¹ “This is the single Church of Christ, which in the Creed is professed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, which our Savior, after his resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd (Jn 21:17), and him and the other apostles to extend and direct with authority (cf. Mt 28:18 f.), which he erected for all ages as ‘the pillar and mainstay of the truth’ (1 Tm 3:15). This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in [subsistit in] the Catholic Church, which is governed by the Successor of Peter and by the bishops in communion with him, although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure.”

² See Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Notification on the book of Father Leonardo Boff: “The Church: Charism and Power”: AAS 77 (1985), 758-759; CDF, Declaratio de Iesu Christi atque Ecclesiae unicitate et universalitate salvifica: AAS 92 (2000), 742-765; CDF, Responsa ad quaestiones de aliquibus sententiis ad doctrinam de Ecclesia pertinentibus, June 29, 2007: AAS 99 (2007), 604-608; CDF, Commentary on the Document “Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church: Notitiae 43 (2007), 398-415. See also Wicks, Jared, “Questions and Answers on the Responses of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith”, Ecumenical Trends, vol. 36, no. 7 (July/2007), p. 1-7 & 15Google Scholar.

³ See, for example, Kasper, Walter, That They May All Be One: The Call to Unity, Burns & Oates, London 2004, p. 65Google Scholar; Sullivan, Francis A., “Quaestio Disputata: The Meaning of Subsistit in as Explained by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith”, Theological Studies 69 (2008), p. 116-124CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Quaestio Disputata: A Response to Karl Becker, S. J., On the Meaning of Subsistit In”, Theological Studies 67 (2006), p. 395-409; “The Significance of the Vatican II Declaration that the Church of Christ ‘subsists in’ the Roman Catholic Church”, in R. Latourelle, ed., Vatican II: Assessments and Perspectives, Twenty-Five Years After (1962-1987), 3 vols., Paulist, New York 1989, vol. 2, p. 272-287; Schillebeeckx, Edward, Church: the Human Story of God, Crossroad, New York 1990Google Scholar; The Language of Faith: Essays on Jesus, Theology, and the Church, Orbis Books, Maryknoll (NY) 1995; Valentini, Donato, “The Unicity and the Unity of the Church”, in Declaration Dominus Iesus, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Washington, D.C. 2011, p. 76Google Scholar; Betti, Umberto, “Chiesa di Cristo e Chiesa Cattolica”, Antonianum 61 (1986), p. 726-745Google Scholar.

⁴ For a representative range of metaphysical readings of subsistit in, see, Malloy, , “Subsistit In: Nonexclusive Identity or Full Identity?,” The Thomist (72) 2008, 1-44CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Ratzinger, Joseph, “The Ecclesiology of the Constitution Lumen Gentium,” in Pilgrim Fellowship of Faith: The Church as Communion, ed. Horn, Stephan Otto and Pfnür, Vinzenz (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005), 123-52, at 147Google Scholar; and Dulles, Cardinal Avery, “Letter to the Editor,” America 197.9 (October): 43Google Scholar. Heim, Joseph Ratzinger: Life in the Church and Living Theology, 315. Vorgrimler, Herbert, ed., Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II (New York: Herder & Herder, 1967-1969), 1:150Google Scholar. Ricken, F., “Ecclesia . . . universale salutis sacramentum,” Scholastik 40 (1965), 373Google Scholar. Hipp, Stephen A., “’Est’, ‘Adest, and ‘Subsistit in’ at Vatican II,” Angelicum 91 (2014), 727-794Google Scholar. de La Soujeole, Benoît-Dominique, Introduction to the Mystery of the Church (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), 127-129CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Welch, Lawrence J. and Mansini, Guy O.S.B., “Lumen Gentium No. 8 and Subsistit in Again,” New Blackfriars 90 (2009): 612-613CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Welch, Lawrence J., The Presence of Christ in the Church: Explorations in Theology (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, 2012), 100Google Scholar. Fastiggi, Robert, “The Petrine Ministry and the Indefectibility of the Church,” in Boguslawski, Steven C. and Fastiggi, Robert L., Called to Holiness and Communion: Vatican II on the Church (Scranton: University of Scranton Press, 2009), 175-176Google Scholar.

⁵ Sullivan, Francis A., “Quaestio Disputata: The Meaning of Subsistit in as Explained by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith”, Theological Studies 69 (2008), p. 116-124CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Quaestio Disputata: A Response to Karl Becker, S. J., On the Meaning of Subsistit In”, Theological Studies 67 (2006), p. 395-409CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ The whole of Article 27 of the Belgic Confession, titled, “On the Holy Catholic Church,” runs thusly: “We believe and confess one single catholic or universal church—a holy congregation and gathering of true Christian believers, awaiting their entire salvation in Jesus Christ, being washed by his blood, and sanctified and sealed by the Holy Spirit. This church has existed from the beginning of the world and will last until the end, as appears from the fact that Christ is eternal King who cannot be without subjects. And this holy church is preserved by God against the rage of the whole world, even though for a time it may appear very small in the eyes of men—as though it were snuffed out. For example, during the very dangerous time of Ahab, the Lord preserved from himself seven thousand men who did not bend their knees to Baal. And so this holy church is not confined, bound, or limited to a certain place or certain persons. But it is spread throughout the entire world, though still joined and united in heart and will, in one and the same Spirit, by the power of faith.” One point is particularly relevant here: that the visibility of the Church—its concrete historical existence as society established by Christ and endowed with apostolic authority centering on Peter as its principal shepherd—is not an essential attribute or constitutive principle of the Church. Related to this, it is worth noting that the framers of the Belgic Confession are at least as concerned with the great chasm fixed between the Church from the world—between the order of grace and that of nature—as with its largely invisible universality. However unsound or false the ecclesiology of Lumen Gentium must be to orthodox Calvinists, what it implicitly denies them is of no consequence to their doctrine of the Church.

⁷ Washburn, Christian, “The Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, and Subsistit in,” Josephinum Journal of Theology 22 (2015): p. 145-175Google Scholar.

⁸ See, for example, Livy's History of Rome, Book 27: Maxime movit patres Hasdrubalis transitus in Italiam, vix Hannibali atque eius armis subsistentem. Here, we are told, Italy is only “with difficulty” (vix) “withstanding” (subsistentem) Hannibal's Carthaginian forces. Perhaps more to the point (since we are concerned here, not with human beings, but with the “thinghood” of the Church), in Book V of The Gallic War, Caesar describes the dramatic scene in which neque ancorae funesque subsisterent, neque nautae gubernatoresque vim tempestatis pati possent. Here the term clearly means something like “hold fast.”

⁹ That is, prior to its having acquired a more technical or even metaphysical meaning.

¹⁰ In her superb doctoral dissertation, Die Bedeutung des subsistit in (LG 8): Zum Selbverständnis der katholischen Kirche (Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag, 2002), Alexandra von Teuffenbach alone amongst the theologians provides a more or less comprehensive lexicographical survey of subsistere as it is used by classical Latin authors (see, especially, pp. 90-99). Nevertheless, the fuller implications of the continuity between the poetic, pre-philosophical meaning of subsistere and its later metaphysical signification—so devastating to the special pleading of those who insist on an “ordinary” meaning of subsistere as “existing”—are not fully drawn out.

¹¹ Lonergan, Bernard J. F, The Triune God. Doran, Robert M., Monsour, Daniel, eds., and Shields, Michael G., trans. (Toronto: Published for Lonergan Research Institute of Regis College by University of Toronto Press, 2009), p. 241Google Scholar.

¹² It is worth noting in this connection that Henri de Lubac's Méditation sur l'Eglise, (Paris, 1953), translated as The Splendor of the Church, trans. Michael Mason, (London: Sheed & Ward, 1956), by all accounts so influential on the ecclesiology of Lumen Gentium, was deeply indebted to Pius's encyclical, which it cites more than any other magisterial document. The dangers Pius saw generally in the (derisively-named) nouvelle théologie, and de Lubac's work in particular, concerned mostly the relation of the supernatural to the natural order. De Lubac's ecclesiology does not seem to have been a matter of especial concern to the pope.