The pope’s recent comments regarding the status of certains churches as such has sparked reactions from disgust to, “Ok, so what?” I have no interest in either defending or attacking the pope’s remarks (see this post’s comments for statements from Metropolitan Kyrill and Timothy George), but I am interested in addressing a bit of what I have heard from some responding Protestants. Protestants who I have talked that are off-put by the latest papal remarks usually start out by commenting on the priggishness of the pope thinking only Roman Catholics are the true church and everyone else is wrong. The “pride” of the Roman See is contrasted with the seemingly humble Protestant stand that no one church is right or perfect and we therefore must include all churches as legitimate churches (provided they are not among certain Prots who exclude the R.C.C. as a legitimate church). Catholics and Orthodox are quite aware that the members of the Church are fallible sinners; the Church itself exists precisely for sinners. However, they will also ascribe lofty language to the Church to the confusion of many Protestants. Below I just want to take a glance at an exceptionally brief list of New Testament verses on the Church, and perhaps this will help understand some of this high language must be present in the Church that takes the Scriptures seriously for it is the very language of Scripture. (Please forgive my redundant commentary. We, myself included, too often gloss over the grandeur of what’s being said).

Col. 1:24 “. . . for the sake of His body, which is the church.”

1 Cor. 12:12 “For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ.”

Eph. 5:25-32 “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church.”

Eph. 1:22-23 “And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.”

-We are quite familiar with the church as the Body of Christ, but even more explicit, “the FULLNESS of Him who fills all in all.”

Mt. 16:18-19 “And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

Mt. 18:17-18 “And if he refused to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector. Assuredly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

The keys given to Peter in Mt. 16 are here in 18 the whole church’s, and what a weighty responsibility.

John 16:13 “However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth.”

1 Tim. 3:15 “I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.”

-Just as in Matthew we see keys given to an apostle in chapter 16 (and arguably to all the apostles) it is a task ascribed to “the church” in chapter 18 (also demonstrating the identity of the church is very much bound up in being under the apostles and those they appointed as successors) we see in John 16 a promise given to the apostles that they’ll be led into all truth, and then 1 Timothy says the Church is the very foundation of truth (for it is led by the Holy Spirit through the apostles and those who follow in apostolic doctrine into all truth -not 20,000 plus denominations).

Eph. 3:8-11 “To me (Paul), who am less than the least of all the sainst, this grace was given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God who created all things through Jesus Christ; to the intent that now the manifold
wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, according to the eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

-The very intent of the mystery hidden in God from the beginning of ages was that the wisdom of God might be made known by the church even to the angels and heavenly creatures.

The Church, though full of fallible members, is the pillar and ground of truth; it is full of those who sin against the Body of Christ, yet the Church is the spotless Body of Christ; one of its founders (Paul) calls himself the chief of all sinners and less than the least of all the saints, yet he tells his readers that he has become their spiritual father and that they ought to follow his example, not to mention he wrote several documents considered infallible; the keys of the Kingdom are given to one who did not yet understand that Christ had to die, would be called Satan, and would deny Christ three times (he too would write infallible Scripture).

This is nothing new, the Christian life is one lived in tension, juxtaposition, and paradox. The Creator became a creature, eternity entered temporality, the Impassible suffered, the Life-Giver died on a Cross, and now we who are in Christ are sinners but saints, in this world but dead to it, chasing life only to lose it but dying only to find it. There is no nice neat way to parse out how and when to ascribe certain terms to particular persons at specific times. We have to live in and through the tensions and wrestle with them. We are the people of the already but the not yet who strive to become what we are.

The mere fact that one lives with these tensions doesn’t necessarily mean they’re orthodox, but I would say that the failure to acknowledge the paradox is heterodox (not orthodox). The fact that most Protestant ecclesiologies have no room for one, holy, catholic, apostolic church, a spotless bride, the pillar and foundation of truth, demonstrates a failure to acknowledge the full reality of the Church. Orthodox and Catholics are fully aware of the Church being for fallible, fractured, sinners, but they also take into account the other glorious descriptions and definitions given to the Church in Scripture (not to mention Scripture is itself a collection of works that the Church had the task of deciding upon).

We who are the members of the Body of Christ so often fail to do deeds worthy of the Body of Christ, but our sins cannot make Christ a sinner, our foolishness cannot take away Christ’s wisdom, and even when we nail Him to a cross He makes the shame His glorification, the evil (deicide) a good (salvation for creation).