From The Household Of God (1954):
“It is surely a fact of inexhaustible significance that what our Lord left behind Him was not a book, nor a creed, nor a system of thought, nor a rule of life, but a visible community.”(p 20)
“In the New Testament...we do not find that our Lord first laid down a compendium of doctrine and then invited those who believed it to form an association on that basis. The personal fellowship and the doctrine were given together, and in such wise that in both there was room for ever-new growth. The divine society into which He admitted men was more than a school of correct theology. It was a personal fellowship of those who believed in Him, who had yet many things to learn which they would only learn slowly and stumblingly, but who could be trusted to be His ambassadors to the world and the foundation stones of His Church because they abode in Him. To them He gave no authorized creed. The boundaries of His society were not to be fixed by subscription to a precisely formulated theology. He gave them the two sacraments of His death and resurrection by which His visible society would be defined. And within these limits they would have the perfect freedom of the Spirit who would lead them into all the truth.” (p 79)
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