12 The Holy Catholic Church

CHAPTER XII. THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH.

I HAVE tried to bring out in the course of this essay the positive notion of ’ holiness.’ The root meaning of the Hebrew frq is generally thought to be ’ separateness,’ that which was holy being that which was separated off from what was common. At a very early period, however, the word must have acquired its own special meaning, its application being restricted to Deity and what had to do with Deity. It is therefore useless to attempt to interpret the use of the word ’ holy ’ by reverting to the original meaning of the word which was used to express it. Holiness is something sui generis, and to think of the ’ holy ’ as that which is separate without taking into account the rationale of the separateness, would be utterly misleading. The notion of ’ holiness ’ has been a progressive one. It ultimately defines the character of God ; the notion, that is, becomes strictly ethical, and I have tried in this essay to give greater definiteness than seems to have been given before to the notion of divine holiness. When then we wish to get hold of the Christian doctrine of the Holy Catholic Church, we must not revert to the root meaning of fdq, as some have done, and say that the ’ holiness ’ of the church connotes its separateness from the world, however true such an idea might be. The Church is holy because it par- takes of the divine character, or because such is its ideal. It must be remembered that in the Creed there is a close connection between the words, "I believe in the Holy Ghost," and the immediately following words, "the Holy Catholic Church," with which is conjoined " the Communion of Saints (or holy ones)." Nor again must we fall into an at one time common mistake of giving an almost negative meaning to the word ’ church.’ " There is no foundation," says Hort, " for the widely-spread notion that ekklhsia means a people or a number of individual men called out of the world or mankind. In itself the idea is of course entirely scriptural, and moreover it is associated with the word and idea ’ called,’ ’ calling,’ ’ call.’ But the compound verb ekkalew is never so used, and ekklhsia never occurs in a context which suggests this supposed sense to have been present to the writer’s mind. Again, it would not have been unnatural if this sense of calling out from a larger body had been as it were put into the word in later times, when it had acquired religious associations. But as a matter of fact we do not find that it was so. The original calling out is simply the calling of the citizens of a Greek town out of their houses by the herald’s trumpet to summon them to the assembly, and Numbers x. shows that the summons to the Jewish assembly was made in the same way. In the actual usage of both qahal and ekklhsia this primary idea of summoning is hardly to be felt. They mean simply an assembly of the people, and accordingly in the Revised Version of the Old Testament ’ assembly ’ is the predominant rendering of qahal." [See Hort’s Christian Ecclesia, Lecture I.]

It is well then to emphasise that every one of the three words used in the phrase ’,Holy Catholic Church ’ has a positive meaning. The very mention of catholicity serves to check any tendency there may be to give a negative meaning to the word ’church.’ The idea is of a great world-wide society, whose members are enrolled irrespective of race or colour or station or sex; where there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, bond nor free, where all are one man in Christ Jesus. [GaLeviticus 3:28.] The Holy Catholic Church then is a universal holy society. The thought is not of man separated from man, but of man conjoined with man in holiness, in the consciousness of a definite relationship with God and of a share in the divine life and character. The question has been sometimes discussed whether the Church is to be identified with what Christ repeatedly called the Kingdom of Heaven. Of the Kingdom of Heaven there is frequent mention in the Gospels, but the Church is only twice referred to, or perhaps once. For in the second passage where the expression ’the Church’ occurs (St. Matt, 18:17), it may well be that the Jewish Church is intended. Hut while the words, "Let him be unto thee as the Gentile, and the publican" (5:17), seem to suggest that it is the Jewish Church which is meant, the whole tenour of the passage rather points to the Christian Ecclesia of which mention has already been made in St. Matthew 16:18. There St. Peter has just made his great confession, " Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." And Jesus said to him, " Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jonah : for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I also say unto thee, that thou art Peter (Petroj), and upon this rock (petra) I will build my church (oikodomhsw mou thn ekklhsian) ; and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven : and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

It is unfortunate perhaps that the connection of thought between the Church and the Kingdom of Heaven should have to be demonstrated from a passage bristling, as this does, with subjects of controversy. But I think the passage shows conclusively that there is a very close connection between the two, if not an identification. We might perhaps express the distinction in this way. The expression ’Kingdom of Heaven’ sets forth the notion of divine sovereignty, the expression ’The Church’ emphasises human fellowship under that sovereignty. The Church at any rate exists for the realisation of the truth contained in the teaching of the Kingdom of Heaven. This being so, the laws of Christ’s kingdom, as given in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere, become the laws of the Church. Sovereignty implies a right to command, and Christ undoubtedly did command and claimed authority. He claimed authority for the good of the whole world, to make effective for the world the blessings of God’s love. It was His one aim to do and to get done the will (qelhma) of the Father in heaven. He distinctly repudiated all claims to a kingdom of this world. To Pilate He said: "My kingdom is not of this world : if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews : but now is my kingdom not from hence." He came, as He told Pilate, to bear witness to the truth, that is, the real meaning of life. He taught His disciples not to seek great things for themselves : " The kings of the Gentiles have lordship over them ; and it is those who have authority over them that are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is the greater among you let him become as the younger : and he that is chief as he that doth serve ... I am in the midst of you as he that serveth." [St. Luke, 22:25 ff.] He was the King of men, yet their servant. He triumphed over all the temptations of human kingship (such seems to be the meaning of verse 28), and reigned from His cross to break down the pride and self-will of the world.

We expect to find then in the Sermon on the Mount a setting forth of these same principles of self -sacrifice to guide the action and conduct of the members of the kingdom. And this is exactly what we do find. From first to last the law of the kingdom is self-sacrifice. Self-assertion, resentment, the anger of pride, and contempt of others, these are all out of place. "Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil (twi ponhrwi) : but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man would go to law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go one mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away." [St. Matthew 5:38-42.] A paradoxical injunction this ; yet its meaning is clear. The law of the Kingdom of Heaven is not ’ Get all you can,’ but ’ It is more blessed to give than to receive " ; ’ Give all you can ’ ; ’ What is mine is thine.’ But it is to be noticed that Christ did not teach that injuries were to be overlooked. In St. Matthew 18:15 we read Christ’s words: "If thy brother sin against thee, go, shew him his fault between thee and him alone : if he hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he hear thee not, take with thee one or two more, that at the mouth of two witnesses or three every word may be established. And if he refuse to hear them tell it unto the church: and if he refuse to hear the church also, let him be unto thee as the Gentile and the publican." The injury is not to be regarded as personal, so much as an injury done by the brother to himself against his own good ; and this injury can only be escaped from by repentance. Punishment inflicted by the Church is for the good of the offender, and not as in the cosmic kingdom for the society looked at apart from the offender. There can be no separation of interests in the society of Christ’s Church. Excommunication, the severest punishment the Church can inflict, is for the good of the offender as much as for the good of the society at large. There is a case of -excommunication in the New Testament in which the principles of its use are most clearly set forth. Says St. Paul in writing to the Corinthians : " For I verily, being absent in body but present in spirit, have already, as though I were present, judged him that hath so wrought this thing, in the name of our Lord Jesus, ye being gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, to deliver such a one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” [1Cor. 5:3 ff.] Nor was the remedial punishment in vain, as we gather from St. Paul’s words in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians : " Sufficient to such a one is this punishment which was inflicted by the many; so that contrariwise ye should rather forgive him and comfort him, lest by any means such a one should be swallowed up with his overmuch sorrow. Wherefore I beseech you to confirm your love toward him." [2 Corinthians 2:6 ff. The whole passage is instructive.]

It is essential to the spirit of the Christian society that it should set a high value on the individual, that it should recognise the worth of man as man, every man being potentially a child of God. There can therefore be no exclusiveness. They only are excluded who wish to be excluded, those also, who know not that they are excluded by reason of their ignorance, and those whom the society has excluded temporarily as having forfeited the privilege of’ membership by sin which is unconfessed and not repented of. The Church is essentially Catholic in the broadest sense of the term. And she is also holy. Her principles are not the principles of the world. She is not cosmic but spiritual, and for the spiritualising of the cosmic. Christ’s kingdom and Christ’s Church are not of this world.

I know that it may be said that this is all very well in theory, but experience has proved that the Church is very worldly, and that she knows how to use the methods of the world to suit her own purpose. What actually is will be treated of later on. I am now trying to set forth what, as I believe, the Church is ideally according to the will of God, what therefore she can become in God’s good time if we will respond to His guidance. I believe that God is calling us to a great reunion of the Church of His Christ, but we must be quite clear about the divine principles of the Church before we can hear the call aright.

Ideally then the Church is a Society of living men indwelt by the Spirit of God, Who imparts to them the divine life and character, which they are to manifest forth. We are to know God in a great social life or koinwnia. " Our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ." [1 John 1:3.] If anyone will read the Epistles to the Ephesians and to the Colossians he will see that this was St. Paul’s idea of the Church. In St. Paul the Church is conceived of and likened to a Body, the Body of Christ, He being the Head, and the persons who belong to the Society being the members of that Body. All members have not the same office, but each has a function to perform in the general welfare of the body. The Church then is not an organisation but an organism. Its life is essentially divine. Its mind is the mind of Christ, and the body is animated by the Holy Spirit of God and of His Christ. The body is to "grow up in all things into him, which is the head, even Christ ; from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love." [Ephesians 4:15; Ephesians 4:16.] We observe these last words " in love," love being that divine gift which results from the divine character. God is Love. We love because He first loved us. The fulness of Christian love results from gratitude. We have no power to originate love ; that power belongs to God alone. The Church then must have and supply her members with the knowledge of God. Without this there can be no true life. Her teaching must be about God from Whom are all things and to Whom are all things. She must be able to give men some clue to the mysteries of the universe and of human life. St. Paul says of Christ that in Him " are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden." [CoLeviticus 2:3.] That they are hidden in Christ does not mean that they cannot be found, for the whole point of St. Paul’s reference here is that Christ may be known and so the treasures of wisdom and knowledge may be found. And in connection with this passage we may consider St. Paul’s reference to Christ as the Head of the Church. I think that by Headship is meant something more than sovereignty, though that sovereignty is implied in it is clear from Ephesians 5:23; Ephesians 5:24 :" For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the Church, being himself the saviour of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be also to their husbands in everything." But the subjection is not a blind subjection. It is the subjection to the Eternal Reason of God which Christ Himself is (St. John 1:1). You cannot separate from Christ’s Headship of the Church such expressions as " the mind of Christ." " We have the mind of Christ." " Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." ’ The mind of Christ’ means something more than a certain disposition to humility though it tends to this.

There seems perhaps a certain contradiction between ’ the mind of Christ’ whose characteristic is humility, and the hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge. But this soon disappears. All our knowledge, or science, as we call it, can be and is to be interpreted in Christ. Some when they do not see the connection between science and her discoveries and the Christian doctrine are inclined to resent the intrusion of science, as if she were only " falsely so called." But all that is true in science and the treasures of all science are hidden in Christ. Such at least was the claim made by a first preacher of the Christian doctrine. If that claim cannot make itself good, then Christianity is not the final religion of the world. It will be well to face the fact. We must look for another.

It is a first function of the Christian society to set forth the treasures of wisdom and knowledge as they are discerned in Christ. But this cannot be done unless we have the key to all knowledge which Christ gave in revealing God Himself. But let a man lay hold of the truth about God, His absolute unselfish love, let him realise that God has not one selfish thought, and that this is what Christ revealed, and he will then have entered into the hidden meaning of knowledge.

What is wanted to-day is a great revival of Christian learning ; a great interpretation of human truth, if I may call it so, in the light of divine truth. The men of learning must bring their contributions to the understanding of the truth of God as Christ made it known. It is a painful fact that through the self- seeking and self-assertion and the cosmic spirit in man the Church of Christ has been split up into many apparently disconnected parts. But has not a day come when the great Truth about God shall awaken a nobler spirit in men, and when the Church shall gradually find her way, by a permeation into her of the Truth, to a oneness such as she has never yet known? The Church must be a home of knowledge ; there must be thought and patient waiting for light. But thought, while it is essential to life, the highest life, is not the whole of it. There must be the activity of love, the coming out of ourselves for the good of others. The life of God has been conceived of as one of con- templation. This, if true, is only partially true. The divine life, so far as we are able to understand it (and it can be but little in our low stage of development towards a share in that life), while it may be thought of as one of ceaseless contemplation, is one of ceaseless activity to impart to others the life. The Church then must be to her members a home of life, if we may use such an expression. She must be able to remove all hindrances to that life, and to bring the life to all her members. Hence the special significance of the two great sacraments of the Gospel, "generally necessary to salvation," Baptism and the Holy Communion of the Body and Blood of the Lord.

I am not going to discuss here such questions as whether these two sacraments are a sine qua non of the imparting of the divine life, and whether men can afford to neglect them, and whether men will be punished for disobedience to Christ’s commands. All such enquiries seem to me to proceed from a very low estimate of the thoughts of God and His great ways. Let a man be persuaded that Christ is what He claimed to be, and what He has been set forth by the Church to be, the only revealer of God, the one mediator between God and man, Himself both God and man, Who has interpreted to men their own nature as no one ever did before or has been able to do since, let him but see that he has in Christ what no one else can supply, knowledge, forgiveness, life, and the rest will follow. But we have to take into account that the sphere of man’s present life is the State and not the Church. And the virtuous qualities which may result from the Church’s teaching of holiness must manifest themselves in the every-day relations of life, public and private. Is the Church more than a school where moral and spiritual truths are taught that may be practised outside? The Church indeed would not exist to no purpose if it were nothing more than a collection of individuals bound together by an oath to practise what we may call the virtues of the divine life. But the Church is much more than this ; she has a life as well as a purpose.

It is sometimes said that the Church exists for the salvation of men’s souls. And this is true, if rightly understood. But the salvation of the soul has so often seemed to mean an escape from a place of punishment in the next world that the fulness of its meaning has been lost. The Church does not exist to help men to heaven, and to teach them escape from hell. This escaping-punishment theory, as I have already said, has done, and still does, much harm. From such a theory spring those heinous doctrines such as of works of supererogation, as if so much were required of men to escape hell and to get into heaven, so that when the boundary line is passed everything further is beyond what is necessary. So long as heaven is looked upon as a place of escape from hell, such theories will consciously or unconsciously influence men’s minds. But let men see that to be in heaven is to have a share in the divine life and character, and that to cut ourselves off from this by deliberate rejection of that which is revealed to us to be of the essence of that life is hell, then no such theory as that of works of supererogation can find a place in the system of Christian truth. The Church is not for the salvation of the soul, but for the salvation of the whole man, body, soul and spirit. This comes from knowledge, from self-discipline, from divine grace. The Church exists to be the channel of divine grace to men, to perfect the union of the divine and human. The Divine Spirit, while given to men individually, is given to them in the Society and through the Society. There is no such thing as a Christian in isolation.

Divine worship, which the Church alone provides, is a necessary part of the life of the Church. The administration of the divinely appointed Sacraments whereby provision is made for securing to men the forgiveness of their sins, and the strengthening of themselves by the Body and Blood of Christ, depends upon the Church. In his own unaided strength man cannot be an " imitator of God," cannot indeed come to know God, but there is a divinely appointed Society in which the Will of God is confessed to be the rule of life, and the Sacraments are duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance. This Society we call the Holy Catholic Church. The State has to deal with those who profess the divine rule of life and with those who do not ; it has to provide for the well-being of the people at large, as the people understand that well-being. Its legislation cannot go beyond popular opinion ; its laws must accord with the predominant sentiment. It may be Christian, or it may not. If the State were truly Christian, Church and State would be but two different aspects of the same Society. But the Church’s rule of life is not dependent on popular sentiment. The Church’s ministry is for the teaching of the truth of life as it has been revealed in Christ Jesus; it is for helping its members to become sharers more and more in the divine character of love. It is for the ministering of the divine forgiveness and the divine life.

All this helps to give definiteness to what we mean when we speak of the holiness of the Church. The Ideal Church would perfectly exhibit the divine character. It would be at unity with itself as is the Divine Trinity. The Church is wholly spiritual, the State is partly cosmic. It is important to bear this always in mind. The State must use coercion. She must be self- asserting to some extent. It is, as I understand the matter, the function of the Church to spiritualise the State by spiritualising the members of the State. Her methods must not be carnal, nor coercive, but persuasive, while, she holds up to men the high standard of the Divine Perfection. She has ever to remember that she is the Body of Christ, representing Christ to the world; and therefore she must represent Him worthily, with meekness and lowliness as He Himself walked on earth among men.

We cannot shut our eyes to the fact that the Christian Church has often failed, and failed miser- ably, because she has forgotten her own spirit. She has taken up with cosmic methods, and has been even in danger of becoming a cosmic state. She has been ready to grasp worldly power, to use coercion, to exalt herself in the ways of the world. We cannot shut our eyes to these things. Yet still the Church goes on, and will go on for ever. It is no new church that is wanted, no schism, which is too often the fruit of pride and self-assertion, but a cleansing of the purposes of the Church of all these centuries, the Church which is still as at the first the Body of Christ indwelt by His Spirit. The church of the first three centuries, though torn by divisions as the meaning of her own doctrine was being slowly discovered to her by the teaching of the Spirit of God, was yet kept pure from cosmic temptations in part by the cleansing fire of persecution. When at length the world found out that it had something to gain from the Church, it allied itself to her. The Church became corrupted by the world, learnt its methods, grasped at power, until at last the great disruption of the sixteenth century came about. But the hand of God is to be seen in all history, and though what we call the Reformation was marred by the self-seeking and self-assertion of men, we can see that God was working to free men from fetters which hindered the knowledge of the truth. There can never be for those who have once learnt the blessings of a spiritual freedom a return to the tyranny over intellect and conscience. A church which has any fear of the growth of knowledge is a church of the past and not of the future. But while the Church has been torn asunder by the cosmic spirit of men, the Divine Spirit has been, according to Christ’s promise, leading patient enquirers after truth into truths of nature which need now their interpretation according to the Gospel of Christ. Christianity is on her trial before the world, and she can bear it, if, casting aside the cosmic, she will adhere to the Truth of God. If she is going to hold to rigid and preconceived notions of what Inspiration is, she will get back the answer she deserves : The God who wrote your Bible is not the God who wrote the book of nature. It is the living message that is wanted. And we do not want any infallible pope to utter it forth ; we want the courage to let the truth be hammered out, if we may say so. Let men say what they really think. Let them not be anathematised for opinions. If these are wrong, men will learn them to be wrong by a patient putting forth of the truth on the part of those who have made it their own.

God has not one thought for Himself. It is a Gospel to change the world. It sets character before everything else as the test of truth, and this is strictly according to Christ’s own teaching. Self-sacrifice and the being renewed from the cosmic to the spiritual, this is the end of true religion. If this end is not reached, or at any rate approximated to, our religion is a failure. " Pure religion and undefiled before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world."

Let it not be thought that I am advocating the substitution of philanthropy for religion. Any doctrine of life, any practice of life which leaves God out of account, seems to me wholly insufficient. I do not suggest the substitution of the love of man for the love of God. What we want is more of the love of God, and to get that we must see God as Christ has revealed Him to us as Perfect Love. God is worthy to be loved, and must be loved when we know what He is.

God has not one thought for Himself. I know that this thought can do great things. It is the Truth which can make us free. Let this thought be laid hold of by a few, let it be believed, let it be repeated, let it be lived but not stereotyped in words, and we are already one step nearer to the reunion of Christendom. Let our Church of England gather together all Christians in this land and make them one in this thought, let reunion begin at home, and we shall be stronger to do God’s work in the wider world as a missionary church. Let the thought given by the Church to the nation permeate our national life. It will solve many social problems and reconcile many conflicting interests.

I do not underrate the magnitude of the difficulties of reunion, but they can be overcome if once Christians can persuade themselves that it is the divine will, and therefore possible. It is the cosmic spirit in us all that has to be cast out. Let the Church understand her functions as distinguished from those of the State. Let her be content to perform those functions and not trespass where she has no call to go, and the relation between Church and State in this land will soon settle itself.

God has not one thought for Himself. Let us repeat this truth of the Divine Holiness to ourselves every day. It can bring about the new heaven and the new earth.

It is quite clear that this thought about God may require the surrender of many former views and the modification of many more. Only so can the diverse thoughts of the Christian world to-day be gathered together in the truth. But the thought is not revolutionary. It is essentially constructive. The demands which it will make on every man who accepts it as true will be to him a practical proof of its truth. In this truth we shall find that we have not only in theory, but in actual practice, a redemption of human life from sin and selfishness.

" Now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more will I make to tremble not the earth only, but also the heaven. And this word. Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that have been made, that those things which are not shaken may remain."

GLASGOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO.