What Is The Church?

“The Bible,” writes Avery Cardinal Dulles, “when it seeks to illuminate the nature of the Church, speaks almost entirely through images, most of them . . . evidently metaphorical.” Citing Pope Paul VI, Dulles lists the following images: “the building raised up by Christ, the house of God, the temple and tabernacle of God, his people, his flock, his vine, his field, his city, the pillar of truth, and finally, the Bride of Christ, his Mystical Body.” Dulles himself examines several other models: church as institution, as mystical communion, as sacrament, as herald, as servant. Yet, it is not clear how Dulles’s own categories are non-metaphorical, nor is it obvious that calling the church a “body” or a “people” should be taken as metaphorical. The biblical descriptions are not “raw material” for theological reflection on the church. The biblical descriptions are the fundamental descriptions of the church, more fundamental certainly than such sociological descriptions as “institution.”