VII
The Apostles’ Creed acknowledges the ‘one, holy, catholic church’. The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (dating from the Council of Constantinople in 381) talks about the ‘one, holy, catholic and apostolic church’. The true church is described in these three or four attributes. But how are we to understand them? Are they meant to be the church’s essential elements? Are they the church’s landmarks? Are they the criteria for the church’s truth? Are they the church’s own credal marks for the kingdom of God in the world? And if they are to be interpreted in this light, do these four attributes characterize the church completely?
These questions are important for the fellowship of the different churches. They are more important still for the visible form of the church in the world. If we see them as the conditions (criteria) of the true church, then we look for what distinguishes it from the false church, and ask what the premises are for fellowship between the different churches. If we see them as the signs (signa) or characteristics (notae) of the church, then we ask about the form by which it can be recognized in the world and their character as testimony. It is therefore important to substantiate these statements about the church theologically and fully if we are to legitimate their use and avoid one-sidedness.
(i) The statements about the church are a component part of the creed. They are made by faith, and unless they are made in faith they lose their meaning. They are integrated components of the confession of the triune God, and cannot be detached from this context. They belong to the article about faith in the Holy Spirit, and are only justified and comprehensible in the framework of the creative workings of that Spirit. This distinguishes the ‘characteristics’ of the church named here from the characteristics of any other object of experience. We can only know them for signs through perception in which we are inwardly and actively involved. They make sense if we see the church in the context of the divine history in which the acknowledgment of the triune God puts it. They are consequently not merely distinguishing marks, but credal marks as well. They are not the characteristics of an object per se; they are characteristics which this object receives through a history external to itself. The church receives the attributes named from the activity of Christ in the workings of the Spirit for the coming kingdom. But as these extend and link together, the attributes become the inalienable signs of the true church, which is to say the church in the truth of God.
(ii) If the church acquires its existence through the activity of Christ, then her characteristics, too, are characteristics of Christ’s activity first of all. The acknowledgment of the ‘one, holy, catholic and apostolic church’ is acknowledgment of the uniting, sanctifying, comprehensive and commissioning lordship of Christ. In so far they are statements of faith. ‘The unity of the church is not primarily the unity of her members, but the unity of Christ who acts upon them all, in all places and at all times.’ Christ gathers his church. Consequently the unity of the church lies in his uniting activity. The result of his gathering activity is the unity of believers in Christ (Gal. 3:28) and their unity of mind in the Spirit (Eph. 4:1ff.). The holiness of the church is not initially the holiness of her members or her cultic assemblies; it is the holiness of the Christ who acts on sinners. Christ sanctifies his church by justifying it. Consequently the holiness of the church lies in his sanctifying activity. The result of his justifying activity is ‘the communion of saints’. The catholicity of the church is not initially her spatial extent or the fact that she is in principle open to the world; it is the limitless lordship of Christ, to whom ‘all authority is given in heaven and on earth’. Where, and so far as, Christ rules, there, consequently, the church is to be found. She acquires her openness to the world in the breadth of his rule. ‘She is catholic on the strength of the catholicity of her Lord, which is imputed to her.’ Her apostolic character is also to be understood in the framework of the mission of Christ and the Spirit. Founded by Christ’s apostles in the Spirit, her charge is the apostolate in the world. As the church of Christ the church is bound to be the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.
(iii) If the church acquires her existence from Christ’s messianic mission and the eschatological gift of the Spirit, then her characteristics are messianic predicates at the same time. In so far these are statements of hope. The unity of the church is a ‘predicate of the time of salvation’, for in the Old Testament the restoration of the unity of God’s people and the unity of mankind are prophetic promises. The Messiah of the last days will ‘gather’ those who have been dispersed, unite the divided and bring about the kingdom of peace. As the Messiah of the time of salvation Christ gathers and unites Jews and Gentiles, Greeks and barbarians, masters and slaves, men and women, making them the new people of the one kingdom. According to the prophetic promise, holiness is part of the inmost nature of the coming divine glory that is going to fill the earth. ‘The Holy One of Israel’ will redeem his people. When the church is called ‘holy’ in the New Testament, this means that it has become the new creation in Christ and therefore partakes of the holiness of the new creation, which the holy God brings about through his Spirit. The church is holy because it is the ‘community of the last days’. The apostles and the church’s apostolate belong to the beginning of the messianic era, like the gospel and evangelization. Finally, the church is catholic to the extent in which it partakes of the catholicity of the coming kingdom. In its openness for the kingdom of God it is also open to the world, encompassing it with its mission and intercession. The four characteristics of the church are therefore to be seen as messianic predicates of the church in the perspective of the coming kingdom, for which it exists and which in the church acquires form and testimony. As the church of the kingdom of God, the church is bound to be the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.
(iv) If the characteristics of the church are statements of faith and hope, they also lead to statements of action. Because in Christ the church is one, it ought to be one. Those who receive its unity in Christ ought to seek its unity. The one people of the one kingdom ought to lay the foundations of unity among men. Because in Christ the church is holy, its members ought to fight sin and sanctify its life through righteousness. Because they are sanctified through the Spirit, they ought in obedience to sanctify all things for the new creation. Because in Christ it is open to the world, it ought to be catholic, testifying everywhere to the all-embracing kingdom. As the church of the Spirit, the one church is the unifying church. The holy church is the church that sanctifies or makes holy. The catholic church is the peace-giving, and so the all-embracing, church. The apostolic church is—through the gospel—the liberating church in the world.
The church’s essential nature is given, promised and laid upon it in the characteristics we have named. Faith, hope and action are the genesis of the form of the church visible to the world in unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity. That is why theology cannot withdraw to ‘the invisible church’, ‘the church of the future’, or ‘the church of pure demands’. The church lives in the one, holy, catholic and apostolic rule of Christ through faith, hope and action.
(v) Although the creed limits itself to these three or four marks of the church, this has never been seen in history as a restriction, but always as a pointer to the essentials. Theological doctrines of the church therefore include a wealth of other signs. Luther, for example, named seven: (i) the preaching of the true word of God; (ii) the right administration of baptism; (iii) the right form of the Lord’s supper; (iv) the power of the keys; (v) the rightful calling and ordination of the church’s ministers; (vi) prayer and hymn-singing in the vernacular; (vii) suffering and persecution. The church’s creeds, however, always stopped short at the four classical attributes. These are undoubtedly the essential ones. But it must be noted that they were formulated and laid down for the first time at the great imperial synods of the early church and we therefore have to see them in the context of the church’s development into the church of the empire. At that period there was considerable political pressure for the church’s unity and universality, so that it might be in a position to administer the unified religion for the Roman empire. To make this historical observation is not to deny the truth of these statements about the church. But it gives us liberty to move other marks of the true church into the foreground in a changed world situation, and to link these with the traditional ones.
Theological recognition is not in itself a creed. It is not therefore bound to the formulated creed either. We shall permit ourselves to add other characteristics to the theological interpretation of the classical marks of the true church and to show their essential connection with the latter today. The church’s unity is its unity in freedom. The church’s holiness is its holiness in poverty. The church’s apostolicity bears the sign of the cross, and its catholicity is linked with its partisan support for the oppressed.
(vi) Finally, we must draw attention to a denominational difference in the doctrine about the marks of the church (notae ecclesiae) which grew up in the Reformation period. The Reformers did not reject the four attributes of the church, but they saw the marks of the true church in the pure—i.e., scriptural—proclamation of the gospel and the right administration of the sacraments; that is to say, an administration in accordance with the charge to the church and the promises conferred on it. It is these signs of the church which make it the church, practically speaking, for they are its real foundations. They cannot therefore be set up contrary to the four other predicates, any more than these can be set up against these two signs. A church in which the gospel is purely preached and the sacraments are rightly used is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. The two Reformation signs of the church really only show from within what the traditional attributes of the church describe from without, so to speak. Without the pure proclamation there is no messianic church, gathered together for unity in Christ. Without the fellowship of the table and the one baptism the church has no catholicity. But then the reverse is true as well: without unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity there is no pure proclamation and no right use of the sacraments. There is no real difference here; there is only a mutual complementing. The four attributes of the church point to the proclamation and the sacraments and cannot be maintained apart from them. But word and sacrament point to the church’s four attributes and cannot be purely and rightly ordered without the fellowship which faith sees as having these attributes.
The matter only becomes difficult—because more controversial—when the one, holy, catholic church gathered round word and sacrament considers its situation in our divided, fought over, unjust, inhuman world: Is not the Christ proclaimed in the church the one who preaches the gospel to the poor? Is not the Christ of its Eucharist also the brother of the one who is persecuted outside the church? What form is to be taken by Christ in the church in a world of hostility? By the church sanctified in the Spirit in a world of poverty? By the catholic church as it testifies to the kingdom in a world of violence? By the apostolic church in the world of the cross? Is the situation in which the church finds itself in this society not bound to stamp it with the signs of poverty, suffering, liberation and partisanship? If the church were to ignore its social and political Sitz im Leben—its situation in the life of mankind—then it would be forsaking the cross of its Lord and would be turning into the illusionary church, occupied merely with itself. We cannot therefore merely give the marks of the church bearings that tend in an inward direction, understanding them in the light of word and sacrament; we must to the same degree give them an outward direction and see them in reference to the world. They are not merely important for the internal activities of the church; they are even more important for the witness of the church’s form in the world. The marks of the church will then become confessional signs in the conflicts which today are really splitting and dividing mankind. Let us therefore extend the ecclesiology of tradition, which is orientated towards unity, into an ecclesiology oriented towards conflict in the world situation of today.
(i) The unity of the church is experienced first of all in the gathered congregation. The congregation is gathered through proclamation and calling. It gathers for the one baptism (Eph. 4:5; 1 Cor. 12:13) and for the common Lord’s supper (1 Cor. 12:13; 10:17). It lives in the spirit of mutual acceptance (Rom. 15:7) and maintains the unity of the Spirit through ‘the bond of peace’ (Eph. 4:3). In the church people of different social, religious and cultural origins become friends who ‘forbear one another in love’ (Eph. 4:3), do not judge one another, but stand up for each other, especially for the weak among them. The unity of the gathered congregation is visible and experienced in the fellowship of people who are in themselves different. It is in no way a fortuitous result of the proclamation and the administration of the sacraments, but is, in association with these, itself the sign of hope. The fact that Jews and Gentiles, Greeks and barbarians, masters and slaves, men and women surrender their privileges, or are freed from oppression as the case may be, is—like the gathering of the new people of God itself—the sacrament of the kingdom and the beginning of the messianic era.
The unity of the congregation is a unity in freedom. It must not be confused with unanimity, let alone uniformity in perception, feeling or morals. No one must be regimented, or forced into conformity with conditions prevailing in the church. Everyone must be accepted with his gifts and tasks, his weaknesses and handicaps. This unity is an evangelical unity, not a legal one. The charismatic congregation gives everyone the room he needs to be free in his dealings with other people and to be at their disposal when they need him. Because it is Christ who gathers it and the Spirit of the new creation who gives it life, nothing that serves the kingdom of God and the freedom of man must be suppressed in it. It is a unity in diversity and freedom.
But the congregation’s unity is also freedom and diversity in unity. Where old enmities flare up again in it, where people insist on getting their own way and want to make their perceptions or experiences a law for other people, not only is the fellowship between people threatened, but so (in a deeper sense) is the fellowship with God himself. Through claims to domination and divisions of this kind Christ himself is divided (1 Cor. 1:13). Anyone who uses freedom in order to destroy freedom is not acting in accordance with that freedom. Freedom can be destroyed through the mania for uniformity, just as it can be killed by ruthless pluralism. In both these dangers, the important thing for the committed congregation is to return to the foundation of its unity in diversity, and to experience the open fellowship of Christ in his supper. For the committed congregation is his people and it is only in his Spirit that unity and diversity can be so intertwined that they do not destroy one another.
(ii) Every congregation gathered together in one place is one in Christ with every other congregation gathered together in other places and at other times. A community which does not see the suffering and testimony of other communities as its own suffering and its own testimony is dividing the one Christ who suffers and acts in all places and at all times. Communities which are divided in space and time recognize one another through their identity in Christ and the common Spirit. They will therefore experience this common identity of theirs and make it visible through fellowship and friendship with one another. They will recognize one another as members of the one church of Christ. ‘If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together’ (1 Cor. 12:26). This demands a solidarity beyond the limits of one’s own community and must be proved in times of persecution. Every repression of a single Christian or a single community in the world affects all Christians and the whole church. It is only through this living solidarity and full identification with its persecuted members that the church will be able to resist the oppressor’s tactics of ‘divide and rule’. That is why it is not enough for the fellowship between the individual communities to exist merely in an organization over a large area.
The hierarchical build-up of large-scale church units and of administrations over a large area becomes abstract if it loses its contact with the ‘grass roots’. It is true that many of the community’s tasks can be carried out regionally or territorially by the church authorities: questions of finance, schools, dealings with government departments. But this does not affect the specific tasks of the local community—proclamation, mission, charitable work, fellowship, and so forth. Individual communities cannot delegate their specific duties to supra-regional units, and so shed their own responsibility for them. If they did so they would become poverty-stricken and reduce their work at the ‘grass-roots’. Even fellowship at the local level is one of the community’s own specific duties. It must be performed by the community itself and cannot be delegated.
The community can assign particular charges connected with their mutual fellowship. The apostles performed this function in the early Christian churches. Later it was given to bishops. In state churches it was possible to leave this task to the state authorities. On the other hand regional and territorial synods grew up which represented and expressed practically the common fellowship between the different congregations. But the episcopal organization is in danger of absorbing the actual congregation into abstract units under the name, in Germany, of Landeskirchen (churches belonging to a particular federal Land, or state); and on the other hand the synodal organization is in danger of seeing itself solely as the representative of the congregations, over against a central church government. In both cases organizations above the local level lose the character of the ‘committed congregation’. The governing bodies and the synods then see themselves as institutions for the support of the congregations, or even as ‘the church’ compared with ‘the congregations’. The all-important thing is therefore to present and organize the fellowship between local churches not from above but from below. Church governments and synods cannot set themselves up ‘above’ the congregations; they themselves can only be again the congregation gathered round word and sacrament The unity of the congregations depends on what the congregations do. The fellowship of the fellowships should be lived as fellowship. The open friendship of Jesus, which is experienced and lived in the gathered congregation, and ‘the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’, cannot be surpassed. It is only when the unity of the congregations with one another is itself realized as a congregation that unity in freedom and freedom in unity can be experienced. For all inter-congregational fellowships and organizations, therefore, the fellowship in word and sacrament is fundamental, and the things that have to be administered and the affairs that have to be ordered must be settled in the fellowship of the Spirit.
(iii) Unity in freedom is not merely a mark of Christ’s church; it is also a confessional mark, a sign of the church’s creed in a divided and estranged world, ‘that the world may believe’ (John 17:21). The word and the sacraments have a power that gives fellowship and freedom in the church and—through the church—in the whole world of men and women as well. As a unifying force, the church is the messianic people of Christ, for unity is not merely an attribute of the church; it is the church’s task in the world as well. If the assembled church is the confessing church, then it will represent the unity in Christ and the Spirit that makes all things new in the midst of the conflicts of its social and political situation. That is why the unifying power of the sacraments cannot be separated from the tasks and forces of social and political justice. The unity of Christ, which must not be divided, is not only unity with his disciples and the fellowship of believers but, based on that, is also his unity and fellowship with the oppressed, humiliated and forsaken. The church would not witness to the whole Christ if it were not a fellowship of believers with the poor, a fellowship of the hopeful with the sick, and a fellowship of the loving with the oppressed. Its unity would no longer be a ‘predicate of the time of salvation’ if it were not to achieve liberation for the downtrodden, justice for those without rights, and peace in social conflicts. It is not ‘one’ for itself; it is one for the peace of divided mankind in the coming kingdom of God. In this respect ‘unity in freedom’ and ‘freedom in unity’ become particularly important.
The church itself acquires its practical unity as it experiences and lives in liberation from claims to domination in the society in which it exists. It is only a church liberated in this sense that portrays that unity. But this also means, as experience shows, that a church that suffers because of its resistance to claims of this kind becomes assured of its unity in Christ in a particular degree. The church will seize every opportunity to work for unity through liberation, and for peace through justice, in social and political conflicts. It does this when it works for the liberation of people whose rights have been taken from them and who have to suffer injustice helplessly. It does this when it offers open friendship to the people who have to suffer enmity and contempt. It testifies to the fellowship of the crucified Christ when it offers this fellowship and helps the people who are poor, oppressed and rejected to find fellowship themselves.
But when the church believes, hopes and practises unity in, with and beneath the real conflicts of society, it is also taking new conflicts on itself. The church’s inward orientation towards its own unity would remain abstract and remote from its messianic mission if this political trend of its unity were not discerned and accepted. The ecumenical movement of the separated churches has made great progress in the field of dogma, and has been able to overcome traditional conflicts about baptism, the Lord’s supper and the ministry. But for a number of years a growing sense of the social and political tasks of messianic action has introduced new conflicts into these endeavours on the part of the church for unity and fellowship. It is no longer merely true that ‘doctrine divides but service unites’; now it is often the case that ‘doctrine unites but politics divide’. Here the question of which kind of unity has priority is especially delicate. Is it the fellowship in word and sacrament that unites a person with his political enemies, or is it fellowship with the poor and all those who are standing up for them that divides the one from the other? When does a political situation become so acute that it becomes a matter of creed? Does Christian fellowship exist between the hangman and his victims? Can there be Christian fellowship with both the hangman and his victims at the same time? How far can the church settle conflicts of this kind within itself, and when does Christian fellowship run aground on them? Can we witness to our unity even through confrontation and conflict about the truth? Can the church confine itself to word and sacrament, and keep out of the quarrel altogether as an institution, while individual Christians take different and opposing sides in the various conflicts? Can political enemies ‘remain one under the gospel’? How long can they do this? And what does it mean for their conflict itself? Does this not make ‘the gospel’ an abstract and ineffective power? These are some of the practical questions facing the church and many individual Christians today. If we only have the church’s internal unity in view, we will push these questions off into the field of ethics. If we are looking towards messianic unity, they are questions of faith as well. If we only look at the unity without taking account of the freedom, reconciliation for fellowship easily becomes a policy of appeasement—a mere prevention of conflicts without any search for a solution. If we only look at the freedom without taking account of the unity, then we easily overlook the irreparable sacrifice required by conflict as a means to liberation and peace. Neither the unity as such nor the conflict as such is creative. The only creative thing is the strength that accepts the conflicts and seeks for unity in freedom, and freedom in unity. As far as the practical and personal questions in these conflicts are concerned, the primary question is not whether fellowship with the church or fellowship with the oppressed and persecuted is more important. The question of really pre-eminent importance is where the assured and consistent fellowship of Christ is to be found. For this alone is, after all, the foundation of the fellowship with our Christian brethren, and with the least of men. It will therefore also be the yardstick for church fellowship and political fellowship. Unity and division, conflict and reconciliation, confrontation and co-operation must be tested against the cross of Christ; for his cross is the first and last sign of the one kingdom.
(i) The expression ‘catholic’, καθολικός (which comes from the adverbial usage καθʼ δλου, ‘generally’, ‘universally’) is not as yet applied to the church in the New Testament. It was first used in that context by Ignatius of Antioch:
Let that be considered a valid eucharist which is celebrated by the bishop, or by one whom he appoints. Wherever the bishop appears, let the congregation be present; just as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church (Smyrn. 8. 1f.).
‘Catholic’ means, first of all, what is general, universal, linked with everything, compared with the particular and individual. Applied to the church, it meant the main church, the bishop’s church in a province, compared with the local churches. If, as Ignatius stresses, the bishop represents Christ and hence the unity of the church, then the church’s catholicity is determined by the universal, all-uniting presence of Christ. In this case what is meant is the church whole and entire, as it is in Christ. That includes its spatial catholicity—its presence in all parts of the inhabited earth (the oikumene) and its temporal catholicity—its presence in all periods of history. It was only in the quarrels with the heretics and schismatics in the first centuries that ‘catholic’ was used as the mark of ‘the true church’, the sole and rightful church. The term then included its quality—its fullness of truth, its unity and holiness in Christ, and its apostolic legitimation.
The church’s catholicity is a correlative term to its unity. Whereas its unity means its catholicity in intention and trend, its catholicity means its unity in extent. Qualitatively, its catholicity means the church’s inner wholeness, compared with the splitting off of individual elements of truth, which are then given an absolute validity of their own. It we put the spatial and the inner meaning of the word together, then the church with its inner wholeness is related to the whole of the world. This follows inevitably from its definition as the church of Christ. Being entirely related to Christ, it is related to the whole world, for whose reconciliation Christ was sacrificed by God, and for whose liberation and unification all power was given him in heaven and on earth (cf. Eph. 1:20ff.). When, in the conflicts of the Reformation period, ‘Catholic’ became the party name for one particular church, the Reformers also replaced the word ‘catholic’ in the German creed by ‘general’ or ‘Christian’ church.
(ii) The claim made in talking about the church’s spatial, temporal and inner catholicity is a large one, and has given rise to misunderstandings. Consequently we must make some theological distinctions here. The church is not universal, general and related to the whole in itself, but solely in and through Christ. That is why Ignatius was right (if we leave his episcopalism on one side) when he said: ‘Wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church.’ For in the fullest sense of the word, the attribute ‘catholic’ applies to the lordship of Christ, through which the universe is summed up and united, and the kingdom of God, which the lordship of Christ serves. Even in its comprehensive form, the historical church is particular and not yet the whole. Just because it is the people of the coming kingdom, it is not yet the new humanity itself. It is not yet itself the summing-up and unification of the universe, but is only its witness in the divided world. It cannot therefore be its duty to combine everything syncretistically and to incorporate everything in itself. But at the same time the church of Christ and the coming kingdom is related to the whole. Its catholicity lies in the universal and, in principle, unlimited breadth of its apostolic mission. Its participation in the catholicity of the kingdom is realized through its mission to the world—‘to the end of the earth’ (Acts 1:8) and ‘to the close of the age’ (Matt. 28:20). The church is catholic in its mission, because in its proclamation it appeals to people who do not belong to it, and because it does not accept that there is any sphere which Christ would not have claimed for his own from the beginning. Thanks to its hope it cannot surrender any individual person or any part of creation. ‘Catholic’ is therefore not an adjective describing the church’s state; it is an attribute describing its movement, its mission and its hope. We may remind ourselves in this connection that before the word became a predicate of the church Justin talked about the ‘catholic … resurrection’ (Dial. 81. 4) and that early liturgies called the prayer of intercession for all men and all situations in life ‘the catholic prayer’. The church is related in a missionary way to the whole of mankind, because its resurrection hope and its eucharistic prayer include everyone. ‘Catholic’ is therefore an eminently eschatological definition of the church.
(iii) But how are we to interpret this eschatological definition of the church? If it is related to the whole by virtue of its universal mission, then the catholicity of God’s kingdom is manifested in this movement of the church and the openness to the world of its prayer. If it is itself the beginning of the kingdom of God on earth in the particular sense, then in the eschatological consummation it will itself be the whole and realize its catholicity. The perfected church is then to be the ‘truly catholic, perfect society’ and conversely, the church which is incomplete in its particularity must represent nothing other than the future universal society. But the second postulate, like most other interpretations of the word catholic, overlooks the historical differences between the church and Israel, as well as the distinction between the church and the political orders of society.
The church in history is limited not merely by its inadequate extent. It does not merely remain limited because it cannot, fundamentally speaking, live for everyone at the same time. It is above all limited, non-universal and non-Catholic as long as Israel exists parallel to it. An incorporation of Israel is neither promised, nor enjoined upon it, though what is laid on it is the missionary task of ‘making Israel jealous’ for salvation (Rom. 11:11ff.). If the acceptance of Israel will be like ‘life from the dead’ (Rom. 11:15), then that is the point when the general resurrection of the dead acquires the predicate ‘catholic’ for the first time, as the description of a state of affairs. In the sense of the missionary relation ‘to the whole’, the church must be called catholic from the moment of its decision in favour of the mission to the Gentiles and the nations of the world. Yet this very decision leaves Israel’s hope and the hope for Israel eschatologically open. The church of Christ is ‘catholic’ as regards Israel in an extremely dialectical sense, precisely through the decision for the unilateral mission to the Gentiles, so that through the salvation of the Gentiles Israel too might ultimately be saved.
Moreover the church in history remains limited, non-universal and non-catholic until ‘every rule and every authority and power’ is destroyed (1 Cor. 15:24). An incorporation of this earthly rule is neither promised nor enjoined upon the church; what is laid on it indeed is to bear witness to and practise brotherhood, friendship and freedom in fellowship in its own midst. If God will only be ‘all in all’ when the rule of Christ is consummated in the rule of God, then the kingdom of glory can only be called catholic in the fullest sense at that point. The church in history cannot therefore be ‘catholic’ in the sense of the incorporation of all people and conditions in the church, including Israel and the nations. It is catholic in the eschatological context we have described, in its mission. Its worldwide mission points everything towards the catholic kingdom of God and relates the whole, which is fragmented and divided here, to the future total salvation.
(iv) If the church finds its historical catholicity, which is related to the coming kingdom, in its apostolate, then it also acquires freedom from those enthusiastic dreams of realizing the universality of God’s kingdom through a universal Christian state or by supplanting Israel. It will also be free from the Christian ‘integralism’ which forces it to be there ‘for everyone’ in the same way at all times and in all places. It will then be flexible in its apostolate for the universal kingdom. That is important for the actual putting into effect of the mission and policies that are related to the whole.
If the church, being catholic, ‘is there for all’ it will be inclined to keep out of the conflict between one person or group and another. It will either confine itself to a purely religious ministry addressed to people of whatever party, or will offer itself as a ‘third power’, as a neutral platform or as a meeting point in the conflict. It will admonish the warring parties to peace and reconciliation but will remain above the conflict and will not intervene itself.
If, on the other hand, the church sees its catholicity in its apostolate, it can serve the universality of God’s kingdom in a different way. The goal of the church’s mission remains universal. In the new people of God the divisions that destroy mankind will already be deprived of their force here and now. The barriers which people set up against each other, in order to maintain their own position and to put down others, will be broken down through mission and fellowship. But the path that leads to this goal begins at the bottom. According to Isaiah 40:4f., ‘every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low.… And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.’ In the words of Luke 1:51ff., ‘He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts, he has put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent empty away.’ According to 1 Cor. 1:26ff. this path manifests itself in the church itself through the preaching of the crucified Jesus. God chooses the people who in the eyes of the world are foolish, weak, ‘low and despised’, in order to judge the wise, the strong, and the people who count for something in the world, ‘so that no human being might boast.… Let him who boasts, boast of the Lord.’ The goal of glory is intended for all men. But because not all are ‘people’ in the same way, as far as their means, rights and freedom to live are concerned, the fellowship in which all are to see the glory of God ‘together’ is created, through the choosing of the humble and through judgment on the violent. This form of partisanship does not destroy Christian universalism, nor does it deny God’s love for all men; it is the historical form of universal love in a world in which people oppress and hate each other. Jesus turned to the sinners, tax-collectors and lepers in order to save the Pharisees and the healthy as well. Paul turned to the Gentiles in order to save Israel too. Christian partisan support for the oppressed is intentional and its goal is to save the oppressor also. The ‘mountains’ are not made low as an end in itself, but in order to reveal the glory of God to all flesh ‘together’. The rich and the mighty are not rejected out of revenge but in order to save them. Masters are rejected because of their oppression, so that they may experience the fullness of the common humanity, of which they are depriving themselves and others. Christian universalism will therefore be realized in particular conflict situations in a partisanship of this kind; otherwise it is still in danger of being abstract and of dissolving the community itself. Conversely, however, any partisan intervention in power struggles loses its Christian legitimation if it loses sight of the universal goal. The church is not yet itself the glory of God; it is the way and the historical movement towards the goal whereby all flesh should see it together. Universality and partisanship are not opposites when they are historically intertwined in this way. The church is related to the whole and is catholic in so far as, in the fragmentation of the whole, it primarily seeks and restores to favour the lost, the rejected and the oppressed.
(i) The creed uses the term ‘holy’ twice—for the ‘holy’ church and for what our creed calls ‘the communion of saints’, i.e., the fellowship of the holy. The ‘fellowship of the holy’ can be seen as the comprehensive definition of the church and can mean the fellowship of ‘the holy things’ as well as fellowship with holy people and their merits. The Reformers, however, thought of the congregatio sanctorum, and understood the ‘one, holy, catholic church’ as the community of holy people. Thus the first phrase calls the church in its unity and wholeness holy, whereas the second talks about the holiness of all and each of its members. Whatever the authors of the Apostles’ Creed may have meant, this interpretation is in accordance with New Testament usage.
The church is holy in its unity and in all its members, not in itself but in Christ, ‘whom God made our … sanctification and redemption’ (1 Cor 1:30ff.). ‘You were sanctified … in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God’ (1 Cor. 6:11). That is why the apostle addresses the church in his letters as ‘sanctified in Christ Jesus’ (1 Cor. 1:2), as ‘saints in Christ Jesus’ (Phil. 1:1), and as ‘God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved’ (Col. 3:12). The church is holy because it is sanctified through Christ’s activity in and on it. Holiness means here not a higher sphere of divine power, before which people shudder and shrink back; it must be understood as a verbal noun. Holiness consists of being made holy, in sanctification, the subject of the activity being God (1 Thess. 5:23; 2 Thess. 2:13). God sanctifies his church by calling the godless through Christ, by justifying sinners, and by accepting the lost. The communion or community of the saints—or the holy or sanctified—is therefore always at the same time the community of sinners; and the sanctified church is always at the same time the sinful church. Through its continual prayer ‘forgive us our trespasses,’ it recognizes itself as being in sin and at the same time as being holy in the divine forgiveness of sins. ‘If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us’ (1 John 1:8). In the confession of sin and faith in justification the church is simultaneously communio peccatorum and communio sanctorum. It is in this very thing that its sanctification, and consequently its holiness, consists.
Holiness does not divide the church and Christians substantially from sinful humanity, and does not remove it to a position above the mass of sinners. If God’s justifying grace is believed in the church, then that grace also manifests the true and whole misery of men and women. That misery, which is described by the word sin, can only be perceived and acknowledged undisguised and without self-justification, where the divine forgiveness, justification and sanctification is historically manifest. The church is therefore holy precisely at the point where it acknowledges its sins and the sins of mankind and trusts to justification through God. This does not merely apply to individual Christians; as we said at the beginning, it is true for the church as a whole.
The public admission of guilt made by the Protestant churches in Germany and Japan after the Second World War, and the public admission of guilt made by the churches in the former colonial countries and in countries where there is slavery and racialism, are to be viewed as signs of the churches’ sanctification. They reach beyond the churches to the whole people and therefore serve the liberation and sanctification of the nations. It must be noted, however, that they do not merely contain impeachments and self-impeachments and are not the expression of a guilty conscience which lets itself be put under pressure by other people. They are rather public manifestations of the liberating divine righteousness, and of a conversion to a new, different future. Just as liberating grace determines the whole church, and not only its individual members, so the whole church also lives from the forgiveness of guilt. Guilt is personal and social at the same time, and so, therefore, is liberating grace as well.
(ii) The church is holy because God shows himself to be holy in the grace of the crucified Christ acting on it. The revelation of his holiness means redemption. In the New Testament the Holy Spirit, as the eschatological ‘advance gift’ of glory and the power of the new creation, is determinative for the idea of holiness. The people who are called through the gospel and are chosen, justified and sanctified are ‘led by the Spirit of God’ (Rom. 8:14). Being united through the Spirit they are given life through the fullness of the Spirit’s different gifts. They live, suffer and act from the Spirit of the last days. The church is therefore holy in the dawn of the new era and the new creation. We are continually told that the goal of sanctification is bringing forth fruit to eternal life and glory. Consequently the fellowship of justified sinners is at the same time the fellowship of the people called to service for the kingdom of God and the believers who are equipped with the powers of the Spirit. They are set apart and destined, not for themselves but for the service of the kingdom of God. As the sanctified they therefore sanctify the world. They themselves set apart and destine for the kingdom of God whatever they reach. The non-Christian partner in a marriage is ‘sanctified’ by the Christian partner, and so are the children of the marriage (1 Cor. 7:14). Everything that love reaches and destines for love is sanctified for the kingdom of God, and so filled with hope and charismatically enlivened.
This means for the church as a whole that the communio peccatorum it acknowledges in the confession of guilt is its past, and the communio sanctorum that it believes when it believes in the forgiveness of sin is its future. It testifies to the fellowship of justified sinners, which acknowledges both, in the perpetual conversion from that past to this future. In this sense the holy church is the converting church of the new beginnings. It is ecclesia reformata et semper reformanda. Its faith becomes trustworthy in its reformatio perennis. Through continual new conversion and permanent reformation it testifies to the coming reformatio mundi which is already present in the Spirit—the ‘new order of all things’ in the kingdom of God, and the sanctification of the whole creation in the glory of God. Its sanctification puts the church and all its members on the road to universal glory. In the context of the fellowship of sinners, the sanctification of the church lies in justification. In the context of the coming kingdom of glory its sanctification lies in its call to service, to suffering and to poverty.
(iii) ‘To be a Church in splendour, without spot or wrinkle, is the ultimate goal to which we are being led by the passion of Christ. This, then, will come about in heaven, not on earth.’ This remark indicates that sanctification does not only come about through active service in the world but is also—and even more—suffered. It is experienced and suffered in the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings. The signs of the sanctification of the church and its members are in a particular way the signs of its suffering, its persecution because of its resistance, and its poverty in the ground of its hope. The saints who were revered by the church in a particular way were the martyrs, who in the visible fellowship of the crucified Jesus testified to his invisible glory. The friends of Jesus who were called to discipleship and the messianic mission left everything and became poor for the kingdom’s sake. The church in Jerusalem was called ‘the poor saints at Jerusalem’ (Rom. 15:26). Paul collected money for them in Macedonia and Achaia. Christ himself, ‘whom God made our … sanctification’ ‘for your sake … became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich’ (2 Cor. 8:9). The church is therefore sanctified wherever it participates in the lowliness, helplessness, poverty and suffering of Christ. Its glory is manifest through the sign of poverty. When believers take up their cross, the kingdom of God is manifested to the world. In this sense we can say that the church is sanctified in this ‘perverse world’ through the signs of poverty, suffering and oppression. These are the birth pangs of the new creation in the midst of the creation that is still enslaved. What the apostle says about himself is also true of the apostolic church in a corresponding degree: ‘As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything’ (2 Cor. 6:9–10).
If God’s strength ‘is made perfect in weakness’ (2 Cor. 12:9) then his holiness is also mighty in poverty. Because these statements stand in the context of the fellowship of Christ and the apostolate, they cannot be isolated from the world in which the church lives. Poverty would otherwise easily become an attitude of humility limited to the inner and spiritual life. We would enthuse about ‘a church poor in the poverty of Christ’ without perceiving the real poverty in the world and the riches of the glory for the sake of which Christ and his followers ‘become poor’. The church is not as yet sanctified by poverty if it does not become ‘the church for the poor’ and especially honour alms given for the poor. If it only praises ‘the dignity of the poor in the church’, then it is not yet moving in this direction. Christ became poor in order through his poverty to make many rich. The disciples became poor in order to fill the world with the gospel. So the church too will only be poor in this sense if it consecrates everything it has to service for the kingdom of God, investing it in the messianic mission to the world (1 Cor. 15:43). It will be poor in a both spiritual and material sense if it becomes the church of the poor and if the real poor find themselves and their hope in the church. Poverty is not a virtue unless it leads to the fellowship of the really poor. Humility is not an attitude unless it leads to the fellowship of the humiliated. The poor church will therefore have to be understood as the church of the poor—as the fellowship, that is, in which the poor arrive at freedom and become the upholders of the kingdom. Christian poverty therefore means the fellowship of the poor and fellowship with the poor—but as the fellowship of the messianic mission and the hope for the kingdom. In this sense Christian poverty, as ‘an expression of love is solidarity with the poor and is a protest against poverty’.
In a world where there is an unjust division between the riches in the power of a few and the poverty in the empty hands of the many, the church’s poverty becomes the witness of the messianic kingdom. Sanctified through its poverty in the fellowship of the poor, and in protest against poverty, it becomes the sign of the glory of God which fills all flesh. It is then sanctified through the spirit of the Beatitudes. The true fellowship of the poor is of more value than all the alms and development aid of the rich. The problem of poverty in the world is not solved by programmes which mobilize ‘the church for the poor’ or try to win ‘the poor for the church’, but only through the church of the poor itself. Whatever state churches and other rich and well-organized churches can do in the way of help, the apostolic charge remains central: to found congregations at the lowest level, congregations which independently discover their powers and potentialities in the liberating history of Christ; for the fellowship of the poor and suffering Christ is the secret of the ‘holy church’ and the ‘communion of saints’. In his fellowship the church becomes the poor people of the coming kingdom and so becomes holy and blessed.
(i) The apostolicity of the church has a special place among its four characteristics. On the one hand the church which in Christ is holy and catholic only encounters man in history through the apostolic witness. ‘Without the apostolic witness He would simply be hidden, and only on the basis of this witness is He really known.’ Historically, therefore, the three other characteristics of the church are manifest and assured from its apostolate. But on the other hand, apostolicity is the church’s special historical designation. It is the mark of its messianic mission in the name of Christ for the coming kingdom. Whereas the three other characteristics continue in eternity, and are also the characteristics of the church when it is glorified in the kingdom, the apostolic mission will come to an end when it is fulfilled. The three other attributes are designations of the kingdom and are transferred to the people of the kingdom as ‘designations of the time of salvation’. But apostolicity is a designation for the kingdom. It is not an eschatological term, but a term related to the eschaton, because it is not a characteristic of the eschaton itself. In respect of the kingdom of glory the apostolate is provisional, the forerunner of what is to come, just as the apostles saw themselves as forerunners of the coming Lord and hence sought to fill the whole world with his gospel. The unity, catholicity and holiness of the people of God, on the other hand, are final designations, because they describe the one, all-embracing and holy kingdom of God. We can therefore say that the historical church will be the one, holy, catholic church through the apostolic witness of Christ, and in carrying out that witness; whereas the church glorified in the kingdom of God is the one, holy and catholic church, through the fulfilment of its apostolate. Historically the church has its being in carrying out the apostolate. In eternity the church has its being in the fulfilment of the apostolate, that is, in the seeing face to face.
(ii) The historical church must be called ‘apostolic’ in a double sense: its gospel and its doctrine are founded on the testimony of the first apostles, the eyewitnesses of the risen Christ, and it exists in the carrying out of the apostolic proclamation, the missionary charge. The expression ‘apostolic’ therefore denotes both the church’s foundation and its commission.
If the historical church is founded on the witness of Christ’s apostles, then the word has first of all the simple meaning: ‘deriving from the apostles’, ‘relating to the apostles’, ‘dating from the period of the apostles’. In this sense the church fathers later greeted the churches ‘in the apostolic manner’, and talked about ‘the apostolic age’ and ‘the fellowship of the apostles’. In the conflict with heretics and schismatics the word acquired the character of legitimation, the legitimation of true doctrine, the whole unadulterated gospel; and became a category of tradition. Correspondingly, the word was used in the dispute about ministry and charisma to legitimate the bishops as the successors of the apostles. Irenaeus, for example, talks about ‘those who were appointed bishops in the church by the apostles and those who are their successors down to our own time’. The apostolicity of the church therefore meant the claim to an unbroken, unaltered and unadulterated bond between the present church and the apostles in faith and practice, proclamation and office.
But we must go beyond the use of the word as a category of legitimation. For the apostles, to whom the church appeals, were the eyewitnesses of the risen Lord. ‘The first Christian apostolate was founded through the appearances of the risen Christ.’ Luke talks about the ‘twelve apostles’ (Luke 6:13; Acts 1:21ff.). But Paul talked about all the apostles, and did not only mean the twelve. What constitute the apostolate are the appearance and commission of the risen Christ, not merely the discipleship of the earthly Jesus. And here the Easter appearances have a threefold meaning: (a) They reveal the Jesus crucified on Golgotha as the one raised by God and exalted to be Lord. They therefore found and provoke the proclamation and the faith: ‘Jesus—the Christ’, ‘Jesus—the Lord’. (b) They reveal the crucified Jesus in the splendour of the coming divine glory and bring the victory of life to light. They therefore substantiate the promise of coming glory and eschatological hope. (c) They are appearances which convey a call, through which those affected are designated witnesses of Christ and his future. Knowledge of Christ, hope for the future, and mission coincide in the Easter appearances. In the light of the appearances of the crucified and risen Christ the first Christian apostolate therefore takes on an eschatological meaning. The messianic hope was given practical expression in the mission to Israel of the first Jewish-Christian church. The prophetic hope for the salvation of the nations was given practical expression in the apostle Paul’s mission to the Gentiles. Because the apostolate has its foundation in the eschatological event of the raising of the crucified Christ, it lays advance hold on Christ’s universal future. The coming Lord of glory reveals himself and gathers his people in the apostolic gospel. If, therefore, the historical church looks back to its beginnings in its appeal to the apostles, in this way it also actualizes its eschatological hope and becomes assured of its own messianic mission. If we understand the apostolate in the light of the Easter appearances, it is not enough merely to see it in the history of the tradition and to trace back the apostolic church to its earthly founder and the ‘apostolic age’. Its apostolicity is not merely a category of legitimation; it is even more a category of promise and commission. Nor is it enough to affirm the bond with the apostles merely through the proofs of tradition and succession. The apostolic succession is, in fact and in truth, the evangelical succession, the continuing and unadulterated proclamation of the gospel of the risen Christ. The Reformers therefore demanded that the proclamation of Christ be made the criterion of apostolicity. They understood the scriptures as the true apostolos, that is to say as the apostolic testimony to the continuing apostolic proclamation and the expanding messianic church.
(iii) It follows from the unique character of the first Christian apostolate that the church can only appeal to the apostles when it lays hold on its own apostolic and missionary charge. In the history of God’s dealings with the world the church has a particular commission. It is to testify by means of word, deed and fellowship to the liberating lordship of Christ, to the ends of the earth and to the end of time. That is the nature of its apostolate, and for that reason the apostolate is also its historical nature. It is the church of the apostolate. The apostolate is its subject. In the apostolic movement it evangelizes the peoples and, as a new fellowship, itself becomes the form the kingdom of God takes in the world. It calls men and women to repentance and, as an open fellowship, itself becomes the form this repentance takes. It witnesses to the enlivening hope for the kingdom and as a fellowship of poverty becomes a lived hope. In this apostolic movement the church must continually assure itself of its origin in the appearances of the risen Christ, and therefore of the proclamation of the apostles as well. But it does not therefore need to idealize the apostolic age for all that. It does not have to maintain its apostolic identity slavishly, through repetition. The important thing is equivalence, not identity. In this apostolic movement the church must continually orientate itself towards the future—the future of Christ which the first Christian apostolate talks about. Where the retrospective bond with the apostles is concerned, the historical church will ask about continuity and strive for continuity. But where the future its apostolate serves is concerned it will be open to leap forward to what is new and surprising. Here ‘the most characteristic thing is not the old things that are preserved but the new ones that take place and come into being’. The apostolic church is the missionary church. Something new, individual and independent is always springing up. So the missionary church will not aim to spread its own form and found ‘daughter churches’ everywhere. A ‘young church’ is not the subsidiary branch of an old church, which the old one has to look after. It is ‘a new church’ of the same apostolate. It preserves its unity when it fulfils Christ’s apostolic mission in its own historical situation. The risen Christ is called ‘the life-giving Spirit’. He is the creative Spirit who makes something new everywhere, uniting it in himself. The Christian apostolate participates in this and must therefore not be quenched by outward regimentation.
(iv) Up to now we have understood the apostolate of the apostles and the church as active mission. But if the apostolate is the mission of the gospel, the call to freedom, the call to messianic fellowship, then the apostolate in the world is never undisputed. The powers and laws of unfreedom and timid reserve contradict and resist it, as they contradicted and resisted the mission of Christ. Participation in the apostolic mission of Christ therefore leads inescapably into tribulation, contradiction and suffering. The apostolate is carried out in the weakness and poverty of Christ, not through force or the strategies of force. Reserved and withdrawn men and women and closed societies are opened through the witness of apostolic suffering, and can only through this be converted to the future of the kingdom. Just as the apostle Paul pointed to his persecutions, tribulations, wounds and scars in order to prove his apostolate (2 Cor. 6 and 7), so persecutions and sufferings will also be the proof of the apostolic church. ‘The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church’, said the early church. The numbers of martyrs in the ‘young’ missionary churches meanwhile exceeds the number of martyrs in the early church. There are many countries in which the apostolic witness is predominantly heard in prison, and nowhere so distinctly as there.
Even though the apostolate is so strongly eschatologically determined by the Easter appearances of the risen Christ, it is equally strongly determined by suffering and sacrifice in discipleship of the Christ who was crucified. The one cannot be without the other if the whole Christ is to be witnessed to. The fellowship of Christ does not only determine the content of the apostolate; it determines its form in history as well. We shall therefore have to understand the apostolate essentially—not merely fortuitously—as active suffering and as suffering activity. The church is apostolic when it takes up its cross. It then witnesses to the glory of the risen Christ in its fellowship with those who suffer, and his future in its fellowship with the imprisoned. In our godless and inhuman world ‘the church under the cross’ shows itself to be the true apostolic church. Its apostolic succession is the succession of the passion of Christ.
The one holy, catholic and apostolic church is the church of Jesus Christ. Fellowship with Christ is its secret. The church of Jesus Christ is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church. Unity in freedom, holiness in poverty, catholicity in partisan support for the weak, and apostolate in suffering are the marks by which it is known in the world.