Jesus and His Church: A Study of the Idea of the Ecclesia in the New Testament

Contents I. The Teaching of Jesus II. The Primitive Church III. The Unity of the Apostolic Teaching IV. Conclusion
The essence of the book is a five-fold argument. First, in Part One evidence is collected from the first three Gospels, under these five heads, to prove that the teaching and activity of Jesus were directed to the gathering of a community, the true Israel, the newly constituted People of God. Second, the five marks of the new community, already discovered in the mind of our Lord, are seen to characterize the life of the Promitive Church … third, the same five marks reappear in all the main types of teaching in the New Testament.
–from the Preface to the 2nd edition