In a previous article I showed that the first effect of the Word was to create a community, and this time I want to speak about this community, showing first what it meant for the Old Testament, and then how the notion was deepened in the New. Textbooks sometimes approach this matter by asking themselves whether Christ founded a church to exist after him, and showing that he did so by reference to various gospel texts. The inadequacy of this lies in the fact that it conceives the possibility of Christ's not having founded a church. When we see Christ in the context of scripture we see that the Church is not an institution which Christ decided to have but might have decided not to have. When we see Christ in his Old Testament background, as he is presented by the New Testament, we see the Church as inevitable. Of course, God might not have planned to have a church but this would have meant having a totally different plan for the world. The Father's plan, as we learn from the tremendous last epistles of St Paul, was to bring all things to fulfilment in Christ.