Local and Universal: A Free Church Account of Ecclesial Catholicity

In the words of the creeds, the church is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic body of Christ.

Of those features, perhaps none is as misunderstood as the church's catholicity (that is, its universality)—because while the church is universal, it is also radically local, connected to a particular community or even found on a specific street corner. How might we reclaim the universality of the church without losing its local situatedness?

In this Studies in Christian Doctrine and Scripture vol...