CHAPTER III

THE CHURCH'S ONE FOUNDATION

ONLY twice in the four gospels does the word church occur, and in only one of those instances do the words of Jesus throw any light on what the nature of that church should be. But before turning to these passages it is necessary to guard against a common error in reading the New Testament. We naturally give to the words there the meaning which they now bear; but this is often quite different from the meaning which they originally bore. Thus the word church calls up to our mind a picture either of the Protestant Church with its pulpits and its preachers or of the Catholic Church with its altars and its priests. But to suggest an idea analogous to either picture Jesus would have used the word synagogue or the word temple. The word ecclesia, rendered in our English version

Church," was in earlier versions rendered Congregation, and when used in the Greek version of the

Old Testament it is still rendered Congregation. In the Old Testament, as in classical Greek, it signified either a mass meeting of the people or a popular assembly representing them, somewhat resembling the American House of Representatives or the English House of Commons. Bearing this fact in mind, we may now turn to the passage in Christ's Teaching in which he indicates the foundation of his Church or Congregation.

Jesus had been preaching for about a year, and the twelve disciples had been accompanying him, listening to his preaching, doing a little preaching themselves, and gradually learning the truth which he had come to proclaim. He had taken them apart by themselves, partly for rest, partly for personal religious instruction,-the first of those "Retreats" which have been not any too frequently held by his followers since. He pursued the Socratic method. He asked them, "Who do men say that I am?" "Some that thou art John the Baptizer; some Elijah; others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." "But who do ye say that I am?" To this question one of the disciples answered, "Thou art the Messiah, the son of

the living God." This answer Jesus accepted. "Blessed," he said, "art thou, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in Heaven. And I say also unto thee that thou art a rock, and upon this rock I will build my Israel,1 and the gates of Death shall not prevail against it."

To this somewhat enigmatic utterance three different interpretations have been given. Catholics have said that Christ founded his church upon Peter, or at least upon the Apostles, and that to them he gave supreme authority and conferred upon them the right to transmit their authority to others; and they define the Church of Christ as a body of disciples whose leaders have received this apostolic ordination transmitted from generation to generation. The difficulty about this interpretation is that Christ says nothing here or elsewhere about any successors to Peter or the Apostles, and that there is no indication in the New Testament that they

1"If we may venture for a moment to substitute the phrase, Israel, and read the words as "on this rock I will build my Israel" we gain an impression which supplies at least an approximation to the probable sense."-F. J. A. Hort, D.D., "The Christian Ecclesia."

ever exercised the authority claimed by the modern priesthood.

Protestants have interpreted Christ as meaning that Peter's confession of faith in Jesus as the Messiah and the son of God is the foundation of the Christian Church, and that any church which accepts this doctrine is sound and any church which repudiates it is unsound. The foundation then is not a person but a doctrine. The difficulty about this interpretation is that it does not interpret. It rubs off the slate that which Christ had put upon it and puts something else in its place.

The third interpretation of this passage is that the foundation of Christ's church is not Peter's doctrine of Christ, nor Peter and the twelve as officers in an organization not yet formed, but Peter as a type of humanity transformed by the inspiration which he had received from a year of intimate companionship with Jesus.

Simon, the son of Jonah, was of all the apostles the one who had the least stability of character. He was not a rock; he was a wave of the sea. It was he who said, "Lord, bid me come out to thee upon the water," but who, making the venture and begin

ning to sink, cried, “Lord, save me." It was he who said, "I will never deny thee; I am ready to go with thee to prison and to death"; and then rushed into the Court of Caiaphas with audacity, only to deny his Master with oaths at the first temptation. It was he who was the first to preach the Glad Tidings to the Gentiles and yet, when the hierarchy came from Jerusalem, was frightened and refused even to eat with the Gentiles. To this vacillating man Jesus says, “I will make a rock of you, even of you." If he could make a rock of Simon — and Simon's subsequent life shows that Jesus did so he could make a rock of any one.

What Christ says then is, not I will build my church on you and your successors, nor, on what you have said, but, on you as a man transformed by the power of an indwelling Christ; on you as a type of a long line of humanity changed by companionship with me through the coming ages.

This is the interpretation of Christ's saying afforded by its setting. This is also Peter's own interpretation. Writing years after to his contemporaries, he says,

You have had a taste of the kindness of the Lord: come to him then - come to that living Stone which men