Because there is one
loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we partake of the one loaf.
(1 Cor. 10:16-17)
We, who are many, are one body. What on earth can this mean?
If we are determined rationalists, a statement like this is far too strange to be interpreted any other way than purely symbolically. If we reject mystery, then the idea of many being truly one is self-contradictory – “nonsense got up by word triflers”, [1] to borrow Zwingli’s phrase. The modern rationalist can say: “We, the Church, are a bit like a body, in that we are supposed to work together, we shouldn’t work against each other, we belong together,” or even “we all belong to Christ.” Paul’s statement is thus deprived of its sacramental value, and restricted to a mere analogy.
But we have learnt enough by now to know that pure symbolism was rare in early Jewish or Christian thought. Symbols can carry realities with them – especially if they are instituted by Him in whom “all things hold together” (Col. 1:17). The early Christians could have interpreted Jesus’s “This is my body” to mean nothing more than “This is a bit like my body” – but they pointedly did not do so. And the link which Paul makes between the Eucharist and the Church in the verse quoted at the head of this chapter is a hint that when he said that we are one body, he too was not thinking in purely symbolic terms: he was speaking of a mystery; he was speaking sacramentally.
We arrived, at the end of Chapter Four, at an outline of a
scriptural blueprint of the Church. Take a look at that summary list again now,
for we are about to see that it is actually far too modest. Yes, the Church is the
New Israel (Matt. 19:28, Rev. 21:12-14), God’s household (1 Tim. 3:15, Eph.
2:19, Heb. 3:6), God’s family (Mk. 3:35, 1 Cor. 4:15, 1 Tim. 1:2), “the pillar
and foundation of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). But we are now about to expand our
understanding of the Church, by seeing what the Bible has to say about:
(1) the Church as the Body of
Christ; and
(2) the Church as the Bride of
Christ.
Body
Let us take a look at some of the passages in the Bible which describe the Church as the Body of Christ. The most lengthy is this one:
The body is a unit, though it is
made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body.
So it is with Christ. For we were all baptised by one Spirit into one body –
whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free – and we were all given the one Spirit to
drink.
Now the body is not made up of one
part but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not
belong to the body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body.
And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the
body,” it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole
body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were
an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts
in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be...
The eye cannot say to the hand,
“I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”
... But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honour
to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but
that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every
part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it.
Now you are the body of Christ,
and each one of you is a part of it. (1 Cor. 12:12-18,21,24-27)
There is so much in this passage which we Catholics and Evangelicals, struggling to understand each other, can learn from. Paul is clear: we cannot say to each other, “I don’t need you!” We suffer and we rejoice together. We are one body. This means that we are all, in a sense, a part of each other: not merely related to each others as brothers in Christ – though we are surely that – but also viscerally bound together, members of each other. The Church is “his body, the fulness of him who fills everything in every way” (Eph. 1:23) – the fullness of Him in whom “all things hold together” (Col. 1:17)! If we are faithful to Him, we will hold together.
Koinonia ton hagion
This “held together” conception of the Church is summarised in one ancient phrase which is usually translated as “the communion of saints”. Belief in the communion of saints is one of the most ancient articles of the Christian faith. It forms part of what is called the Apostles’ Creed, and as such was officially adopted by the worldwide Church as early as the fourth century A.D. [2] – which suggests that the concept itself is yet more ancient.
It is tempting to say that “the communion of saints” is not a biblical phrase – but this is not strictly true. As we have seen in preceding chapters, often English words which seem at first to be “unbiblical” turn out to be deeply scriptural when we investigate a little. The word “sacrament”, as we have seen, is a translation of the Greek mysterion, which turns out to be all over the New Testament. [3] The word “Eucharist” translates the Greek eucharistia and the Hebrew todah – which are absolutely fundamental concepts in both Old and New Testaments, as we saw in Chapters Nine and Ten. The English phrase “communion of saints” is a translation of the Latin communio sanctorum, itself a translation of the Greek koinonia ton hagion. Let’s unpick the meanings of these words a bit, for they will help us to see what an important scriptural insight the communion of saints is for understanding the fullness of the Christian message.
Let us start with the Greek ton hagion (Latin sanctorum). This can mean “of saints” or “of the saints”. Alternatively, it can also mean “of holy things”. Perhaps a better translation might be “of the holy”, referring to all holy things and people – everything and everyone sanctified by God. The Greek word for “holy” (or “saint”) is hagios, and this word penetrates Scripture at all levels and in so many ways. What or who, then, does the Bible tell us is holy?
In the final analysis, only God is intrinsically holy – to be precise, “holy, holy, holy” (Is. 6:3)! The Hebrew word for “holy”, kadosh, implies someone or something set apart from the rest. [4] In other words, it does not mean that a person or thing is intrinsically “good”, but that God has chosen it for holiness. We saw in Chapter Nine how God’s presence (Shekhinah) can radiate out to the world, drawing places and things to Him and setting them apart too as “holy”. If anything in this world is holy, it is by God’s grace, not because of its own nature. All the “signs” we investigated in that chapter – Tabernacle, Temple, altars, lampstands, bread, wine, oil, sacrifices, festivals – are holy because God has set them apart to be so. They are made into channels for God’s grace, and therefore they have the privilege of participating in God’s holiness, and of taking on, in a small way, His holy nature.
In the same way, people can be set apart from the rest to share in God’s holiness. We saw in Chapter Four how God, through the Holy Spirit, can draw people into His life, even to the extent that they can share in capacities (such as the forgiveness of sins) which properly only belong to God. In the same way, Israel is a holy nation, not because it is full of very good people, but because God is holy:
You are to be holy to me because I, the LORD, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own. (Lev. 20:26; cf. Lev. 11:44, 19:2; see also Deut. 7:6)
Within that holy nation, the firstborn male of every family is called holy (Ex. 13:2,12; Lk. 2:23); and so Jesus, the firstborn son of God, is “the Holy One of God” (Mk. 1:24; cf. Lk. 1:35, Acts 3:14).
In both Old and New Testaments, the members of God’s chosen people are called holy (or “saints”) by virtue of their chosenness, and of their participation in God. They are not just saints per se, but saints of God: Daniel calls them “saints [kadish/hagioi] of the Most High” (Dan. 7:18); Paul calls them “saints [hagiois] in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:1) or “those sanctified [hegiasmenois] in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor. 1:2). Jesus Himself puts it like this: “For them I sanctify [hagiazo] myself, that they too may be sanctified [hegiasmenoi]” (Jn. 17:19). Only God can sanctify Himself; for us, His creatures, the only way to be holy is to participate in His life. So Holiness is something which originates with God and then draws others in. Jesus is holy because He is one with the Father. The Church is holy not on account of the virtue of its members but because it is His body. To be a saint one becomes a member of Jesus’s body: that body which is “the fulness of him who fills everything in every way” (Eph. 1:23) – the Church.
The Greek word koinonia (in Latin, communio) is another word pregnant with complex and profound implications. In English it is sometimes translated as “fellowship” or “participation” – but these words are shallow in comparison with the fullness of its meaning. Koinonia means unity, as one body, one person, one “flesh”. The ancient Jews would have found the concept far easier to understand that we do in our modern age of individualism, because for them, as Free Church of Scotland theologian W. Robertson Smith explains, a nation (or household)
was a group of persons whose lives were so bound up together, in what must be called a physical unity, that they could be treated as parts of one common life. The members of one kindred looked on themselves as one living whole, a single animated mass of blood, flesh and bones, of which no member could be touched without all the members suffering... In Hebrew the phrase by which one claims kinship is “I am your bone and your flesh.” [cf. Is. 58:7] [5]
For Christians, this is another way of describing the “held together” nature of God and His Christ. The Triune God is the ultimate koinonia – the ultimate unity: “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father… I am in the Father, and… the Father is in me” (Jn. 14:9-10). The good news for us is that “God, who has called you into fellowship [koinonian] with his Son Jesus Christ, is faithful” (1 Cor. 1:9).
So how can we attain this koinonia in Christ? Well, there are many ways of course. But let us, for now, consider this one:
Is not the cup of thanksgiving
for which we give thanks a participation [koinonia]
in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation [koinonia] in the body of Christ? Because
there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we partake of the one
loaf.
Consider the people of Israel: Do
not those who eat the sacrifices participate [koinonoi eisin] in the altar? (1 Cor. 10:16-18)
So, just as the people of Israel were made holy through their communion with each other and with God, made manifest through their participation in the todah sacrifices, so too are we made holy (hagioi) through our holy communion (hagia koinonia) with each other and with God, made manifest through our participation in the new todah, the Eucharist. Holiness requires communion with God, which demands unity of the Body of Christ the Church (Eph. 4:12-13), for God, the holy One (Is. 6:3), is One (Deut. 6:4). And communion is found in the Body of Christ in the Eucharist (1 Cor. 10:16-17). That is why Paul could write, “We, who are many, are one body, for we partake of the one loaf” (1 Cor. 10:17). And that is why the Christians of the first century A.D., echoing Paul, recited this prayer when they celebrated the Eucharist:
“As this broken bread, once dispersed over the hills, was brought together and became one loaf, so may thy Church be brought together from the ends of the earth into thy kingdom.” [6]
Robertson Smith warns us against taking too symbolic an approach to all this:
To us all this seems mere metaphor, from which no practical consequences can follow. But in early thought there is no sharp line between the metaphorical and the literal, between the way of expressing a thing and the way of conceiving it; phrases and symbols are treated as realities. [7]
Yes, we can interpret koinonia as “mere metaphor”, but only by driving a wedge between symbol and reality, between type and antitype, between material and spiritual, between Heaven and earth. And that is not what Christ came for. For
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together... For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven. (Col. 1:17,19-20)
All things, whether or earth or in Heaven. That means that in Christ bread on earth can be reconciled, or “communioned”, with the Bread of Heaven. Water on earth can be “communioned” with the Living Water (Jn. 4:7-15). Jerusalem on earth can be “communioned” with “the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (Rev. 21:2). The Body of Christ on earth can be “communioned” with the Body of Christ in Heaven. Communio sanctorum, or koinonia ton hagion, refers to the communion of all holy things and people, both material and spiritual, both earthly and heavenly – without which God’s likeness cannot be restored in His creation.
Qahal kadoshim
But we must go further. For Christ is not only Lord of both Heaven and Earth, but He is also “the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Rev. 22:12). His realm is eternal, and so He is Lord also of all times and seasons; and of the eternal realms, which are beyond and above all places and times. Therefore, koinonia is not just something shared between Christians who know each other, who worship and pray together on earth in their parishes or communities. It is not even just limited to the members of the whole worldwide Body of Christ here on earth. God’s koinonia extends through space and time, for Christ came to redeem all creation and gather it to Himself. Paul puts it like this:
All things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future – all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God. (1 Cor. 3:21-23)
So, in Christ, all things and all times (“life or death or the present or the future”) are ours, and we are of God. Therefore, God’s community of the called-out ones (ekklesia) also subsists in some sense in all times and all places. So now we can see that the word katholikos means even more than we have hitherto said. It does not just mean “worldwide”, because the Church, being the Body of Christ, is not limited by the space and time of this world. Katholikos also implies universal and eternal – everywhere and in every time, and also outside of space and time, in the eternal realms to which we will pass after death. All of us who have heard the call of Christ are members of the Body of Him who joins Heaven and earth. Therefore we are members of each other, and wherever and whenever Christ is, we are there.
Scripture makes this explicit. In the Old Testament, the inhabitants of Heaven are described using the same vocabulary as the members of the Church on earth in the New. Whilst there is no Hebrew equivalent for koinonia, there are words for assembly or congregation. God’s heavenly court is described as an “assembly of the holy ones”, i.e. qahal kadoshim, or, in Greek, ekklesia hagion – a very similar phrase to “communion of saints”:
The heavens
praise your wonders, O LORD,
your faithfulness
too, in the assembly of the holy ones [qahal
kadoshim / ekklesia hagion].
For who in
the skies above can compare with the LORD?
Who is like
the LORD among the heavenly beings?
In the
council of the holy ones [kadoshim/hagion]
God is greatly feared;
he is more
awesome than all who surround him. (Ps. 89:5-7)
Thus Scripture tells us that there are hagioi in Heaven as well as on earth; there is ekklesia in Heaven as well as on earth, and we are all of one Church:
But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church [ekklesia] of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. (Heb. 12:22-23)
Who then are these “holy ones”, these hagioi who inhabit the heavenly Jerusalem? And what kind of qahal or ekklesia do they make? And if we are all of one Church, then how do we relate to them? Scripture provides tantalising glimpses of this reality. First, God’s throne room is filled with angels (Heb. 12:22): particularly, cherubim (Ps. 80:1, 99:1) and seraphim (Is. 6:1-6). They are holy (Ps. 89:5-6, Dan. 4:13), for they are in God’s communion.
If there are “holy ones” in Heaven and “holy ones” on earth, and if all these hagioi are in communion, then it makes sense for us to be, in some sense, in communication. And so angels pass between Heaven and earth, on Jacob’s ladder (Gen. 28:12) and on Christ (Jn. 1:51). And all these creatures communicate with men on God’s behalf (e.g. Gen. 16:7-12, 22:11-12; Judg. 2:1-5, Dan. 9:21-27; Lk. 1:26-38, 2:10-14). There are even “seven spirits” who can communicate God’s “grace and peace” to us (Rev. 1:4)! Significantly, this communication is not just one way: angels also carry the prayers of men to God:
Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all the saints, on the golden altar before the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel’s hand. (Rev. 8:3-4)
Angels, OK. But what about the other inhabitants of Heaven? Is there any reason to believe that the saints in Heaven – mere men, after all – can participate in God’s life in this way? Aren’t they… dead? Jesus’s answer is unequivocal:
“Have you not read in the book of Moses, in the account of the bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. (Mk. 12:26-27, cf. Matt. 22:31-32, Lk. 20:37-38)
Jesus tells us in the same passage that “those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead... are like the angels” (Lk. 20:35-36, cf. Matt. 22:30, Mk. 12:25). Exactly what he meant by that is of course debatable, but we cannot discount the possibility that the angels give us a glimpse of what life is like for the saints in Heaven. The saints in Heaven have also entered fully into God’s communion. Like the angels, they too fill His throne room with praise (Rev. 4). They too can pass between death and resurrected life (Matt. 27:52-53). They too surround us and watch over us (Heb. 12:1). And because they are now God’s communicants, they too can be His communicators. And so, in the parable of the beggar Lazarus, Abraham, a mere man, communicates with the rich man on God’s behalf (Lk. 16:22-31). And Moses and Elijah speak to Jesus whilst he in on the mountain with His disciples (Matt. 17:1-4, Mk. 9:2-6, Lk. 9:28-33). And in Heaven the souls of martyred saints pray to God on behalf of men on earth, and God answers them:
I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer. (Rev. 6:9-11)
Not only that, but in Heaven the saints present the prayers of other men to God:
Surrounding the throne were
twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders [presbyterous]. They were dressed in
white and had crowns of gold on their heads. […]
The twenty-four elders fell down
before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of
incense, which are the prayers of the saints [hagion]. (Rev. 4:4, 5:8)
Who are these twenty-four enthroned presbyteroi? The gospels tell us the identity of twelve of them:
“I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” (Matt. 19:28, cf. Lk. 22:30)
And Revelation hints at the identity of the other twelve:
He... showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God... It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and... on the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel... The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were written the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. (Rev. 21:10,12,14)
Twelve plus twelve: twelve gates plus twelve foundations: the twelve patriarchs of the tribes of Israel plus the twelve apostles of Jesus. In Heaven these twenty-four elders, though mere men themselves, sit enthroned and crowned, and together present the prayers of men to God!
Put all these verses together, and you have an image of earth and eternity, joined up and teeming with life and activity and communication. Angels and men praise God incessantly. The prayers of men are presented to God by both angels and men. And God answers, using both men and angels to convey His word. How could we expect less, from a God who is both God and man, and who has come to redeem and reunite Heaven and earth? [8]
Now, none of this gives anyone the right to worship the saints. Like the angels, the saints are “‘fellow servant[s] with you and with your brothers the prophets... Worship God!’” (Rev. 22:9) we are told. To worship the angels or the saints would be idolatry: we may not do this. But we can be in communion with them, for they are holy, as we are saints (hagioi). And so we can speak with them, if we so wish – as we can speak with our fellow saints on earth.
Praying for each other
But does that mean that we can pray to the saints? Well, it depends upon what you mean by “pray”. The English word “pray” comes from the Latin precari, which means “to ask” or “to entreat” – and it is not so long ago that the word was used in English to mean exactly that. [9] Some languages, such as French (prier) or Italian (pregare), use exactly the same word to mean both “to entreat” (someone) and “to pray” (to God). So when we “pray” to the saints, all we are doing is asking them to pray to God for us. We are entreating them to present our prayers to God – just as the twenty-four elders in Revelation do. This does not accord the saints divine status – any more than it accords divine status to the elders in Heaven. Christians of all persuasions routinely ask other Christians to pray for them: this is God’s command to us, and the example of the apostles. [10] Asking others to pray for us does not threaten the role of Christ as the “one mediator” (1 Tim. 2:5) between God and man. If it did, then we would never ask anyone else to pray for us – even our fellow Christians on earth. And if it did, then it would be impossible for the angels or saints in Heaven to carry our prayers to God, which Scripture tells us they do (Rev. 5:8, 8:3). Rather, it confirms the biblical principle that we are called to be God’s “fellow-workers” (1 Cor. 3:9, 2 Cor. 6:1), members of Christ’s body (Rom. 12:5, 1 Cor. 12:12-26, Col. 3:15 etc.) – and “a royal priesthood” (1 Pet. 2:9).
This last phrase is of particularly importance to us – and not just because it is one particularly beloved of Evangelicals. Christ is our one High Priest (Heb. 4:14, 6:20 etc.), but we are all members of His royal priesthood (1 Pet. 2:9). As Presbyterian theologian Robert McAfee Brown points out, “the high-priesthood of Christ and the royal priesthood of all believers are inseparable. They are not identical but they are part of the same activity.” [11] A priest, in the Old Testament, is one who offers sacrifice on behalf of the people. Christ did not abolish the priesthood, but transformed it by extending it to all believers. The phrase “royal priesthood”
does not mean that “every man is his own priest.” It means the opposite: “every man is a priest to every other man.” It does not imply individuality. It necessitates community. Christians are to offer themselves to one another, to pray for one another, to sacrifice themselves on behalf of one another, so that through them all, the high-priesthood of Jesus Christ may be more effectually communicated to them all. [12]
Sharing our Christian life through mutual prayer and self-giving is, therefore, is a sign of faith. And Catholics are happy to extend this good and holy principle of Christian communication to those who have gone before us into Heaven. Evangelical Anglican theologian Tim Perry explains it well:
It is on the basis of… shared life in Christ that Christians can and do intercede for one another across wide geographic differences. It is his life that is the basis of our communion as church, as his people, as his very body. And part of that life is the mutual bearing of burdens and the pleading of God’s mercy and favour on our brothers and sisters. If Christ is not only the bond of our communion, but the source of its life – a life that transcends bodily death – and if it is on the basis of our union with Christ that we intercede for each other, it is quite possible to conceive not only that the saints now in heaven pray for us, but that they can be implored to do so, much in the same way as we ask our brothers and sisters here on earth. [13]
C. S. Lewis puts it more succinctly:
If you can ask for the prayers of the living, why should you not ask for the prayers of the dead? [14]
There is a corollary of this, of course. For if the Body of Christ bridges Heaven and earth, past, present and future, time and eternity (cf. 1 Cor. 3:21-23), then not only can the saints in Heaven pray for us, but we too, as members of the same Body, can pray for those who have passed out of this world into the eternal realms. This practice occurs in both the Old and New Testaments. For instance, the prophet Elijah prays for the son of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kgs. 17:20-22); Jesus prays for Lazarus (Jn. 11:41-42); and Peter prays for Tabitha (Acts 9:40). In all these cases, God clearly hears the prayers offered by men for those who have passed on – and He responds with miraculous generosity.
Even when resurrection is not the result, prayer for those who have passed through death keeps popping up in the Bible. For example, Paul prays for the Ephesian disciple Onesiphorus, saying:
May the Lord grant that he will find mercy from the Lord on that day! (2 Tim. 1:18)
Onesiphorus was a Christian disciple, a man of faith. And yet Paul clearly does not think it superfluous to pray for his soul. Onesiphorus, though no longer with us, is now alive in the eternal realms, being purified in preparation for the last day. Paul recognises that, though Onesiphorus may have been faithful and righteous in this world, his destiny depends upon God’s mercy (Tit. 3:5, Rom. 9:16). And so Paul prays for Onesiphorus’s soul, that “he will find mercy from the Lord”.
It is also clear from deuterocanonical and non-biblical literature that praying for the souls of men in the eternal realms was common practice among Jews during the centuries leading up to Christ, and among both Jews and Christians during the centuries after Christ’s sojourn on earth. For instance, in c. 163 B.C., during the course of the Maccabean wars, Judas Maccabeus and his army came
to have the bodies of the fallen taken up and laid to rest among their relatives in their ancestral tombs. But when they found on each of the dead men, under their tunics, objects dedicated to the idols of Jamnia, which the Law prohibits to Jews… [they] gave themselves to prayer, begging that the sin might be completely forgiven. Next, the valiant Judas… took a collection from them individually, amounting to nearly two thousand drachmas, and sent it to Jerusalem to have a sacrifice for sin offered, an action altogether fine and noble, prompted by his belief in the resurrection. For had he not expected the fallen to rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead, whereas if he had in view the splendid recompense reserved for those who make a pious end, the thought was holy and devout. (2 Macc. 12:39-45, NJB)
For those who believe in the resurrection, then, praying for the departed was a “holy and devout” thing to do. It is likely therefore to have been common practice for Jesus and His apostles, and was continued by the early Christians. For example, the Christian martyr Vivia Perpetua – one of the earliest female Christian writers that we know of – wrote, c. 200 A.D., of praying for her departed brother Dinocrates whilst awaiting her martyrdom in the amphitheatre at Carthage. [15] And early Christian tomb inscriptions often sought the prayers of the living for the dead, as did this one on the grave of Bishop Abercius of Hierapolis (in modern-day Turkey), also from c. 200 A.D.:
Abercius is
my name, a disciple of the chaste shepherd
Who feeds
His sheep on the mountains and in the fields…
Who taught
me the faithful writings of life…
Standing
by, I, Abercius, ordered this to be inscribed;
Truly, I
was in my seventy-second year.
May
everyone who is in accord with this and who understands it pray for Abercius. [16]
Praying for the departed is also common practice among Christians to this day. Whenever we say of one who has left this world, “May God rest his soul,” we are praying for a member of our body, His body. When we sing “Michael, row the boat ashore,” we are asking the angels to commit our departed brothers into God’s care. [17] And when in the same spiritual we sing “Brother, lend a helping hand,” we are asking our Christian brothers to also pray for the departed and, in the final instance, us. In all these ways, we are furthering the communion of the holy. This is a loving and faithful thing to do, as C. S. Lewis explains:
Of course I pray for the dead. The action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter men. And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden. At our age the majority of those we love best are dead. What sort of intercourse with God could I have if what I love best were unmentionable to him? [18]
There is nothing compulsory about this of course. We all have free choice as to whom we pray for, and whom we ask to pray for us: our family, our friends, our local Christian community, the worldwide Church on earth, or the universal Church which, like Christ, bridges the divide between earth and eternity. There are no biblical injunctions to tell us for whom we may or may not pray, or whose prayers we may or may not seek. But Catholics see no scriptural reason why the universal option, ambitious though it may be, should be closed to us who belong to the Body of Him in whom all things, in Heaven and on earth, hold together (Col. 1:17). For “the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” (Ja. 5:16) – and there is no human being more righteous than those who have “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,” and who
are before
the throne of God
and serve
him day and night in his temple. (Rev. 7:15)
No man is an island
We have examined the biblical case to support the idea that the saints, both on earth and in Heaven, can and do communicate with and on behalf of each other. But this is actually a fairly modest idea compared with some of the things that Scripture says about the communion of the holy. We have seen that the whole purpose of being in communion with each other is to be in communion with Christ. The body of which we are all part is not just any old body: it is the body of Christ. And so we are sanctified by being put into communion with Him who joins Heaven and earth. That is how we are made fit for Heaven – by the action of His Spirit, dwelling in His body, of which we are members. We rise to eternal life because His body rises to eternal life. Death loses hold of us because death loses hold of Him. “Because I live, you also will live” (Jn. 14:19).
If Christ’s body is one, and if we are all members of that Body, then the question must be asked: What effect do we, the members, have on each other? Yes, we can and should love each other, support each other, and pray for each other. But is that just because it is a good thing to be loving to other Christians in general? Or is something more profound at work? After all, Paul doesn’t just say that the eye shouldn’t say to the hand, or the head shouldn’t say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” No, he says that the eye cannot say this to the hand, the head cannot say this to the feet (1 Cor. 12:21). Why cannot? Paul answers the question himself:
If one part suffers, every part suffers
with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it.
Now you are the body of Christ,
and each one of you is a part of it. (1 Cor. 12:26-27)
And so we find ourselves faced with the uncomfortable notion that to be a Christian places each and every one of us in communion with both the suffering and the rejoicing of every other part of the Body of Christ – including the head, which is Christ Himself. In some sense at least, we have a shared destiny.
Actually, we should not be too surprised by this. Look through the salvation vocabulary of the Old Testament, and we find that redemption is generally described as a communal affair, one which is applied to Israel as a whole, and not just to individuals. Return from exile to the Promised Land is one of the paramount images applied to this salvation:
Comfort,
comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and proclaim to her
that her hard service has been
completed,
that her sin has been paid for. (Is.
40:1-2)
“The time
is coming,” declares the LORD,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah.” […]
“This is the covenant that I will
make
with the house of Israel
after that time,” declares the LORD.
I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.” (Jer.
31:31,33)
“I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you.” (Ezek. 36:24-27)
As Anglican theologian Tom Wright points out, “the most natural meaning of the phrase ‘the forgiveness of sins’ to a first-century Jew is not in the first instance the remission of individual sins, but the putting away of the whole nation’s sins.” [19] Baptist theologian H. Wheeler Robinson explains that for the ancient Jews
the complete destiny of the
individual can be realized only if the nation accomplishes its own. [...]
The covenant is with the nation,
not with the individual Israelites except as members or representatives of the
nation. Throughout the whole period of the Old Testament, this covenant with
the “corporate personality” of Israel (as we may call it) remains the
all-inclusive fact and factor. [20]
And so, if there is a continuity between the house of Israel and the new household of God, the Church, then it should not surprise us too much if this sense of shared salvific destiny [21] is transferred from the Old Testament to the New and if, even in the New Covenant, salvation is described as in some sense at least a communal matter. The Gospels confirm this, telling us that God “will save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21, my emphasis) and “make ready a people prepared for the Lord” (Lk. 1:17, my emphasis) – not just a bunch of individuals. “He has come and redeemed his people… to give his people the knowledge of salvation” (Lk. 1:68,77, my emphasis). This will be “good news of great joy that will be for all the people” (Lk. 2:10, my emphasis). [22]
Evangelical missionary David Bjork warns against
the all too common mistake of confusing personal faith and individual faith. By “personal faith” I mean a faith that underscores the importance of knowing, trusting and loving God… The Christian faith, while being personal, is never individual, at least not in the contemporary understanding of the word. True Christian faith is always personal and communal. [23]
This is a challenging concept for us modern Christians, growing up in the mindset of post-Renaissance, post-Enlightenment individualism. It reminds me of that wonderful Meditation by the great Anglican cleric and poet John Donne (1572-1631), the most famous part of which is this:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.
But there is more to Donne’s Meditation. He continues:
The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she
does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for
that child is thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and
ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that
action concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume. […]
No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by and made fit
for God by that affliction… Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it
is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our
home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this
affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him;
but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold
to me: if by this consideration of another’s danger I take mine own into
contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is
our only security. [24]
Read carefully what Donne is suggesting here: that whatever happens to any one of us, to any member of the Body of Christ, happens to all of us. Not only do we share our sufferings and our rejoicings, but even to a certain extent we share our journeys of faith – our baptisms and our deaths. This sharing makes us more like the Triune God – the ultimate koinonia – and therefore brings us, together, closer to Heaven.
This is a radical idea. It can go against our modern concept of how salvation is supposed to work. In the wake of the Renaissance, we can often think of our salvation as a purely individual matter, something concerning just “me and God”. How on earth can Donne suggest that another man’s baptism, another man’s tribulation, indeed another man’s death can help me in my journey to Heaven? Surely it is only Christ’s suffering and death that puts me right with God! One of the great clarion calls of the Reformation was “solo Christo”: salvation through Christ alone! Anything beyond that – all this talk of angels and saints, and of the sharing of our Christian destiny – threatens to deny the uniqueness and the sufficiency of Christ’s saving sacrifice. Doesn’t it? Or does it?
As we saw in Chapter Seven, when we look at Scripture there is indeed lots to tell us that we are saved by Christ’s sacrifice, and that alone. But that is not all there is to say on the subject. The question is not whether we are saved by Christ alone – for the answer to that is an unqualified yes. Rather, the question is: How is the grace of Christ’s saving sacrifice applied to us? In the words of Luther which we read in Chapter Seven, “What is the work by which we take hold of Christ's death and resurrection?” Luther’s answer, based upon his interpretation of Paul, was uncompromising: “faith alone”! [25] But the problem is that Scripture, stripped of Luther’s interpretation, and stripped of the interpretations of many generations since, is not quite so unequivocal. Tom Wright explains:
The gospel creates, not a bunch of individual Christians, but a community. If you take the old route of putting justification, in its traditional [Protestant] meaning, at the centre of your theology, you will always be in danger of sustaining some sort of individualism. This wasn’t so much of a problem in Augustine’s, or even in Luther’s, day, when society was much more bound together than it is now. But both in Enlightenment modernism and in contemporary post-modernism, individualism has been all the rage… Tragically, some would-be representations of “the gospel” have actually bought into this, by implying that one is justified or saved first and foremost as an individual… Of course every single human being is summoned, in his or her uniqueness, to respond personally to the gospel. Nobody in their right mind would deny that. But there is no such thing as an “individual” Christian. Paul’s gospel created a community… Ours must do no less. [26]
There is much in Scripture which hints that our eternal destiny may be affected not just by our own faith, but by the faith and the actions of others in the Body of Christ. First, all Christians believe that their prayers may affect the life and salvation of another human being. That is why we pray for people we know, both believers and non-believers. In the years before I became a Christian, I know that many of my Christian friends were praying for me to come to faith, and I am grateful for their prayers. That their actions may have affected the course of my salvation is something I am thankful for. Their prayers did not usurp God’s right to decide my fate in accordance with His own plans; nor did they deny my need of the grace of Jesus’s saving sacrifice; nor did they absolve me of having personally to receive, and to treasure, the gift of faith. Rather, they were God’s way of involving some of His chosen saints in my salvation. They were a sign of the communion of the holy. This is why we are all told to pray for others: it is part of how God’s turns us into His “fellow workers” (1 Cor. 3:9, 2 Cor. 6:1) – his “royal priesthood” (1 Pet. 2:9).
But it does not stop at prayer. Scripture tells us that events and relationships of love, such as marriage and birth and parenthood, can have a part in saving someone else:
The unbelieving husband has been sanctified [hegiastai] through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified [hegiastai] through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy [hagia]. (1 Cor. 7:14)
Women will be saved through childbearing – if they continue in faith [pistei], love and holiness [hagiasmo] with propriety. (1 Tim. 2:15)
And even one man’s suffering can contribute to another’s salvation, as Paul says:
Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church [ekklesia]. (Col. 1:24)
And even Jesus, in His agony in the Garden, was strengthened by the angels:
He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. (Lk. 22:43)
How can these things be so? How can a created angel possibly strengthen the Saviour of the world? How can an unbeliever be sanctified through a believer? How can one be saved through childbearing? How can all Christians be “royal priests” to all other Christians? And how on earth can Paul’s sufferings possibly make up for “what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions”? Surely there is nothing “lacking” in Christ’s suffering!?
Verses such as these make no sense if we do not accept the idea of the communion of the holy. For if husband and wife are not “one flesh” (Gen. 2:24), then they cannot possibly sanctify each other. And if the angels are not members of Christ’s Body, then they cannot possibly strengthen Him. And if Paul is not a member of Christ’s Body, then any suggestion that his sufferings make up for something “lacking” in Christ’s puts Paul in competition with Christ.
But if we believe that the Body of Christ is held together (Col. 1:17) by Christ, and that we are all members of that Body, then Paul’s statement is an amazing revelation. It tells us that by uniting ourselves to the Body of Christ, which subsists universally, uniting Heaven and earth (Col. 1:20), past, present and future (1 Cor. 3:22), we can be communicants (koinonoi) in Christ’s saving sacrifice. It enables us all to be Christ-like, infused with His Spirit, and give of ourselves, in communion (koinonia) – just as He does. That is why Paul says in the quote above, “for the sake of his body, which is the church” (Col. 1:24) – outside which none of this makes sense. The great Protestant theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer explains it like this:
Just as no man can live without the church, and each owes his life to it and now belongs to it, so his merits too are no longer his own, but belong to the church too. It is solely because the church lives as it were one life in Christ that the Christian can say that other men’s chastity helps him in the temptations of his desires, that other men’s fasting benefits him, and that his neighbour’s prayers are offered for him… which in turn is to be accounted for by the fact that Christ died for the church so that its members might lead one life, with one another and for one another. [27]
This is why Jesus can say to us, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24, Mk. 8:34, cf. Lk. 9:23). And that is why Paul can write, “We are… heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory” (Rom. 8:17). It is not Jesus’s intention to take away our sufferings, but our sins. That He suffered for us does not spare us the responsibility of suffering for each other, or even for Him. It means that in Christ, our sufferings, our deaths, our births, our marriages, our baptisms, are not our own, but His and each other’s:
We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus… so that his life may be revealed in our mortal body. (2 Cor. 4:8-11)
This does not undermine the uniqueness of Christ’s saving sacrifice. Indeed, this is the Christian equivalent of the Jews’ “us also did he redeem with them” and “this is the bread of affliction, which our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt”. [28] In Christ, our lives, our sufferings, our deaths have – to use a phrase we met in Chapter Nine – a kedushas ha-yom: [29] a God-infused holiness. This is yet another layer to the communio sanctorum: our very lives, in Christ, are holy (cf. 1 Cor. 3:21-23). That is why, in Christ, we can, as a “royal priesthood” (1 Pet. 2:9), offer them for each other; because in Christ, they are of Christ, and “by his wounds we are healed” (Is. 53:5). Pope John Paul II explains:
Every man has his own share in the Redemption. Each one is also called
to share in that suffering through which the Redemption was accomplished. He is
called to share in that suffering through which all human suffering has also
been redeemed. In bringing about the Redemption through suffering, Christ has
also raised human suffering to the level of the Redemption. Thus each man, in
his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ.
[…]
In this dimension every human suffering, by reason of the loving union
with Christ, completes the suffering of Christ… The mystery of the Church – that
body which completes in itself also Christ's crucified and risen body – indicates
at the same time the space or context in which human sufferings complete the sufferings
of Christ. Only within this radius and dimension of the Church as the Body of
Christ, which continually develops in space and time, can one think and speak
of “what is lacking” [Col. 1:24]
in the sufferings of Christ. [30]
In saying all this, we are pushing at the edges of some of the most profound mysteries of the Christian revelation. We cannot “solve” these mysteries. But we must accept that Scripture presents them to us, and that therefore we must submit to them with humility. C. S. Lewis explains:
That we can die “in” Adam and live “in” Christ [cf. 1 Cor. 15:22] seems to me to imply that man, as he really is, differs a good deal from man as our categories of thought and our three-dimensional imaginations represent him; that the separateness… which we discern between individuals, is balanced, in absolute reality, by some kind of “inter-inanimation” of which we have no conception at all. It may be that the acts and sufferings of great archetypal individuals such as Adam and Christ are ours, not by legal fiction, metaphor, or causality, but in some much deeper fashion. [31]
If we find this idea difficult, then perhaps it might help to realise that none of this undermines the great Reformation principle of solo Christo. We are saved by Christ alone, and by His grace and mercy alone; it is just that the mechanisms by which Christ saves us are varied and complex. They are His choice, after all; and if, as Scripture tells us, He sometimes chooses to save His people – even to strengthen Himself! – through the actions of other members of His Body, then let us rejoice in that. We are, after all, meant to be His “fellow-workers” (1 Cor. 3:9, 2 Cor. 6:1) – and that is a privilege indeed.
Bride
But we have not reached the end of our discussion of the communion of the holy, for there is another important way in which we Christians are called to be one Body, which Scripture proclaims as one of the most profound mysteries of all:
Wives, submit to your husbands as
to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of
the church, his body, of which he is the Saviour. Now as the church submits to
Christ, so also should wives submit to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, just
as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy,
cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to
himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but
holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as
their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no-one ever
hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church
– for we are members of his body. “For this reason a man will leave his father
and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh” [Gen.
2:24]. This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the
church. (Eph. 5:22-32)
This passage can of course teach us much about how to be married here on earth. But, as Paul says, he is “talking about Christ and the church”. So here we have another powerful image about the communion which exists between Christ and His Church: He “feeds and cares for it”, and “present[s] her to himself” as a radiant bride; and so the two are one flesh. Christ and the Church are one flesh! We reduce this to mere symbol at our peril, for there are few impulses more physically powerful in human life than our desire for food and our desire for erotic union. And there are no more intimate ways for two beings to become “one flesh” than through eating, and through sex. When I consume the flesh of an animal, that animal becomes part of me; it loses its own existence and becomes part of mine: “one flesh”. When I make love to my wife, I literally enter into her body; and out of that union can come a new life which is neither just mine nor just hers: “one flesh”. Food and sex, feasting and marriage, are connected. And yet Paul tells us that both these things are but the earthly side of “a profound mystery” – and mystery, by definition, bridges the gap between Heaven and earth.
How is this? How does God “feed and care for” His people? In many ways, of course. But one very special way is by giving them bread and water in the desert, and another is by giving them bread and wine at the Eucharist. The first bread is the bread of angels (Ps. 78:25); the second is the living bread that comes down from Heaven (Jn. 6:32-58). They create communion – unity between God and His people. That is why the Hebrew word for “sacrifice” is korban, meaning “to draw near”; and that is why the bread that we break is called koinonia (1 Cor. 10:16). All holy things (hagia) are in koinonia – and so the material stuff we consume at the Eucharist, which Christ has declared to be the body of Him who reconciles “to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven” (Col. 1:20), is but the earthly end of a mystery which reaches into Heaven, to the eternal banquet of God (Is. 25:6, Lk. 14:15-23).
And how does God marry His Church? At a wedding banquet. And this is indeed “a profound mystery” (Eph. 5:32): feasting and marriage, food and sex – the wedding banquet is the ultimate biblical image for the depth of God’s love for us. Let us see how.
The Bible begins with a marriage made between man and woman in purity of heart, still in holy communion in the garden of Eden:
The man
said,
“This is now bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman’,
for she was taken out of man.”
For this reason a man will leave
his father and mother and be united to his wife,
and they will become one flesh.
The man and his wife were both
naked, and they felt no shame. (Gen. 2:23-25)
It is just after this marriage that sin enters into the world – significantly, through an illicit meal, hidden from God (Gen. 3:1-6). Man and woman lose their communion with each other and with God, and so they hide themselves, both from each other and from Him (Gen. 3:7-8). And the angels, their fellow creatures and erstwhile fellow holy communicants, become instead the ones who separate them from access to Paradise (Gen. 3:24). Mankind has become like a faithless wife (cf. Ezek. 16); his communion with God has been broken.
Ever since then, God has been wooing us, to try to bring us back into communion with Him. And so He says to us, in language oozing with images of food and sex, of feasting and marriage:
Come from
Lebanon, my bride,
come with
me from Lebanon...
Your lips
drop sweetness as the honeycomb, my bride;
milk and
honey are under your tongue...
You are a
garden locked up, my sister, my bride;
you are a spring
enclosed, a sealed fountain. (Song 4:8,11-12)
“I am now
going to allure her;
I will lead
her into the desert
and speak
tenderly to her.
There I will
give her back her vineyards...
“In that
day,” declares the LORD,
“you will call me ‘my husband’.”
(Hos. 2:14-16)
Time and again Jesus compares the kingdom of Heaven to a marriage feast (e.g. Matt. 25:1-13, Lk. 12:35-40). And Jesus makes it clear that He, the Messiah, is the bridegroom the world has been waiting for:
“How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have him with them. But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast.” (Mk. 2:19-20; cf. Matt. 9:15, Lk. 5:34-35)
And so Jesus’s first miraculous sign, at which He reveals His glory (Jn. 2:11), takes place at a wedding banquet (Jn. 2:1-11). In the Old Covenant Jesus, “the spiritual rock that accompanied them” (1 Cor. 10:4), gave His people bread and water; in the New He gives them bread and wine (Matt. 26:26-29, Mk. 14:22-25, Lk. 22:17-20, 1 Cor. 11:23-25). From the Old Testament to the New, Jesus has changed water into wine: the banquet has become even richer!
And so the Bible ends with a marriage feast – an eternal heavenly wedding feast, where the Christ is the bridegroom, and the Christ is the sacrifice-meal (Rev. 5:6,12):
“Let us
rejoice and be glad
and give
him glory!
For the wedding
of the Lamb has come,
and his
bride has made herself ready...
‘Blessed
are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!’” (Rev. 19:7,9)
Just after Adam’s marriage, sin came into the world through the deception of the serpent (Gen. 3:1-15). But at the wedding feast of the second Adam (cf. 1 Cor. 15:45), the “ancient serpent” is thrown into the abyss (Rev. 20:2-3), and then into the lake of burning sulphur (Rev. 20:10). The wedding of Christ and His Church ushers in “a new heaven and a new earth” (Rev. 21:1), where
“the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” (Rev. 21:3)
In other words, the wedding feast of the Lamb creates, or rather creates anew, the communion of saints which was lost in Eden. One of the ways we can enter into that holy communion is by being dutiful to Christ’s instruction: “Do this in anamnesis of me” (cf. Lk. 22:19, 1 Cor. 11:24), and by accepting in faith (even if not in understanding) what He tells us: that the bread that we break is “a koinonia in the body of Christ” (cf. 1 Cor. 10:16), a communion with the eternal wedding feast of the Lamb – not just symbolically, but mystically, for He is the one who puts Heaven and earth in communion. The Eucharist is Christ’s meal prepared for us, Christ’s “once for all” (Heb. 10:10) sacrifice made for us, and Christ’s eternal marriage with us. Because He holds all things together, whether in Heaven or on earth (Col. 1:20), this meal, this sacrifice, this marriage extends into the communion of Heaven. If we partake of this marriage-feast-sacrifice, then
there will be heard once more the
sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of bride and bridegroom, and the voices
of those who bring thank-offerings [todah]
to the house [bayit] of the LORD,
saying,
“Give
thanks to the LORD Almighty,
for the LORD
is good;
his love
endures for ever.” (Jer. 33:10-11)
New life
A final image of marriage: When husband and wife make love,
another great mystery is revealed: that married love leads to the creation of new
life. So husband and wife do not merely image God’s love for His people: they
also image God’s creativity – His desire to create new life in His image and
likeness, for every family on earth is named after our Father in Heaven (Eph.
3:15). The heavenly Jerusalem, after all, “is our mother” (Gal. 4:26). And so the
communion of the holy, the marriage of Christ and His Church, leads to new
life, new birth. Let us see now what the Bible has to say about being born again.
SCRIPTURAL SUMMARY of
Chapter Eleven
One body
1 Cor. 10:16-17, 12:12-27
In Him all things
hold together.
Col. 1:15-20
The Church, the New
Israel…
Matt. 19:28, Rev. 21:9-14
… God’s household…
Eph. 2:19-22, 1 Tim. 3:15, Heb.
3:6
… God’s family…
Mk. 3:35, 1 Cor. 4:15, 1 Tim. 1:2
…“the pillar and foundation of the truth”…
1 Tim. 3:15
… “the fulness of him who fills everything
in every way”
Eph. 1:23
Who is holy?
Ex. 13:2, 13:12; Lev. 11:44, 19:2, 20:26; Deut. 7:6, Is. 6:3,
Dan. 7:18, Mk. 1:24; Lk. 1:35, 2:23;
Jn. 17:17-19, Acts 3:14, 1 Cor. 1:2, Phil.
1:1
What is communion?
Is. 58:7; Jn. 4:7-15, 14:9-10; 1 Cor. 1:9, 3:21-23, 10:16-18;
Rev. 21:2, 22:12
The communion of
saints:
Ps. 89:5-7, Heb. 12:22-23
angels…
Gen. 16:7-12, 22:11-12, 28:12; Judg.
2:1-5, Tob. 12:12, 2 Macc. 15:14; Ps.
80:1, 89:5-6, 99:1;
Is. 6:1-6; Dan. 4:13, 9:21-27; Lk. 1:26-38, 2:10-14; Jn.
1:51; Rev. 1:4, 8:3-4, 22:8-9
… and men…
Matt. 17:1-4, 19:28, 22:30-32,
27:52-53; Mk. 9:2-6, 12:26-27; Lk. 9:28-33, 16:22-31, 20:35-38,
22:30; Heb.
12:1; Rev. 4, 5:8, 6:9-11, 21:10-14
… “fellow-workers” and “royal priesthood”…
Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 3:9, 12:12-27;
2 Cor. 6:1, Col. 3:15; Heb. 4:14, 6:20; 1 Pet. 2:9
… who pray for each other, that God may be merciful.
1 Kgs. 17:20-22, 2 Macc. 12:39-45,
Jn. 11:41-42, Acts 9:40, Rom. 9:16, 2 Tim. 1:18, Tit. 3:5,
Ja. 5:16, Rev. 7:14-15
No man is an island…
Gen. 2:23-25, Is. 40:1-2, Jer. 31:31-33, Ezek. 36:24-27, Matt.
1:21; Lk. 1:17, 1:68, 1:77, 2:10, 22:43;
1 Cor. 3:21-23, 7:14, 12:12-27; Col.
1:24, 1 Tim. 2:15
… even in suffering.
Matt. 16:24, Mk. 8:34, Lk. 9:23, Rom. 8:17, 2 Cor. 4:8-11
The wedding banquet
of Christ
Gen. 2:23-3:24; Song 4:8-12, Is. 25:6, Jer. 33:10-11, Ezek.
16, Hos. 2:14-16; Matt. 9:15, 25:1-13,
26:26-29; Mk. 2:19-20, 14:22-25; Lk.
5:34-35, 12:35-40, 14:15-23, 22:17-20; Jn. 2:1-11, 6:32-59;
1 Cor. 11:23-25; Gal.
4:26, Eph. 3:15, 5:22-32; Rev. 19:6-9, 20:2-10, 21:1-3
[1] Huldreich Zwingli, “Letter of
Huldreich Zwingli to the Most Illustrious Princes of Germany Assembled at
Augsburg, Regarding the Insults of Eck (August 27, 1530)”, in The Latin Works of Huldreich Zwingli,
vol. II, ed. William John Hinke (Heidelberg, Philadelphia, 1922), p. 120, on archive.org
[2] J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (Longmans,
London, 1967), pp. 388-9
[3] e.g. 1 Cor. 2:7, 4:1, 13:2, 14:2, 15:51; Eph. 1:9; Col. 1:26-27,
2:2, 4:3
[4] “Holy”, in Dictionary of Biblical Theology, ed. Xavier Léon-Dufour (The Word
Among Us, Ijamsville, 1988).
[5] W. Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites
(A. & C. Black, London, 1894), pp. 273-274, on www.etana.org
[6] The Didache 9, in Early Christian
Writings, ed. Maxwell Staniforth (Penguin, London, 1988)
[7] W. Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites
(A. & C. Black, London, 1894), p. 274
[8] Also in the deuterocanonical
literature: in the book of Tobit, the angel Gabriel says to Tobias: “‘When you
and Sarah were at prayer, it was I who offered your supplications before the
glory of the Lord and who read them; so too when you were burying the dead’”
(Tob. 12:12, NJB); and in Maccabees,
Judas Maccabeus has a vision of the deceased prophet Jeremiah “‘who loves his
brothers and prays much for the people and the holy city’” (2 Macc. 15:14, NJB).
[9] e.g. “Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,
trippingly on the tongue.” (William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III sc. 2)
[10] e.g. Rom. 15:30-31; Eph. 3:16-19, 6:18; Col. 4:3, 1 Thess. 5:25; 2
Thess. 1:11, 3:1; 1 Tim. 2:1, Ja. 5:16, 1 Jn. 5:16
[11] Robert McAfee Brown, The Spirit of Protestantism (OUP, New
York, 1961), p. 96
[12] Robert McAfee Brown, The Spirit of Protestantism (OUP, New York,
1961), p. 97
[13] Tim Perry, Mary for Evangelicals (InterVarsity, Downers Grove, 2006), p. 300
[14] C.S. Lewis, Prayer: Letters to Malcolm (Fount, London, 1977), p. 17
[15] The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas II.3-4, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, ed. Phillip
Schaff (T&T Clark, Edinburgh), on www.ccel.org
[16] Epitaph of Abercius, in The
Faith of the Early Fathers vol. 1, ed. William A. Jurgens (Liturgical,
Collegeville, 1970)
[17] cf. Dan. 10:13, 12:1; 1 Thess. 4:16, Jude 1:9, Rev. 12:7
[18] C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (Fount, London, 1977), p. 109
[19] N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (SPCK, London, 1992), p.
273 [my emphasis]
[20] H. Wheeler Robinson, Corporate Personality in Ancient Israel
(Fortress, Philadelphia, 1980) pp. 33,51
[21] the “darker” aspect of which is
alluded to in passages such as Ex. 20:5, Deut. 13:12-15, Josh. 7, 2 Sam. 21:1-7
[22] Robert E. Webber, Common Roots: A Call to Evangelical Maturity
(Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1979), p. 42
[23] David Bjork & Stephen March, As Pilgrims Progress: Learning how Christians
can walk hand in hand when they don’t see eye to eye (Aventine, San Diego,
2015), p. 120
[24] John Donne, Meditation XVII from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, on www.online-literature.com
[25] Martin Luther: “An Open Letter on
Translating, 1530”, trans. G. Mann, rev. M. D. Marlowe, on www.bible-researcher.com
[26] N. T. Wright, What Saint Paul Really Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of
Christianity? (William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1997), pp. 157-158
[27] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Communion of Saints (Harper & Row,
New York, 1963), pp. 129-130
[28] Passover Hagadah, ed. Rabbi Bernard Goldenberg (Yeshiva Mesivta
Rabbi Chaim Berlin, New York, 1945)
[29] Rabbi Mayer Twersky, “And It Happened at Midnight” (The TorahWeb
Foundation, 1999), on www.torahweb.org
[30] John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris V.19 & 24 (The Holy See, 1984), on w2.vatican.va
[31] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (Harper Collins, London, 2002), p. 83
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