One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, Tome 2. John Williamson Nevin
should be wrought intensively into the whole civilization of this country (the weight of which prospectively no one can fully estimate); that it should have in it not merely an outward and nominal sovereignty, but be brought also fully to actuate and inform its interior collective life, filling its institutions as their very soul, and leavening them throughout into its own divine complexion; that it should solve the problem of Church and State in a really christian way, so as to bind them into one with free inward reconciliation, instead of throwing them hopelessly apart; that it should take possession truly of the art and literature of the country, its commerce and science and philosophy as well as its politics, passing by no tract of humanity as profane and yet acknowledging no tract as legitimate on the outside of its own sphere and sway: all this, we say, is an object far more near to the final redemption of the world, and of far more need at this time (if it might be accomplished), for the bringing in of the millenium, than the conversion of all India or China. The life of the Church is the salvation of the world.
From the whole subject we draw in conclusion the following reflections:
1. From the view now taken of the proper catholicism or wholeness of christianity, we may see at once that it by no means implies the necessary salvation of all men. This false conclusion is drawn by Universalists, only by confounding the idea of the whole with the notion of all; whereas in truth they are of altogether different force and sense. As hundreds of blossoms may fall and perish from a tree, without impairing the true idea of its whole life as this is reached finally in the fruit towards which all tends from the beginning, so may we conceive also of multitudes of men born into the world, the natural posterity of Adam, and coming short of the proper sense of their own nature as this is completed in Christ, without any diminution whatever of its true universalness under such form. Even in the case of our natural humanity, the whole in which it consists is by no means of one measure merely with the number of persons included in it; it is potentially far more than this, being determined to its actual extent by manifold limitations that have no necessity in itself; for there might be thousands besides born into the world, which are never born into it in fact. Why then should it be thought that the higher form of this same humanity which is reached by Christ, and without which the other must always fall short of its own destination, in order to be full and universal in its own character must take up into itself literally all men? Why may not thousands fail to be born permanently into this higher power of our universal nature, just as thousands fail of a full birth also into its first natural power, without any excluding limitation in the character of the power itself? Those who thus fail in the case of the second creation fail at the same time of course of the true end of their own being, and so may be said to perish more really than those who fall short of an actual human life in the first form; yet it by no means follows from this again that such failure must involve annihilation or a return to non-existence. It may be a continuation of existence; but of existence under a curse, morally crippled and crushed, and hopelessly debarred from the sphere in which it was required to become complete. To be thus out of Christ is for the subjects of such failure indeed an exclusion from the true and full idea of humanity, the glorious orb of man’s life in its last and only absolute and eternally perfect form; but for this life itself it involves no limitation or defect. The orb is at all points round and full.
2. As the wholeness in question is not one with the numerical all of the natural posterity of Adam, so neither may it be taken again as answerable simply to any less given number, selected out of the other all for the purpose of salvation. This idea of an abstract election, underlying the whole plan of redemption, and circumscribing consequently the real virtue of all its provisions by such mechanical limitation, is in all material respects the exact counterpart of that scheme of universal salvation which has just been noticed. It amounts to nothing, so far as the nature of the redemption is concerned that it is made to be for all men in one case and only for a certain part of them in the other. In both cases a mere notional all, a fixed finite abstraction, is substituted for the idea of an infinite concrete whole, and the result is a mechanical ab extra45 salvation, instead of a true organic redemption unfolding itself as the power of a new life from within. The proper wholeness of christianity is more a great deal than any arithmetical sum, previously made up under another form, for its comprehension and use. It implies parts of course, and in this way at last definite number and measure, and so in the case of its subjects also a veritable “election of grace;”46 but it makes all the difference in the world, whether the parts are taken to be the factoral making up the whole, or come into view as its product and growth, whether their number and measure be settled by an outward election or determined by an election that springs from within. A tree has a definite number of branches and leaves—so many, and not more nor less; but who would think of looking for the ground of this beyond the nature of the tree itself, and the conditions that rule the actual development of its life? The law of determination here is something very different, from the law that determines the imitation of a tree in wax or the composition of a watch. So the election of grace in the case of the new creation holds in Christ, and not in any view taken of humanity aside from his person.
3. The catholic or universal character of the Church thus, we may easily see farther, does not depend at any time upon its merely numerical extent, whether this be large or small. An organic whole continues the same (the mustard seed for instance) through all stages of its development, though for a long time its actual volume and form may fall far short of what they are destined to be in the end, and must be too in order to fulfill completely its inward sense. So the whole fact of christianity gathers itself up fundamentally into the single person of Christ, and is found to grow forth from this literally as its root. The mystery of the incarnation involves in itself potentially a new order of existence for the world, which is as universal in its own nature as the idea of humanity, and by which only it is possible for this to be advanced finally to its own full and perfect realization. Those who affect to find this unintelligibly mystical and transcendental, would do well to consider that every higher order of existence, even in the sphere of nature itself, carries in it a precisely similar relation to the mass of matter, surrounding it under a lower form, which it is appointed to take up and transform by assimilation into its own superior type. The Second Adam is the root of the full tree of humanity in a far profounder sense than the First; and it is only as the material of it naturally considered comes to be incorporated into this, that it can be said to be raised into the same sphere at all; its relation to it previously being at best but that of the unleavened meal to the power at work in its bosom, or that of the unassimilated element to the buried grain which is destined by means of it to wax into the proportions of a great plant or tree. So too from the root upwards, from the fountain onwards, the new order of life which we call the Church or the Kingdom of God remains throughout one and catholic. It owns no coordination with the idea of man’s life under any different form. It is the ultimate universal sense of man’s nature, the entire sphere of its perfection, the whole and only law of its final consummation. With this character however, the Church can never be content to rest in a merely partial revelation of its power among men, but is urged continually by its very nature to take actual possession of all the world, as we have already seen, both extensively and intensively. Here we have of course the idea of a process, as something involved in the very conception itself which we have in hand. As an article of faith, the catholicity of the Church expresses a present attribute in all ages; it is not drawn simply from future, as a proleptical declaration of what is to be true hereafter, though it be not true now; the whole presence of the new creation is lodged in its constitution from the start and through all centuries. But who will pretend that this has ever yet had its proper actualization in the living world? The catholic quality and force of christianity go always along with it; but innumerable hindrances are at hand to obstruct and oppose its action; and its full victory in this view accordingly, as well as in the view of its other attributes, is to be expected only hereafter. To believe in the Church as universal or catholic, it is not necessary that we should see it in full actual possession of the whole world; for when has that been the case yet, and what less would it be than the presence of the millenium in the most absolute sense? It is to believe however that the whole power by which this is to be reached is already at work in its constitution, and that its action looks and strives always towards such end, as the only result that can fairly express