The idea just expressed may have been dimly present to the mind of Moehler when he wrote: "But it is the conviction of Catholics that this purpose of the divine revelation in Christ Jesus would not have been attained at all, or at least would have been attained but very imperfectly, if this embodiment of the truth had been but momentary, and if the personal manifestation of the Word had not been sufficiently powerful to give its tones the highest degree of intensified animation, and the most perfect conceivable efficacy, that is to say, to breathe into it the breath of life, and to create a union once more setting forth the truth in its vitality, and remaining emblematically the conclusive authority for all time, or, in other words, representing Christ himself."
Viewed in this light, the historical manifestation of the Church, instituted Matt. xvi. 18, 19, presents itself as a postulate of her essence. Because the Church was essentially destined historically to manifest the kingdom of God, the Lord built her upon Peter, the rock. A temporal establishment of the kingdom of heaven in the midst of this world required the divine installation of an individual keeper of the keys. Thus the idea of the papacy flows from that of a kingdom of God on earth.
If, then, this explanation presents Catholicism as a supernatural kingdom, and if this very attribute constitutes the characteristic feature of its being, its inmost life and fundamental [{674}] principle, it is manifestly inadmissible to place the kingdom of God as established in the Church on the same footing with the works of creation. A juxtaposition like this would entirely ignore the vital essence of the Church, that is to say, her superiority to nature.
The same distinction is overlooked by those who regard Church and state as simply two manifestations of the same kingdom of God. Such is the point of view of a system of moral theology, the influence of which upon the opinions prevailing among a considerable fraction of the present generation of theologians is not to be mistaken. In the eye of that doctrine "Mosaism and Christianism—state and Church—both externally represent the kingdom, and both represent one and the same kingdom; the former [the state] rather in its negative, the latter [the Church] rather in its positive aspect. And thus we have two great formations in which the kingdom on earth is made manifest, Church and state." Could Hirscher have reached any other conclusion? He regards it as his task "to dispose of the question whether the germs of the divine kingdom, like seeds, are implanted in the character of man as in a fruitful soil, and whether they can spring forth from it [i.e., from the character or nature of man himself] and blossom as the kingdom of God."
Although it is here said that "God abode in man with his Holy Spirit and with its sanctifying grace," yet the Holy Spirit or his grace is not made the foundation upon which the kingdom is erected; that foundation is sought, on the contrary, in the "divine powers" infused into man at his creation. God only assists at the upraising of the kingdom through them by "dwelling in them for ever as the principle of divine guidance."
The logical inference from these premises, which seek the germs of the kingdom of God as established on earth in human nature itself, that is to say, in the "heavenly faculties" inherent in man, is well disclosed in the definition of the kingdom of God on earth given by Petersen, a theologian reared in the school of Schleiermacher. "The kingdom of God on earth," says he, "is at once Church, state, and civilization, i.e., it is an organism of community in religion, morals, and society, and by these three special organisms it essentially approaches, develops, and perfects its organic unity, in organizing its religious principle in the Church, its moral framework in the state, and its natural base in civilization, thus in the unity of all three rounding its proportions as a universal organism of genuine humanity." If "the germs of the divine kingdom, like seeds, are implanted in the character of man as in a fruitful soil," it is entirely consistent to regard the kingdom of God on earth as "substantially identical with the idea of the human race," as "the realization of that idea."
It gives us pleasure to state that the notion of the kingdom of God on earth just alluded to has been declared unscriptural even in a Protestant exegesis of greater thoroughness. [Footnote 148]
[Footnote 148: Hofman, Schriftbeweis, 1855. ]
III. THE BODY OF CHRIST.
Next to the idea of the kingdom of God, the most significant expression for the inner essence of Catholicism is found in the scriptural conception of the body of Christ. As his body, the Church is intimately connected with him. Christ and the Church belong together as the head and the body; both constitute a single whole. This intimate relation between Christ and the Church is described by the Scriptures in animated terms. The Church, it says, is for Christ what our own body is for us; as members of the Church we are members of the body of Christ, of his flesh, and of his bones. On one occasion, indeed, the apostle uses the word Christ as synonymous with the Church, so intimate is their relation.