§ 47. General Survey

The foundation of the constitution of the Church was laid by its own Founder. On this foundation the apostles first organized the Christian community at Jerusalem, and then in other regions, wherever they went to preach Christianity. But the outward condition of the Church in the first three centuries did not permit it to be ordered in every respect as its position and calling required. Only when the Church obtained outward freedom, and came under the protection of the Graeco-Roman state authority, could it fully devote itself to its own internal ordering, and then its constitution was permanently established. According to this constitution, the organism of the Church is composed of various members, standing in a fixed relation to one another, all of whom must act together to attain the end for which the Church was founded. To preserve this constitution in accordance with the plan of the Church’s Founder, there exists a particular church authority, which the hierarchy, with the mediate or immediate participation of the faithful people, exercises according to precisely fixed prescriptions. To give a complete survey of this church constitution is the task of the second part of this book, and to that end it will set forth: 1) what the general foundations of that constitution are, what the composition of the church organism is, and what church authority is; 2) what the teaching on the hierarchy is, how one enters it, and how it is constituted; and finally 3) what the organs of church authority are, in their several ranks.

SECTION ONE. The general foundations of the church constitution.

CHAPTER ONE. On the Church in general.