It is thus only that the whole revelation in general acquires meaning for me. If it be really true that there is a personal God—and there is such a God, for our whole spirit is rooted in Him—and if it be really true that this living God—for the very reason that He is a personal God—willed to manifest Himself to me in Jesus Christ, then it cannot be that I should need, for the attainment of this infinitely important, saving reality, laborious historical and philological study, that I should have to appeal to the Higher and Lower Criticism in order to reach the divine mystery. For then the divine would not be simple and plain enough to penetrate into my heart and into the hearts of all men, even the least and simplest. But this simplicity and this plainness are found in the quiet, living faith, in the loyal and strong hope, in the devoted fellowship and love of the Church, which in her dogma, morals and worship breathes the Spirit of Jesus, and which in spite of persecution, sin and evil has for so many centuries with continually new strength borne testimony to Him. “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.” Not three only, but millions of loving and loyal hearts—though there be tares among them—are united in this one Church in the name of Jesus. Therefore is Jesus verily in the midst of them.

Endnotes

1.      “Die Einheit in der Kirche,” 1925, p. 42. The first edition of this remarkable book on the note of “unity” appeared in 1825

2.      Futura ecclesia in omnibus linguis praenuntiabatur (S. Aug. Sermo CCLXVI, 2).

3.      Ego vero evangelio non crederem, nisi me catholicae ecclesiae commoveret auctoritas (Contra ep. Manichaei, c. V).

4.      He too teaches that Christ is to be grasped only through the Church, His body. cf . De fide rerum quae non videntur, III, 5: Proinde, qui putatis nulla esse indicia, cur de Christo credere debeatis quae non vidistis, attendite quae videtis: ipsa vos ecclesia ore maternae dilectionis alloquitur … me attendite, vobis dicit ecclesia, me attendite quam videtis, etiamsi videre nolitis. Similarly in Sermo CX VI, 6: Quomodo illi (sc. apostoli) illum (sc. Christum) videbant et de corpore credebant, sic nos corpus videmus, de capite credamus.

Chapter V: The Foundation of the Church in the Light of the Teaching of Jesus

“I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill” (Mt. v, 17).

With the experience of Pentecost the new faith and the new fellowship of the faith entered history. Must we therefore regard the Church simply as the creation of the Spirit of Pentecost, the offspring of the faith, ultimately as the work of the glorified Christ manifesting Himself in the faithful, or does the Church go back to a positive and immediate foundation by the “historical” Jesus Himself?