by

Clifton D. Healy

In an earlier essay, The Church Is One and Visible, I traced the New Testament teaching on the fact of the visible unity of the Church Christ founded, and what implications that had for me as a Protestant. Subsequently, I began to understand further some of the implications related to the fact of the Church’s being Christ’s Body. This present essay is the result of that further reflection. Though this present essay can be considered on its own terms, it should be read as a further development of my thinking on the Church in general.

In the conservative Stone-Campbell church world in which I have lived, a lot of time and energy used to be expended determining both the boundaries of right belief and who legitimately falls within those boundaries. Positions, ostensibly taken from Scripture, were staked out on issues such as the inerrancy of Scripture, the necessity of immersion, the utilization of instruments in worship, and so forth. This is not so much the case today as the primary ministry focus of many evangelical churches, and the Stone-Campbell churches with them, has moved from concerns of right doctrine to the therapeutic concerns of emotional and spiritual wellness. At one time, it might be argued, the concern of many churchgoers had to do with the particular congregation’s doctrinal stance. Though doctrine is certainly still a concern in the evangelical world (and especially the Stone-Campbell churches), doctrine lags behind the more therapeutic concerns of present-day churchgoers. Many churches today minister to their parishioners via personal, marriage and family counseling and various seminars, tapes and books in the self-help genre: management of money, overcoming depression and addiction, achieving a satisfying sex life, parenting, career counseling, and so forth.

While one is sometimes struck by the shallowness of much that falls under these ministries, one may also take them as a significant sign of a growing and important awareness: we as persons are meant for the sort of wholeness that can be found only in God. This wholeness, however, is not that sort of wholeness one gleans from the modern trends and seminars. Rather, this wholeness is the human destiny of participation in the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). That is to say, it is less about comfort and more about eschatological ontology. More to the point, due to humanity’s fallen nature, this wholeness is gained at the cost of much discomfort. One is not trying to achieve happiness or spiritual contentment. One is trying to achieve theosis, the conformation of our humanity in the image and likeness of God.

While at first glance this appears to have little if anything to do with the Church, as I will show, the Church is the indispensable means and place by and in which humans may find the union with God for which Jesus prayed in John 17.

Talk of theosis brings up some specters for conservative evangelical Christians. This Greek word is often translated as "divinization." The way St Athanasius described it in the fourth century has many evangelicals wary of some sort of Mormonism or New Age heresy: "God became man that man might become god." Surely, taken out of context, such a bold claim is subject to much misunderstanding.

However, that to which St Athansius was referring is thoroughly biblical. The most clear starting point is the passage I noted above, 2 Peter 1:3-4 (ESV; here and throughout). The text reads:

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

The word "partakers" in this text is one which shares the same root as koinonia, fellowship. This is a participation, a sharing, of God’s nature. This is not some sort of diminution of personhood in a sort of nirvana of non-being. Rather, for participation to occur, there must be distinct persons involved. But the distinction is not prohibitive of participation.

What Peter refers to in his epistle is that for which Jesus himself prayed:

"I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me." (John 17:20-23)

The unity for which Jesus prayed is clearly like that unity which the Trinity exhibits, in which the distinction of persons is not swallowed up in the union of essence, nor the unity of essence nullified by the distinction of persons. Thus, it is a union with God which retains the distinction of personhood while making possible the participation in God’s nature which we have seen in Peter’s epistle.

But what do we mean by this participation in the divine nature? What would such participation look like? How is it distinguished from such doctrines of heretical sects as the Mormons and the New Age neo-Buddhist negation of the person? One clue is what Paul notes in his letter to the Romans. He writes that, "For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers" (Romans 8:29). In other words, whatever our participation entails, it will be a Christlikeness. From this we can infer certain things. Our participation will be an incarnational participation. That is to say, it will not merely be some intellectual assent or spiritual/non-bodily maturation. It will involve us as whole beings, body and spirit. As Paul writes elsewhere, "The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven" (1 Cor. 15:47-49).

Our participation will also involve a process of growth. Although we become new creatures in Christ, as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come," this is an instance of "already-and-not-yet," of an eschatological reality. We have this treasure, as it were, in jars of clay. But this progress in Christ is just that, progress. Earlier in the same epistle Paul writes, "And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit" (3:18). Notice the Trinitarian implications here. God the Father accomplishes our salvation in the person and work of God the Son, through the progress in glory which comes from God the Spirit.

But how does the Spirit accomplish this progressive participation in the divine nature in us? Strangely enough (to us Protestants), we find a partial, though fundamental, answer in the passage in Paul’s first Corinthian correspondence where he discusses the reality of our participation in the Lord’s Supper. He writes, "The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel: are not those who eat the sacrifices participants in the altar?" (1 Corinthians 10:16-18). Paul here is discussing the Eucharist in the context of idols. While Christians should feel free to purchase in the market place meat that had been sacrificed to idols, though within certain limits--after all, idols are nothing--by the same token, Christians could not participate in services to idols, which entailed the consuming of food offered to idols, since that betokened a participation with demons. In short, our participation in the divine nature, as Paul very clearly indicates here, takes place most fully in our participation in the Eucharist, in which the bread and wine become, in a mystery, the body and blood of Christ (cf. what Paul says in chapter 11).

But there are two words here for participation, partaking, and participants. Once again, we see words from the koinos root: koinonos and koinonia. There is another word, as well, metecho, another word for participation. These words for sharing and participation have a broad range of meaning, from sharing possessions to being partners. But in the Corinthians context, the point of sharing, of participation, is the Lord’s Supper, or Eucharist. Paul indicates the the cup is a participation in the blood of Christ, the bread a participation in the body of Christ. In the partaking of the one bread, a "many" becomes one. By sharing in the body of Christ, in the bread, the Body of Christ is constituted. By partaking of the elements, we partake of Christ, and of one another as the Body of Christ.

Many Protestants find this unacceptable on literal terms. But though Paul may indeed be speaking "metaphorically" he is nonetheless indicating an actual reality. I need not here argue for the traditional understanding of the Eucharist--it is not my purpose, and 1 Corinthians 11 provides ample clarity--but merely wish to say that there is more here than just the metaphor; which, after all, is the point of the metaphor. Whatever we may want to say about the elements of bread and wine, Paul is clearly intending to communicate that in this action of the observance of the Eucharist, we participate in Christ and by our participation become, in kind, that in which we participate. By partaking in the bread, which is the Body of Christ, we become the Body of Christ.

But we must be absolutely clear, as Paul is in 1 Corinthians 10, that this participation is not merely an individual participation. That is to say, though we as persons partake and participate, our "being" as Christians is not an individual being. An excellent point to begin our exploration of this is Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. He writes:

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple. (1 Corinthians 3.10-17; emphasis added).

I have italicized those second person pronouns which are plural to more clearly indicate what Paul is talking about. Who is it that is God’s temple? In whom does the Spirit dwell? In the plural you recipients of Paul’s letter. That is to say, the Corinthian church, and more broadly, the Church, is God’s temple, and in the Church the Spirit dwells.

Unfortunately, this is not easily seen in our modern English translations. We read the word "you" and are conditioned by our culture to think in personal instead of corporate terms. Regrettably, this common misunderstanding in 21st century American Christianity, is compounded by a glaring inadequacy of present-day English usage: the similarity of the singular and plural forms of the second person pronoun, you. Although the English utilized in the King James Version of the Scriptures is able to distinguish the singular you from the plural ye, even the seventeenth century colloquial usage was dropping the ye for the all-purpose you. So when Americans read English translations and come across the word "you," context alone will not alert them to its plural nature. Only a footnote or knowledge of the original Greek of the New Testament will assist one here.

But you is more frequently plural than singular. This is consistently the case throughout the New Testament, but especially in the epistles. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is an especially good place to begin. In the first chapter he writes, "And he [God the Father] put all things under his [God the Son’s] feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all" (vv. 22-23; emphasis added). The Church is Christ’s Body, we see this throughout the New Testament. But notice closely what Paul is saying here: the Church is the fullness of Christ. This is echoed in chapter four of the same epistle when Paul writes of our growth in Christ, "until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (v. 13; emphasis added). Paul had exhorts the Ephesian Christians in the third chapter that they might come "to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God" (v. 19; emphasis added). Again, in his letter to the Colossians, Paul writes, "in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority" (Col. 2:9-10; emphasis added).

What is the point of all this? The promises of God’s salvation, mercy and grace addressed to "you" in the epistles, I frequently took as being of a personal nature. I read the passages noted above as saying that it was in me the fullness of Christ. The reality is that it is in the Church that the fullness of Christ, who is full deity, dwells. If it is my destiny as a Christian to participate in the divine nature, then my participation can only come through my being a member of the Body of Christ, in whom the fullness of Christ dwells. My participation in that reality is sure only to the degree that I am a member of Christ’s Body, the Church.

In short, my being as a Christian is predicated on my being a member of the Body of Christ. I do not become saved and then become a member of Christ’s Body. I am saved to the degree that I become and remain a member of Christ’s Body, the Church. As John D. Zizioulas writes in his book, Being as Communion,

In the first place, ecclesial being is bound to the very being of God. From the fact that a human being is a member of the Church, he becomes an "image of God," he exists as God Himself exists, he takes on God’s "way of being." This way of being is not a moral attainment, something that man accomplishes. It is a way of relationship with the world, with other people and with God, an event of communion, and that is why it cannot be realized as the achievement of an individual, but only as an ecclesial fact. (15)

It should be remembered, of course, that just as the distinction of persons in the Trinity is not erased by their sharing of one essence, so, too, Christians, in their ecclesial being as persons, are not nameless amalgamations to a corporate whole. Still, American Protestantism, in my experience, has so dissociated salvation from its corporate foundation in the Body of Christ, that for many the so-called "me and Jesus" syndrome is the only reality, though a false one.

But while much of modern Protestantism is coming to some awareness of ecclesial being--in its truncated forms of cell groups and identity- or need-based "communities"--even this is predicated on the therapeutic constructs alluded to above. In the end, community is for many Protestants based on persons, or, more technically on hypostasized needs, and is not based, as it is in Scripture, on the full deity of Christ in his fullness in the Church. This is a radically dangerous mistake. For in the end it leads to a false understanding of salvation.

For several months now, the question of the Church has occupied my thinking. More than just a question of local membership, I have wanted to understand what, or rather, who, the Church is. If the most important question a person must answer is "What think ye of the Christ?", the second most important question one must answer is, "What think ye of the Body of Christ?" Having come this far, through several months of exploration and reflection, I can offer a summary of sorts, along five main points.

First of all, the starting point has to be that the Church is the Body of Christ. If the Church is the Body of Christ, then it will be an incarnate body, a visible body. The Church will be manifested visibly; it will not be some only invisible spiritual body. Only the reality of a visible Body of Christ takes seriously the implications of the Incarnation. The only other conception of the Church, that of some invisible entity, is, ultimately, Gnostic in that in such a conception it is only the intellectual and spiritual that truly matter.

Second, if the Church is the Body of Christ, it must be one. If the Church is one, then there is only one real Church. Making this claim does not limit the grace and workings of God to the embodied Church. God sends the sunshine on the good and the wicked. The Spirit moves where he will. But it is to say that one may and must say, "Here is the Church." In our present schismatic reality, this point must be strongly pressed, though it be as strongly disbelieved. If the Church is the Body of Christ, it cannot be divided, since Christ is one, and the Trinity is one. The schisms we have witnessed in history and presently are not divisions within the one, indivisible Body of Christ, but divisions away from it. However, as will be clarified momentarily, though schism away from the Church is a grave and serious matter, and the Church rightly both discerns various actions as schismatic and warns of the dangers of schism, it does not necessarily follow that the Church may judge the salvific fate of those who’ve sundered themselves from the one Body of Christ. Christ prohibits Christians from judging the salvation of others, though he likewise bids us discern truth from error, and calls us all to repentance.

Third, if the Church is the Body of Christ, then it is in and through the Church that the salvation Christ accomplishes may be realized. This is not to deny that salvation is ultimately a mystery into which humans may not fully look. But it is to say that insofar as God has revealed the way of salvation to us, it is accomplished in and through Christ alone. Since the Spirit has formed the Church to be the Body of Christ, Christ, as Head of the Church, accomplishes his saving work in and through his Body. If salvation will be accomplished outside of the Church, this we do not know. What we do know is that is must be through Jesus, for there is no other name under heaven, given to us humans, by which we must be saved.

Fourth, since Jesus is the incarnate God, since the Church has embodied existence, then this salvation which Christ works in his body, must be a whole salvation which involves the created world, especially the human experience. Thus, by the explicit teaching of Scriptures, our participation in the divine nature, our putting on of Christ, is not merely some ethical, moral or spiritual reality, though it is these things in part. Rather, our participation in Christ involves, through the reality of the bodily Resurrection, the transfigured elements of bread and wine, the holy oil of anointing, the water blessed in his name, the iconic visual representations of the incarnate Word and his saints, the union of man and woman, and the many varieties of gifts the Spirit bestows. Salvation is not an intellectual or disembodied reality, but encompasses all of human and created existence.

Fifth, if the Church is the Body of Christ and one, then it must be and proclaim the truth of Christ. That is to say, the genuineness of any group’s claim to be the Church (or a part of the Church) rests significantly on whether or not it proclaims the truth of Christ, for Christ himself is the Truth, and departure from truth is a departure from Christ. Christ promised to lead the apostles, and the Church, into all truth. Part of that revelation, by Paul’s own account, is both recorded in the documents that the Church has discerned to be the Scriptures and kept by way of the so-called "oral teachings" of the Apostles. It also, in concert with Christ’s promises, includes those dogmatic decisions of the one, visible Church on matters of faith (for example, the ecumenical Councils). Thus, any group which teaches that which is contrary to Scripture or the ecumenical teachings of the Church, or denies those Scriptures and teachings, may rightly be doubted as to the veracity of its claim to be the Church, or part of the Church. Thus, for example, anyone who or any group which would deny the biblical and conciliar understandings of the person and work of Christ may invalidate, by their own mouths, their claims to be part of the Church. This would include, in part, the denial of Jesus’ divinity and humanity, the Trinitarian understanding of God’s being, the Virgin Birth, the bodily Resurrection, the unending rule of Christ, etc.

There is certainly much more to be thought through, not the least of which is the question, "Where is this Church?" It is to this question that I must now turn.

© 2002 Clifton D. Healy

Return to What I Have Learned