This doctrine of the

Church not

inconsistent

with justifi

cation by faith:

society as visible as the churches which represent it.

It is sometimes argued that St. Paul could not have believed in salvation through the Church, because this contradicts his doctrine of the justifying effect of individual faith.1 But in fact there is no such contradiction. The Christian life is a correspondence between the grace communicated from without and the inward faith which, justifying us before God, opens out the avenues of communication between man and God, and enables man to appropriate and to use the grace which he receives in Christ. There is thus no antagonism, though there is a distinction, between grace and faith. Now grace comes to Christians through social sacraments, as members of one 'Spirit-bearing body.' 'By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body'; 'we being many are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of that one bread.'2 Thus the doctrine of the Church as the household of grace is the complement, not the contradiction, of the doctrine of faith. Faith is no faith if it isolates a man from the fellowship of the one body, and the one body has no salvation except for the sons of faith. Ignatius then with his strenuous insistence on churchmanship can rightly, so far, 'claim to be a good Paulinist.' In fact St. Paul's teaching about the Church is given nowhere with more practical force than in the Epistles to the Corinthians, which belong to that very group of Epistles in which he fights the battle of faith. And both principles are brought into play by him to vindicate against Judaism the catholicity of the Gospel. Christianity is a catholic religion, he argues in his earlier Epistles, because it appeals to a faculty as universal as human nature-the faculty of

faith men are justified by nothing of national or local observance like the Law; 'it is one God who will justify the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through faith.'1 Christianity is catholic, he argues again in effect, in the Epistles of the first captivity, because the Person of Christ is a catholic, a universal Personality; 'by Him were all things created by Him and for Him-and in Him all things have their consistence.' 2 Therefore also His redemptive power transcends all local, national distinctions; 'He hath made both (Jews and Gentiles) one... in one body.' 3 For the unity of that body, in which on the basis of faith the Gospel offers sanctification to mankind, is by its very essence as the body of Christ universal in its capacity. But these two grounds of catholicity are correlative, not antagonistic.

4

'freedom of

Once again, if there be such a thing as liberty in nor with the law or a 'law of liberty,' the obligations of church the spirit': membership and the authority of a common rule of truth are not in any way antagonistic to the freedom of the spirit. The good citizen, whether of the earthly or heavenly city, is free in the law by being at one with the spirit of the law. Here again the same St. Paul held to both sides of the antithesis which is represented by authority and freedom, by fellowship and individuality.

able to the

all human society.

The doctrine of the Church is indeed only one but agreeexpression of a principle as broad as human society principle of -the principle that man realizes his true self only by relation to a community, that 'he is what he is only as a member of society.' Aristotle said of old that 'the society (the city) is prior to the individual' -prior, that is, in idea, because it is essential to his being really man, because man is by his very essence

Two misconceptions of

'a social animal.' By isolating himself he hinders,
he narrows himself, he perishes: by merging himself
in the larger whole he realizes his true individuality
and his true freedom. So when God sent redemption.
upon the earth, He sent it in a community or king-
dom. Fellowship with God is to be won through
fellowship with His Son, but that not otherwise than
through fellowship with His Church.
'That ye may
have fellowship with us'-that is why St. John writes
his Epistle and truly our fellowship is with the
Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.' Nor are we
to suppose that this association is only a temporary
and painful expedient-that we are to submit to be
one body for a while in order to live a more separate
and isolated life hereafter. No, as the life of perfected
humanity is presented to us in the vision of the
Apocalypse, it is the life of a City indissolubly one.
It is the life of the one bride of Christ, the one
humanity, whose white robes are the distinctive, yet
coincident, 'righteousnesses of the saints.' 4

Now that we have brought this investigation to a the growth conclusion, we are in a position to repudiate two ways of conceiving the development of Christianity.

of the Church.

vious indi

(1) That it (1) It has been represented 5 as if at the first stage developed out of pre- we must conceive of Christians rather as individual vidualism, believers who were led to unite in local associations. This is accounted for by the 'tendency to association,' characteristic of the Roman empire of that date. But association was not at first a 'fixed

On the Greek idea of the móλis see Newman Politics of Aristotle i. p. 560: a strongly individualized unity which impresses its dominant idea on its members,'

etc.

21 St. John i. 3. 'Manifeste ostendit B. Iohannes quia quicumque societatem cum Deo habere desiderant primo ecclesiae societati debent adunari' (Bede, quoted by Westcott in loc.).

⚫ I am not wishing to deny that St. John is representing the Church as she now is: cf. Milligan The Revelation of St. John p. 228. But it is certainly a picture of what she will not only be, but be wholly and manifestly, hereafter.

4 Rev. xix. 8.

By Dr. Hatch (B. L. p. 29 f.), if I understand him rightly. Dr. Sanday interprets him otherwise (Expositor, Jan. 1887, p. 10 n.').

1

habit'; it was not 'universally recognised as a primary duty'; it did not 'invariably follow belief.' Afterwards the local associations succeed in so asserting themselves over individual Christians that adhesion to a community ceases to be voluntary; a man is no Christian unless he belongs to one. This is the state of things which the Ignatian letters are intended to promote. Still, however, Christians might be supposed to unite in Churches how and where they pleased. But later this 'free right of association' vanishes; 1 each Church with its bishop and presbytery asserts itself as the exclusive local 'ark of the covenant.' All who would be within the pale must belong to this one and none other. This is the successful contention of Cyprian. Still later these authoritative local Churches grow into closer and closer combination. The idea of the Catholic and Apostolic Faith, due to St. Irenaeus,2 had already formed a bond of union under a common authoritative Creed: now the churches become one great confederation of societies in a unity which found expression in ecumenical councils with their common authority.3 Gradually, meanwhile, the hierarchical gradations amongst the various bishops develop on the lines of the imperial system.

contrary to

Now this mode of conceiving the progress of Chris--a theory tianity is in direct violation of the evidence. The the evidence. only evidence produced for the supposed first stage which preceded obligatory association consists in the fact that the earliest church teachers found it necessary to preach the duty of association, if not as an article of the Christian faith, at least as an element of Christian practice.'4 This is evidenced by the warning in the Epistle to the Hebrews against forsaking the Christian assemblies; 5 by St.

1 Hatch B. L. pp. 103-106.

* Ib. p. 96: 'Its first elaboration and setting forth was due to one man's genius."
Ib. pp. 97, 175-189.
• Ib. p. 29.
Hebrews x. 25.

Jude's denunciation of those who 'separate themselves'; 1 by the passages in the Shepherd of Hermas 2 about those who 'have separated themselves' and so 'lose their own souls.' What do such utterances really go to prove? A tendency to slackness on the part of those who had been Christians 3 and as such had hitherto frequented the assemblies of the Church-a sin of schism, denounced like any other sin. But the idea is nowhere discernible that every Christian was not, as such, a member of the Church, bound to the obligations of membership. Schism is a sin in Scripture as really as in Ignatius' letters. Next, the supposed right of free association into churches never existed. No doubt the tendency to association in the Roman empire made (as has been said) for the spread of the Christian Church. It made the idea of a Church easier to men's minds. But more than this the facts of the case will not allow us to grant. Christ Himself constituted the Church and gave it its authority, so that it came upon men as a divine gift, with a divine claim, through the apostolic preaching. 'Jesus,' says Dr. Stanton, 'never speaks of the kingdom as something which men could constitute for themselves; it must come to them.'6 From the beginning of Christianity it came to men and took them up, one by one, out of their isolation and alienation from God into its holy and blessed fellowship. It was never a creation of their own by free association. The idea is a figment. From the first each local church with its organization represented the divine will for man's salvation in one

2 See above pp. 18-19.

1 St. Jude 19. That they had been members of the Church is quite plain in the passages quoted from Hermas.

Of course he might find himself in an isolated position away from church privileges, as may happen to-day.

The 'heretic' is the man of self-willed, separatist tendencies (Tit. iii. 10). Cf. St. Jude 19; St. Matt. xviii. 17.

• Jewish and Christian Messiah p. 218.