| ### CHAPTER 2: THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH ###  |

| #### 1. THE FOUNDER |

| #### #### THE new religion whose early history is the subject of this book, has for its origin the attested fact of the birth, at Bethlehem, an unimportant town of the Roman province of Judaea, of Jesus Christ. His mother Mary and her husband Joseph, were of Galilee and it was the business of the imperial census, in the Roman year 749, which brought them travelling at this most unsuitable of times so far from their poor home. The goal of their journey was barely reached when, in an outhouse of one of the overcrowded inns of the little hill town, Mary gave birth to her Son. The life that there began is the foundation of the Church. #### The Child's destiny had been foretold to His mother by the angel of Yahweh who announced to her the coming miraculous conception through the direct operation Or the Most High. To Joseph, too, was given like explanatory vision and prophecy. The Child was to save His people from their sins, whence the name Joseph was charged to impose on Him -- Jesus. #### The documentary sources of our knowledge of that life are the writings of the immediate disciples of Jesus, set down within a generation of the end of His earthly life, the collection which we call compendiously the New Testament. Around the genuineness of these writings, the truthfulness of those who composed them, their value as records, a vast amount of controversy has raged. The study of the questions raised by that controversy belongs properly to a more specialised science than General Church History which must here make its own the findings of Scripture scholarship. The position assumed here is that the New Testament writings are what they propose themselves to be-authentic records of trustworthy contemporary witnesses. What kind of thing is the religion those writings describe? The first difficulty before the enquirer is that the writings do not profess to describe any religion at all, but are supplementary to the basic knowledge which they presuppose. The collection is made up of a variety of things. There are short accounts of the life and death of Jesus Christ; there is an account of the spread of His teaching in the first generation after His earthly life ended; there is a book of mysterious prophecy; and a number of letters written by His principal lieutenants explaining particular difficulties or correcting special errors in belief or practice. The New Testament can thus in no sense be regarded as a systematic exposition of the religion taught by Jesus Christ. It provides, none the less, a wealth of information about this new religion and its Founder sufficient for the historian's purpose, sufficient, that is to say, to make clear the new thing's nature. #### As a religion it is alone of its kind. It is a revelation; it is a rule of conduct; it is a doctrine; it is an organisation; and in each of these aspects it is something new. This new revelation is the fulfilment of Yahweh’s repeated pledge to Israel. Jesus is the long promised Saviour Who shall rout Yahweh’s ancient enemy and restore Mankind to its original amity with the Creator. Jesus is the Messias. Finally He through Whom this revelation is made, the Teacher, the Founder, is yet something infinitely beyond. He is the object of His disciple's faith, no mere prophet of Yahweh, even the greatest, but Yahweh’s Son, God Himself incarnate. [ ] #### The religion of Jesus Christ is no revolutionary thing, new in all its parts, built up on the ruins of some older thing destroyed to make way for it. It is, by its Founder's express declaration, the perfect fulfilment of the ideas and ideals already foreshadowed in Judaism; and the body of the New Testament religion is built round an idea already so familiar as to be a commonplace of Jewish piety, the Kingdom or Reign of Yahweh. "Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God" is the New Testament's first description of the divine Teacher's activity. But this Preacher of the Kingdom of God has no attachments to any of the contemporary teachers who, interpreting the messianic prophecies in material terms, eagerly dispute the details of the future King's earthly triumph. Such a kingdom has no place in the teaching of Christ. The kingdom as now announced is not the political triumph of Yahweh’s chosen people over their Gentile oppressors; it is not even a restoration of the kingdom of David. It is the reign of Yahweh in men's hearts. The citizens of this kingdom are those in whose heart Yahweh reigns, and such citizenship is not a privilege of race, nor the reward of merit. It is offered to all ! Repentance, faith, simple childlike humility are the disposing conditions. For the subjects of this new reign of God, the old ideals of holiness and moral goodness revealed by Yahweh to the Jews remain in all their force The Law is not abolished but, lived in the new spirit -- the spirit of the kingdom-is transformed in this its final fulfilment. More important than obedience to the letter of the law is the spirit in which the law is kept, and the new spirit is the spirit of loving dedication of self to Yahweh, the love of all mankind in imitation of Yahweh’s universal love and for Yahweh’s sake. Yahweh, the King, is revealed as the loving Father of those He rules. It is as "Our Father" that -- in the one prayer Jesus taught His followers -- the disciple is bidden to address Him. As a father He cannot but give good things to the children who ask. He cares for the birds, the very flowers of the field and His children's every hair. Even His children's ingratitude and rebellion cannot destroy Yahweh’s love; and Jesus tells the parable of the Prodigal Son to bring home the supreme truth of this love that only the sinner's own obstinacy can withdraw him from this eternal love's effect. Man's love -- of God, of his fellows -- must strive to imitate Yahweh’s love. It must be complete, selfless, universal, not the product of chance association, of similarity of race, or of the hope of gain. Everything for God, for God's sake from Whom all love has come. The "reign" is necessarily an intimate, interior thing in man's very heart and will, its very existence calling for the continual conscious union of the disciple's soul with Yahweh. On this interior submission all else depends. Obedience to Yahweh’s commands, then, is no mere legalist obedience, but, because of the motive which shapes it, of the spirit which gives rise to it, a means of ever closer union. Yahweh’s love, which is the foundation of the Kingdom, is, too, its final object and, consummated in eternity, the soul’s ultimate reward. It is impossible to exaggerate the part of Love in this revelation of Jesus Christ. #### The reign will be established slowly, gradually. Like the leaven in meal, like the seed buried out of sight, it will grow silently in a man's heart, in the world. Its victory is the outcome not of violence, nor of external force, but of Love's slow persuasion. No sudden burst of enthusiasm, then, will suffice for its establishment. A steady, persevering will alone provides the necessary foundation. For the Kingdom will make high demands upon its subjects. It is a treasure hidden, a pearl of surpassing value, to possess which when he hears of it a man will sell all he has. In a matter where anything short of absolute selflessness menaces the whole good work, the disciple must be tested, disciplined, must try himself by surrender, until self be no more. All is asked of him to whom all will be given. Where is this giving up of self to end? For each disciple where Yahweh wills it. The extreme sacrifices -- of property, of family life, of life itself -- though commended as the perfect thing, are not prescribed as equally necessary to all. There is a way of Precept as well as this higher way of Counsel. But for all, to whichever way Yahweh calls them, there is the same spirit in which they must serve -- the spirit of renouncement, self-forgetfulness, service of others, love, humility and all for Yahweh’s sake, in conscious imitation of Him. The ideal is summed up in a phrase of startling realism "If any one will come after me let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me." [ ] And for all there is, too, the duty of continuous prayer -- for prayer, once more, is no mere external rite but a hidden interior act of union with God, its model the "Our Father." If His demands are far-reaching Yahweh’s patience with those who stumble as they strive is revealed as infinite; and for the repentant, no matter what the degree of their offending, His mercy has no limits. So, too, must the disciple forgive those who injure him, forgive them endlessly, love even his enemies, bless them that hate him, pray for his persecutors and those who despoil his good name. So shall he show himself the child of his Father in Heaven. #### The disciple's willing acceptance of the reign, his faithfulness to its spirit, are rewarded even in this life by the peace for which man's innermost being yearns, and which is only possible to the man on whose affections self has ceased effectively to make demands, and by an ever-closer union with God. In the world to come there is the consummation of the union with God begun in His Kingdom on earth. Goodness and happiness then go together, and goodness is the renunciation of self and the service of others for Yahweh’s sake, in a union with Him inspired by love for Him. This last qualification is all important. The spirit informing the new ideal of conduct raises it above the mere humanitarianism which, sooner or later, calls for human compensation, and can never reach perfect disinterestedness, be perfectly safe in practice for the souls who dedicate themselves to it. #### In the nineteen hundred years that have gone by since Jesus preached His gospel, the phrases in which He set it have become the commonplaces of mankind. All men use them, all pay them the homage of lip-service at least. It is, on this account, difficult to understand, unless we meditate historically, how great a novelty such teaching was when it was first given. What are, if too often unpractised, the acknowledged commonplaces of modern moral idealism none the less, were then truths startling in their novelty, and, because alive, disconcerting. Nor can we ever hope to see their effect as it was produced unless we continually bear in mind Who He was that taught -- a man truly, but a Man who was God, a man through Whose real Humanity-human body, human soul, human mind, human will, human charm -- a Divine Person acted. Only when read with this all important fact in mind -- that Jesus Christ is God incarnate-does the story of that earthly life take on the fullness of its meaning, and the reasonableness of the steep ascetic recommendation become clear. It is a share in what He Himself enjoys that He offers to those who will follow Him. Some higher motive than the merely human must inform their allegiance. Only by rallying to His high demands can the disciple become that to which God's high ambitions destines him. #### Jesus then teaches, through the new revelation of the Kingdom, a doctrine of social brotherhood which, because it is based on the transcendent truth of Yahweh’s essential Love (never before so perfectly revealed), reaches the very heights of idealism. And this divinely ideal spirit is proposed as the normal habit for all mankind. There is no man in whose soul it cannot be realised, no man whose heart it cannot touch, whose life it cannot transform. The philosophers, at their best, spoke only to a tiny minority of trained minds, chosen spirits. Jesus speaks to all. For it is not by mere individual effort that citizenship is first achieved, nor does the Kingdom develop from even the best of human intentions, from the strongest of human wills. As it is more than a human morality, so the Divine shares in every state of its growth. "Without me you can do nothing" are the divine Master's own words to those who accept Him. Their good-will, their faith, are to be informed by a higher, divine life, and transformed thereby, made capable of the supernatural activities which alone can serve and maintain the new life. This new life -- which alone makes possible the translation into act of the new rule of conduct -- is the divine life by which Jesus lives Himself, and in which, by their new association with Jesus, the disciples mysteriously share. Jesus is the vine, they are its branches. With Him, as the greatest of all His followers is to say a few years later, they form one body, He the head, they the limbs. #### The new revelation is not then -- for all the universality of its appeal, promise, and plan -- intended to achieve its end through individual conversation merely. The individual converted, in allegiance to the new Kingdom, reaches the destined perfection through his new status and in consequence of the association that goes with it, rather than by any virtue of his own individual act of adhesion. It is as the branch of the Vine Who is Christ, as the limb of that body whose head is Christ, that the citizen of the Kingdom is a subject for the new privileges. And that mysterious association with Christ, and hence with all those other limbs his fellow-subjects, receives visible corporate expression in the ecclesia -- an actual society. For the Kingdom which is a seed and leaven, is also a field where the weeds grow as surely as the wheat. It is a net of fish, again, both bad and good; a palace (and Jesus names one of His followers as the keeper of its keys); a building (and the same follower Jesus names as its rock-like foundation). It is a flock which wolves can attack; a flock whose shepherd is Jesus, and which again He can commit to the care of that disciple who is key-bearer and foundation rock. Into this actual, visible, corporation the disciple enters by a visible corporal initiation -- Baptism. In the Kingdom there is authority, and those to whom its Founder gives that authority are to be obeyed as He Himself is obeyed. Their authority is to teach, to teach indeed all nations, to bind and loose in His name, to forgive sins even and to retain, to admit by Baptism those who believe: and what by His commission they authoritatively decide, that, He promises them, will He finally confirm. The Kingdom will be buffeted. Hell itself will strive against it -- but vainly; for He will Himself be with it to the end. The nucleus of that society in which the Kingdom is thus visibly expressed are the twelve disciples whom the record is careful to name -- the Apostles; and it is one of these, Simon, who is the shepherd appointed to feed the flock, the key-bearer of the palace, the rock-like foundation and therefore renamed by the Founder Himself, and so to be known ever after, not Simon but Peter. #### The Church (ecclesia) is however much more than the association in which the disciples are grouped under an ordered authority. It is in the Church, and through the Church, by means of that authority, that the teaching is to be preserved safe from error, the life to find true guidance. The Church is, too, the means by which the disciple is related to God. Jesus Christ and the Church together constitute the mystical Christ of which, while Jesus Christ is the head the rest of the disciples are limbs, members. This is not mere metaphor but spiritual reality. All the members live by the life of the whole, and that life is the Divine Life of the Head. Into that living body the disciple is incorporated by the ritual act of Baptism. Thereby and thereafter he shares in the Divine life, entering into a privileged relation with God, into a new relation with the other members of the body. It is through the unity of this mystical body that God has chosen to work out the salvation of mankind. This is the central point, the innermost mystery of the new religion. This is the essence of "the good news about the Kingdom of God," the fulfilment of God's promises to the Jews, the means by which man may share here on earth in the life that is divine. This unity of the mystical body is shown forth, realised and intensified through a second ritual act, the disciple's sharing in the banquet-mystery called the Eucharist, where he is given a Food which, in appearance bread and wine, is in reality Christ Himself. It is to disciples who are members of this mystical body, linked thus with the Divine in a union whence comes to them a real newness of life, a share in the divine life; to disciples illuminated in mind thereby and strengthened in will, that the high demands of conduct are made, that there is proposed the ideal of a life of love of God and of man for God's sake. The disciple, through Baptism member of the Church, member of the mystical body of Christ, is supernaturalised; and through the mystical body Christ lives on for ever in this world. #### Even this is not the end of the summary of what that ecclesia is in which Jesus Christ set His revelation, and which He preached in His "good tidings." Jesus was the long-promised Messias. All humanity, Jew and Gentile alike, had through the sin of Adam been ever since estranged from Yahweh, "under the rule of sin." The Reconciler was Jesus Christ, and the redemption of humanity from its enslavement was wrought by His sacrificial death. Through that death came for man the possibility of forgiveness, of restoration. It is, in the Gospel religion, the source of the whole scheme's life. Man's role is not, however, passive. He must take the proffered thing, the new status possible through that death. He takes it by believing - - it is not a reward for merit-and by being baptised. The death is for all. The offer is made to all, to Jew and non-Jew alike. Man must believe once he knows it is God Who speaks. And he must become of the Church by Baptism. Baptism, associating the disciple with Christ dying sacrificially on his behalf, associates him with Christ's consequent triumph over sin. It is, once more, as a member of the mystical body that he shares in the triumph as in the death, and thence lives on in Christ, like a branch grafted on to a tree, by the one same vital principle of the Divine life. Baptism then, the rite of initiation, is most strictly bound to the sacrificial death. Equally strictly bound to it is the other great ritual of the Eucharist, which is not only a showing forth of the mystical body's unity, but a renewal of the sacrificial death itself. #### The ecclesia then is not a mere aggregation of individual believers, but a spiritual moral person, which continues in concrete, visible fashion the life and work of its Founder-teaching, guiding, sacrificing; which is the means through which men take hold of the gifts of the new fellowship with Yahweh. A new vital principle, a new ideal of living, divinely revealed truth eternally secured, in a living organism ruled by safeguarded teachers with authority and power to dispense supernatural aids -- the Catholic Church. Its history we can study as the history of the development of Christ's teaching -- the History of Dogma; or as the history of the way in which the new life has shown itself through two thousand years -- the History of Christian Spirituality; or as the history of the organism as an organism. But while no study of Church History is complete which leaves out any one of these, it is truer still to say that no Church History can ever really be complete, for the essential Church History is the history of the reign of God in the millions of faithful human hearts throughout two thousand years -- and this is known only to God. #### The sublime religious idealism of the revelation of Jesus Christ is the teaching for which the world has all these centuries been waiting. His own life is itself the best exemplification of the way in which His teaching must, of its nature operate For His life was hidden, remote; unobserved, for all its marvels, beyond its tiny local setting; and the propaganda, which lacked all appeal save what appeal the ideals and truth made of themselves to hearts well disposed, had so little immediate success that by the time of His death scarcely more than a hundred believing souls had given themselves to the cause. #### His daily life, for all but the last three years, was apparently the ordinary well-filled day of a workman -- a carpenter like Joseph His foster-father -- in a small country town, with so little to distinguish it publicly from the life of those around that, on His first appearances as Teacher, those who knew Him best could scornfully point to His ordinary antecedents in final and devastating criticism of His new role. He was to these simply "the carpenter's son," and to His immediate relatives the subject, obviously, of an unfortunate fit of madness ! Signs and marvels had accompanied His birth. If, on the one hand, it had come about in circumstances of destitution which foreshadowed the ideal of self-renouncement for God's sake which He was ever to preach, it had yet been heralded by visions of angels; and, led by a mysterious divine star, wise men had come from the East to adore the Newly-born. At the ritual ceremony of His mother's purification the Child had been recognised in prophecy as Israel’s saviour; and Divine intervention, again, had saved Him from Herod's jealousy-inspired massacre of all the children of His age. Upon that vision Joseph had fled with Him and with His mother into Egypt and there for ten years, until Herod's death (A.D. 6), they lived. The story of the next twenty years is that of the quiet ordinary life in the house of Joseph and Mary in the town of Nazareth, half way between the Carmel range and the Lake of Genesareth, a quiet of which one incident alone is known to us -- the visit to Jerusalem when the Boy was twelve, His disappearance, and His being found instructing the Doctors of the Law in the temple portico. #### Twenty miles or so to the north-east of Nazareth is the little heart-shaped stretch of water called sometimes the Sea of Galilee, sometimes the Lake of Genesareth, twelve miles long in its greatest length, seven miles broad. The half-a-dozen little towns that cluster round it were the scene of the greater part of the new Teacher's activities, and it was from their population of fisher-folk that most of His first followers came. #### From the beginning that simple teaching provoked opposition and misunderstanding. For the politically-minded zealots who looked for the Messias -- as so much contemporary discussion presented him -- as Yahweh’s warrior-captain, this new teaching was a disappointment. The Pharisees too were alienated by the denunciation of the development which had made the letter of Yahweh’s Law the all-important thing in orthodox Palestinian Judaism. Nowhere was He understood immediately and fully. Even the chosen band who, coming to Him in the first days, were the objects of His special instruction, and who remained to the end, whom He chose to be the nucleus of the new institution, were to the last a little impatient of the idealism, a little disappointed at the lack of earthly glamour, at the failure to conform to the hopes of orthodox religious patriotism. #### None the less, wherever He went crowds awaited His coming, listened to the teaching, followed the Teacher from one town to another and even into the wilderness when He made thither for retirement. The teaching, the new voice that spoke "as one having authority," the personality, the miracles of healing wrought everywhere in all men's sight, miracles so evident, so numerous, so characteristic that He could Himself quote them as a testimony -- "Relate to John the things you have seen, the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the dead rise again" -- as evident as that "the poor have the gospel preached to them," all these things bred immense enthusiasm but little, very little, of that solid conviction and change of heart based on belief which alone would serve His purpose. #### The passing enthusiasm for novelty, for a thaumaturgus, He refused -- the leaven must work according to its nature -- refused it even when it would have saved Him from His hostile critics, from His enemies. For by now enemies He assuredly had; and in the later stages of His career as missionary they assist, "lie in wait," set traps to trick Him, now into the expression of some unorthodox opinion in the day's religious casuistry, now into treason against the all-powerful Emperor. The end is only a matter of time. Humanly speaking, sooner or later, should He not prevent it by His divine power, these jealous and wily adversaries will have Him enmeshed. From now on He redoubles the time, and the patience, He expends on the chosen faithful few. He explains to them gradually Who He is, His mission and destiny of suffering and death, their own future role in the ecclesia, the nature of their high vocation and the reception which will be theirs too, once they meet the world He is come to save, the world which knows Him not, wills not to know, and pursues Him to death itself. To the end, though they remain faithful, believing, obedient, the disciples hear all this with reluctance. Human nature in them is not able to reconcile this destiny of vicarious suffering with that other tradition of Yahweh, Lord of Hosts, strikingly triumphant over the wicked whether in Israel’s past or in the wild apocalyptic reveries that have, for them, so often drowned the sadness of the insistent present. So with the earthbound material heart of His nation against Him, and the work of formation not yet accomplished in even His faithful few, Jesus comes to the appointed chosen death. Once more, as in the birth, the circumstances make it the supreme act of self-renouncement, once more supernatural signs accompany every phase of His life. #### "The Gospel is announced; the Church is founded; the sacrifice of the cross is to confirm the one and the other." Slowly Jesus makes His way south, journeying for the last time to Jerusalem, the religious capital, where for generations now the struggle between the rationalist, Sadducee, aristocracy from whom are chosen the High Priests, and the legalist piety of the patriotic and popular Pharisee is the one absorbing evidence of religious interest. Both Sadducee and Pharisee are, for their own characteristic reasons, opposed to His mission, willing to plot His fall. This He knows, yet "steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem." And He foretold that in the Holy City they would lay hands on Him, mock Him, scourge Him and put Him to death: and that He would rise again the third day. On the first day of the week before the feast of the Pasch, through the streets of the Holy City filled with thousands of pious pilgrims drawn thither by the feast, in a kind of triumph -- surrounded by His disciples and acclaimed by the crowd as the Holy One of God -- He entered on the time of His passion. One last time the imperfect enthusiasm, which would use Him and His teaching rather than yield and be itself converted to His uses, blazed in an appearance of adhesion. #### Four days later, on the eve of the Pasch, He prepared to celebrate the feast for the last time with the twelve disciples of His especial choice. At the ceremonial meal He instituted the new rite of the Eucharist, already foreshadowed and promised in His preaching, and in a long discourse made to the Apostles the revelation of His own most intimate self. From the meal they passed to the olive grove of Gethsemane -- the traitor among the Apostles, seduced by the Master's enemies, had already arranged with his enemies for His betrayal and arrest. In the garden they found Him and took Him. #### He was led before the High Priests and, proclaiming His Divinity, condemned for blasphemy. But although, in his mockery of a trial, they reviled and insulted Him, more they dared not do-the Roman Authority not consulted. Whence an appeal to the Procurator of Judaea, Pontius Pilate, and a further trial. Pilate was embarrassed. His Prisoner was innocent, but the influential Jewish leaders insisted. The procurator shifted uneasily -- Jesus was of Galilee, so he tried to load with the decision the shoulders of Herod, its nominal ruler. That failing, he tried a last resource -- the custom of releasing annually on the feast some criminal condemned to death. But the mob and the priesthood asked in preference a highway robber lying under sentence. Finally, with taunts that affected the procurator's loyalty -- "If thou release this man thou art not Caesar's friend" -- they prevailed, and Pilate, disclaiming responsibility, made over the Prophet to the priests. #### "And they took Jesus and led Him forth. And bearing His own cross He went forth to that place which is called Calvary, where they crucified Him, and with Him two others one on each side, and Jesus in the midst. . . . And Jesus having cried out with a loud voice, gave up the ghost. . . . And the centurion who stood over against Him said 'Indeed this man was the Son of God.' #### "Now there was in the place where He was crucified a garden; and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein no man yet had been laid. There they laid Jesus because the sepulchre was nigh at hand. And on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came to the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled back from the sepulchre. And going in, they found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were astonished in their mind at this, behold, two men stood by them in shining apparel. And as they were afraid, and bowed down their countenance towards the ground, they said to them: 'Why seek you the living with the dead? He is not here but risen. Remember how He spoke unto you, when He was yet in Galilee, saying: The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.' And they remembered His words. And going back to the sepulchre, they told all these things to the eleven, and to all the rest. . . . And these words seemed to them idle tales; and they did not believe them. . . . At length He appeared to the eleven as they were at table; and He upbraided them with their incredulity and hardness of heart, because they did not believe them who had seen Him after He was risen again. . . . To whom also He shewed Himself alive after His passion, by many proofs, for forty days appearing to them, and speaking of the kingdom of God. And eating together with them, He commanded them, that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but should wait for the promise of the Father, which you have heard (saith He) by My mouth. For John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost, not many days hence. They therefore who were come together, asked Him, saying: Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? But he said to them: It is not for you to know the times or moments, which the Father hath put in His own power: But you shall receive the power of the Holy Ghost upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and Samaria, and even to the uttermost part of the earth. And when He had said these things, while they looked on, He was raised up: and a cloud received Him out of their sight. And while they were beholding Him going up to Heaven, behold two men stood by them in white garments. Who also said: Ye men of Galilee, why stand you looking up to heaven? This Jesus Who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come, as you have seen Him going into heaven." ####  |