church
from a charismatic leader and a circle of disciples forming a brotherhood.
At the end of the period of brotherhood, there is a reorganization and the
introduction of discipline and development of a new type of organization
- an ecclesiastical body – called the church. The church refers histori-
cally to the believers and followers of Jesus Christ. This community is
composed of believers representing a separate group. A church is usually
an open, inclusive, and eventually a bureaucratic organization that holds
and often promotes the values of the larger society in which it exists.
The early Christian tradition utilizes enduring metaphors to express
the meaning of the church for them by imaging the church as a Mater
Ecclesia, as the apostle Paul does in Galatians (4.21–31) by discussing
the universal mother nourishing her children. And Jesus (Matt. 23.37)
refers to the holy city of Jerusalem in maternal terms. The church is
called the bride of Christ (Rev. 19.7; Rom. 7.4; Eph. 5.23; 2 Cor. 11.2–4),
and in Galatians (4.21–31) Paul refers to the church as a second Eve.
With respect to this nuptial symbolism, the Christian church father
Irenaeus (c. 140–c. 200) describes Christ as the divine bridegroom stand-
ing in a marital relationship with his bride the church, whereas Tertullian
(c. 160–c. 225) emphasizes the virginity of the church without blemishes,
calls her a virgin free from the stain of fornication, and the Second Eve - mother of the living. Another early Christian thinker, Clement of
Alexandria (150–220), agrees that the church is both virgin and mother,
but he adds that her baptized converts become her children and she nurses
them with holy milk. The bridal metaphor can also be found in the work
of Origen (185–253) when he states that the church is constituted by
those who are mystically united with the Logos (Word) in a spiritual mar-
riage. In the bridal chamber, the soul is joined, according to Origen, to
the Logos, and it experiences spiritual intercourse. Augustine (354–430),
bishop of Hippo in North Africa, continues the bride metaphorical lan-
guage in which the bride is joined to the bridegroom in the flesh, making
the nuptial union that of word and flesh. Whatever the metaphors used to
describe the church, it is believed to prefigure and prepare members for
a complete transformation of the entire social and historical order into
one inclusive society under God.
The fully developed church defines doctrine, forms rules of faith or
creed, standardizes forms of worship, and establishes a constitution to
govern it. With the establishment of the mature church, the prior oral tradi-
tion is written down to preserve it and traditions of the religion are
accepted. Membership in a church is the result of an individual’s birth.
The authority of the church is hierarchically constructed and centralized,
and its clergy is distinguished from the laity. The church evolves by com-
promising with the secular world by, for instance, accepting the prevailing