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V olume 18 • N o 5
Y
FEBRUARY 2018
Mother Church
ears ago I watched a series of
interviews on the television of
inmates at the state prison. They
were asked about their background, their
family life, their parents. Several of
them mentioned what losers their fathers
were: harsh, cruel, negligent, drunks,
etc. Yet without exception they warmly
commended their mothers. “She was a good
woman,” they’d say. Or, “She had a good
heart.” William Fox (1879-1952), founder
of Fox Film, which eventually would
merge into movie giant Twentieth Century
Fox, according to his recent biographer
hated his father, who was an adulterer and
indifferent to his children. When his father
died he cursed his corpse and spit on his
coffin. Yet he adored his mother. Why the
contrast? Because with few exceptions
mother-love prevails. Those who bear,
birth and nurture children establish a bond
with those children that perseveres. Even
hardened criminals, calloused to all that
is good and worthwhile, recognize its
depth and beauty and appreciate it. The
unparalleled strength of mother-love lies
behind the rhetorical question of Isaiah
49:15:
“Can a woman forget her nursing child,
that she should have no compassion
on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.
The Reformers enthusiastically employed
the metaphor of motherhood found in
Galatians 4:6 (“the Jerusalem above… is
our mother”). The church, says Luther in
his Large Catechism, “is the mother that
brings to birth and sustains every Christian
through the Word of God.” Calvin entitles
Book IV of the Institutes, “The true
Church, and the Necessity of our Union
with Her, Being the Mother of all the
Faithful.” Calvin said of the visible (not
the invisible) church,
[L]et us learn even from the simple
title “mother” how useful, indeed
how necessary, it is that we should
know [the church]. For there is no
other way to enter life unless this
mother conceive us in her womb,
give us birth, nourish us at her breast,
and lastly, unless she keep us under
her care and guidance until, putting
off mortal flesh, we become like the
angels. Our weakness does not allow
us to be dismissed from her school
until we have been pupils all our lives.
Furthermore, away from her bosom
one cannot hope for any forgiveness
of sins or any salvation.
“Note that the church, here called ‘Mother,’
is the visible church,” says John McNeil in
his footnotes accompanying the standard
translation of the Institutes, “and that the
mother function of the church, bearing
and nourishing believers, is necessary to
salvation.” “The church,” says Calvin in
his commentary on Ephesians 4:11-13,
“is the common mother of all the godly,
which bears, nourishes, and governs in the
Lord both kings and commoners; and this
is done by the ministry.” Calvin endorsed
another of Cyprian’s sayings, “that he who
would have God as his father must have
the church as his mother.”
Continued Page 2
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