Congar on Thomas

Thomas wrote no treatise on the church, but Yves Congar, among others, insisted that the whole second part of the Summa is about ecclesiology. Thomas is telling a story of exodus and return, and the second part of his treatise is about the return effected by Christ and worked out in the church.

Man, Thomas says, is created for beatitude; beatitude is the final end, the purpose for which God created man. Man exists for fellowship with God, and this ought also to be the aim of every particular human action. This purpose is interrupted and destroyed and despoiled by sin, and so it was necessary for Christ to return mankind back to God. He ensures that man reaches his telos. Thomas understands both the incarnation and Christ’s sacrifice as dimensions of humanity’s return to God.

Thomas defines the sacrifice of Christ in an Augustinian way. According to Augustine, sacrifice was any action by which we seek to be united to God. It doesn’t necessarily involve bloodshed or death – though it inevitably does for sinners – but is a reaching for God. Jesus is divine and human, and for Thomas His humanity is the instrument of the deity to bring mankind back to its proper end. God the Son united Himself to man in order to offer true sacrifice, to be united to God on behalf of the church.

The church, united to the humanity of Jesus and to God through union with Jesus, is return of mankind to God. For Thomas, the church is not merely the people who are returning, but the church is the return, insofar as the church is the body of Christ. The church is the people restored to the proper purpose and end of human life.

Congar develops this argument in several stages. First, by joining himself to humanity, Christ became the head of creation and the fountainhead of all grace in humanity.

Second, this grace is communicated to those who participate in the Head, Jesus. In fact, the participation of the church in Jesus is so intimate that one can say that Christ + Church = Christ, just as God + world = God. Thomas is not divinizing the church or the creation, but only insisting that there is only a world, and a church, by participating in God.

Third, Thomas says that one of the reasons for which man offers sacrifice is “in order that the spirit of man may be perfectly united with God” (III, 22, 2). This is one of the effects of Christ’s sacrifice. Thomas adds, “through Him we have acquired the perfection of glory.” According to Thomas, expiation of sins is part of the intention of Jesus’ sacrifice, but not the only intent. Christ in His sacrifice bears humanity across the divide that sin has made between God and man, and thereby returns us to God.

Finally, Congar argues that for Thomas the church “is the whole economy of the return towards God, motus rationalis creaturae in Deum .”

In addition to its value as an interpretation of Thomas’s Christological (and pneumatological) ecclesiology, this thesis has a great deal of biblical weight. Sacrifice in Leviticus, after all, is not just expiation for sin, but ascension to God. Jesus’ sacrifice extends from His death through His resurrection and return to the Father, and in this whole sequence He acts not for Himself but for His people.