The Cradle Of Christian Truth: Apostles’ Creed (Part 15)—The Holy Catholic Church

by on May 13, 2025 | Comment

When I lived in the UK, I had to go on one occasion to the US embassy in London. As I entered the embassy, I was struck by how different the atmosphere of the whole place was. A list of things stood out to me. But as I sat in the reception area thinking to myself that it was the nicest room I had been in for some time, it occurred to me that the most comforting feature was how much personal space I had. There were multiple feet between me and the next nearest family or even the nearest row of chairs. It was spacious. That sort of space is unusual in Britain but is basically expected in the US.

We can forget that embassies are sort of a funny thing, legally speaking. The property on which any US embassy sits is American soil. It is a carved-out chunk of another country that is in truth part of this nation. Why did the US embassy have features and practices that pulled me back into American culture? Because it is not part of Britain where American affairs happen to be conducted. It is America, so aspects of American life and values extend to that place.

Though an embassy exists amidst another culture or country, it nonetheless instantiates its homeland. For every US embassy, America has in a sense dropped a piece of itself into another place to protect and further our interests there. Embassies are something real though. You might go to lots of major cities that have, for example, a Chinatown or little Italy, where concentrated expressions of a certain culture sort of spontaneously grew. On the other hand, an embassy is constituted with the formal purpose of extending a particular government. It is not spontaneous or subject to whimsical fluctuation. It exists as an imposition of another culture from outside.

The apostle Paul then had good reason to refer in 2 Corinthians 5:20 to new covenant ministers as “ambassadors for Christ,” whose role is to implore sinners to be reconciled to God in Jesus Christ. He returned to that idea in Ephesians 6:19–20, stating his role as ambassador of the gospel.

In Ephesians 4:1–16, we have a description of the embassy itself, as well as of what the role of ambassador means. We learn that the church as we know it was left by Christ in the wake of his ascension as his embassy on earth. It is the outpost of his kingdom, meant to extend the culture of heaven as particular instantiations of our true and heavenly homeland.

In working through the Apostles’ Creed, we are in the section about the Holy Spirit, exploring particular works most associated with the Spirit. As we noted last time, the first thing we confess under the Spirit’s work is that we believe in the holy, catholic church. As we think about the church as holy and catholic, we learn about what makes it distinct from the culture in which it resides—after all, embassies do not merge into the society around them or merge those societies into themselves—and about what makes the church one entity with one purpose. The main point is that Christ by the Spirit creates the church as a gift to manifest his kingdom.

Clarifications

Two issues need taking up at the outset to make sure we understand what the Creed is saying. The first is to think about the phrase in the Creed that raises a lot questions, second only to the line about Christ descending to hell: What do we mean by saying that we believe in the catholic church?

We associate the word catholic firstly with the Roman Catholic Church as an institution. The word catholic is itself a Latin word (catholicus) that means “universal” or “general.” We might smooth it for the point it is making here to “worldwide.” So, the word catholic just refers to the fact that the church is one as it spreads across the world. It is universal in that it is not limited to one nation, nor is it divided according to being the church of different nations. The church is one under the Lord Jesus, not separate according to ethnicity, language, lineage, nationality, earthly citizenship, or anything else. So, to confess that we believe in the holy catholic church just means that we believe that all God’s true people, regardless of time or place, are bound together as one people because of our faith in Jesus Christ.

Let us pull at this thread a bit more though. The reason the Roman church calls itself the Roman Catholic Church is because it claims to be the universal church. Their intent in the name of Roman Catholic Church is to claim that the only way to be part of the true church connected to Christ is to be in formal communion with the bishop of Rome, that is, the Pope. They are saying that no other institution is part of the universal community of Christ.

They have diluted that claim some through the promulgations of Vatican II in the 1960s, but the traditional stance behind the name is that the institution in union with the Roman Pontiff is alone Christ’s church. In that respect, the adjectives Roman and Catholic are in conflict because it defines the universal church by a specific city. We might also note that when the Apostles’ Creed was written, there was no Pope, since that role as we know it developed centuries later.

By contrast, when we confess our belief in the—lower “c”—catholic church, we are saying that Christ has a people all over the world joined to him and joined to one another because of our union with him.

The second clarification, which is much quicker, is the relation of two phrases: that we believe in “the holy catholic church” and “the communion of saints.” Some take these two phrases as meaning the same thing. I favor the view that they are distinct ideas. Our phrase for this installment gets at the objectivity of the institution that Christ left on earth. The following phrase gets at what it is like to be part of that institution. So, with those clarifications in place, let us think about what the holy catholic church is as Christ left it for us.

Catholicity

Ephesians 4:1–16 informs what it means biblically that the church is holy and catholic. The passage hangs around two critical points. First, verses 1–3 express the governing exhortation. Paul wrote from prison to urge the Ephesians to walk in a manner worthy of the calling they have from God as those whom he has brought to faith. That calling includes humility, gentleness, patience, and bearing with one another as Christians for the sake of peace and unity in the church. We need to think about how that call helps to explain what the church is.

That call is expressed in the reality that there is one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. Interestingly, these benefits have bookends about the obviously objective reality of the church. On the front, one body; on the back, one baptism. The in-between blessings likewise belong to the church. We receive the Spirit’s work in the church. We have our hope because we are reminded of it in the church. Jesus is the one Lord over specifically the church. We are not a diverse faith, but all who truly belong to God’s people have the same sort of faith: the sort that trusts in Jesus Christ. All these blessing bring us to the one God who is over all.

Then in verse 7 we start to see why these blessings are not about our personal, subjective experience but about Christ’s objective creation of the church as the institution of his kingdom. This grace was given to each of us as Christ’s gift as he ascended. He gave gifts to men as he went to sit at the Father’s right hand.

Set within all that we saw last week about how the Son poured out the Spirit as he ascended, we find starting in verse 11 what the concrete manifestation of the Spirit being sent looks like. Christ poured out the Spirit to give the gift of apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers. In other words, the Spirit manifests himself as the poured-out gift of the ascended Christ in the presence of church officers who work to equip the saints, to do the work of the ministry, and to build up Christ’s body.

Their work continues for the sake of attaining unity in Christ. In other words, the catholicity of the church, its universality, rests in the marks of the church: the preaching of the gospel and the right administration of the sacraments. We proclaim one Lord and the one faith in him, which is confirmed by the one Spirit in one baptism, as well as the same Supper that Christians share in Christ. Jesus gave a church that has real features that ground its unity, which is why congregations across the world, while having different emphases, styles, and appearance, also have true union with one another in Christ. The gifts that the ascended Christ gave through the Spirit ground the church’s catholicity.

Consecration

By consecration, I just mean holy. The church is set apart, which is what we mean by saying that the church is holy. Now, there are two senses in which the church is set apart: pattern and purity. It has a specific design, and it has an ethical destination.

As far as its pattern, we have already thought about how Christ by the Spirit created the church with a certain shape around official, biblical teaching through appointed officers who protect and help the church through cultivating and correcting discipline. We are all always under church discipline. Most of us exclusively experience cultivating discipline—the positive investing in the saints through Word, sacrament, prayer, and pastoral care to build you up in faith, assurance, and holiness. Sometimes, when we refuse to repent of sin, we come under correcting discipline where the officers have to rebuke in a more formal way.

This structure of specific church officers for teaching, shepherding, and growing the church is good news. We should be glad about it. Why? Christ by the Spirit created the church’s independency. We are not tied to any nation. We are supposed to be distinct from every nation and government while incorporating people from every nation, country, ethnicity, and government. Christ’s gifts of officers and objectivity makes the church its own society.

Praise be to God that he will grow, deepen, and strengthen his society regardless of what is happening to the culture that surrounds us. We are the embassy of heaven. We are heavenly soil purchased in this age. We embody the culture of Christ as his people although we are outposts working within a surrounding culture.

That is why the church’s pattern furthers the church’s purity. The church’s structural holiness as a set apart institution works to strengthen the church’s ethical holiness as people who are set apart from sin. That objective holiness works for our subjective holiness. After all, in Ephesians 4, we see the objective gifts that Christ gives serve to build the church’s unity, grow our knowledge of the Son, mature us, and give us new measures of fullness in Christ. Because of that work that happens on account of the church as an institution, we are enabled to resist the things of this age and grow up into our head, Jesus Christ. In other words, the church is given a certain objective position in order to work in us a subjective growth.

There is a parallel in the gospel itself. Christ gave himself for our sin, to cleanse his church and bring us to faith. He makes us spotless and blameless before him that he might be pleased with us. On account of that forgiveness of sin, that justification, he works in us to sanctify us, to grow us in godliness. The church as an institution is then a template as a gift from Christ to understand the gifts Christ gives us as members of the church.

What a blessing to have this distinct citizenship as Christians. That we have this place where another culture is instantiated and embodied. That when we gather here, we ought to feel how much we have stepped out of the worldly age and are experiencing the culture that Christ has poured out from heaven. As we grow in acting like Christ’s culture, we help one another encounter the character of Christ himself. How good it is that Christ gives us the gift of knowing himself as he gives us the gift of belonging to one another.

©Harrison Perkins. All Rights Reserved.

You can find the whole series here.

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