have said to be true faith. Hence, when Suarez (De Fide, disp. IX, sect. 1, n. 3, 13–19), with other theologians, distinguishes in the Church of Christ itself faith alone as the essential form, from the other properties and institutions determined by Christ in his Church, so that that essential form suffices not only for the more general notion of the Church of God on earth, as we have said, but also for the character of the Church of Christ, and therefore catechumens, excommunicated persons, and schismatics themselves, as long as they retain faith, simply are and ought to be counted as members of the Church of Jesus Christ: this manner of teaching or of speaking, I say, is not to be admitted, as will be expressly demonstrated in its place, although the disagreement among Catholic theologians is rather in the manner of speaking than in the thing itself.

From this distinction between the general notion of the Church of God on earth, whose form we have said is faith, and the special state of the Church in the New Testament, it is understood that no one has ever been saved, or can be saved, who has not in act itself belonged, or does not belong, to the Church according to that general notion: « without faith it is impossible to please God » (Heb. XI. 6), and « the just lives by faith » (Rom. I. 17; Gal. III. 11). Yet those in the Old Testament who died « according to faith » and were « proved by the testimony of faith » (Heb. XI. 13, 39) were saved without belonging to the special state of the Church determined by Christ; and still may be saved those who, with a perfect disposition of soul, are fitted to this state of the Church, although, being inculpably hindered, they are not in act and simply its members. Suarez (l.c. n. 18) bent this distinction to confirm his somewhat unsuitable way of considering and speaking. After he has tried to prove that catechumens are simply members of the « present Church », he answers the objections raised against it. « The things adduced to the contrary, he says, prove only that catechumens are not in the Church as to those peculiar conditions and as it were accidents, which Christ added to the Church; but not that they are not in it as to those which are as it were the substance of the Church, which has always been the same; and these two are to be distinguished in the Church as it now is. » For he saw on the one hand that men could be saved by faith perfected in charity, who in act do not participate in the state of the Church determined in the New Testament; and on the other hand, at least in n. 18, he preferred the manner of saying that conjunction with the true Church is necessary for salvation by a necessity of means, not only by desire (as Bellarmine had said, de Eccles. L. III, c. 3) ⁶ but in act: hence he concluded that the substance and the essential form of the Church, for any state, is uniquely true faith; and so he referred the rest, which constitute the Church of Jesus Christ in its own proper special form and distinguish it from the Church of the Old Testament, « as to accidents. » This manner of speaking cannot be approved by us; indeed by a similar argument it could be urged that all those articles of faith which were not at all times to be explicitly believed even in the Old Testament are « accidental » in the Christian profession; and thus Tertullian (against Praxeas c. 31) and other Fathers would have wrongly called the profession, e.g., of the Holy Trinity « the substance of the New Testament »; which we do not think it right to suppose, even if perhaps the explicit faith in articles of this kind, as many theologians and with them Suarez teach, is not, for the New Testament either, simply of necessity of means, but only of divine precept (cf. Suarez, disp. XII, sect. 4).