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248. “The Church is Jesus himself.” The heart (and the heresy) of Roman Catholicism?

Most recently, evangelical theologian Henri Blocher argued that at the heart of Roman Catholicism lies the concept of the Church as the continuing incarnation of Jesus Christ. The idea is that, in a strong and “real” sense, the Roman Catholic Church is the sacramental and mystical body of Jesus, as if His incarnation were prolonged in it. Obviously, Blocher was not inventing anything. The theological point is affirmed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (no. 521), evoked by the Second Vatican Council (Lumen Gentium nn. 8, 48, and 52), and argued with different nuances and emphases by leading modern Roman Catholic theologians such as Johann Adam Möhler, John Henry Newman, Mathias-Joseph Scheeben, and Yves Congar.[1]

Another testimony confirming this view is added to these authoritative voices. It is that of Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914) in the book Christ in the Church. A Volume of Religious Essays (London: Longman, Green and Co., 1911). Until recently, I was unaware of the works of Benson, who may not be central to contemporary Roman Catholic theology, but neither is he negligible.

Converted from Anglicanism (after John Henry Newman) to Roman Catholicism under the pontificate of Leo XIII, Benson became a Catholic priest while continuing to write novels, short stories, and various essays. A brilliant and eclectic personality, as a convert, Benson looked for and explored the “heart” of Roman Catholicism. Thus, in the pamphlet Christ in the Church, he tackles head-on the self-understanding of the Church of Rome and dissects its meaning.

Benson begins with Jesus’ words, “This is my body, which is given for you” (Luke 22:19): “that act was but a continuation (though in another sense) of that first act known as the Incarnation” (8). Roman Catholics believe that “the Church is in a real sense the body of Christ… in the Church He lives, speaks, and acts as He lived, spoke, and acted in Galilee and Jerusalem” (9). The analogy is thus established: just as Jesus Christ lived two thousand years ago, so “He lives His mystical life today in a body drawn from the human race in general – called the Catholic Church” (10). It follows that the actions of the Church are His, “her words are His, her life is His” (id.). Here is the Roman Catholic thesis briefly put: “in a real sense, she is Himself” (id.).
 
On the basis of the extension between Christ and the Church to the point that the Church is Christ, Benson continues: “The written Gospel is the record of a past life; the Church is the living Gospel and record of a present life” (11). The Vine and the branches “are in the most direct sense identical” (12). For the Catholic, “Jesus Christ still lives upon earth as surely, though in another and what must be called a ‘mystical’ sense, as He lived two thousand years ago” (18). Moreover, “we have present upon earth in the Catholic Church that same personality and energy as lived upon the earth two thousand years ago in the Figure of Jesus Christ” (25). Therefore, “the same authority must be predicated of the voice of the Church as of the Voice of Christ” (21). No religion, “except one, and that the Catholic Church, claims to be actually Divine and to utter the Voice of God” (32). If the Church is the continuation of the Incarnation, “she is indeed what she claims to be — the one and unique organ of Divine Revelation” (40).
 
In this sense, the infallibility of the Church and its Roman Pontiff is simply inevitable and obviously true because “If infallibility be predicated of Jesus Christ, it must be predicated of Him in His Mystical as well as in His Natural Body” (22). In the Roman Catholic view, there is therefore a transitive property between Christ and the Catholic Church to the point that what can be predicated of the one passes to the other. It is the theological logic that is in the DNA of Roman Catholicism and makes it what it is.
 
The identification is so complete that “we, living members of the Church on earth, have the same personality and energy that existed in the figure of Jesus Christ two thousand years ago” (20). This means that Christ still suffers in the Church (10) and “Jesus Christ is still resurrected, not once or twice, but repeatedly in the Catholic Church” (22). The Church is so identified with Christ that she continues to “redeem humanity” (33).

Now, despite being a Catholic priest and a voice of early 20th-century Anglo-Saxon culture, Benson is not one of the leading voices in Roman Catholic theology. Yet, in his sparkling and drumming style, he gives voice to what Catholic teaching and official theology have developed over the centuries: the church is the extension of the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
 
Evangelical theologian Gregg Allison speaks of the “Christ–church interconnection.”[2] The church is considered a prolongation of the incarnation, mirroring Christ as a divine–human reality, acting as an altera persona Christi, a second “Christ.” The threefold ministry of Christ as King, Priest, and Prophet is thus transposed to the Roman Church–in its hierarchical rule, its magisterial interpretation of the Word, and its administration of the sacraments. There is never solus Christus (Christ alone), only Christus in ecclesia (Christ in the church) and ecclesia in Christo (the church in Christ).
 
The emphasis on the Christ–church interconnection seems to forget that the church is still a divine creature, belonging to the reality created by God and marked by sin, while Christ is the divine Creator, the One from whom all things are and who is perfect now and always. When we talk about Christology, we are talking about the unique relationship between human nature and divine nature in the person of Jesus Christ on the side of the Creator. When we talk about ecclesiology, we are talking about the unity of divine and human elements from the side of creation. The distinction between Creator and creature is crucial to avoid the trap of elevating the church into a quasi-divine body.

There are enormous problems with this thesis: it goes beyond the biblical image of the body of Christ (Christ is the head, we are members!), it deifies a human community, it idolizes an institution, and it usurps what should be recognized only to Jesus Christ according to Scripture alone (sola Scriptura, Scripture alone!). It goes beyond and against what is written in the Bible. Yet it gives access to the deep bowels of Roman Catholicism of all times. Ultimately, Roman Catholicism is a heresy that took Christology and transplanted it into its ecclesiology. And in doing so, Rome distorted it.

[1] See Roberto Baglioni, La chiesa “continua incarnazione” del Verbo: da J.A. Möhler al Concilio Vaticano II (Napoli: Editrice Domenicana Italiana, 2013).

[2] Gregg R. Allison, Roman Catholic Theology and Practice. An Evangelical Assessment (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014) pp. 56-66.

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194. Christ Unfurled or the Roman Catholic Christ-Church Interconnection. Evangelical Remarks on David Meconi’s latest book

“Christ and his Church thus together make up the ‘whole Christ’ (Christus totus). The Church is one with Christ.” Here is how the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church (§ 795) hammers out one of the two axes of the Roman Catholic theological system, i.e. the Christ-Church interconnection (the other being the nature-grace interdependence). If one wants to come to terms with the deep structure of the theological vision of Rome, they must begin by addressing this critical Christological-ecclesiological point whereby Rome considers itself the prolongation of the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

In his masterful book Roman Catholic Theology and Practice. An Evangelical Assessment (2014), Gregg Allison has done a great service in highlighting the foundational importance of the nexus between Christ and the Church for the whole Roman Catholic framework. Every doctrine and every practice occurs between the two axes: on the one hand an optimism about nature (regardless of the covenant-breaking brought about by sin) and on the other inflating the claims of the church that acts as another Christ. Now, from within the Roman Catholic tradition, David Meconi, S.J. reinforces the crucial importance of the fact that “the Church and Christ really are one” (2) given the fact that the Church is “an extension of Jesus Christ himself” (2).

Meconi is academically well-qualified to write from a conservative Roman Catholic perspective. In the past I have read his The One Christ: Saint Augustine’s Theology of Deification (2013) and consulted The Cambridge Companion to Augustine (2014) of which he is one of the chief editors. He is a Roman Catholic Augustinian scholar with a particular interest in a “whole Christ” theology. With the recent book Christ Unfurled: The First 500 Years of Jesus’s Life (Charlotte, NC: Tan Books, 2021) Meconi labours on the Christ-Church interconnection even more closely, thus offering an account of what it means for Roman Catholic theology to affirm that “the Church is a replication of the incarnate God’s own human and divine life” (6).

The Early Centuries
He does it by emphasizing the historical perspective, i.e. reading the five centuries of the Christian church as if they were “the first five hundred years of Jesus’ life on earth” (14). Since “the Church is the extension of Christ’s very incarnate self” (15), the Church is therefore Christ unfurled as the title of the book indicates. In the first chapter, the thesis is repeatedly stated: “The Church is the unbroken continuation of Christ’s own incarnate self, the extension of his divine and human presence on earth” (17) so that “post-Ascension people could see, hear, and still touch the Lord” (17). Moreover, “The Church as founded by Jesus Christ is the continuation of his own divinely human, or humanly divine, life” (19). The unfurling of Christ in the church stretches to His work of salvation, establishing an interconnection between the cross of Calvary and the chief sacrament of the Church; in fact, “in and through his Church, the life-giving Body and Blood of Jesus continue to be with us in the Most Holy Eucharist” (19-20). Reiterating the point, Meconi goes as far as saying that “the hypostatic union of the incarnate Son’s humanity and divinity continues in the unity of the Eucharistic sacrifice” (114).

In subsequent chapters, Meconi attempts to prove that this Roman Catholic view has been upheld in the church since the beginning. As for Apostolic Fathers (e.g. Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch) and in writings such as the Didache and The Shepherd of Hermas, he argues that the early Christians understood themselves “as envoys and extensions of Christ’s very presence in the world” (30). However, the proofs given for such a strong statement are less than convincing. In fact, the “canonicity of Scripture” (i.e. the recognition of the inspired books of the Bible) and the “rule of faith” (i.e. the comprehensive summary of the gospel) which the Apostolic Fathers were interested in are hardly early attestations of the Christ-Church interconnection. They are simply some of the concerns that the early church had in trying to faithfully live after the death of the apostles. Their tendency toward “monoepiscopacy” (i.e. one bishop over each local church) is more of an unfortunate influence of Roman imperial authority structures than a sign of their endorsing the “whole Christ” theology. As for later Fathers, Meconi is right in saying that, for example, Tertullian spoke of the church as the “mother Church” and Origen of the “bride of Christ” (69), but these two titles given to the church do not intrinsically imply the theology of the extension of the incarnation, unless one wants to see it retrospectively, having already decided that this is what he wants to see.

The Legacy of the Creeds
Examining the legacy of the early councils and creeds (Nicea and Constantinople) which focussed on the trinitarian nature of God and the divine and human natures of the person Jesus Christ, Meconi makes the point that “Jesus Christ founded a Church so he would have a visible locus, a freely-chosen Body, unto whom he could extend his life” (135). Again, this is an inference that stretches what the creeds say by filling in the terms with meanings they don’t have. The language of “extension” and “continuation” is not found in the creeds. The union or fellowship between Christ and the church (or the believers) is certainly maintained, but whether this relationship points to the “extension” of the incarnation is beyond what the texts of the councils say. In order to cross the boundaries between the incarnation of Jesus Christ and the life of the church, one needs further theological elaboration than what can be found there.

Finally, a long section of a chapter is dedicated to Augustine’s views of the “whole Christ,” Meconi’s own area of expertise. According to him, “for Augustine, the ‘whole Christ’ is not just Jesus now seated at the right hand of the Father but the entire Christ is Jesus as well as those whom Jesus loves” (182). Together they form “one mystical person” (197). This is accurate as far as Augustine is concerned, although in Augustine there is also a strong emphasis on the distinction between Christ and the church and the submission of the latter to the former. On this point, Augustine is at best confused. I have written elsewhere of the damages of Augustine’s formula (totus Christus) and the corrections brought about by the Protestant Reformation in stressing the uniqueness of Christ (solus Christus).

The Whole Christ or Christ Alone?
On the axes of the Christ-church interconnection,Rome builds its self-understanding as a church endowed with the authority of Christ the King, the priesthood of Christ the Mediator, and the truth of Christ the Prophet. The threefold ministry of Christ as King, Priest, and Prophet is thus transposed to the Roman Church – in its hierarchical rule, its magisterial interpretation of the Word and its administration of the sacraments. But this is not what the gospel teaches. This is an inflated view of the church based on a defective view of Christ. According to Rome, there is never solus Christus (Christ alone), only Christus in ecclesia (Christ in the church) and ecclesia in Christo (the church in Christ).

The emphasis on the Christ–church interconnection seems to forget that the Church is made up of creatures (human beings). Because the church is made up of creatures, it is part of creation, and is not the creator, while Christ is the divine Creator, the One from whom all things are and who is perfect now and always. When we talk about Christology, we are talking about the unique relationship between human nature and divine nature in the person of Jesus Christ from the perspective of the Creator; when we talk about ecclesiology, we are talking about the people of God, the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit – all of these titles referring to a created reality. The distinction between Creator and creature is decisive for not falling into the trap of elevating the church into a quasi-divine body.

After the Ascension to the right hand of the Father, Christ did not continue his incarnation in the church. Having formed the church through his finished work on the cross, He sent it to the ends of the earth and empowered it with the Holy Spirit to preach and to bear witness to his gospel of salvation. Christ is the head of the church, and the church serves His purposes and His alone, until He comes again.