The Gospel and the Catholic Church: Recapturing a Biblical Understanding of the Church as the Body of Christ
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The Gospel and the Catholic Church: Recapturing a Biblical Understanding of the Church as the Body of Christ
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781598565362 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hendrickson Publishers, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 05/03/2022 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 224 |
| File size: | 350 KB |
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The Gospel and the Catholic Church
By Michael Ramsey
Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, LLC
Copyright © 2010 Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, LLCAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59856-536-2
CHAPTER 1
The Church and the Passion
Throughout the centuries the Church of God has had both its devoted adherents, who would die for it, and its persecutors, who have sought to destroy it. Thus, both in love and in hatred, men have reckoned with it seriously, and have been compelled to think out their attitude toward it. But at the present time there is a very different mood widespread, one of apathy and bewilderment that asks, "What is this strange thing, the Christian Church? Whatever can it mean? What relation have its services, its hierarchy, its dogmas, its archaic and beautiful language, to the daily troubles of mankind?" This bewilderment leads many to pass the Church by, since it seems to do and say so little about the things that matter supremely—world peace, social reform, the economic tangle. "And is not the Church itself divided and beset with controversy?" Surrounded by men and women too apathetic even to be hostile, the Christians are driven to think out where the relevance of the Church really lies.
There are many, therefore, within the Church who believe that its relevance must be found in its ability to take a lead in social and international policies, and who would meet the situation by attempts to make the Church "up to date" and "broad-minded" and "progressive" in the cause of peace and economic reform. The Church in their view must bestir itself to provide such remedies as thoughtful men outside the Church demand, and to answer the questions that such men are asking; and if it fails to do this it remains a scandal, ignored by this generation.
But the New Testament suggests that the right answer begins at a very different point. For the relevance of the Church of the Apostles consisted not in the provision of outward peace for the nations, nor in the direct removal of social distress, nor yet in any outward beauty of the Church itself, but in pointing to the death of Jesus the Messiah, and to the deeper issues of sin and judgment—sin in which the Christians had shared, judgment under which they stood together with the rest of mankind. In all this the Church was scandalous and unintelligible to men, but by all this and by nothing else it was relevant to their deepest needs.
For the relevance of the Church can never be any easier than was the relevance of the Messiah. He provoked questionings and doubts among many of the wisest and holiest of His race. He perplexed those who looked to Him as a national leader, as a reformer, a prophet, a teacher and a healer, and even as Messiah; for He abandoned His useful and intelligible works in Galilee in order to bring God's Kingdom by dying on the Cross. "There was no beauty in him that we should desire him." And the life beset by the "whys?" and the "wherefores?" of good and sensible men ended with the terrible question-mark of the cry of desolation from the Cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" So ended His earthly life, but in the manner of its end and in the "why?" uttered on Calvary, there was present the power of God; for Jesus knew whence He came and whither He was going. His Church on earth is scandalous, with the question-marks set against it by bewildered men and with the question-mark of Calvary at the center of its teaching; yet precisely there is the power of God found, if only the Christians know whence they come and whither they go. They are sent to be the place where the Passion of Jesus Christ is known and where witness is borne to the Resurrection from the dead. Hence the philanthropist, the reformer, the broad-minded modern man can never understand, in terms of their own ideals, what the Church is or what it means. Of course it is scandalous, of course it is formed of sinners whose sinfulness is exposed by the light of the Cross, of course there is an awful question-mark at its center. These things must needs be, if it is the Body of Christ crucified and risen from the dead.
Thus the first need of the Christians, in face of the apathy and the bewilderment about the Church, is to know and to be able to say plainly what the church really is. This does not mean to know and to say what the Church ought to be, as, for instance, that it ought to be full of love and peace and to shower blessings on mankind, and that it will soon be doing this through a new energy of the Holy Spirit. "It doth not yet appear what we shall be." Before the Christians can say these things about what the Church ought to be, their first need is to say what the Church is, here and now amid its own failures and the questionings of the bewildered. Looking at it now, with its inconsistencies and its perversions and its want of perfection, we must ask what is the real meaning of it just as it is. As the eye gazes upon it, it sees—the Passion of Jesus Christ. And the eye of faith sees further—the power of Almighty God. The Christians will not try to answer the philanthropist and the reformer by meeting them on their own terms and by hiding the scandalous Gospel. They will say plainly what the Church of God is, and whither it points. Philanthropies point to the conditions of men's lives, the Church points to the deeper problem of man himself.
This book is written as a study of the Church, and its doctrine, and unity and structure, in terms of the Gospel of Christ crucified and risen. In the light of this Gospel the meaning of the Church will be examined. It seems that both the theologian, and the worker for Christian reunion, and the philanthropist are compelled toward this line of approach.
(1) The theologian is forced by the New Testament to study the Church in this way. The Church has often been expounded as the "extension of the Incarnation," and in these terms some classical teaching about the Church has been given. But the New Testament takes us deeper than this. It shows us how the disciples knew themselves to be the refounded Israel of God through being partakers in the Messiah's death. The prediction by Jesus of His death had bewildered them; and in answer to their bewilderment He taught them that they would not understand the death except by sharing in it. The language in the Gospels about following Christ in His Passion—"if any man would come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me" (Mark 8:34); "are ye able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" (Mark 10:38); "take ye: this is my body" (Mark 14:22)—is answered by the language in the Epistles about dying and rising with Christ—"always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body" (2 Cor. 4:10).
Saint Peter, St. Paul, and St. John show plainly that the meaning and ground of the Church are seen in the death and resurrection of Jesus and in the mysterious sharing of the disciples in these happenings. It is a Church, because "Christ loved the church, and gave himself up for it" (Eph. 5:25). It is a temple, because "the stone which the builders rejected, the same was made the head of the corner" (1 Pet. 2:7). It is a body, because "he hath reconciled us in the body of his flesh through death" (Col. 1:22). It is universal, because "ye that once were far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ" (Eph. 2:13). Its worship is the proclaiming of "the Lord's death till he come" (1 Cor. 11:26). Before ever the Apostles realized the full doctrine of the Incarnation or thought of the Church in terms of it, they knew the Church through knowing the Lord's death and resurrection. Thus, while it is true that the Church is founded upon the Word-made-flesh, it is true only because the Word was identified with men right down to the point of death, and enabled men to find unity through a veritable death to self.
The doctrine of the Church, and its order, ministry, and sacraments will in these pages be expounded not primarily in terms of an institution founded by Christ, but in terms of Christ's death and resurrection of which the one Body, with its life and its order, is the expression.
(2) The movement toward the reunion of Christendom is also compelled to see its problems in close connection with the Passion. Before he passes on to his schemes of reconciliation, the Christian is compelled to pause and ask what the present fact of disunity means. Why is it? And he will not simply say that it is wrong, and flee from it in the quest of new visions and ideals and policies; he will pause again and dwell upon the facts, just as they are. In them is the Passion of Jesus; and in them already the power of God. Both divisions and unity remind us of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Division severs His body: but unity means the one Body, in which every member and every local community dies to self in its utter dependence upon the whole, the structure of the Body thereby setting forth the dying and rising with Christ. And if the problems about schism and reunion mean dying and rising with Christ, they will not be solved through easy humanistic ideas of fellowship and brotherhood, but by the hard road of the Cross.
When reunion has been discussed, there has often seemed to be an impasse between two types of Christianity. On the one hand, there is the Catholic tradition which thinks of the Church as a divine institution, the gift of God to man, and which emphasizes outward order and continuity and the validity of its ministry and sacraments. To the exponents of this tradition, unity is inconceivable apart from the historic structure of the Church. On the other hand, there is the Evangelical tradition which sees the divine gift not in the institution but in the Gospel of God, and which thinks less of Church order than of the Word of God and of justification by faith. This tradition indeed emphasizes the divine society of the redeemed, but it finds it hard to understand the Catholic's thought and language about order and validity and his insistence upon the historic Episcopate. The two traditions puzzle one another. The one seems legalistic; the other seems individualistic. To the one "intercommunion" is meaningless without unity of outward order; to the other "intercommunion" seems the one sensible and Christian way toward unity. And thus the debates between the two traditions are often wearisome and fruitless.
A fresh line of approach seems needed. Those who cherish the Catholic Church and its historic order need to expound its meaning not in legalistic and institutionalist language, but in evangelical language as the expression of the Gospel of God. In these pages Church order, with its Episcopate, Creeds, and Liturgy, will be studied in terms of the Gospel. It will be asked, for instance, what truth about the Gospel of God does the Episcopate, by its place in the one Body, declare? And what truth about the Gospel is obscured if the Episcopate is lacking or is perverted? If the historic structure of the Church sets forth the Gospel, it has indeed a meaning that the Evangelical Christian will understand, and it may be possible to show that reunion without that structure will impair that very Gospel that the Evangelical Christian cherishes.
(3) The philanthropist, outside or inside the Christian Church, is also confronted with the death of the Messiah. He longs passionately for the mitigation of the economic sufferings of mankind and for an effective international spirit. His longing is after the obedience of Christ, for he knows that Christ healed the sick and the possessed, and fed the bodies of men, and he looks to the Church to do the same. But as Jesus in the midst of His works of healing and feeding was moving toward death, so also is His Church. For the Church exists for something deeper than philanthropy and reform, namely to teach men to die to self and to trust in a resurrection to a new life that, because it spans both this world and another world, can never be wholly understood here, and must always puzzle this world's idealists. Hence, as the Body of Christ crucified and risen, the Church points men to a unity and a peace that men generally neither understand nor desire.
Thus the Church is pointing beyond theology, beyond reunion-schemes, beyond philanthropies, to the death of the Messiah. It leads the theologian, the church-statesman, the philanthropist, and itself also, to the Cross. The dying is a stern reality; theologian, reunionist, philanthropist learn that their work and their ideal is, in itself and of itself, nothing. But all that is lost is found; and the Cross is the place where the theology of the Church has its meaning, where the unity of the Church is a deep and present reality, and where the Church is already showing the peace of God and the bread from heaven to the nations of mankind. The Jews stumbled at the death and resurrection, and hence they never knew the Church to be the Body of the Christ. The disciples knew it, only when He had died and was risen from the dead.
"Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou raise it up in three days?" But he spake of the temple of his body. (John 2:20–21)
CHAPTER 2One Died for All
1.
The Passion of Jesus and the Church of God are themes central and inseparable in the New Testament. But neither is intelligible apart from the Old Testament; for Jesus died that the Scriptures might be fulfilled, and the Church which he claimed as His own was the ancient Israel of God. The Old Testament has both its Church and its Passion, and Christ is the fulfillment of both.
The Old Testament itself confronts us with God's method of bringing unity to the human race beset with the disorder of sin. He chooses a nation, and delivers it from bondage, that it may be the instrument of His purpose, a worshiping people who continually praise Him for the acts whereby He has delivered them, and whereby He has kept them in safety. He teaches this people, through painful struggles, to worship Him not self-interestedly as a means of securing their own prosperity, but for His own sake, for the praise of His glory, rehearsing His mighty works in creation, in nature, and in history. And Israel has a mission to the nations of the world, who are at last to be drawn into unity with her in the worship of the one God. Thus God purposes to unite mankind through a particular people, and to unite them, not in a program of philanthropic and social progress, but in the worship of Himself. The end for which He has created men is that all their activities shall become an act of praise toward the perfect and eternal God. Meanwhile, the life and worship of Israel looks forward as well as backward; for the time shall come when God will intervene through His Messiah to vindicate His Kingdom upon earth. As yet His people live by promise and in hope.
In the midst of the promise and of the hope Israel was beset by the agony of its Passion. God is just and all-ruling—and yet the innocent continually suffer. The more God discloses through His prophets the truths of His righteousness and His sovereignty, the more acute does this problem of suffering become. Again and again there confronts us in the Old Testament the figure of the man of God asking "why?" Habakkuk, upon his watchtower, complains,
Thou that art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and that canst not look on perverseness, wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy peace when the wicked swalloweth up the man that is more righteous than he? (Hab. 1:13)
Jeremiah stands as it were by the deathbed of his nation, and cries,
The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.... Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people. (Jer. 8:20; 9:1)
Job, assured of his own integrity, is torn between faith in His Creator and rebellion against Him. In figures such as these the problem is seen in its intensity. But it was not only these outstanding men of God whose sensitive souls felt the passion for, as the Psalms show again and again, it was deeply woven into the nation's thought and experience. The cry "how long?" often sums up the burden of the psalmist's plaint,
Yea, for thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. (Ps. 44:22)
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Gospel and the Catholic Church by Michael Ramsey. Copyright © 2010 Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, LLC. Excerpted by permission of Hendrickson Publishers Marketing, LLC.
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Table of Contents
Preface to The Hendrickson Publishers Edition XI
Preface to The First Edition XXIII
Part 1
Chapter 1 The Church and The Passion 3
Chapter 2 One Died for All 9
Chapter 3 Therefore All Died 25
Chapter 4 The Meaning of Unity 37
Chapter 5 The Gospel and Church Order 47
Chapter 6 The Gospel and Episcopacy 59
Chapter 7 Worship 75
Chapter 8 Liturgy 85
Chapter 9 The Truth of God 103
Part 2
Chapter 10 The Church of The Fathers 119
Chapter 11 Developments In Catholicism 137
Chapter 12 The Reformers and The Church 155
Chapter 13 Ecclesia Anglicana 175
Chapter 14 Reunion, Death, and Resurrection 189
Appendices
1 The See Of Rome and Unity 193
2 Archbishop William Temple On Apostolic Succession 195
Index of Subjects 197
Index of Names 199
What People are Saying About This
"The book has more than historical interest for Anglicans. It has a distinct contribution to make to the doctrine of the church and the theology of minstry."
— James E. Griffiss
Professor of Systematic Theology at Nashota House
"A classic theological study worthy of serious reading and thought. Ramsey's careful—often moving and beautiful—exposition of his 'underlying conviction' includes deep probing of the Bible, a survey of the unfolding understanding of Christ and the church, a profound insight into the being of the church as a dying and rising again with Christ, an appreciation of Eastern Orthodox thought, a testimonial to the positive intentions—even the necessity—of the Reformers, a theologically-grounded advocacy of renewed liturgical worship, and a passion for the reunion of all Christians."
—Andrew F. Wissemann
Bishop of Western Massachusetts
from the Preface to the American Edition