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(y) Evidence of St. Paul's Epistles.

where Christians got their new name,1 is the same society extending itself to a new city. So when St. Paul went abroad, he founded Churches' to prepare men for the kingdom.2 And the local Churches are but branches of one stock. Behind the Churches is the Church represented by the Apostles. This is the truth which is impressed on the narrative of the Apostolic Conference with its authoritative direction to the Churches-' It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things.'s This is only the exhibition in act of the authority given by Jesus Christ to His society over its members, to bind and to loose with heavenly

sanction.

(y) The picture presented in the Acts is the same as that of which we become spectators in St. Paul's Epistles. He writes to 'the Church of God which is at Corinth,' and that Church is undoubtedly a visible body containing good and bad members alike. It is a 'temple of God,' but a temple which sin can corrupt; a chosen people, but one like that of the old covenant, capable of like failure; 5 it is the 'body of Christ' through sacramental participation in His life, but there may be 'schism in the body.' St. Paul then conceives of the local Church as a visible community of mixed character, but with unmistakeable limits. The distinction between

1 Acts xiii. 1; xi. 26. On the significance of the exact form Christiani see Simcox's Early Church History p. 62: on the analogy of Herodiani, Pompeiani, etc., it suggests, not the disciples of a school, but the adherents of a leader or king.

2 Acts xiv. 22, 23; xv. 41; xvi. 5.
41 Cor. iii. 17.

5 1 Cor. x. 1-13.

3 Acts xv. 28.

6 1 Cor. x. 16; xii. 12-28. It is of course plain why the imperfections of the Church are dwelt on in connection with the local societies: they are naturally matters of specially local concern and local treatment,

'those within' and 'those without' is very marked.1 But each local Church is only one representative of the Church which is general. St. Paul governs each particular Church in accordance with the evangelical tradition of truth and life, which is common to all and to which he is himself subject.2 He passes back imperceptibly, without any break in thought, from the Churches to the Church; the Church in fact simply (as far as this world is concerned) consists of the Churches. Thus, when in the Epistle to the Ephesians he is drawing out the spiritual significance of the Church as 'the body of Christ, the fulness of Him who filleth all in all'-when he is declaring it to be one, in virtue alike of the one life which it derives from Christ by the communication of the Spirit, and of the one truth which 'apostles and prophets' delivered from Christ, and of the love in which it must bind both Jews and Gentiles in one 1 -he is indeed describing the Christian society 'from an ideal point of view'; that is to say, he is describing all that the Church potentially is, as when we too proclaim the Church 'one, holy, and catholic.' 5

1 1 Cor. v. 9-13; cf. xiv. 23; 2 Cor. vi. 14 f. Of course the brethren at a particular place, as at Rome, when St. Paul wrote his Epistle to the saints' there, may not yet have been completely organized into a local Church. That was, as it is now, a work of time. But a Christian, as such, is a member of the Christian society, and, unless in exceptional circumstances, of an organized local Church.

2 1 Cor. xi. 2 'The traditions'; 1 Cor. xv. 3; 2 Thess. iii. 6; 1 Cor. vii. 17 'So ordain I in all the Churches'; Gal. i. 7, 8 'Though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any other gospel . . . let him be anathema.'

31 Cor. xii. 28, xv. 9; Gal. i. 13.

4 Eph. iv. 3-16: It is one body' in virtue of the 'one Spirit' whose indwelling is Christ's indwelling; owns 'one Lord' in the power of 'one faith' and the consecration of one baptism; and it knows no God and Father but one. It ought to live, therefore, in the unity of love (ver. 3), but the 'bond of peace' is a duty which may be neglected. The inward unity of life, though dependent on outward facts (e.g. 'one baptism'), is a reality, whether recognised in practice or not.

5 The Church has never yet so developed all the fulness within her as to exhibit herself in her full catholic glory and holiness as the 'bride of Christ.' She is potentially more than she is actually. Potentially catholic, for example, she still leaves outside her fold the mass of Orienta peoples,

Nevertheless it is the visible, actual Church of which he is speaking, the Church to which Christ gave visible officers' some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers,' for the full equipment of the Church with a view to what it is to do and what it is to become. This visible hierarchy belongs plainly to a visible society-exactly that same society which St. Paul similarly describes in his Epistle to the Corinthians as 'the body of Christ,' even as part of Christ,2 the Church in which 'God set first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers,'3 that is the general community which is locally represented in the Churches of Corinth and Ephesus. St. Paul then means by the Church a society as visible as the Churches which represent it. It is sometimes argued that St. Paul could not inconsistent have believed in salvation through the Church, because this contradicts his doctrine of the justifying effect of individual faith. But in fact there is no

Church doctrine not

with justification by faith:

1 See Pfleiderer's account of the Epistle to the Ephesians (Paulinism. ii. pp. 190

193) and Hort's Ecclesia p. 169; and my own Ephesians pp. 140 ff.

2 The Christ' consists of the head and the members (1 Cor. xii. 12).

3 1 Cor. xii. 27-28. This passage (vv. 12-28) about the body of Christ, taken with such passages as Gal. iii. 27 (‘baptized into Christ') and 1 Cor. x. 16, 17 (about the Eucharist), seems to me to contain all the truth that is developed in the Epistle to the Ephesians; nor can I see that there is anything in the expression-' the Church, the pillar and ground of the truth' (1 Tim. iii. 15), which might not have occurred in the Epistles to the Ephesians or to the Corinthians.

4 Dr. Hatch calls it an unproved assumption that 'the Church of which St. Paul speaks as the body of Christ, "the fulness of Him which filleth all in all," is really, as the Augustinian theory assumes it to be, a visible society, or aggregation of societies' (B. L. pref. sec. ed. p. xii). His view appears to coincide with that of Bishop Hoadly, who was Law's opponent. The Bishop held 'as the only true account of the Church of Christ,' in general, that it was 'the number of men, whether small or great,' who were sincere Christians-i.e. the invisible society of the elect. This, he held, is what St. Paul calls the Church. 'It cannot be supposed,' he pleads, 'that a man's being of the invisible Church of Christ is inconsistent with his joining himself with any visible Church'; but the first is essential, the second is voluntary. Law deals with trenchant power with this utterly unscriptural distinction between the 'universal invisible' and 'particular visible' Churches (Letter iii. pp. 177 ff.) 5 Pfleiderer Hibbert Lectures lect, vi.

such contradiction. The Christian life is a correspondence between the grace communicated from without and the inward faith which, justifying us before God, opens out the avenues of communication between man and God, and enables man to appropriate and to use the grace which he receives in Christ. There is thus no antagonism, though there is a distinction, between grace and faith. Now grace comes to Christians through social sacraments, as members of one 'spirit-bearing body.' 'By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body'; 'we being many are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of that one bread.' Thus the doctrine of the Church as the household of grace is the complement, not the contradiction, of the doctrine of faith. Faith is no faith if it isolates a man from the fellowship of the one body, and the one body has no salvation except for the sons of faith. Ignatius then with his strenuous insistence on churchmanship can rightly, so far, 'claim to be a good Paulinist.'1 In fact St. Paul's teaching about the Church is given nowhere with more practical force than in the Epistles to the Corinthians, which belong to that very group of Epistles in which he fights the battle of faith. And both principles are brought into play by him to vindicate against Judaism the catholicity of the Gospel. Christianity is a catholic religion, he argues in his earlier Epistles, because it appeals to a faculty as universal as human nature-the faculty of faith men are justified by nothing of national or local observance like the Law; it is one God Who will justify the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through faith.' Christianity is catholic, he

1 Pfleiderer /.c. p. 262; Ignatius ad Phil. 8.

nor with the 'freedom of

argues again in effect, in the Epistles of the first captivity, because the Person of Christ is a catholic, a universal Personality; 'by Him were all things created by Him and for Him-and in Him all things have their consistence.' Therefore also His redemptive power transcends all local, national distinctions; 'He hath made both (Jews and Gentiles) one... in one body.' For the unity of that body, in which on the basis of faith the Gospel offers sanctification to mankind, is by its very essence as the body of Christ universal in its capacity. But these two grounds of catholicity are correlative, not antagonistic.

Once again, if there be such a thing as liberty in the spirit: law or a 'law of liberty,'1 the obligations of church membership and the authority of a common rule of truth are not in any way antagonistic to the freedom of the spirit. The good citizen, whether of the earthly or heavenly city, is free in the law by being at one with the spirit of the law. Here again the same St. Paul held to both sides of the antithesis which is represented by authority and freedom, by fellowship and individuality.

but agree.

able to the

all human

society.

The doctrine of the Church is indeed only one principle of expression of a principle as broad as human society -the principle that man realizes his true self only by relation to a community, that 'he is what he is only as a member of society.' Aristotle said of old that 'the society (the city) is prior to the individual' -prior, that is, in idea, because it is essential to his being really man, because man is by his very essence 'a social animal.' By isolating himself he hinders,

1 St. James i. 25.

2 On the Greek idea of the woλis see Newman Politics of Aristotle i. p. 560: 'a strongly individualized unity, which impresses its dominant ideas upon its members; etc.'

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