Summa de Ecclesia

It must be firmly confessed with the holy fathers, as has been said, that the Church of Christ is holy. Hence Aug., on that verse of Ps. 85, Guard my soul, for I am holy, says: Let the body of Christ dare to say it; let that one man crying from the ends of the earth dare to say with his head, I am holy, for he has received the grace of holiness, the grace of baptism and the remission of sins; and below: For all Christians, and all the faithful baptized in Christ, have put on Christ himself, as the Apostle says: As many of you as were baptized in Christ have put on Christ. If they have been made members of his body and say they are not holy, they do injury to the very head whose members they have been made. Now we must reply to the arguments. ¹ To the first it is answered that Christ is called the only holy one as he is the only good one, because he alone, as God, is good and holy of himself and by nature, and as man is at the summit of holiness. For this reason he is named in Dan. 9 the Holy of holies. And in the Psalm the prophet confesses of him, saying: God has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows, in which way he alone is holy. And this is what is said in 1 Kings 2: Who is holy as the Lord is, or as another text has it: There is none holy besides you, O Lord, because, as the Gloss says, no one is holy except God; and though there are those who speak of many gods and many lords, yet none of them is by nature what God is, for he alone is the one who says: I am who am. By this, therefore, it is not denied that by participation in his grace the faithful are good and just and holy. Hence the Lord says in Lev. 20: Be holy, for I am holy. And Aug., treating that verse of Ps. 75, Guard my soul, for I am holy, exhorts the faithful thus: let each one of the faithful say, I am holy. This is not the pride of one puffed up, but the confession of one who is not ungrateful. For if you say you are holy of yourself, you are proud; but if, being faithful in Christ and a member of Christ, you say you are not holy, you are ungrateful.

² To the second argument it is answered by first setting down two points to note. First, it is to be noted that for our present purpose a twofold holiness can be distinguished. In one way, holiness bespeaks complete liberation from all uncleanness and corruption of fault and punishment, and this is the holiness of the homeland, of which it is said in the Psalm: Glory, this is to all his saints. In another way, holiness bespeaks cleansing not from any sin or imperfection whatever, but from those uncleannesses that oppose the purity of grace and the light of charity, such as original and mortal fault, of which it is said in Rom. 1: To all who are at Rome, beloved of God, called saints, the Gloss: they were saints sanctified through baptism. Likewise in 1 Cor. 3: The temple of God is holy, which you are, where the Gloss says: It is holy from the time of baptism, because God dwells in no one whom the Holy Spirit has not first sanctified and cleansed. Second, it is to be noted that the holiness by which the Church is called holy in this present life does not bespeak immunity from all sin, corruption and imperfection, but immunity from those vices and sins with which the charity of God cannot stand, through which God abides in us and we in God, 1 John 4, such as criminal or mortal sins. Hence the Gloss on Song 4, You are all fair, my love, and there is no spot in you, says: spot, namely of criminal fault; and so the Gloss of the Decretum holds in ch. omnibus consideratis, 24, q. 1, on the word without spot. And therefore the venerable Bede, treating the aforesaid verse of Song 4, You are all fair, etc., says: These things were said, not because in this life any saint could be immune from all faults or perfect in virtues, since it is truly written that there is no just man on earth who does good and does not sin, but because the holy Church, insofar as she is the Church of Christ, is both right in faith and clean in deed. With these points noted, the answer to the argument is that first it is said that the cleanness implied in the definition of holiness laid down by blessed Dionysius bespeaks cleanness or purity from sin, whether in intellect or in affection, which stands in opposition to grace, such as original and mortal sin, but does not bespeak cleansing from venial sin. Hence Aug. in the Definitions of Right Faith rightly says: None of the saints or the just is without sin, yet they do not thereby cease to be just or holy, since they hold holiness in their affection. Second, to the minor premise, where it is said that the Church in its present state is not wholly free from the uncleanness that is contrary to divine grace, and to the authority of blessed John saying: If we say that we have no sin, etc., it is answered in two ways. In one way, concerning venial sins, which in this present life cannot be wholly avoided; for it is said in Prov. 24: The just man falls seven times a day. And Aug. says, as is found in the Gloss: It is impossible for any saint ever not to fall into the least sins, nor do the just thereby cease to be just, because with God's help they rise again swiftly. Second, it is answered to the same point that if blessed John speaks of mortal sin, then the sense is not that all the faithful have mortal sin, but that if we say from pride, as the interlinear Gloss says, being puffed up about some righteousness, since no one knows whether he is worthy of hatred or love, as is said in Eccles., whoever asserts without revelation that he is without mortal sin incurs the sin of boastful pride and of falsehood, asserting what he does not know. And therefore he says: and the truth is not in us. This is the exposition of Master Nicholas of Lyra. ³ To the third it is answered that, although by that authority of Matt. 6, as the Gloss says, each one of us is taught that he sins daily, since he is commanded to pray daily for his sins, yet it is not given to be understood that daily all we the faithful sin with a sin opposed to holiness. Hence Jerome, on Ps. 118, expounding the verse Blessed are the undefiled in the way, says: How undefiled? Because without slight sins man cannot be, as holy John says: If we say, etc. And the prophet says: He who enters without stain, etc., and in reply he says: without stain, that is, without mortal crimes. ⁴ To the fourth it is to be said that the Apostle does not mean to say in those words that every man lies, indeed he says of himself in 2 Cor. 12: God knows that I do not lie, but, as is gathered from the Gloss, it is given to be understood in the words of the Apostle and of the prophet saying, Every man is a liar, that every man is of changeable nature and will, and therefore can be a liar in his promises; God, however, is not so, since he is invariable and immutable. And thus, as the Gloss says, Every man is a liar is said because, so far as he is of himself, man is slippery in being and flows away through sins. And so the argument taken from that authority does not work against our proposition, since, although every man so far as he is of himself is slippery and liable to flow away through sin, yet through grace he can avoid flowing away. Hence the prophet says in Ps. 93: If I said, my foot is moved, your mercy helped me. And the Apostle in 1 Cor. 15: By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace in me was not void. ⁵ To the fifth the answer is clear from what was said to the second objection, where, with the distinction made between the two modes of holiness, it was said that the holiness importing complete liberation and immunity from all corruption and the old age⁶ of fault and punishment and from the contagion of any imperfection whatever does not belong to the Church in the state of this present life, but to the future one, when she shall appear glorious; and consequently, speaking in this way, it does not belong to the Church in the state of this present life to have no spot or wrinkle, as the cited authorities of the saints plainly declare. But the holiness that bespeaks immunity from those faults and wrinkles that resist divine grace enlightening the soul does well belong to the Church, as has been shown at length; and consequently in this way immunity belongs to the Church, even in the state of this present life, to have neither spot nor wrinkle nor anything of that sort. ⁷ To the sixth it is to be said that, although the wicked are of the Church in number, they are not so in merit. But the whole Church is holy in all who are of the Church both in number and in merit, such as all the faithful who are rooted in Christ by the love of charity. For blessed Hilary says in his book On the Trinity: You are holy if you are a perfect believer in faith, if you are firm in unshaken hope, if you are perfectly rooted in charity. Hence, although many sinful faithful are said to be in the Church, nevertheless, since these are not true members of the body of Christ nor belong to the Church by the perfect unity which comes through charity, it does not follow that the Church is simply not to be called holy; she is indeed holy, as we have said, in all who belong to her in number and merit, that is, in all her members. ⁸ To the confirmation taken from the authority of Origen it is to be said that, although the Church has wicked men mingled with the good, yet because the wicked are not truly and properly members of the body of Christ which is the Church, it must not simply be granted that the Church of Christ is foul, or not holy, or a den of robbers; but it is well said by the holy doctors, as we cited above, that in some who are not perfectly and properly her members she is weakened, or suffers some foulness, and from the perversity of the deeds of wicked acts of the faithful she takes on some disparaging designations, for instance, that she is called a den of robbers, as cited from Origen, and other things of that sort.

⁹ To the seventh it is answered by denying the consequence, because foreknown believers either have the stain of mortal sin or not, but are in grace. If the first be granted, what was said a little above about other sinful believers must be said of them. But if they are without the stain of mortal sin, possessing the grace of Christ, it must be said that in them too the Church is called holy, even though in the future they will bear the stain or contagion of unbelief and the wrinkle of impiety. For judgment concerning the members of the Church is taken according to the disposition of the present time and not of the future, just as a man is now called clean in limbs which tomorrow or hereafter will be unclean. ¹⁰ To the eighth it is answered by denying the consequence, since we cannot know by human means who among adults in this present life is holy with the holiness of grace and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Nevertheless we are most certain that such holiness is in the members of the Church which are her true and proper members, in whom she herself is called holy, inasmuch as she is described as the body of Christ and his beloved spouse, fair and without spot, Song 4.

¹¹ To the ninth it is to be said that the Church in the state of this present life is not said to be so established in faith and charity that all her members are so confirmed in grace that they can no longer sin, but for this reason, that there will always be in the Church some faithful and holy men. ¹² To the tenth and last it is to be said first that, taking the Church as she comprehends angels and men, the Church was always holy, because the good angels remained immovably in the holiness in which they were created. If we speak of the Church as we have spoken above, namely as taken and gathered from faithful men, we say too that the Church was always holy in some person or persons, as blessed Aug. says on Ps. 124: of old there is a Church, and from the time when there are called saints there is a Church on earth. To the authorities cited to the contrary it is said that Aug. and Jerome do not speak of the universal Church which is said to have begun from Abel the just down to the last just man, but of the Church according as it bespeaks the gathering of the faithful coming from the Gentile people, which people was before foul with the filth of idolatry. Hence Aug. on Ps. 103 adds: Is this not she who lay in the mire of iniquities? Is this not she who lay in the fornication of idols? Or it is to be said, and perhaps better, that the Church taken from the human race is not to be understood as having first been foul in the sense that after the Church began to exist she was foul in all her members, since, as will be seen below, in the Church which is said to have begun from Abel the just there were always some holy person or persons, but it must be taken in the sense that all the members of the Church taken from the human race, except our Savior, who was conceived not of human seed but of the Holy Spirit, were before, even if not at the same time, foul with the foulness of some sin, at least original. And this seems to be Aug.'s meaning, as appears from the authorities he cites to prove that the Church was first foul, as is clear from Rom. 3: All have sinned, the Gloss: from one sinner all are born sinners and need the glory of God, and from Rom. 5: he died for the impious.