The Nicene Creed contains 4 “marks” of the Church: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. These notae ecclesiae seem inside the third article, the pneumatological part, thereby underscoring that the church’s unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity are presents of the Spirit, not merely human achievements. Instantly following is the occupation of “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins” and the eschatological confession of “the resurrection of the lifeless and the lifetime of the world to come back.” As one of many preeminent ressourcement theologians, Yves Congar (1904-95) argued, this creedal construction suggests an intentional theological arc: the Spirit begets the Church, the sacraments maintain the Church, and the Church’s mission is oriented in direction of the eschaton.
This theological structure, in accordance with one other ressourcement theologian, Henri de Lubac (1896-1991), binds the Church’s identification and mission to her sacramental life. The “credal physique” (corpus credi) is inseparable from the “sacramental physique” (corpus sacramentorum) and the “mystical physique” (corpus mysticum) of Christ.. The Creed is thus not an summary doctrinal guidelines, however a liturgical and ecclesial confession shaping how Christians stay, worship, and have interaction the world.
This two-part essay explores the theological unity between the Church’s credal identification, sacramental life, and moral vocation. My declare is that the foundational sacraments of Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist, because the sacramental entry into the physique of Christ and participation within the divine life, are inseparable from the Church’s ethical and missional calling. Drawing from patristic, scholastic, and modern Anglican and ecumenical sources, we must always situate sacramental participation inside the Church’s eschatological horizon. In doing so, the Church contends for a consciously Eucharistic spirituality because the supply of moral renewal in a divided world and the sadly, repeatedly dividing, Anglican Communion.
This primary half, nonetheless, will think about the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the marks of the Church, and the sacraments. Within the second half, I’ll apply these claims to moral renewal and mission.
Credal Pneumatology and Ecclesiological Marks
The Creed describes the Church as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. These 4 credal ecclesiological marks describe the Church’s God-given nature. They don’t seem to be crafted by the Church however slightly acquired from God as a part of the Church’s divine structure. In flip, these marks name her members to embody these traits in faithfulness to the Gospel.
The church is one: her unity is grounded within the unity of God, the headship of Christ, and the indwelling of the Spirit (Eph. 4:4–6). But, as Aquinas observes, unity can be ethical, requiring charity to bind believers collectively in harmony (Summa Theologiae, II-II, q.37). The Eucharist is the sacrament of unity as a result of it’s Christ himself who’s each provided and acquired. Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann wrote about this fantastically in his For the Lifetime of the World (1988).
The Church is holy as she is integrated into Christ, her Bridegroom. She can be the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, who sanctifies and animates her members, guiding them to the work of God (A Catechism, in An Anglican Prayer Ebook 1989; 432). This holiness just isn’t merely ethical purity, however ontological as properly, as its objective and the achievement thereof is made full in participation within the divine life (2 Pet. 1:4). Holy Baptism consecrates the devoted into this holiness, whereas the Eucharist nourishes and deepens it.
The Church is catholic, which refers each to universality and to the wholeness of apostolic religion and life. The Church is catholic as a result of she holds the fullness of the technique of grace (Ignatius of Antioch, Smyrnaeans, 8), and he or she “proclaims the entire religion to all individuals to the top of time” (A Catechism 1989: 432).
The Church is Apostolic: she exists in continuity with the apostolic witness, maintained by way of apostolic succession in ministry and constancy to apostolic educating. The Church is apostolic in her liturgy, doctrine, and mission, bearing the apostolic mandate to make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19–20).
Holy Baptism: The Portal to Ecclesial and Moral Life
The Creed’s assertion of “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins” identifies baptism as each ecclesial initiation and moral commissioning. In baptism, the believer is integrated into the physique of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13), forgiven, and given the Spirit. Baptism thus has an unrepeatable and ontological character. One would possibly think about right here Karl Rahner’s Theological Investigations (1974).
Patristic catechesis offered baptism as a radical reorientation of life. Cyril of Jerusalem describes baptism as illumination, the opening of the eyes to divine reality (Mystagogical Catecheses, II). This theological anthropology sees the baptized as homo novus—the brand new human—known as to stay in a method that befits the gospel. This radical reorientation is echoed slightly profoundly within the ceremony of Christian baptism.
Candidates for baptism are known as to brazenly reject all that’s evil; the satan and all non secular forces of evil that insurgent towards God; the sinful wishes of humanity that search to create and widen a chasm between humanity and God; and the powers of the world that corrupt and destroy God’s creation. The ceremony of the blessing of water speaks profoundly of the regenerative energy of Holy Baptism, which configures baptized Christians with Christ in a demise and resurrection like his, cleanses the baptized from sin, and births them into the household of the Church.
Most iconically, the Ceremony of Baptism then requires the candidates to declare the religion of the Church into which they are going to be baptized, whereby in accordance with historic customized they could profess the Creed of the Apostles or the Creed of Nicaea. The ceremony then ends with two exhortations from the congregation, the household of the baptized into whom the newly baptized have been born:
battle valiantly underneath the banner of Christ towards sin, the world, and the satan, and proceed [as] his devoted troopers and servants to the top of your lives … shine as a lightweight on the earth to the glory of God the Father.
The decision of the baptized—to stay lives match for the Gospel—is due to this fact a name to radical dwelling, radical within the sense of a return to the elemental root of Gospel dwelling, whereby Christ is on the core of, is the measure of, and is the fulfilment of the imaginative and prescient of ethical life. That is very a lot a problem for the baptized to stay lives that, whereas on this world, are very a lot out of this world, lives which are actually superior as they refuse to evolve to the patterns of the secular influences and powers that be, and search to affirm the integrity and reality of Divine Legislation. Thus, Holy Baptism is certainly an initiation ceremony additionally to a sharing within the thoughts and disposition of Christ by way of his Bride, the Church.
The Holy Eucharist: The Credal Confession Made Flesh
The Holy Eucharist is the central act of Christian worship. This assertion has been made usually in Anglican circles, following the Liturgical Motion of the twentieth century, however we must be clear about its foundation. The Eucharist is the central act of Christian worship as a result of the Church is intimately united, by the Holy Spirit, to heavenly worship round God’s throne (1989; 101). Although not explicitly named within the Creed, the Holy Eucharist is implicitly talked about in its construction and eschatology. The Church’s unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity profoundly meet on the altar. The Eucharist is each sacrifice and banquet, anamnesis and epiclesis, making current the paschal thriller. One would possibly think about right here Herbert McCabe’s God, Christ, and Us (2008).
St. Augustine calls the Eucharist “the sacrament of our unity” (Sermon 272), for in receiving the Physique of Christ, the devoted turn into extra absolutely the physique of Christ (the Church). That is the dynamic behind the phrase credo in corpus; to consider within the physique is to be reworked into it.
Participation within the Eucharist shapes moral life as a result of it requires reconciliation (Matt. 5:23–24), humility (1 Cor. 11:27–29), and thanksgiving (1 Thess. 5:18). A Eucharistic ethic thus extends from the altar into the world: the identical Christ encountered within the Host is to be met within the poor, the stranger, and the enemy (Matt. 25:31–46).
The necessities for members within the Holy Eucharist embrace the continual examination of their lives, repentance of sins, and charitable dwelling with all individuals. It is a furthering of the decision to radical dwelling, for members of the Holy Eucharist are challenged to not solely obtain the basis of moral life—Christ himself—however are challenged additionally to turn into an alter Christi, one other Christ, or an extension of Christ, an extension of what and who they obtain within the Eucharist. As Christ then is one, so we discover within the Holy Eucharist the problem for members thereof to repeatedly try towards strengthening the unity of the Corpus Christianorum—the physique of Christian individuals within the bonds of unity and obedience to Divine Legislation.
The type of the Holy Eucharist echoes this very notion. Starting with the signal of the cross and the invocation of the Most Holy Trinity, this unity of the gathered devoted has its eyes opened to their mystical unity with each other and with the Holy Trinity they’re known as to resemble. Inside the liturgy, the fourfold acts of adoration, thanksgiving, penance, and petition are made by the one physique, the Church, as was finished in centuries previous, and as shall be finished in centuries to come back.
This participation invitations the Church to replicate ever extra carefully on the paranormal union of the Church all through the ages; a Church as soon as stricken by heresies and hire asunder by schisms and different threats to the unity of the physique of Christ. This name to a realized unity is a problem to open the eyes of the devoted to notice that this unity is one each of religion and motion, all within the bond of unity held by obedience to Divine Legislation, within the custom and succession of the Apostles, regardless of the pressures of the encompassing world whose ethical tone adjustments with the seasons.
It is a name, then, to a consistency in holding Christ and his statutes on the core of the ethical lifetime of these within the eucharistic neighborhood, who which by way of the Holy Eucharist obtain the forgiveness of their sins, the strengthening of their communion with Christ and with each other, and sharing within the foretaste of the heavenly banquet on this life.
Editor’s Be aware: The second a part of this essay will seem tomorrow. The dialogue will flip to eschatology, ethics, and life in a fragmented church.
The Rev. Thapelo Masemola is Chaplain at St John’s Faculty, Johannesburg, South Africa.
