Note (return) — Chapter II

But there was never a time in history when the conception of the Church, as nothing else than the visible communion of those holding the correct apostolic doctrine, was clearly grasped or exclusively emphasised. In Irenæus and Tertullian we rather find, on the one hand, that the old theory of the Church was still to a great extent preserved and, on the other, that the hierarchical notion was already making its appearance. As to the first point, Irenæus frequently asserts that the Spirit and the Church, that is, the Christian people, are inseparable; that the Spirit in divers ways continually effects whatever she needs; that she is the totality of all true believers, that all the faithful have the rank of priests; that outside the holy Church there is no salvation, etc.; in fact these doctrines form the very essence of his teaching. But, since she was also regarded as the visible institution for objectively preserving and communicating the truth, and since the idea of the Church in contradistinction to heresy was necessarily exhausted in this as far as Irenæus was concerned, the old theories of the matter could not operate correctively, but in the end only served to glorify the earthly Catholic Church.151 The proposition that truth is only to be found in the Church and that she and the Holy Spirit are inseparable must be understood in Irenæus as already referring to the Catholic Church in contradistinction to every other calling itself Christian.152 As to the second point, it cannot be denied that, though Irenæus desires to maintain that the only essential part of the idea of the Church is the fact of her being the depository of the truth, he was no longer able to confine himself to this (see above). The episcopal succession and the transmission to the bishops of the magisterium of the Apostles were not indeed of any direct importance to his idea of the Church, but they were of consequence for the preservation of truth and therefore indirectly for the idea of the Church also. To Irenæus, however, that theory was still nothing more than an artificial line; but artificial lines are really supports and must therefore soon attain the value of foundations.153 Tertullian's conception of the Church was essentially the same as that of Irenæus; but with the former the idea that she is the outward manifestation of the Spirit, and therefore a communion of those who are spiritual, at all times continued to operate more powerfully than with the latter. In the last period of his life Tertullian emphasised this theory so vigorously that the Antignostic idea of the Church being based on the "traditio unius sacramenti" fell into the background. Consequently we find nothing more than traces of the hierarchical conception of the Church in Tertullian. But towards the end of his life he found himself face to face with a fully developed theory of this kind. This he most decidedly rejected, and, in doing so, advanced to such a conception of ecclesiastical orders, and therefore also of the episcopate, as clearly involved him in a contradiction of the other theory—which he also never gave up—viz., that the bishops, as the class which transmits the rule of faith, are an apostolic institution and therefore necessary to the Church154.