De Ecclesia Christi

« In the institutions and laws of the Old Testament, there must be distinguished: 1°. those which were in themselves necessary for salvation, pertaining to the eternal and universal Testament, from the others which were precepts only for the peculiar people and for the time of introduction to a better hope; 2°. within these very peculiar institutions one must distinguish those which by their principal end were typical of the Christ to come and of his Church, so that after they were fulfilled in Christ, their observance is to be regarded as abolished and dead, and after the sufficient propagation of the Church, altogether forbidden and deadly; but others, which, without at least a proximate and immediate prefiguring of Christ, pertained to the political or external religious discipline of the synagogue, though the obligation of divine law has now been removed in the Church of Christ, can nevertheless be permitted, or even prescribed, by custom or by human ecclesiastical law. »

The form of the Church, as it was imperfectly in the Old Testament, as has been declared in the preceding thesis, did not cease through defect but through the announced perfection, which was prefigured even in the synagogue itself; for the veil of the Old Testament « is done away in Christ » (2 Cor. III. 14), by a progress similar to that by which, in the present stage of the Church, « when that which is perfect has come, that which is in part shall be done away » (1 Cor. XIII. 10). Wherefore it is worthwhile to inquire briefly here how, in this transition from the imperfect to the perfect, the cessation of the old institutions, which are said by the Apostle to have been done away in Christ (τὸ καταργούμενον), has taken place.

I. In the Old Testament, those things which we generally call spiritual (in distinction from those which the Apostle, Heb. VII. 16, calls « the law of carnal commandment »), namely those pertaining to the grace offered and given in view of the merits of the Restorer of human nature fallen in the first Adam, to faith, hope, and charity, to the end of eternal life: all these, I say, are and always were of the eternal Testament, destined for all nations and all times. These therefore remain common to the people of God, or to the Church, in every economy, whether patriarchal, or in the fuller Mosaic, or in the perfection of the New Testament; although in the last, in keeping with its very perfection, after the « great mystery of piety » has been completed, they are more abundant in themselves and wider in extent. « 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 » — St. Leo, sermo XXIII (de Nativ. III), c. 4 (cf. thes. II, III). But since these spiritual things were given at any time from the merits of Christ, and since their perfection is the proper character of the New Testament, therefore they are sometimes said to have always pertained to the New Testament, even in the time of the Old. Cf. St. Augustine, contra Faust. L. IV; St. Thomas, 1-2, q. 107, a. 1.

These must be distinguished entirely from what was proper to the Old Testament in the Mosaic economy, insofar as it contained the shadow, type, and preparation for Christ to come, and for the New Testament promised in the Old and prefigured in it. To this typical order belong all the political and liturgical institutions, or judicial and ceremonial ones (as the theologians customarily call them), whether principally and in themselves, or at least indirectly, insofar as they were given by God through Moses for forming and preserving that peculiar people, so that in it the preparations for the Christ to come and for his Church might be kept and explained through the successions of times; and thus (as Paul says of certain historical events of that people) « all these things happened to them in figure » (1 Cor. X. 11).

What pertains to the spiritual order Augustine calls « precepts of the life to be lived »; theologians, using a generic name, call them moral, and they are theological, pertaining to faith and morals, and therefore to the eternal Testament. These have neither been changed in the Church of Jesus Christ nor can be changed, except by explanation and by bringing them to the state of the perfection of the New Testament (cf. Matt. V. 21 ff.; XIX. 8 f.). But those things which belong to the typical order, comprised under the name judicial and ceremonial, are called by Augustine « precepts of the life to be signified. »

Under these latter precepts the Mosaic synagogue was constituted in its own and peculiar manner, so that when these were removed in their signification of future things, their value, and their purpose, the whole peculiar character and form of the synagogue was removed. « The priesthood having been transferred (the principal subject and center of the judicial and ceremonial precepts), it is necessary that the law (of the whole peculiar Testament) also be transferred » Heb. VII. 12. Now indeed all these institutions, from their very intimate nature as types and preparations for Christ and his coming work, of their own accord ceased in this their signification and value, as they were fulfilled in Christ, now present, and in his Church, now constituted: « which are the shadow of things to come, but the body is Christ » Col. II. 17. Augustine discourses on these things most fully in his books against Faustus. « When a Jew says to me: why do you keep the Old Testament, whose precepts you do not observe? I answer: the Christians observe even from those very books (of the Old Testament) the precepts of the life to be lived; but the precepts of the life to be signified were then rightly observed, when those things which have now been revealed were foretold. Wherefore I do not even observe these things thus for religion, yet I hold to them as a testimony, just as also the carnal promises which are contained there, whence the Old Testament is properly so called, although eternal things have been revealed to me to be hoped for » — Aug., cont. Faust. L. X, c. 2. He disputes much more fully about these things in L. XIX, cc. 8, 9, 10, 11.

Therefore the cessation of the old judicial and ceremonial institutions, and so of the synagogue as true Church, has taken place by fulfillment in Christ and in the Church of Christ; this cessation, I say, is understood as the transition from the future to the present, from shadow and figure to body and signified thing, from promise to gift, from prophecy to gospel: « I came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it » Matt. V. 17.

II. Nevertheless, so that we may judge rightly about those divine but temporary institutions, and about their extinction at the apostolic time and afterward, when they were now dead or deadly, four very different modes of observance must be distinguished in them: a) observance in the formal reason of promises and types, as still awaiting Christ; b) observance held necessary from perpetual institution and divine law; c) observance in the reason of a religious institution once given by God to the sons of Israel, no longer necessary but nonetheless permitted; d) observance not to be retained from the divine law of the Old Testament, but imposed by human law.

1°. It is clear that the first mode of observance, for the time of the New Testament, involves the denial of Jesus Christ. In this mode the synagogue, persisting, denied and perverted the proper reason and purpose of the Old Testament itself; and thus, through apostasy from its own law, it fell into an unbelief contrary to true faith and to the Church of the New Testament, promised and prefigured by that very law, as the Savior reproached them: « There is one who accuses you, Moses, in whom you hope (ἠλπίκατε); for if you believed Moses, you would perhaps believe (ἐπιστεύετε ἄν) also me » John V. 46. The Apostle himself explains this thus: « Israel, pursuing the law of justice, did not arrive at the law of justice. Why? Because not by faith, but as if by works (of the law): for they stumbled at the stone of stumbling... Not subject to the justice of God; for the end of the law is Christ, unto justice for every believer » Rom. IX. 27 f.

Accordingly, after the manifestation of Jesus Christ and the fulfillment of these in him, the judicial and ceremonial precepts of the old law always were and remain not only dead, that is, neither necessary nor useful, but altogether deadly. « If certain deeds and celebrations which were future-announcing figures were still done by Christians, nothing would be signified except that those things which were then foretold by figures had not yet come. For what is still foretold as to come either has not yet come, or if it has already come, it is foretold in vain or deceitfully » — Aug., cont. Faust. L. XIX, c. 8.

2°. As to the second mode of observance which we named, by obligation of the divine law, still remaining: this obligation, and the necessity of observance for salvation, once the redemption was completed through the death of the cross, objectively and in itself certainly ceased, even for the Jews themselves, and all the more for Christians from circumcision. For that peculiar law, given for one peculiar people, never obliged the other nations, and consequently the faithful from the Gentiles; and for the people of Israel itself, as we said just before, it was only a pedagogy to Christ and to his Church and to the perfection of the new law. « But before faith (the new law) came, we were kept under the law, shut up in that faith which was to be revealed; so the law was our pedagogue in Christ (εἰς Χριστόν), that we might be justified by faith; but when faith came, we are no longer under the pedagogue » Gal. III. 19 ff. Where God through Jeremiah (XXXI. 31) promised a « new Testament », the Apostle adds a comment: « In saying new he has made the first old; and what grows old and aged is near to perishing » Heb. VIII. 8–15. « But now he promises, saying: Yet once more I will move not only the earth but also the heaven (Hagg. II. 6). Now that he says yet once more declares the transference of things movable, so that those things that are immovable may remain. Therefore, receiving the immovable kingdom, we have grace » ib. XII. 26.

After the promulgation, therefore, of the Christian faith of the New Testament, the immovable kingdom, it was never permitted to hold or teach the observances of the pedagogy, of the Testament made old and of the already translated movable things, as if they still persisted in their value and in their binding force. Against those who taught that the ceremonies of the law must be observed from obligation, as necessary for Christian justice, the Apostle wrote his whole letter to the Galatians. « Behold, I, Paul, tell you that if you are circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing... You are estranged from Christ, you who are justified in the law; you have fallen from grace » Gal. V. 2. Augustine explains this passage: « To them it was said: if you are circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing; who therefore wished to be circumcised because they thought that otherwise they could not be saved in Christ. In this mind, with this will, with this intention, whoever then was circumcised, Christ profited him nothing at all... He therefore accuses those who believed themselves justified in the law, not those who observed those legitimate things in honor of him by whom they were commanded, understanding both for what purpose of foretelling the truth they had been commanded, and how long they ought to endure » — Aug., ad Hieron. ep. 82, n. 19.

3°. Another mode, therefore, of observing the legal things, which Augustine indicates in his last words, could be altogether different from both preceding ones: namely, if, conceding and professing that the transference of the old law has already taken place, and that therefore the necessity or obligation of these ceremonies has ceased, the same legal institutions were nevertheless observed, either out of veneration for their origin and for the tradition of so many centuries among the people of God, or, in Augustine's words (ad Hieron. ep. 40, n. 6), « out of the custom of solemnity, not from the necessity of salvation; » or for reasons of prudent economy, in the way in which Augustine (ep. 82, n. 9) warns that Paul himself at times observed the legal things, « lest they be thought to be condemned by the doctrine of Christ as sacrilegious, or written without God's command, and to show that neither were the Jews at that time to be prohibited from them as from wicked things, nor the Gentiles compelled to them as necessary. »

That this mode of observing the legal things was for some time permitted, and that therefore those things, although already dead, were not yet deadly, is demonstrated by the deeds of the Apostles themselves, and especially of Paul, which embody the doctrine: Acts XVI. 3; XVIII. 18; XXI. 20–26. As to doctrine, and even as to the mode of conduct and the practice considered generally, there was indeed full agreement between the Apostles Peter and Paul.

For just as the Apostle of the Gentiles constantly taught that the obligation of those ceremonies had ceased, and therefore that they no longer conduced to Christian justice, not only for the Gentiles but also for the Jews; yet so he became to the Jews as a Jew, in order to gain the Jews; to those who are under the law, as if he were under the law, though he was not under the law, that he might gain those who were under the law (1 Cor. IX. 20); and he circumcised Timothy « because of the Jews » (Acts XVI. 3); and he himself observed the legal ceremonies, lest the faithful from circumcision, or Jews not yet converted to the faith, be led into the opinion that the Apostle condemned the old law in himself and taught (as they used to say) « a departure (ἀποστασίαν) from Moses » (Acts XXI. 21). But this very thing, concerning the abolished and in no way necessary observance of the ceremonies of the law, was first proclaimed and defined by Peter in the Council of the Apostles, directly indeed for the converted faithful from the Gentiles, but at the same time also for the Jews (Acts XV. 10, 11). This doctrine he confirmed by his own mode of conduct: « For being a Jew, he lived in the manner of the Gentiles (ἐθνικῶς) and not in the Jewish manner » Gal. II. 14. On the other hand, he tolerated it just as Paul did, and where he feared the scandal of the Jews, or (as Paul says) « fearing those who were of the circumcision » (Gal. II. 12), he himself observed the ceremonial laws. The difference of economy between the two Apostles consisted in the application of one and the same doctrine to the particular condition of the Antiochenes. For since (by special providence) Paul had been entrusted with « the Gospel of the uncircumcision, as Peter with that of the circumcision », the one, Paul, wished the greater regard to be had for the Gentiles, lest they be led into error about the necessity of the legal things; the other, Peter, for the Jews, lest they be turned away from the Christian Church ¹. Gal. II. 7, 11–14.

From the teaching and practice of the Apostles it is certain that that ceremonial law, although already dead, was nevertheless not yet deadly in those first beginnings of the Christian Church. But no less, from the very reason and nature of that temporary permission, from the consensus of the Fathers and indeed of the whole Church, and from definitions and condemnations against heretics, it is established that the observance of those ceremonies, of legal circumcision and of the other old sacraments, of the Levitical priesthood, of the sacrifices, and of the other sacred things of this kind, soon began, when « the Christian Church had been already established and more widely diffused among the nations », to be altogether illicit, and therefore deadly. In the decree for the union of the Jacobites issued in the Council of Florence (4 Feb. 1442), after the definition of the cessation of the legal things of the Old Testament, and the declaration « that whoever, even after the passion, puts hope in legal things and submits himself to them as if necessary for salvation, as if the faith of Christ could not save without them, has sinned mortally », a further explanation is added: « Nevertheless the Holy Roman Church does not deny that from the passion of Christ until the Gospel was promulgated those things could be kept, provided that they were not believed to be necessary for salvation; but it asserts that after the promulgation of the Gospel they cannot be kept without the loss of eternal salvation. Therefore it declares all who after that time observe circumcision, the sabbath, and the other legal things to be alien to the faith of Christ, and that they cannot be partakers of eternal salvation, unless at some time they repent of those errors. » The same is stated in summary in the Profession of Faith prescribed by the Holy See for the Orientals.

The time is not, indeed, defined more strictly by those words, « after the Gospel was promulgated »; yet it seems right to say that this promulgation, sufficiently ample and widely diffused among the nations, coincides with the foretold final destruction of the holy city and temple, and with the dispersion of the Church of Jerusalem, which was made up of Christians from circumcision. From that time, therefore, the observance of the laws and rites of the synagogue began to be not only negatively unnecessary, but privatively proscribed and pernicious. Indeed, that prophetic law had already lost the life of its office, as Augustine says; nevertheless, until the extreme execution of the sentence pronounced by Christ the judge against the city and the temple, it had to be religiously carried to burial; but once buried under the ashes of the city and temple, it cannot be brought to light without violating the divine economy established in the institution of the Church. « Why should I not be allowed to say that the Apostle Paul and the other Christians of right faith ought then to have commended those old sacraments truly, by observing them a little, lest those observances of prophetic meaning, kept by the most pious fathers, be thought diabolical sacrileges to be detested by posterity? For when faith had come, which was foretold by those observances and revealed after the death and resurrection of the Lord, they had lost, as it were, the life of their office. Nevertheless, just as dead bodies had to be carried in some way to burial by the duties of their kinsfolk, not feigned (as St. Jerome had said) but religious; yet not to be abandoned at once, or thrown to the detractions of enemies as to the bites of dogs. Therefore now, whoever of the Christians, even if he is of the Jews, should wish to celebrate these in the same way, digging up the buried ashes, will not be a pious bearer of the body, but an impious violator of the burial. » — Aug., ad Hieron. ep. 82, n. 15–17; cf. cont. Faust. L. XIX, c. 17. The Judaizing sects, who contended that those observances were perpetual by divine law, fell into heresy, and « while they wished to be both Jews and Christians, they could be neither Jews nor Christians. »

4°. There remains for us, from the questions proposed, the last one: whether, and within what limits, the observances which were divinely prescribed to the people of Israel in the Old Testament as ceremonial can be imposed on the faithful by the Church to be kept for a pious and fitting discipline; not indeed by divine law (since they have been abrogated), but by its own ecclesiastical laws, or by an equivalent lawful custom?

Benedict XIV, in his encyclical letter (1 March 1756) addressed to the bishops of the Greek rite, to commend and explain a new edition of the Euchologion, illustrates this doctrine on the Mosaic legal things at length, §§ 59 ff. « Although with the Gospel promulgated the ceremonial precepts of the old law have ceased... nevertheless it is within the power of the Church of Christ, with just concurring reasons and for grave causes, to restore the obligation of observing some of the ceremonial precepts which were in the old law, although, as we have indicated, they have been abrogated in the new; provided that the precept is not of the number of those which in the old law were chiefly ordained to prefigure the Messiah to come, such as, for example, circumcision and the sacrifices of animals, as Vasquez observed for our purpose; but that it is of the kind which pertained to external discipline and bodily cleanliness, in whose class must certainly be counted those things prescribed about clean and unclean foods. This assumption is confirmed no less by the discipline of the Western Church than of the Eastern, and indeed by the monuments of earlier centuries. » So the most learned Pontiff. Also in the decree for the Jacobites cited above, the doctrine of the Holy Roman Church is first put forward: « that the distinction in the Mosaic law between clean and unclean foods belongs to the ceremonial things which passed away and ceased to be effective when the Gospel arose; » and further, « that no nature of food that human society admits is to be condemned, nor is there to be a distinction among animals... whatever kind of death they die; » nevertheless there too account is taken of « the regular and ecclesiastical discipline »; for it concludes: « although for the health of the body, for the exercise of virtue, for regular and ecclesiastical discipline, many things not forbidden (by the divine law) may and ought to be forgone, because according to the Apostle all things are lawful but not all things are expedient. »

Many and principal ceremonial laws had their own foundation and form in the signification of the types of the Christ to come and of the Church of Christ, in which therefore other institutions, prefigured by those old typical ceremonies, are as the complement of prophecy. To this belong the sacraments of the old law, and in the first place the sacrament of circumcision, as a sign of the Redeemer to be born from the seed of Abraham, and as a seal of adoption into that peculiar people, and therefore as a type of the future adoption of sons in the Church of the New Testament through sanctification in baptism, which is « the circumcision not made by hand, but the circumcision of Christ » Col. II. 11, 12; cf. Rom. II. 29. The same holds of the priesthood and of all the old sacrifices, since in the New Testament they are wholly excluded, both by the bloody sacrifice on the cross, to which those were referred, and by the priesthood according to the order of Melchisedech, in which, by divine institution, « the variety of carnal sacrifices ceasing, one offering of the body and blood of Christ fulfills all the differences of victims » (St. Leo, sermo 59, c. 7). Besides sacraments and sacrifices, there are referred here the sacred things connected with them to the peculiar form of external worship, and the observances ² pertaining to legal cleanness or holiness, which Paul (Heb. IX. 9, 10, 13) calls « the ordinances of the flesh imposed until the time of correction », if indeed these sacred things and observances are considered not singly, apart, but in their complex, by which they constituted the peculiar ritual and priestly character of the typical people and its separation from all the nations.

It is therefore manifest that these rites, containing a profession of an economy imperfect and to be completed by the coming Redeemer, can neither be restored by ecclesiastical law nor tolerated by the Church among its faithful. In this matter St. Augustine most effectively expresses his agreement with St. Jerome, who seemed to understand him otherwise: « Just as you freely pronounce that the ceremonies of the Jews are both harmful and deadly for Christians, and that whoever has observed them, whether from Jews or from Gentiles, has fallen into the abyss of the devil; so I wholly confirm this your word, and add: whoever has observed them, whether from Jews or from Gentiles, not only truly but also feignedly, has fallen into the abyss of the devil » — Aug., ep. 82, n. 17, 18.

From all the foregoing it appears how much those are in error who foresee a future time in which the Jewish people, converted to Christ, in the rebuilt temple of Jerusalem, together with the eucharistic sacrifice of the immaculate Lamb, will by divine command also offer the sacrifices of the old form and restore the other sacred things.

Quite distinct from what we have recalled must be the judicial laws and certain individual ceremonial ones, which had their foundation not in the typical signification of things to come in the New Testament, but in disciplinary, ethical, and political considerations generally regarded. Therefore, from this very foundation of the ethical or political order, or, as is said in the decree for the Jacobites, for the health of the body, for the exercise of virtue, for regular and ecclesiastical discipline, observances of this kind, which were, and although they were, prescribed in the Old Testament by the Mosaic law for the people of Israel, may in the New Testament also be permitted, or even prescribed, for Christians by lawful authority. That this is not a renewal of the old divine law now abolished, but a new imposition of human law, is manifest in itself; although for its honesty and fitness it can, and usually does, appeal to the old law given by God himself. Thus the abstinence of the Mosaic law from « blood and what is strangled » was prescribed by the Apostles themselves even for Christians from the Gentiles (Acts XV. 20, 29; XXI. 25); and although « with the cause of this apostolic prohibition ceasing, the effect also ceased » (decree for the Jacobites), and therefore it ceased to be properly an apostolic law; nevertheless the same abstinence was kept for many centuries in the Western Church, and in some Eastern Churches down to our own age, either by custom or by positive ecclesiastical law; and this also held for certain uncleannesses of the body or of foods established in the old law. On these matters, besides the encyclical letter of Benedict XIV cited above, the theologians may be read, and among them Suarez, de Legibus, L. IX.

From what has been said one may note in passing in what sense certain laws which are in themselves ecclesiastical are sometimes referred to the Mosaic law, and under this relation are called divine. Namely, when the very substance of the thing commanded is derived from the natural law (granted the institutions of the supernatural order), but the determined manner is prescribed by the Church in the same form as the Mosaic ceremonial law, appeal is rightly made, in commendation of such a prescription, to the old law given by God himself. Thus the right of sacred pastors to a suitable support is derived from the natural law, and in the New Testament too it is confirmed by positive declaration (1 Cor. IX. 7 ff.; 1 Tim. V. 17, 18); but the manner of this support by the receipt of tithes in the Mosaic economy belonged to the ceremonial or (if you prefer) judicial law (Suarez, l. c., chap. 19, n. 18). Wherefore, since the obligation from that divine law has ceased, the law of tithes, considered formally, is to be counted for the New Testament as ecclesiastical. Nevertheless, Innocent III in the Decretals (L. III, tit. 30, cap. 26, Tua nobis) declares the obligation, nature, and consecration of the tithes of the New Testament from the divine law of the Old Testament, since the reason in the priesthood of the New Testament is equal or stronger than in that old Levitical priesthood ³. In this way is also explained the divine right of ecclesiastical immunity, even in those things in which the exemption, formally considered, is not by divine but only by canonical right; on which matters may be consulted Bellarmine, de Clericis L. I, cc. 28, 29; Suarez, de Religione, T. I, L. III, c. 8, n. 10; contra Reg. Angl. L. IV, toward the end.