Tag: What We Believe Series

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Scripture

What We Believe, Part 2: What Scripture Says of Jesus

Father Joshua J. Whitfield

February 8, 2023 8:12 am February 8, 2023

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To know what we believe, we must read Scripture. But what does the Bible say about Jesus? One way to answer this question is to examine the names and titles…

To know what we believe, we must read Scripture. But what does the Bible say about Jesus?

One way to answer this question is to examine the names and titles of Christ. In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church takes this approach (see Nos. 422-455). Theologians both Catholic and Protestant have done this for centuries. Simply put, it’s an easy way to explore how Jesus is portrayed in the New Testament — by studying his many titles. Examining only a few will be sufficient.

The most emphatic and repeated thing Scripture says of Christ, as Peter preached at Pentecost, is that he was crucified and killed, but that “God raised him up” (Acts 2:23-24). That is, Jesus is the Risen One. Such was the disciples’ most profound experience and what compelled them to preach to anyone who would listen.

Believing that central message, however, only inspired more questions — biographical ones. Like, where was Jesus from? Who were his parents? What did he do and say? Jesus was a teacher, clearly. He was also recognized as a prophet and acted like one. But how was Jesus different from other teachers and prophets? The Gospels were written to answer just such questions — to meet faith’s curiosity, the desire to know more — just as Theophilus desired to know, the one for whom Luke wrote his Gospel (Lk 1:3-4).

Such desire, such curiosity, is fundamental to the Gospels, and it carries us into the whole world of the Bible. “But who do you say that I am?” Jesus asked. “The Messiah,” Peter answered (Mt 16:16). This makes sense only in light of the Hebrew Scriptures, as is true of almost all that’s said of Jesus in the New Testament. For instance, the word “Messiah,” the Greek translation of which is “Christ,” simply means “anointed.” In the Old Testament prophets, priests and kings were “anointed.” The Messiah for whom Andrew longed, as did the Samaritan woman, was imagined as a sort of king, like kings of old — the regal fulfilment of God’s promise to David that his kingdom would never end.

So Jewish meaning, you see, gives meaning to Jesus. Such is true even for his name — “Jesus.” The angel Gabriel gave Mary this name (Lk 1:31); it’s the same name as “Joshua,” transliterated also sometimes “Yeshua” or “Yehoshua.” Succeeding Moses, Joshua led the people into the Promised Land. Jesus, in a sense, did the same. The name also evokes the Tetragrammaton, YHWH, the four consonants that are in the Hebrew Scriptures, the unpronounceable, and at times unwritable, name for God. “Jesus” simply means something like “YHWH saves.”

The Jewish web of meaning also helps us understand titles like “Son of Man,” which is how Jesus often spoke of himself. In one sense it simply means “human,” for we are all sons or daughters of “man” (Ps 8:4). Yet, in another sense — and especially as Jesus spoke of the “Son of Man,” say, in Luke’s Gospel — it evokes the enigmatic figure found in the Book of Daniel, the “son of man” presented before the “Ancient One” at the end of history given “an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away” (Dan 7:13-14). “For just as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day” (Lk 17:24). Jesus here was not simply employing a colloquial term for “human.” Rather, he was placing himself within the destiny described in Daniel. When Jesus talked about his death and resurrection, or about the end of the world, or when he said the “Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth,” it’s likely that this mysterious passage from Daniel came to the minds of his listeners, certainly to the Gospel writers (Mt 17:22-23; Mk 2:10-11). It is as if that is what the evangelists wanted us to understand about Jesus, about who he is and what happened to him, that we should understand him in terms of the eternal victory Daniel mystically saw.

Another term used of Jesus was “servant.” Peter called him “servant Jesus” (Acts 3:13). Paul said Jesus “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” (Phil 2:7). Early on for Christians, talk of Jesus as servant evoked the Songs of the Servant found in Isaiah. In the so-called fourth Song of the Servant, for example, an enigmatic servant is “spurned” and “pierced for our offenses.” Yet, by “his stripes we are healed,” the text says (Is 53:3-5). It is easy to see how early Christians interpreted these passages from Isaiah in light of Jesus, as prophetic images of his death and resurrection. Such is how Philip explained this passage to the Ethiopian eunuch, for instance (see Acts 8:32-35). It also, along with imagery from Exodus, makes sense of what John saw in the Book of Revelation, the living triumphal “Lamb that seemed to have been slain” (Rev 5:6).

Jesus was also called “Son of God.” In the Old Testament a “son of God” was sometimes an angel or a king (Job 1:6; Ps 2:7). In the Gospels, however, more is meant. Mark’s Gospel, as it reads at the beginning, is the “gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God” (Mk 1:1). The whole story Mark tells leads to just this realization, voiced in the words of the centurion. “Truly this man was the Son of God” he says at the foot of the cross (Mk 15:39). But what does that mean? To call Jesus “Son of God” in one sense doesn’t immediately suggest Jesus’s divinity. When, however, Jesus prays to be glorified with the glory he shared with the Father from “before the world began,” we begin to see that “Son of God” means something more. Rather, it describes the unique relationship Jesus claimed to have with God, whom he called “Abba” or “Father” (see Jn 5:17-18) and which, adopted by the Holy Spirit, believers also have (Rom 8:15). Jesus, in this sense, is the “firstborn” of God’s many children, those in whose hearts the Holy Spirit is poured (Rom 8:29; 5:5).

Now, all this thus far simply speaks to the hope of Israel, and that Jesus fulfills it. He was, however, called other things that say more. For instance, calling Jesus “Lord” as both Peter and Paul did (Acts 2:35; Rom 10:9; Phil 2:11) was perhaps the most radical thing one could say of him. Calling Jesus Lord carried both religious and political meaning. Religiously, one could argue, it identified Jesus with God himself. Whenever Jewish scribes came across YHWH in the Hebrew Scriptures, for instance, out of respect they often replaced it with “Adonai,” which is translated “Lord.” And politically, of course, Caesar was “Lord.” Thus, to call Jesus “Lord” was blasphemous to some and seditious to others. Which is why, for Christians, calling Jesus “Lord” was so charged and also dangerous.

And no less daring, at least philosophically, was to call Jesus “Word.” That is what John said of him, that Jesus is the Word that “was with God” and “was God” (Jn 1:1). This should be read in light of Isaiah where God speaks of his word that goes forth from his “mouth” (Is 55:11), but also in light of all the words of God and the Law, which Moses begged Israelites to keep and pass onto their children (Deut 32:46). It also evokes the word spoken by God at creation (Gen 1:3). The Greek mind, though, would have read “Word” a variety of ways: as speech, as concept, as the rational organizing principle of the cosmos. Philo, the Jewish philosopher, understood it to be the divine reason of things. This makes John’s statement startling, that in Jesus the “Word became flesh” (Jn 1:14). Here we’re talking about not simply the fulfillment of Israel’s hope, but something more. It is a unique claim that Nicaea would summarize only a few centuries later — that the Father and the Son are “consubstantial,” that Jesus is “God from God.”

Now, this is but little of what is said of Jesus in the New Testament. There is, of course, so much more. John said as much at the end of his Gospel (Jn. 21:25). St. Athanasius said the same, that trying to learn about Jesus was like trying to count waves on the sea (On The Incarnation, No. 54). There is, indeed, much more. Yet, one must start somewhere, and Scripture is the best somewhere to begin. Because what we believe is found in the Bible, and it is also where you will be found if you keep reading. For the truth is, we are all sought by what we are seeking. So, keep reading until you are found.

Father Joshua J. Whitfield is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and author of “The Crisis of Bad Preaching” (Ave Maria Press, $17.95) and other books. Read more from the series here.

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Scripture

What We Believe, Part 37: Anointed and Sealed in Confirmation

Father Joshua Whitfield

January 23, 2023 11:20 am January 23, 2023

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6 min read

How do we understand the meaning of the sacramental ritual of confirmation? In St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, we see vocabulary emerge, describing what happens at Confirmation when…

How do we understand the meaning of the sacramental ritual of confirmation? In St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians, we see vocabulary emerge, describing what happens at Confirmation when the Holy Spirit descends upon the Christian: “But the one who gives us security with you in Christ and who anointed us is God; he has also put his seal upon us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a first installment” (2 Cor 1:21-22). The words “anointed” and “seal” are used to describe the work of the Holy Spirit upon and in the soul of the individual baptized believer. That’s what the Spirit does: anoints and seals.

The word “anointed” itself contains even more meaning and insight. The Greek verb for anointed, χρίσας, is, of course, similar to the word “Christ” (the phrase in 2 Cor 1:21 actually reads: Χριστόν καί χρίσας). This gives us an even more profound sense of what confirmation does: by the gift of the Holy Spirit we are anointed, or in a sense “Christ-ed.” Remember early Christians saw Christ’s baptism and Spirit-driven desert experience as a pattern of their own experience? This is why. Because the Anointed is the pattern for the anointed.

We find this terminology in other passages of the New Testament, too. For example, in Ephesians we read about believers “sealed with the promised holy Spirit” (Eph 1:13). That’s why, as it says later in Ephesians, believers shouldn’t use foul language so as not to “grieve the holy Spirit of God” by which they were “sealed for the day of redemption” (Eph 4:29-30). That Christians were “sealed” by the Holy Spirit evoked the image of being owned by Christ. Soldiers, for instance, were marked by their generals, then enslaved by their masters. So, for the Holy Spirit to “seal” the believer meant that he or she was owned by the Holy Spirit to be, as Paul said of himself, “a slave of Christ Jesus” (Rom 1:1) — a Lord, certainly, whose yoke is easy and burden light, but who is Lord all the same (Mt 11:30).

Beyond the Scripture, we find the same pattern and vocabulary in the tradition. The Apostolic Tradition — an ancient Church manual from the third century — describes confirmation this way:

“And the bishop shall lay his hand upon them invoking them and saying: ‘O Lord God, Who did count these worthy of deserving the forgiveness of sins by the laver of regeneration, make them worthy to be filled with Your Holy Spirit and send upon them thy grace, that they may serve You according to your will.’ … After this, pouring the consecrated oil and laying his hand on his head, he shall say: ‘I anoint thee in the name of Christ’” (The Apostolic Tradition, No. 21).

Recall that a typical baptismal ceremony in the early Church saw catechumens baptized in the nude (men and women baptized separately). Stepping down into a large font, they were immersed in water three times. Coming out the other side, they were dressed in white robes. Sometimes they were given honey and milk, symbols of entering the Promised Land. And then immediately, the newly baptized would go into another room and there meet the bishop where he would lay hands on the newly baptized and anoint them with chrism, a perfumed oil used at ordinations and coronations, symbolizing the new Christian’s share in the kingship of Christ. St. Cyprian, who lived in North Africa, describes this: “They who are baptized in the Church are brought to the prelates of the Church, and by our prayers and by the imposition of the hand obtain the Holy Spirit, and are perfected with the Lord’s seal” (Letter 73).

We see the same from St. Ambrose; but from him, we learn even more. “For after the font,” he wrote, “it remains for the perfecting to take place.” He too calls confirmation a “spiritual seal.” But he links the gift of the Holy Spirit to the gifts mentioned in Isaiah 11:2-3: “a spirit of wisdom and of understanding, a spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and of fear of the Lord.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls these the “gifts of the Holy Spirit” (No. 1303). These gifts Isaiah described were interpreted in early Christian tradition to be gifts belonging to Christ, as a prophecy about Jesus. So, when St. Ambrose said that, at confirmation, these gifts were now given to the Christian, he was describing the intimate moral and charismatic union made between believers and the Lord in the Sacrament of Confirmation. The newly baptized now possessed these prophetic and Christ-like gifts. These Messianic gifts are now given to the Christian through the Holy Spirit. Again, the anointed become like the Anointed.

Now, what are the gifts of the Holy Spirit? St. Thomas Aquinas described them perfectly, saying such gifts give the believer an “ardent desire” for virtue and make the person who possesses them hungry for virtue (Summa Theologiae, I-II 69, Answer 3). For example, we all have an innate sense of justice since it’s written into the natural law. If I paid one person $100 and another person $50 for doing the same job, the person who was underpaid would undoubtedly feel the injustice of it and likely complain because, of course, his or her sense of justice is innate. And the person who was paid $100 will also sense the injustice of it too, and he or she may even ask that the other person is paid more, or he or she may share the extra money. Now Aquinas says the gifts of the Holy Spirit make a person desire justice more. That is, the person possessing the gifts of the Spirit would not consent to such iniquity but would passionately want to do something about it. That’s what these gifts do. Everyone has a sense of justice, but the gifts of the Holy Spirit enhance a Christian’s natural moral sense with desire.

And so, biblically speaking, we understand confirmation in terms of being anointed and sealed. These two images give us a sense of the Christological reality of confirmation, how confirmation perfects our union in Christ beginning in baptism. These images and this pattern continued throughout the tradition. They are the basic elements of Catholic theology and the practice of baptism and confirmation. But confirmation is part of the single twofold event of baptism and confirmation, which for much of Christian history was celebrated within a single ceremony. Baptism and confirmation belong to the same spiritual reality, forming us into one Christ. But these eventually became separated as we know today.

Father Joshua J. Whitfield is pastor of St. Rita Catholic Community in Dallas and author of “The Crisis of Bad Preaching” (Ave Maria Press, $17.95) and other books. Read more from the series here.

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4 min read

Scripture

What We Believe, Part 36: Confirmation Completes Baptism

Father Joshua J. Whitfield

January 16, 2023 1:32 pm January 16, 2023

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4 min read

The sacraments of baptism and confirmation belong together. It can be confusing, of course, because people experience confirmation in different ways. If you’re baptized as an adult, for instance, you will be confirmed immediately after baptism. However, if you’re baptized as an infant, then you’ll not be confirmed until many years later.

Here is the reason for this. Christian initiation is understood historically in the early Church as one event, wherein the two sacraments of baptism and confirmation, along with the Eucharist, were celebrated together. This was broken up for a variety of practical reasons, giving us the diverse ways in which we can receive confirmation today. It’s critical to know, though, that these two distinct sacraments belong together — and, alongside the Eucharist, form one initiation experience.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it this way: “Baptism, the Eucharist, and the sacrament of Confirmation together constitute the ‘sacraments of Christian initiation,’ whose unity must be safeguarded” (No. 1285). Their unity arises from the fact that these sacraments work together to form the believer into the person of Christ — or as the New Testament puts it, into “the full stature of Christ” (Eph 4:13).

In baptism, a person is born in Christ — grafted, to put it another way, into Christ himself. Confirmation, on the other hand, names the experience of the Holy Spirit shedding his grace upon a Christian even more perfectly, catalyzing the grace already present in the baptized person. The words used by the Catechism are “completion,” “more perfectly bound,” “enriched.” After confirmation, the baptized person is “more strictly obliged to spread and defend the faith by word and deed” (Catechism, No. 1285). One can begin to see from this, of course, how confirmation came to be viewed as a sacrament of adolescence, a sacrament marking one’s growth and development. Confirmation came to be seen as an opportunity for a young person to take ownership of his or her baptism, to be “more strictly obliged” to live the Christian life. This, though, is a later development — a broadening of the meaning of confirmation and not the way Catholics always thought about the sacrament.

This twofold pattern is recognizable in the Bible. We see it in the story of Jesus’ baptism and temptation. After Jesus was baptized by John, after the voice broke from heaven saying, “You are my beloved Son,” we learn in Mark that “the Spirit drove him into the desert,” where he was tested by Satan (Mk 1:9-13). Some of the early Church Fathers saw this passage as a symbol of confirmation. They saw that, like Christ, when we are baptized, we too are called sons or daughters of the Father. And, again like Christ, after baptism, the Spirit drives us out into the wilderness to fight the devil.

In Acts of the Apostles, Peter and John are sent to Samaria, because although believers there “had accepted the word of God,” the Holy Spirit “had not yet fallen upon any of them.” Before the two apostles arrived, believers in Samaria “had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.” Later, Peter and John laid hands on them, giving them the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:14-17). Although in the New Testament, we do not find a systematic sacramental theology — that would take centuries of synthesis and tradition — we do find the basic elements and ingredients, as it were, of sacramental theology, including the elements of our Catholic belief about baptism and confirmation. We see that their relationship is a relation of presence to perfection and action. In baptism, we’re made present to Christ. In confirmation, we’re perfected and pushed into action by the Spirit.

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5 min read

Scripture

What We Believe, Part 35: What About Infant Baptism?

Father Joshua J. Whitfield

January 9, 2023 10:12 am January 9, 2023

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For all our talk about baptism previously, infant baptism remains, for some, a controversial practice. Why do Catholics and some other denominations baptize babies? Why not wait for the child…

For all our talk about baptism previously, infant baptism remains, for some, a controversial practice. Why do Catholics and some other denominations baptize babies? Why not wait for the child to choose baptism for him or herself? Here is what the tradition of the Church teaches us.

First, in the New Testament, there are references to entire “households” receiving baptism. When Lydia was baptized, for instance, Luke says “her household” was baptized too (Acts 16:15). Or, in Corinth, Paul said he baptized the “household of Stephanas” (1 Cor 1:16). This was thought, by many in the early Church, to include all people — those enslaved, children, parents. Now that, by no means, clinches the argument, nor was it the most important argument for the practice in the early Church. But it is significant.

In many parts of the early Church, adult baptism was clearly the norm, a practice also typically associated with intense moral rigor. Only after achieving a level of moral perfection would a person dare to receive baptism, which is why so many put it off until old age or just before death. Early Church Father Tertullian — a thoroughly rigorist Christian — represents this thinking: “If any understand the weighty import of baptism, they will fear its reception more than its delay” (“On Baptism,” No.18).

Yet it’s clear that in many parts of the Christian world, the practice of infant baptism was accepted and even, in some places, the norm. “The Apostolic Tradition,” a manual of Church worship and practice like the Didache, but from the third century, lists both adults and children as candidates for baptism. “The children shall be baptized first. All of the children who can answer for themselves, let them answer. If there are any children who cannot answer for themselves, let their parents answer for them, or someone else from their family,” it says (“The Apostolic Tradition,” No. 21.2-4). The growth of the practice of infant baptism likely had some connection to the idea that baptism was necessary for salvation — a theological claim that, whatever we may think of it now, would have been taken seriously in earlier eras of serious faith and high infant mortality.

But aside from evidence found in the tradition, what theological defense is there? Enter here, St. Augustine. He offers a theological defense for infant baptism, saying basically that a child becomes a believer through the sacrament. “Therefore an infant, although he is not yet a believer in the sense of having faith which includes the consenting will of those who exercise it, nevertheless becomes a believer through the sacrament of that faith. For as it is answered that he believes, so also he is called a believer, not because he assents to the truth by an act of his own judgment, but because he receives the sacrament of that truth” (Epistle, No. 98.10). Now what does this mean?

Let’s use an analogy. Think of parents determined to give their children the best education possible. And understandably, they decide that the best school for, say, their teenage daughter, is the Catholic high school down the road. Thus, they make their daughter apply; they pay; they make her go to the Catholic school. Now, their daughter may not understand the value of the gift of such an education. She may not understand the good things her parents have done for her. She may even hate the school at first. But in time, she will have the opportunity to grow into the school and into all the benefits that the school offers. Of course, it’s up to her whether she succeeds or fails, but it was up to her parents to give her the opportunity. And why did they give her the opportunity? Because they knew it was the best thing for their daughter well before their daughter did. If they had waited for her to choose on her own, she may have not made a choice at all, or she may have made a bad choice.

This same sort of thinking is what’s behind the practice of infant baptism. That’s what St. Augustine meant, saying the infant becomes a believer through the sacrament of his or her parents’ faith. It doesn’t at all take away the freedom of the child to live his or her life any more than the parents sending their child to the school they know is best takes away their child’s freedom either to succeed or fail as a student. But that’s why parents have their infant children baptized because, by faith, they know the gift of the sacrament is what’s best for them.

Now we should be clear this is not uniquely Catholic thinking. John Calvin, for example, advocated infant baptism. His argument was in fact quite biblical. He pointed to Noah and to the covenant he made with God on behalf of the whole of creation. Calvin’s reasoning was that if Noah could enter all the dumb animals of creation into a covenant with God, then surely parents could enter their children into a covenant with God. “From this the ignorance of the Anabaptists may be refuted,” Calvin confidently asserted (“Commentary on Genesis,” No. 9:10). Only some Protestant groups reject infant baptism, we should remember, so this isn’t exclusively Catholic belief and practice.

There is, of course, much more that can be said or argued about infant baptism, but this brief look into the tradition is a start. What we believe about baptism — that it’s a sacrament of God’s desire for us — is clear; thus, why wouldn’t we baptize infants? For Christ bids the little ones come to him, too (Mk 10:13-16).

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7 min read

Scripture

What We Believe, Part 12: The Church Moral

Father Joshua J. Whitfield

January 9, 2023 6:00 am January 9, 2023

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7 min read

To belong to the Church is to belong to a communion the measure of which is nothing less than the whole of creation — the Church cosmic. And belonging to…

To belong to the Church is to belong to a communion the measure of which is nothing less than the whole of creation — the Church cosmic. And belonging to the Church opens up a new moral horizon. To believe in Christ and belong to the Church doesn’t just change the way one views history and the universe, it changes one’s understanding of moral possibility. It changes the way believers see themselves and other people — the good and the purpose of people.

As Paul said, each believer’s life is “hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). That is, there’s a truth about each believer that is not visible but which is discerned only in faith. And the ethical change this effects is that now believers must measure their behavior in terms of heaven — our destiny as Ephesians puts it (Eph 1:11). Believers change their moral behavior in light of the understanding that they will live forever with their brothers and sisters in heaven.

We can think about how heaven changes morality in this way: Imagine you’re on the way to a party, but running a bit late. Flustered to begin with, on the highway you come upon a very slow driver, too clueless to get out of your way. Angry, you honk the horn and ride the driver’s bumper until finally you can pass. For good measure, as you whiz by, perhaps you give the slow driver a universally recognized hand gesture just to make sure he or she understands your displeasure. But now imagine, 10 minutes later, you arrive at the party. You park and look in the rearview mirror to see the slow car parking just behind you. You both get out and walk to the door, as you begin to feel faint, realizing that you’re going to the same party. Awkward, don’t you think? Surely, if you had known that this slow driver was going to the same party as you — or let’s say, to the same heaven as you — don’t you think you would have changed your behavior on the road? Now, to make the point theologically: eschatology influences morality. When a believer genuinely realizes that his or her life is hidden with Christ in God — that Christ in heaven is his or her destination and that his or her brothers and sisters are going there too — behavior changes. And that’s how the Church cosmic gives shape to the Church moral.

But what does the morality of Christians look like? Again, we deal more thoroughly with this topic later. Here it suffices to say that believers live together in Christ, living as Christ to one another as Paul described in his Letter to the Philippians. “Complete my joy,” Paul writes — just like Jesus and John — “by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing” (Phil 2:2). It’s almost as if Paul may have read John 17.

What is the task of Christian people? To be one. How do we do that? By being like Christ to one another. Forsake rivalry, be humble, count others more important than yourself. Such humility, patterned on Christ, was something utterly new in moral thinking. Aristotle would’ve considered what Paul is recommending simply a form of dishonesty. If one is a great man, Aristotle thought — and, by the way, only a man could be great in his mind — then one should acknowledge it and strive to be what he called “magnanimous.” Jesus, though, gave believers another model. He was indeed great — in the “form of God,” Paul said — but yet he “emptied himself, taking the form of a slave” (Phil 2:6-7). He lowered himself to serve and save others. And because of this — because he rose from the dead and is now exalted as Lord — now everyone can be great, not just Athenian men — even those deemed lowest, those on the farthest margins of society. This radically changed society. This new moral example — the example of Jesus Christ — inspired Christians to practice humility, which ideally is the ethic of all believers, of the entire Church, for it’s how believers remain one and how they show Christ to each other and to the world. They practice humility because they believe Christ is Lord of heaven and earth, because their moral horizon now extends well beyond earthly life.

And it’s a way of life that has consequences, as John made clear. “Do not be amazed if the world hates you,” he wrote (1 Jn 3:13). Jesus, of course, said the same thing (Jn 15:18-25). The way believers live their lives is at times radically different than the way others live theirs. And, just as the way Jesus lived his life convicted and provoked others, so too will believers sometimes convict and provoke the people around them. But that, of course, doesn’t ultimately matter; by no means does the hatred of the world destroy this new way of life lived by believers. Again, because believers know they’ve entered a new and very different world, even as they remain in the old world. Remember when Jesus said he was no longer in the world? (Jn 17:11). John put it in terms of death and life and hatred and love. “We know that we have passed from death to life,” he wrote, “because we love our brothers” (1 Jn 3:14). The ethical fruit of belonging to the Church — not just sacramentally, but morally, too — is mutual love, love that endures often alone in a world that’s forgotten love. To belong to the Church, to be one and to love each other is to experience the beginning of resurrection, eternal life, heaven. Again, we see here how the cosmic shapes the moral; passing from death to life, believers love differently — with an eternal perspective.

And again, notice the Church. As John said, this love is love for the “brothers.” Obviously, this includes women. The point is to notice that the love John is talking about isn’t some disembodied abstract love; it’s not mere feeling or attitude. The love John is talking about is fully ecclesial. That is, by love, John also means the communion of the Church. As Paul said, belonging to the “body of Christ” (another image of the Church), believers are “parts of one another” (Rom 12:5). To belong to the Christ is to belong to each other, which is to belong to the apostolic Church, an actual, tangible body of people discernible throughout history. The Church is not some abstract paradigm or disembodied ethic. Rather, it’s an organic communion of believers in Christ constituted by the gift of the Holy Spirit. We can reach out and touch it; we can see the Church. It’s not just an idea. This is an essential claim of Catholicism.

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8 min read

Scripture

What We Believe, Part 20: The Church One and Visible

Father Joshua J. Whitfield

December 31, 2022 7:17 am December 31, 2022

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8 min read

Throughout its history, the Church has insisted upon its visibility. Especially in these latter centuries as the Church — visible for so many years as some strange political entity —…

Throughout its history, the Church has insisted upon its visibility.

Especially in these latter centuries as the Church — visible for so many years as some strange political entity — has changed its aspect, it has nonetheless still insisted that it is not just an immaterial, invisible society. It is, rather, quite visible. The Church is hierarchical and charismatic; it is an incarnate thing, visible and ethical, obedient to the teachings of Jesus. Echoing the Sermon on the Mount, it’s a “communion of life, charity and truth” that is “sent forth into the whole world as the light of the world and the salt of the earth” (LG 9; Mt 5:13-16). One simply can’t define the Church only in material terms or only in spiritual terms, opposing matter and spirit so absolutely. That is actually heresy.

Rather, as Lumen Gentium teaches, the Church is an “entity with visible delineation.” The risen Christ “continually sustains here on earth His holy Church,” not just as a Mystical Body, but also as a “society structured with hierarchical organs.” The “visible assembly and the spiritual community” are not to be thought of as “two realities” but as “one complex reality which coalesces from a divine and human element.” Again, the applicable analogy here is the incarnation: the idea of the divine and human present in the mysterious and visible (LG 8). Thus, the visible and material aspect of the Church cannot be completely separated from its invisible spiritual reality. That the Church is always visible simply follows from the fact of its nature as sacrament. This is basic Catholic theology, shared though also by the Orthodox and many other Christian traditions.

It’s at this point, however, we encounter some of the unique claims of Roman Catholicism. Simply put, how does this Church we’ve been describing since John 17 relate to the Roman Catholic Church? The answer is complicated. Thus, Lumen Gentium speaks here carefully: “This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him, although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure. These elements, as gifts belonging to the Church of Christ, are forces impelling toward catholic unity” (LG 8).

Now, this is a loaded paragraph! As we’ve already seen, the Church, as sacrament, is a visible organism — hierarchic, charismatic, spiritual, material — but not entirely circumscribable. That is, the Church we’ve been describing since John 17 is not exclusively identifiable with the Roman Catholic Church. The Church is bigger, more mysterious than that. But still, in a very real sense, the Roman Catholic Church is the Church. So, how do you get your head around that?

Lumen Gentium teaches that the Church “subsists in” the Catholic Church — the Church governed by the successor of Peter. Now, this little Latin verb — subsistit — is probably the most controversial word ever to come out of Vatican II. It does indeed mark a change in how the Catholic Church describes itself in relation to other Christian bodies, but it needn’t be controversial. Before the Second Vatican Council, most Catholic theologians were content simply to say that the Church is(est) the Roman Catholic Church. However, Lumen Gentium changed that, adding actually quite helpful nuance. By saying the Church “subsists in” the Roman Catholic Church, Lumen Gentium is not saying the Roman Catholic Church is the ideal Church or the real Church in the sense that other Christian communities are unreal; rather, it’s saying that the Church described in the New Testament is always fully present in the Roman Catholic Church, that by its sacraments and apostolic and Petrine structure, the oneness Jesus prayed for in John 17 is never absent from it (Unitatis Redintegratio, 4). It’s saying that the Roman Catholic Church, ecclesiologically speaking, will always be fully and substantially the Church described in the New Testament and throughout Christian history.

But what about those churches and communities not part of the Roman Catholic Church? What about non-Roman Catholics? The Second Vatican Council teaches that the Christian Church subsists in the Roman Catholic Church, the Church in communion with Peter and his successors, the popes. And yes, it also teaches that non-Roman Catholic churches and communities are different from the Roman Catholic Church, that they “are not blessed with that unity which Jesus Christ wished to bestow on all those to whom he has given new birth into one body … that unity which the Holy Scriptures and the ancient Tradition of the Church proclaim” (Unitatis Redintegratio, 3). However, non-Roman Catholic churches and communities do indeed possess “many elements of sanctification” and also many gifts belonging to the great Church of Christ, all of which are innately “forces impelling toward catholic unity” (LG 2.8). Thus, for Baptists, Methodists, Anglicans, and so on — anyone with an inkling for truth: such truth, in whatever community it flourishes, tends toward the perfect unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit given to the Church in Christ.

But how can we get our heads around this very bold claim? The image that helps me think about this is a simple one — a broken flower pot. If I dropped a big potted plant on the floor, breaking it into several pieces, and if I looked at you and said, “Pick up the plant” — what would you do? You’d likely pick up the root stock, the big bit. It’s unlikely you’d pick up that smaller fragment off to the side or the even smaller one farther away. When I say, “Pick up the plant,” you’re going to pick up the part you know is more fully the plant. But, of course, all the pieces belong together. All the fragments matter. That’s what Lumen Gentium means when it says the Church “subsists in” the Roman Catholic Church. The one fragment off to the side may be Baptists with their great preaching; another fragment, Anglicans with their beauty and humor; another, Methodists with their hymnody. You see what I’m saying? That’s basically the idea. All the broken pieces belong together, but the fullness of the thing is what it is — the Roman Catholic Church.

That’s the unique claim of Roman Catholicism; and undoubtedly, it’s quite a claim. Speaking personally as a convert, I had to explore and wrestle with this for quite some time. I understood that Jesus meant us to be one; and I also understood (as we’ll explore later in this series) that being one meant being one eucharistically, visible one. But does that therefore mean Roman Catholicism? I mean, I had been around Roman Catholics and was not bowled over. And so, for me, it became a historical investigation, questions regarding the claims of the papacy. Is it true, for instance, that all Christians should be in communion with Peter and his successor? I did indeed come to believe this, yes. At this point, suffice it to say that I had to come to grips with this theology, and it wasn’t easy. But in the end, my accepting it stemmed from this idea of God’s mission for glory — that the Father sent his Son and that through the Son and the Spirit, the Church was created in holy, catholic, and apostolic oneness, a divine and human communion. Now indeed, this is an outstanding claim the Roman Catholic Church makes for itself. Yet, like it or lump it, believe it or not, for twenty centuries the Church has found the guts to proclaim it in season and out. Disagree, that’s fine — it’s understandable and even respectable in some instances. But, nonetheless, the outstanding claim remains; there it is. The Church we’ve been following since John 17 “subsists in” the Roman Catholic Church. It was the blunt stubbornness of this teaching that made me wrestle with it so much. Which really is all I can say to you — wrestle with it. Because this is what we Catholics really believe.

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