As the head of the Church, the Son [{743}] of man, being lifted up from the earth, draws all men unto him. The Scripture concludes the narration of the miraculous events of the first Christian Passover and of their immediate results with the remark that the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved. Therefore, immediately after the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, began the daily increase of the Church through the fructifying influence of the grace of its head. They were multiplied in proportion as they walked in the comfort, the [Greek text], of the Holy Ghost. By one Spirit the Church of Christ is baptized into one body, which Spirit overflows it and saturates it with its essence. In him we were sealed as the possession of Christ, and we know that he abideth in us by the Spirit which he hath given us. On being received into the Church the members are built into an edifice, the foundation of which has its cornerstone in Christ. By this incorporation they are united into a mansion of God in the Spirit. In so far as we are joined unto the Lord we are one spirit with him, and our bodies are temples of the Holy Ghost.
On account of its intimate relations with Christ, the Spirit is called the Spirit of Christ. Even the Lord himself is directly called the Spirit. By him, the Spirit of the Lord, we are transformed into his image, the image the Lord. Thereby the Spirit evinces itself the principle of our liberty.
The main result of the action of the Spirit in the Church is, therefore, the union of the latter and of her individual members with Christ, the Christ who is within us. The union between Christ and the Church is effected by the Spirit, who acts as the connecting link, while Christ himself is the efficient cause of the union, in so far as he sends his Spirit to accomplish it. How, then, is the inhabitation of the Spirit, which is identical with that of Christ, in the Church brought about? The answer to this question involves results decisive of the present investigation.
If the Church were an unattained ideal, according to the Protestant acceptation, the promise of Christ to be with his followers even unto the end of the world would admit of no more profound interpretation than that, after his personal departure, the Lord would continue to occupy the minds of his disciples, thus giving their thoughts a right direction through all time. The presence of Christ in the visible Church would no longer be vouchsafed by a substantial pledge, making the repletion of the Church with Christ, which is the ideal of that institution, a historical reality even at the present day, in so far as the pledge is actually present. If, on the other hand, the latter view is the only scriptural one, then the true Church is not to be handed over exclusively to the future and to the realm of ideas. She is herself within the sphere of reality, she belongs to the living present, if the inmost principle of her being is even now actually at work, as a gift coeval with her establishment, not the mere object of search and speculation.
The idea of Catholicism presupposes one thing more. Such a principle dwelling in the Church as a reality must necessarily exercise its functions in a single individual image only. Both of these positions are the necessary results of the teachings of Holy Writ.
The Scriptures describe the Holy Ghost, by whom the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, as something conferred upon us, per spiritum sanctum qui datus est nobis. In the capacity of abiding in our souls as something bestowed upon us, as donum, the fathers distinguish a personal attribute of the Holy Ghost, having its foundation in the peculiar manner of its eternal emanation from the Father and Son. This emanation is wrought as a common infusion of being from Father and Son, as an intro-divine overflowing of love. [Footnote 154] Together [{744}] with the Holy Ghost that is given unto us, that is to say, by means of the love shed abroad in our hearts through him, the two other persons of the Trinity likewise come and take up their abode within our souls. The unity of the three divine persons is not only the antetype of the unity of the Church, but is at the same time its fundamental principle. In his high sacerdotal invocation the Lord prays that all those who believe through the word may be one, even as the Father is in him and he in the Father; and that we may be one in the Father and the Son, ut et ipsi eis nolis unum sint. The unity of the Father and the Son, who take up their abode within us simultaneously with the Holy Ghost, is the foundation of our own ecclesiastical unity. There is the fundamental, the ultimate principle of Catholicism. In it, through the Holy Ghost, we have a fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
[Footnote 154: St. Augustinus, de Trinit., lib. v., cap. 14: Exiit enim non quomodo natus, sed quomodo datus; et ideo non dicitur filius. Cap. 15: Quia sic procedebat ut esset donabile, jam donum erat et antequam esset cui daretur. Cap. 11: Spiritus sanctus ineffabilis est quaedam Patris Filiique communio. . . . hoc ipse proprie dicitur, quod illi communiter: quia et Pater spiritus et Filius spiritus et Pater sanctus et Filius sanctus. Ut ergo ex nomine, quod utrique convenit, utriusque communio significetur, vocatur donum amborum Spiritus sanctus.]
The other functions ascribed to the Spirit by Holy Writ are also of such a nature as to constrain us to assume that the essence of the true Church is a reality even at this day. By the Holy Ghost we receive even now an earnest of the inheritance in store for us. Its testimony assures us that we are the children of God. We have become such even now, and through him. We are born of the Spirit. The renewal accomplished by him is a bath of regeneration, the putting on of a new man. In the hearts of believers he is a well of water springing up into everlasting life. In this sense our justification may be regarded as a glorification in the germ. Christ has anointed the Church with a chrism which abides and exerts itself in her as a permanent teacher.
It is an entire misapprehension of the creative power of Christianity to ascribe to the Spirit of Christ which governs the Church no more profitable efficacy than the barren, resultless chase of an ideal which constantly eludes realization. The very idea that a law of steady development is to be traced in Christianity itself, this very favorite view of all the advocates of an ideal Church, ought to have led to a more profound appreciation of the essence and history of the Church. If the Church is to undergo a development, the realization of her ideal should not be postponed to the end of time. What is its course in history? This point is decisive of our position respecting the ideal Church.
The doctrine relies upon Matt, xviii. 20. Here the Catholic acceptation of a realization of the essence of the Church, historically manifested, would appear to be directly excluded. The passage adduced makes Christ abide among us, and accordingly makes the true Church come into being simply in consequence of the casual assemblage of two or three, so that it takes place in his name—a condition the performance or breach of which is a matter by no means patent to the senses. But these words are to be read in connection with what precedes them. Verses 17 and 18 allude to the authority of' the Church as historically manifest. The resolutions of that authority are ratified in heaven, and are valid before God. For—such is the logical thread of the discourse of Jesus—what the Church, as historically manifested, ordains, is at the same time ordained by the Holy Ghost dwelling within her. That such is actually the case, the Lord then proceeds to show by the concluding illustration. The agreement of two is alone sufficient to secure a fulfilment of the prayer: for where two or three are assembled together in the name of Christ, there is he in the midst of them: how much more amply then is the presence and the countenance of Christ assured to the entire Church, and to the organ intrusted with the execution of her [{745}] power! [Footnote 55] True, Christ is present even where only two or three are assembled in his name; but the result of his presence corresponds to the extent of the assembly. There Christ simply effects the fulfilment of the common prayer. That the arbitrary concourse of a few individuals in the name of Christ is the realization of the essence of the Church, nowhere in the whole passage is there a word to confirm such an interpretation.