Christ in the Church

Dim Bulb — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 22:19:17 +0000

Since the Church would be nought else but the Body of Christ, the realization in history of His divine and human Being, therefore the glorified Christ is the proper source of her power and authority, so much so that this authority is exercised only in His name and in the true and deepest sense belongs only to Him. The whole constitution of the Church is completely aristocratic and not democratic, her authority coming from above, from Christ, and not from below, from the community. The new powers come from Christ, the Incarnate God, and from Him flow through the apostles to the Church. That ancient African writer, Tertullian, stressed this fact as early as the second century in the pregnant sentence: “The Church is from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, Christ from God.”[5] The apostles did not act in their own right, but as “sent” and as representatives of Christ: “He that heareth you, heareth me, and he that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth Him that sent me” (Luke x, 16; cf. Mt. x, 40). And the apostles on their part, as the New Testament in general and the pastoral epistles in particular show us, appointed by imposition of hands, wherever they founded new communities, the “firstlings,” i.e., the first converts, to be leaders (proestotes) who should, as St. Peter so strikingly and beautifully says (I Peter v, 2) “shepherd the flock of God” in their stead. So the apostolic authority did not reside in the communities, but in the elders, leaders, overseers, who were chosen by the apostles in the name of Christ to take their place. And after the death of the apostles it was these elders who transmitted the authority which had been committed to them, by the imposition of hands, and organized the new communities round men empowered with this authority. Certainly the communities played their part in the matter, and helped by their advice to determine who should be entrusted with the commission. But in itself the power was exclusively an apostolic power, a thing reserved to the bishops who derived from the apostles. We may assert that the whole literature of early Christianity attests this conception. It is developed with classic lucidity in one of the earliest of Christian writings, the “First Epistle of St. Clement” (Ad Cor. xliv, 3).

Therefore ecclesiastical authority rests upon the apostolic succession (successio apostolica), upon the uninterrupted communication by imposition of hands of that commission which the apostles received from Christ. This apostolic commission, as passed on from bishop to bishop right down to our own day, is, if we regard its inmost nature, nothing else than the messianic authority of Jesus. By means of the apostolic succession, this authority is perpetuated and imparts the truth and grace of Jesus to humanity. And, therefore, behind ecclesiastical authority stands Jesus Himself. As the scholastics put it, Jesus is the “principal cause” (causa principalis) of all functions exercised by the Church, their ultimate source and the basis of their efficacy. Man is only an instrument, the “causa instrumentalis,” through whom Christ Himself acting in the Church teaches and sanctifies and governs. And so in the functioning of the Church, the human self, the human personality, the individual as such, falls wholly into the background. Not any human personality, but the redemptive might of Jesus controls the Church. The expression and resultant of this force is Church authority. The official authority of the Church is essentially a service of Christ (ministerium Christi), that is to say, a service which is fulfilled only in the name and by the commission of Christ, and derives its importance exclusively from the authority of Christ. It is true that the personality of the official may considerably affect the manner and method in which he carries out the will of Christ. Nevertheless the substance of his function, the core of his activity, is wholly independent of personal traits and weaknesses. For, however much they owe to personal gifts, his preaching and ministry are performed in the power of Christ; nor is it he that baptizes, but Christ baptizes through him. Therefore, Church authority, as thus conceived, derives immediately from the fundamental conviction that the Church is inwardly permeated by her “Lord.” This is no unevangelical borrowing from pagan sources, or from Jewish or Roman law, but an expression of that primitive Christian thought: “It is Christ who evangelizes, Christ who baptizes.” (Christus est, qui evangelizat, Christus est, qui baptizat.) So the aim of the Church in her official system is simply to secure that great and primary Christian idea that there is properly only one authority, only one teacher, only one sanctifier, only one pastor: Christ, the Lord.-Karl Adam, THE SPIRIT OF CATHOLICISM

Posted by Dim Bulb.

CATHOLIC BOOKWORM » Ecclesiology

Christ in the Church