In view of what has been said, the conclusion is (i) that Christ alone is the head of the universal church, which church is not a part of anything else. This is clear because, if any one is the head of the universal church, then is he made better than the angels and than any blessed created spirit, Heb. 1:4; but this befits Christ alone, for it behooved him to be the first-born among many brethren, Romans, 8 : 29, and consequently it behooves him to be the chief by the right of the law of primogeniture, Col. 1 : 15. This conclusion also follows from the apostle’s words, Eph. 1 : 20: ” Which God wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name which is named not only in this world but also in the world which is to come, and has put all things under his feet and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body.” From this it is clear that, if any Christian were to be the head of the universal church with Christ (for the church cannot be a monster having two heads, as is set forth in Boniface VIITs bull, beginning Unam sandam; therefore, the bull says, “the church is one body and has one head, not two heads, like a monster ”), it would be necessary to concede that the Christian who was the head of that church was Christ himself, or otherwise it would be necessary to concede that Christ is inferior to that Christian and a lowly member of him. The conclusion shows that the thing is impossible. Hence, the holy apostles agreed in confessing that they were servants of that one Head and humble ministers of the church, his bride. No one of the apostles ever presumed to claim that he was the head or the bridegroom of the church, for this would have meant to adulterate with the queen of heaven and to arrogate the name of dignity and office — the dignity by which, according to the eternal predestination, and the office through which, by eternal appointment, God ordained that Christ should be supreme ruler of his bride. This also appears from St. Augustine’s letter to Dardanus [Migne’s ed., 33 : 832 sqq.], where he says: “She only has one head, namely him who rules over her, excelling all and typifying in one union the spiritual and secular rule.”
Therefore, it is possible to understand the ” Head of the Church” in a twofold sense: inward and outward. In the inward sense, as the chief person of his church, and he is this in two ways: either by superintendence over the material goods of his church or by ruling over its spiritual things. As outward head he is a person that superintends persons inferior to his nature, but he is called the head to those outside of this number whom he rules by his influence in virtue of his nature. And so Christ is the outward head of every particular church and of the universal church by virtue of his divinity, and he is the inward head of the universal church by virtue of his humanlty; and these two natures, divinity and humanity, are one Christ, who is the only head of his bride, the universal church, and this is the totality of the predestinate. For this divinity is the man who descended from heaven and who ascended again into heaven, as is said in John 3 : 13, not the whole of the divinity considered as divinity, but according to the headship whose descent was not a local movement but an incarnation or self-emptying. And the ascent was a local movement by which he took with himself the other parts of the body.
Hence, it is plain that there is nothing inconsistent in a
CHRIST THE ONLY HEAD OF THE CHURCH 20 particular church having several heads. For it may have three heads, namely the divinity of Christ, his humanity, and the chief appointed by God to rule over it. But there are degrees of subordination in these heads, because the divinity is supreme, Christ’s humanity is intermediate, and the chief is the lowest. But the universal church, as has been said, has two heads, the outward head which is the divinity and the inward which is the humanity.
Further, from these things it is seen that Christ from the very beginning of the world down to his incarnation was, in virtue of his divinity, the outward head of the church, but from the incarnation on he is the inward head of the church, by virtue of his humanity. And so the whole holy catholic church always has had and now has Christ as its head, from whom it cannot fall away, for she is the bride knit to him, her head, by a love that never ends, for the bridegroom says to the church herself, Jer. 31 : 3: “I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee.” Therefore, always, from the very beginning, the bridegroom has been present with the whole church by virtue of his divinity, who later was with the holy fathers by virtue of his humanity. Hence Augustine says, commenting on Psalm 37 : 25, “I have been young [junior, younger] and now I am old”: “The Lord himself in his heart, that is, his church, was younger than the first men. And, behold, now that he is old, yc know and do not know, and ye understand because ye are fixed in this, and so ye have believed, because Christ is our head, we are the body of the head. Are we alone the body and not those also who were before us? All who were righteous from the beginning of the world have Christ for their head. For they believed that he was for to come whom we now believe to have come, and in the faith in him they were healed, in which faith we also are healed; that he verily might be the head of the whole city of Jerusalem, all the faithful being included from