(One, Holy, Universal (Catholic),
Apostolic)
Introduction:
Among
the articles of Christian faith, ‘the Church’ has a peculiar status. Unlike the doctrines of God, Christ, Trinity,
creation, fall, redemption, it was not specifically thematized in the patristic
period, nor did it become the subject of controversy. The biblical images of
the church have stimulated theological reflection on the church throughout the
history of tradition, yet they did not serve as a basis for a systematic
doctrine of the church. In fact, there
was no such systematic doctrine during the patristic and medieval periods. Only
when some questions began to be raised about the church in the Middle Ages did
systematic treatises on this topic first appear. Since the Reformation the
nature of the church has been a matter more of confessional conflict than of
doctrinal consensus.
