My Journey to a Comp Exam - What I Have Learned Part II

This is the second of my upcoming comprehensive exam material, and this one is completely my composition in lieu of the cooperative effort by my classmates.  This one has to do with Theological Foundations of the faith, and more specifically with a question concerning Cardinal Schonborn's statement, "Finis ominum ecclesia" (the Church is the goal of all things).  So, it is my hope that maybe as you read and experience a little bit of my own studies here, you can learn a little something as well.  

"The Church is the goal of all things" - a profound statement made by Cardinal Christoph Schonborn and also elaborated more in his book Loving the Church, in which he devotes a whole chapter to that phrase.  By it he means that the Church, as a means, is a sacrament or sign and instrument of intimate union with God.  But, it is also an end, in that the sacramental grace dispensed through the Church aids in the final goal of the plan of Creation, which is the perfection of a fallen creation and restoration of it to what God intended it to be.  That includes us as human beings, being we are the pinnacle of God's creation ourselves.  That being said, this subject needs to be looked at by the three areas of theology that are affected by it, and I will explain what those are in the next paragraph.

The first area of theology to explore this question will be what is called Fundamental Theology.  Fundamental theology has nothing whatsoever to do with Fundamentalists, but rather is a discipline within the greater spectrum of theology that seeks to establish the fact that God has made supernatural revelation and has established His Church as the custodial interpreter of that revelation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theology - accessed 9/22/2017).  To put this in layman's terminology, God revealed Himself, as well as His plan, and it is up to the Church to be the reservoir of knowledge concerning that revelation.  Outside of the Church's custodial realm, God's revelation of Himself becomes subjective and open to the whims and fancies of rationalism and other mindsets that deny the supernatural aspect of faith.  This means then, in lieu of that fact, that creation itself is the "first language" God speaks.  If we go back to Aquinas, you will recall that he taught that God authored two "books," one being Nature and the other being Revelation.  In the language of metaphysics, there is also the idea of the Principle of Causality that relates to this as well - everything has sufficient reason to exist, and thus any being that does not contain the sufficient reason for its own existence within itself requires a cause (W. Norris Clarke, The One and the Many.  Notre Dame, IN:  University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. p. 21).  There is only one being in the whole universe who has self-sufficient cause for existence, and thus is perfect and free to create or discontinue anything else, and of course that is God.  God speaks this truth through both Nature and Revelation, and neither "book" can contradict the other (Law of Non-Contradiction) - created things speak to us directly in Nature (through, for example, the Fibbonaci sequence and the Golden Ratio being played out in the design of creation), and God Himself speaks through His own Revelation, which we understand to be Holy Scripture and Tradition.  Now, via supernatural grace, Revelation perfects Nature, and thus we are back to Fundamental Theology.  Creation as the "first language " God spoke is in fact His language, as He Himself "wrote the book."  And, as Scott Hahn notes, God made Nature (at least initially) good, and the more we realize that Nature has goodness attributed by God to it, we then can have grace to build upon that - natural law exists, as Dr. Hahn notes, to prepare human beings for supernatural grace (Scott Hahn, Reasons to Believe.  New York:  Doubleday, 2007.  pp. 54-55).  What that means in terms of Fundamental Theology is that the importance of the role of faith in creation is fundamental to having a correct understanding of the Church.  Creation relates to the Church in several ways - it foreshadows it, serves it, and is perfected by it.  Why?  Because the Church, as the "goal of all things," is where the ultimate deposit of supernatural grace is dispensed to those seeking it.  Therefore, understanding that God is the Creator of heaven and earth (as affirmed in the opening sentences of the Creeds) is the first step to conversion.  The Church, as the guardian of the Fidei Depositum, makes this possible by its evangelical mission.  Therefore, if belief in God is lacking, Christ is unable to be proclaimed and the Church cannot be established - at the heart of the proclamation is what is known as the Kerygma, the story of the economy of salvation in history, and Christ is the focal point of that.  If one doubts God as Creator, then it begins to make faith crumble and the Kerygma cannot be received and accepted.  The Kerygma is a complete legacy of salvation in itself, and therefore what God says must be believed and accepted by faith as true.  It is therefore up to the Church, as the authenticating custodian and interpreter of divine Revelation, to herald these truths without compromise and in their entirety.   That essentially is Fundamental Theology in a nutshell.

We now move onto Biblical Theology, which is defined as a discipline within the broader spectrum of theology that bases the existence of the Church upon what God revealed in Scripture, and in turn the Church is be the conduit of the salvation heralded in the Kerygma to the world.  It is related to Fundamental Theology and Christian metaphysics in that it presupposes that God is the author of the written Revelation, and thus it can be authenticated by the witness of the Church as true.  This of course entails several things as it relates to the narrative of the Kerygma as revealed in Scripture.  First, the Bible presupposes the Church.  Although the Church precedes the complete canon of Scripture in tangibility, nonetheless Scripture in many cases (Old Testament) predates the Church but presupposes its existence by types and the divine order of history leading up to the coming of Christ.  The language of covenant is the key here in understanding the mechanics of this, and as we look at Scripture we see that the framework of the Scriptural narrative is one of a series of covenant relationships - six to be exact - which are a prefigurement of the Church.  As Christ is the culmination of this narrative, there is no further supernatural Revelation after His sojourn on earth (CCC 73).  God begins this work, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church notes, at the Fall in Genesis 3, and the Church is seen as God's reaction to the chaos provoked by sin (CCC 761).  Lumen Gentium also affirms this in noting that the Revelation of the Kingdom is often conveyed by means of metaphors, as well as by typologies of figures and nations found there (LG 6).  As Lumen Gentium 9 notes, "Step by step He taught and prepared this people, making it holy unto itself," referring of course to the people (the Jews) that Christ was to come from.  This preparation, of course, came in the form of covenant. As the Catechism notes again, this means that the "remote preparation" for this gathering together of the people of God begins when God calls Abraham and promises that he will become the father of a great people (CCC 762).  In reality, God made it possible for Abraham to father two great peoples - the first, of course, were his physical descendants, but one of those of that line, Jesus Christ, would birth the other, the "spiritual people of Abraham" known as the Church.  Therefore, every Biblical covenant must be seen as a prefigurement of the Church in the greater plan of God for the salvation of mankind. This also means that the Church has to be one (note Ephesians 4:5 and I Corinthians 12:13), and therefore division tends to hinder the Church's mission. As one Church, it becomes the setting where God unfolds His plan, step-by-step, and therefore the work of salvation is complete and finished (note Ephesians 3:10 and Acts 2:42).  This gives the Church then a mediatory role in salvation in that Christ (who is the source and only Mediator of salvation - I Timothy 2:5) bestows upon the Church His authority to share in that mediation because her people share in the life of Christ via the Eucharist and the proclamation of the Gospel.  It also intersects here with the study of Mariology, as Mary too is a picture of the Church in that regard.  This means the Church, unlike the claims of some Evangelicals, is not merely the aggregation of Christians, but is a mystical body that transcends mere human components but also has a supernatural origin and mission.

This now overlaps and leads into the third discipline of theology called Dogmatic Theology.  This area of theology has to do with the Church in lieu of established beliefs and convictions held by the Church, essentials of doctrine in particular.  Looking at Lumen Gentium again, we see that the Church has been given a maternal attribute (note also Galatians 4:26 and Revelation 12:17) in regard to its members (LG 6).  The life of the Church, therefore, is hidden with Christ until the Second Coming, at which time she will be the perfected Bride united with her Spouse.  As such, the Church in her maternal role nourishes her people with the sacraments, which also dispense the life of Christ and supernatural grace to those who receive them.  This means then that the truth and grace of Christ are communicated by Him through His Church, and thus dogma enunciates that truth.  Dogma is given so that man can have the fruits of salvation communicated to him by the Church, who also nourishes him with the Eucharist and other sacraments.  This therefore gives the Church an evangelistic mandate to "be fruitful and multiply" and to "make disciples" of all nations.  All of humanity is called to be disciples, as God's will for humanity is to be saved and freed from the concupiscent nature of sin and death.  Therefore, rather than salvation being merely an individual choice, the Church becomes a necessary factor in the process and therefore it necessitates those who respond to the call to accept Christ to be in union with His Church.  That makes the Church herself a sacrament, as the Catechism reminds us "the Church in the world is the sacrament of salvation, the sign and the instrument of the communion of God and man. (CCC 780)"  That being established, there is one other factor that completes this - the role of faith.  Only faith can accept the mystery of the Church as the mystical Body of Christ, and like her Spouse the Church too has both human and divine components (CCC 779).  This ties back into Fundamental Theology then in reiterating that the Church is both the means and goal of God's plan.  She is the mystery of salvation evidenced by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (CCC 778).  Although the Church is the kingdom of God begun by Christ on earth, she is not a completed kingdom yet.  And, that is why the goal of her members is to be brought into perfection by Christ at the end of time (CCC 782).

However, as we see everyday, that perfection is not achieved easily - the Catechism states that glory in perfection is brought by trial (and testing) (CCC 769).  It means that often the Church then will take stands that will place it in a precarious position, as the enemy and fallen human nature often do not respond to the faith of the Church, and thus persecution ensues against her members.  But, in tested faithfulness, perfection happens - growth means strength, and the resiliency of the Church in the face of intense persecution has been testified to over many centuries.  That is because the Church exemplifies the unity of mankind as it was originally intended to be by the sacramental mission she has been given by Jesus Himself.  It is therefore the presupposed goal of humankind to work toward that consummation, which is fully realized in the reality of the Church (CCC 1045).  There is, however, one stipulation - God gave man the free will to choose to do this, and man also has the volition to reject it.  Tragically, many do for many reasons, and those who do reject the message of salvation in Christ through the Church risk a nasty eternity in hell.  God doesn't therefore "send" people to hell - people send themselves.  Christ, through His visible Church on earth, tells people there is a better way, and the mission of the Church is to share that "better way" with all those who would listen.

In essence then, man's innate goal of union with the Church is integral to union with her Head, Jesus Christ.  Man may not realize his need for that goal to be fulfilled, but the need is hot-wired into us.  Man often misinterprets that need and projects it elsewhere, leading in false belief systems that may even have demonic inspiration.  But, the phrase "Finis omnium ecclesia" still holds true - it is the way God chose to do this great work of the redemption of mankind, and only through that narrow door to the Church's nurturing bosom are we to find our fulfillment and restoration in Christ.  It should be the prime quest of every person, but often isn't due to lack of faith or the siren's call of relativism and rationalism.  Man's reason tries to make every way valid as paths to God, but Jesus said in John 14:6 that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no man can approach the Father without believing in Him first.  And, this is not just an individualistic quest - the best way to find Jesus is in His Church, to which He calls us all.  Therefore, the Church leads us to salvation, and our goal is to be part of her to receive Him.