Catholicity: The Church's Wholeness

I. The Church's Wholeness
The church is catholic or universal (kath' holon means holistic).

All Christian life is Spirit-given (1 Cor 12:1-11), evangelical (1:20-2:5), and in common (1 Cor 12:12-14:40).
The church occupies a special place in creation, "in Christ" (1 Cor 1:2), "inheriting the Kingdom of God" (6:9-11), and "at the ends of the ages" (10:11).
What is your or my relationship with it, and with one another?

Participatory love (Luke 10:25-28, John 13:31-35, 1 Cor 10:23-24, 12:4-7, 1 Cor 13, 1 John 3:11-24, etc.).

II. Is Wholeness a Possession or a Promise?
Early Church Fathers treat its wholeness in terms of Christ's presence and the church's whole deposit of faith suffice for salvation—more as an attribute or a possession.

Ignatius: "wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church."
Vincent of Lerins: the catholic faith is "that which is believed everywhere, always, and by all."
Cyril of Jerusalem: the church is sufficient, having everything for salvation.

Recent treatments see wholeness in terms of God equipping the church to progress towards wholeness—more as a promise or goal.

Catholicity as an eschatological process, not a quality already realized.
The Holy Spirit works to 'catholicize' the church.
A thriving church body will have unity and power in fruitful relationships among increasingly healthy persons.

Regardless, catholicity properly understood owes to Christ's wholeness (Eph 4:15-16).

III. Traditional Rival Accounts of Catholicity
'Roman Catholic', 'Eastern Orthodox', 'Anglican' and mainstream 'ecumenical' visions of catholicity sees wholiness as

full communion, on the grounds of (so the Lambeth Quadrilateral) Scriptures, creeds, sacraments, and episcopate. (For Catholics, the Papacy too.)

'Protestant' catholicity sees it as

a life ordered by Word and sacraments, which are formally and materially sufficient for it.

'Baptist' catholicity sees whole Christian life

as necessarily a shared life of loving discipleship.
A local congregation is a whole church, with fellowship but no necessary dependence on other congregations.

IV. Recent Accounts of Catholicity
'Pentecostal' or 'charismatic' catholicity envisions wholeness as

a local body featuring the full original range and the proper exercise of Christ's spiritual gifts (Acts 11:15, Eph 4:8-12, Heb 13:8).

These include:
xenolalia: Proclaiming God's mighty works in foreign (unlearned?) tongues (Acts 2:4), which begins with the "baptism in the Holy Spirit" (Acts 1:5-8).
glossolalia: Ecstatic prophecy and prayer in "the tongues of angels" (1 Cor 12:28, 13:1, 14:1-33), which begins with incorporation into Christ (1 Cor 12:3-6).
other neglected gifts: prophecy, words of knowledge, healing, exorcism, apostleship, prosperity....
Some critical issues: Are these gifts for every church? every believer? Have some gifts ceased in specific contexts (cessationism, 1 Cor 14:22)? What constitutes abuse? (1 Cor 11:29; Acts 8:18-24). How are glossolalia and xenolalia related? Are tongues unique among spiritual gifts? (cf. 1 Cor 14).

'Liberationist' catholicity pursues 'catholicizing'

throuugh 'conscientization' and structurally including the structurally excluded (James 2, Acts 4:31-37, 6:1-7).

Social structures cause inequality which is injustice (Marx). Imperialism turned evangelism into civilization, the church into a colonizer, and Jesus into a willing victim (Latin American crucifixes). Yet ...
God is the God of the poor. God's work is liberation. Salvation is communal as God is communal. The poor have a privileged perspective on God. Jesus is a radical revolutionary restructuring his order. Word, sacraments, and theology are for furthering liberation.
Ethnic, gender, and other variations hold that what the church lacks in human diversity, universality, or 'equity' (meaning equality of outcomes), it lacks in catholicity (Col 1:19-23, Eph 2:11-22).
Some critical issues: Does liberation theology correct other inadequate accounts of catholicity? Or is it a Marxist 'false contextualization' of the gospel? Does it have reductionist or misdirected doctrines of election, salvation, knowledge, humanity, or church? Which diversities (for instance, sexuality) owe to 'creation' and which are 'fallen' and not for inclusion?

DMMs' "church circle" (Acts 2:36-47) touches on all of these qualities in their 'primitive' New Testament forms,

which manifest together immediately after Pentecost.

For our discernment: Are these theological traditions' treatments of wholeness

God's true full vision for us in his redemptive mission (2 Cor 5:9-6:13, the Great Commission and Great Commandment, etc.)?
Or smaller, even 'fleshly' (Gal 5:16-26) visions that aren't actually God's vision?

When we 'lose the plot' of God's whole purpose, good gifts and promises are misplaced, misprioritized, and disordered.

So catholicity's whole framework is indispensable for them to work together holistically.

V. Diversity or Catholicity?
Does the category of catholicity inform or even improve upon contemporary treatments of diversity, equity, justice, inclusion, greatness, and so on?