Church in Christian usage names the whole community of believers first and the building second, and the Greek ekklesia means an assembly called out and gathered.
Paul calls it the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12, an image in which the members differ in function and none can be dispensed with.
The one word covers three things: the local congregation, a denomination, and the universal Church of all Christians in all places and times.
The Nicene Creed attaches four marks to it, one, holy, catholic and apostolic, where catholic means universal rather than Roman.
Roman Catholic teaching holds that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church, and Eastern Orthodox churches make a parallel claim for themselves.
Many Protestant churches distinguish the visible Church, which contains everyone on the membership roll, from the invisible Church known only to God.
Definition
Church means the community of Christian believers.
The Greek ekklesia means an assembly called out and gathered.
The word covers the local congregation, the denomination and the universal body.
It is applied to the building only because that community meets there.
Sacrament and mystery
A sacrament is an outward visible sign of an inward invisible grace, a definition that comes from Augustine and is still taught in Catholic and Anglican catechisms.
The Latin sacramentum translated the Greek mysterion, which is why Orthodox churches still call these rites the holy mysteries.
Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians count seven, and both hold that Christ himself is the one who acts in them.
Most Protestant churches count two, baptism and the Lord's Supper, on the ground that only these were instituted by Jesus, and many prefer the word ordinance.
Catholic teaching uses the phrase ex opere operato, meaning that a sacrament works by the act itself and not by the worthiness of the minister, though what the recipient brings affects the fruit.
The Society of Friends and the Salvation Army keep no outward sacraments at all, holding that the inward grace needs no sign.
Definition
Sacrament means an outward visible sign of an inward invisible grace.
The Greek mysterion lies behind the Latin sacramentum.
Catholic and Orthodox Christians count seven, and most Protestants count two.
A few churches keep none, holding that the grace needs no outward sign.
Agape and the loves
Agape is the love of God for humanity, and Christians use the same word for the love they are commanded to show in return.
Greek had several words for love, and Christian writers set agape apart from eros (desire), philia (friendship) and storge (family affection).
1 John 4 makes the strongest claim about it, that God is love, so Christians treat agape as a description of God's character and not only of God's conduct.
1 Corinthians 13 describes it as patient and kind, and the chapter is read at weddings far more often than it is read as the argument about spiritual gifts it actually belongs to.
Jesus extends it to enemies as well as neighbours in Matthew 5, and that is what most separates the Christian use of the word from ordinary affection.
The early Church held an agape meal, a shared supper connected to the Eucharist, and Methodists revived it as the love feast in the eighteenth century.
Its institutional form today is organized charity. Caritas Internationalis, Christian Aid and parish food banks are all presented as agape put into practice.
Definition
Agape means the love of God for humanity.
Christians also use it for the love they are commanded to show others.
It is distinguished from eros, philia and storge.
1 John 4 identifies it with God's own character.
Common Mistake
Agape is often reduced to a warm feeling.
Christian writers define it by what it does rather than by what it feels like.
It is commanded, which would make little sense if it were an emotion.
Jesus extends it to enemies, whom nobody is expected to like.
The resurrection of Christ
Resurrection is the Christian claim that God raised Jesus from the dead on the third day, and it is the event on which the tradition stakes everything.
Paul puts the stakes plainly in 1 Corinthians 15, writing that if Christ has not been raised then Christian preaching is empty and so is Christian faith.
All four Gospels report an empty tomb and each names women as the first witnesses, a detail scholars often note would not have been invented in that setting.
The accounts describe appearances rather than the event itself, and they differ over place and order, which Christians read as independent testimony rather than as one agreed story.
Churches disagree over what kind of event it was. Most teach a bodily resurrection, while some liberal Protestant theologians read the accounts as expressing the disciples' conviction that Jesus lives.
Eastern Orthodox Christians make it the centre of the whole year, and their Pascha icon shows Christ pulling Adam and Eve out of their tombs, an image called the harrowing of hell.
Definition
Resurrection means the raising of Jesus from the dead on the third day.
Christians use the word also for the raising of believers at the end.
Easter, called Pascha in the East, is the festival that celebrates it.
Most churches teach it as bodily, and a minority read it as a way of speaking.
Resurrection of believers
The creeds state a second resurrection, the resurrection of the body, so Christian hope is not for the survival of a soul that leaves the body behind.
Paul calls what is raised a spiritual body in 1 Corinthians 15, using the image of a seed sown in the ground and a plant that comes up looking nothing like it.
The claim marks Christian hope off from reincarnation, since it looks to one embodied life restored rather than to a series of lives.
Funeral liturgies say it aloud, committing a body to the ground in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.
Burial practice grew out of the doctrine. Orthodox churches still resist cremation, while the Catholic Church permitted it in 1963 and asks that ashes be kept in a sacred place.
Most Protestant churches accept cremation without difficulty, holding that God is not limited by what happens to a body.
Note
Resurrection is not the same as resuscitation.
The Gospels present the raising of Lazarus as a return to a life that would end again.
Christians claim something different for Jesus, a life no longer subject to death.
The distinction shapes what they hope for themselves.
The concepts in practice
The four terms interlock in an ordinary Sunday, and a congregation can meet all of them within an hour.
Baptism is described as entry into the body, so the sacrament and the Church are the same event seen from two sides.
The Eucharist is where the Church is most visibly itself, and 1 Corinthians 10 argues that the one loaf makes the many into one body.
The sign of peace and the collection for the poor are taught as agape in action rather than as decoration around the service.
Every Sunday is kept as a weekly Easter, and the Easter Vigil is the night on which many churches baptize new members.
Orthodox Christians greet one another at Pascha with the words Christ is risen, and the reply he is risen indeed, for weeks afterwards.
Christian care for the dying, in hospices such as the one founded by Cicely Saunders and in ordinary parish visiting, is presented as agape and resurrection hope working together.
Active recall
Give the meaning of ekklesia and the three things the word church covers.
State Augustine's definition of a sacrament and say how many the churches count.
How do Christians distinguish agape from other kinds of love?
Why does Paul say Christian faith is empty if Christ was not raised?
What does the resurrection of the body rule out, and how has it shaped burial practice?