The Nicene Creed includes four “marks” of the Church: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. These notae ecclesiae appear within the third article, the pneumatological section, thereby underscoring that the church’s unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity are gifts of the Spirit, not simply human achievements. Immediately following is the profession of “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins” and the eschatological confession of “the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” As one of the preeminent ressourcement theologians, Yves Congar (1904-95) argued, this creedal structure suggests an intentional theological arc: the Spirit begets the Church, the sacraments sustain the Church, and the Church’s mission is oriented towards the eschaton.
This theological architecture, according to another ressourcement theologian, Henri de Lubac (1896-1991), binds the Church’s identity and mission to her sacramental life. The “credal body” (corpus credi) is inseparable from the “sacramental body” (corpus sacramentorum) and the “mystical body” (corpus mysticum) of Christ.. The Creed is thus not an abstract doctrinal checklist, but a liturgical and ecclesial confession shaping how Christians live, worship, and engage the world.
This two-part essay explores the theological unity between the Church’s credal identity, sacramental life, and ethical vocation. My claim is that the foundational sacraments of Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist, as the sacramental entry into the body of Christ and participation in the divine life, are inseparable from the Church’s moral and missional calling. Drawing from patristic, scholastic, and contemporary Anglican and ecumenical sources, we should situate sacramental participation within the Church’s eschatological horizon. In doing so, the Church contends for a consciously Eucharistic spirituality as the source of ethical renewal in a divided world and the sadly, continuously dividing, Anglican Communion.
This first part, however, will consider the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the marks of the Church, and the sacraments. In the second part, I will apply these claims to ethical renewal and mission.
Credal Pneumatology and Ecclesiological Marks
The Creed describes the Church as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. These four credal ecclesiological marks describe the Church’s God-given nature. They are not crafted by the Church but rather received from God as part of the Church’s divine constitution. In turn, these marks call her members to embody these characteristics in faithfulness to the Gospel.
The church is one: her unity is grounded in the unity of God, the headship of Christ, and the indwelling of the Spirit (Eph. 4:4–6). Yet, as Aquinas observes, unity is also moral, requiring charity to bind believers together in concord (Summa Theologiae, II-II, q.37). The Eucharist is the sacrament of unity because it is Christ himself who is both offered and received. Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann wrote about this beautifully in his For the Life of the World (1988).
The Church is holy as she is incorporated into Christ, her Bridegroom. She is also the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, who sanctifies and animates her members, guiding them to the work of God (A Catechism, in An Anglican Prayer Book 1989; 432). This holiness is not merely moral purity, but ontological as well, as its purpose and the fulfillment thereof is made complete in participation in the divine life (2 Pet. 1:4). Holy Baptism consecrates the faithful into this holiness, while the Eucharist nourishes and deepens it.
The Church is catholic, which refers both to universality and to the wholeness of apostolic faith and life. The Church is catholic because she holds the fullness of the means of grace (Ignatius of Antioch, Smyrnaeans, 8), and she “proclaims the whole faith to all people to the end of time” (A Catechism 1989, 432).
The Church is Apostolic: she exists in continuity with the apostolic witness, maintained through apostolic succession in ministry and fidelity to apostolic teaching. The Church is apostolic in her liturgy, doctrine, and mission, bearing the apostolic mandate to make disciples of all nations (Matt. 28:19–20).
Holy Baptism: The Portal to Ecclesial and Ethical Life
The Creed’s assertion of “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins” identifies baptism as both ecclesial initiation and ethical commissioning. In baptism, the believer is incorporated into the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13), forgiven, and given the Spirit. Baptism thus has an unrepeatable and ontological character. One might consider here Karl Rahner’s Theological Investigations (1974).
Patristic catechesis presented baptism as a radical reorientation of life. Cyril of Jerusalem describes baptism as illumination, the opening of the eyes to divine truth (Mystagogical Catecheses, II). This theological anthropology sees the baptized as homo novus—the new human—called to live in a way that befits the gospel. This radical reorientation is echoed rather profoundly in the rite of Christian baptism.
Candidates for baptism are called to openly reject all that is evil; the devil and all spiritual forces of evil that rebel against God; the sinful desires of humanity that seek to create and widen a chasm between humanity and God; and the powers of the world that corrupt and destroy God’s creation. The rite of the blessing of water speaks profoundly of the regenerative power of Holy Baptism, which configures baptized Christians with Christ in a death and resurrection like his, cleanses the baptized from sin, and births them into the family of the Church.
Most iconically, the Rite of Baptism then requires the candidates to declare the faith of the Church into which they will be baptized, wherein according to ancient custom they may profess the Creed of the Apostles or the Creed of Nicaea. The rite then ends with two exhortations from the congregation, the family of the baptized into whom the newly baptized have been born:
fight valiantly under the banner of Christ against sin, the world, and the devil, and continue [as] his faithful soldiers and servants to the end of your lives … shine as a light in the world to the glory of God the Father.
The call of the baptized—to live lives fit for the Gospel—is therefore a call to radical living, radical in the sense of a return to the fundamental root of Gospel living, wherein Christ is at the core of, is the measure of, and is the fulfilment of the vision of moral life. This is very much a challenge for the baptized to live lives that, while in this world, are very much out of this world, lives that are truly awesome as they refuse to conform to the patterns of the secular influences and powers that be, and seek to affirm the integrity and truth of Divine Law. Thus, Holy Baptism is indeed an initiation rite also to a sharing in the mind and disposition of Christ through his Bride, the Church.
The Holy Eucharist: The Credal Confession Made Flesh
The Holy Eucharist is the central act of Christian worship. This assertion has been made often in Anglican circles, following the Liturgical Movement of the 20th century, but we should be clear about its basis. The Eucharist is the central act of Christian worship because the Church is intimately united, by the Holy Spirit, to heavenly worship around God’s throne (A Catechism 1989, 101). Though not explicitly named in the Creed, the Holy Eucharist is implicitly mentioned in its structure and eschatology. The Church’s unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity profoundly meet at the altar. The Eucharist is both sacrifice and banquet, anamnesis and epiclesis, making present the paschal mystery. One might consider here Herbert McCabe’s God, Christ, and Us (2008).
St. Augustine calls the Eucharist “the sacrament of our unity” (Sermon 272), for in receiving the Body of Christ, the faithful become more fully the body of Christ (the Church). This is the dynamic behind the phrase credo in corpus; to believe in the body is to be transformed into it.
Participation in the Eucharist shapes ethical life because it requires reconciliation (Matt. 5:23–24), humility (1 Cor. 11:27–29), and thanksgiving (1 Thess. 5:18). A Eucharistic ethic thus extends from the altar into the world: the same Christ encountered in the Host is to be met in the poor, the stranger, and the enemy (Matt. 25:31–46).
The requirements for participants in the Holy Eucharist include the continuous examination of their lives, repentance of sins, and charitable living with all people. This is a furthering of the call to radical living, for participants of the Holy Eucharist are challenged to not only receive the root of ethical life—Christ himself—but are challenged also to become an alter Christi, another Christ, or an extension of Christ, an extension of what and who they receive in the Eucharist. As Christ then is one, so we find in the Holy Eucharist the challenge for participants thereof to continuously strive toward strengthening the unity of the Corpus Christianorum—the body of Christian people in the bonds of unity and obedience to Divine Law.
The form of the Holy Eucharist echoes this very notion. Beginning with the sign of the cross and the invocation of the Most Holy Trinity, this unity of the gathered faithful has its eyes opened to their mystical unity with one another and with the Holy Trinity they are called to resemble. Within the liturgy, the fourfold acts of adoration, thanksgiving, penance, and petition are made by the one body, the Church, as was done in centuries past, and as shall be done in centuries to come.
This participation invites the Church to reflect ever more closely on the mystical union of the Church throughout the ages; a Church once plagued by heresies and rent asunder by schisms and other threats to the unity of the body of Christ. This call to a realized unity is a challenge to open the eyes of the faithful to note that this unity is one both of faith and action, all in the bond of unity held by obedience to Divine Law, in the tradition and succession of the Apostles, despite the pressures of the surrounding world whose moral tone changes with the seasons.
This is a call, then, to a consistency in holding Christ and his statutes at the core of the moral life of those in the eucharistic community, who which through the Holy Eucharist receive the forgiveness of their sins, the strengthening of their communion with Christ and with one another, and sharing in the foretaste of the heavenly banquet in this life.
Editor’s Note: The second part of this essay will appear tomorrow. The discussion will turn to eschatology, ethics, and life in a fragmented church.
The Rev. Thapelo Masemola is Chaplain at St John's College, Johannesburg, South Africa.
