By RAYMOND DE SOUZA
Part 18
So far we have seen that Jesus Christ is a unique Man in History, who claimed to be the Son of God, one in nature with God the Father, and who laid down His life for His claim, which was directed to the glory of God and the salvation of souls.
But He did not remain with those whom He converted. What did He leave behind? A message of salvation to mankind. Fine. But how did He leave that message? A baptized non-Catholic will immediately say, “He left us the Bible!”
Oh, did He really? But He never wrote any book of the New Testament! Those books were written by His apostles and disciples decades after His death and Resurrection. The only time we know He wrote was when He saved the adulterous woman, and He then wrote something with His finger in the sand. What He wrote is a matter of debate, but it was certainly not a book.
He did not write the Old Testament, either. Other people did, centuries before Him, and even here there was no unity among the Jews: Pharisees and Sadducees disagreed about which books were canonical and which ones were not.
So, the question remains: How did He leave His message to the world, and whom did He entrust it to? The answer is: He founded a congregation of men, or a Church, with a distinct hierarchy between those who were called to teach and those who were called to be taught: pastors leading the flock; shepherds and sheep. He did not establish just a “people of God,” where every Tom, Dick, and Harriet interpreted the Scriptures as they thought the Holy Spirit was guiding them.
He came to save people from their sins (Matt. 1:21) and to save those who were lost (Matt. 18:11). Moreover, He came to give them life, and abundantly so (John 10:10). He gave two sacred rites He said were necessary for salvation, namely Baptism (Mark 16:16) and the Eucharist (John 6:53), told them to do as He had done (Luke 22:19-20), and gave Commandments to be obeyed (John 14:24; 15:14).
Moreover, He gave to His chosen disciples the most amazing, incredible, unprecedented power in the history of salvation: They were given the divine power to forgive sins! (John 20:23).
He gave His disciples a specific plan of action: First, go to preach only to the Jews (Matt. 10:5-6). Later, He sent them to the Gentiles everywhere in the world (Matt. 28:19). The apostles obeyed His commands, they baptized people into the Church (Acts 2:41), and gave them His Body and Blood in the Eucharist (1 Cor. 10:16; 11:27).
But He did not only give the apostles the power to preach in His Name and to sanctify the people with the sacraments. He also gave them the power — and this is a crucial point — to govern the people entrusted to their care. Now, to govern means to exercise authority over the flock, to make laws, to enforce the laws, to judge and to punish if necessary (John 20:21; Matt. 28:18-20).
Perhaps the most evident instruction He gave them to demonstrate the authority He was giving them was this one: “Amen, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 18:17-18).
And the apostles exercised those powers — today we call them executive, legislative, and judiciary — as we see in the first council held in Jerusalem their legislation about dietary laws for Gentile Christians (Acts 15:29) and defined the qualifications for admission into Holy Orders (1 Tim. 3:2; Titus 1:6-9) and the Church in Corinth was given specific precepts and admonitions (1 Cor. 7:10-16; 11:34).
The apostles had the power to excommunicate bad members of the Church (1 Tim. 1:20; 1 Cor. 5:1-5), established the norm of having evidence given by two or three witnesses in court (1 Tim. 5:19), and punished every disobedience (2 Cor. 10:6).
Even if we take all of the above as mere historical records, the ineluctable fact remains that Jesus did not give the people a Bible or anything like that: He gave them a Church, a congregation, a society, endowed with a specific set of men in authority to govern, that is, to teach, guide, and sanctify.
The religious society of Christians was not founded by the apostles, who decided, democratically, what the beliefs were going to be and how they were to run the business of preaching to people. No, it was founded by Jesus Christ, with a specific set of beliefs and rules, which the apostles learned from Him and passed on to their successors in the government of the Church.
In fact, the very word “Church” comes from the Greek Kuriakon, or Kyriakon, meaning “belonging to the Lord,” that is, the House of the Lord, the pillar and the foundation of the Truth (1 Tim. 3:15).
Historical Facts
Therefore, the Church of Jesus Christ is not merely a “People of God”; it is a religious society and, like all societies, had the four basic characteristics that identify any society properly so called:
1) It was made up of a specific number of people. Christ called twelve men, gave them His authority, and sent them to convert the world. And they began their preaching, converting thousands.
2) They were united in the pursuit of the same things, had the same purpose, that is, sanctification and salvation.
3) They used the same means to attain those goals, that is, they believed in the same doctrines as the apostles taught them, they obeyed the same Commandments, and used the same sacred rites to receive divine grace for their identification with the Founder, Jesus Christ.
4) The members of the Church were united under the same authority, the apostles and their successors. Christ founded only one Church upon a rock (Matt. 16:18) and the apostles governed her collegially. He did not found one Church per apostle, twelve churches in total, and let them carry on their mission as they saw fit. He compared His Church to a sheepfold, a city, even a kingdom, which naturally presupposes authority to govern.
These are the historical facts, and no amount of subjective, private interpretation of the Bible will ever change history.
Next article: To follow the Church of Christ is to follow Christ.
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(Raymond de Souza is an EWTN program host; regional coordinator for Portuguese-speaking countries for Human Life International [HLI]; president of the Sacred Heart Institute, and a member of the Sovereign, Military, and Hospitaller Order of the Knights of Malta. His website is: www.RaymonddeSouza.com.)
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