CHURCH
754
CHURCH
a professedly critical school that this phenomenon
should be explained. Harnack holds that it took the
place of Jewish racial unity. But it does not appear
why Gentile converts should have felt the need of
replacing a feature so entirely proper to the Hebrew
religion.
The doctrine of the older Protestant writers is that there are two Churches, a visible and an invisible. This is the view of such standard Anglican divines as Barrow, Field, and Jeremy Taylor (see e. g. Barrow, Unity of Church, Works, 1830, VII, 628). Those who thus explain visibility urge that the essential and vital element of membership in Christ lies in an inner union with Him; that this is necessarily invisible, and those who possess it constitute an invisible Church. Those who are united to Him externally alone have, they maintain, no part in His grace. Thus, when He promised to His Church the gift of in- defectibility, declaring that the gates of hell should never prevail against it, the promise must be under- stood of the invisible, not of the visible Church. In regard to this theory, which is still tolerably prev- alent, it is to be said that Christ's promises were made to the Church as a corporate body, as constitut- ing a society. As thus understood, they were made to the visible Church, not to an invisible and unknown body. Indeed for this distinction between a visible and an invisible Church there is no Scriptural warrant. Even though many of her children prove unfaithful, yet all that Christ said in regard to the Church is realized in her as a corporate body. Nor does the un- faithfulness of these professing Catholics cut them off altogether from membership in Christ. They are His in virtue of their baptism. The character then re- ceived still stamps them as His. Though dry and withered branches they are not altogether broken off from the true Vine (Bellarmine, De Ecclesia, III, ix, 13). The Anglican High Church writers explicitly teach the viability of the Church. They restrict themselves, however, to the consideration of material visibility (cf. Palmer, Treatise on the Church, Part I, c. iii).
The doctrine of the visibility in no way excludes from the Church those who have already attained to bliss. These are united with the members of the Church Militant in one communion of saints. They watch her struggles; their prayers are offered on her behalf. Similarly, those who are still in the cleansing fires of purgatory belong to the Church. There are not, as has been said, two Churches; there is but one Church, and of it all the souls of the just, whether in heaven, on earth, or in purgatory, are members (Catech. Rom., I, x, 6). But it is to the ( hurch only in so far as militant here below — to the Church among men — that the property of visibility belongs.
VIII. The Principle op Authority. — Whatever authority is exercised in the Church, is exercised in virtue of the commission of Christ. He is the one Prophet, Who has given to the world the revelation of truth, and by His spirit preserves in the Church the faith once delivered to the saints. He is the one Priest, ever pleading on behalf of the Church the sacrifice of Calvary And He is the one King — the chief Shepherd (I Peter, v, 4) — Who rules and guides, through His Providence, His Church's course. Yet U,- wills to exercise His power through earthly rep- resentatives. He chose the Twelve, and charged (hem in His name to teach the nations (Matt., xxviii, 19), to offer sacrifice (Luke, xxii, 19), to govern His flock (Matt., xviii, 18; John, xxi, 17). They, as seen above, used the authority committed to them while they lived; and before their death, they took meas- ures for the perpetuation of this principle of govern- ment in the Church. From that day to this, the hierarchy thus established has claimed and has exer- cised this threefold office. Thus the prophecies of the
Old Testament have been fulfilled which foretold that
to those who should be appointed to rule the Mes-
sianic kingdom it should be granted to participate
in the Messias' office of prophet, priest, and king.
(See II above.)
The authority established in the Church holds its commission from above, not from below. The pope and the bishops exercise their power as the successors of the men who were chosen by Christ in person. They are not, as the Presbyterian theory of Church government teaches, the delegates of the flock; their warrant is received from the Shepherd, not from the sheep. The view that ecclesiastical authority is ministerial only, and derived by delegation from tin 1 faithful, was expressly condemned by Pius VI (1794) in his Constitution "Auetorem Fidei" (q. v.); and on the renovation of the error by certain recent Modernist writers, Pius X reiterated the condemna- tion in the Encyclical on the errors of the Modernists. In this sense the government of the Church is not dem- ocratic. This indeed is involved in the very nature of the Church as a supernatural society, leading men to a supernatural end. No man is capable of wielding authority for such a purpose, unless power is com- municated to him from a Divine source. The case is altogether different where civil society is concerned. There the end is not supernatural: it is the temporal well-being of the citizens. It cannot then be said that a special endowment is required to render any class of men capable of filling the place of rulers and of guides. Hence the Church approves equally all forms of civil government which are consonant with the principle of justice. The power exercised by the Church through sacrifice and sacrament (potestas ordinis) lies outside the present subject. It is pro- posed briefly to consider here the nature of the Church's authority in her office (1) of teaching (po- testas magisterii) and (2) of government (potestos jurisdidionis).
(1) Infallibility. — As the Divinely appointed teach- er of revealed truth, the Church is infallible. This gift of inerrancy is guaranteed to it by the words of Christ, in which He promised that His Spirit would abide with it for ever to guide it unto all truth (John, xiv, 16; xvi, 13). It is implied also in other passages of Scripture, and asserted by the unanimous testimony of the Fathers. The scope of this infallibility is to preserve the deposit of faith revealed to man by Christ and His Apostles (see Infallibility). The Church teaches expressly that it is the guardian only of the revelation, that it can teach nothing which it has not received. The Vatican Council declares: "The Holy Ghost was not promised to the successors of Peter, in order that through His revelation they might manifest new doctrine: but that through His assistance they might religiously guard, and faith- fully expound the revelation handed down by the Apostles, or the deposit of the faith" (Cone. Vat., Sess. IV, cap. liv). The obligation of the natural moral law constitutes part of this revelation. The authority of that law is again and again insisted on by Christ and His Apostles. The Church therefore is infallible in matters both of faith and morals. More- over, theologians are agreed that tin- gift of infalli- bility in regard to the deposit must, by necessary consequence, carry with it infallibility as to certain matters intimately related to the Faith. There are questions bearing so nearly on the preservation of the Faith that, could the Church err in these, her infalli- bility would not suffice to guard the flock from false doctrine. Such, for instance, is the decision whether a given book does or does not contain teaching con- demned as heretical. (See Doom WIC Facts.)
It is needless to point out that if the Christian Faith is indeed a revealed doctrine, which turn must believe under pain of eternal loss, the gift of infalli- bility was necessary to the Church. Could she err
