In our journey through the Apostles' Creed, having pledged our faith to the Holy Spirit, it's time to take another big step. We say also here that we believe in “the holy catholic church, the communion of saints.” So what are we saying? There's a lot here, and we can only scratch the surface, so let's dive right in. To get an appreciation for what we're saying here, we need, like usual, to go back to the Old Testament – and, to be specific, the Greek Old Testament. Because the Greek Old Testament actually uses the New Testament word we translate as 'church' – ekklesia – a bunch of times.
After the exodus, the Old Testament 'church' comes into being. When Moses receives the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, it happens “on the day of the ekklesia,” the assembly or 'church' (Deuteronomy 9:10 LXX). Later, in Deuteronomy 23, this ekklesia is the worshipping assembly of Israel, and it has to be kept pure, so people with certain pagan roots or with backgrounds in certain pagan practices are banned from being “in the ekklesia of the Lord” (Deuteronomy 23:1-3, 8 LXX). In Judges, “all the people of Israel came out” to Mizpah to approach God to seek his will for dealing with a crisis, and that gathering is called “the ekklesia of the people of God” (Judges 20:2 LXX), and a death sentence was passed for those who refused to come to the ekklesia (Judges 21:5 LXX). When David becomes king, he arranged to bring the Ark of the Covenant to Zion, so he summoned the ekklesia, which approved his plan and grew until it encompassed all Israel (1 Chronicles 13:1-5 LXX); and after a false start, when the transfer resumed, David assembled (exekklesiasen) Israel at Jerusalem, and there was music and rejoicing and worship through sacrifice (1 Chronicles 15:3,14-28), followed by a blessing from the king and a feast in God's presence (1 Chronicles 16:1-3).
King David gathers all the officials, tribal leaders, and military to Jerusalem so as to commission Solomon in the sight of “all the ekklesia of the Lord” (1 Chronicles 28:8 LXX), and that ekklesia then offers building material for the temple and thousands of sacrifices (1 Chronicles 29:7-9, 21-22). When the temple was finished and it was time to dedicate it, the Israelites summoned by King Solomon were described as “a very great ekklesia” when they sacrificed and feasted together (2 Chronicles 7:8 LXX). King Jehoshaphat called the people to the temple to fast, pray, seek the Lord during a national crisis, and all Judah from men and women to children and babies stood before the Lord “in the ekklesia” (2 Chronicles 20:14). Years later, the high priest Jehoiada called all the Levites and clan leaders together as “all the ekklesia of Judah” to revitalize worship and crown Joash as king (2 Chronicles 23:3 LXX). Still later, King Hezekiah summoned the priests, Levites, and officials to sacrifice, and they are called the ekklesia (2 Chronicles 29:23 LXX). After the exile and return, Governor Nehemiah gathers the Jewish community in a “great ekklesia” (Nehemiah 5:7 LXX), and when he spoke to them with authority, “all the ekklesia said amen and praised the Lord” (Nehemiah 5:13 LXX).
So what's an ekklesia, in the Greek Old Testament? Most of the time, it's a centralized worshipful gathering that represents the entire holy nation of Israel, with purity requirements for admission. It's called together by a figure of authority into God's presence. Sometimes it hears the word of God. Frequently, it prays. Quite often, it involves sacrifice, which is then eaten together in a sacred feast. And it undertakes official business pertinent to the operation of God's holy nation, not through democratic means, but through willing submission to the godly declarations of legitimate authority. That's when the ekklesia meets, in the Greek Old Testament.
So all of that is in the background when we open up the Gospel of Matthew to what we call its sixteenth chapter. Jesus has been asking his closest disciples who they say that he is. And Simon son of Jonah, the leader of the disciples, speaks on their behalf and gives a perfect answer, which Jesus said was revealed to Simon by God the Father. And then Jesus confers on Simon a new name – Kepha in Aramaic, which means 'Rock,' and in Greek the equivalent name is Petros, Peter – and so after naming Simon 'Rock,' Jesus says to him, “on this rock, I will build my ekklesia, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it: I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of the heavens, and whatever you might bind on the earth will be bound in the heavens, and whatever you might loose on the earth will be loosed in the heavens” (Matthew 16:19). Jesus is announcing his plans to restart the true ekklesia of a New Israel – and that is the word we translate as 'church.' And the gates of death can never overcome Jesus' messianic ekklesia, once he establishes it on the rock.
Later, he does exactly that. It becomes “the ekklesia of God which he obtained with his own blood” (Acts 20:28). This assembly, this institution, is originally in Jerusalem (Acts 5:11), but by the ninth chapter of Acts, there's a single ekklesia spread “throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria” which is being “built up” in peace (Acts 9:31). Eventually, this one ekklesia spreads into the Hellenistic world, and we begin to hear about ekklesiai, 'churches,' because ekklesia was also the word used in Greek cities for a political assembly of all the town's citizens. So most often in the New Testament, Paul and others talk about 'churches' in various local places, but those are all only manifestations of a single deeper reality, the Church that Jesus founded – his ekklesia – which Paul calls “the church of the living God, pillar and base of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).
But we confess it as “the holy church.” And the New Testament gives us three crucial pictures of the Church to get us there. First, this new ekklesia is spoken of in terms of a body – the social body of the Messiah, an extension of his very own physicality. On multiple occasions, Paul presents the Messiah as a Head, the supreme body part; but a Head requires a whole Body, and that is the Church. So in Colossians 1:18, Paul describes Jesus Christ as “the Head of the Body, the Church.” And in Ephesians 5:23, Paul again says, “Christ is the Head of the Church, he himself Savior of the Body.” It is precisely as the Body of Christ that Jesus, the Head, saves. this great balance of unity and diversity. I mean, listen to what Paul says in Romans 12: “Just as in one body we have many parts, and the parts don't all have the same function, so we, though many, are one Body in Christ, and individually parts of each other. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them” (Romans 12:4-6). And read 1 Corinthians 12:12-27 for yourselves – it's the same, but deeper still!
This tells us a few things about the Church. The Church is a visible reality, one we can see and touch and meet. This one institution, the Body of Christ, has existed on earth ever since he sent his Spirit. And because we are Body parts, we protect the parts that are most vulnerable. We regard as indispensable the most fragile among our number. And it's precisely because what hurts one of us hurts the Body as a whole, like a stubbed toe, and we all instinctively should feel it – or something's wrong. On the other hand, when one of us is honored, we all have reason to celebrate it and bask in the delight of it, because we are that same Body. There's no room for competition among parts of a human body, so neither is there room for a competitive mindset between Christians in the local congregation or between local congregations in the Church. There's no room for scorn among parts of a human body, so neither is there room for scorn within or between congregations in the Church. And neither is there room for either undue conformity or undue deviation in the Body. If there's undue conformity, then the Body isn't a viable organism after all. A human body that's a head stuck on a billion legs is not a human body, and it won't last. On the other hand, undue deviation – as when a part develops with divergent DNA that doesn't match the rest of the individual – well, that's mutation, that's chimerism, and it can get pretty dangerous and result in an unviable organism as well. We are called to balance and respect and welcome one another, precisely because of this powerful image of the Body of Christ.
And as parts in a larger body, we have to accept that none of us is primary. There is no 'I' in 'Church.' There is no 'ego' in 'ekklesia.' The Body does not exist for the sake of its parts. It is arranged to nourish the parts for their given functions, and to be responsive to the parts' pains, but not to make any given part the be-all and end-all of its being. A body does not just operate for the maximal enjoyment of the liver. A body's purpose is not to sustain the foot in permanent bliss. Rather, each and every part has something to contribute. The Body of Christ is not meant to be filled with just vestigial organs – things that used to serve a purpose at some past point in body history, but are obsolete now, retired from their former functions. Each part has a gift given by the Spirit and is meant to use that gift, not to please itself, but to aid in the coordinated purposes of the whole Body.
Moreover, as the Body of Christ, it isn't our job to second-guess Jesus. Jesus is the Head, and that's where the brain is. The body parts are supposed to be responsive to the head. When body parts aren't responsive to the head, that's sometimes paralysis and sometimes a seizure. If we don't take our Head's orders – if we receive his message but accept it as mere information to register and not as a command to action – then that's paralysis. If we begin moving on our own in ways that the Head isn't commanding, and so develop our own strategies of movement without reference to the Head and his will, then that's a seizure. Neither are terribly healthy in the human body, and neither are healthy for the Body of Christ. We must be responsive to our Head.
Second, this new ekklesia is spoken of in terms of a bride – the bride paired with the Messiah, mirroring Old Testament language about Israel or Judah or Jerusalem as a bride paired with the Lord God. As we explore the Old Testament, we very famously find multiple prophets speaking of Jerusalem, Judah, or Israel as a woman who is related to the Lord God via a marriage covenant. Through Ezekiel, God remarks to Jerusalem: “You were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord GOD, and you became mine. Then I bathed you with water and washed off your blood from you and anointed you with oil. I clothed you also with embroidered cloth and shod you with fine leather; I wrapped you in fine linen and covered you with silk, and I adorned you with ornaments and put bracelets on your wrists and a chain on your neck, and I put a ring in your nose and earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. … You ate fine flour and honey and oil. You grew exceedingly beautiful and advanced to royalty. And your renown went forth among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through the splendor that I had bestowed on you” (Ezekiel 16:8-14).
So Jerusalem here is portrayed as God's Bride, and can also be presented as a Mother to the people of Israel or of Judah. The giving of the covenant at Mount Sinai was portrayed, in retrospect, as having been the marriage ceremony between the Lord and his bride Israel. However, as prophets would eventually come to lament, it was not a perfectly happy marriage. Because Israel was an adulterous bride. So, through the Prophet Hosea, God complains that the whole land was engaged in spiritual prostitution by abandoning him (Hosea 1:2), and thus tells Hosea to tell the Israelites to “plead with your Mother, plead – for she is not my wife, and I am not her husband” (Hosea 2:2). Through the Prophet Isaiah, God interrogates the descendants of Judah, “Where is your Mother's divorce certificate with which I sent her away? … For your transgressions, your Mother was sent away” (Isaiah 50:1-2). Israel, Judah, or Jerusalem was the Bride of the Lord, and functioned as a Mother to the Israelites or Jews, a counterpart to God's Fatherhood of the nation. Unfortunately, this story led to divorce.
Thankfully, the Old Testament looks forward to the day when a New Israel will be married with no threat of divorce hanging over her. The Lord declares to her in advance, “I will betroth you to me forever, I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy; I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord” (Hosea 2:19-20). God says to Jerusalem, “the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married … As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (Isaiah 62:4-5). Isaiah urges faithful Jews to “rejoice with Jerusalem” their mother and “nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast, that you may drink deeply with delight from her glorious abundance” (Isaiah 66:10-11).
And in the New Testament, those promises are fulfilled, and the Jerusalem or Israel who receives them is the one Paul means when he says that “the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our Mother” (Galatians 4:26). Just like old Jerusalem was the Bride of God and the Mother of all Israelites, so New Jerusalem or New Israel is the Bride of Christ and the Mother of all Christians. And that Mother, that Bride, is the Church – the same Church Jesus founded on the rock. “Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her,” Paul says, “that he might make her holy, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the Church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25-27). Because the Church is his Bride, Jesus calls her 'holy,' because his death was to give her his holiness. The holiness of the Church just is the holiness of her Husband, and while she hasn't received him perfectly yet, she is guaranteed to in the end. This is also a promise that there can be only one Church loved by Jesus, because Christ is no polygamist. He says about her, “My dove, my perfect one, is the only one” (Song of Songs 6:9). And we are all the Church's children, children mothered by the New Jerusalem. To press this point home, one third-century Christian, a man named Cyprian who lived about two hundred years after the apostles, put it this way: “From her womb we are born, by her milk we are nurtured, by her spirit we are given life. … A man cannot have God for his Father who will not have the Church for his Mother.”1
Third, this new ekklesia is spoken of in terms of a building – specifically, the New Temple, the fulfillment of what was always signified by the old temple that now no longer stands in Jerusalem. Flash back with me to Matthew 16, and take note of the verb Matthew finds on Jesus' lips. What's he going to do with his ekklesia? Jesus is going to 'build' it. That's an architectural word. It's the word you'd use for building a house, or some other dwelling. And, in fact, we hear it again in Acts 7, when the deacon Stephen retells the story of Solomon having 'built' the Temple – it's the same word. So from the very moment Jesus mentions his ekklesia, he's using the language of house construction. But what kind of house?
Since Jesus was talking to Peter, it's only fair to let Peter get the next word in. In his famous letter, Peter says that Christians can be thought of as “living stones” being utilized as the material in God's building project. But what is God building? Peter says that we living stones are being “built up as a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5). Jesus' ekklesia is a 'spiritual house' – that is, a temple. And Paul will help us fill in the rest. Paul says that this “whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2:21). “You are being built together into a dwelling place for God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22). “You are God's temple, and God's Spirit dwells in you” (1 Corinthians 3:16), “the temple of the living God” (2 Corinthians 6:16), “a temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:19). As the second-century writer Irenaeus will remark, “Where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church and all grace.”2
So now we have these three significant pictures of the Church. The Church is the Body that grows from Christ its Head. And that tells us that the Church is guaranteed to be holy. As Paul remarks in one of his letters, “if the root is holy, so are the branches” (Romans 11:16) – if the Head is holy, so is the Body. The Church is a holy Body, and cannot lose that holiness unless the Church is decapitated, losing its Head. But that will never happen! Jesus' promise cannot be false. So the gates of Sheol have never – will never – overcome the Church. The Church cannot die, cannot be decapitated. The Church always has a Head who guarantees its holiness.
The Church is the Bride bound by deepest ties to Christ her Bridegroom. And that likewise tells us that the Church is guaranteed to be holy. What is the husband's, is the wife's – that includes the holiness of Christ. He has already cleansed her and still cleansing her, already sanctified her and still sanctifying her. To allow the Church to lose her holiness would be to renounce his claim on her – to divorce her and put her away, whether quietly or in fury. But one thing we know: “If we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). To deny his Bride would be to deny himself, and that he cannot do. There is no divorcing this union: prophecy has already seen the wedding supper laid out (Revelation 19:9). No, we can be sure that the Jesus who began a good work in his Bride will unrelentingly bring it to completion for the wedding day (cf. Philippians 1:6). And so the Church can never lose her holiness.
The Church is the Temple indwelt so thoroughly by the Holy Spirit, claimed as sacred space. A temple is, by definition, holy. A temple that is no longer holy is no longer indwelt by the divine presence. The Church will not be so desecrated that the Holy Spirit withdraws. For “the Spirit is life” (Romans 8:10). For the Holy Spirit to disown his Temple would be to remove life – would mean to declare the gates of Sheol victorious over it. And we know that can never happen! So the Church must remain a functional temple, an inhabited temple.
What's so important about all this is that any standing we have as “holy and beloved” (Colossians 3:12) is a consequence of the holiness guaranteed to the Church. It is only because the Body is holy that any of its varied parts can be considered holy. Only a holy Body can have holy parts, which derive their holiness from the Body. And it is only because the Bride is holy that her children can inherit her holiness, from their very birth to her, from their nursing at her teachings, from the food she feeds them and the songs she sings them and the love she showers on them. And only because the Temple is holy can any of the living stones be holy. For a temple is not built out of stones that are already holy. The stones only become holy because they belong to the temple – take away the temple, and the stones are ordinary.
Now, it is true that the Church's holiness has not always been obvious, least of all in our behavior. The Apostle Peter, with his voice of authority, commands us to “be holy in all [our] conduct” (1 Peter 1:15). And yet, often throughout the ages, we struggle at best, and too frequently reject the calling. We choose to act, not holy, but common – or, worse still, profane – or, worst of all, sacrilegiously. Sadly, parts of the body have not only feuded with each other but unleashed violence on the world. Sadly, the Bride has at times debased herself, and her children have turned feral. Sadly, the Temple has in some respects been polluted and defiled, used to house myriad idols. It is only grace that keeps the Body in motion, only grace that keeps the Bride betrothed, only grace that keeps the Temple inhabited. The Body is called to grow and mature, and we are waiting. The Bride is called to lose her present spots and wrinkles, and we are waiting. The Temple is called to be completed and be furnished with all holy things and filled with glory, and we are waiting. Some day, the wait will be over!
Now, we confess, in the Creed, that our trust is placed in “the holy catholic church.” And now we get confused, because we don't know what the word means. But the Greek word katholikos is a compound word – literally, 'throughout all,' or 'pertaining to the whole.' Luke talks about the church being “throughout all” Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, and the words he uses are the ingredients that this word is built out of. In pre-Christian Greek, to call something katholikos could mean it was generic or general, could mean that it applied universally, could mean it was something indivisible and permanent. The first time we hear it being applied to the Church is actually just a little over a decade after Revelation was written, and it's by a man who knew the apostles. St. Ignatius was dealing with groups of people who, for their own reasons, were quitting their local churches, getting together, and trying to keep doing 'churchy' things on their own, with no power or authority to do it. By doing that, they had cut off their connection to the church Jesus was actually building. So Ignatius told them that the local church is wherever its bishop is, just like “wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the catholic church.”3 The church Ignatius is talking about is complete, whole, an organic unity that stretches not only across the world but also between heaven and earth, because the most important parts of the Church are already in heaven.
Soon after his time, we find more people quitting their churches because they thought they could do Christianity better on their own, either by themselves individually or in little clubs organized around certain teachers. These clubs came up with all sorts of bizarre ideas. They thought they were very smart and were privy to secret knowledge about Jesus that the Church didn't have. And so they looked down on the mainstream Church as being katholikos, in the sense of basically being store-brand Christianity, while their version had to be special-ordered.4 The Church responded by embracing the word 'catholic' even more fervently, because true Christianity isn't just for a little elite club, it's for everybody – that's part of what 'catholic' gets across – and yet still has the fullness of truth.
Then, persecution came, and in the wake, some people thought that the church leaders had handled things badly, mostly by being too forgiving to those who had stumbled under pressure. Thinking that the Church had been corrupted, these hardliners split off and tried to start their own church – a whole alternative assembly they began in one little corner of the world. But the real Church answered back that a little regional project can't be the Church Jesus wanted. Jesus came to gather the whole world in his wide net. And so, they said, the real Church is catholic, in the sense that it has “an international and universal diffusion.”5
By the time our Creed was all put together, 'catholic' had become a codeword that compressed a lot of things into it. We're saying that this is the universal church – the one that believes the whole truth and uses it to effect a whole healing, and then offers this whole truth and whole healing to the whole world throughout the whole of time, and that this is all and only true because this Church embraces the whole Jesus in his whole fullness, with the whole range of his gifts. That is the meaning compressed into the word katholikos, which we preserve today in the Creed as 'catholic' – and we keep it untranslated because that's more than any other English word can carry. It reminds us that the church cannot be limited to one skin color, one occupation, one country. It reminds us that the true Church is not a johnny-come-lately invention, nor is her teaching false. We get no tailor-made Christianity that suits our tastes. And not all groups organized by professing Christians actually belong to the Church that Jesus has built and is building.
The Church Jesus built and is building is not just holy and catholic, it's apostolic. Paul tells us that this Church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief cornerstone” (Ephesians 2:20). Not only was the Church built on and led by the apostles, but the Church was marked by receiving their teaching. From the day of Pentecost, the Church was “devoted to the apostles' teaching” (Acts 2:42). Paul tells the Thessalonians to “stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us” (2 Thessalonians 2:15), he tells the Corinthians to “maintain the traditions even as I have delivered them to you” (1 Corinthians 11:2), he tells the Romans to “watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught” (Romans 16:17), and he tells Timothy to “guard the deposit entrusted to you” (1 Timothy 6:20), which is “the good doctrine that you have followed” (1 Timothy 4:6), and to not let anybody in the church “teach any different doctrine” (1 Timothy 1:3). The Church must remain loyal to that good doctrine, to those traditions.
Now, the local churches that the apostles started eventually spawned other local churches, which early Christians called “the offspring of apostolic churches,” and through those organic connections, they remained all part of the one original apostolic Church.6 The apostles handed these churches over to authorized leaders in each place,7 shepherds who could summon the church together to pray, receive God's word, offer the Christian sacrifice of thanksgiving, and authoritatively declare the business of the kingdom. Apart from those authorized leaders, we're told from the very start, “there is nothing that can be called a church.”8 And down throughout history, the Church – under the direction of those very leaders – spread across the world, sending forth missionary church-planters. Indeed, the entire Church is missionary, because that's part of what it means to be apostolic. The whole Church is sent into the whole world, to spread and reach out with its whole truth. And if we would be apostolic, part of what that means is to have that same spirit in us, the missionary spirit, driving us to be faithful laborers in the harvest.
We confess in the Creed that we believe in “the holy catholic church” – or, in the other Creed, “in one holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” But does that really matter for our life and for our faith? Absolutely it does. The Church is the institution that gives us Christian community – yes, and more than community: gives us communion with heaven and our holy ones already there. The Church is salvation in social form. Jesus can be my Savior and your Savior only because he has chosen to be the Church's Savior. Jesus does not save anyone by themselves, as an island. He saves the Church, the same way God saved the Ark through the Flood. The Church is the Mother of all Christians, and we must embrace and honor our Mother or else we neither embrace nor honor our Father.
That means that the Church is not a social club or a voluntary organization or a cafeteria for the soul. The church is not some social group we can join and leave at whim. The Church is holy, set apart from all other groups, all other corporations, all other families, all other institutions. And so the Church is not a consumer choice. The Church is not a marketplace, nor a market product. It is not tailor-made for anyone but Jesus Christ, who is infinite. Church is not about me or about you. It is not about our preferences for some things being shorter or some things being longer, for some things being familiar or some things being fresher. If those are the thoughts we have as we approach the church, if we approach church like customers who are satisfied or dissatisfied with the service we think is for us, then we are blind to God, blind to Christ, blind to the Church.
No, the Church is holy. The church gathers to pray, receive the word of God, offer sacrifice, and do the business of the kingdom. The Church is here to love her Husband with an all-embracing love – to receive him, know him, and learn to love all that he loves, in the way that he loves it. The Church is here to train her children up in the way they should go, to birth and bathe and feed them, to tend their wounds and give them discipline and point them to their Father's endless horizons. The Church is here to shower her children with the gifts her Husband brought home for them, including all the grace we need to be saved. And “through the Church, the power of God [is] now made known” (Ephesians 3:10), so to God our Father “be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever – Amen!” (Ephesians 3:21).
1 Cyprian of Carthage, On the Unity of the Catholic Church 5-6 (middle of the third century)
2 Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 3.24.1 (last quarter of the second century)
3 Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Smyrnaeans 8.2 (first quarter of the second century)
4 Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 3.15.2 (last quarter of the second century)
5 Optatus of Milevis, Against the Donatists 2.1 (third quarter of the fourth century)
6 Tertullian of Carthage, Prescription Against Heretics 20 (dawn of the third century)
7 See Clement of Rome's late-first-century testimony in 1 Clement 42.4; 44.1-2 (“our apostles... appointed the above-mentioned men and gave them a permanent character so that, as they died, other approved men should succeed to their ministry”); and, from the late second century, Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 3.3.1; 4.26.2 (“as for all the others who are separate from the original succession, in whatever place they gather, they are suspect: they are heretics... or schismatics... or hypocrites...”).
8 Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Trallians 3.1 (dawn of the second century)
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