Who Are the People of God?: A Deep Dive into Lumen Gentium (Part 2)

The chapter on the people of God begins: “At all times and in every race God has given welcome to whosoever fears him and does what is right. God, however, does not make men holy and save them merely as individuals, without bond or link between one another. Rather has it pleased him to bring men together as one people” (Lumen Gentium §17, official Vatican translation), a people “which acknowledges him in truth and serves him in holiness.”[1]

Perhaps no phrase is more commonly associated with the ecclesiology of Vatican II than “People of God.” For that reason, and also for its “populist” and perhaps “democratic” overtones, and, in the U.S., its almost irresistible if subliminal suggestion of the harmonic, “We the People,” it has come virtually unglued from the Church as Mystery, the subject of the first chapter.

To many, without really explicitly asserting it, “people of God” has a more exclusively horizontal sound to it, with the vertical dimension of transcendence or mystery much attenuated. It is tempting to disconnect the “society equipped with hierarchical structures, . . . the visible society, . . . the earthly church,” implicitly identified as the People of God, from the “mystical body of Christ, . . . the spiritual community, . . . the church endowed with heavenly riches,” forgetting the exhortation of LG §8 (just cited) not to think of them as two separate realities.

This tendency is exacerbated by the also subliminal but nevertheless seemingly ubiquitous tendency to hear the phrase “People of God” and to equate it with the lay faithful, such that the clergy serve the “People of God” rather than themselves being a part of it.

But a careful study of this chapter shows these tendencies are completely foreign to the logic and content of Lumen Gentium.

The text continues:

He therefore chose the race of Israel as a people unto himself. With it he set up a covenant. Step by step he taught and prepared this people, making known in its history both himself and the decree of his will and making it holy unto himself. All these things, however, were done by way of preparation and as a figure of that new and perfect covenant, which was to be ratified in Christ, and of that fuller revelation which was to be given through the Word of God himself made flesh. . . . Christ instituted this New Covenant, the New Testament, that is to say, in his Blood (see 1 Cor 11:25), calling together a people made up of Jew and gentile, making them one, not according to the flesh but in the Spirit. This was to be the new People of God.[2] For those who believe in Christ, who are reborn not from a perishable but from an imperishable seed through the word of the living God (see 1 Pet 1:23), not from the flesh but from water and the Holy Spirit, are finally established as a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people . . . who in times past were not a people, but are now the people of God (1 Pet 2:9-10).

If anything, this text demonstrates a radical continuity with the first chapter’s claim that the Church is “mystery,” as a further specification, not as a disclaimer.

The comparison to the election of Israel connects the Church to the mystery of election: Israel is the “People of God” not in the first place through any work, merit, or sign of their own making (not even circumcision), but because of God’s electing will. The mystery of Israel is that, wherever you encountered Israel, you encountered first and foremost the electing will of God which makes it the Chosen People. That electing will of God is not present abstractly in history or invisibly, but very visibly and concretely in Israel, such that when Israel, the Chosen People of God, is scattered into the nations, God’s name is defamed, and also such that, no matter how terrible or corrupt their leadership (to wit, most of the kings), the scandal could not render null and void the electing will of God. The mystery of Israel could not be undone by the failure of any leader or even of the whole people, sent into exile for that very reason.

The presence of Israel in the world, because it is the presence of God’s electing will concretely and not abstractly, is the presence of God’s eternal Wisdom, his plan, already mentioned in LG §2 (“the free and hidden plan of the Father’s Wisdom and Goodness”), concretely in the world. Israel is, as it were, the “sacrament” of God’s electing will and eternal Wisdom (“making known in [Israel’s] history both himself and the decree of his will and making [Israel] holy unto himself”).

The mystery of Israel is that, as the presence of God’s electing will in history, it is such as “a preparation for” (praeperatio) and a “figure of” (in figuram) the Church, and thus the mystery of the Church is further specified as the fulfillment of God’s mysterious (“hidden”) plan, with God’s electing will choosing to save people through mutual bonds which now transcend the boundaries of any “people” or “nation” defined any other way, including blood descent from Abraham. “For,” the text says, though in the flesh, the mutual bonds of association are not “from” the flesh: “reborn not from a perishable but from an imperishable seed through the word of the living God, not from the flesh but from water and the Holy Spirit.” The “universal” scope of God’s electing will fulfilling its figured presence in Israel does not abstract God’s will from history, but more firmly establishes it in the concrete visible structure of the Church formed by bonds of “rebirth,” of baptismal grace, from “incorruptible seed,” thus highlighting that it is only God’s electing will that binds this people together so that it is a “chosen race . . . who in past times were not a people, but now are the people of God” (citing 1 Pet 2:9-10).

As noted in LG §1 (sec. 3), the “origin and growth” of the “kingdom of Christ already present in mystery,” that is, the Church, is “symbolized by the blood and water which flowed from the opened side of the crucified Jesus,” and “as often as the sacrifice of the Cross by which Christ our Pasch is sacrificed (1 Cor 5:7) is celebrated on the altar . . . the unity of believers, who form one Body in Christ (see 1 Cor 10:17), is both expressed and achieved.” In Chapter 2, this very same mystery is expressed in terms of promise (citing Jer 31:31-34), figure, and fulfillment, the Old Covenant being a “figure of the New and Perfect Covenant,” the “New Covenant in [Christ’s] blood (see 1 Cor 11:25),” the “New Israel,” the People “purchased with his own blood” (later in LG §9).

There is certainly therefore no diminution of the “mystery” of the Church or the Church as “mystery” intended in the title “People of God.” This is a people which did not make itself, which could not have made itself, which does not make itself, but is constitutively defined by the blood of the New Covenant which is what forms the “mutual bonds” among the members and so constitutes a visible society in the world, the blood of Christ symbolizing and effecting the self-giving love of Christ.

This also has implications for how we think about “Church life” and what that “life” is that we share as mutually related in Christ’s blood.

It is not in the first instance a physical, biological life because it (we) are born of an “imperishable” or “incorruptible” seed, “from water and the Holy Spirit” (see John 3:5-6). To say it is not of the flesh is to say that, like the conception of Christ, it is not of human or worldly initiative, and neither is its destiny: As LG §9 puts it later, “its end is the kingdom of God, which has been begun by God himself on earth, and which is to be further extended until it is brought to perfection by him at the end of time, when Christ, our life (Col 3:4) shall appear, and creation itself will be delivered from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God (Rom 8:21).” The life of the Church, which makes us Church, is Christ, his life poured out for us on the Cross, and this very life is the life by which creation itself will be delivered from . . . corruption. That is so very clearly not a life we could have created, or given ourselves, or initiated! It is worth pausing to consider the awesomeness that is the “life” of the “Church,” the awesomeness of that life which will be revealed fully in the catching up of the whole cosmos into itself, when it—when he, Christ our life—appears at the consummation of the ages.

And yet, maybe even more awesome, that life, not from us, not of our initiative, not of the flesh, nevertheless appears and is lived in the flesh, as a visible society, a “communion” in the flesh “of life, love and truth,” a “seed of unity, hope and salvation for the whole human race” (still LG §9). “Seed” is an organic image, an image of potential life already actually present and alive, not abstract, not “merely” spiritual (to use the language of LG §8) but an “instrument for the redemption of all,” the “visible sacrament of this saving unity” whose “source” is “Jesus.” This phrase provides a sure connection to LG §1 (“sacrament”) and LG §8 (“visible”). Until then, Chapter 2, echoing Chapter 1, reminds us that we are on pilgrimage, “advancing through tribulations and trials . . . until, through the Cross, it may arrive at that light which knows no setting” (LG §9). We can never, in other words, take credit for any achievement, enrichment, success, etc. in “church life” as though we had reached perfection in that achievement, instead experiencing the awesome gift of our communion in a life we did not give ourselves as “ceaseless renewal.” Alternatively, no scandal should lead us to believe that any action of ours could extinguish this life completely, even if it can damage, sometimes very seriously, the Church’s witness.

Section 9, in talking about the People of God specifically as the “messianic people,” is describing the “royal” vocation of Christ the anointed kind (“messiah”) and the royal freedom which characterizes church life:

[The] messianic people has Christ for its head, Who was delivered up for our sins, and rose again for our justification (Rom 4:25) and now, having won a name which is above all names, reigns in glory in heaven. The state of this people is that of the dignity and freedom of the sons of God, in whose hearts the Holy Spirit dwells as in his temple. Its law is the new commandment to love as Christ loved us (LG §9).

The life of the Church is a participation in the royal freedom of Christ, free to love, free with his freedom, but experiencing that freedom always in its purification and renewal.

Christ the Lord, High Priest taken from among men (see Heb 5:1-5), made the new people “a kingdom and priests to God the Father” (Rev 1:6; see 5:9-10). The baptized, by regeneration and the anointing of the Holy Spirit, are consecrated as a spiritual house and a holy priesthood, in order that through all those works which are those of the Christian man they may offer spiritual sacrifices and proclaim the power of him who has called them out of darkness into his marvelous light (1 Pet 2:4-10). Therefore all the disciples of Christ, persevering in prayer and praising God (Acts 2:42-47) should present themselves as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God (see Rom 12:1) (LG §10).

Chapters 10-11 are on Church life as a participation in the one priesthood of Christ the High Priest. This includes especially the priesthood, common to all the baptized, the worship of the whole People of God, clergy included, such that the presence of the Church in the world is the presence of Christ the High Priest offering spiritual sacrifice on behalf of the world.

Note that this is not just a statement about Church life narrowly speaking. Because it means that life in the world, outside the visible boundaries of the Church, is an experience of the presence of Christ the High Priest offering spiritual sacrifice on behalf of the world. In a way, and without denying the special character of Church life properly speaking, the whole world becomes “Church life,” a very different world than if the Church, the priestly People of God, were not present, a world without the one true sacrifice continuously being offered in its midst. This is what it means to say that the Church is a “sacrament” of this life in the midst of the world, and the specification of the Church’s mystery as People of God allows this emphasis on the transformation of “worldly life” into “Church life,” broadly speaking, to be brought forward into special clarity. Just as the world with the Chosen People Israel in it was not the same world as the world without Israel in it, without the promises and their visible presence, so the pilgrim People of God, clearly transcending all ethnic boundaries by uniting them, makes the world the site of God’s sharing of his own life, concretely and in the flesh, the “Good News.”

The relationship between the common priesthood of the baptized and the ordained priesthood of the clergy is taken up in the next, famous paragraph:

Though they differ from one another in essence and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood are nonetheless interrelated: each of them in its own special way is a participation in the one priesthood of Christ. The ministerial priest, by the sacred power he enjoys, teaches and rules the priestly people; acting in the person of Christ, he makes present the Eucharistic sacrifice, and offers it to God in the name of all the people. But the faithful, in virtue of their royal priesthood, join in the offering of the Eucharist. They likewise exercise that priesthood in receiving the sacraments, in prayer and thanksgiving, in the witness of a holy life, and by self-denial and active charity (LG §10).

The priesthood conferred by Holy Orders is not a mere difference “in degree” (essentia et non gradu tantum differant) as though it were a new infusion of “more” baptismal grace, elevating the ordained priesthood “above” the common priesthood of the baptized. That would make the ordained “super Christians,” as it were, and would thereby inscribe “clericalism” into the very charter of the People of God. They differ “in essence” because they are “interrelated,” or in a better translation, “ordered mutually toward each other” (ad invicem ordinantur). The ordained priesthood is not derived from Baptism but from a different sacrament, Holy Orders, which orders the ministerial priesthood not in the first instance towards the world, as it were competing with the common priesthood, but towards the common priesthood itself, serving it so that it can fulfill its vocation to offer spiritual sacrifices.

There is only one true Priest, Christ, and one true and wholly pure sacrifice, his own, as both Priest and Victim, and Holy Orders confers the “sacred power” of acting in the person of Christ the High Priest, making him present in the Eucharistic assembly, such that it is truly Christ who is offering himself in the Eucharistic sacrifice, truly present, signifying and by signifying, effecting, the communion of the Church as his one Body.

The ordained minister does not act in his own person, as though the Church were his and he were the Head, but, configured to Christ the High Priest in a special way by the sacrament of Holy Orders, he, in a way, gives the assembly to itself, gives the Church to herself by making present the true Head of the one Body, the true head of the Priestly People, so that it may fulfill its vocation of offering spiritual sacrifice (including his and any other clergy’s own vocation as baptized person). And thus the faithful truly, “by virtue of their royal priesthood, share in the offering of the Eucharist.” Note how beautifully and precisely this is further elaborated and specified in the next section.[3]

Ultimately the doctrine of difference “in essence and not in mere degree” preserves the mystery of the Church, so that the Church is not in the first instance “our” work—including that of the clergy—but his, acting in our midst, offering himself, truly making the Church-making sacrifice on Calvary present and available for us to enter into communion with it as our own, by participation.

The dimensions of the life of the Church as irreducibly priestly, as priestly life, is set forth in the next section, LG §11, which specifies its unfolding in the sacraments and the virtues that flow from them and are configured precisely as enactments of the “spiritual sacrifice” proper to the People of God as priestly. The virtues are not independent achievements with no relation to the life of grace on offer in the sacraments. Ultimately as exercises of the priestly character of the baptized, as such they are the fruits of the sanctification on offer in the sacraments and present to the world the “holiness” to which all the baptized are called, and in which is made visible the vocation of all of humanity: “Fortified by so many and such powerful means of salvation, all the faithful, whatever their condition or state, are called by the Lord, each in his own way, to that perfect holiness whereby the Father himself is perfect” (LG §11). It is important to notice that this theme of the universal call to holiness, the subject of its own chapter later on (c. 5), is first introduced in the context of the priestly character of Church life as properly speaking the life of the “holy People of God” (LG §12, segue from LG §11).

Chapter 12 takes up the third dimension of Church life as a participation in the vocation of Christ, that is, of prophet: “The holy people of God shares also in Christ’s prophetic office” (LG §12, first sentence), this especially because “it spreads abroad a living witness to him, especially by means of a life of faith and charity and by offering to God a sacrifice of praise, the tribute of lips which give praise to his name” (ibid.). The charisms of the Holy Spirit, offered for the building up of the Church, belong here in the life of the Church as prophetic witness to the God who brought us out of darkness into his marvelous light. Section 10 noted that the gift of governance belongs to the sacred power of Holy Orders; section 11 shows that “governance” is not the only form of leadership in the Church, since the charisms are there to build the one Body too, though with regard to such gifts, “judgment as to their genuinity and proper use belongs to those who are appointed leaders in the Church, to whose special competence it belongs, not indeed to extinguish the Spirit, but to test all things and hold fast to that which is good.”

Sections 13-17 show in a detailed way what dimension of the Church as Mystery the designation “People of God” is intended to bring forward, as already hinted above (in 4a). It is a title that emphasizes the relationship of the Church to all other “peoples,” featuring its continuity with Israel as a people among peoples, offspring (“seed”) of Abraham, in whom “all nations will be blessed” (Gen 22:18, cf. Gal 3:29). The Mystical Body of Christ, as the People of God, is the presence, among the nations and drawn from all of them, as this “blessing.” In this way, precisely by remaining one Body, the Mystery of Christ’s Life present in the Church, and without renouncing this particularity but preserving and uplifting it, the whole world, in a way, becomes “Church.” The title “People of God” is the theological “site” (if that is not too jargony, which I suppose it is) that allows the doctrine stated in LG §8, that the one true Church of Christ, organized as a society visible in this present world, subsists in the Catholic Church, to be “performed” as a doctrine of degrees of communion and proximity. There is only one true Church and it cannot be separated from the visible communion of the Catholic Church as though there could be more than one:

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 (see John 11:52). It was for this purpose that God sent his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things (see Heb 1:2) that be might be teacher, king and priest of all, the head of the new and universal people of the sons of God. . . . It follows that though there are many nations there is but one people of God (LG §13).

The transition from LG §13 to LG §14 introduces, as a corollary, the idea of degrees of communion and proximity: “All men are called to be part of this catholic unity of the people of God which in promoting universal peace presages it. And there belong to or are related to it in various ways, the Catholic faithful, all who believe in Christ, and indeed the whole of mankind, for all men are called by the grace of God to salvation” (LG §13).

The Church is “necessary” for salvation (opening lines of LG §14); there is no other communion or societas or people that is saving and is the sacrament of the Kingdom of God on earth. That very necessity is what is truly transformative of the whole world, an ongoing transformation expressed in the idea of degrees of communion and proximity:

a. Those in full communion, “fully incorporated into the society of the Church” (LG §14), who are to remember that their exalted status is not because of their merit but because of grace.

b. Those (LG §15) Christians in various degrees of separation from the Catholic church, here understood as various degrees of partial communion. These bodies are not called “churches” (except for the special case of the Orthodox) because that would make the word “church” simply a sociological category. Rather they are members, if in imperfect communion, of the one true Church: “in some real way they are joined with us in the Holy Spirit, for to them too he gives his gifts and graces whereby he is operative among them with his sanctifying power. Some indeed he has strengthened to the extent of the shedding of their blood” (LG §15). But just as those in full communion are not to ascribe it to their merit, in a corresponding way, those in partial communion are not saved by what separates them from full communion, but by what communion with the one true Church still remains, some of the dimensions of which are mentioned.

c. Those who are not Christian, especially the Jews, but also the Muslims as to some extent Abrahamic, and those in other religions or no religion, more distant from the one true Church but still in some kind of relationship to it by virtue of the “call” to all people.

Section 17 concludes the chapter with a rousing declaration of the Church’s call to mission, ending with the fitting and sublime declaration:

The obligation of spreading the faith is imposed on every disciple of Christ, according to his state. Although, however, all the faithful can baptize, the priest alone can complete the building up of the Body in the eucharistic sacrifice. Thus are fulfilled the words of God, spoken through his prophet: From the rising of the sun until the going down thereof my name is great among the gentiles, and in every place a clean oblation is sacrificed and offered up in my name (Mal 1:11) In this way the Church both prays and labors in order that the entire world may become[4] the People of God, the Body of the Lord and the Temple of the Holy Spirit, and that in Christ, the Head of all, all honor and glory may be rendered to the Creator and Father of the Universe (LG §17).

Thus is drawn together two of the major images of the Church from chapter 1 (Body of the Lord and Temple of the Holy Spirit) with the image of the People of God, from chapter 2. The mystery of the Church is one mystery, carried in these several, interrelated images.

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