Nine years ago, on the verge of becoming Catholic, I had a long phone conversation with a good friend from my Bible-college days. In the course of our friendly but spirited discussion, I made a passing comment about the Church being “the Body of Christ.”
My evangelical-Protestant friend immediately asked, “Where do you get that?”
“From the Bible,” I replied. “Paul describes the Church as the Body of Christ in several of his letters.” I mentioned 1 Corinthians 12, Colossians 1 and other passages.
Although surprised by his question, I understood his consternation. After all, I'm a former evangelical myself. I recalled how, in studying Catholic doctrine and theology as I read my way into the Church, I kept encountering verses I had either never noticed before or had not paid much attention to.
The conversation came to mind when I recently read the following passage in a new book: “If Christ and his Church are one, then a great deal of Catholic doctrine simply follows naturally. In a word, ecclesiology represents the crucial difference between evangelicals and Catholics.”
The book was not written by a Catholic, but by an evangelical, Mark Noll. Titled Is The Reformation Over? An Evangelical Assessment of Contemporary Roman Catholicism (Baker, 2005), it takes a careful look at what separates Catholics from evangelical Protestants and concludes that, although many issues remain divisive, the biggest obstacle to union are beliefs about the nature and purpose of the Church.
Noll writes that some evangelicals make the joke that “the main difference between us and the Catholics is ecclesiology. They have one and we don't.” Although stated in jest, the comment acknowledges that many “Bible Christians” have a “low” ecclesiology while Catholics (and the Eastern Orthodox) have a “high” ecclesiology. Put simply, most evangelicals believe the Church is a secondary or peripheral issue while Catholics, as the Catechism explains, believe “the Church is the goal of all things” (No. 760).
This “high” view is not only unacceptable to many evangelicals; it upsets them.
Yet, more and more evangelicals are becoming Catholic or seriously examining the Catholic faith because they recognize that the Church is indeed “the household of God” and “pillar and support of the truth,” just as the great Catholic theologian, Paul of Tarsus, describes it (1 Timothy 3:15).
They believe that the Church is the Body of Christ and the Bride of Christ, as Paul explains in his epistle to the Ephesians. The realize that a high view of Christ and of salvation demand a high view of the Church because it is through the Church that Christ is proclaimed, known, met and embraced. This is especially true in the Eucharist, when “we who are many” are made into “one body” by partaking of the “one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:17).
I think Noll is correct in identifying ecclesiology as the central issue in evangelical-Catholic relations. This is good news for Catholics since talk about the Church as the Body of Christ should be natural. This is also good news for evangelicals since the Catholic view of the Church is biblical, Christo-centric — and consistent.
Carl E. Olson is editor of IgnatiusInsight.com.