328
CHUKCH
CHURCH
so. Heresy aiid schism impiiir unity, but do not altogetlier destroy it, just as the spiritual life of the individual is not altogether destroyed even by grievous sins.
The Invisible Church. — So far only the unity of that part of the Church wliich is on earth has been spoken of. But members of the Body of Christ do ■not cease to be united to Him, and therefore to eaeli other after death. That part of the Church which has passed away from earth is called the Invisible Cluirch, in contrast to the Visible Church upon earth, but they are essentially one. With regard to the state of the departed, very little direct teach- ing is recorded to have been given bj- Clirist Him- self, and we must not presume to speculate too much where knowledge has been withheld. Per- haps little more can be said than that in the parable of Dives and Lazarus (Lk l&^-^^) Christ gave a general sanction to current Jewish beliefs as to tlie state of the departed, and that His words to the penitent thief (Lk 23") assure us that union witli Himself is not impaired by death. If this is so, it is sufficient justification for the uni>ersal belief of early Christians, that the Invisible Clmrcli is united to the Visible by common worship.
2, Holiness. — The Church may be called holy because it is a Divine institution, of which Christ is the head, and the special sphere of the working of the Holy Spirit, or because its members, being united to Christ as the branches are to a vine or the limbs to a body, are called to a life of holi- ness, and have a real though imperfect holiness infused into them. Something has already been said on these first points, and it is liardly necessary to show at length that Christ required holiness from His followers (Jn n^'"", Mt 5«). It is no less evident that the holiness spoken of here and else- wliere is a progressive holiness.
One difficulty which has arisen mth regard to this characteristic of the Church is that the want of holiness in many of those who have fulfilled the outward conditions of Church membership has often in Church history led to attempts to secure greater purity by a sacrifice of external unity. The Novatians, the Donatists, and many later bodies of separatists, have made such attempts. The persistency of this tendency in the face of such teaching of Christ as is contained in the parables of the Tares and the Draw-net is some- what surprising, but at all events it testifies to a depp niider1yin<r ronviction of the necessity of liiiliiio~i<. St. I'anl emphasizes the holine.ss of any liixlv "I Chri-tiaii- wliich he addresses, by giWng tliri'n tlif titlr of ' salnts,' liowever iuiperfect many of the iMcUviduals might be (Ko V, 1 Cfo 1-, 2 Co P, Eph 1', Ph 11, Col 1= ; cf. Ac 9P). They are totli indi\idually and collectively a holy temple, and the habitation of the Holy Spirit (1 Co S'"- "• " 6'9, Eph 2"''"). And, as has already Ijeen pointed out, he does not draw any sharp line of division be- tween the imperfect society on earth and that which shall be perfected hereafter (Eph a"-^-'^') -. he regards both the indiWdual and the society as being already that which they are becoming.
those 1
whole the Church is holy in that cans of saiictiflcation which Christ i holv laws, holy teaching, so th i; feotions, her whole aim is that the tenl teaching shall b« to promote holiness ,i life. ... An university is learned, or i in learning or riches, although there mi
■ rrich nia
3. Catholicity.— Tlie earliest extant use of the word 'Catholic' as applied to the Cliurcli is ,ii Ignatius {ad Smyrn. viii. 2) : ' Wherever the IiIsIk,,, appears, there must the multitude be; just as wherever Christ Jesus Is, there is the Catliulir Church.' The natural sense of the word wouht
appear to be that of the Church throughout all the world as opposed to tliat in one place ; but this is not the sense in which the term has been commonly used. The Church has been called ' Catholic ' not because it has actually extended throughout the world, for this it has never yet done, nor even simply because it is destined to be so extended, but rather as possessing characteristics Avhich make it capable of being a universal religion, adapted to all classes of men in all parts of the world, and throughout all time. Even apart from particular words of Christ, such as those recorded in Mt 28^", nothing is more apparent in His teaching than that the religion which He taught was intended to l)e a universal religion, in special contrast to Judaism, which, like the religions of the ancient world gener- ally, was a strictly national religion, and appealed only to a part of mankind. In spite of the many anticipations of universalism which are to be found in Jewish prophecy, the controversy which took place in the early Church about the observance of the Jewish law shows mth what difficulty the idea was accepted by those who had been Jews. This quality, again, of universal applicability to all men at all times can belong only to a DiWne reve- lation sufficient for the needs of all mankind. Such a revelation Christ professed to give, and the Catholicity of the Church must depend upon its faithfulness to the fulness of the truth revealed in Christ. And so, in addition to the idea of universal extension, the word Catholic has been used to con- vey the idea of orthodoxy in tlie communion of the Church. The well-known definition of Cyril of Jeni- saleiii {Cat. xviii. 23) co-ordinates these two ideas. ' The Church is called Catholic because it extends throughout the whole world . . . because it teaches completely all doctrines which men ought to know . . . because it brings into subjection to godliness the whole race of men . . . and because it treats and heals every sort of sins . . . and has in it every form of virtue.' In this sense the Church was called Catholic wlien it was very far from being extended even over a considerable part of the world, and the term can be applied even to the Church in a particular place, as being in communion with and possessing the characteristics of the whole. So in the Martyrdom of Pohjcarp he is spoken of as ' Bishop of the Catholic Church that is in Smyrna.' The Oliurch or any part of it approaches the ideal of Catholicity in proportion as it possesses all the qualities whicli are necessan' to make it literally universal ; and, on the other iiand, 'eveiy- thing whicli hinders or lessens the capacity of the Church to be universal, everything which deprives it of part of the full truth or inserts in its teaching any thing -which does not belong to the truth, every- thing which cramps its power of getting rid of sm and increasing godliness, has a tendency to draw the Church away from the ideal of its Catholic life. To become such that it could not appeal to the whole world or to all classes of men, to deny essen- tial parts of the revealed faith, to become in its accepted principles a necessary instrument of some sins or a necessary opponent of some virtues, would be, in proportion as this was wilful and deliberate and fully carried out, a sinking below the niini- nniiii which the note of Catholicity requires' (Stone, 7//r Chiirrh, p. 59).