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52 Jurist 525 (1992)
Catholicity of Two or Three: Free Church Reflections on the Catholicity of the Local Church

handle is hein.journals/juristcu52 and id is 531 raw text is: THE JUIUST 52 (1992) 525-546 CATHOLICITY OF TWO OR THREE: FREE CHURCH REFLECTIONS ON THE CATHOLICITY OF THE LOCAL CHURCH MIRASLAV VOLF* Every church wants to be catholic, but only in its own way. Such is the paradox of catholicity on this side of God's new creation: it signifies a totality (holos), but it always exists as a particularity. No church is catholic purely and simply; each one is catholic in a particular manner. This is how there can be a controversy over catholicity. 1. The Question of Catholicity In the controversy over catholicity episcopal churches and free churches have stood at opposite extremes. Free churches have always been considered, by the Catholic Church as well as by the Orthodox Church, as quintessentially non-Catholic. Because catholicity qualifies all the other attributes of the Church, all the ecclesiological capital sins of free churches can be understood as offenses against catholicity. The way free churches understand unity, holiness and apostolicity is prob- lematic precisely because it is uncatholic. The unity of free churches is uncatholic because within it concrete forms of communion with all the other churches-with the whole Church-are lacking. Their holiness is uncatholic because it is exclusive: according to the free church idea, all those who do not have a conscious faith and a life which responds appropriately to it must remain excluded from the Church. The apos- tolicity of free churches is uncatholic because it lacks the connection to the whole Church in its history, which is assured by apostolic succes- sion. Moreover, the ecclesiological specificity of free churches consists precisely in their understanding of the Church's unity, holiness and apostolicity. If they want to become Catholic they must renounce their own identity. A free Catholic Church is a contradiction in terms-it * Associate Professor of Systematic Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pas- adena, CA, and at the Evangelical Theological Faculty, Osijek, Croatia.

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