Every Sunday we recite the Nicene Creed. In it we declare, “We believe in one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic church.” We do not often pause to reflect deeply on this line. Yet these are the four marks attributed to the church during the First Council of Constantinople in A.D. 381, which led to the creed that we recite today. These four marks serve as a point of discernment, helping us to recognize the presence of the church of Jesus Christ. They are always present, even if not always clearly visible, and they refer to the church as a whole, rather than to its individual members.
At the start of the recent Synod on Synodality, I had a conversation with Agbonkhianmeghe E. Orobator, S.J., a distinguished African theologian who is now the dean of the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University in Berkeley, Calif. During our discussion, he spoke about the marks of a synodal church that emerged from the instrumentumlaboris for the synod. This idea sparked my imagination.
Now that we have the final document of the synod, I believe looking at the document through the four “marks” is a way to make the document more accessible and understandable.
What are the most vital “marks” or attributes of a synodal church as revealed in the text?
It took the early church nearly 400 years to articulate the four marks that we profess in the Nicene Creed. It may also take some time to determine the definitive marks of a synodal church. In the meantime, we must remain attentive to, and reflective on, this crucial theme. If synodality is indeed a constitutive dimension of the church (as stated in Paragraphs 12 and 28 of the instrumentumlaboris), then we should expect to observe certain attributes when synodality is flourishing and maturing.
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With thanks to America and Charles Jason Gordon, where this article originally appeared.
