Solus Christus (Christ alone) versus totus Christus (the whole Christ). If one wants to capture the difference between the evangelical faith and Roman Catholicism, here it is.
On the one hand, the evangelical stress on the uniqueness of Jesus’s person (the God-man) and His atoning work; on the other, the Roman Catholic insistence on the organic relationship between Christ and the Church.
Essential to Roman Catholicism is that the Church is considered a prolongation of the Incarnation, mirroring Christ as a Divine-human reality, acting as an altera persona Christi, a second ‘Christ.’ The threefold ministry of Christ as King, Priest, and Prophet is thus transposed to the Roman Church – in its hierarchical rule, its magisterial interpretation of the word, and its administration of the sacraments. There is never solus Christus (Christ alone), only Christus in ecclesia (Christ in the church) and ecclesia in Christo (the church in Christ).
