Abstract
This essay takes up recent Protestant concerns about Catholic theology's understanding of the Church's mark of catholicity. Wesleyan and Reformed authors have argued that the (Roman) Catholic Church is “Roman” but not “catholic.” In their view, the problem is that the Catholic theological conception of catholicity focuses on union with the pope (or bishop of Rome). In a nutshell, Rome has decreed that to possess the mark of universality means to be in communion with Rome. Recent Protestant authors have made the point that not only is this arrogant and narrow, but also it is implausible given that the majority of Christians in the world are not (Roman) Catholic. My essay's first section lays out these concerns, which of course are not new. In my second section, I examine recent Catholic theological perspectives on catholicity. I conclude by suggesting a threefold path forward.
In a recent essay, the Catholic theologian Roch Kereszty has remarked, “The key to understand the Church's nature is her participation in the mysteries of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation.” 1 This participation is at the core of the Church's catholicity. For much of the Church's history, however, the mark of catholicity was associated with visible universality. Thomas Aquinas, for example, taught that the Church is catholic (or universal) because it extends throughout the world, includes people from all social conditions, and has existed since Abel. 2 From this angle, the catholicity of the Church clearly relates to the ministry of the bishop of Rome, whose purpose is to foster unity in faith in a Church that otherwise would break into various regional groups following different doctrinal and moral paths.
Such claims about catholicity have been an ecumenical sticking point for centuries. In this light, the first section of my essay will set forth some concerns that have recently been put forward by the Wesleyan and Reformed theologians Kenneth Collins, Jerry Walls, and Kevin Vanhoozer. These theologians, whose ecumenical credentials are not in doubt, deny that the (Roman) Catholic Church is “catholic.” 3
These theologians would not be surprised by the fact that their concerns are hardly new, but date back to the Reformation itself (and no doubt well before). 4 In the past century, the same concerns were raised by the Lutherans Friedrich Heiler in his Der Katholizismus: Seine Idee und seine Erscheinung and Wilhelm Stählin in his “Katholizität, Protestantismus, und Katholizismus.” The late Catholic theologian Avery Dulles sums up Heiler's argument along lines that are precisely those of Collins, Walls, and Vanhoozer: “[Heiler] assailed the Roman practice of identifying Roman with Catholic, and argued that Rome commits the anti-Catholic heresy of making the particular into the universal…. Rome… is not Catholic, for it wants to rule in the spirit of the Caesars rather than serve in the spirit of the gospel.” 5
I will pair the concerns of Collins, Wall, and Vanhoozer with those of the Anglican theologian Hans Boersma. Boersma argues that the (Roman) Catholic position flies in the face of empirical reality. In his view, the Church is clearly divided and none of the existing churches possesses unity or catholicity. The (Roman) Catholic Church, like the Orthodox, claims to be the one and catholic Church founded by Christ. For Boersma, what is needed for true ecumenical dialogue is for all churches to recognize in repentance and humility that Christ's Church has been fragmented and that we all need to implore the Spirit's aid to restore the visible ecclesial unity and catholicity that Christ wills for his followers. 6
The above concerns are obviously of pressing ecumenical importance. As a second step, therefore, I will examine some recent Catholic perspectives on catholicity, focusing on the work of Aidan Nichols, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Avery Dulles. My purpose will be to suggest that when catholicity is understood primarily as the Church's participation in Christ and the Trinity, there is a possibility for better ecumenical understanding and appreciation. My Conclusion will suggest a threefold path for moving forward.
Protestant Concerns
In Roman but Not Catholic: What Remains at Stake 500 Years after the Reformation, Kenneth Collins and Jerry Walls contend, among other things, that the (Roman) Catholic Church is not catholic—that is, does not bear the mark of catholicity named in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. They define “catholic” as follows: “universal, comprehensive, ecumenical, global, extensive, and whole.” 7 They quote the Catechism of the Catholic Church to the effect that the Church is “catholic” because Jesus Christ is present in the Church. According to the Catechism, it follows from the fullness of Christ's presence that the (Roman) Catholic Church possesses all the means of salvation that unite the Church to Christ. These include the teachings of the faith, the seven sacraments, and the offices of the Church in accordance with apostolic succession. The Catechism adds that the Church is also “catholic” insofar as the Church possesses a universal mission to spread the Gospel.
In response, Collins and Walls comment, “the authors of the Catechism have defined the universality of the church in terms of the particular form that the church has taken in the Roman Catholic tradition.” 8 They contend that according to this definition, the Church only bears the mark of catholicity when it confesses the Creed with the filioque, when it celebrates the seven sacraments, and when it is led by the Pope. Since these elements all developed in the (Roman) Catholic Church over centuries—the filioque was a late addition to the Creed, and the expansion of the number of recognized sacraments did not take place until the twelfth century—it would appear that the early Church itself was not “catholic” except perhaps in an incipient form. Moreover, Christian communities that do not accept the authority of the bishop of Rome (the Pope) are simply excluded, according to Collins and Walls's reading of the Catechism, from catholicity.
It follows that the (Roman) Catholic Church has limited the mark of catholicity to those ecclesial communities in union with Rome. Although many Christians worship in churches that are in union with Rome, a majority of Christians do not do so. Given this fact, Collins and Walls observe that “catholicity” has thereby become its opposite. Rather than truly involving universality, the (Roman) Catholic definition of catholicity only pertains to a portion of the world's Christians. The “universal” Church turns out to be only the portion of the Christian community that is in communion with Rome. Collins and Walls explain that the Catechism has indulged in “a confusing and, in the end, contradictory twofold process: first, it maintains that the word ‘catholic’ refers to the universal, comprehensive church; second, it then identifies that universal catholic church specifically with itself in a move of generalization in which a part, that is, a particular theological tradition, is mistaken for the whole.” 9
In fact, the “universal” Church, if by that is meant the majority of all Christians, rejects the (Roman) Catholic Church's claims about the requirements of catholicity. Protestants reject the papacy and most of the seven sacraments along with many other (Roman) Catholic doctrines. The Eastern Orthodox reject the papacy and some doctrines. The Church prior to the fourth century lacked much of what supposedly belongs to catholicity. But the Catechism has the nerve to declare, “Particular Churches are fully catholic through their communion with one of them, the Church of Rome, ‘which presides in charity.’ ‘For with this church, by reason of its pre-eminence, the whole Church, that is the faithful everywhere, must be in accord.’” 10 The Catechism goes on to cite a similar sentence from Maximus the Confessor. Collins and Walls point out that on this basis the (Roman) Catholic Church judges the Eastern Orthodox Church “to be not completely catholic simply because this historic church is not in full communion with the Vatican.” 11 Somehow, despite the fact that the Orthodox Church is just as ancient as the (Roman) Catholic Church, and despite the fact that it was the (Roman) Catholic Church that altered the Creed, the rejection of the papacy is enough to render a Church deficient in catholicity.
Collins and Walls draw the conclusion that, at bottom, “catholicity” for the (Roman) Catholic Church really means “in full communion with the Pope.” Such a definition of catholicity inscribes into the definition of “universal” precisely one of the most contested claims in all Christianity, the claim that elevates the See of Rome above all else and that makes acceptance of papal authority to be the measure of universality. Surely this is one of the most self-serving, divisive, and dubious definitions of Christian ecclesial “universality” that anyone could imagine! In its intrinsic divisiveness and replacement of true universality with a universality based upon its own standing, then, the Church led by the bishop of Rome has shown itself to be an exponent of division. In other words, while it lays claim to the name Catholic, it is not catholic.
The actual “universal” or “catholic” Church, say Collins and Walls, can be seen around the world, wherever there are Christians. Collins and Walls affirm that there really is today a universal or catholic Church, existing “under the power, authority, and sovereignty of Christ, the head of the church.” 12 (Roman) Catholic Christians make up a part of that universal Church, despite their pernicious doctrine; but the universal Church is much broader than (Roman) Catholicism imagines. Collins and Walls explain that this is why, unlike (Roman) Catholics themselves, Collins and Walls always and only refer to the “Roman Catholic Church.” 13 To do otherwise would be implicitly to accept the (Roman) Catholic claim to be catholic or universal, thereby insulting and diminishing all other Christians. They especially wish to avoid insulting Eastern Orthodox Christians who, during the eleventh century, had the catholicity of their Churches called into question by (Roman) Catholics laying claim to the term, as though a mere part of the Church (i.e., the Latin Church) could reasonably claim to be the “universal” Church.
Since they recognize (Roman) Catholics to be Christians, Collins and Walls argue that their perspective is more ecumenical and generous than is the (Roman) Catholic position, with its arrogant seizing of catholicity to itself. Granted, in their view the (Roman) Catholic Church has developed traditions and practices that “may at times detract from both the power and the clarity of the gospel.” 14 But (Roman) Catholics are still Christians. By allowing that the universal or catholic Church includes (Roman) Catholics and Eastern Orthodox along with Protestants of all stripes, Collins and Walls aim to have “the good sense not to make any one of these traditions the heart of the church,” although of course their ecclesiology is Protestant rather than (Roman) Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. 15 For Collins and Walls, the central point consists in “the theological and ecclesiastical trouble that emerges when any one communion insists on being the center.” 16
They are aware that Eastern Orthodox Churches, too, claim catholicity or universality and believe that both (Roman) Catholicism and Protestantism have, to different degrees, fallen away from the fullness of catholicity. The fact that both (Roman) Catholics and Eastern Orthodox make the same divisive claim in the name of a supposed universality that ceased to exist when they split from each other in the eleventh century makes clear that a more ecumenical ecclesiology is needed—which Collins and Walls find in Protestant ecclesiology, once stripped of the classical Protestant claim that (Roman) Catholics are not actually Christians. Collins and Walls accentuate their accusation of (Roman) Catholic narrowness by employing “the term ‘Rome’ to refer to the Roman Catholic Church.” 17
In pressing their case against (Roman) Catholicism on multiple fronts—not only on the matter of catholicity, though they consider that matter to exemplify the problem with “Rome”—Collins and Walls remark that they have deliberately chosen to “read and learn even from Roman Catholic dogmatists, that is, from those authors who have already made up their minds that whatever Rome affirms is the gospel truth.” 18 I am among the “Roman Catholic dogmatists” whom they have in view, both appreciatively and critically. 19
Naturally, then, I am interested in their charge that identifying the (Roman) Catholic Church as “catholic” or universal is an example of self-interested special pleading. Given that both Catholics and Orthodox assert that the fullness of catholicity is in their respective communions, Collins and Walls are in fact asserting that only a Protestant ecclesiology is correct about catholicity. They are consigning those who do not agree with them to the status of those who distort true catholicity. They are doing a Protestant version of what they think (Roman) Catholics are doing, by arguing that only their own ecclesiology is compatible with true catholicity.
Kevin Vanhoozer
Kevin Vanhoozer pushes further along these lines. Writing from a “Mere Evangelical” (or “Mere Protestant”) perspective focused upon developing strategies by which Protestants from various traditions can come to see each other (despite their differences) as full partners, Vanhoozer urges that even on matters of biblical interpretation, the key is to be open to others’ perspectives as much as possible—though without becoming a liberal Protestant or a Catholic or Orthodox. He tells his readers, “part of the process of producing mature disciples is coming to accept your own interpretations of Scripture as one of the riches of the royal priesthood rather than the whole treasury.” 20 The whole treasury is contained in Scripture alone. 21 Only Scripture is reliable and authoritative in an absolute sense, as God's Word. 22 Yet Christ-centered, Spirit-filled interpreters (both as individuals and collectively, i.e., in creedal confessions) across the ages have much to teach us through their readings of Scripture. To broaden our perspective, says Vanhoozer, we need “to attend to the broader pattern of Protestant authority and to listen for the Spirit speaking in the history of the church's interpretation of Scripture.” 23
Vanhoozer explains in this context that every Protestant should be a “catholic Christian” attuned to the “communion of saints”—just not in the (Roman) Catholic (or, for that matter, the Orthodox) understanding of these terms. All believers in Christ are “saints,” as the Apostle Paul's usage of the term makes clear. This does not mean they are sinless or holy in every way, but it means that they have accepted Christ as Lord, their sins have been forgiven, and they are being sanctified by the Holy Spirit. The communion of such “saints” extends across generations, and so the insights of past Spirit-guided Christians help Christian communities today to understand God's authoritative word. Regarding “catholicity,” Vanhoozer emphasizes that “Protestants too care about catholicity. Protestants propose a kind of wholeness, unity, and universality centered not on an imperial structure (the domain of Rome) but an imperial gospel (the domain of God's word).” 24 Vanhoozer here suggests that what (Roman) Catholics trust in is the “imperial structure” or imperial power of “Rome” or the papacy in order to establish and ensure catholicity, i.e., the universal fullness, breadth, and mission of the Church. By comparison, Vanhoozer thinks that Protestants recognize that catholicity or Christian fullness flows from the universality and fullness of the Gospel or the word of God. And if one is choosing between a universality based upon a powerful leader in the Church and a universality based upon the fullness of God's word, the correct choice is clear.
In an earlier work co-authored with Daniel Treier, Vanhoozer suggests that Evangelical theology has traditionally been focused on resources from America, Great Britain, and (to a degree) Germany. Vanhoozer and Treier identify “a deficit of catholicity: evangelical theology has not yet reckoned adequately with either time or place.” 25 They describe “Protestant catholicity” as Jesus Christ calling to himself a holy people (“saints”)—namely, all people who call on him with a sincere heart as Lord and Savior—and sending them on mission. The Gospel itself is what has “catholicity” or fullness, since the Gospel is the word of God, Jesus Christ. The Church receives and embodies catholicity insofar as baptized believers proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As members of the “catholic” Church, believers are by divine grace “sharers in all that Christ is,” and Christ calls believers to share what they have received with the whole world. 26
In their book, Vanhoozer and Treier define “catholicity” as sharing in what the whole Church believes “about the gospel of God and the God of the gospel,” and thereby being united to “the catholic tradition” or “the consensus tradition passed down through the centuries.” 27 This includes the fact that Jesus is the incarnate Lord, the consubstantiality of the Son and the Father, the reality of the Triune God, the salvific crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus, and so on. The catholic tradition is catholic because it reflects Scripture truly. It is the consensus tradition rather than merely what a part of the Christian world teaches. Doctrines that are taught only by a part of the Christian world are not “catholic” or at least not yet catholic; Christians as a whole have not perceived them to be a true reflection of the word of God. The catholic tradition exhibits continuity over time and is extended across the world rather than being merely a local or twenty-first century phenomenon. Believers should appreciate “the ministerial authority of the catholic tradition” in light of the “magisterial authority of the canonical Scriptures.” 28 When this is done, Vanhoozer and Treier argue, the catholic essentials of the Gospel can be distinguished from the nonessentials with regard to which Christian diversity should be permitted and respected. 29
Ultimately, Vanhoozer is confident about what the fullness of Jesus Christ—the fullness that catholic Christians receive—consists in. It consists in whatever Evangelical Protestants agree is contained in Scripture, leaving room for future development of doctrine within Evangelical Protestant communities. Fortunately, Evangelical Protestants find much agreement with (Roman) Catholics and Orthodox on these matters. In Vanhoozer's view, wherever Evangelical Protestants disagree with (Roman) Catholics and Orthodox, or with one another, these are either disagreements about nonessentials (second-level doctrines) or disagreements that demonstrate how far Catholics and Orthodox have diverged from the word of God as communicated in Scripture. Vanhoozer is confident that Evangelical Protestants have the right, biblically warranted methods for interpreting Scripture correctly, and that (Roman) Catholics employ some wrong, biblically unwarranted methods that arrive at unacceptable doctrinal conclusions. 30 Vanhoozer urges Catholics to reject the notion of “catholicity” rooted in “Rome” and its power, and instead to embrace “an evangelical catholicity bounded by the gospel, not by Rome”—and thus to embrace a “catholicity… as deep and wide as the gospel itself.” 31
Hans Boersma
In a recent contribution to an ecumenical symposium on Vatican II, the Anglican theologian Hans Boersma points out that according to Lumen Gentium and Unitatis Redintegratio, “the various ways in which people belong to or are related to the people of God may be depicted by a widening set of concentric circles, with Catholic believers in the center, and moving outward via other Christians to Jews, Muslims, and non-believers.” 32 Of course, this objective situation needs also to be paired with interior faith—which may be profoundly lacking in persons who identify as Catholic—but the fact nevertheless is that in the Catholic view the “people of God,” or the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church” really “subsists in” the visible Catholic Church. 33 This position excludes Protestant communions from possessing, in a strict sense, catholicity or fullness.
On the positive side, Boersma notes that Unitatis Redintegratio recognizes that there is a hierarchy of truths and that Catholics and Protestants share the highest revealed truths. Unitatis Redintegratio also admits that, due to Christian divisions, the Catholic Church “finds it more difficult to express in actual life her full catholicity in all its aspects,” even though the Catholic Church possesses this catholicity. 34
The problem that Boersma identifies is this: if the unity and catholicity that Christ wills are present in the Catholic Church alone—even if these marks of the Church can be increased and enriched by ecumenical breakthroughs—then it appears that the Catholic Church understands itself to be radically different from all other churches or ecclesial communities that have a place at the ecumenical table. Whereas from an Anglican or a Reformed perspective one can suppose that each church or ecclesial community brings something to the fullness of the whole—since the fullness of the whole, which visibly existed in the early Church, now does not exist in any one of the numerous divided churches—from a Catholic perspective (in this regard comparable to the Orthodox one), the Catholic Church alone brings the fullness, and the other churches or ecclesial communities may enhance or enrich that fullness. As a result, says Boersma, Catholics at the ecumenical table do not meet non-Catholic Christians as equals.
Boersma adds that according to Unitatis Redintegratio “restoration of unity can come about only through unity with Rome, since it alone has the plenitudo of the means of salvation.” 35 This is true even though Catholics would insist that it should be made clear that it is not “Rome” alone that has the plenitudo, but the Catholic Church in communion with the bishop of Rome, and more fundamentally Christ and the Trinity. Indeed, the Catholic theologian Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole devotes most of his recent discussion of the Church's catholicity to insisting that “the Church ‘is neither Latin [i.e., Roman], nor Greek, nor Slavonic, but Catholic.’” 36 This is so even though—and here de La Soujeole treats at length the problem of inculturation and the relationship between the universal Church and the particular churches—“this catholicity is realized concretely among the Latins, the Greeks, the Slavs… who nevertheless do not cease to be Latins, Greeks, or Slavs.” 37
Boersma observes that despite Unitatis Redintegratio's laudable concern for increasing or perfecting ecclesial unity and catholicity, the document holds that the Protestant communions are separated from unity (and thus from catholicity), while the Catholic Church truly possesses these realities and cannot lose them. As Boersma remarks with some dismay, according to Unitatis Redintegratio “only the separated brethren are lacking in terms of the fullness of the catholicity of the church,” even though this fullness is in certain regards still imperfect in the Catholic Church and thus can be enhanced. 38 With reference to unity, but along lines that apply also to catholicity (which of course is closely connected with unity), Boersma asks, “If unity was never lost—except from the side of those who are separated from the Catholic Church and except for certain expressions of the unity of the Catholic Church—what is there to restore?” 39
In Boersma's view, the Catholic Church has gravely underestimated the impact of the East-West division and the Reformation. The wounds to unity (and thus to catholicity) have been such that no one institutional Church, at present, can claim either unity or catholicity; at best, although Boersma does not say this, such realities are still present in the world only if the better elements of all the churches are patched together. The notion that the Catholic Church possesses the catholic fullness of revealed truth is implausible to Boersma. He states, “It strains credulity that brothers and sisters in Christ, who love and care for one another, must either continue in their divided paths or accept that the uniquely Roman Catholic representations of certain doctrines are essential to Christian unity.” 40
Unlike Collins, Walls, and Vanhoozer, Boersma does not suggest that (Roman) Catholicism has built an ecclesiology or a doctrine of catholicity upon a Roman imperial model. He simply thinks that it is implausible that the Catholic Church is not in the same mess that all Christian communities are in. It is empirically clear that baptized Christians, meant to be united, are divided.
I note that the logical conclusion to draw from Boersma's argument is that the Church exists today, insofar as it does exist, wherever faithful Christians gather to hear the word of God proclaimed and to celebrate the sacraments. Divided Christian communities are at best branches or parts of the one and catholic Church that Jesus founded. This viewpoint reflects a Protestant or Anglican ecclesiology.
Catholic Theologies of Catholicity
Is Catholic theology of the Church's mark of catholicity problematic because it is theologically imperialistic, empirically incoherent, and ecumenically a dead end? Have Catholics traded a catholic fullness marked by Jesus Christ and the word of God, for a catholic “fullness” determined merely by the Church's Petrine office or by the claim to be the one and catholic Church founded by Jesus despite the fact that the majority of Christians are not Catholics?
In this section, I will not answer these questions directly. Instead, I wish to examine what recent Catholic theology has had to say about the Church's catholicity. Such an inquiry will help us to see where there may be some promising foundations for engaging such questions in an ecumenical spirit.
Let me begin with the Catechism and Vatican II. Regarding catholicity, recall that the first point that the Catechism makes is that “the Church is catholic because Christ is present in her.” 41 The Catechism goes on to explain that what makes the Church “catholic” is the fact that the Church is Christ's Body and possesses all the means of salvation, so as to be able to share in Christ fully, just as Christ wills to be shared in. Although among the means of salvation is the Petrine office, the Catechism makes clear that the Church does not depend upon the developed doctrine of the papacy in order to be “catholic.” On the contrary, already on the day of the first Pentecost the Church was fully catholic.
Vatican II's Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, accepts that Christian divisions make it difficult for the Catholic Church “herself… to express in actual life her full catholicity in all its aspects.” 42 Yet, the Catholic Church insists that local churches, which in their diverse cultures and traditions display the Church's catholicity, must be in communion with Rome, as appears for instance in Lumen Gentium's statement that “holding a rightful place in the communion of the Church there are also particular Churches that retain their own traditions [i.e., Eastern Catholic Churches], without prejudice to the Chair of Peter which presides over the whole assembly of charity.” 43 Unitatis Redintegratio teaches that although the Orthodox Churches are indeed Churches, still the fullness of unity and catholicity is lacking to these Churches, since they do not possess “the fullness of the means of salvation” inclusive of the apostolic college headed by Peter and his successors. 44 This lack of fullness is present even though the mark of catholicity remains in a real sense, given the true ecclesial status of these Churches and the corresponding fact that “through the celebration of the Eucharist of the Lord in each of these [Eastern Orthodox] Churches, the Church of God is built up and grows in stature.” 45
Aidan Nichols, O.P
Expressing a perspective grounded in Vatican II and the Catechism, Aidan Nichols first distinguishes between qualitative and quantitative catholicity. The latter consists in the expansion of the Church around the globe; the former consists in the fullness of the Church's faith. As a representative of the qualitative understanding of catholicity, he cites Cyril of Jerusalem's Mystagogical Catecheses (18.23), where Cyril identifies catholicity with possession of the means of salvation (doctrine and sacraments) and also with holiness. Cyril also offers a quantitative reason for catholicity, namely, the Church's geographical breadth. Nichols observes that in the post-Tridentine Catholic Church up until the Second Vatican Council—with some exceptions such as the Tübingen School and Yves Congar—catholicity was defined in terms of “the wide geographical extent of a single sacramental society, which is plainly one thanks to the unity of its governance.” 46 In comparison, Congar understands catholicity in terms of the Church's sacramental mediation of the divine life.
Nichols emphasizes that a proper understanding of catholicity will relate it “to the Church's own triune source in Jesus Christ.” 47 He thinks Avery Dulles does a particularly good job of this, and I will briefly summarize Dulles's contributions below. Suffice it to say here that Dulles highlights the divine plenitude and the unity and distinction of the divine Persons, and that Dulles presents the incarnate Word (in the unity of his Person and the diversity of his two natures) as “catholic” in himself and in his mission to “fill all things” (Eph. 4:10) with his own glorious life. Dulles identifies the image of the Church as Christ's Body as crucial to the catholicity of the Church, insofar as the Body participates in its Head's catholicity through Christ's gift of himself to his Body.
Thus, the Church possesses catholicity, but not yet in the fullness that the consummated Church will one day possess it (cf. Eph. 4:13). The unity and diversity of the Church express the ways it is being built up in Christ's fullness by the Spirit. Nichols notes that the fact that the Church consists in a communion of individuals whose particular vocations and differences contribute to the unity of the ecclesial communion also has to do with the Church's catholicity. Since the Holy Spirit is the bond of unity of the Father and Son in the Trinity, the Spirit is operative in forging the Church's catholicity.
Having emphasized that the Church's catholicity comes from Christ's catholicity, which he shares with his Body, Nichols reflects upon how the Holy Spirit sustains the Church's catholicity by “foster[ing] communion without effacing differences,” both with respect to diverse individuals and with respect to diverse cultures. 48 Here, he takes up not only the differences between Latin and Eastern Catholic Churches, but also the distinction between the universal Church and the particular churches. The particular churches manifest the “universal Church” in accordance with their specific charisms. Ultimately, baptism and the Eucharist have the universal Church in view, as do “such institutions as ecumenical councils, the Petrine office, the episcopate considered as a college, and worldwide religious orders of the globally unified variety.” 49
Nichols then addresses “quantitative” catholicity, that is, the spread of the Church throughout the world. This spread fulfills the Old Testament prophecies that Israel's election was for all nations. Christ commands his disciples to spread the Gospel to all nations (Matthew 28:19). The Church is possessed of a message that is universal and of sacraments that are intended to mediate the Paschal Mystery of Christ to all peoples. There can be no purely or merely “national” Church.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Nichols directs attention to Hans Urs von Balthasar's short but striking 1975 book Katholisch, which in English has appeared as In the Fullness of Faith: On the Centrality of the Distinctively Catholic. There, Balthasar observes that unless one is entranced by the sheer mystery of catholicity, one is likely to construe the Catholic Church—and all other Christian traditions—along merely institutional lines, on the assumption that the variety of Christian claimants to be the Church means that there really no longer is (if there ever was) a truly “catholic” visible, institutional Church. In response, Balthasar argues that “the measure of its [the Church's] catholicity, which permeates and informs it, is found, not in itself, but above it, in the mystery of Christ”—a mystery that in turn is inseparable from the Church's testimony to Christ. 50
Balthasar does not hesitate to defend the Petrine office as fundamental to the Church's catholicity, but he notes that the Petrine office relies for its intelligibility upon the higher principle of sacramental or apostolic office in the Church, and thus upon “the pneumatic and eucharistic Christ and his ever-living presence” in the Church. 51 The Petrine office is intelligible, too, only in light of the Church's indefectibility—the holiness of the communion of saints—as symbolized by Mary's holy fiat in her participation in the work of redemption. At the same time, although it is the presence of the glorified and eucharistic Christ (through the Spirit) and the Spirit-guided indefectibility of the Church that ground the Church's catholicity, Balthasar remarks that “these deeper principles could not exercise their unity-creating power right to the end without the external reference-point of the Roman bishop.” 52
Balthasar posits that Jesus is catholic or else his Church could not be catholic. He defines “catholic” as “embracing everything, leaving nothing out.” 53 Yet, how can a single man, even the God-man, embrace everything, given that Jesus was a late Second-Temple Jew who lived and died in a very particular context? Balthasar suggests that Jesus’ catholicity is manifested in his revelation of the Father. In every way, Jesus makes himself transparent to the divine love of the Father. His lowliness, his mercy, his severity, his compassion—all point toward the Father. Jesus unites paradoxical attributes, and he thereby reveals the plenitude of God; Jesus sends the Spirit, and he thereby reveals the diversity and bond of unity within God. Balthasar adds, “Jesus’ catholicity is not only ‘vertical’, as it were, doing God's will on earth as in Heaven and revealing God in the world: it is also ‘horizontal’, recapitulating the history of Adam's race.” 54 Jesus fulfills—or “full”-fils by his plenitude—the whole of the Old Testament which he reinterprets in light of himself. By the Holy Spirit, Jesus speaks his catholic word, inclusive of his Church, through the Scriptures. 55
Balthasar offers a rich account of the catholicity of the Cross. He meditates upon how Jesus’ catholic fullness “has room for us to enter right inside it,” since it is “a fullness that creates space within it, not a mere flowing outward (bonum diffusivum sui) but a fullness that opens up its inner riches.” 56 Jesus wants to give us his catholic fullness and to take away our brokenness, enriching rather than suppressing our individuality within the catholicity of the Triune God.
For Balthasar, the key is self-surrendering love. In love, the Son Jesus surrenders himself utterly to the Father; and “because he surrenders himself, he receives himself.” 57 The Father eternally gives his whole self to the Son in begetting the Son. Christ's kenosis opens up room for us to share in the Triune catholicity by sharing in the self-surrendering love of the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit. Thus Balthasar identifies the Trinity's (kenotic) catholicity as the source of the Church's (kenotic) catholicity. He suggests that this can be interpreted in terms of both the image of Body and the image of Bride: “‘body’ in that the Church is made into a vessel, an organ, an extension of Christ through his self-communication, and ‘bride’ or ‘spouse’ in that it is fashioned by the Bridegroom's self-surrender and thus presented by him to himself (Eph. 1:23; 5:25–27).” 58
Balthasar argues that on the Cross, Christ manifests the mutual self-surrendering love of Father and Son, united by the bond of the Spirit (a bond that is self-surrendering love) “who draws men into the divine fullness of both [Father and Son] that is prodigally squandered on the world.” 59 The Eucharist, the charisms and vocations of the members of Christ's Body, and the catholic “we” are all manifestations of our incorporation into the catholic fullness (infinite self-surrendering love) of the Father in the Son through the Spirit. The Church shares in the self-surrendering mission of Christ for the sake of the world. Along these lines, Balthasar states, “The reiterated ‘all’ at the end of Saint Matthew's Gospel shows that Christ's catholicity is opened up, in the catholicity of his Church, to a future catholicity of the world.” 60
For Balthasar, the Petrine office is not an affront to Christ's sharing of his catholicity with the Church. On the contrary, Balthasar's ecclesiology involves a “constellation around Christ within which the Petrine constitutes one element.” 61 As we have seen, he argues that the heart of the Church is the catholicity of self-surrendering love, the fullness of Christ's self-surrender to the Father in the Spirit, and thus the self-surrendering love of the Trinity into whose life we are drawn as the Bride. An element of this self-surrendering love, as manifested in the structure of the Church, is the Petrine office. Balthasar understands the Petrine office—precisely as an office of authority—to be modeled upon the cross, due to the ever-humiliating difficulty of the papal task. 62 In combination with other elements in the Church, the Petrine office serves the unity of the Church, grounded in the eschatological gospel of self-surrendering love. 63
Avery Dulles, S.J.
Avery Dulles points out that around the time of the Council, Karl Rahner rejoiced that “the era of Eurocentrism is coming to an end and… Catholicism is at length becoming, for the first time in history, a de facto planetary Church.” 64 Today, says Dulles in 1985, “catholicity” is associated with openness, while Catholicism itself is associated with a narrow dogmatism. In defense of dogma and structure, Dulles aims to reconnect “catholicity” and “Catholicism.” To be “catholic” is not to be open to anything and everything, but rather is to be open to the fullness of God's gifts in Christ, a fullness that includes the Church's teachings, sacraments, and offices. These latter entities are the way in which Christ wills for us to know and commune with him intimately. They enable us to receive “the plenitude of divine life” that is in Christ and the Holy Spirit. 65
Dulles's historical survey of the concept of catholicity indicates that, following Augustine, medieval theologians such as Aquinas associated catholicity primarily with geographical breadth and with the presence in the Church of people from all social ranks. Post-Tridentine Catholic theologians did the same, up until the Tübingen School and the retrieval of the Greek Fathers. Vatican II moved in an ecumenical direction, affirming in paragraph seventeen of Unitatis Redintegratio that the heritage of the Orthodox Churches belongs to full catholicity. Vatican II also recognized that, while the Catholic Church possesses catholicity, it does not do so in a perfect or complete way: there is plenty of room for growth, not only through an increase in the unity and devotion of Catholics, but also through the increase within the Church of the unity of Christians and through the evangelization of non-Christian peoples.
Dulles privileges the divine fullness and differentiated unity in his definition of catholicity. 66 Christ is “catholic” because he possesses the divine fullness as the Incarnate Lord. Christ is also “catholic” because he is the head of all Christians across time and space, and because of his primacy over all creatures. Dulles observes that the Church participates in Christ's catholicity as his Body, since Christ is present in his Body. Dulles turns also to the image of the Church as Christ's Bride. He states, “Like the marriage bond, the union between Christ and the Church is indissoluble. Thanks to his sanctifying action, the Church has a definitive share in his fullness of life.” 67 The Church's catholicity is never her own as such, but is always a participation in Christ's catholicity, which is fuller than the Church's. 68 Dulles adds that the communication of Christ's catholicity (the fullness of divine love) to the Church is the work of the Holy Spirit, who unites us to Christ. The Trinity is the ultimate source of catholicity.
Dulles describes the “quantitative” measure of catholicity as well. He argues that Jesus repeatedly makes clear in the Gospels that he intends to draw in all nations. Dulles underlines Paul's teachings about the breaking down of the wall of separation between Jews and Gentiles. He points out that the early Christians were committed to spreading the Gospel far and wide. The Church must be missionary, and therefore geographical breadth will be a measure of catholicity. Dulles urges that true catholicity allows for significant diversity across different cultures, and he suggests that “reconciled diversity” may provide a basis for ecumenical movement toward unity. 69 Catholicity means that the Church stands at the service of all human beings; the Church is not a club for a spiritual elite, but rather is an instrument through which God cares for the whole of humanity. 70 Dulles states, “Loving every human being in Christ, the Church labours for all, prays for all, suffers for all. Only thus can it remain Catholic.” 71 The catholicity of the Church, Dulles adds, also includes the blessed in heaven, who pray for and with the Church on earth.
Dulles examines catholicity across time, arguing that “continuity in the temporal dimension corresponds to communion in the spatial.” 72 In his view, the Church began with Abel. Dulles notes that Vatican II has retrieved this perspective, which had become less prominent due to the post-Tridentine emphasis on the Church as a structured institution. He adds that the final, consummated Church will have no need of structures or sacraments, because God will be all in all. But this does not mean that the consummated Kingdom will replace the Church, as though the institutional Church were a mere instrument. As Dulles says, both Catholics and Orthodox insist that the present-day Church truly possesses the marks of unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity that will be perfected in the consummated Church. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church possesses these marks in an imperfect way, given that the Church is presently still being built up into Christ by the Spirit. 73 But the catholic Bride is already here: “The catholic fullness or plērōma of Christ's living presence really inheres in the Church. Christ has suffered and has by the shedding of his blood gained for himself his beloved Bride.” 74 Christ's Bride is “catholic” through its sacramental structures, including baptism, the Eucharist, and holy orders (preeminently the episcopacy, and thus the papacy as well).
Dulles envisions four dimensions of catholicity: height (the Triune God's fullness), depth (the filling of all things by Christ), breadth (enabling the Church to be a worldwide institution), and length (continuity across the centuries). These dimensions are sacramentally sustained in the Catholic Church. Believers receive the Word of God through the mediation of the Church. Dulles notes that whereas Protestants emphasize the word and faith, Catholics emphasize the sacraments; but in the end word and sacrament are inseparable. The Scriptures are not independent of the Church that, in Christ and by the Spirit, unites the faithful through baptism and the Eucharist. The Eucharist has an eschatological and cosmic dimension that make it a “catholic” sacrament, a sacrament of unity and charity. In celebrating the Eucharist, each local church in communion with the whole Church is “catholic.” The Church was united under the leadership of the apostles, and the successors of the apostles serve that purpose now. Christ acts through these ordained leaders as his authorized witnesses in each generation. Apostolic succession (holy orders) grounds not only the ministry of the sacraments (preeminently the Eucharist), but also the proclamation of the word.
With regard to papal primacy, Dulles offers a brief historical sketch suggesting that in the first millennium it was associated with witness and apostolicity, while in the second millennium it was associated with power and unity. Dulles observes that Vatican II connects papal primacy with service and catholicity—but not with “catholicity” understood in terms of power. Dulles argues that we should make a distinction between “papalism,” which has sometimes afflicted the Catholic Church, and papacy as such. 75 Our participation in the fullness of Christ is served by papal primacy, which, although it cannot prevent all divisions (and may indeed foment some), nevertheless greatly assists in the operational reality of a global Church that is constantly threatening to break apart for various reasons.
Dulles defends “the collegial understanding of the papacy, which emerges from Vatican II.” 76 As he suggests, if the pope (John Paul II) can come from Krakow, it is not exactly fair to describe the Catholic Church as “Rome.” The pope does not simply represent “Rome,” and the doctrines of the Catholic Church are not simply those of “Rome”—indeed, very few doctrines of the Catholic Church originated in Rome. If there were no collegial head among the bishops, this absence would not serve participation in catholic fullness, given the fallen human tendency toward fragmentation. Nor does the existence of the papacy entail uniformity among the local churches around the world; the evidence of history and of the present day shows the falsity of that view. 77 In Dulles's view, the papacy serves diversity-in-unity and thereby serves catholicity, which values diversity. Catholicity consists in fullness and universality, and therefore is necessarily broad. 78
Dulles notes that some time periods have seen more appreciation for ecumenical convergence than have other time periods. He identifies the period 1840–1920 as among the low points in Catholic-Protestant relations, while deeming that things have improved since that time. He affirms, “The [Catholic] Church can certainly profit from external criticism, whether from friendly or from hostile sources.” 79 He rejects “exorbitant claims” regarding “the institutional Church and its hierarchical leadership,” and he bemoans the fact that “in certain periods the Church has been seen as a quasi-incarnation of the divine.” 80 Fortunately, he says, there have been Catholics in every age who have been bold enough to check “institutionalism” by castigating all too accurately “the sins and blindness of popes and bishops.” 81 Reform and discontinuity of certain kinds will be needed in order to renew and energize the Church. Catholics must hold fast to the Word of God and give Scripture its central and authoritative place, just as Vatican II repeatedly insisted. The act of faith is an assent to Christ, not to the Church, even while mediated by the Church.
For Dulles, Christians can learn from each other in ecumenical exchange. Vatican II displayed a Catholic willingness to learn from Protestant concerns without renouncing the Church's “full sacramental, hierarchical, and dogmatic structures.” 82 The Catholic Church possesses catholicity as Christ's Bride, sharing in his fullness, but this does not mean that the Catholic Church embodies catholicity perfectly. On the contrary, both Orthodox and Protestants can help the Catholic Church by their example and by their criticisms to live up to catholicity. Even if, in the Catholic and Orthodox view, Protestant communions do not possess catholic fullness (since they have renounced some of the ways in which Christ wills for his fullness to be participated in the Spirit), they possess many catholic elements, including the word of God, baptism, numerous creedal affirmations, and so on. Indeed, the Catholic view of Protestantism vis-à-vis catholicity is much like Collins and Walls’ view that Catholics possess a part of catholicity but lack other parts. The difference is that Catholics (like Orthodox) consider that there exists a visible, institutional Church that truly is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, even though that Church is still imperfect and can increase in the fullness of its participation in Christ's fullness.
Conclusion
At the end of our survey, what common ground can be found? Or must we simply choose between asking Catholics (and Orthodox) to adopt a Protestant ecclesiology and a Protestant account of catholicity, on the one hand, and asking Protestants (and Orthodox) to adopt a Catholic account of catholicity, on the other?
As we have seen, Catholics hold that Protestants are not catholic because they are not in communion with Rome and are not possessed of certain doctrines, sacraments, and offices that pertain to the way in which Christ, through the Spirit, gives himself to his Church. In turn, Protestants argue that (Roman) Catholicism lacks catholicity because it makes communion with Rome a fundamental mark of full catholicity—and because Catholicism teaches a number of false doctrines.
Biblically speaking, the disputed question is what has happened to the Church to which Jesus refers in the Gospel of Matthew when he says, “on this rock I will build my Church” (Mt. 16:18) and also when he commands, “tell it to the Church; and if he refuses to listen even to the Church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Mt. 18:17). This is the same visible, institutional Church about which Acts 5:11 says, “And great fear came upon the whole Church.” At first, the whole Church is centered in Jerusalem. It then spreads out due to “a great persecution… against the Church in Jerusalem,” which led the first Christians (except for the apostles) to scatter “throughout the region of Judea and Samaria” (Acts 8:1). Although Paul writes letters to various churches around the Mediterranean, he does not relinquish the notion of a universal visible Church. On the contrary, he insists that the Church is one, “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” (1 Cor. 12:13). When he says that “Christ is the head of the Church” (Eph. 5:23), he means the whole Church—the visible, institutional Church that he knows. Paul invites us “to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:18–19). God “has made him [Christ] the head over all things for the Church, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:22–23).
From the Catholic perspective, the Petrine office—grounded in Peter's leadership among the apostles and in Christ's words to Peter—is a biblical datum about the Church founded by Christ. The Catholic Church in communion with the bishop of Rome possesses the mark of catholicity because this pertains to how Christ wills for us to share in his fullness. A sign of catholicity is that the Catholic Church can still meet in Council, as did the Jerusalem Church in Acts.
Yet, as Yves Congar says, “The Scriptures do not surrender their meaning by the bare text; they surrender it to a mind that is living, and living in the conditions of the Covenant. This mind, or living subject, is… the Church.” 83 Granting Congar's point, the problem is that one of the most contested meanings of Scripture is where the Church today is. Christians are not likely soon to cease to be divided about where and how to find the catholicity of Christ and the Trinity in the Church. Inevitably, Wesleyan, Reformed, and Anglican Christians will feel closer to one another in certain ways than they do to Catholics. This is clear when Collins and Walls argue, for instance, that the Catechism (in defining the unity of the Church) has shifted attention “from Christ, in whom all union rightly subsists, to a particular theological tradition, the Roman church.” 84 To focus attention upon “the Roman church” rather than the incarnate Lord would be a sin indeed! Catholics will feel similarly that Protestants have distorted or discarded important aspects of how Christ makes himself present. Catholics believe, for instance, that the Eucharist builds the Church and that the Eucharist is necessarily consecrated by recipients of the sacrament of holy orders in accordance with apostolic succession.
How then might such painful and intractable divisions be addressed, especially in situations where Protestants or Catholics do not find one another's ecclesiology well represented in the other's understanding of the catholicity of the Church? In light of the above discussion, I suggest three ways forward.
First, Catholics and Protestants (and Orthodox) agree that the perfection of catholicity and unity is an eschatological reality that awaits the consummation of all things. Without doubt, this perfection will be vastly greater than that which we see in any ecclesial body that we now know. Since this is so, no Christian community can afford to ignore or dismiss other Christian communities, since no Christian community perfectly expresses catholicity and we all have much to learn.
Second, Catholics and Protestants (and Orthodox) may together appreciate the “qualitative” dimension of catholicity. Christ is catholic; the Triune God is catholic. This catholicity is the divine fullness of wisdom and self-surrendering love, in utter humility. The ecclesial mark of catholicity, therefore, involves being turned toward the other in Christ-like love. For this reason, the fact that Catholics and Protestants (and Orthodox) now recognize each other as fellow Christians is a wonderful sign. Deepening this mutual recognition will not involve requiring Catholics to adopt a Protestant ecclesiology. Nor will it mean requiring Protestants to think that the papacy and the seven sacraments enhance (rather than detract from) the catholic fullness of the Church's participation in Christ. Instead the deepening that I have in view will proceed from Catholics and Protestants together directing ourselves Godward, seeking always to participate more fully in the catholicity of Christ and the Trinity.
Third, Catholics and Protestants can therefore meet each other as equals, indeed as partners, in a real quest to partake in the catholicity of Christ and the Trinity, without denying that Christ has indeed given this catholicity to the Church. Pouring forth his Spirit, Christ will encounter us in his catholic fullness. He will do so, surely, through the Scriptures and through the Eucharist; through those who are poor and through our own existential poverty; through “the mystics, saints, and scholars of the classical Christian tradition”; through the “windows, towers, vaults, naves, roses, labyrinths, altars, and façades” of the great cathedrals about which Robert Barron has written so eloquently; and through much more. 85 Protestants and Catholics can rejoice together in these encounters with Christ and can rightly hope that their fruit will be deeper ecclesial communion.
As we Catholics and Protestants strive to participate more fully in the catholicity that Christ gives to his people, we should be on the alert for aspects of catholicity that we might share with one another as friends of Christ through his Spirit. All the theologians whom I have discussed above affirm that while Catholics and Protestants are in certain important respects divided, we are in other important respects united. As Collins and Walls say, “the common ground we share is far more important than any disagreements that distinguish and even divide us,” since this common ground is “profound and far reaching.” 86 Most importantly, Catholics and Protestants today recognize that we are united by belief in Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord. Since this is so, we can encourage each other. For as Paul remarks, “What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him?” (Rom. 8:31–32).
Footnotes
Author biography
Matthew Levering holds the James N. Jr. and Mary D. Perry Chair of Theology at Mundelein Seminary. The author of over thirty books, he is currently at work on a 9-volume quasi-dogmatics, the fifth volume of which was recently published (Engaging the Doctrine of Israel: A Christian Israelology in Dialogue with Ongoing Judaism). He serves as the co-editor of two quarterly journals, Nova et Vetera and International Journal of Systematic Theology.