The Holy Spirit and the Four Marks of the Church

In the creed which we profess at Mass, we declare the Church to be one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. In the past, particularly in counter-reformation apologetics, it was not uncommon for these four marks to serve as a kind of litmus test for identifying the true Church of Christ. Amid the various claimants to ecclesial fullness, the four marks were used as criteria to demonstrate that the Catholic Church alone instantiated them completely. While this approach has its place, the four marks of the Church are in the first place theological realities that may be considered for their own value, in a more irenic setting, to explore the nature and mission of the Church. Such an approach would consider not simply how the Church externally manifests each of the marks, but how God acts within the Church to bring about these ecclesial characteristics. In other words, the four marks of the Church would be viewed through a predominantly theocentric lens.

Moreover, the four marks of the Church also have a bearing on what we might call pneumatological ecclesiology, since the Holy Spirit is actively involved in bringing about these essential attributes of the Church: “The Church does not possess them of herself; it is Christ who, through the Holy Spirit, makes his Church one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. . . .” (CCC, §811; emphasis mine). There is an intimate connection between the Church and the Holy Spirit that only infrequently receives the attention it deserves. The Holy Spirit acts in the Church to establish and preserve the hierarchy and ensure the veracity of magisterial teaching. The Spirit is the soul of the Church, giving it life and unity. The Holy Spirit sanctifies the members of the Church and makes of it an effective sacrament of Christ in the world. The same Spirit is the primary agent of evangelization who gives the Church a variety of charisms to build up the Church and serve the world. Hence, it would be fruitful both to our understanding of the Church, and to our appreciation of the action of the Holy Spirit in the Church, to consider the Spirit’s role in establishing the unity, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity of the Church.¹

The Spirit and the Church’s Unity

Christ has only one body and one bride. Christ founded a single Church which subsists in the Catholic Church (cf. §LG 8). Besides the unity deriving from Christ her founder, the Church is one because of the Holy Spirit who animates her as her soul (see CCC, §813). This unity is described by the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio:

After being lifted up on the cross and glorified, the Lord Jesus poured forth His Spirit as He had promised, and through the Spirit He has called and gathered together the people of the New Covenant, who are the Church, into a unity of faith, hope and charity. . . . It is the Holy Spirit, dwelling in those who believe and pervading and ruling over the Church as a whole, who brings about that wonderful communion of the faithful. He brings them into intimate union with Christ, so that He is the principle of the Church’s unity.²

The communion of the faithful in the Church is described primarily in terms of a unity of faith, hope, and charity. These three theological virtues are themselves “the pledge of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in the faculties of the human being” (CCC, §1813). While the unity of the Church is certainly manifest in external ways as well, a certain priority is given to the internal workings of the Holy Spirit who establishes that unity.

The unity of the Church is fittingly appropriated to the person of the Holy Spirit because of the Spirit’s role in the immanent Trinity. As St. Augustine said, “The communion of the Church’s unity . . . is as it were a work of the Holy Spirit himself, with the participation of the Father and the Son, because in a way the Spirit himself is the communion of the Father and the Son . . . The Spirit of them both.”³ Pope John Paul II comments, “The concept of trinitarian unity in the Holy Spirit as the source of the Church’s unity in the form of ‘communion’ is one of the main points of ecclesiology.”⁴ In other words, appropriating the unity of the Church to the Holy Spirit is a truth about both the Church and the trinitarian God from whom the Church takes her origin.

The one Church is marked by a great diversity which enhances rather than threatens the Church’s unity (see CCC, §814). The resolution of the tension between unity and diversity is a gift of the Spirit. Again, we can turn to the words of John Paul II: “Ecclesial communion is expressed in the readiness to remain in unity and constancy, regardless of the multi-faceted plurality and differences among individuals, ethnic groups, nations and cultures. As the source of this unity the Holy Spirit teaches mutual understanding and indulgence (or at least tolerance), showing each person the spiritual wealth of others.”⁵ The Church’s unity amid diversity is, then, a reality but also a task in the heart of each of the faithful, moved by the Holy Spirit.

Wounds to the Church’s unity do not destroy her essential oneness, and in God’s providence “some and even very many of the significant elements and endowments which together go to build up and give life to the Church itself, can exist outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church,” and this includes “the life of grace; faith, hope and charity, with the other interior gifts of the Holy Spirit. . . .”⁶ These gifts themselves, though found outside the Church’s visible boundaries, “are forces impelling toward catholic unity.”⁷ Hence, though the Holy Spirit animates the Body of Christ as its soul, it is not the case that the Spirit is therefore confined to the visible bounds of the Catholic Church: “It follows that the separated Churches and Communities as such, though we believe them to be deficient in some respects, have been by no means deprived of significance and importance in the mystery of salvation. For the Spirit of Christ has not refrained from using them as means of salvation which derive their efficacy from the very fullness of grace and truth entrusted to the Church.”⁸ As the source of the Church’s unity, the Holy Spirit also inspires efforts toward the restoration of full Christian unity.⁹

The Spirit and the Church’s Holiness

Explaining the proper name of the Third Person of the Trinity, “Holy Spirit,” Thomas Aquinas says, “Holiness is attributed to whatever is ordered to God. Therefore because the divine person proceeds by way of the love whereby God is loved, that person is most properly named ‘The Holy Ghost.’” (ST I, q. 36, art. 1) Holiness, then, even as it derives from its source, might be understood as perfect ordering toward God in love or charity. “Charity is the soul of the holiness to which all are called: it ‘governs, shapes, and perfects all the means of sanctification.’” (CCC, §826) The Holy Spirit is the agent by which holiness is brought about in the Church because “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rm 5:5). Thus, Lumen Gentium explains the holiness of the Church brought to perfection by the Spirit:

The Church, whose mystery is being set forth by this Sacred Synod, is believed to be indefectibly holy. Indeed Christ, the Son of God, who with the Father and the Spirit is praised as “uniquely holy,” loved the Church as His bride, delivering Himself up for her. He did this that He might sanctify her. He united her to Himself as His own body and brought it to perfection by the gift of the Holy Spirit for God’s glory.¹⁰

The Church is, in the Pauline terminology, God’s temple in which the Holy Spirit dwells (cf. 1 Cor 3:16). The image of the temple invokes the Church’s holiness; as Pope John Paul II said, “The temple is not just an architectural space. It is the representative image of holiness which is brought about by the Holy Spirit in people alive in Christ and united to the Church. And the Church is the ‘place’ for this holiness.”¹¹ In an age that may find the message of an indefectibly holy Church less and less credible, it is important to recognize that the objective holiness of the Church comes not, in the first place, from her members, but from the Spirit who dwells within her.

The pilgrim Church on earth, “at the same time holy and always in need of being purified,”¹² is encouraged by the holiness perfected in the Church Triumphant, and looks to the saints as consummated works of the Holy Spirit. “By canonizing some of the faithful, i.e., by solemnly proclaiming that they practiced heroic virtue and lived in fidelity to God’s grace, the Church recognizes the power of the Spirit of holiness within her and sustains the hope of believers by proposing the saints to them as models and intercessors” (CCC, §828). The saints are, in a sense, the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in the world. As Yves Congar put it, “The incarnate Word reveals the invisible Father and the Spirit reveals the Word, Christ. Going further, we can say that the saints reveal the Spirit, that is to say, they reveal God as gift, love, communication, and communion.”¹³ The Holy Spirit is always at work shaping the Church’s members to subjectively conform to the objective holiness of the Church.

The Spirit and the Church’s Catholicity

The Church is Catholic, or universal, in the first place because Christ dwells in her, the fullness of Christ’s body united with its head, along with the fullness of the means of salvation Christ willed her to have (Cf. CCC, §830). This fullness or totality may be called catholicity in the qualitative or intensive sense. The Church is also universal in a quantitative or extensive sense insofar as the Church has been sent on a mission to the whole world (cf. Mt 28:19; Acts 1:8; cf. CCC, §831). “This catholicity has its origin in the Holy Spirit, who ‘fills the universe’ (Wis 1:7) and is the universal principle of communication and communion. The ‘power of the Holy Spirit’ tends to spread faith in Christ and the Christian life ‘to the ends of the earth’ (Acts 1:8), extending the benefits or redemption to all peoples” (cf. CCC, §831). The Holy Spirit serves to interiorize and universalize what was circumscribed in the earthly mission of the Savior.

Indeed, in the Acts of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit is powerfully active at each threshold in which the Gospel crosses boundaries of peoples. The Gospel is first preached in Jerusalem after the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost to “Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven” (Acts 2:5). In light of the event of Pentecost, Vatican II’s Decree on the Missionary Activity of the Church, Ad Gentes, says:

To accomplish this [the proclamation of the Gospel to all], Christ sent from the Father His Holy Spirit, who was to carry on inwardly His saving work and prompt the Church to spread out. . . . The Church was publicly displayed to the multitude, the Gospel began to spread among the nations by means of preaching, and there was presaged that union of all peoples in the catholicity of the faith by means of the Church of the New Covenant, a Church which speaks all tongues, understands and accepts all tongues in her love, and so supersedes the divisiveness of Babel.¹⁴

The Church is “publicly displayed” at Pentecost, already one and catholic by the gift of the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit is thus the principle of the catholicity of the Church from its origin.

The Samaritans then receive the Spirit through the laying on of hands by Peter and John (Acts 8:14–17). The Gentiles receive baptism and are welcomed into the Church in the person of Cornelius and his household after the Holy Spirit fell on those listening to Peter’s preaching (Acts 10:44–48), a decision confirmed at the Council of Jerusalem with the statement, “it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28). Paul travels further to Ephesus, and when he encounters believers who had not even heard of the Holy Spirit, he lays hands on them and they receive the Holy Spirit and speak in tongues and prophesy (Acts 19:1–7). Thus, Pope John Paul II is able to write: “Under the impulse of the Spirit, the Christian faith is decisively opened to the ‘nations.’ Witness to Christ spreads to the most important centers of the eastern Mediterranean and then to Rome and the far regions of the West. It is the Spirit who is the source of the drive to press on, not only geographically but also beyond the frontiers of race and religion, for a truly universal mission.”¹⁵ The Church, already intensively catholic through the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost, is impelled toward its fully extensive catholicity by the promptings of the same Spirit.

This universality remains essential to the identity of the Church throughout the ages, and the Holy Spirit likewise remains the transcendent source of its catholicity. Thus, Lumen Gentium speaks of the universality of the People of God:

All men are called to belong to the new people of God. Wherefore this people, while remaining one and only one, is to be spread throughout the whole world and must exist in all ages, so that the decree of God’s will may be fulfilled. In the beginning God made human nature one and decreed that all His children, scattered as they were, would finally be gathered together as one. It was for this purpose that God sent His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, that he might be teacher, king and priest of all, the head of the new and universal people of the sons of God. For this too God sent the Spirit of His Son as Lord and Life-giver. He it is who brings together the whole Church and each and every one of those who believe, and who is the well-spring of their unity in the teaching of the apostles and in fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in prayers.¹⁶

John Paul II comments on this text from the Council with the simple affirmation, “In these words the Council proclaimed its own awareness of the fact that the Holy Spirit is the principle and source of the Church’s universality.”¹⁷

The Spirit and the Church’s Apostolicity

The Church’s apostolicity is realized in several different ways. The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains three aspects of her apostolic foundation:

• she was and remains built on “the foundation of the Apostles,” the witnesses chosen and sent on mission by Christ himself;

• with the help of the Spirit dwelling in her, the Church keeps and hands on the teaching, the “good deposit,” the salutary words she has heard from the apostles;

• she continues to be taught, sanctified, and guided by the apostles until Christ’s return, through their successors in pastoral office. (CCC, §857; emphasis mine)

The first reason given is historical, the original apostolic witness at the origins of the Church. Pope John Paul II, commenting on Acts 1:8 (“You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes down upon you; then you are to be my witnesses”), draws out the pneumatological import of the apostles’ witness: “It is the promise of Pentecost, not only in a historical sense, but also in the inner, divine dimension of the witness of the apostles and therefore, we can say, of the Church’s apostolicity.”¹⁸ In other words, the event of the Spirit’s coming at Pentecost established not just the apostles as witnesses, but the permanent witness of the Church’s apostolicity.

The second point, which relates to the Church in its continued life throughout the centuries, specifically attributes the integrity of the deposit of faith over time to the assistance of the Holy Spirit. Pope John Paul II makes this point in his catechesis on the Creed: “It is the Spirit of Pentecost, the Spirit who fills the apostles and the apostolic communities, the Spirit who guarantees the handing on of the faith in the Church from generation to generation, helping the apostles’ successors to guard the ‘rich deposit,’ as Paul says, of the truth revealed by Christ.”¹⁹ The Church, then, is apostolic in her teaching, the continuity of which is safeguarded by the Holy Spirit.

The final point regarding apostolic succession does not explicitly mention the Spirit. However, elsewhere the Catechism, speaking of the bishops as successors of the apostles, says that the apostles urged their immediate collaborators “to tend to the whole flock, in which the Holy Spirit had appointed them to shepherd the Church of God.”²⁰ Again, Pope John Paul II comments, “Paul urged the pastors to watch over their flock, but with the certainty that the Holy Spirit who had placed them there as ‘bishops’ would assist and sustain them. He himself would guide the successors of the apostles in the munus in the power and responsibility of guarding the truth which the apostles received from Christ.”²¹ Whereas Christ himself chose his apostles, the choice of their successors is attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit.

Conclusion

In a sense, it should come as no surprise that the Holy Spirit is present and active whenever we consider the fundamental characteristics of the Church. Christ founded the Church and gave the Church her essential identity, and we know “in their joint mission, the Son and the Holy Spirit are distinct but inseparable” (CCC, §689). When Christ promised that upon the rock of Peter he would build his Church, we could be sure that it would be the Spirit who would bring that work to fulfillment. The Spirit still works in the Church today to make her one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Thus, when a local church, a parish, or a domestic church suffers from division, sin, lack of evangelical zeal, or deviations from the apostolic tradition, it is most fitting to call upon the Holy Spirit in prayer for renewal in these fundamental characteristics. Then the four marks of the Church can serve as credible and effective signposts to the world of the one Church of Christ.