Summa de Ecclesia

AGAINST what was said in the preceding chapter objection is made as follows.¹ Christ is called the principal and greatest foundation of the Church, as the Apostle says in 1 Cor. 3: No one can lay another foundation besides the one laid, which is Jesus Christ. Since, therefore, the Church ought to take her denomination from her foundation, it seems she comes to be named Christian rather than apostolic.

Second² thus: the prophets are called secondary foundations of the Church just as the apostles are, as Paul says in Eph. 3: Built up upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Therefore the Church comes to be named prophetic just as apostolic.

Third³ the teaching upon which the Church was above all founded is said to be the Gospel. Hence in Matt. 16 Christ says: Upon this rock, that is, upon this confession of faith, I will build my Church. Therefore it seems the Church is rather to be called evangelical than apostolic.

To these it is to be said; to the first⁴ it is said that it is true that the Church is undoubtedly both Christ's and called Christian from Christ, just as her people are called Christian. Hence Augustine on John: the Church was founded upon the rock, whence Peter too received his name; for the rock is not from Peter, but Peter from the rock, just as Christ is not named from the Christian, but the Christian from Christ. Concerning this name of Christendom and the time when that Church of Christ first began to be so called, the same blessed Augustine says in book 1 of his Retractations: The very thing which is now called the Christian religion existed among the ancients, nor was it lacking from the beginning of the human race until he himself came in the flesh; whence the true religion, which already existed, began to be called Christian. For when, after the resurrection and ascension into heaven, the apostles began to preach and very many believed, first at Antioch, as it is written, the disciples were called Christians. In our times, therefore, the Christian religion is so called, not because it did not exist in former times, but because in later times it received this name; to know and attain which is the safest and surest salvation. So Augustine. Nevertheless in the creed she was named apostolic rather than Christian, both because in being called Catholic she sufficiently expressed being named Christian, for Catholic and Christian are the same, and also because she was called apostolic rather, since, as an apostle means one sent, as Augustine says, and in the sending the sender himself is understood, certainly in the Church being called apostolic both are understood: namely Christ the sender, who is the principal and primary foundation of the Church, indeed, as the holy of holies and prince of pastors, so is he the foundation of foundations; and the apostles themselves, sent by Christ, who are said to be the secondary foundations of God's holy Church.

Moreover, Christ is called an apostle, whence in Heb. 3 the blessed Paul says: Brethren, consider the apostle and high priest of our confession, Jesus, where the Gloss says: Why should we deny Christ to be an apostle, whom God sent to us? Hence the Church is denominated apostolic not only from the apostles of Christ but also from Christ himself.

To the second argument⁵ that, although the prophets are called foundations of the Church just as the apostles are, nevertheless the Church comes to be named apostolic rather than prophetic for several reasons. First, because the apostles handed down to us the Catholic faith itself upon which the Church of God is founded more explicitly and clearly than the prophets did. For the prophets, according to the interpretation of their name (for prophet means seeing afar), handed down to us the faith of divine mysteries under certain shadows of figures, whence on Ps. 16, Dark water in the clouds of the air, the Gloss says: namely obscure teaching is in the prophets. Yet the final consummation of grace was made through Christ, whence his time is called the time of fullness in Gal. 4. Those who were nearer to Christ, whether before, like John the Baptist, or after, like the apostles, more fully knew the ministries of God, and consequently handed down to the Church a more explicit teaching of faith, as is thus clear. The faith of the Church consists above all in two things: first, in the true knowledge of God, according to Heb. 11: He who approaches God must believe that God is; second, in the mystery of the incarnation of Christ. In both the holy Church of God was above all illumined through the teaching of the apostles, whence the whole faith of the Church was founded above all upon the revelation made to the apostles concerning the faith of the unity of the divine essence and the Trinity of persons and the coming of the Son of God in the flesh. Hence to the Apostle Peter, the teacher of both sacraments professing by the Father of lights the faith explicitly, saying: You are Christ, the Son of the living God, who have come into this world, Christ answers: Amen I say to you, Peter, that you are Peter, and upon this rock, namely of your confession, I will build my Church. Of this profession of Peter's faith blessed Hilary in his book On the Trinity speaks thus: The faith of Peter, therefore, seeing the Son of God in man, embraced both, saying: You are Christ, the Son of the living God. This account of the confession must be held, that as we remember him Son of God, so also Son of man, because one without the other grants no hope of salvation. So Hilary.

The second reason why the Church was called apostolic rather than prophetic is that the teaching of the apostles was more universal and profound than that of the prophets. For the trumpet of apostolic preaching went out to all the ends of the world, which the voice of the prophets did not do. Hence the prophet says of the apostles: Their sound went out into all the earth, etc. And Pope Leo in ch. ita dominus, dist. 19: So our Lord Jesus Christ, Savior of the human race, instituted that the truth which was formerly contained in the proclamation of the law and the prophets should go out through the apostolic trumpet unto the salvation of all, as it is written: Their sound went out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. And on Luke 6, He chose twelve, whom he named apostles, the Gloss says: whom he destined as sowers of the faith through the world to propagate the help of human salvation. The third reason why she is named apostolic rather than prophetic is that a more superabundant perfection of divine grace was in the apostles than in the prophets. Hence, as cited above, the Apostle Paul says of himself and the others in Rom. 8: We ourselves, having the firstfruits of the Spirit, the Gloss: namely the Holy Spirit, both earlier in time and more abundantly than the rest. And in Eph. 1 he says: According to the riches of his grace which superabounded in us, the Gloss: namely in the apostles, in all wisdom, the Gloss: in all knowledge of divine things, and prudence, the Gloss: providence in temporal things, that he might make known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure. The fourth reason why the Church was called apostolic and not prophetic is that, with the fullness of time come and the sacrament of our redemption consummated, what the holy prophets principally foretold concerning the Catholic faith was fulfilled in the Church, and what was handed down by them as closed under seals is now opened and unsealed. Hence the Gloss on the phrase fullness of time in Gal. 4 says: namely the fulfillment of all figures. And since now, with the truth dispensed and manifested in the Church through the preaching of the apostles, the prophets have ceased as clouds in the presence of the sun with respect to bringing forth new teaching of faith, because the law and the prophets were until John, Matt. 11, much more fittingly was the Church named apostolic than prophetic.

⁶ Second, the argument made could be answered by saying that, since the apostles are called sons of the prophets, whence the Gloss on Ps. 147, Thus the sons of the quiver, which is also Augustine's, says: Know, therefore, that the sons of the quiver are said to be the apostles, sons of the prophets, who are called the quiver. A thing is said to be shaken out, like a sack, that what lay hidden within may come out; the prophets, therefore, containing closed sacraments, were shaken out by the preachers with the diligence they applied and the Lord opening, and what was hidden came forth opened. And therefore the prophets are called the quiver, and once shaken out, the apostles were begotten. So there. Therefore when the Church is called apostolic, in the apostles are understood the patriarchs and prophets, whose sons they were, not only by propagation of flesh but also by profession of faith and imitation of holiness.

⁷ To the third it is answered that the reasoning does not proceed, both because the apostolic and the evangelical teaching are the same, for the apostles taught nothing necessary to human salvation which they did not learn from the Gospel or from Christ. Hence the Apostle Paul in many places in his epistles calls the teaching he preached the Gospel. Moreover, the apostles were not only notaries of the Gospel but also its heralds throughout the whole world. And also because that profession of faith upon which Christ founded the Church in Matt. 16 was that of the blessed Apostle Peter, who, as the mouth of all the apostles, as blessed Chrysologus says, when Christ sought and questioned his apostles, Who do you say that I am, answered in the person of all the apostles: You are Christ, the Son of the living God, etc. And because the apostles themselves, gathering together in one place, as we received from the tradition of the elders, each uttering his own sentence, when they were about to part from one another, published the creed which the universal Church holds, as blessed Pope Clement, disciple and successor of the apostles, testifies in his decretals. Likewise holy Pope Leo the first, writing beautifully to Augustus: That brief and perfect confession of the Catholic creed was sealed with the sentences of the twelve apostles, as many in number. And blessed Ambrose, an illustrious witness of this matter, reckoning the faith of the apostles to be the key of the kingdom of heaven, says: This key I judge to have been forged by the work of twelve craftsmen, for faith was conceived in the creed of the twelve apostles, who, like skilled craftsmen gathering into one, forged the key by their counsel.

So he. Rightly, therefore, with these and the above reasons well weighed, God's holy Church was called apostolic by the holy fathers in the composition of the second creed.