The Church and the sacraments
The Church and the ordained ministry
Why the Church is visible, what bishops and priests are for, and the one question that divides the four.
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The Church is not an association of individuals who have independently decided to follow Christ. She is the body of Christ, the people God calls out and joins to His Son. You do not join her the way you join a club; you are baptised into her.
She is visible. This is the first thing the four traditions hold in common against much of modern Christianity. The New Testament knows nothing of an invisible fellowship of true believers scattered among institutions of no consequence. It knows congregations with named leaders, a common meal, a discipline that can exclude, and letters addressed to them as bodies.
She has a ministry that was given, not organised. Christ chose twelve. They appointed others and laid hands on them. By the early second century the pattern is everywhere: one bishop in each place, with presbyters and deacons. Ignatius of Antioch, writing around 107 on his way to be killed, treats it as settled and universal.
The Creed names four marks: one, holy, catholic, apostolic. Each is a claim and each is under strain. The Church is one, and visibly divided. Holy, and full of sinners. Catholic - for everyone everywhere - and often provincial. Apostolic, and required to show it.
The four traditions agree that ministry comes through ordination by bishops in succession from the apostles. They disagree, seriously, about what secures that succession, and about whether one bishop - the Bishop of Rome - holds a universal office over the rest. That is the oldest and hardest disagreement in this course.
What the Church is
Scripture reaches for images rather than definitions, and each says something a definition would miss.
The body of Christ. Not an organisation Christ founded and left; an organism He is the head of. Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 12 is that the parts cannot opt out of one another - the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you.
The bride. A relationship of covenant and love, which is why idolatry is described as adultery throughout the prophets.
The temple. Built of living stones, with Christ as cornerstone, and the Spirit dwelling in it. The place where God is met.
The people of God. Continuous with Israel. The Church is not a new project begun in Acts 2 but the restored and opened people of the covenant, into whom the Gentiles are grafted.
The household, the flock, the field, the vine. Every one of them corporate. There is no image in the New Testament of the Christian as a lone individual with a private line to God.
Pause and thinkPause: someone tells you "I love Jesus but I don't need the Church - it's just an institution run by men." What is the strongest answer, and what should you concede first?
Concede the grievance, because it is usually earned. Institutions run by men fail badly, and the Church's failures have been public, repeated and sometimes monstrous. Someone who has been hurt by a church is not making an abstract argument, and treating it as one will end the conversation.
Then make the argument. The New Testament has no category for a Christian without the Church. Paul does not write to individuals scattered in Corinth; he writes to the church at Corinth and treats its members as accountable to one another. The sacraments are corporate by nature - you cannot baptise yourself, and the Supper is a meal. How shall they hear without a preacher? assumes a sent ministry. And the letters to the seven churches in Revelation address congregations, some of them badly compromised, as bodies Christ still holds responsible.
The deeper point: the objection assumes that Christ gives Himself to individuals directly and the Church is an optional add-on. The four traditions hold the reverse
- that Christ gives Himself through the Church, in word and sacrament, so that
leaving her is not streamlining but disconnecting.
And the historical point, offered gently: the person saying this holds a New Testament that the Church assembled, recognised and copied for fifteen centuries. The institution run by men is why he has the book he is using to criticise it.
Visible and holy at once
Two errors sit at the extremes, and both are ancient.
The first says the real Church is invisible - known only to God, consisting of the genuinely regenerate, with visible institutions as approximations at best. The attraction is obvious: it explains the scandals without embarrassment.
The four traditions reject it, though with different emphasis. The Church in the New Testament can be joined, addressed, obeyed and left. She can excommunicate, which an invisible body cannot do. And if she is invisible, the sacraments have no home and the promise that the gates of hell shall not prevail refers to nothing you could point at.
The second error says the Church consists only of the pure, and that grave sinners are not really members. This was the Donatist position in fourth-century North Africa, and Augustine spent decades answering it. His answer: the Church is a corpus permixtum, a mixed body, wheat and tares together until the harvest - and the validity of the sacraments does not depend on the worthiness of the minister, or no one could ever be sure of anything.
Both errors are attempts to escape an uncomfortable fact: the Church is holy and full of sinners, and both halves of that are true at once.
The ordained ministry
By the beginning of the second century, the threefold ministry is in place across the Church: bishop (episkopos, overseer), presbyter (presbyteros, elder
- the word behind priest), and deacon (diakonos, servant).
Ignatius of Antioch, writing about 107 to churches he had never governed, assumes it without argument - do nothing without the bishop, let the eucharist be celebrated by the bishop or one he appoints. He is not proposing a structure; he is describing what everyone already does.
What the ministry is for:
- Word. Preaching and teaching, and guarding the deposit against error.
- Sacrament. Presiding at baptism and the Eucharist, and pronouncing absolution.
- Oversight. Pastoral care, discipline, and the unity of the local church with the wider one.
Two things it is not. It is not a higher grade of Christian - the baptised are the royal priesthood, and all four traditions teach this. And it is not a delegation from the congregation; ministers are ordained, and what is conferred comes from Christ through the Church rather than upward from the members.
Where the four traditions stand
Catholic
The Catholic Church teaches that the Church founded by Christ subsists in the Catholic Church - the formulation of Lumen Gentium 8, which affirms that the one Church of Christ is found there while recognising genuine elements of sanctification and truth beyond her visible boundaries. Governance is by the college of bishops in communion with the Bishop of Rome, who as successor of Peter holds a primacy of jurisdiction over the whole Church, not merely of honour. The First Vatican Council (1870) defined papal infallibility within strict limits: when the Pope speaks ex cathedra, as universal pastor, defining a doctrine of faith or morals to be held by the whole Church. The limits are frequently overlooked by critics and matter: it is not a claim that the Pope is personally sinless or that his opinions are guaranteed, and the power has been exercised at most twice since definition. Ordination confers an indelible character in three degrees - bishop, priest, deacon
- and is reserved to men, which Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994) declared the Church
has no authority to change. Anglican orders were declared null and void by Apostolicae Curae in 1896, a judgement Anglicans dispute; Orthodox orders are recognised as valid.
Orthodox
Orthodoxy holds that the Church is the one body of Christ, identified with the Orthodox communion, and is governed conciliarly. Authority rests with the bishops together, expressed in councils, and a council's authority depends finally on its reception by the whole body of the faithful - clergy and laity together. There is no single bishop with universal jurisdiction. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople holds a primacy of honour as first among equals, which Orthodoxy insists is what Rome held in the first millennium and what it exceeded thereafter. The concept of sobornost - catholicity as organic, Spirit-given unity rather than administrative uniformity - runs through modern Orthodox ecclesiology. Each local church gathered around its bishop at the Eucharist is fully the Church, not a branch office: this eucharistic ecclesiology, developed by Afanasiev and Zizioulas, is one of the East's significant contributions. Ordination is to bishop, priest and deacon, and is reserved to men; parish priests are commonly married, having married before ordination, while bishops are drawn from the monastic clergy.
Lutheran
Article 7 of the Augsburg Confession gives the definitive Lutheran statement: the Church is the assembly of all believers among whom the gospel is purely preached and the holy sacraments are administered according to the gospel - and it is enough (satis est) for the true unity of the Church to agree concerning the teaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments, without requiring uniformity of human traditions or rites. This is the Lutheran principle of unity, and its implications are large. Article 5 states that God instituted the office of the ministry to give the gospel and the sacraments, and Article 14 that no one should publicly teach or administer the sacraments without a regular call. Luther taught the priesthood of all the baptised, which is often misunderstood: it does not abolish the ordained office but denies that the clergy are a separate spiritual caste. On episcopacy, Lutherans were prepared to retain bishops and said so explicitly, but held that where bishops refused to ordain evangelical pastors the Church could ordain without them, since ministry is constituted by the gospel rather than by lineage. The result is variety: Sweden and Finland retained the historic succession, Germany largely did not, and both are recognised as Lutheran.
Anglican
Anglicanism retained the threefold ministry of bishops, priests and deacons in historic succession, and the Preface to the Ordinal states that these orders have existed from the apostles' time and are to be continued. The Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral (1886/1888) sets out what Anglicans regard as the irreducible basis for reunion: the Scriptures, the Nicene and Apostles' Creeds, the two sacraments of Baptism and the Supper, and the historic episcopate locally adapted. Article 19 defines the visible Church as the congregation of faithful men in which the pure word of God is preached and the sacraments duly ministered - close to the Lutheran formulation - and adds that the Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria and Antioch have erred, and so also has the Church of Rome. Article 37 denies that the Bishop of Rome has jurisdiction in this realm. Authority is dispersed: there is no Anglican pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury holds a primacy of honour and convening power only, and provinces are autonomous - which has made the Communion capable of great breadth and, in recent decades, vulnerable to fracture. Most provinces now ordain women to the priesthood and many to the episcopate; a minority do not, and the question remains formally unresolved across the Communion.
The hardest question
Strip the four positions down and they converge remarkably - visible Church, threefold ministry, sacraments, apostolic continuity - until one question: is there a universal office?
Catholics say yes: Peter received a distinct commission, it passes to his successors, and the Church cannot be one without a visible head. Orthodox say the first millennium knew a primacy of honour among equals, not jurisdiction, and that Rome's later claims are the innovation. Lutherans say the office of the ministry is divinely instituted but the papacy is a human arrangement that became a tyranny over consciences. Anglicans have historically said much the same, while a strand has always been willing to consider a renewed Petrine ministry exercised differently.
The disagreement is not about whether Peter mattered. All four read Matthew 16 and John 21. It is about what follows for a bishop in Rome in the twenty-first century.
Work with it
Check yourself
What does Augustine mean by calling the Church a corpus permixtum?
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Correct. It was his answer to the Donatists, who held that the Church consists only of the pure and that sacraments from unworthy ministers are invalid.
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The denominational question did not exist in his terms; his concern was purity within one visible Church.
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True of the Church, but not what the phrase addresses.
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Augustine did distinguish the elect from the visible membership, but corpus permixtum specifically names the mixture of good and bad within the visible Church.
Check yourself
What does Article 7 of the Augsburg Confession say is sufficient for the true unity of the Church?
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Yes - the satis est. Uniformity of human traditions and rites is explicitly not required, which shapes the whole Lutheran approach to church unity.
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The Lutheran Confessions deny that this is necessary, treating the papacy as a human arrangement.
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Lutherans were willing to retain bishops and some churches did, but Article 7 does not make it a condition of unity.
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Article 7 explicitly denies that uniform rites are required.
Check yourself
What are the strict limits on papal infallibility as defined at the First Vatican Council?
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Correct, and the limits are narrow. It is not a claim about the Pope's personal holiness, his opinions, or his governance, and the power has been exercised at most twice since 1870.
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This is the common caricature and is denied by the definition itself.
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Infallibility concerns teaching, not impeccability. The definition says nothing about personal sinlessness.
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Governance is not the subject of the definition.
Objection drill
The threefold ministry is a second-century power grab. In the New Testament, episkopos and presbyteros are the same office - Paul uses both words for the same men in Acts 20 and Titus 1. There is no bishop over presbyters anywhere in Scripture. Your hierarchy was built after the apostles died and then backdated.
A model answer
The exegesis in the first half is right, and it should be conceded without hedging. In Acts 20 Paul calls for the presbyteroi of Ephesus and then tells those same men that the Spirit has made them episkopoi. Titus 1:5-7 slides between the words in consecutive sentences. In the apostolic period the terms overlap, and a monarchical bishop presiding over a college of presbyters is not visible in the text.
So the real question is what happened next, and here the evidence is unusually clean.
Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, writes seven letters around 107 while being taken to Rome to die. He writes to churches he has no authority over - Ephesus, Magnesia, Tralles, Philadelphia, Smyrna - and in every one he assumes a single bishop with presbyters and deacons, as something they already have and already understand. He is not arguing for it. He is not defending it against objectors. He is not introducing it. He appeals to it as common ground while making other points.
Consider the timing. Ignatius is writing perhaps a decade after the death of the apostle John, to the very region where John had lived and taught. If the structure were a recent innovation replacing an apostolic arrangement, we would expect evidence of the changeover: a controversy, a defence, a region that resisted, a surviving alternative, a complaint from someone. We have none. Clement of Rome around 96, the Didache, Polycarp, Irenaeus by 180 - the sources are consistent, and by Irenaeus the succession lists of bishops in the major sees are being published as an argument against the Gnostics, which only works if everyone already accepts the premise.
Compare this with things the early Church genuinely did argue about. The date of Easter produced a furious transcontinental dispute in the 190s over a matter of calendar. Whether Gentiles must be circumcised produced a council in Acts 15. If someone had abolished an apostolic form of church government and replaced it with a hierarchy, the silence is extraordinary.
What the four traditions actually claim is modest enough to be defensible: that the apostolic ministry continued, and that it took the settled form of bishop, presbyter and deacon very early, under the guidance of the Spirit and with universal consent. They do not claim Paul used the word bishop in the later sense.
On backdating, notice that the argument cuts both ways. The claim that a hierarchy was invented and then retrospectively justified requires a coordinated suppression across the whole Mediterranean world, in an age of slow communication, among churches that disagreed publicly about a great deal else and preserved the records of those disagreements. The simpler explanation is that the structure developed quickly and organically from the apostolic ministry, which is what the sources actually describe.
And a concluding question worth putting, because it moves the discussion from history to practice: if church government is a matter of human arrangement, on what basis is one arrangement better than another? The objection usually implies that the apostolic pattern is normative and the later one is not. But that argument needs the apostolic pattern to be clear - and the honest reading is that the New Testament describes a ministry still taking shape, in churches that then settled it within a generation, everywhere, the same way.
Memory work
Turn each card over, then say honestly whether you knew it. Cards you miss come back sooner.