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The Gospel and the Catholic Church: Recapturing a Biblical Understanding of the Church as the Body of Christ
This reissue of Archbishop Ramsey s classic theological study of Anglican views of the church is important for students of ecumenism, and for those concerned with the relationship between Christ and the church in the New Testament. Although some of the book is dated, its conviction that the church's meaning lies in its fulfillment of the sufferings of Christ and that every part of its history is intelligible in terms of the Passion remains perceptive and challenging.
Examining Scripture, doctrine, and history, Ramsey paints an intricate portrait of the church as an example of Christ's death and resurrection. He explores Eastern Orthodox doctrine; explains the purposes and preconditions of the Reformation; and calls for a renewal of liturgical worship and reconciliation within the communion of the saints.
Originally published in 1936 while he was serving as sub-warden of Lincoln Theological College, this was Ramsey's first book. After more than seventy years, its wisdom concerning the relationship between Catholic and Evangelical, and the underlying complementarities and tensions which characterize the Anglican tradition, remains theologically sound and biblically astute.
Examining Scripture, doctrine, and history, Ramsey paints an intricate portrait of the church as an example of Christ's death and resurrection. He explores Eastern Orthodox doctrine; explains the purposes and preconditions of the Reformation; and calls for a renewal of liturgical worship and reconciliation within the communion of the saints.
Originally published in 1936 while he was serving as sub-warden of Lincoln Theological College, this was Ramsey's first book. After more than seventy years, its wisdom concerning the relationship between Catholic and Evangelical, and the underlying complementarities and tensions which characterize the Anglican tradition, remains theologically sound and biblically astute.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1936
47 people are currently reading
168 people want to read
About the author
Arthur Michael Ramsey
96 books13 followersServed as the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury from 1961 - 1974.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
January 12, 2015
I've spent a fair amount of time in Anglican schools and churches, and not once has this book been covered, which is truly a shame. I don't know what he was intending to write when he did this, but it is probably the closest thing I've come across to an Anglican systematic. He centers his exploration on the four points of the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral (Sacraments, Scripture, Creeds, and Apostolicity) and explores at length how the life, death, and resurrection of Christ is manifested and plays itself out in each point. Good read for anyone wanting to get more acquainted with Anglican thought outside of the descriptive books one finds in more Adult ed courses.
July 25, 2022
Absolute Catechetical Banger™️
September 19, 2022
Brilliant overview of the theological underpinnings of the Anglican Church.
Ramsey easily weaves through history, theology, philosophy and pastoral encouragement. I found this book very helpful for my faith indeed.
Ramsey easily weaves through history, theology, philosophy and pastoral encouragement. I found this book very helpful for my faith indeed.
May 10, 2024
Required reading.
Still pondering many of the things in this text. Main takeaways at the moment are:
-The Church is the Body of Christ, the body is organic, and the Episcopate is a part of that body.
-The Episcopate is the outworking of Christ's authority passed down to the Apostles and then down to the first Bishops.
-The Church exists primarily as a people grounded in the death and resurrection of Christ. Any social, political, or philosophical things attached to it come after. Being a Christian is not about being a "good person" or a "good conservative/liberal" or a "good citizen", but someone utterly convinced and glorying in the reality of the death and resurrection of Christ.
-The Church is not merely the invisible body of believers, but also the visible and historical group of people. In order for it to be truly incarnational it does need to be visible.
-The center of worship is adoration. We worship because God is good, not because He can do things for us.
Solid book, a touch biased towards the Orthodox Church and (obviously) the Anglican. Ramsey is a great writer and scholar, and I'll be happy to read more of his material. I'm also struck by how weak my own Ecclesiology is, but that's to be expected perhaps given the traditions I've been a part of.
Still pondering many of the things in this text. Main takeaways at the moment are:
-The Church is the Body of Christ, the body is organic, and the Episcopate is a part of that body.
-The Episcopate is the outworking of Christ's authority passed down to the Apostles and then down to the first Bishops.
-The Church exists primarily as a people grounded in the death and resurrection of Christ. Any social, political, or philosophical things attached to it come after. Being a Christian is not about being a "good person" or a "good conservative/liberal" or a "good citizen", but someone utterly convinced and glorying in the reality of the death and resurrection of Christ.
-The Church is not merely the invisible body of believers, but also the visible and historical group of people. In order for it to be truly incarnational it does need to be visible.
-The center of worship is adoration. We worship because God is good, not because He can do things for us.
Solid book, a touch biased towards the Orthodox Church and (obviously) the Anglican. Ramsey is a great writer and scholar, and I'll be happy to read more of his material. I'm also struck by how weak my own Ecclesiology is, but that's to be expected perhaps given the traditions I've been a part of.
February 23, 2023
Excellent. Something that every Christian living in America should consider reading. Challenging and encouraging.
February 27, 2023
A PROMINENT ANGLICAN LOOKS HISTORICALLY AT THE CHURCH
Author (and former Archbishop of Canterbury from 1961-1974) Michael Ramsey wrote in the Preface to the first (1936) edition of this book, “The underlying conviction of this book is that the meaning of the Christian Church becomes most clear when it is studied in terms of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The author attempts to apply this conviction to some of the problems concerning the doctrine of the Church. What is the nature of Christian fellowship in contrast with other ideas of unity amongst men? Is Episcopacy merely a convenient form of Church government, or has it some deeper meaning n the Gospel of God?”
He states in the first chapter, “the first need of the Christians, in face of the apathy and the bewilderment abut the Church, is to know and to be able to say plainly what the Church really IS. This does not mean to know and to say what the Church OUGHT to be… Before the Christians can say these things about what the Church ought to be, their first need is to say what the Church is, here and now amid its own failures and the questionings of the bewildered.” (Pg. 5)
He observes, “It is indeed a paradox that the death of Jesus, an event of utter isolation from men, should be the means of fellowship between men and God, and between men and one another… The death is---first of all---the deepest point of the Son of God’s identification of Himself with men and of His entry into the stream of human life.” (Pg. 21)
He says, “But though the Church has died and is risen, the end is not yet; and, by one of the many paradoxes of the New Testament, there is a dying and a rising still to be experienced, and the Church is the scene of dying and rising in every age of history.” (Pg. 40)
He asserts, “The outward order of the Church … is no indifferent matter; if is, on the contrary, of supreme importance since it is found to be related to the Church’s inner meaning and to the Gospel of God itself. For the good news that God has visited and redeemed His people includes the redeemed man’s knowledge of death and resurrection through his place in the one visible society and through the death to self which every member and group has died. And in telling of this one visible society the Church’s outward order tells indeed of the Gospel. For every part of the Church’s true order will bear witness to the one universal family of God and will point to the historic events of the Word-made-flesh.” (Pg. 50)
He acknowledges, “Developments thus took place, but they were all tested. The tests of a true development are whether it bears witness to the Gospel, whether it expresses the general consciousness of the Christians, and whether it serves the organic unity of the Body in all its parts. These tests are summed up in the scriptures, wherein the historical Gospel and the experience of the redeemed and the nature of the one Body are described. Hence, while the Canon of Scripture is in itself a development, it has a special authority to control and to check the whole field of development in life and doctrine.” (Pg. 64)
He states, “The crucial question… for theology is this. Does this developed structure od Episcopacy fulfill the same place in the Church and express the same truth as did the Apostles’ office in Samaria and in Corinth and throughout the Apostolic church? If ‘Paul the Apostle’ represents an important truth by his place and function in the one Body, does the Bishop represent the same truth?... The ministry s important as linking the Christians with the historic events of Jesus Christ, since Christian experience is not a spirituality unrelated to history, but bears witness to its derivation from Jesus in the FLESH… Thus the Church is one Body; its members glorify not themselves and their experiences, but the one historical Christ. And its worship is one…” (Pg. 77-79)
He observes, “Thus Paul’s prayers are not primarily petitions, nor primarily mystical acts of contemplation; they are primarily LITURGICAL, not in the sense that he reads them out of a book, but… that his method is first to recall the action of God, in Christ’s redemption and in the one Body, and only the to utter his petitions by bringing into this action the topical needs with which he is concerned.” (Pg. 89)
He states, “The problem of ‘Creed or No Creed’ … is but a small part of the whole question of the Truth of God. For to this the Church by its recital of Creeds but by its utterance of the Gospel and by the whole life in Christ. The issues of the Truth of God are thus as wide and as varied as are all the issued discussed in Part I of this boo; and it may now be well to ask whither the whole discussion seems to point.” (Pg. 134)
He says, “If the dogmatic debates are sometimes tedious, the theme which dominates the is still the redemptive work of Christ. If there is talk of an earthly kingdom which is the Church, there is still the New Testament sense of the ‘not yet’ and of the eccelsia ‘qualis tunc erit.’ There is, in other words, a doctrine of the mystical Body with its Pauline and the Johannine features still manifest… The study of the Gospel in the New Testament forces us to study the Church of the Fathers; the Church of the Fathers still shows us Christ crucified and risen, and a body which is one.” (Pg. 160)
He asks, “Is Christ divided? In all these ways Catholicism has appeared in broken fragments of what it is meant to be. It is severed into at least three man elements, the Latin, the Eastern Orthodox and the Anglican. Its historic Church order is obscured by these divisions; the place of the Episcopate as the organ of the Church’s universal life and the meaning of the sacraments as the acts of the one Body are sometimes hidden from sight. The name ‘Catholic’ is often linked to piety which is individualistic, and to systems which are sectarian and incomplete. A cry is forced from the Christian’s lips, ‘Is Christ divided?’” (Pg. 174)
He suggests, “The positive witness of the Reformation to the meaning of churchmanship must not be belittled. Yet this witness was incomplete because the Reformers’ return to S. Paul was incomplete. Whereas the New Testament shows us the importance of the Church’s structure… the Reformers omitted from their view of Christianity that element which the Apostolate represented by its place in the Body.” (Pg. 181)
He summarizes, “For while the Anglican church is vindicated by its place in history, with a strikingly balanced witness to Gospel and Church and sound learning, its greater vindication lies in its pointing through its own history to something of which it is a fragment. Its credentials are its incompleteness, with the tension and the travail in its soul. It is clumsy and untidy, it baffles neatness and logic. For it is sent not to commend itself as ‘the best type of Christianity,’ but by its very brokenness to point to the universal Church wherein all have died. Hence its story can never differ from the story of the Church to which the Apostle wrote.” (Pg. 220)
This book will appeal mainly to Anglicans and Episcopalians interested in historical theology.
Author (and former Archbishop of Canterbury from 1961-1974) Michael Ramsey wrote in the Preface to the first (1936) edition of this book, “The underlying conviction of this book is that the meaning of the Christian Church becomes most clear when it is studied in terms of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The author attempts to apply this conviction to some of the problems concerning the doctrine of the Church. What is the nature of Christian fellowship in contrast with other ideas of unity amongst men? Is Episcopacy merely a convenient form of Church government, or has it some deeper meaning n the Gospel of God?”
He states in the first chapter, “the first need of the Christians, in face of the apathy and the bewilderment abut the Church, is to know and to be able to say plainly what the Church really IS. This does not mean to know and to say what the Church OUGHT to be… Before the Christians can say these things about what the Church ought to be, their first need is to say what the Church is, here and now amid its own failures and the questionings of the bewildered.” (Pg. 5)
He observes, “It is indeed a paradox that the death of Jesus, an event of utter isolation from men, should be the means of fellowship between men and God, and between men and one another… The death is---first of all---the deepest point of the Son of God’s identification of Himself with men and of His entry into the stream of human life.” (Pg. 21)
He says, “But though the Church has died and is risen, the end is not yet; and, by one of the many paradoxes of the New Testament, there is a dying and a rising still to be experienced, and the Church is the scene of dying and rising in every age of history.” (Pg. 40)
He asserts, “The outward order of the Church … is no indifferent matter; if is, on the contrary, of supreme importance since it is found to be related to the Church’s inner meaning and to the Gospel of God itself. For the good news that God has visited and redeemed His people includes the redeemed man’s knowledge of death and resurrection through his place in the one visible society and through the death to self which every member and group has died. And in telling of this one visible society the Church’s outward order tells indeed of the Gospel. For every part of the Church’s true order will bear witness to the one universal family of God and will point to the historic events of the Word-made-flesh.” (Pg. 50)
He acknowledges, “Developments thus took place, but they were all tested. The tests of a true development are whether it bears witness to the Gospel, whether it expresses the general consciousness of the Christians, and whether it serves the organic unity of the Body in all its parts. These tests are summed up in the scriptures, wherein the historical Gospel and the experience of the redeemed and the nature of the one Body are described. Hence, while the Canon of Scripture is in itself a development, it has a special authority to control and to check the whole field of development in life and doctrine.” (Pg. 64)
He states, “The crucial question… for theology is this. Does this developed structure od Episcopacy fulfill the same place in the Church and express the same truth as did the Apostles’ office in Samaria and in Corinth and throughout the Apostolic church? If ‘Paul the Apostle’ represents an important truth by his place and function in the one Body, does the Bishop represent the same truth?... The ministry s important as linking the Christians with the historic events of Jesus Christ, since Christian experience is not a spirituality unrelated to history, but bears witness to its derivation from Jesus in the FLESH… Thus the Church is one Body; its members glorify not themselves and their experiences, but the one historical Christ. And its worship is one…” (Pg. 77-79)
He observes, “Thus Paul’s prayers are not primarily petitions, nor primarily mystical acts of contemplation; they are primarily LITURGICAL, not in the sense that he reads them out of a book, but… that his method is first to recall the action of God, in Christ’s redemption and in the one Body, and only the to utter his petitions by bringing into this action the topical needs with which he is concerned.” (Pg. 89)
He states, “The problem of ‘Creed or No Creed’ … is but a small part of the whole question of the Truth of God. For to this the Church by its recital of Creeds but by its utterance of the Gospel and by the whole life in Christ. The issues of the Truth of God are thus as wide and as varied as are all the issued discussed in Part I of this boo; and it may now be well to ask whither the whole discussion seems to point.” (Pg. 134)
He says, “If the dogmatic debates are sometimes tedious, the theme which dominates the is still the redemptive work of Christ. If there is talk of an earthly kingdom which is the Church, there is still the New Testament sense of the ‘not yet’ and of the eccelsia ‘qualis tunc erit.’ There is, in other words, a doctrine of the mystical Body with its Pauline and the Johannine features still manifest… The study of the Gospel in the New Testament forces us to study the Church of the Fathers; the Church of the Fathers still shows us Christ crucified and risen, and a body which is one.” (Pg. 160)
He asks, “Is Christ divided? In all these ways Catholicism has appeared in broken fragments of what it is meant to be. It is severed into at least three man elements, the Latin, the Eastern Orthodox and the Anglican. Its historic Church order is obscured by these divisions; the place of the Episcopate as the organ of the Church’s universal life and the meaning of the sacraments as the acts of the one Body are sometimes hidden from sight. The name ‘Catholic’ is often linked to piety which is individualistic, and to systems which are sectarian and incomplete. A cry is forced from the Christian’s lips, ‘Is Christ divided?’” (Pg. 174)
He suggests, “The positive witness of the Reformation to the meaning of churchmanship must not be belittled. Yet this witness was incomplete because the Reformers’ return to S. Paul was incomplete. Whereas the New Testament shows us the importance of the Church’s structure… the Reformers omitted from their view of Christianity that element which the Apostolate represented by its place in the Body.” (Pg. 181)
He summarizes, “For while the Anglican church is vindicated by its place in history, with a strikingly balanced witness to Gospel and Church and sound learning, its greater vindication lies in its pointing through its own history to something of which it is a fragment. Its credentials are its incompleteness, with the tension and the travail in its soul. It is clumsy and untidy, it baffles neatness and logic. For it is sent not to commend itself as ‘the best type of Christianity,’ but by its very brokenness to point to the universal Church wherein all have died. Hence its story can never differ from the story of the Church to which the Apostle wrote.” (Pg. 220)
This book will appeal mainly to Anglicans and Episcopalians interested in historical theology.
February 21, 2021
This is without a doubt one of the best books I have read in the past couple of years. Ramsey gives one of the clearest articulations of the vital realities of the people of God as one body birthed out of the Gospel of the crucified Messiah, and the theological dangers in losing that conviction. As a work of ecclesiology, it carefully, thoughtfully, and with great charity, examines the history of the Christian Church and the points at which her errors have robbed her people of a clearer appreciation of the Gospel of Christ.
In a feat rare in Anglicanism, Ramsey is able to demonstrate the actual strengths of the Via Media position of the Anglican communion as opposed to its near defacto weakness as existing in permanent compromise. He shows how it is both in Catholic and Protestant witnesses of the Gospel that the people of God are able to be properly constituted within the fellowship that makes them. And how both camps, in their strengths, are prone to weaknesses that must be realized and gracefully addressed.
I am not the world’s fastest reader, but this short work slowed me even further. It is dense and rich, soaked in both the witness of scripture and the truth of the saints. I am not one to usually mark up my books, but there is hardly a page in my copy that doesn’t have some brilliant point underlined. Each chapter could be a whole voluminous series unto itself, and yet the simple conviction is never lost: the Church is shaped by, governed by, and witness to the Gospel of the incarnate and crucified Messiah. Everything about her is defined by this reality. Her scriptures, her structure, all is the Church responding to the Gospel. And our tendencies to one camp or another will invariably weaken our appreciation of and encounter with the Gospel if we are not rooted in those fruits which the Gospel had yielded.
If you are at all interested in Anglican ecclesiology in perhaps its best presentation, this book is without question the one to read.
In a feat rare in Anglicanism, Ramsey is able to demonstrate the actual strengths of the Via Media position of the Anglican communion as opposed to its near defacto weakness as existing in permanent compromise. He shows how it is both in Catholic and Protestant witnesses of the Gospel that the people of God are able to be properly constituted within the fellowship that makes them. And how both camps, in their strengths, are prone to weaknesses that must be realized and gracefully addressed.
I am not the world’s fastest reader, but this short work slowed me even further. It is dense and rich, soaked in both the witness of scripture and the truth of the saints. I am not one to usually mark up my books, but there is hardly a page in my copy that doesn’t have some brilliant point underlined. Each chapter could be a whole voluminous series unto itself, and yet the simple conviction is never lost: the Church is shaped by, governed by, and witness to the Gospel of the incarnate and crucified Messiah. Everything about her is defined by this reality. Her scriptures, her structure, all is the Church responding to the Gospel. And our tendencies to one camp or another will invariably weaken our appreciation of and encounter with the Gospel if we are not rooted in those fruits which the Gospel had yielded.
If you are at all interested in Anglican ecclesiology in perhaps its best presentation, this book is without question the one to read.
November 25, 2021
This was such an incredibly helpful book. Ramsey carefully and thoroughly makes a biblical and theological case for Episcopacy. He does so in a way that doesn't disparage other traditions, he happily highlights what he sees as good in them, but in the end arrives at the conclusion that the Episcopacy most clearly proclaims the Gospel and is the key to Church unity.
As someone who didn't grow up Anglican, this book was beneficial because it helped me better understand the logic and telos of Episcopacy and why it should be taken seriously and defended.
As someone who didn't grow up Anglican, this book was beneficial because it helped me better understand the logic and telos of Episcopacy and why it should be taken seriously and defended.
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May 14, 2025Really, really good, sets out a coherent Anglo-Catholic theology of the Church without relying on major ahistoricity, while also relating the Church to the Gospel in a way which, for me, was very enlightening.
July 4, 2019
Very dense and academic, but well-reasoned arguments about church unity, the Episcopacy, and the meaning of the Church.
October 7, 2019
Occasionally brilliant but for me too often much too technical. But a robust defence of Anglicanism.
October 27, 2020
A classic!
January 23, 2022
Anglican classic on Eucharistic Ecclesiology
March 26, 2024
Although I think episcopal church government is important, I don't see it as vital as Abp. Ramsey.
I really liked his focus on the Gospel and Christ as the center of the Church.
I really liked his focus on the Gospel and Christ as the center of the Church.
March 29, 2011
Written by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsay (published in the '20s originally), this is a nice reissue by Hendrickson. Ramsey is not so much interested in the Roman Catholic Church, as the "catholic" or universal, church. The book is ecumenically spirited and he has much good, but also much criticism, of both the Roman Church and the Reformation (though his utter lack of mentioning, let alone dealing with, Calvin seemed a bit of an oversight). Moreso than this, however, the book is about the core of the Church, the gospel. He argues that the Church today has many forms, but at the heart and the root, they all stand upon the gospel. Most of the book, in fact, is taken up with explaining this gospel in all its richness, emphasizing the importance of the Church, the role of Christ as the center, and the vital nature of our union with Christ in the sacraments. Very enjoyable, and I learned a little about Anglicanism in the process.
December 19, 2015
Just grand. This is a profound meditation on the Gospel and the universal or "catholic" Church, especially as it relates to the Ecclesia Anglicana. "Hence "Catholicism" and "Evangelicalism" are not two separate things that the Church of England must hold together by a great feat of compromise. Rightly understood, they are both facts that lie behind the Church of England and, as the New Testament shows, they are one fact. A church's witness to the one church of the ages is part of its witness to the gospel of God."
August 11, 2011
Ramsey's "The Gospel and the Catholic Church" is a profound meditation on the relationship between the two. I highly recommend it as a means of discovering the deeper meaning of both the gospel and the Church as means of expressing the death and resurrection of Christ. For a more complete review, see: http://www.amazon.com/Gospel-Catholic...
October 29, 2013
What can I say? Twenty plus years later its my second time through this book, which is a classic of catholic Anglicanism. Oh for the age of the scholar bishop!
January 29, 2008
If I can find a copy of this for less than $80 I'll be a happy camper.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews