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As God in His Trinity of Persons possesses absolutely the fullness of His divine substance, His heavenly Body or His essential Wisdom, so too the God-Man in the trinity of His Messianic powers possesses completely the Universal Church, His divine-human Body, at once heavenly and earthly, the perfect Spouse of the incarnate Word. “All power has been given unto Me in Heaven and Earth.” This universal power is not the omnipotence of God; that belongs eternally to the Word and so cannot be given to him. The power here referred to is the Messianic power of the God-Man, a power that does not relate to the universe outside God as such, but to the universe reunited to God, co-operating with Him and incarnating in time His eternal essence. If the fullness of this power belongs by right to Christ and only to Him, since He alone could merit it, the exercise of this divine-human power demands the free submission and the living co-operation of mankind itself. The action of Christ is therefore determined here by the progressive development of humanity, drawn by degrees into the divine-human sphere, assimilated to the mystical Body of Christ and transformed into the Universal Church.
If God, that is to say, Christ in glory, had wished to impose His truth and His will upon men in a direct and supranatural manner, if He had wished to save the world by force, He could well have done so; just as before His glorification He could have asked His heavenly Father to send Him a legion of angels to protect Him from the servants of Caiaphas and the soldiers of Pilate. In that case the history of the world would have been soon completed, but it would not have achieved its goal; there would have been no free co-operation between Man and God, no true union and perfect concurrence between the creature and the Creator; and mankind itself in losing its freedom of choice would have been assimilated to the physical world. But the Divine Word did not become incarnate on Earth in order to sanction materialism. Since that incarnation, the freedom of Man remains assured; the Universal Church has a history. It was necessary that Christ should ascend to the heavens and govern the Church by means of human ministers to whom He might delegate the moral and juridical fullness of the three Messianic powers, without thereby imparting to them the immediate efficacy of His omnipotence which would have restricted the freedom of men. In a word, we know that in founding the Church Christ delegated His powers to her; and in doing so he followed what we may call the trinitary scheme, ratio Trinitatis.
The Trinity of God is the evolution of absolute Unity which contains in itself all the fullness of Being, unfolding itself in three hypostatized modes of the divine existence. We know that in the Trinity absolute Unity is secured: (1) by the ontological primacy of the first hypostasis which is the original cause or principle of the two others, but not vice versa; (2) by the consubstantiality of all three, ensuring the indivisibility of their being; and (3) by their perfect solidarity which does not permit of their acting separately. The social trinity of the Universal Church is the evolution of the ecclesiastical monarchy which contains in itself all the fullness of the Messianic powers, unfolding itself in the three forms of Christian sovereignty. As in the Godhead, the unity of the Universal Church is secured: (1) by the absolute primacy of the first of these three powers, the pontificate, which is the only sovereignty directly and immediately instituted by God and therefore de jure the cause and necessary condition of the two others; (2) by the essential community of these three powers as included within the same Body of Christ and sharing the same substance of religion, the same faith, tradition and sacraments; (3) by the moral solidarity or community of aim which for all three can be nothing but the coming of the Kingdom of God, the perfect manifestation of the Universal Church.
The religious community and moral solidarity of the three sovereign powers under the absolute primacy of the universal pontificate, such is the supreme law, the ultimate ideal of social Christendom. But though in God the trinitary form of unity exists in actuality from all eternity, in the Church it is only gradually realized. Hence, there is not only a difference, but even a certain contrast between the Divine Trinity and the social trinity. The primary datum of the Divine existence is absolute Unity, of which the Trinity is the direct, perfect and therefore eternal unfolding. The primary datum of the Church is, on the contrary, the indeterminate plurality of natural, fallen humanity. In the Divine Being the Trinity is the form by which absolute Unity extends and unfolds itself; in the social being of the human race the trinity is the form by which the indeterminate plurality of particular elements is reduced to a synthetic unity. Thus, the development of the Church is a process of unification within an ideally constant, but actually variable, relationship between de jure unity and de facto plurality, a process which involves two main operations: the progressive centralization of the given ecclesiastical body, and the unifying and synthetic action of the centralized Church which aims at the incorporation of the whole of mankind into itself. The hypostases of the Divine Trinity are absolutely simple in themselves and their trinitary relationship is perfectly pure and immediate. The sovereign powers of the trinitary society of the Universal Church are neither simple in themselves nor in the conditions in which they must be realized.
They are not simple in themselves, for they are only relative centers of a collective whole. The mode of their realization is complicated not only by the indeterminate plurality of the human medium in which they must manifest themselves, but also owing to the fact that the perfect Messianic revelation finds in natural humanity only partially successful attempts at unification, upon which the unifying work of the Church must be grafted. While this materially assists the divine-human operation, it also imparts to it a less pure, regular and harmonious character. The chaos which is only veiled by the physical creation still asserts its claims not only in the history of natural humanity, but also in the history of Religion and of the Church.
The aim of the divine-human work is to save all men equally, to transform the whole world into a royal and prophetic priesthood, a society of God in which men find themselves in direct relation to Christ and have no need of sun (that is, of a special priesthood), of moon (that is, of a special kingship), or of stars (that is, of prophecy as a public function). But to attain this end, it is not enough to define it. It is only too obvious that the mass of men do not individually and subjectively possess piety, justice and wisdom in sufficient measure to enter into direct contact with the Godhead or to invest each individual with the character of priest, king and prophet. Hence, it is necessary that these three Messianic attributes should be given objective and organic form in public and social life, and should be permanently differentiated in the universal organism in order that Christ may have specific organs of His activity as Priest, King and Prophet. The people of Israel said to Moses at the foot of Sinai: “We cannot endure the presence of Jahveh, we shall all die. Go thou in our stead to speak with Jahveh, and thou shalt bring back all that he shall say to thee for us; so shalt thou be a mediator between us and the Most High, that we may live.” And the Lord said to Moses: “What this people have said, they have well said.” And by the command of Jahveh, Moses not only acted personally as a mediator between the Godhead and the people, but also, in declaring that the people had been called to be a priestly kingdom (malkhouth cohanim), he founded, as we have seen, the three powers through which Jahveh was to exercise His social activity in Israel.
The human mediator of the Old Testament thus foreshadowed the divine-human Mediator of the New Covenant. Jesus Christ, while preaching the Kingdom of Heaven which is within us, grace and truth, and proclaiming the perfect unity of love and freedom as the supreme law of His Church, none the less proceeds to organize the ecclesiastical body and to bestow upon it a central organ by the method of a special choice. All must be completely equal, all must be one, and yet there are only twelve Apostles to whom the power of Christ is delegated, and among them there is only one on whom this power is conferred completely and absolutely.
We know that the principle of chaotic existence, of existence, that is to say, apart from the Godhead, is manifested in the life of natural humanity by the indeterminate succession of generations, in which the present hastens to supplant the past, only to be itself continually supplanted by an illusory and transient future. The parricidal children, becoming fathers, cannot but beget a new generation of parricides, and so on to infinity. Such is the evil law of mortal life. Therefore, if mankind is to be regenerated and given true life, its past must above all be stabilized by the organization of a permanent fatherhood. Purely human society already allots to the transitory fatherhood of natural life three distinct functions: the father produces and sustains the existence of the child by begetting it and providing for its material needs; he guides the moral and intellectual development of the adolescent by educating it; finally, he remains for his grown son the living and venerable memory of his past. The first relationship is for the child one of complete dependence; the second lays upon the adolescent the duty of obedience; the third only demands filial piety, a free sentiment of veneration and a mutual friendship.
If, in family life, fatherhood is seen under these three successive aspects, in the regenerate social life of the whole human race it assumes them simultaneously. For there are always individuals and nations that have yet to be begotten to spiritual life, and have yet to receive the elements of religious nurture — nations and individuals in moral and intellectual infancy; others, like adolescents, must in every age develop their spiritual powers and faculties with a certain freedom, but none the less must be constantly watched over and guided in the true path by the authority of a father, which shows itself at this stage mainly as an educative and teaching authority. Finally, there are always, if not whole nations, at least individuals who have reached spiritual maturity, and the more conscious and free they are, the greater is the veneration and filial piety they feel for spiritual fatherhood.
From another point of view, there is bound to be an hierarchical gradation in spiritual fatherhood in proportion to the extent of the social units which it embraces. We know that the Church is natural humanity transubstantiated. Now, natural humanity is constituted on the analogy of a living body. A physical body is a complex unity made up of relatively simple units of different degrees in a complicated relationship of subordination and co-ordination. The main degrees of this physical hierarchy are three in number. The lowest degree is represented by the relatively simple units, the elementary organs or organic elements of the body. In the middle degree we find the limbs of the body and its organs properly socalled, which are more or less composite. Finally, all these members and organs are subordinate to the unity of the whole body controlled by a central organ.
Similarly, in the political organism of natural humanity, which was to be regenerated by Christianity, relatively simply units — tribes, clans, rural communities, small states — were united in composite collectivities more or less subdivided, nations at different stages of development, provinces of varying extent; finally all the provinces and nations were united in the universal monarchy, governed by a unique social organ, the city of Rome, a city which concentrated in itself the whole world and was at once urbs et orbis.
This was the organism which was to be transubstantiated by Christianity. The body of historic humanity was to be regenerated in every part in accordance with the order of its composition. And since Christ established a spiritual fatherhood as the basis of this regeneration, that fatherhood had to take form in accordance with the given variations in the forms of society. There were, therefore, three degrees in the spiritual fatherhood or the priesthood: each primary social community or village, transubstantiated into a Church, received a spiritual father or priest; and all these priests together formed the lower clergy or the priesthood, properly speaking. The provinces of the Empire, transubstantiated into eparchies or dioceses of different orders, each formed a large family with a common father in the person of the archiereus or bishop, the immediate father of the priests under him and through them of all the faithful of his diocese. But all the spiritual social units of this second order represented by the episcopate, the particular Churches of cities, provinces and nations governed by prelates of all degrees (simple bishops, archbishops, metropolitans, primates or patriarchs) are only members of the Universal Church which must itself be manifest as a higher unit embracing all these members. The mere juxtaposition of its parts is not in fact enough to constitute a living body. It must possess a formal unity or substantial form which definitely embraces in actuality all the particular units, the elements and organs of which the body is composed. And if the particular spiritual families which between them make up mankind are in reality to form a single Christian family, a single Universal Church, they must be subject to a common fatherhood embracing all Christian nations. To assert that there exist in reality nothing more than national Churches is to assert that the members of a body exist in and for themselves and that the body itself has no reality. On the contrary, Christ did not found any particular Church. He created them all in the real unity of the Universal Church which He entrusted to Peter as the one supreme representative of the divine Fatherhood towards the whole family of the sons of Man.
It was by no mere chance that Jesus Christ specially ascribed to the first divine hypostasis, the heavenly Father, that divine-human act which made Simon BarJona the first social father of the whole human family and the infallible master of the school of mankind. “It is not flesh and blood which have revealed it to thee, but My Father Who is in heaven.” God the Holy Trinity is as indivisible in His action ad extra as in His inner life. If St. Peter was divinely inspired, it was by God the Son and God the Holy Ghost as much as by God the Father, and since it was a matter of inspiration it might have seemed more appropriate to make special mention of the Holy Spirit Who spake by the prophets. But it is just here that we see the divine reason which governed every word of Christ, and the universal significance of His utterance to Peter. For it was not a matter of asserting that in this particular instance Simon had been inspired from above; that was as possible for him as for any of his fellows. But it was a matter of establishing in his favor the unique institution of universal fatherhood in the Church, the image and instrument of the divine Fatherhood; and therefore it was above all to the heavenly Father that the supreme reason and sanction for this institution was to be referred.
It is hard to leave the pure air of the Galilean mountains for the polluted atmosphere of the Dead Sea. Our anti-Catholic controversialists, while admitting that the Church of the parish or of the diocese needs its priest or bishop, its visible father, the human organ of the divine Fatherhood, will hear nothing of a common father for the whole Universal Church. The only head of the Church, they say, is Jesus Christ. And yet they see no reason why a parish or a diocese should not be governed by a visible minister; every Orthodox is ready to see in each bishop or priest a vicar of Jesus Christ, though he cries Blasphemy! when Catholics give this title to the first of the patriarchs, the successor of St. Peter. But do these Orthodox schismatics in fact recognize Jesus Christ as Head of the Church? If He were really for them the sovereign Head, they would obey His words. Is it obedience to the Master that drives them into rebellion against the steward that He has Himself appointed? They are ready to allow Christ to act through His ministers in any given part of His visible Kingdom, but they appear to think that He exceeded the limits of His power and abused His rights in giving to Peter the keys of the whole Kingdom. It is as though an English subject, while allowing the Empress of India the right of nominating a governor at Madras and a magistrate at Bombay, were to dispute her appointment of the Viceroy at Calcutta.
But, it may be said, the Universal Church in her entirety goes beyond the bounds of earthly humanity; she includes the saints in Paradise, the souls in Purgatory and even, adds Khomyakov, the souls of those yet unborn. We doubt whether the Pope is much concerned to extend his jurisdiction over the souls of the unborn. But, speaking seriously, we are not dealing with the Universal Church in its absolute and eternal totality, but in its relative and temporal totality, with the visible Church in each given moment of its historic existence. For the Church, as for the individual man, there is the invisible totality or the soul, and the visible totality or the body. The soul of man surpasses the limits of earthly existence, it survives the physical organism, and in the world of spirits it thinks and acts without the medium of a material brain; but if anyone were to draw from that the conclusion that in his earthly existence man can get along without brains, the conclusion would hardly be granted, except perhaps in his own case!
There is another a priori argument used to evade the necessity for a universal fatherhood. Since the principle of fatherhood represents tradition, the memory of the past, it is thought to be enough for the Church to show true spiritual fatherhood by guarding tradition and preserving the memory of its own past. From this point of view, spiritual fatherhood would be represented solely by the great departed ancestors of the religious society, the Fathers of the Church. But why not extend this logic to particular Churches? Why are not the faithful of a parish content to find this spiritual fatherhood in the historic memory of the first founders of their parish church? Why do they also need a living spiritual father, a permanent parish priest? And why does it not completely satisfy the inhabitants of Moscow to have a sacred tradition, a pious remembrance of the first rulers of their Church, the holy metropolitans Peter and Alexis? Why do they also want a living bishop as a perpetual representative of this ancient tradition? To relegate the spiritual fatherhood of the Church to the past in the proper sense of that which has only an ideal existence for us is to misconceive her very essence and raison d’être. The barbarous ancestors of mankind knew better: they recognized the survival of ancestors and even made them the main object of their worship, but for the continual maintenance of that worship they required that the dead ancestor should always have a living successor, the soul of the family, the priest or sacrificer, the permanent intermediary between the invisible divinity and their actual life.
Without a single father common to the whole human family, the earthly life of the sons of Adam must remain subject to division of every kind, and unity will have only an ideal existence upon Earth. Real unity will be driven back to Heaven like the legendary Astræa; and Chaos will reign upon the Earth. In that case, Christianity would have failed; for it is in order to unify the lower world, to draw the Earth out of chaos and unite it with the heavens, that the Word was made flesh. The docetic Christ of the Gnostics, a phantom Christ, would be more than sufficient to found an invisible Church. But the real Christ has founded a real Church upon Earth and has based it upon a permanent fatherhood universally diffused throughout all the parts of the social organism, but actually concentrated for the whole body in the person of the common father of all the faithful, the supreme pontiff, the elder or presbyter par excellence, the Pope.
The Pope, as such, is directly the father of all the bishops and, through them, of all the priests. Thus, he is father of fathers. There is no question that the Pope is the only bishop to be called not only “brother” but also “father” by other bishops from the earliest times; and it was not only individual bishops that recognized his paternal authority, but gatherings of the whole episcopate as impressive, for instance, as the Council of Chalcedon.
But this fatherhood of the Pope in relation to the teaching Church or the clergy does not belong to him absolutely. Not only bishops, but all priests are under certain aspects the equals of the Pope. The Pope has no essential pre-eminence over a simple priest in the ministry of the sacraments, with the exception of Holy Order, in which he has no privilege above that of any other bishop. It is for this reason that the Pope calls the bishops not only his sons, but also his brothers, and is called brother by them. Thus, within the limits of the Church, properly speaking, the Pope has only a relative fatherhood, not fully analogous to the Divine Fatherhood. The essential characteristic of the latter is that the Father is such in an absolutely unique manner, that He alone is Father, and that the Son and the Spirit, while partaking in the Godhead, do not partake in the Divine Fatherhood in any manner or degree. But the bishops and priests — the whole teaching Church — share more or less in the spiritual fatherhood of the Pope. Fundamentally, there is no essential difference between this spiritual fatherhood or priestly power in the Pope and the same power as it is in the bishops; just as the power of the episcopate is the relative fullness of the power of the priesthood, so its absolute fullness is found in the Papacy.
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