What is a "Church?"

On religiousintelligence.co.uk on Monday, 9th June 2008, there was an article,

Anglican dispute sees two rival bishops invited to Lambeth Conference By: George Conger which in the story said:


Last October, Dr Williams wrote to Central Florida Bishop John W Howe reaffirming the traditional view that the diocese, not the national church or province, was the primary ecclesial entity within the Anglican Communion

“The organ of union with the wider Church is the Bishop and the Diocese rather than the Provincial structure as such,” Dr Williams said. “The Bishop and the Diocese” were the “primary locus of ecclesial identity rather than the abstract reality of the ‘national church’,” he noted.

Unfortunately, the writer used used the ecclesiastical term Traditional with a lower case "T." If he had used the upper case which is none other than the New Testament word paradosis, he would have been right on the ball, for the definition given by Archbishop Rowan Williams is none other than the Tradition of the Church for the last 2,000 years: "The Bishop and the Diocese” were the “primary locus of ecclesial identity ."

Oh that all the Churches and churches would teach this rather than congregationalism or nationalism or worse yet, individualism! How that could help us all. Our Unity is Christ's Body-- Christ, and in Him we are already and always have been ONE, not because we all agree that we are, but because Christ cannot be divided. What we are doing on all sides is trying (for it is impossible, 'kicking against the pricks,') to separate a part of Christ from Christ. That is called sin, against Christ, the Spirit, and the Father; trying to separate ourselves or others from Christ, and it is a sin against the Spirit, for the Spirit is Life and the Spirit is Truth Herself, and a sin against the Father, for this has been the Mystery from the foundation of the world which was revealed in Christ as the will of the Father. I thank God that God is God and that there is no other God but God.