Structure and Nature of the Church

 In 1965 the Roman Catholic theologian Marie-Joseph Le Guillou defined the church in these terms:

The Church is recognized as a society of fellowship with God, the sacrament of salvation, the people of God established as the body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit.

The progress of Roman Catholic theology can be seen in the contrast between this statement and the definition still current as late as 1960, which was substantially the one formulated by the Jesuit controversialist Robert Cardinal Bellarmine in 1621:

The society of Christian believers united in the profession of the one Christian faith and the participation in the one sacramental system under the government of the Roman Pontiff.

The older definition, created in response to the claims of Protestantism, defines the church in external and juridical terms. The more recent definition is an attempt to describe the church in terms of its inner and spiritual reality.

From its origins the church has thought of itself as the one and only worshipping community that could trace itself back to the group established by Jesus Christ. The ancient adage, “There is no salvation outside the church,” was understood as applying to those who had withdrawn from the church as well as to those who had never belonged. When this adage was combined with the notions contained in Bellarmine’s definition, lines between those inside the church and those outside it were clearly drawn. These lines were maintained in the breakup of Western Christendom in the Reformation.

There were, however, other factors determining the idea of the one true church. The Roman Catholic Church had never excluded the Orthodox Church from the community of Christian believers, even though the two churches fell into schism in 1054. Furthermore, the juridical definition of the church did not include traditional themes such as the communion of saints and the body of Christ. The theme of the communion of saints refers to the church as a whole, including both the living and the dead (the souls in purgatory—a place or condition for those who must be cleansed from lesser sins—and in heaven). The idea of communion appears in early church literature as an indication of the mutual recognition of union in the one church and the notion of mutual service.

To be continued.