The Church and Her Attributes.
The heterodox of all shades recognize, in some form or in some sense, what they call the church of Christ, and hold it in some way necessary, or at least useful, to salvation. The Anglicans profess to believe in a church founded by Christ himself, of which they claim to be a pure or purified branch; the Presbyterians profess to believe that there is a church, out of which there is no salvation; the Methodists and Baptists call their organizations churches, and hold them to be parts or branches of one universal or catholic church; and even Socinians, Unitarians, and Universalists, who deny the incarnation, speak of the church, though precisely what they mean by it is not easy to say. So far as we know, there is no sect, school, or party, not included among those whom our theologians call infidels or apostates, that does not profess a belief, of some sort, in the holy catholic and apostolic church of the creed.
In a controversy between us and the heterodox, the question is not, An sit ecclesia? but, Quid sit ecclesia? The controversy hinges, not on the existence of the church, but on what the church is, and only rarely on which is the true church; for when all have once come to agree as to what the church is, there will be little dispute as to which she is. We start, then, with the assumption that there is something to be called the church of Christ, and proceed at once to point out what she is.
The church of Christ, taken in its most comprehensive sense, in all states, places, and times, is, says Billuart: "Congregatio fidelium in vero Dei cultu adunatorum sub Christo capite—the congregation of the faithful, united under Christ the head, in the true worship of God." Most of the heterodox, as well as all Catholics, will accept this definition. But this definition includes the faithful who lived before Christ; as well as those who have lived since, and as those who lived and died before the incarnation could not enter into heaven before the way was opened by our Lord himself, who is the first-born from the dead, and the resurrection and the life, a definition more particularly adapted to the state of the church since the coming of Christ is needed. The church has indeed existed from the beginning; but before the Word was actually incarnated, she existed by prophecy and promise only; but Christ having come and fulfilled the promise, the church exists now in fact, in reality, for the reality foretold and promised has come. Hence St. Paul, in referring to the faithful of the Old Testament, says, "And all these being approved by the testimony of faith, received not the promise"—or the fulfilment of the promise—"God providing something better for us, that they should not be perfected without us." Heb. xi. 39, 40. The church, before Christ, was incomplete, and needed further fulfilment or perfecting; the church in the state in which she exists since Christ, is the church realized, completed, or perfected. According to this state, and as the kingdom of God on earth, she is, as Billuart again defines: "Societas fidelium baptizatorum ejusdem fidei professione, eorumdem sacramentorum participatione, eodem cultu inter se adunatorum sub uno capite Christo in coelis, et sub ejus in terris vicario summo pontifice—the society of the faithful, baptized in the profession of the same faith, united in the participation of the same sacraments and the same worship, under one head, Christ in heaven, and on earth under his vicar, the supreme pontiff." [Footnote 70]
[Footnote 70: Billuart, De Reg. Fid. Dissert. III. De Eccl. Art. I.]
All will not accept the whole of this definition; but all will agree that the church is a society embracing all the faithful, united in the true worship of God under one head, Jesus Christ in heaven; but the heterodox deny the union under one head or one regimen on earth. But what is a congregation or society of the faithful under Christ its head? A congregation or society under one head implies both unity and multiplicity, either many made one, or one manifesting or explicating itself in many, and in either sense supposes more than the heterodox in general understand by the church. The faithful, congregated or associated under one head, Christ, are one body, for Christ is the head of the congregation or society, not merely of the individuals severally; but the heterodox generally, in our times at least, make the church consist solely of individuals aggregated to the collective body of believers, because already united as individuals by faith and love to Christ, as their head; which supposes Christ to be the head of each individual of the church, but not of the church herself. According to this view, men are regenerated outside of the society or church, and join the church because supposed to be regenerated or born again, not that they may be born again. The church in this case is simply the aggregate of regenerated persons, and derives her life from Christ through them, instead of their deriving their life from Christ the head through her. The one view makes the church a general term, an abstraction, performing and capable of performing no part in the regeneration and sanctification of souls; the other makes the church a reality, a real existence, living a real life not derived from her members, and the real medium through which our Lord carries on his mediatorial work; and therefore union with her is not only profitable to spiritual life, but necessary to its birth in the soul, and therefore to individual salvation. This must be the case if we suppose Christ to be the head of the congregation or society called the church, and of individuals severally only as they are affiliated to her.
There is, we suspect, a deeper philosophy in the church than the heterodox in general are aware of. "The church," it was said in this magazine, in one of the essays on The Problems of the Age, "is the human race in its highest sense," that is, the regenerated human race, the human race in the teleological order, not in the order of natural generation, which is simply cosmic and initial. This supposes in the church something more than individuals, as, indeed, does society itself. With nothing but individualities brought together there is no society, there is only aggregation, because there is no unity, nothing that is one and common to all the individuals brought together. In all real society there is a social principle, a social life, in which individuals participate, but which is itself not individual, nor derived from the individuals associated. Thus in every real nation, not a pseudo nation made up of the forced juxtaposition of distinct and often hostile communities, there is a real national life. An insult to the nation each one feels is an insult to himself; and if the existence of the nation is threatened, every one in whose heart throbs the national life, rises, and all, in the fine Biblical expression, "march as one man" to the rescue, prepared to save the nation or die in its defence.
The unity of social life is still more manifest when we come to the race. We are aware of the old quarrel between the nominalists and conceptualists on the one hand, and the old realists on the other; but we disposed of that controversy in the article entitled An Old Quarrel, in the Magazine for May of last year, and established, we think, the reality of genera and species, while we denied that of abstractions, or simple mental conceptions. If we deny the reality of genera and species, we must deny the fact of generation, and the Catholic dogmas of the unity of the species and of original sin. If all men have not proceeded from Adam by way of natural generation, there can be no unity of the species; and if no unity of the species, there can be no original sin, which is "the sin in which we are born," the sin of origin, the sin of the race, transmitted by natural generation from Adam to all his posterity. To deny the reality, of the species is to deny this, is to deny generation, that we are born in any sense of Adam; to deny generation is to deny regeneration; and to deny regeneration is to deny the whole Christian or teleological order. We cannot then logically be nominalists or conceptualists and Christian believers at one and the same time.
We do not pretend that the species subsists without individualization any more than we do that the individual can subsist without the species. What we contend for is, that in every individual there is that which is not individual, but distinguishable from the individuality, which is common to all the individuals of the species, and which in men binds all men, from the first to the last, together in the unity of their natural head or progenitor. The species is more than the individual, operates in the individual, determines his specific nature, and separated from which the individual is nothing; but the species does not subsist without individualization, and could not be explicated by natural generation if not individualized. Yet the entire race was individualized in Adam.