History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity. A. D. 100-325

On the basis of Paul’s idea of the unity, holiness, and universality of the church, as the mystical

body of Christ; hand in hand with the episcopal system of government; in the form of fact rather

than of dogma; and in perpetual conflict with heathen persecution from without, and heretical and

schismatic tendencies within—arose the idea and the institution of: "the Holy Catholic Church,"

as the Apostles’ Creed has it;

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 or, in the fuller language of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan, "the

One Holy Catholic Apostolic Church." In both the oecumenical symbols, as even in the more

indefinite creeds of the second and third centuries, on which those symbols are based, the church

appears as an article of faith,

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 presupposing and necessarily, following faith in the Father, the

Son, and the Holy Spirit; and as a holy fellowship,

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 within which the various benefits of grace,

from the forgiveness of sins to the life everlasting, are enjoyed.

Nor is any distinction made here between a visible and an invisible church. All catholic

antiquity thought of none but the actual, historical church, and without hesitation applied to this,

while yet in the eyes of the world a small persecuted sect, those four predicates of unity, holiness,

universality, and apostolicity, to which were afterwards added exclusiveness infallibility and

indestructibility. There sometimes occur, indeed, particularly in the Novatian schism, hints of the

incongruity between the empirical reality and the ideal conception of the church; and this incongruity

became still more palpable, in regard to the predicate of holiness, after the abatement of the spiritual

elevation of the apostolic age, the cessation of persecution, and the decay of discipline. But the

unworthiness of individual members and the external servant-form of the church were not allowed

to mislead as to the general objective character, which belonged to her in virtue of her union with

her glorious heavenly Head.

The fathers of our period all saw in the church, though with different degrees of clearness,

a divine, supernatural order of things, in a certain sense the continuation of the life of Christ on

earth, the temple of the Holy Spirit, the sole repository of the powers of divine life, the possessor

and interpreter of the Holy Scriptures, the mother of all the faithful. She is holy because she is

separated from the service of the profane world, is animated by the Holy Spirit, forms her members

to holiness, and exercises strict discipline. She is catholic, that is (according to the precise sense of

    ,

 which denotes not so much numerical totality as wholeness), complete, and alone true, in

distinction from all parties and sects. Catholicity, strictly taken, includes the three marks of

universality, unity, and exclusiveness, and is an essential property of the church as the body and

organ of Christ, who is, in fact, the only Redeemer for all men. Equally inseparable from her is the

predicate of apostolicity, that is, the historical continuity or unbroken succession, which reaches

back through the bishops to the apostles, from the apostles to Christ, and from Christ to God. In

the view of the fathers, every theoretical departure from this empirical, tangible, catholic church

is heresy, that is, arbitrary, subjective, ever changing human opinion; every practical departure, all

disobedience to her rulers is schism, or dismemberment of the body of Christ; either is rebellion

against divine authority, and a heinous, if not the most heinous, sin. No heresy can reach the

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The Church of England retained the term "catholic" in the Creed, and the, ante-papal and anti-papal use of this; term

(=general, universal); while Luther in his Catechism, and the Moravian church (in her liturgy) substituted the word "Christian,"

and surrendered the use of "catholic" to the Roman Catholics. "Roman" is a sectarian term (in opposition to Greek Catholic and

Evangelical Catholic).

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Credo ecclesiam; yet not in (

εἰς) ecclesiam, as in the case of the Divine persons

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Communio sanctorum. This clause, however, is not found in the original Creed of the Roman church before the fifth century.

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Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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conception of the church, or rightly claim any one of her predicates; it forms at best a sect or party,

and consequently falls within the province and the fate of human and perishing things, while the

church is divine and indestructible.

This is without doubt the view of the ante-Nicene fathers, even of the speculative and

spiritualistic Alexandrians. The most important personages in the development of the doctrine

concerning the church are, again, Ignatius, Irenaeus, and Cyprian. Their whole doctrine of the

episcopate is intimately connected with their doctrine of the catholic unity, and determined by it.

For the episcopate is of value in their eyes only, is the indispensable means of maintaining and

promoting this unity: while they are compelled to regard the bishops of heretics and schismatics

as rebels and antichrists.

1. In the Epistles of Ignatius the unity of the church, in the form and through the medium

of the episcopate, is the fundamental thought and the leading topic of exhortation. The author calls

himself a man prepared for union.

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35 He also is the first to use the term "catholic" in the

ecclesiastical sense, when he says:

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 "Where Christ Jesus is, there is the catholic church;" that

is, the closely united and full totality of his people. Only in her, according to his view, can we eat

the bread of God; he, who follows a schismatic, inherits not the kingdom of God.

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We meet similar views, although not so clearly and strongly stated, in the Roman Clement’s

First Epistle to the Corinthians, in the letter of the church of Smyrna on the martyrdom of Polycarp,

and in the Shepherd of Hermas.

2 Irenaeus speaks much more at large respecting the church. He calls her the haven of rescue,

the way of salvation, the entrance to life, the paradise in this world, of whose trees, to wit, the holy

Scriptures, we may eat, excepting the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which he takes as a type

of heresy. The church is inseparable from the Holy Spirit; it is his home, and indeed his only

dwelling-place on earth. "Where the church is," says he, putting the church first, in the genuine

catholic spirit, "there is the Spirit of God, and where the Spirit of God is there is all grace."

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Only on the bosom of the church, continues he, can we be nursed to life. To her must we flee, to

be made partakers of the Holy Spirit; separation from her is separation from the fellowship of the

Holy Spirit. Heretics, in his view, are enemies of the truth and sons of Satan, and will be swallowed

up by hell, like the company of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Characteristic in this respect is the

well-known legend, which he relates, about the meeting of the apostle John with the Gnostic

Cerinthus, and of Polycarp with Marcion, the "first-born of Satan."

3. Tertullian is the first to make that comparison of the church with Noah’s ark, which has

since become classical in Roman catholic theology; and he likewise attributes heresies to the devil,

without any qualification. But as to schism, he was himself guilty of it since he joined the Montanists

and bitterly opposed the Catholics in questions of discipline. He has therefore no place in the Roman

Catholic list of the patres, but simply of the scriptores ecclesiae.

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ἄθρωπον εἰς ἔνωσιν κατηρτισμένον.

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Ad Smyrn. c. 8.

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·Ad Ephes. c. 5. Ad Trall. c.7. Ad Philad. c. 3, etc

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Adv. Haer. iii. 24."Ubi ecclesia ibi et Spiritus Dei, et ubi Spiritus Dei, illic et omnis gratia." Protestantism would say,

conversely, putting the Spirit first: "Ubi Spiritus Dei, ibi ecclesia et omnis gratia."

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Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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