The Nature of the Church

Overview

Recall questions on the four marks of the Church, unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity, Cyprian of Carthage on the Church and salvation, Luther on where the Church is found, and the challenges the marks face today.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What are the four marks of the Church?

   Model answer

   One, holy, catholic and apostolic, as confessed in the Nicene Creed. They function partly as description and partly as vocation: they state what Christians believe the Church already is by God's gift, and what it must continually become. Almost every serious argument between denominations can be framed as a disagreement about what these four words mean and where they are found.

2. 2

   What does the unity of the Church mean when Christians are visibly divided?

   Model answer

   Interpretations differ. Catholics and Orthodox tend to locate unity in visible communion with a particular structure of bishops and sacraments, so division means some bodies are separated from the one Church. Many Protestants argue that the true Church is a spiritual reality of all genuine believers, so denominational division is a wound but not a contradiction. The ecumenical movement assumes unity is both a gift and a task not yet fulfilled.

3. 3

   In what sense can a Church of sinners be called holy?

   Model answer

   Christians generally answer that holiness is not a claim about the moral average of the membership but about the Church being set apart and made holy by God's action in Christ. The Church is sometimes described as at once holy and in need of purification. Scandals, abuse and complicity in injustice make this mark the hardest to sustain in public argument, and churches have increasingly had to distinguish confessing holiness from claiming innocence.

4. 4

   What does catholicity mean, and how is it wider than one denomination?

   Model answer

   The word means whole or universal. It claims that the Church holds the entire faith, not a regional selection of it, and is for everyone, in every culture and age. Roman Catholics identify this most fully with communion with the see of Rome, while Anglicans, Orthodox and others use the word for the Church's wholeness and continuity rather than for any single institution. It also supports inculturation, since a genuinely universal Church cannot be tied to one culture's forms.

5. 5

   Explain apostolicity and the dispute over how it is preserved.

   Model answer

   Apostolicity means the Church is founded on the apostles and continues their teaching and mission. Catholic and Orthodox tradition ties this to apostolic succession, an unbroken laying on of hands from the apostles through the bishops, which guarantees valid ordination and sacraments. Most Reformation churches argue that fidelity to apostolic teaching matters more than the historical chain, and that a succession of doctrine can be broken even where the succession of hands is intact.

6. 6

   Outline Cyprian of Carthage's teaching on the Church and salvation.

   Model answer

   Cyprian argued that the Church is one and cannot be divided, and that whoever separates from it separates from Christ. Outside the Church he held there is no salvation, and he described the Church as mother to those who have God as Father. Unity for him was concretely visible in the bishop and in communion between bishops. He drew the practical conclusion that baptism performed outside that communion was no baptism at all, a position later Western practice did not follow.

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