Nielsen’s Nook

In about 347 A.D. Cyril of Jerusalem laid out a succinct list of four connotations that were circumscribed by the notion of catholicity:

The Church is called ‘catholic’ or ‘universal’ because it has spread throughout the entire world, from one end of the earth to the other. Again, it is called catholic because it teaches fully and unfailingly all the doctrines which ought to be brought to men’s knowledge, whether concerned with visible or invisible things, with the realities of heaven or the things of earth. Another reason for the name ‘catholic’ is that the Church brings under religious obedience all classes of men, rulers and subjects, learned and unlettered. Finally, it deserves the title ‘catholic’ because it heals and cures without restriction every type of sin that can be committed in soul or in body, and because it possesses within itself every kind of virtue that can be named, whether exercised in actions or in words or in some kind of spiritual charism [(i.e., spiritual gift)].^[1]

Geographic Ubiquity

While the invisible church is no doubt spread across the face of this earth in places like Egypt and Iraq, Nigeria and Uganda, India and Uzbekistan, China and Laos, Brazil and Mexico, and Britain and the United States, Cyril’s ecclesiology does not so readily allow for the abstraction of the visible from the invisible. It is certainly the invisible church that is Christ’s instrument to create in us a theological world-view, to disciple us and to heal us from our many sins. However, it is that in the context of the visible church.

So catholicity is very important because the visible is connected to the invisible ostensibly. Our presence as a church in the area in which we live does say something about the invisible church (may we not misrepresent it!). The connectedness of all who are part of the invisible church via Jesus is to be demonstrated in the relation of the organization and attitude of the visible church. In other words, while the visible church is bound together and throttled forward by polity and committees, these are but instrumental vehicles that correspond to the invisible catholic work of the Spirit. Nevertheless, independent churches would be inconsistent with what Cyril seem to articulate here because they do not visibly demonstrate the invisible connection to the church worldwide.

Look for part 2 tomorrow…

^[1] The Catechetical Instructions of Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, d. 386, Catechesis 18, 23-5: Patrologia Graeca  33, 1043-50. Tr. The Office of Readings according to the Roman Rite (Slough, 1983), p. 926. As cited in G. R. Evans and J. Robert Wright, The Anglican Tradition : A Handbook of Sources (London: SPCK, 1991), 27.