The Holy Catholic Church: the Communion of Saints A Study in the Apostles’ Creed By Henry Barclay Swete Macmillan, 1916 [Spelling and punctuation selectively modernized. Bible citations converted to all Arabic numerals. Footnotes moved into or near their places of citation.] Contents Foreword I. The Holy Catholic Church 1. The Church and Its Notes – “Church” in the New Testament; The Unity of the Church; Its Holiness; Its Catholicity; Its Apostolicity; Its Visibility; Its Indefecbility 2. The Church in Its Life, Order, and Funcons – The Life of the Church; Its Order; Its Priesthood; Its Work; Its Teaching; Its Authority 3. The Church in Its Relaons – To the Individual; To the Churches; To the World; To the Future Life II. The Communion of Saints 1. Meaning and History of the Phrase – In Holy Scripture; In Early Church Writers; In the Western Creed 2. The Communion of the Saints With God – With the Father; With the Son; With the Holy Spirit 3. The Communion of Saints in the Church Militant – In the Sacraments; In the Spiritual Life; In Visible Fellowship 4. The Communion of Living Saints With the Departed – Condion of the Faithful Departed; Interchange of Prayer; Invocaon of Saints 5. The Communion of Saints in the Life to Come – In the Intermediate State; In the Risen Life Addional Notes (A) On Belief in the Church (B) On the Place of Sanctorum Communionem in the Apostles’ Creed Index (omied for web) Foreword This book contains the substance of courses of lectures given at Cambridge in 1913–14 to classes consisng chiefly of candidates for the ministry of the Church of England. There are few quesons of more praccal importance to Chrisan people, whether clergy or laity, than those which are raised by a study of the character, the work, and the funcons of the Catholic Church. Upon the answer which we give to those quesons depends our atude, as individuals, towards the great society of which we are members. It determines for each of us whether he shall march in the war against sin and unbelief as a soldier in the army of Christ, under the command of its officers, conscious of the honour and the joy of serving in the ranks of a trained and disciplined force; or as an irresponsible adventurer, brave and loyal at heart, but a member of an irregular company, which follows no leaders but such as are chosen by itself. The Communion of Saints, to which the second part of this study is devoted, stands first among the four privileges which the Bapsmal Creed of the West connects with loyal membership in the Holy Catholic Church. It is perhaps less tangible, and somemes appeals less readily to the imaginaon than the other three; the Forgiveness of sins, the Resurrecon of the body, and the Life everlasng awaken in the mind and spirit a response more immediate and more disnct than the privilege of fellowship with the other members of the Body of Christ. Moreover, circumstances have led to a weakening among English Churchmen of the sense of communion with our fellow Chrisans. The abandonment of public prayers for the faithful departed, however necessary or expedient that step may have been, could not but tend to lessen the hold of our people upon the oneness in Christ of the living and the dead; while our present separaon from the other historical churches of Christendom has shut the eyes of many to the essenal unity of the Catholic Church. The purpose of these pages will be answered if they help to revive in any reader a praccal faith in the great arcle of the Creed to which they relate. Cambridge, July, 1915. I. THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH 1 – The Church and Its Notes The great society which the New Testament calls the “Ecclesia,” the Assembly or Congregaon, [On εκκλησία see Dr. Hort’s Ecclesia, c. 1; Hamilton, People of God, ii. p. 35 ff.] has been known to Englishmen from Saxon mes as the “Church”. [“Church”’ (kirk, Kirche), according to the best authories, represents το κυριακόν, “the Lord’s House,” the normal Greek name for the Church building from the fourth century onward. Thus the Synod of Neo-Caesarea between 314 and 325 speaks of catechumens as of οι εισερχόμενοι εις το κυριακόν (can. 5) and the Synod of Laodicea uses κυριακά as a synonym for εκκλησία (can. 28). On the later history of the word church, see the New Oxford Diconary, s.v.] The two names offer complementary views of the Chrisan brotherhood. The Greek word Ecclesia represents it as the congregaon of the New Israel; the English word Church, which means the House of the Lord, suggests a building dedicated to the service of God. Both these concepons are Biblical, and they meet on the first occasion when the Society is menoned in the New Testament, “I will build my Ecclesia,” our Lord is reported to have said [Ma. 16:18]; the Congregaon of His new people is an edifice to be reared by Christ Himself on the rock of an immovable faith. The Epistles retain the double figure; if “the saints,” i.e. the body of bapzed believers, are “the Israel of God,” “an elect race,” “a holy naon,” [Gal. 6:16; 1 Peter 2:9.] they are also represented as “ built on the foundaon of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the cornerstone.” [Eph. 2:20 f.] In Him the whole building grows into a holy temple. The Church is the House of God, a great mansion replete with all things necessary for the Master’s use; a spiritual house built of living stones, designed for holy, priestly service. [1 Tim. 3:15; 2 Tim. 2:20; 1 Peter 2:5.] Such passages strike the note which is taken up by the English word “Church” and its Teutonic cognates. Nevertheless, the dominant concepon of the Chrisan Society in the New Testament is best expressed by Ecclesia, the assembly of all who have been made disciples of Jesus Christ. The word has a significant history. It passed into Chrisan use from the Greek Old Testament, where from Deuteronomy onwards, it is the normal rendering of ,see Thackeray ; ָק ָחל the Hebrew qāhāl, [In the earlier books συναγωγή is used for Grammar of O.T. Greek, i. p. 14.] the usual name for the Congregaon of Israel. No doubt the Greek translators of Deuteronomy and the subsequent books of the canon took over ecclesia from Greek municipal life, in which an important part was played by the popular assembly so named. Moreover, the early and wide acceptance of the word as a name for the Chrisan brotherhood may well have been due to its familiarity in the cies of Asia Minor, where the earliest Genle Churches were planted by St. Paul. In each of the Greek speaking cies evangelized by the Apostle there was henceforth, side by side with the assembly of all the cizens which was recognized by the State, an assembly meeng under divine sancon – an “Ecclesia of God,” [1 Cor. 1:2; 2 Cor. 1:1; 1 Thess. 1:1, 2:14; 2 Thess. 1:1, 4.] composed of the cizens of the Divine City resident in the place. Nevertheless, it was as succeeding to the posion and privileges of ancient Israel that the Chrisan Church received the name Ecclesia. The Chrisan use of the term was derived from the Greek Old Testament, and not directly from the municipal life of the Greek city-state. Our Lord, as it appears from St. Mahew, twice spoke of the future Chrisan Society as the Ecclesia, [Ma. 16:18, 18:17. Cf. M’Neile, ad loc.] using probably its Aramaic equivalent. There seems to be no sufficient ground for refusing to believe that He spoke in this way. [See Allen on St. Mahew, p. 176; Stanton, Gospels, ii. p. 348 ff.; Oxford Synopc Studies, p. 279 ff.] On the lowest possible esmate of His person and character, it is not improbable that He foresaw, as the result of His ministry, a reproducon on wider lines of the Old Testament Congregaon of Yahweh, drawn together by their allegiance to Himself; that He contemplated something of this kind is confirmed by another Mahaean saying, [Ma. 19:28.] in which the Twelve are represented as the future judges of the tribes of the future Israel. May we go a step further, and say that our Lord not only foresaw, but founded the Catholic Church? If the queson means, “Did He leave behind Him a constuon or even the outline of a constuon for the new Society? did He deliver instrucons relang to the organizaon, the ministry, the worship of the future Church, a system answering in the smallest degree to the minuteness of the Levical legislaon ascribed to Moses?” the answer must be that we have no record of any such provision, and no hint that it was made. On the contrary, all that we know of our Lord’s purpose and methods would lead us to suppose that no such scheme was in His thoughts. [See Pastor pastorum, pp. 222 f., 236 f.] The working out of details was deliberately le to the Apostles and to the future Church, taught and guided by the gi of the Spirit of Christ; the Master was content to lay down principles, and to mark out the great lines on which the Kingdom was to proceed. Yet in another sense the foundaons of the Church were certainly laid by Jesus Christ during His life on earth. In those years He gathered round Him a body of disciples, and out of the body He formed the nucleus of a ministry; He instuted, if the Gospels are to be believed, the two great Sacraments, of which the one admits to membership in the Church, and the other forms the chief bond of union between those who already are its members.