Unity and fellowship of church
The church is one in essence, because it is founded on one gospel, united to one Lord and indwelt by one Spirit. Its unity is under constant threat because of the tendency to division that is inherent in fallen humanity, and needs to be continually maintained and actively expressed in fellowship.
The unity of the church
The church is one
CATHOLICITY is a ‘note’ (or mark) of the church of God, along with unity, holiness and apostolicity. In the patristic period catholicity pointed to the fact that the one church of God was a universal society, confessing one faith, with one baptism and engaged in God’s mission in his world because it was united to Christ the Lord.
However, the fact of schism, division and heresy led to the need to have criteria to establish catholicity. The most famous and widely used test is that of Vincent of Lérins (d. before 450) who, in the early 5th century, provided a threefold test in what we now call the Vicentian Canon. It is: Quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est (‘What has been believed everywhere, always and by all’). Those who take these criteria seriously have seen this as pointing to the sacred Scriptures, the ancient creeds, the two sacraments and the threefold ministry as the necessary norms of catholicity. Others add the papacy as the means whereby the norms are maintained. Taken in this way, this Canon excludes large parts of orthodox Protestantism from the universal church of God. Thus, if the word ‘catholicity’ is to be useful it must bear another meaning.
One possibility is that it be used with a minimal meaning, merely pointing to the historical and existential fact that because Christ commanded the gospel to be preached throughout the whole created order, the church therefore became a universal society. Another, more productive, approach is to recall that ‘catholic’ points to wholeness (kath’ holou, ‘on the whole’) and thus see catholicity as that into which God calls his church because he has already provided wholeness for his people in the Lord Jesus. This wholeness includes all that which Christ, in and by the Spirit, wants to share with, and pour into, his body, in terms of the fruit and gifts of the sanctifying and liberating Spirit. In this way of understanding, therefore, catholicity is experienced more or less now and is that towards which the people of God move in hope as pilgrims. It may be added that this approach accords with the first recorded use of ‘catholic’ in the literature of the church. In c. 112 Ignatius of Antioch wrote to the church in Smyrna: ‘Wherever Christ is, there is the catholic church’.
The church transcends all barriers
The church’s unity reflects the unity within the Trinity
The church’s unity is the work of the Trinity
(IV) Metaphorically for a body, meaning a whole, aggregate, collective mass, as spoken of the Christian church, the whole body of Christians collectively, of which Christ is the head (Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 10:17; 12:13, 27; Eph. 1:23; 2:16; 4:4, 12, 16; 5:23, 30; Col. 1:18, 24; 2:19; 3:15).