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CHAPTER 5
CHURCH1
In the previous chapter I have considered the person of Christ, his biographic life (primarily for him), and what that same biographic life was with respect to the founding of Christianity. I considered this founding of Christianity to be in numerical identity with his life because that founding consisted, in the first place, in making Christians, and not simply instituting some norms and disciplines. In the second place, in making them by precisely repeating in identity his own life, above all his passion, crucifixion, death and resurrection. And in third place, doing this in a permanent way, i.e., making that some Christians make others Christian. The subject of the founding of Christianity leads us to a different point from what we have considered up to now. What is all this about some making others?
When I studied religions in another work2, I insisted that every religion, as the molding of a religation, has two great parts. On the one hand, it has a certain idea of God. In the case of Christianity this idea is precisely the idea of the Trinitarian God, as I have shown. And on the other hand, it has a vision of the world on three points. In the first place, has a vision of the world resting on God as the fundament and origin of all things. In the case of Christianity we saw that actually it was the case of projection ad extra of the very Trinitarian characteristic of God, if you will in two aspects, in a general one, which creation is, and consisted in the finite way of being God. And creation culminates in a second aspect, the personal incorporation of the reality of God himself to creation, which is the person of Christ. But besides this fundament and origin of all things in God there is, in second place, the unity of all believers in that religion. And this is what in a generic way (I will have to explain what the content of this term is) we call ekklesía. Finally, in the third place every religion has some ideas about the ultimate destiny of all men, an eschatology. These are the three ingredients of every religion.
We have seen in the previous pages (and at some length) what the case is with respect to God insofar as creator, fundament of all things, and incarnated among them through Jesus Christ. Indeed, this reduces to only one concept, which will have to be making its somewhat monotonous appearance in this chapter, the deiformity. From the creation of the most elemental matter to the incarnation of Christ there are different degrees, and different forms (essentially different with respect to Christ) of deiformity. Now we directly face the problem of some in reference to others, an ecclesiology, and an eschatology. I shall undertake this problem in a much more succinct manner than the way I dedicated to the other point. Precisely by the characteristic of Christianity, which {425} consists in Christ making Christians out of men, and those to continue by making others Christian, a great part (indeed the essential) of what the ekklesía is has been mentioned already in the previous chapter. Nevertheless, we must now address these problems.
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§ 1
WHAT IS THE CHURCH?
There is a first problem we must at least recall. What is the original and radical fundament for what we call “the turning of some to others”? And in second place, in what does the very characteristic of some turning to others consist?
A) What is the fundamental basis for the turning itself of some to others? Obviously, it is the case of a certain kind of unity. Some continue to make others Christian, and therefore, men, inasmuch as they form part of this movement of Christianization and deiformation, constitute in some way a certain unity we must define now. This goes back to Christ himself; it will be sufficient to recall the passages where Christ says, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned” (Mk 16:15-16). Or also the phrase with which after the institution of the Eucharist, at the Last Supper, instituted the sacrament of order in his apostles saying, “Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Cor 11:24-25; Lk 22:19). Consequently, above all, the origin and fundament of the unity for Christians to make Christians out of others is formally constituted by sacramentality. I understand by sacrament, in the first place, a personal doing by Christ. In the second place, a doing in which the same thing is done numerically as Christ did his life. And in third place, something that Christ makes that it be done permanently. Precisely that permanence is provided {427} in the command to baptize, and in the command to make the consecration of the bread in remembrance of him.
Consequently, everything that must be said about the Church is essentially, fundamentally, and radically resting on the idea of sacramentality. Because of this it is now usual, above all in present day theology, to say that the Church is the radical sacrament3. But that seems to me to be absolutely false. The radical sacrament is Christ who is subsisting sacrament. And the Church is radical sacrament inasmuch as the life of the Church (at least in the idea) is the same life of Christ. The sacraments are identically the actions of the very life of Christ, and therefore, the Church, insofar as sacramental, and the depository of the sacraments does nothing but constitute the very life of Christ. And in the measure this is so there is Church. The rest are external considerations to the matter.
The Church, certainly, is the life of Christ as present. But then, how is that presence given? This is essential to the issue. And precisely because there is no dissociation between the formal institution of the Church and what the life of Christ was it is necessary to recall what his personal life was. The personal life of Christ was the constitution of a theandric I, which expresses and refluxes back at the same time on the theandric characteristic of his substantive reality. This reflux is that, which in the case of all men I have called intimacy. In Christ it was an ultimate and radical intimacy in which Christ lived through identity (of nature, using the Chalcedonian language) with the Father. In an intimacy in which he had the lived truth of his own reality, and of his relationship with the Father, the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit. Hence, the sacramentality of the Church, the fact that the Church is nothing but the very life of Christ, means {428} that she constitutes purely and simply the effusion of the Spirit of Truth in which the intimacy of Christ consists. This effusion of the Spirit of Truth is constitutive of the Church, and in addition (as I shall explain immediately) is dynamic. And precisely that effusion of the Spirit of Truth is what constitutes the feast of Pentecost.
Pentecost is one of the three most important feasts of ancient Israel together with Passover and Tabernacles. It is one of the feasts in which Israel presents itself to Yahweh at a chosen and particular place who makes his name to dwell there. In Christianity this effusion of the Spirit of Truth constituted (according to the description of St. Luke, who in all probability is the writer of the Acts of the Apostles) an act accompanied by a great theophany, there is a great wind, tongues of fire, etc. (cf. Acts 2:1-13). This is more or less a remembrance of the literary style of the theophanies in the Old Testament. The wind is the great symbol in the account of creation of the Spirit of ‘Elohim (cf. Gn 1:2). The tongues of fire contain allusions to Isaiah (cf. Is 6:6-7), and to a passage of the prophet Joel (cf. Jl 2:27-3:3), etc. It is the case of a literary style proper to theophanies, and from this point of view, is more or less a haggadic Midrash. The fact itself is a different matter. Here what is being addressed, beyond all of the allusions to the Old Testament theophanies, is the effusion of the very intimacy of Christ in the Holy Spirit, who is precisely the Spirit of Truth. And that this Spirit is going to constitute from this moment on, the new creation which it had been already constituting from old in the whole of humanity, the Church. This is the reason for the words of Christ, “I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world” (Mt 28:20). It is the same thing to say that Christ is present than to say his Spirit is there because the Spirit is nothing but the emission and effusion {429} of the Spirit of Truth in which the intimacy of Christ consists.
From this it is clear that the effusion of Pentecost is, in the first place, the culmination of Passover. Certainly, if the Passover is the resurrection of Christ, and here what we are given is precisely the Spirit of Christ it definitely means that the effusion of the Holy Spirit is in some way the last act of the life of Christ. If the first was everything that took him to the Cross, and the second was the resurrection, the third is the effusion of the intimacy of his Spirit. It is the culmination of the Passover of resurrection. In the second place, the effusion of Pentecost is the constitution of the unity by virtue of which some Christians make others Christian in this assisting presence of the Holy Spirit, which is nothing but the Spirit of the intimacy of Christ. And in third place, the effusion of Pentecost is not only something constitutive, but as I mentioned, is a dynamic presence because it consists precisely in conferring the mission that Christians continue making others Christian with all the appropriate universality required. It is a universality, which is being realized historically, first in Jerusalem afterwards in Antioch, and later in Rome. And I use these terms, not from the point of view of sees of St. Peter, but as regions for Christianization. Because St. Peter, underneath his being Pope, was evidently an Apostle and a Christian. No matter how much a Pope is a Pope, he would never be one if first he were not a Christian.
B) This well established, we now ask, if this is the origin and fundament of the Church, in what does the very internal characteristic of this Church consist? Certainly (I have just indicated it) the Church is a unity. Some Christians continue to make others Christian and what all are making of each other is precisely to be Christians. Then, to ask what is the characteristic of the {430} Church is the same as asking what is the characteristic of this unity. Is the same as asking about the characteristic of this hén (one), that Christ asked of the Father in his priestly prayer shortly before leaving for Gethsemane, “so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us” (Jn 17:21). In what does this unity consist? From my point of view, this unity is expressed in three concepts, each one founded on the previous one.
1) While addressing religions I was saying that every religion involves an ecclesiology. But let us understand that here ekklesía does not mean an ecclesiastic community. There are many religions that have no ecclesiastic community. The point is to find out what it might mean when we employ that term, for example, to refer to all the inhabitants of Athens going to offer to Pallas Athena their acts of devotion. It simply means that they participate in the same faith, in the same beliefs, and in the same activity of the divinity. But they do not constitute a collective community.
The first concept that from my point of view constitutes that, which we call the hén, the one in which the Church consists, is precisely what I have just mentioned. And in this sense Christianity shares with all those religions, that it is a sameness. Christians have a sameness. The Epistle to the Ephesians says it graphically with a sharp phrase, “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph 4:5). Christians have only one Lord, Christ; only one faith, which is the surrender to the person of Christ; and only one baptism, which is only one initiation in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. It is the case, therefore, that all Christians have the same faith, the same Lord, the same reference to Christ, and the same baptism. Not only have “sameness” in that initiation to the Christian life by reason of baptism. St. Paul insists on a deeper dimension, which refers to the Eucharist, “The cup of blessing that we bless, {431} is it not a communion in the blood of Christ? And the bread that we break, is it not a communion in the body of Christ? Because we, though many (the Greek text says hóti, many) are one bread, and one body, for we all partake of one bread” (1 Cor 10:16-17). Here it is the case of a sameness not only of initiation, but a sameness of fullness.
Men are, first and above all, by virtue of their living and vital inscription and admission into Christianity, in which some make others Christian, a hén, a one, because they have a dynamic sameness in and by Christ. It is not the case that simply by mere chance many individuals all have the same faith, the same baptism, the same participation of the Eucharist, and refer to the same Lord. It is the case of a dynamic unity precisely because Christians make others Christian. It is not the case of a merely quiescent and converging unity; it is an internal unity, of a life that is being transmitted from some to others. The sameness of life, which exists in all of them, is from my point of view the first characteristic of the hén, of the unity in which the Church consists.
2) However, it is necessary to enter into a deeper and more profound concept. Certainly, Christianity is a religion, and as such it is a molding of religation. This religion, by the character of Christ, and by the character of what Christ makes us when making us (that is, others like Christ), is what the religation of the Son is doing upon Earth.
Nevertheless, let us be clear that religation is a dimension essentially and constitutively personal of man, even of the most atheist of men. Religation is a dimension formally constitutive of the substantive reality of man insofar as personified. And in this radical sense all religation involves an essentially personal dimension. But, in {432} second place, this religation molds itself in religion. And this molding in religion, as I mentioned in another work4, precisely consists in the surrender of the total reality of man to that reality of God to which man reaches through his intellection as terminus and fundament of his religation. And in this personal surrender, which is at the same time the configuration of his reality through faith, and the configuration of faith by the human reality that surrenders, is what the molding of a religation into religion clearly consists. In this sense, not only is religation constitutively personal, but in addition all religion is essentially personal. Yet, there is a third moment in this molding that poses an important problem. Because we may ask, how does a religion mold itself in many men? In each one of them it is personal, no doubt about that, as I have just mentioned. However, a profound difference may occur among religions. Because religion itself might be nothing but an objective body, i.e., a type of union among men who have that same life considered from a collective and social point of view. I shall soon return to this point. Religion would constitute in a certain way, even in the presence of an ecclesial community a kind of objective body. By objective body we understand that persona may not be related to me insofar as persons, but insofar as having certain qualifications independently that these qualifications may or may not be formally theirs (constituted in their-ownness, and therefore in the person of the other). Then we would have an objective unity of religion, but purely from the point of view of an objective body.
{433} That is not the case of Christianity. The case of Christianity is completely different. It is not the case of an objective body. There is an interest to use the term “objective” to indicate that this is not a falling into the subjective arbitrariness of each man, but it is not actually the case of an objective body, but of a personal body. It is not only personal by virtue of religation or molding, but its content is intrinsically and formally personal. It is a personal body. From this follows that the hén, the one, is not only sameness, but (using a term I will immediately cancel) community.
In what does the community of Christians consist? If we only use the term community this is not a novelty that Christianity brings to history. I prescind from comparing with other extra-biblical religions, but I take the religion of Israel. Not only at the time of Exodus, where there might be all kinds of ethical reasons mixed with the idea of community, but precisely during its final portion, in the texts from Qumran at the Dead Sea. In these texts we are told that the community is a holy house for Israel, and house of perfection and truth for Israel5. Here the community has a very different characteristic from the one it might have had at the time of Moses or the prophets. And here the idea of Covenant enters much more deeply into the spirit of those that live it. However, the characteristic of community, in the case of Christianity, is radically different. In the first place, because here the unity of mankind is not founded on a Law (in the Torah), but is founded on a person, the person of Christ. And in second place, because the truth is not the value of the Law, but the faith in Christ. Now we face a question that surfaces with even greater intensity and importance, in what does it {434} consist that, which we poorly and clumsily call the community of Christians, the Church as community.
Let us take a step backwards. When I dealt with the characteristic of objective body many religions have, I briefly mentioned what the objective body was. That each person lives with others, and is affected by other persons. And to be affected by other persons with whom someone lives is what I generically called a héxis, a habitude. In this sense, society is not a thing that floats on itself, but is the habitude the members have by being members. In other words, they have in themselves the habitude determined by the others.
Up to this point the matter is quite simple. But, who are those others? Those that affect me and the way I am affected may have two very different characteristics. On the one hand, those others are persons like myself. And, certainly, the others and myself are persons because we are our own, because the things we have and the things we do, are not only things we have as properties, but we have them formally and reduplicatively as ours. I not only have some properties on my own, but I belong to myself. In other words, I consist on a his-ownness and precisely because of that I am a person. This occurs in all other persons. Therefore, if we ignore in the other persons (and in some measure in myself) that we have this his-ownness, then the result is that the héxis, the habitude, by which some persons affect others does not affect others insofar as persons, but simply insofar as others. This is just what we call a social body. A social body is radically and constitutively something depersonalized. Without arguing with sociologists what they mean by community, we have to differentiate the social community from what I am going to present next. Namely, the fact that I may allow to be affected by {435} others in my reality as mine, in my his-ownness. And to allow to be affected by what the reality of others has of its own, in their his-ownness. In that case the habitude belongs to a different order. It is not the habitude of the other insofar as other, but the habitude of another person insofar as person. And precisely then that other habitude does not constitute a community, but constitutes something much more profound, what we call a communion of persons.
From the point of view of the merely objective héxis, of the other as other, what we might call the unity of men constitutes itself into a system, and an organization. From the second point of view, the unity of men is a personal communion, which is resting essentially and formally in that, which makes possible the personal communion insofar as personal. Consequently, against everything that is being repeated quite clumsily by those who are not too interested in religious matters, and by those who being interested in religious matters (even by their profession) allow themselves to be updated by mixing with ideas that have no bearing in the matter, the Christian religious community is not primarily a social community. No sociologisms or hypersociologisms, it is a communion of persons, a personal communion.
And what is a personal communion? What is this héxis, this habitude, in which I allow to be determined as person by other persons insofar as persons? Needless to say it is a determination as person. And therefore, all of it is at stake in the dimension of what we would call the surrender of one person to another. Just as the objective body is founded on the organized system, and more or less on a certain solidarity, the personal communion is founded on the dimension of surrender. And the dimension of personal surrender of a person to another is built upon an ultimate and radical fundament, {436} which is what constitutes the very essence of that communion. In what does this fundament consist? In the case of Christianity the fundament is quite clear, it is Christ himself. Because of this the unity of Christians, the hén, is not simply a sameness of Christianity, but is definitely a personal communion in and by Christ, precisely in his life.
Now then, the life of Christ is subsisting sacrament, and this means that the personal communion of all persons in the Church is constitutively and formally a sacramental communion in the most generic sense of the term. This is what is essential in what we call the Christian community. It is not a social community. With an illustrious teacher of mine I argued many years ago on this idea that the communion of saints is the great sociological dogma of the Church. The communion of saints is not a sociological dogma; it is the supreme expression of personal communion, which is a different matter. This does not mean, of course, that this communion of persons does not have an organizational aspect. But everything it may have of organization is constitutively built upon what it has of personal communion. Anything else would be a falsification of the matter. Certainly, that aspect of organization refers back to Christ, who made Peter the fundament of his Church. Yes, but he makes him fundament taking him from the group of twelve. There is no Pope that is fundament of the Church because he is so-and-so, because he is a certain person, but first and above all because he is a member of the Church. So much so, that if he did not belong to the Church, and his faith deficient eo ipso he would cease being Pope. The reason for the supreme power in the Church is essentially of the same type than the reason for us being Christian, by belonging to a sacramental sameness in personal communion.
An organization is essential to the Church. What happens is that we are quite accustomed to hearing this organization being called with {437} a more or less appropriate term for uses more or less common, but without the necessary theologic precision, the concept of service. Obviously, St. Peter served the Apostles, but is the concept of service what constitutes the formal reason for his authority? Not at all, it is something more radical. The possibility for being a hierarchical authority in the Church, the power of orders, is received directly from Christ, and passes through Christianity. Neither the bishops are governors of the Pope, nor the Pope is a Chief of State, nor the priests are partisans of bishops. The ecclesiastic hierarchy with all its importance is founded on sacramentality, and not the reverse. Prior to making a Pope out of St. Peter, Christ conferred on him the sacrament of order.
The communion of the Christians is what, from my point of view, constitutes the formal and precise subject of the very exact expression that circulates without a proper definition in the current books, the people of God. People of God means purely, simply, and formally personal communion. Certainly, it is a common saying that the people of God is a continuation of the people of Israel. This is evident; historically there is continuity. But continuity is not the essence of history. The people of God is something different. In the Old Alliance it was just a Covenant of Yahweh with Israel, and therefore, of Israel with Yahweh. Here it is not the case of being a people of Yahweh or God, but of being a people of Christ. In other words, a people in which each of its members is another Christ, and whose unity of communion is the personal communion among them and with Christ. The people of God, understood this way, is essentially different than understood in Israel.
From my perspective, it is absolutely essential to introduce this concept of personal communion in order to understand in what measure the hierarchical organization of the Church, indispensable {438} and necessary with all its prerogatives, however, is built upon the personal communion. Not only on a vague feeling of being people of God, but rather that it is the personal communion of Christians among themselves, and of all with Christ. The unity of persons, from this point of view, does not constitute a society. It is not just purely and simply to be faithful to Yahweh, but it is precisely a personal communion with Christ as subsisting sacrament what perdures in the Church.
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1 From this point on we again follow the text of the 1971 seminar.
2 Cf. X. Zubiri, The Philosophical Problem of the History of Religions (El problema filosófico de la historia de las religiones), op. cit., pp. 98-111.
3 Cf. O. Semmelroth, Die Kirche als Ursakrament, Francfort, 1963 (3rd. ed.).
4 Cf. X. Zubiri, The Philosophical Problem of the History of Religions (El problema filosófico de la historia de las religiones), op. cit., pp. 87-94.
5 Cf. 1QS VIII, 5-6, in F. García Martínez (ed.), Textos de Qumrán, Madrid, 1992, pp. 58-59.