One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic: Communion of Saints with R.C. Sproul

0:00 As we continue our study now of the doctrine of the church, I want to take the opportunity to reach back into the pages of church history all the way back to the fourth century to get some insight into our understanding of the nature and the character of the church. I think most of you are familiar to some degree at least with the Apostles' Creed and then later with the Nicene Creed. Some of you use the Nicene Creed regularly in the liturgy of your church, that magnificent creed that affirms the deity of Christ, that He is God of God and light of light, that He is begotten and not made, and for us men and for our salvation has come down from heaven and so on. But in addition to the marvelous teaching of the person and work of Christ that we find in the Nicene Creed, we also have a famous list of adjectives that the church of the fourth century used to confess their concept of the church. And those four adjectives that I want to look at in this session are these.

1:23 The Creed describes the church as one Holy Catholic. and what? Apostolic church. We believe in one holy Catholic apostolic church. Now each one of these adjectives calls attention to something I think of great importance about the nature of the church. Of course, the time that the Creed was written in the fourth century, the unity that the church enjoyed was indeed an organizational unity. For the most part, there was but one visible Christian church. That was before the Great Schism, and it was before the Protestant Reformation, which occurred in the sixteenth century whereby the visible unity of the body of Christ was broken and dashed into literally thousands of pieces.

2:48 In the United States of America, for example, as I speak, there are over 2,000 Protestant denominations. it or not, over 2,000 different denominations. There's the church of the ladder up to heaven number one and the church of the ladder up to heaven number two, which broke away from the church of the ladder up to heaven number one. So we can no longer say with the confidence of the church fathers of the fourth century that the church is numerically one in the visible unified sense. But there still is a sense in which some unity of the body of Christ has been preserved. In the first instance, the unity is still found throughout Christendom whereby in spite of the points of doctrine with which we disagree and by which our distinctives are determined, there is still a certain core or Catholic or universal faith that we all embrace.

4:11 Virtually every church in the World Council of Churches, for example, in their or in each one of its constituent creeds or confessions testify or at least profess belief in the substance of teaching found in the so-called ecumenical councils, like the Council of Nicaea, like the Council of Chalcedon, and so on, which means simply this, that there is a common core of truth that every church affirms. For example, the Trinity. We all believe in the Trinity. We all believe in the deity of Christ. We all believe in the work of Christ on the cross as an atonement. We may differ on various dimensions of our understanding of the atonement, but we believe certainly that the death of Christ was an atonement, and so on. So that in its It's essential.

5:12 The church still shares one Lord, one faith. baptism. If you're baptized in the Lutheran Church and you decide to join the Methodist Church, in all probability the Methodist Church will recognize the validity of your baptism in the Lutheran Church and from the Methodists to the Anglicans and so on, because we have one Lord who is Christ, one faith essentially, and one baptism. So there is at least that much unity that has been preserved across denominational lines. There's another point of unity that is important that goes back even in earlier times from the Nicene Creed to the Apostles Creed.

6:16 When the Apostles Creed talks about the church, it talks about the communion of saints. The communion of saints. Not to confuse that with the celebration of the Lord's Supper, which we call the Holy Communion. The communion of saints points to something beyond that. I just received a letter today from a young man, twenty-six years old, who is suffering from a terminal illness. He is soon to die. And he wrote me to tell me that he had read one of my books, a book on suffering, surprised by suffering, and he wanted to tell me that he was ready to go home and that he said that he is looking forward to spending eternity with Christ.

7:27 He said, I want you to know I'm going to die in faith. And he gave me chill bumps to read this young man's letter. I don't know what word I can find to describe what I felt towards him personally, but if there was one word that captured it, it's the word pride. I was proud of this young man. But as I began to think about him through the day, I thought, because I'm going to, I think I'm going to have the opportunity to visit with him personally in the next week or so. And if that comes to pass, there's some things I want to talk to him about, and one of them is I'm going to talk to him about meeting Martin Luther and St. Augustine and Calvin and Edwards and all of the great saints of the past. And I'm going to say to that young man, do you realize that you're about to embark on an adventure that every Christian up until this point in history who, you know, for those of us who are still alive or excluded, but every Christian from the past has already crossed the veil, and every one of them has made that pilgrimage through death's door before us.

8:42 and everyone who was in Christ died in faith, and they have joined that whole host of witnesses, and that the fellowship that we enjoy, the mystical communion that we enjoy as members of the body of Christ transcends the local congregation of which we are a part. As a Christian, when I am worshiping Christ, when I am in church on Sunday morning, I am enjoying fellowship with Christ, and by the Spirit I am communing with Jesus. But you, as you visit your church on Sunday morning, which may be a different denomination, it may be in a different town from where I live, you also are enjoying fellowship with Christ. And since Christ is able to be present at your church and at mine, and I am linked to Him and you are linked to Him, there is the communion of us together. But that communion is not only a communion of saints living, but we who are united to Christ in this world also in at least a mystical sense are communing with those who have gone before us who are alive and present and abiding in Christ.

10:14 I'm going to say to my friend, look, please give my regards to Luther when you get there. And I know that as he goes through the gates of heaven, I'm going to ask him to do a special errand for me. I make my own prayers, but I'm going to ask him, I said, when you see the Lord, Lord, tell them to send help. We pray that the Lord of the harvest would send workers down here. We need some help down here. And I really have a sense in my soul that I envy this young man who's going into the presence of Christ. But we have a communion, and the word communion is almost a redundancy because we see the word for oneness in the word itself, the Latin unio.

11:14 And com, of course, as a prefix means simply with. that in the fellowship of the church we are with union with other people, and that is part of the oneness of the church. Well, the second term that is used is the one I think about which people in our day and age have begun to be cynical. There have been so many scandals of prominent religious figures in the United States in recent years that some people have said if there's any institution that is not holy, it's the church. And I've heard the complaint registered frequently that the church is full of hypocrites. I remember one minister saying, there's always room for one more. And he said at the same time, he said, if you ever find a perfect church, whatever you do, don't join it because you'll ruin it. Because the church is the only institution that I know of that absolutely requires that you be a sinner to be a member. So you might expect the church fathers in describing the church to call it the one unholy Catholic and apostolic church. But no, the fathers called it holy. The simple reason is because the Word of God calls it holy.

12:58 Believers in the New Testament are called the Hagioi. the saints, which means the holy ones. The word hagios is the word that is part of the name of the Holy Spirit. That's the title of the Holy Spirit. And yet we wonder, how can we be called saints when we are so manifestly unholy. Paul writes to the Corinthians, to the saints who were at Corinth, stop all this fighting and stop all of this immorality that he's describing and combating there in the church, and yet he still calls them saints. Seems like a contradiction in terms, doesn't it, for sinners to be called holy.

13:54 Well, as Augustine pointed out centuries ago, there are several reasons why the church is called holy. The first is because as an institution and as a group, the church, you recall, is that body which is ecclesia, that it is called out from the world. And because God has separated this institution from every other human institution, He has consecrated it. And by consecrating it or setting it apart, God has made it holy. second reason why we call the church holy, because the church Members who are truly Christians are people who are really indwelt by the living presence of the Holy Ghost. In other words, the Holy Spirit descends upon the church, upon the people of God, and takes His dwelling place within them. And we know that every Christian is indwelt by the Holy Ghost. That doesn't mean that the indwelling of the Holy Spirit automatically conveys or confers perfection. We are not glorified. We are not yet perfectly sanctified.

15:32 But in so far as the Holy Spirit dwells within us, we can be said to be the Hagioi or the holy ones. Do you see that? I've often wondered why when we look at the way the Bible distinguishes among the three persons of the Godhead, why only one of the three is given the title as part of His name, Holy. We know that God is holy, but we don't speak of the Holy Father. And we know that the Son is holy, but we don't talk about the Holy Son, but rather we speak of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Why? Because the emphasis in the ministry of the Holy Spirit as the third member of the Trinity is is to make the people of God holy. And so the Spirit as He works in this institution is working by the means of grace that are concentrated in it to bring you through your sanctification. All right, the third descriptive adjective here that we find is Catholic is the adjective Catholic. And again, initially in the fourth century, it was tacitly assumed there that the word Catholic meant Roman Catholic because the headquarters for the church at that time was in Rome. But notice that the creed didn't include that particular designation. It didn't have to. But the word Catholic, as most of you already know, I'm sure, simply means universal. And indeed, the church of Christ in the fourth century was universal

17:42 in the sense that wherever the Christian church was found, whether it was in Greece or in Italy or in England or wherever it was found. It was the same what we would call denomination. It was the same visible institution, the same visible organization with the same structure and the same hierarchy so that the church could say, where the bishop is, there is the church. Now, that Catholicity in the visible institutional sense has been lost, although in the sixteenth century part of the controversy between Rome and the Reformers was precisely over this point.

18:39 I mean, what was Rome to do with the churches that were springing up that had broken away from Roman Catholic communion with the Lutheran Church in Germany and the Reformed Church in Switzerland and in Scotland. How was that to be handled in those days? Well, Rome said these churches that were springing up in these nations were not true churches because they were not Catholic, because they were restricted to one nation or to one locality. even still in our nation today. My denomination that I'm a member of is a Presbyterian denomination, and it's called the Presbyterian Church in America. It has no visible connection with the Presbyterian Church in Yugoslavia, if there is one, so that our church is national in its scope and in its boundaries. Rome, however, remains international, doesn't it? I was thinking today of what is the largest export from Italy. It's not spaghetti. It's the Roman Catholic Church, because that tiny little nation of Italy has an institution that is headquartered there that has its representatives all over this globe. And this was one of the arguments that the church said in the sixteenth century against the Protestants, you are local, we are Catholic.

20:23 And so the Protestants said, yes, the faith that we embrace, the one Lord, the one faith, the one baptism, that is Catholic. That remains universal. And we still hold to the Catholic faith, faith, the universal doctrine of Christ and of the Scriptures. And that Catholicity is still a vitally important element of every church. I'm a member of a Reformed church, and people speak to me and say, oh, you're Presbyterian. I say, yes. Oh, I know what that means. I say, what's that mean? They say, well, that means you believe in TULIP, the five points of Calvinism. And I even know Presbyterians who think that Presbyterianism or Reformed theology is the five points of Calvinism. You say that's not true at all.

21:26 Those are the distinctives. Those are the points that we hold in difference from other Christian bodies. But we have to be careful what we call ourselves because there are three designations at least that go around the world today. There's the Catholic, there's the evangelical, and there's the Reformed or the Lutheran or the Methodist or whatever. Anyone who is, not everyone who is Catholic is evangelical. But everyone who is evangelical is Catholic. And not everyone who is evangelical is Lutheran or Reformed, but everyone who is truly Reformed is evangelical, and anyone who is truly Lutheran is likewise evangelical. Do you see how this works?

22:20 That there's the Catholicity, which is the foundational, essential doctrines of the Christian faith that every Christian has to hold to. And there's the evangelical. which means you believe in justification by faith alone, and then there are your distinctives that define the various groups. But we don't throw away our Catholicity that is the universal truth of Christianity when we embrace the particular domination that we do. All right, finally, and perhaps most importantly for our day, the church is apostolic. When I say that this is of vital importance for our day, I say it for this reason.

23:18 I doubt if there has been any time in the entire history of Christianity where the integrity of the apostles has come more sharply under attack from within the church as in our own generation, as in our own lifetime. When people attack the authority of the Bible, what they are attacking basically is the authority of the apostles. Irenaeus in the early church had to combat the heretics who were called Gnostics and other groups, and these people said, we are not going to follow the teachings of the apostles anymore. We have our own insight. We have our own knowledge. We have our own source of authority. We believe in Jesus, but we are not going to accept the authority of the apostles. It was as if to say, Jesus we like, but it's Paul we can't stand. And what Irenaeus said to them, and rightly so, was that if you reject Paul, if you reject the apostle, then you reject the one who sent the apostle. For ladies and gentlemen, the word apostle in its basic meaning in the New Testament means simply one who is sent. But in the technical sense, if I send my son to the store for a loaf of bread, I have not made him an apostle in the technical sense of biblical apostleship.

25:14 There's another dimension to it. To be an apostle in the narrow sense of the New Testament is not only to be sent by somebody, but to be authorized for that mission to speak with the authority of the One who sends you. When Irenaeus argued against the heretics the way he did, he was merely echoing Jesus' own argument with the Pharisees, because the Pharisees said, we're the children of God. We believe God, it's you, Jesus, that we're not going to accept, remember? How did Jesus handle that? He said, the Father sent me. This is the will of the Father, that you believe the one whom the Father sent. And so Jesus would not allow the Pharisees to have their cake and eat it too, because Jesus was the first apostle.

26:19 He was the one the Father sent, and the Father sent him saying, all authority on heaven and earth is given to you. So what Jesus says, the Father says. And one of the things that Jesus said was, with respect to the apostles after he commissioned them, those who receive you receive me. Those who will not receive you do not receive me. It frightens me, particularly in the militancy of some of the feminist movements. I have seen the Apostle Paul so slandered. I've seen him called a male chauvinist pig. I've seen it in print by women within the church saying, we can't stand this narrow-minded, bigoted, first-century Jew called Paul. We worship Jesus, but not Paul. Beloved, you can't have Jesus without Paul. You don't know anything about Jesus except what you have learned through the testimony of the apostles. It was Jesus Himself who said that the very foundation of the church is the apostles. Now, the last controversy that I want to touch on lightly as our time is getting away from us is with respect to this concept of the apostolic church. Some churches, the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, and others believe in an unbroken succession of the Apostles from the original twelve down to the present day. In Rome, the Pope is considered the vicar of Christ. He wears the shoes of the fishermen. He is there in the Basilica of St. Peter.

28:10 He is the successor of Peter who Rome believes was the first bishop of Rome. And so they believe that a church is not authentically apostolic unless there is this continuum from the first century down to today that one can trace back to that starting point. Well, I don't have the time to analyze that in any detail. But the Protestant churches of the 16th century who rejected apostolic succession said the authority of the apostles remains intact in the life of the church right here. Here is how the authority of the apostles is expressed in the life of the church today through the sacred scriptures.

29:05 And so we conclude with the Nicene Fathers that the church is one, the church is holy, the church is Catholic, and the church is apostolic.