Summa de Ecclesia

¹

Further, in fourth place, the holy fathers professed in the creed the holy Church of God to be apostolic, saying: I believe one holy Catholic and apostolic Church. Likewise blessed Gregory, expounding the creed in his Register, says: I believe, one faith, one baptism, one apostolic and universal Church. The holy fathers added in their creed, beyond the creed of the apostles, that the Church is apostolic, and this indeed, as Albert the Great says, to display the authority and antiquity of the Church against those presumptuous innovators who introduce novel and foreign doctrines into the Church. The Church is called apostolic for several reasons. First, because in the apostles, who were the first to adhere to Christ, as the Gloss on Gen. 38 holds, the Church was begun and received the origin of her being according to the time of revealed grace. Hence Augustine in his book On the City of God, as found in 35, q. 1, ch. hac itaque, speaking of the Jewish people, says: First he chose the apostles, whom he instituted as foundations of the Church, by whose preaching many of that same people, converted to him, furnished in themselves the origin of the Church. Hence the Apostle in 2 Thess. 2 thus testifies of himself and the other apostles of Christ: God chose us as firstfruits unto salvation in the sanctification of the Spirit and faith of the truth. And Aug., treating Ps. 44, The king's daughters delighted you, speaks thus with reference to the Church: The apostles are daughters, they are the daughters of kings, for he is the King of kings, and they are the kings of whom it was said: You shall sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. These apostles were, as the firstfruits of the Christian people in order of time, so too in amplitude of perfection. The Apostle attests this in Rom. 8, speaking of himself and the other apostles: We ourselves, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, the Gloss: both earlier in time and more abundantly than the rest. Rightly, therefore, the universal Church herself, by reason of the propagation by which she took her origin from the apostles according to the time of revealed grace, was named apostolic by the holy fathers. Second, she is called apostolic because after the Lord's ascension the apostles founded and strengthened the Church in faith and holy doctrine, by word of preaching, miracles, and examples of holiness, Eph. 3: Built up, namely you are, upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, that is, upon the New and Old Testaments, because what the apostles preached the prophets foretold as to come. And although Christ is the principal and greatest foundation of the Church, 1 Cor. 3, nevertheless the apostles are called the secondary foundations of the Church. Hence in Rev. 21 the most blessed John speaks of the Church thus: The wall of the city having twelve foundations, and in them the twelve names of the apostles and of the Lamb; and in Ps. 86 it is said of the Church: Her foundations are in the holy mountains, the Gloss: in the apostles and prophets. And well are the apostles compared to mountains, for as the sun's ray first illumines the mountains and then ascends to the valleys, so the ray of the divine sun first illumined the apostles and then through them enlightened all the faithful. Hence in Matt. 5 Christ says to them: You are the light of the world. But although the Church is said to be founded in the faith and teaching of all the apostles, yet she was founded above all in the confession of the faith of blessed Peter, as Christ says in Matt. 16: You are Peter, and upon this rock, the Gloss: namely this profession of faith, I will build my Church. Hence above all the successor of blessed Peter, such as the Roman pontiff is, is by antonomasia called apostolic, dist. 97, ch. 1, and ch. si quis pecuniam. Third, the holy Church is called apostolic because she always retains and observes the faith, preaching, teachings and authority of the apostles. She retains power in the keys, judgment in the word, and life in example. She plainly keeps and observes what the Holy Spirit commands through Solomon in Prov. 21: Do not transgress the ancient bounds which your fathers set. The apostles are called fathers of the Church according to Ps. 44: In place of your fathers sons are born to you, where the Gloss of Augustine and Jerome says: The apostles begot the Church; they were sent, they preached; they are the fathers in whose place sons are born to you, that is, bishops are constituted by whom you are ruled and governed. It is supremely necessary for the Church to observe the ancient bounds which the holy apostles set, because, as Jerome testifies on Ps. 133, the Church does not consist in walls but in the truth of doctrines, and where the true faith is, there is the Church; from the faith of the apostles we know who is in the Church. Hence Jerome, in the same place: We are in the Church if we hold the faith of the Church, the faith of the apostles, the faith of Christ of the truth of doctrines. Fourth, the Church is called apostolic because every rite of the Christian religion and observance of sacred ecclesiastical institutions is believed to be derived in the Church from apostolic tradition, as gathered in ch. ecclesiasticarum, dist. 11. And Aug. in book 2 On Baptism Against the Donatists confirms this, saying: Those things which are kept throughout the whole Church are believed to be handed down and commemorated by the apostles themselves, although they are not found in their sayings or counsels. Hence the see of blessed Peter, which is to us the mother of priestly dignity and the teacher of reason, and which never departed from the path of apostolic tradition, according to ch. a recta, 24, q. 1, is specially named apostolic, as in ch. sic and in ch. in memoriam, dist. 19, and in ch. sacrosancta, dist. 22; though sometimes it is found that churches in which the apostles taught in person were called apostolic. Fifth, the Church was called apostolic because Peter and Paul, princes of the apostles, together consecrated to Christ the Lord the Roman Church, which is the head and set above all churches, and preferred her by their presence and venerable triumph to all cities, namely to the whole world. Sixth, the Church is called apostolic according to some, following the Greek interpretation of this word, as sent from above. For apostolic is a Greek name, from apo, which means from above, and stolon, which means mission, as sent from above; whence an apostle is called one sent from above. The Church is called sent from above because patterned from heaven, according to Rev. 21: Behold, I John saw the holy city Jerusalem coming down from heaven, from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. From these points above all is proved the impious presumption of certain men who, scorning apostolic doctrine, strive to sow novel doctrines in the Church. Against them Pope Julius says in ch. nolite, dist. 11:

Do not err, my brethren, in various and strange doctrines; do not be led astray, and keep the institutions of the apostles and of apostolic men and their canons; enjoy these, that you may firmly persist against all the darts of your enemies. For it is most unworthy for anyone, whether of the pontiffs or of the subsequent orders, to reject this rule which he has seen the see of blessed Peter both follow and teach.