Christ Founded a Visible Church

Jun 7th, 2009 | By Bryan Cross | Category: Featured Articles

One of the most fundamental differences between the Protestant and Catholic ecclesial paradigms concerns the nature of the Church that Christ founded. According to the predominant Protestant paradigm, the Church itself is a spiritual, invisible entity, though some of its members, namely, all those believers still living in this present life, are visible, because they are embodied.

Pentecost
Jean Restout II, 1732
Musée du Louvre, Paris

In the Protestant paradigm, anyone who has true faith in Christ is ipso facto a member of the one Church that Christ founded. This Protestant paradigm does not acknowledge that Christ founded a visible hierarchically organized Body.¹ By contrast, the Catholic Church for 2,000 years has believed and taught that the incarnate Christ founded a visible, hierarchically organized Body. In the Catholic paradigm, faith in Christ is not sufficient by itself to make a person a member of this Body; a believer is incorporated into this Body by valid baptism, but is removed from this Body either by heresy, apostasy, schism, or excommunication.

The Reformed confessions affirm the visibility of the Church, so that raises a particular question: with respect to visibility, how is Reformed ecclesiology distinct both from the common Protestant ecclesial paradigm and from Catholic ecclesiology? In this article we first show that Christ founded His Church as a visible Body, and why He did so. Then we present the various positions and argue that the Reformed ecclesiology is equivalent in essence to the common Protestant ecclesial paradigm. Finally, we draw out some important implications following from the visibility of the Church.

Contents:

I. The Body of Christ is a Visible Unity
II. Why Visible Unity is a Mark of the Church: Discipline & Schism
III. Denial of Visibility is Ecclesial Docetism
IV. What the Catholic Church Teaches About the Visibility of the Church
V. Reformed positions, and critique
VI. Implications
VII. Conclusion

I. The Body of Christ Is a Visible Unity

A. The Church Is the Body of Christ; He Is the Head of His Mystical Body

And I say to you, that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. (Matthew 16:18.)

One reason Christ came into the world is to build His Church, that through and in His Church men might ultimately come to eternal life, that is, to the beatific vision of the Triune God.² In the New Testament we find different terms used to show distinct aspects of the Church. One such term is “the Body of Christ” [σώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ]. To distinguish the Body of Christ which is the Church, from the body of Christ that was born of the Virgin Mary 2,000 years ago and now sits at the right hand of God the Father, we refer to the former as the “Mystical Body of Christ” and the latter as the physical Body of Christ.³

Concerning the Mystical Body of Christ, St. Paul writes to the saints in the church at Rome:

For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one Body in Christ, and individually members one of another. (Romans 12:4-5)

St. Paul writes to the church at Corinth:

For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. For the Body is not one member, but many. If the foot says, “Because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. And if the ear says, “Because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body,” it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the Body, just as He desired. If they were all one member, where would the Body be? But now there are many members, but one Body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”; or again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the Body which seem to be weaker are necessary; and those members of the Body which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our less presentable members become much more presentable, whereas our more presentable members have no need of it. But God has so composed the Body, giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked, so that there may be no division in the Body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are Christ’s Body, and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the Church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, various kinds of tongues. All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, are they? All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of miracles, are they? All do not have gifts of healings, do they? All do not speak with tongues, do they? All do not interpret, do they? But earnestly desire the greater gifts. (1 Corinthians 12:12-31.)

To the saints at Colossae St. Paul writes:

He [Christ] is also Head of the Body, the Church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. . . . Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His Body, which is the Church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions. (Colossians 1:18,24.)

And to the saints at Ephesus St. Paul writes:

And He [God the Father] put all things in subjection under His [Christ's] feet, and gave Him as Head over all things to the Church, which is His Body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. (Ephesians 1:22.)

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him, who is the Head, Christ, from whom the whole Body, joined and knit together by every joint with which it is supplied, when each part is working properly, causes the growth of the Body for the building up of itself in love. (Ephesians 4:15-16.)

For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the Head of the Church, He Himself being the Savior of the Body. (Ephesians 5:23.)

In these passages St. Paul teaches that the Mystical Body of Christ is a unity; it is one Body. God has composed it so that there would be no division in it. Yet, in another sense, the Body is a plurality, because it has many members. And yet the members are joined together in one and the same Body. Each of the members of the Body has a different place and function in the Body. They do not all have the same function or role. Some are apostles, some are prophets, some are teachers, etc., each according to his gifts. And St. Paul teaches that some gifts are greater than others, even while each member is dependent on the others. This mutual dependency is true not only of the hands and feet, but even of the Head; the Head cannot say to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’⁴ In this way, the Body is hierarchically organized, each of the subordinate functions contributing to the unified activity of the whole Body.⁵ If the Body were not hierarchically organized, there would be many different activities, but not one unified activity. There would be many different individuals, and not one Body.

At the top of the hierarchy is Christ, the Head of the Body. The Head and members together form one Body, with one shared divine life. The life of a body is its soul, in which all the members of the body are made to be alive and to share in the same life of the body. So likewise, the Life of the Body of Christ is the Holy Spirit, who is the Soul of the Church.⁶ This is why St. Paul says that by one Spirit the Corinthian believers were baptized into one Body and all made to drink of that one Spirit. This incorporation into Christ’s Mystical Body is what is meant by union with Christ. When St. Paul says, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me,” (Gal. 2:20) this should not be understood in an individualistic ‘me-and-Jesus’ sense, but as referring to our union with Christ in His Mystical Body, the Church. Our union with Christ is accomplished through our incorporation into His Mystical Body, the Church, which is composed of many members. Likewise, when St. Paul says in Galatians 3:27-28 that those who have been baptized into Christ are all one in Christ, he is referring to believers being incorporated into the unity of Christ’s Mystical Body, the Church. Concerning that union, St. Augustine wrote:

Let us rejoice and give thanks that we have become not only Christians, but Christ. Do you understand, brothers, the grace of Christ our Head? Wonder at it, rejoice: we have become Christ. For if He is the Head, we are the members; He and we form the whole man . . . the fullness of Christ, therefore; the head and the members. What is the head and the members? Christ and the Church.”⁷

Notice the strong language that St. Augustine uses. Because of our union with Christ the Head in His Mystical Body, we are not only Christians, but, in a true sense, Christ. How is that possible? Because the members and Head form one “whole man.” Of that “whole man” St. Thomas Aquinas wrote:

The Head and members are as one mystical person [quasi una persona mystica] and therefore Christ’s satisfaction belongs to all the faithful as being His members.⁸

St. Augustine and St. Thomas both maintained that through baptism we are incorporated into Christ’s Mystical Body, and that this union is not extrinsic, but intrinsic.⁹ Through baptism we are incorporated into a unity greater than ourselves, and so become one with the Head and other members, yet without losing our individual identity.¹⁰ This unity of the Mystical Body is a visible unity, precisely because it is the unity of a Body. Bodies are visible and hierarchically organized, not invisible.¹¹ Because the Church is a Body, the Church is essentially visible.¹² The visibility of the Body is not reducible to the visibility of certain of its members; the Church per se is visible, just as your body per se is visible. Because the Church is a Body, “it must also be something definite and perceptible to the senses.”¹³ In order to understand how the Body is visible, we need to consider the ways in which a living body is unified.¹⁴

B. The Three Ways in Which a Body Is Unified

An organism is unified fundamentally in three ways. First, an organism is unified in its essence. Each of its parts shares the very same essence. All the cells of our human bodies are human cells. All the cells of a sunflower plant are sunflower cells. They all share the very same formal nature. And so, as St. Paul says in Ephesians 4:5, in the Church there is “one faith.” We all believe the same thing with respect to the faith of the Church. Throughout the history of the Church, when a catechumen is incorporated into the Mystical Body of Christ through baptism, he publicly affirms the Creed, which is the faith of the Church. We are formally unified in the Mystical Body of Christ because we all believe the same doctrine. If the Church has not pronounced any decision regarding some question of doctrine, we may have different opinions about such questions. But the members cannot be formally unified as a Body if they are divided on doctrines concerning which the Church has definitively ruled. This is why Pope Pius XII wrote:

Hence they err in a matter of divine truth, who imagine the Church to be invisible, intangible, a something merely ‘pneumatological’ as they say, by which many Christian communities, though they differ from each other in their profession of faith, are united by an invisible bond.¹⁵

To be one in essence, all the members of the Body must believe and profess all that the Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.

Second, an organism is unified in its activity. Each part of an organism is performing some specific task, but each of these specific tasks is part of a larger unified activity, the activity of the whole organism. Likewise, in the Mystical Body all the individual activities of the members must be coordinated to the overall activity of the living organism that is the Church. What is the overall activity of this Mystical Body? It is the activity of the Head; it is the life of Christ. We all, in union with Christ, offer ourselves up to God as living sacrifices. We do so most fully in the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, when we offer ourselves up to the Father in union with Christ’s sacrifice, and in return are nourished by His grace. The Mystical Body is one by its unified sacramental life: “Since there is one bread, we who are many are one body; for we all partake of the one bread.” (1 Cor. 10:17.) The members of the Mystical Body are dynamically unified because, through their partaking of the same sacraments, they all are engaged in one and the same liturgical activity. The dynamic Life of Christ the Head comes to the members of His Body through the sacraments. St. Paul refers to this in Colossians 2:19, where he writes, “and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the entire Body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.” The sacraments are the channels or arteries Christ has established in His Body by which the members of His Body receive the grace of divine life that flows from the Head.¹⁶ This is precisely why those who do not participate in the sacraments or in all the same sacraments are “deprived of a constitutive element of the Church” and “cannot be called “Churches” in the proper sense”.¹⁷

Third, an organism is unified in its hierarchy. Not every part of the organism is the head. The parts of a body are ordered hierarchically, in systems, organs, tissues, and so on. We saw this above in 1 Corinthians 12 in St. Paul’s description of the Mystical Body of Christ. If there were no hierarchy, then the whole would not be a body; it would be like a pin-cushion, Christ being the cushion, and all believers the pins, each one individually, directly, and independently of the others, connected to Him. That is why the Church, since it is a Body, must be hierarchically ordered. Members serve the Head (and whole) by serving the part of the Body proximate to themselves, according to the gifts and capacities with which they have been equipped, and under the authority of the hierarchy according to their place within it. The hierarchy of a body must be unified in the sense that each member of the hierarchy must be ordered to the head. If there were two or more hierarchies–that is, if there were two or more ultimate ends toward which members were ordered–there would either be two distinct organisms present, or something equivalent to a cancer within an organism.¹⁸ Because the existence of a body requires hierarchical unity among its members, so likewise the existence of the Mystical Body of Christ requires hierarchical unity among its members.

These three modes of unity correspond also to Christ’s three roles as prophet, priest, and king, respectively. Christ is the perfect prophet, and this entails that the members of His Mystical Body share one faith. Christ is the perfect high priest, and this entails that the members of His Mystical Body participate in the same liturgical activity, and thus in the same sacraments. And because Christ is the perfect king, this entails that the members of His Mystical Body share one visible hierarchy, and thus one visible magisterium. In this way, Christ’s perfect fulfillment of the roles of prophet, priest, and king entails the three “bonds of unity” in the Church.¹⁹ These are also the three ways in which the Church is visible. She is visibly united in her shared profession of faith, her shared celebration of the same sacraments, and in her shared ecclesial hierarchy, each of these three having been received and passed down by succession from the Apostles.²⁰

C. Visibility and Unified Hierarchy of the Mystical Body

“Other sheep I have, that are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd.” (John 10:16.)

When we are talking about the visibility of the Church in the context of an ecumenical discussion involving Catholics and Protestants, we are talking primarily about the third mode of unity, because in the ecumenical dialogue the relevant question concerning visibility is this: When Christ founded His Church, did He establish the Church with essential unity not only in doctrine, and in sacraments, but also in its visible hierarchical government? In other words, is visible hierarchical unity part of the essence of Christ’s Mystical Body? Protestants and Catholics, though disagreeing somewhat regarding the content of the one deposit of faith, at least agree that Christ established the Church with unity of doctrine, that is, with one deposit of faith. Likewise, though Protestants and Catholics do not agree about the number and nature of the sacraments, they do agree that Christ instituted one sacramental order and gave it to the Apostles as part of the deposit of faith entrusted to the Church. Essential unity of faith and sacraments can be seen in Ephesians 4:5, where St. Paul says that there is “one faith, one baptism.”

But when we come to the question of unity of hierarchy, Protestants and Catholics do not agree. Protestants either claim that the visible hierarchical unity Christ initially provided to His Mystical Body was accidental (i.e., non-essential) and hence capable of being lost (and was in fact eventually lost), or they claim that Christ’s Mystical Body was never given visible hierarchical unity in the first place. The Catholic position, on the other hand, is that visible hierarchical unity belongs to the essence of Christ’s Mystical Body.²¹ For that reason, according to Catholic doctrine, hierarchical unity cannot be lost unless the Mystical Body ceases to exist. But since the Mystical Body cannot cease to exist, because it shares in the very life of the Son of God over whom death is powerless, therefore the visible hierarchical unity cannot be lost.²²

For there to be a visible hierarchy, it is not enough for each member to be ordered to an invisible Head. Merely being ordered to an invisible Head is fully compatible with having no visible hierarchy. Yet for there to be a visible hierarchy, some visible human persons need to have an ecclesial authority that others do not. According to Catholic doctrine, the authority Christ gave to His Apostles and their successors is three-fold: the authority to teach, the authority to lead men to holiness by way of the sacraments, and the authority to govern the Church.²³ These also correspond to Christ’s threefold office of prophet, priest, and king. Furthermore, for a visible hierarchy to be one, it must have a visible head. Only if each member of a visible hierarchy is ordered to one visible head can the visible hierarchy itself be one. And only if the visible head is essentially one can the visible hierarchy be essentially one. If the visible head of the hierarchy were plural, then the visible hierarchy would not be essentially unified, but at most only accidentally unified.

Since Christ, having ascended into Heaven, is no longer visible to us (“and a cloud received Him out of their sight,” Acts 1:9), therefore He appointed a visible steward (or ‘vicar’) before His ascension, to be the visible head of His visible Body. The single visible head of the visible hierarchy is implied when Jesus says, “there shall be one fold and one shepherd”. (John 10:16) Regarding Christ’s establishment of a visible head of His Body, Pope Pius XII wrote:

But we must not think that He rules only in a hidden or extraordinary manner. On the contrary, our Redeemer also governs His Mystical Body in a visible and normal way through His Vicar on earth. You know, Venerable Brethren, that after He had ruled the “little flock” Himself during His mortal pilgrimage, Christ our Lord, when about to leave this world and return to the Father, entrusted to the Chief of the Apostles the visible government of the entire community He had founded. He was all wise; and how could He leave without a visible head the body of the Church He had founded as a human society. Nor against this may one argue that the primacy of jurisdiction established in the Church gives such a Mystical Body two heads. For Peter in view of his primacy is only Christ’s Vicar; so that there is only one chief Head of this Body, namely Christ, who never ceases Himself to guide the Church invisibly, though at the same time He rules it visibly, through him who is His representative on earth. After His glorious Ascension into Heaven this Church rested not on Him alone, but on Peter, too, its visible foundation stone. That Christ and His Vicar constitute one only Head is the solemn teaching of Our predecessor of immortal memory Boniface VIII in the Apostolic Letter Unam Sanctam; and his successors have never ceased to repeat the same. ²⁴

When Christ ascended, there would not have been visible hierarchical unity among the twelve Apostles had Christ not given unique authority to one of them to be the visible head. Before His ascension Christ gave to Peter the keys of the Kingdom, charged him to strengthen his brothers, and appointed him to feed Christ’s sheep until He returned.²⁵  If Christ had not established an essentially unified visible head, any schism at the vertex of the visible hierarchy would separate His Mystical Body into two or more Bodies. Hence St. Jerome says:

But you say, the Church was founded upon Peter: although elsewhere the same is attributed to all the Apostles, and they all receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the strength of the Church depends upon them all alike, yet one among the twelve is chosen so that when a head has been appointed, there may be no occasion for schism.²⁶

And Pope Leo XIII, says,

Indeed no true and perfect human society can be conceived which is not governed by some supreme authority. Christ therefore must have given to His Church a supreme authority to which all Christians must render obedience. For this reason, as the unity of the faith is of necessity required for the unity of the church, inasmuch as it is the body of the faithful, so also for this same unity, inasmuch as the Church is a divinely constituted society, unity of government, which effects and involves unity of communion, is necessary jure divino. “The unity of the Church is manifested in the mutual connection or communication of its members, and likewise in the relation of all the members of the Church to one head.”²⁷

We see here that grace does not destroy nature, but builds on it and perfects it. This is why villages and cities have mayors, and even why our country has a president. Just as in a natural society there needs to be a unified hierarchy and a visible head, so in the society of the faithful there must be a unified hierarchy and a visible head. For the same reason that virtually every Protestant congregation has a head pastor, the entire visible Church also requires a visible head. The Church as a visible organism preserves the visible head established by Christ, and thus retains all three marks of unity. Without a visible head, the Mystical Body would be reduced to the ontological equivalent of visible pins invisibly connected to an invisible pin-cushion. That is because without a visible head, a visible hierarchy is only accidentally one, because intrinsically it is potentially many separate hierarchies. Many separate hierarchies are not a visible unity; they are ontologically equivalent to many separate individuals.  They are a mere plurality, not an actual unity.

A ‘visible Church’ made up of separate visible hierarchies would be equivalent in its disunity to a merely invisible Church having some visible members.²⁸ Therefore a visible head belongs to the essence of the Mystical Body, since a body cannot have mere accidental unity, but must have unity essentially. In other words, an ecclesiology that is analogous to visible pins invisibly connected to an invisible pin-cushion is equivalent to a denial of the visibility of Christ’s Mystical Body because  such an ecclesiology denies the essentially unified hierarchy necessary for a body to be a body. It makes no difference whether the pins are individual Christians or individual congregations. Without an essentially unified visible hierarchy, a composite whole cannot be a body, let alone a visible body. And when hierarchical unity is abandoned, nothing preserves unity of faith or unity of sacraments. In this way each one of the three “bonds of unity” depends on the other two.²⁹

II. Why Visible Unity Is a Mark of the Church: Discipline & Schism

A. Discipline.

The Church must be one, because Christ is one, and God is one. Scripture repeatedly proscribes divisions, an imperative that makes no sense in an “invisible church” ecclesiology. Likewise if the Church per se were not visible, then our “call to communion” would be both impossible to achieve and already achieved, so not much of a “call” at all.  Here we can point to passages of Scripture that show the importance of church discipline, and obedience to ecclesial authority:³⁰

And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the Church; and if he refuses to listen even to the Church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax-gatherer.  (Matthew 18:17.)

Jesus had just said in Matthew 16 that He would build His Church, a singular thing. Now here, in Matthew 18:17, through what He says about Church discipline, He shows us that the Church has a visible hierarchy, something to which we can tell things, and (perhaps more importantly) to which we can listen. This verse shows that the Church can excommunicate those in sin.  (Cf. 1 Corinthians 5:1-5.) But since communication is a visible thing, only a visible hierarchy can excommunicate those in sin. For an “invisible church” to be able  to excommunicate, communion would also have to be invisible.

Furthermore, the imperative to excommunicate makes little sense in the denominations-are-mere-branches ecclesial view, since an  excommunicate can simply go down the street to the next church agreeing with or tolerating his doctrine or moral conduct.  This ability runs against the Church’s duty to “deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.”³¹ The visible Church therefore must have one visible hierarchy. There is no small irony in the Protestant notion of discipline as a “mark of the Church”, when discipline requires precisely the hierarchical unity that Protestantism lacks.

B. Schism.

There is nothing more grievous than the sacrilege of schism . . . (St. Augustine, Contra Epistolam Parmeniani, lib. ii., cap. ii., n. 25.)

If Christ had founded the Church without a unified visible hierarchy, then schism could be at most only a deficiency in charity towards other believers. Schism would be the equivalent of one of the pins in the pin-cushion failing to be charitable to another pin. And that would be the case whether those pins represented individual Christians or local congregations or denominations. Schism per se would always be visibly symmetrical with respect to the boundaries of the Church, even if culpability were not. That is, neither party in the schism would ipso facto be visibly departing from the Church, unless it were also abandoning the faith or the sacraments. But abandoning the faith or the sacraments is heresy or apostasy. So the separation of parties per se would not be schism from the Church; the separation from the Church, if there were any separation from the Church, would be due only to heresy or apostasy. Perfect ecclesial unity would be fully compatible with remaining divided in many different visible hierarchies, denominations, etc.  So long as Christians shared the same faith and the same sacraments, and had charity toward one another, separation into distinct autonomous organizations would not detract from perfect ecclesial unity. When a congregation would split into autonomous bodies, this would not necessarily be a schism; it could be a mere branching, so long as the new congregations retained the same faith, sacraments, and charity toward each other.

One obvious problem here, however, is that visible separation is almost always predicated on (or rationalized by) disagreement in faith or sacrament. The unity of faith and sacraments cannot be preserved apart from the unity of ecclesial government, i.e., a shared visible hierarchy. Apart from visible hierarchical unity, fragmentation of faith is inevitable. But another problem is that this ecclesiology in effect eliminates the very possibility of schism understood as separation from shared visible ecclesial authority. And when an ecclesiology has no conceptual room for the possibility of schism, the many warnings about schism in Scripture raise a red flag that ecclesial unity has been defined down.

. . . that they may be one, even as We are . . . . that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee . . . that they may be one, just as We are one . . . that they may be perfected in unity, that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and didst love them, even as Though didst love Me.  (John 17:11,21-23.)

I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions. (Romans 16:17.)

Now I exhort you brothers through the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, that all of you confess the same thing, and there be no schisms among you, but you be united in the same mind and in the same purpose. (1 Corinthians 1:10.)

God has composed [the body of Christ] … that “there should be no schism in the body. (1 Corinthians 12:25.)

Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: . . . disputes, dissensions, factions. (Galatians 5:19-20.)

Forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. (Ephesians 4:3.)

In the last time there shall be mockers, following after their own ungodly lusts. These are the ones who cause divisions. (Jude 1:18-19.)

Given an essentially unified visible hierarchy, schism can never be visibly symmetrical. It will always consist of the Church and the party in schism from the Church. We know that separation from shared visible ecclesial authority never results in two Mystical Bodies. Obviously there cannot be two Mystical Bodies, since the clear answer to St. Paul’s question “Has Christ been divided?” is ‘No.’³² St. Cyprian writes:

God is one and Christ is one, and one is His Church, and the faith is one, and one His people welded together by the glue of concord into a solid unity of body. Unity cannot be rent asunder, nor can the one body of the Church, through the division of its structure, be divided into pieces.³³

But what makes that to be so? There are only two possible answers: the invisible pin-cushion conception of the Church, since what is invisible cannot be divided, or a visible principium unitatis, i.e., a perpetual visible head of the visible ecclesial hierarchy. We have shown above why the pin-cushion conception of the Church is incompatible with the Church being a Body. Thus only if there is a principium unitatis can there be such a thing as “schism from,” which is not reducible to heresy or apostasy. This idea of “schism from” can be seen both in Scripture and in the Church fathers:

They went forth from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, surely they would have continued with us. (1 John 2:19.)

Does he think that he has Christ, who acts in opposition to Christ’s priests, who separates himself from the company of His clergy and people?  (St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, d. AD 258, On the Unity of the Church, 17.)

We think that this difference exists between heresy and schism: heresy has no perfect dogmatic teaching, whereas schism, through some Episcopal dissent, also separates from the Church. (St. Jerome, Comment. in Epist. ad Titum, cap. iii., v. 10-11, emphasis added.)

See what you must beware of — see what you must avoid — see what you must dread. It happens that, as in the human body, some member may be cut off — a hand, a finger, a foot. Does the soul follow the amputated member? As long as it was in the body, it lived; separated, it forfeits its life. So the Christian is a Catholic as long as he lives in the body: cut off from it he becomes a heretic — the life of the spirit follows not the amputated member. (St. Augustine, Sermo cclxvii., n. 4.)

And this is how ‘schism’ has been understood and defined in the Catholic Church: schism is defined as “the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.”³⁴ No other definition makes sense, in part because no other definition distinguishes schism from excommunication. Otherwise each party in the schism could with equal warrant say, “No, I excommunicated you.” No other definition shows  why schism is always wrong, even while excommunication is sometimes required. Thus we see that both discipline and schism do not fit into a conception of the Church in which there is lacking an essential visible hierarchical unity. A model of ‘church’ in which both discipline and schism are not possible does great violence to the imperatives of Scripture on both these matters, and is completely at odds with the first fifteen hundred years of Church tradition.

III. Denial of Visibility is Ecclesial Docetism

A. Ecclesial Docetism

In Catholic ecclesiology, the ground of the Church’s unity is Christ, who is both spirit and flesh. We are united to Christ by being united to His Mystical Body through the sacrament of baptism. We are more deeply united to Christ and the Church through the sacraments of Confirmation and the Eucharist. An act of schism separates a person from the Church, and hence from Christ, because the Church is Christ’s own Mystical Body. Catholicism is sacramental, in that it looks for the spiritual through the material, just as we know Christ’s divine nature only through His human nature. We do not, as in gnosticism, attempt to bypass the material, and try here in this life to skirt the sacramental and see directly the divine nature or take the God’s-eye point of view, because that is presently beyond us as material creatures. If we want to know our status in heaven, we inquire concerning our status in His Mystical Body on earth. This earth-to-heaven direction of faith’s epistemology is seen in what Jesus says to the Apostles: “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.”³⁵ The visible and the invisible are bound together because of the incarnation, wherein what is done to the flesh of Christ is done to the Person of Christ. That is precisely why excommunication has teeth; it truly cuts a person off from Christ.

Consider one common Protestant position, according to which all Christians are equally united to Christ by faith alone, and therefore equally united to the Church. I have described this position above as the pin-cushion model. According to this notion of the Church, schism does not do anything to the unity of all Christians, only to the outward manifestation of our otherwise intact spiritual unity. This is a de-materialized (i.e., spiritualized) ecclesiology that in this respect is both gnostic and docetic. Since the incarnate Christ is both spirit and flesh, the visible unity of His Mystical Body is not merely an “outward expression” of the Church’s real spiritual and invisible unity, just as sexual union is not merely a physical expression of the inward/spiritual unity of husband and wife. Sexual union truly should be a bodily expression of a spiritual union. But sexual union is not merely an outward expression of spiritual unity; it is itself a real union of husband and wife. Likewise, the visible unity of the Church (including hierarchical unity) is a real unity of the Mystical Body, not merely an outward expression of the real unity which is spiritual and invisible.

The root problem here is a kind of dualism that treats the spiritual as the really real, and the material as a mere context for the expression of the spiritual. This reduces the Mystical Body to a spirit having some visible members, an invisible pin-cushion with some visible pins. Wherever schism is treated as not separating a person (to some degree) from Christ, there the Church is being treated as fundamentally and intrinsically invisible, with some visible members. Denying the essential unity of the visible hierarchy treats the Mystical Body of Christ as though it is not actually and essentially a Body, because visible hierarchical unity is essential and intrinsic to a body. If a body ceases to be visibly hierarchically one, it ceases to be. This is why a human being cannot survive disintegration of his body. So if visible unity is only accidental to something, that thing is not a living body; it is, at most, only the appearance of a body. Hence those who claim that the Mystical Body of Christ is invisibly one and visibly divided are treating the Body of Christ as though it were merely an apparent Body, not an actual Body. That is why this position is rightly described as ecclesial docetism,  because docetism is the heresy which claimed that Christ only appeared to be a man.

That does not mean that we must fall into some kind of ecclesial Eutychianism. Eutychianism, which is also called Monophysitism (meaning “one nature”), was condemned at the Fourth General Council, the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451. According to the Monophysites, Jesus’ humanity was absorbed into His divine nature such that He no longer has a human nature, having only His divine nature (hence “Monophysitism”). Docetism and Eutychianism both deny that Christ has a human nature. For that reason, both docetic and Eutychian notions of the Mystical Body of Christ treat the Church as in itself invisible, spiritual, and immaterial, only visible in the sense that it makes use of embodied human believers in much the same way that the Logos (i.e. the Second Person of the Trinity), according to a docetic conception, perhaps made use of material elements in order to appear as though having a physical body, but was not actually made up of those material elements, nor were they parts of Him. Chalcedonian Christology, with its affirmation of two distinct natures united without mixture in one hypostatic union, entails that the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ is in itself visible and hierarchically organized as one corporate entity.³⁶

The charge that Catholic ecclesiology is Eutychian asserts that the Catholic claim [that the visible Body of Christ is essentially one] mistakenly attributes to the visible aspect of the Church what is only true of the invisible aspect of the Church, and in that way falsely attributes what is only true of the divine nature of Christ to His human nature, as Eutychianism does. But this charge is based on the mistaken notion that visible hierarchical unity is not intrinsically essential to a living human body. The real distinction between Christ’s divine nature and His human nature does not imply that the Mystical Body of Christ is not necessarily visibly one any more than it would imply that Christ’s physical body could continue to exist even if all its parts were separated. Rather, because Christ truly possesses human nature, His Mystical Body is necessarily visibly one in its hierarchy, just as his physical body is necessarily visibly one its hierarchy. A living human body is essentially visibly one. If it ceases to be visibly one, it ceases to be. Hence, its visible hierarchical unity is essential to its being. That is why the Catholic doctrine that the Mystical Body of Christ is essentially visibly one in its hierarchy is not Eutychian.

B. What Does Ecclesial Docetism Look Like in Practice?

The spirituality and visibility of the Church are no more opposed to each other than the soul and body of a man, or, better, than the divinity and humanity in Christ. . . . It is because it ignores this inseparable twofold character of the Church that Protestantism, Lutheran and Reformed, has never succeeded in resisting the temptation to distinguish, by opposing them, an invisible and sole evangelical Church, on the one hand, and, on the other, visible, human, and sinful Churches.³⁷

In practice, ecclesial docetism entails ecclesial consumerism, because it eliminates the notion of finding and submitting to the Church that Christ founded. In the mindset of ecclesial docetism, what one looks for, insofar as one looks, is a community of persons who share one’s own interpretation of Scripture. In ecclesial docetism the identity of the Church is not determined by form and matter, but by form alone. Which form? The form of one’s own interpretation of Scripture. This reveals why there are so many different Protestant denominations, worship centers, and ecclesial communities, none of them sharing the three bonds of unity with any of the others. Just as the practical effect of docetism is a Christ of our own making, disconnected from the historical flesh-and-blood Christ, so the practical effect of ecclesial docetism is a Church made in the image of our own interpretation, disconnected from the historical Church.

This is expressed doctrinally as a denial of the materiality or sacramentality of apostolic succession. Ecclesial docetism redefines ‘apostolic succession’ as preservation of form, i.e., preservation of the doctrine of the Apostles. But without the material component of apostolic succession, the individual becomes the final interpretive arbiter of what the apostolic doctrine is. And so the ‘church-shopping’ commences. And where there is a great variation of demand, a great variation of supply arises. ‘Church’ is reduced to a consumer-driven enterprise, based on each person’s own internal perception of his own spiritual needs and how the competing organizations, institutions, or communities meet those needs. This turns ‘church’ into something egocentric rather than God-centered.

Another necessary effect of ecclesial docetism is apathy regarding visible divisions between Christians, communities, and denominations. If the unity of the Church is spiritual, insofar as each believer is invisibly united to Christ by faith alone, then pursuing visible unity is superfluous, even presumptuous in its attempt to outdo Christ.³⁸ If there is no essentially unified visible hierarchy, then while there may be certain pragmatic reasons for ecumenical cooperation, as there are within political parties, there can be no divine mandate that there be no schisms among us. Ecclesial docetism redefines the term ‘Church’ to refer to an invisible entity into which all believers are perfectly joined no matter to which visible institution (if any) they presently belong.

Herein lies a noteworthy point.  Ecclesial docetism conceptually eliminates the very possibility of schism. It does so not by reconciling separated parties, but by defining unity down, as something merely spiritual, and so de-materializing schism as something invisible, and spiritual, i.e., merely a deficiency in charity. Ecclesial docetism treats visible divisions of separated hierarchies as branches. Ecclesial docetism denies the sinfulness of schism, not openly or explicitly, but definitionally and thus surreptitiously. It calls what is actually evil (i.e., schisms) innocuous, if not good. It hides from schismatics their state of not being in full communion with the Mystical Body of Christ, depriving them of the fullness of grace they would receive in full communion with Christ’s Church.

IV. What the Catholic Church Teaches About the Visibility of the Church

A. Church Hierarchy and Unity

From the first century, the Catholic Church has always taught that schism is sinful, and that it is not merely a deficiency of charity, but a separation from the visible hierarchy of the Church. This is evident in the letter of St. Clement of Rome to the Corinthians at the end of the first century, just a few years after the death of the last surviving apostle. We can see it also from St. Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch (d. AD 107), who wrote:

Where the bishop is, there is the community, even as where Christ is there is the Catholic Church.³⁹

and

As therefore the Lord did nothing without the Father, being united to Him, neither by Himself nor by the apostles, so neither do anything without the bishop and presbyters. Neither endeavour that anything appear reasonable and proper to yourselves apart; but being come together into the same place, let there be one prayer, one supplication, one mind, one hope, in love and in joy undefiled. There is one Jesus Christ, than whom nothing is more excellent. Therefore run together as into one temple of God, as to one altar, as to one Jesus Christ, who came forth from one Father, and is with and has gone to one.⁴⁰

We can see it too in St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage (d. AD 258):

It must be understood that the bishop is in the Church and the Church in the bishop and he is not in the Church who is not with the bishop.⁴¹

St. Jerome writes most plainly:

Between heresy and schism there is this difference, that heresy perverts dogma, while schism, by rebellion against the bishop, separates from the Church. Nevertheless there is no schism which does not trump up a heresy to justify its departure from the Church.⁴²

Pope Leo XIII, in unambiguous language, teaches that the notion that the Church is “hidden and invisible” is a “pernicious error”:

[T]hose who arbitrarily conjure up and picture to themselves a hidden and invisible Church are in grievous and pernicious error: as also are those who regard the Church as a human institution which claims a certain obedience in discipline and external duties, but which is without the perennial communication of the gifts of divine grace, and without all that which testifies by constant and undoubted signs to the existence of that life which is drawn from God. It is assuredly as impossible that the Church of Jesus Christ can be the one or the other, as that man should be a body alone or a soul alone. The connection and union of both elements is as absolutely necessary to the true Church as the intimate union of the soul and body is to human nature.⁴³

Pope Pius XII says something quite similar about the notion of the Church’s being invisible:

Hence they err in a matter of divine truth, who imagine the Church to be invisible, intangible, a something merely “pneumatological” as they say, by which many Christian communities, though they differ from each other in their profession of faith, are untied by an invisible bond.⁴⁴

From what We have thus far written, and explained, Venerable Brethren, it is clear, We think, how grievously they err who arbitrarily claim that the Church is something hidden and invisible, as they also do who look upon her as a mere human institution possession a certain disciplinary code and external ritual, but lacking power to communicate supernatural life. On the contrary, as Christ, Head and Exemplar of the Church “is not complete, if only His visible human nature is considered…, or if only His divine, invisible nature…, but He is one through the union of both and one in both … so is it with His Mystical Body” since the Word of God took unto Himself a human nature liable to sufferings, so that He might consecrate in His blood the visible Society founded by Him and “lead man back to things invisible under a visible rule.⁴⁵

For this reason We deplore and condemn the pernicious error of those who dream of an imaginary Church, a kind of society that finds its origin and growth in charity, to which, somewhat contemptuously, they oppose another, which they call juridical. But this distinction which they introduce is false: for they fail to understand that the reason which led our Divine Redeemer to give to the community of man He founded the constitution of a Society, perfect of its kind and containing all the juridical and social elements – namely, that He might perpetuate on earth the saving work of Redemption, – was also the reason why He willed it to be enriched with the heavenly gifts of the Paraclete. The Eternal Father indeed willed it to be the “kingdom of the Son of his predilection;” but it was to be a real kingdom in which all believers should make Him the entire offering of their intellect and will, and humbly and obediently model themselves on Him, Who for our sake “was made obedient unto death.” There can, then, be no real opposition or conflict between the invisible mission of the Holy spirit and the juridical commission of Ruler and Teacher received from Christ, since they mutually complement and perfect each other – as do the body and soul in man – and proceed from our one Redeemer who not only said as He breathed on the Apostles “Receive ye the Holy Spirit,” but also clearly commanded: “As the Father hath sent me, I also send you;” and again: “He that heareth you, heareth me.⁴⁶

The constant teaching of the Catholic Church is that Christ founded a visible Church with an essentially unified visible hierarchy. Some people incorrectly think that Vatican II denied the essential unity of the visible hierarchy of the Church. Vatican II did not deny the essential unity of the visible hierarchy of the Church. The issue here is not whether grace and the work of the Holy Spirit can extend beyond the visible boundaries of the Mystical Body of Christ. Of course it can, otherwise no one would ever enter the Church. The issue has nothing to do with invincible ignorance and salvation.⁴⁷ God could have given grace directly, but He wished to give men also the gift of collaborating with Him in dispensing the graces of Redemption, and so He founded His visible Church.⁴⁸

B. The Church and the Kingdom

Many Christians do not realize that the Catholic Church is and claims to be the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, in the Kingdom’s nascent stage. They mistakenly think of the Kingdom as either entirely invisible, entirely spiritual, or entirely future. Lumen Gentium specifically affirms that the Church is Christ’s Kingdom:

The Church, or, in other words, the kingdom of Christ now present in mystery, grows visibly through the power of God in the world.⁴⁹

By “present in mystery” the Council meant that the Catholic Church is the Kingdom of Heaven in its beginning or seminal stage, i.e. the stage prior to the return of Christ. We do not now see the fullness of the Kingdom. But the Catholic Church is the present rule of Christ on the earth. Jesus did not say to Peter, “I give you the keys of the Church, but I retain the keys of the Kingdom.” Rather, Jesus said to Peter, “I will give to you [singular] the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.”⁵⁰ The keys of the Kingdom of Heaven are the apostolic authority over the Church. That is why the Catechism says,

The Church is the seed and beginning of this kingdom. Her keys are entrusted to Peter.⁵¹

To fulfill the Father’s will, Christ ushered in the Kingdom of heaven on earth. The Church is the Reign of Christ already present in mystery.⁵²

The Church is ultimately one, holy, catholic, and apostolic in her deepest and ultimate identity, because it is in her that the Kingdom of heaven, the Reign of God, already exists and will be fulfilled at the end of time.⁵³

In the Gospels Jesus refers to the Kingdom of Heaven (or Kingdom of God) over eighty times. He compares the Kingdom to a mustard seed that grows into a tree, and to leaven that comes to leaven a whole lump.⁵⁴ Those examples do not fit with a merely eschatological conception of the Kingdom. Nor does Christ’s teaching that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. (Matthew 4:17) Nor does His claim that the Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence at the hands of violent men. (Matthew 11:12, Luke 16:16) Nor does His claim that the Kingdom of Heaven may be compared to the parable of the wheat and tares, (Matthew 13:24ff) or to the laborers in the vineyard. (Matthew 20:1ff) Christ’s teaching that the Kingdom of Heaven is like a dragnet that gathers fish of every kind is paralleled in the account in John 21 where the disciples catch 153 fish and draw the net upon the land. That account clearly refers to the Apostles, as fishers of men, bringing all the nations into the Church, and in this way we again see that the Church is the Kingdom in its present stage.  That is why Jesus says, “I say to you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he” (Luke 7:28), because John was martyred before Jesus inaugurated the Kingdom, i.e. the Church.

A number of “Kingdom” passages in the Gospels refer to the Kingdom in its final state, but some interpreters mistakenly conclude from that fact that all Gospel references to the Kingdom are eschatological. One Protestant reading of Jesus’ statement, “For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst” (Luke 17:21), interprets the Kingdom as something in itself internal, spiritual, and invisible, in our hearts. But the notion that the Kingdom must be either internal or external is a false dilemma. Christ now governs His people through His Church, through the Apostles and the bishops they appointed.

The New Testament authors understand the Church as the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant.⁵⁵ The angel Gabriel tells Mary that the Lord God will give her Son the “throne of His father David; and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.”⁵⁶ God had promised to David that his throne would be established forever, and that he would not lack a man on his throne.⁵⁷ This promise was fulfilled when Christ the King, the Son of David, conceived by the Holy Spirit, established the Kingdom that will never end. Likewise, God had promised David that his son would sit on his throne in his place, and build the house for God’s name.⁵⁸ But Solomon was a type of Christ, because Christ is building the Church, which is the true and everlasting temple of God. That is why St. Paul, quoting Isaiah, refers to Christ as the “root of Jesse” who “arises to rule over the Gentiles.”⁵⁹ This ruling over the Gentiles is taking place now, through the Church. And at the Jerusalem Council, St. James, the bishop of Jerusalem, quotes the prophet Amos regarding the Church age as “that day” when God raises up the fallen tabernacle of David, so that “the rest of mankind may seek the Lord.”⁶⁰ We have come, says the author of Hebrews, not to Mount Sinai, but to Mount Zion, the city of David, the heavenly Jerusalem. That city is the Church, the house of God, a kingdom that cannot be shaken.⁶¹

The prophet Isaiah had written of Christ’s Kingdom:

“Of the increase of His government and of peace there will be no end, upon the throne of David, and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from this time forth and forevermore.”⁶²

His kingdom will continue to increase, will never be overturned, because it is divinely established. The prophet Daniel also wrote of Christ’s Kingdom. Speaking to Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel says:

“As you looked, a stone was cut out by no human hand, and it struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces … But the stone that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. … And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall its sovereignty be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever.”⁶³

When would God set up this Kingdom that will never be destroyed? At the time of the fourth kingdom of men, namely the kingdom of Rome. This was fulfilled at the time of Christ. A Protestant who conceives of Christ’s Kingdom as something invisible or spiritual may agree that Christ introduced His Kingdom two-thousand years ago, but not see that this Kingdom is the Catholic Church. But Jesus said the following:

“As My Father appointed a kingdom for Me, so do I appoint for you that you may eat and drink at My table in My kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Simon, Simon, behold Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.”⁶⁴

Christ shows His Apostles that they will eat and drink in His Kingdom and sit on twelve thrones. Eating at His table refers in the present age to the Eucharistic table. Sitting on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel refers to their governance of the Church, because the Church is the New Israel, the universal (i.e. catholic) reign of the Messiah. This term for throne (θρόνος) is where we get the word cathedral, which derives from the Latin cathedra, meaning ‘chair of the bishop.’ From this passage in Luke we also see that Christ prays especially for Peter, and charges him to strengthen his brothers. In Matthew 16:18-19, Christ, the Chief Cornerstone, designates Simon to be Peter, the rock upon whom Christ will build His Church. This is the Kingdom that will never be defeated, but will prevail to the end of time.

“And I say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church; and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”⁶⁵

What are these “keys of the Kingdom”? They are the keys of the house of David, which Isaiah prophecies about as being entrusted to the King’s steward.⁶⁶ Christ has given the keys of the Kingdom to Peter, His steward. This is the Petrine office, the chair of St. Peter the Apostle. Jesus refers to this role in a parable, when He says,

“Who then is the faithful and sensible steward, whom his master will put in charge of his servants, to give them their rations at the proper time?”⁶⁷

Christ rules the Church through the men He has entrusted with the keys of His Kingdom, and given the authority to speak in His name. The Church has always understood herself to be the present stage of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.  Christ does not have two Brides: His Church and His Kingdom. He has one Bride, which is His Church and His Kingdom. He and His Bride are “one flesh”, that is, one Mystical Body. For this reason, the Catholic understanding of “advancing the Kingdom of God” is to bring people into the reign of Christ, that is, into the Catholic Church. The Lord’s Prayer does not ignore the Church; when we pray “Thy Kingdom come”, we are praying for the growth of the Catholic Church, the increase of Christ’s reign within her, and the final glorious return of the King. Understanding that the Church is the present form of Christ’s Kingdom helps us understand why the Church must have a unified visible hierarchy; it also helps make sense of the way St. Ignatius of Antioch exhorts Christians to follow their bishops, as a general might urge his troops to follow their commanders. When the centurion said, “I too am a man under authority, with soldiers under me” (Matthew 8:9, Luke 7:8), his words applied not only to the Roman army, but to the enduring Kingdom Daniel saw in his vision, that is, to the Catholic Church.

V. Reformed positions, and critique

A. Positions

Here we will consider two Reformed positions on the visibility and invisibility of the church.

1. Position: The Visible Church Is the Church as People See It

One Reformed perspective maintains that by “church” a distinction must be drawn between that which people see and that which God alone sees. This distinction has historically been coined in the two terms “visible church” and “invisible church.” In this use, the “invisible church” is not completely without parts that can be seen; rather, its exact boundary is not perceivable or knowable to us. That is because in this ecclesiology, “invisible church” refers to the set of all persons elected to glory. Only God knows which members of the earthly congregations are elect and inwardly born again,⁶⁸ and thus belong to the eternal and spiritual fellowship of the Church. Contrariwise, we can perceive, and thus know who is a part of the “visible church,” that is, who is a member of an Evangelical body, whether that be a denomination or a local congregation unaffiliated with any denomination. But this affiliation provides no guarantee about the affiliant’s inward conversion. Jesus taught that in this organized church there would always be members, not excluding its leaders, who seemed to be Christians but were nevertheless not renewed in their heart and would be rejected at the Last Judgment.⁶⁹

These terms do not mean that there are two churches, one visible and another hidden in heaven. Rather, in Reformed ecclesiology there is only one church, and it is known perfectly to God and known imperfectly on earth.⁷⁰ This church on earth is one in Christ despite the great number of local congregations and denominations.⁷¹ It is holy because it is corporately consecrated to God,⁷² just as each Christian is individually. It is catholic, meaning “universal,” because it exists worldwide. Finally, it is apostolic because it is founded upon apostolic teaching.⁷³ All four qualities may be seen in Ephesians 2:19-22.⁷⁴

2. Position: Christ Founded a Mere Plurality of Believers Without a Shared Hierarchy

Luther, Calvin, and the other Reformers taught that the visible church was merely the “multitude” of believers spread over the earth. Martin Luther described the visible church as “the holy Christian people.” He wrote:

If the words, “I believe that there is a holy Christian people,” had been used in the Children’s Creed, all the misery connected with this meaningless and obscure word (“church”) might easily have been avoided…. Ecclesia … should mean the holy Christian people, not only of the days of the apostles, who are long since dead, but to the end of the world….⁷⁵

John Calvin wrote:

How we are to judge the church visible, which falls within our knowledge, is, I believe, already evident from the above discussion. For we have said that Holy Scripture speaks of the church in two ways. Sometimes by the term “church” it means that which is actually in God’s presence, into which no persons are received but those who are children of God by grace of adoption and true members of Christ by sanctification of the Holy Spirit. Then indeed, the church includes not only the saints presently living on earth, but all the elect from the beginning of the world. Often, however, the name “church” designates the whole multitude of men spread over the earth who profess to worship one God and Christ.⁷⁶

The church universal is a multitude gathered from all nations; it is divided and dispersed in separate places, but agrees on the one truth of divine doctrine, and is bound by the bond of the same religion. Under it are thus included individual churches, disposed in towns and villages according to human need, so that each rightly has the name and authority of the church.⁷⁷

Finally, and helpfully explicit, the Westminster Confession of Faith says of the Church visible:

The catholic or universal church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the Head thereof… The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal…consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation.⁷⁸

Instructing on this section, PCA Pastor TM Moore explains that “the most important institution that God has ordained for His people is, in fact, no institution at all. Rather, it is His own Body – the Church.”⁷⁹

In sum, this visible church is the non-hierarchical collection or plurality of all professing Christians, some of whom are elect and others of whom are not; there are no elect outside of this visible church.⁸⁰

B. Evaluations

These two Reformed ecclesial positions are essentially equivalent because there is no principled difference between them.  For both, what is called “the visible Church” is a mere plurality of visible things. In the first description, the members are individual congregations not hierarchically united under a single visible hierarchy. In the second description the members are individual believers not hierarchically united under a single visible hierarchy. Therefore under both descriptions what is absent is a unified visible hierarchy, and that is why the result can be nothing more than a mere plurality of visible things, united at most by their invisible union to the invisible Christ.

To understand why it cannot be that Christ founded a “visible church” consisting merely of a multitude of believers spread across the world, we need to consider the difference between a mere plurality and an actual composite whole. A mere plurality is not an actual entity, but only a conceptual entity, i.e. an abstraction of some sort. Imagine the set of all the objects on my desk. The members of that set include books, a printer, some photos, some coins, pens, prayer cards, a toy space shuttle, a piece of hard candy, a lamp, etc. I can refer to these things with a singular term: “set” (as in, “The set of all the things on my desk”). But on my desk there is no single thing consisting of the books, the printer, the photos, the coins, pens, etc. There is no set-of-things on my desk, only individual things that can be referred to collectively as belonging to a set. Though the members of the set are actual, the set itself is only a mental construct, not an actual entity.

Contrast that with the parts of my body. The parts of my body are not a mere plurality, or a mere set. They compose an actual whole, namely, me. In that respect, the parts of my body are not like the objects on my desk. The parts of my body are a plurality, but they are not a mere plurality like the objects on my desk. The parts of my body compose an actual whole.

So when a person claims that the visible Church is the set of all embodied believers, he is reducing the visible Church to a mental construct. He seems to be affirming the existence of the visible Church, but he has adopted an ecclesiological position in which there is no such thing as the visible Church — there are only embodied believers, just as in actuality there are only objects on my desk, and not, in addition to the objects on my desk, one more item, namely, the set of objects on my desk. That is why those who claim that the visible Church is the set of all embodied believers hold a position in which there is no visible Church per se; there are only visible believers, invisibly connected to the invisible Christ. And that is why those who claim that the visible Church is the set of all embodied believers hold a position that is equivalent in principle to that of those who deny that the Church is visible, and who affirm that the Church per se is invisible. For this reason, the claim in the Westminster Confession of Faith that “the visible Church … consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion,” is equivalent in principle to the claim of those who deny that the Church is visible .⁸¹ In other words, even though the Reformed confessions refer to a “visible Church”, this is only semantically different from those Protestant ecclesiologies that explicitly deny the visibility of the Church. But neither the pin-cushion ecclesial model nor the mere plurality ecclesial model are compatible with St. Paul’s teaching that the Church is the Body of Christ.

Catholic ecclesiology is not subject to this problem precisely because the Catholic Church is hierarchically unified. Reductionism treats actual composite wholes as though they were mere pluralities of smaller simples, and in this way fails to account fully for the being, unity and activity of actual composite wholes.⁸² Because the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church is analogous to that of an organism, it is for this same reason not subject to eliminative reductionism. The visible hierarchical unity of the Catholic Church unites all its dioceses, parishes and members not in a mere plurality or in a pin-cushion model, but in an actual composite whole, i.e. a visible unity.

VI. Implications

A. The Identity of the Church

Given that the Church Christ founded is visible, and has an essentially united visible hierarchy, it follows that the identity and extent of the Church can be known, by tracing its visible hierarchy through history. When the early Church fathers write about the Catholic Church, they are referring to a definite Body. They are not referring to a mere plurality of persons or congregations, without an essentially unified visible hierarchy. They are referring to the visible Body picked out precisely by the essential unity of its visible hierarchy, and especially the visible head of that visible hierarchy. This involves two of the four marks of the Church as specified by the Nicene Creed: unity and apostolicity. “We believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.” This Church referred to in the Creed (as an article of the Christian faith) is the Catholic Church. We saw above the visible hierarchy of the Church treated as the locus of the Church’s identification in St. Ignatius of Antioch, who wrote, “Where the bishop is, there is the community, even as where Christ is there is the Catholic Church.”⁸³ St. Irenaeus (d. c. AD 200) likewise speaks of this Church:

The Catholic Church, having received the apostolic teaching and faith, though spread over the whole world, guards it sedulously, as though dwelling in one house; and these truths she uniformly teaches, as having but one soul and one heart; these truths she proclaims, teaches, and hands down as though she had but one mouth.⁸⁴

St. Eusebius of Caesarea (AD 263-339) speaks of her:

But the brightness of the Catholic Church proceeded to increase in greatness, for it ever held to the same points in the same way, and radiated forth to all the race of Greeks and barbarians the reverent, sincere, and free nature, and the sobriety and purity of the divine teaching as to conduct and thought.⁸⁵

St. Augustine (AD 354-430) writes:

The Catholic Church is the work of Divine Providence, achieved through the prophecies of the prophets, through the Incarnation and the teaching of Christ, through the journeys of the Apostles, through the suffering, the crosses, the blood and death of the martyrs, through the admirable lives of the saints, and in all these, at opportune times, through miracles worthy of such great deeds and virtues. When, then, we see so much help on God’s part, so much progress and so much fruit, shall we hesitate to bury ourselves in the bosom of that Church? For starting from the apostolic chair down through succession of bishops, even unto the open confession of all mankind, it has possessed the crown of teaching authority.⁸⁶

Perhaps St. Ambrose (340-397), bishop of Milan, sums it up best, when he writes:

“It is to Peter himself that He says, “you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.” Where Peter is, there is the Church. And where the Church, no death is there, but life eternal.”⁸⁷

In short, given this analysis of the essential unity of a visible ecclesial hierarchy, the only plausible candidate for the Church Christ founded, identified by an essentially unified visible hierarchy tracing its succession back to the Apostles, is the Catholic Church. Given that the Church Christ founded is visible, and so has an essentially unified visible hierarchy, it  thus follows that the Church Christ founded is the Catholic Church, i.e. that society of faith in full communion with the episcopal successor of St. Peter.

B. The Promises to the Church Are to the Visible Church

If the Catholic Church is the Church Christ founded, then the promises Christ makes to the Church are not promises to a merely invisible entity having visible members, but are promises to the Catholic Church. The gates of hell shall not prevail against the Catholic Church.⁸⁸ Christ has promised to be with the Catholic Church to the end of the age.⁸⁹ Christ has promised that the Holy Spirit will guide the Catholic Church into all truth.⁹⁰ Whatever the Catholic Church binds on earth will be bound in heaven.⁹¹ The Catholic Church is the pillar and ground of truth.⁹² All these promises would be superfluous and unhelpful if intended only for the set of all the elect. Only if they refer to a Body with a visible hierarchy do they even make sense. Once we see what it means for the Church to be visible, then we see precisely why we can trust Christ by trusting the Catholic Church. Grasping the visibility of the Church, and thus the identity of the Church, and thus the divine guarantees concerning the Church, we can then understand how it follows that the Catholic Church is indefectible.

Christ’s promise to the Church that the Holy Spirit will guide her into all truth grounds the possibility for the development of doctrine. “But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth.”⁹³ The possibility of development of doctrine depends on an essentially unified visible hierarchy. Otherwise there is no definitive determination of the canon, or of orthodoxy and heresy. No mere association of denominations or congregations has the authority to bind the conscience of followers of Christ. Every decision of every synod or session or council or assembly would remain ‘up-for-grabs’, subject to subsequent refutation. Development requires the definitive resolution of disputes, so that the Church as a whole can recognize a question as definitively settled, and then build upon the Magisterial answer. Without an essentially unified visible hierarchy, we are left with biblicism. And that is why Protestantism, lacking an essentially unified visible hierarchy, must trace a path of decay through one of two paths: liberalism or a biblicism that fades into what Michael Spencer calls “the post-Evangelical wilderness.” Christ’s promises to the Catholic Church built on Christ the Cornerstone, and the rock of Peter, insure that ecclesial deism is false; they ensure that when the Magisterium speaks definitively, it is the Holy Spirit speaking.

The essentially unified visible hierarchy of the Church allows her to be not only Magistra (i.e. teacher) but also Mater (mother). This is the meaning of the phrase “Mater et Magistra.” John Calvin maintained that the  holy Catholic Church is our mother.⁹⁴ He writes,

But because it is now our intention to discuss the visible church, let us learn even from the simple title “mother” how useful, indeed how necessary, it is that we should know her. For there is no other way to enter into life unless this mother conceive us in her womb, give us birth, nourish us at her breast, and lastly, unless she keep us under her care and guidance until, putting off mortal flesh, we become like the angels [Matthew 22:30]. Our weakness does not allow us to be dismissed from her school until we have been pupils all our lives. Furthermore, away from her bosom one cannot hope for any forgiveness fo sins or any salvation, as Isaiah [Isaiah 37:32] and Joel [Joel 2:32] testify. … By these words God’s fatherly favor and the especial witness of spiritual life are limited to his flock, so that it is always disastrous to leave the church.⁹⁵

Calvin was not intending to speak of the Catholic Church in union with the successor of St. Peter. However, without an essentially unified visible hierarchy, what Calvin says here about the Church as our mother, makes no sense. That is because without an essentially unified visible hierarchy, there is no visible catholic (i.e. universal) Church; there are only visible Christians, and visible congregations and provincial denominations. None of these is our mother. Nor are they, without being under the essentially unified visible hierarchy, part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. They may be invisibly joined to Christ, but they do not form a unified visible entity; they remain only a visible plurality indistinguishable from a plenitude of schisms. Without an essentially visible hierarchy, there is no visible Church, and thus there is no Church as Mater.

C. Ecumenicism

If Christ founded a visible Church, and His promises refer to this visible Church, then the goal of ecumenicism is not only agreement on doctrine and agreement on sacraments, but full communion under the same visible hierarchy, the one authorized by the Apostles and their successors. Christ’s prayer in John 17 concerning our unity, “that the world may know” entails that we are called to full visible unity. Yet these three bonds of unity are so related that each depends upon the other two. Just as we cannot maintain unity of faith and sacraments without visible hierarchical unity, so we cannot determine or discover precisely what faith it is that we are to hold, apart from this unified visible hierarchy. Insofar as the ‘mere Christianity’ form of ecumenicism seeks to determine some set of essential doctrines, apart from the essentially unified visible hierarchy, this form of ecumenicism is intrinsically incapable of attaining its goal.⁹⁶ For this reason the success of ecumenicism depends not on first finding doctrinal agreement, but on locating the ground and basis of magisterial authority. As Fr. Jeffrey Steel recently said, “on whose terms does this reunion take place?”⁹⁷ This metalevel question lies at the very center of the ecumenical endeavor.

Without reference to the unified visible hierarchy, the “mere Christianity” form of ecumenicism is indistinguishable from a call to settle for common ground between the Church, heresies and schisms. And that is what makes the Catholic Church’s approach to ecumenicism almost intrinsically offensive to all other Christians. It makes the Catholic Church stick out among all the Protestant demoninations, because none of them claim to be the Church that Christ founded. For example, when the Holy See released Responsa ad Quaestiones in July of 2007, the World Council of Churches expressed its disagreement, claiming that “Each church is the Church catholic and not simply a part of it. Each church is the Church catholic, but not the whole of it.” To the “World Council of Churches” (of which the Catholic Church is not a member), the very notion that one visible Body individuated by one visible hierarchy is the one true Church that Christ founded, is offensive. But the exclusivity of the claims of Christ’s Church should be no more surprising than the exclusivity of the claims of Christ Himself, who said, “No man comes to the Father, but by Me.”⁹⁸

VII. Conclusion

We have provided evidence and argumentation here that Christ founded a visible Church, and that this Church is visible not merely because some of its members are embodied, and not because local congregations and denominations exist. The Church Christ founded is visible because, as His Mystical Body, it necessarily has an essentially united visible hierarchy; this is the hierarchy of bishops and priests united under the episcopal successor of St. Peter, the visible head appointed by Christ. Without an essentially united visible hierarchy, Church discipline would not be possible. That is because only Catholic ecclesiology is sacramental, i.e. non-gnostic. Any ecclesiology in which members, whether these be individual Christians or congregations, are said to be fully united to Christ’s Church through an internal invisible connection, nullifies the spiritual consequences of visible excommunication. Yet every ecclesiology denying that Christ founded an essentially united visible hierarchy must posit an invisible connection between the members and Christ. Likewise, denying that Christ founded an essentially unified visible hierarchy reduces schisms to branches, and treats them as innocuous or even desirable, falsely construing them as much-needed diversity. If that seems inconceivable, ask yourself this question: If these were not branches, but schisms, what would be different about them? Treating schisms as mere branches calls ‘good’ what is evil, so it is essential that we be able to distinguish a branch from a schism, and yet nothing short of Catholic ecclesiology makes sense of the distinction. Every ecclesiology short of Catholic ecclesiology falls into some form of ecclesial docetism, since it treats the universal Church per se as though it were not visible, not having an essentially unified hierarchy, and thus not as a Body. The bodily nature of the Church allows the Church to be both Mater et Magistra. It makes sense of Scripture’s teaching regarding the locus and universal nature of the Kingdom of Heaven presently on earth. This Kingdom is not invisible, but visible, present in the mystery of the Catholic Church. Though the Kingdom (i.e. the Church) will achieve its fullness only when Christ returns, even now the thrones of its stewards are visible, not invisible, and its law is canon law. Reformed ecclesiology attempts to avoid denying the visibility of the Church, but without a unified visible catholic hierarchy, what Reformed ecclesiology refers to as “the visible Church” cannot be a Body, only a mere plurality of members (whether individual persons or congregations) each invisibly connected to Christ. The ‘visible Church’ terminology in Reformed ecclesiology is for that reason merely semantical, not substantive. A mere plurality of congregations is no more of a unified Body than is a mere plurality of persons. That is why Reformed ecclesiolgy in essence is indistinguishable from the ecclesiology of those who deny the visibility of the Church per se. The visibility of the Mystical Body of Christ implies that it is a definite Body that can be traced through history, that the promises Christ made concerning the Church apply to it, and that the key to the ecumenical endeavor centers not around some shared minimum of doctrinal common ground, but around the identification of the Church’s unified visible hierarchy in succession from the Apostles.

May God grant all Christians the joy of being in full communion with His Mystical Body. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Bryan Cross and Thomas Brown, Octave of Pentecost, 2009.

1. Some Protestants grant that Christ founded a visible, hierarchically organized Body, but believe that at some point in history it ceased to exist. [↩]
2. “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”  (John 17:3.) See also Matthew 5:8; 1 John 3:2; 1 Corinthians 13:12; Revelation 22:4. “[T]he divine essence immediately manifests itself to [the souls in heaven], plainly, clearly and openly, and in this vision they enjoy the divine essence. Moreover, by this vision [i.e. the Beatific Vision of the divine essence] and enjoyment the souls of those who have already died are truly blessed and have eternal life and rest.” (Benedictus Deus, from AD 1336.) [↩]
3. Cf. Mystici Corporis Christi, 60. [↩]
4. Pope Pius XII wrote:

   It is manifestly clear that the faithful need the help of the Divine Redeemer, for He has said: “Without me you can do nothing,” and according to the teaching of the Apostle every advance of this Mystical Body towards its perfection derives from Christ the Head. Yet this, also, must be held, marvelous though it may seem: Christ has need of His members. First, because the person of Jesus Christ is represented by the Supreme Pontiff, who in turn must call on others to share much of his solicitude lest he be overwhelmed by the burden of his pastoral office, and must be helped daily by the prayers of the Church. Moreover as our Savior does not rule the Church directly in a visible manner, He wills to be helped by the members of His Body in carrying out the work of redemption. That is not because He is indigent and weak, but rather because He has so willed it for the greater glory of His spotless Spouse. Dying on the Cross He left to His Church the immense treasury of the Redemption, towards which she contributed nothing. But when those graces come to be distributed, not only does He share this work of sanctification with His Church, but He wills that in some way it be due to her action. (Mystici Corporis Christi, 44.)

   [↩]

5. Again, as in nature a body is not formed by any haphazard grouping of members but must be constituted of organs, that is of members, that have not the same function and are arranged in due order; so for this reason above all the Church is called a body, that it is constituted by the coalescence of structurally untied parts, and that it has a variety of members reciprocally dependent.” (Mystici Corporis Christi, 16.)

   [↩]

6. “What the soul is to the human body, the Holy Spirit is to the Body of Christ, which is the Church.” CCC 797. Similarly, Pope Leo XIII wrote, “Let it suffice to say that, as Christ is the Head of the Church, so is the Holy Spirit her soul.” Divinum Illud Munus, 6. [↩]
7. In Ioan. 21.8. [↩]
8. Summa Theologica III Q.48 a.2 ad 1. [↩]
9. An extrinsic union is one in which, for example, a mere plurality is conceived in the mind as if it were an actual unity, though it remains in actuality a mere plurality. An intrinsic union, by contrast, is one in which individuals, in their very being, become parts of something else. [↩]
10. “In a natural body the principle of unity so unites the parts, that each lacks its own individual subsistence; on the contrary in the Mystical Body that mutual union, though intrinsic, links the members by a bond which leaves to each intact his own personality.” Mystici Corporis Christi, 61. [↩]
11. Even Christ’s resurrected physical body was hierarchically organized. Jesus said “See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” Luke 24:39. [↩]
12. “[P]recisely because it is a body is the Church visible.” Satis Cognitum, 3. [↩]
13. Satis Cognitum, 3. [↩]
14. If we were to have touched Christ’s physical Body, we would truly have touched God, because His physical Body is truly united to Him through what is called the hypostatic union. Likewise, when we touch His Mystical Body, we also touch God, because by the union of members and Head, the Body of Christ is Christ. This is how we understand Christ’s own identification with us in verses such as Matthew 25:35 and Acts 9:4. We are members of His Mystical Body, and this union of members and Head is so intimate that we form one Mystic Person, just as the cells in a body form one organism. [↩]
15. Mystici Corporis Christi, 14. [↩]
16. See also here. [↩]
17. Responsa ad quaestiones. [↩]
18. This is why Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.” (Matt. 6:24.) We cannot be oriented fundamentally toward two (or more) distinct ends, unless one end is ordered to the other. [↩]
19. Catechism of the Catholic Church 815. [↩]
20. Ludwig Ott writes: “A threefold sensible bond binds the members of the Church to one another, and makes them known as such: the profession of the same Faith, the use of the same means of grace, and the subordination to the same authority.” Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma 301 (1952). [↩]

21. Hence as the Apostles and Disciples were bound to obey Christ, so also those whom the Apostles taught were, by God’s command, bound to obey them. And, therefore, it was no more allowable to repudiate one iota of the Apostles’ teaching than it was to reject any point of the doctrine of Christ Himself. . . . But . . . the Apostolic mission was not destined to die with the Apostles themselves, or to come to an end in the course of time, since it was intended for the people at large and instituted for the salvation of the human race. For Christ commanded His Apostles to preach the “Gospel to every creature, to carry His name to nations and kings, and to be witnesses to him to the ends of the earth.” He further promised to assist them in the fulfillment of their high mission, and that, not for a few years or centuries only, but for all time – “even to the consummation of the world.” Upon which St. Jerome says: “He who promises to remain with His Disciples to the end of the world declares that they will be for ever victorious, and that He will never depart from those who believe in Him” (In Matt., lib. iv., cap. 28, v. 20). But how could all this be realized in the Apostles alone, placed as they were under the universal law of dissolution by death? It was consequently provided by God that the Magisterium instituted by Jesus Christ should not end with the life of the Apostles, but that it should be perpetuated. We see it in truth propagated, and, as it were, delivered from hand to hand. For the Apostles consecrated bishops, and each one appointed those who were to succeed them immediately “in the ministry of the word.” Nay more: they likewise required their successors to choose fitting men, to endow them with like authority, and to confide to them the office and mission of teaching. “Thou, therefore, my son, be strong in the grace which is in Christ Jesus: and the things which thou hast heard of me by many witnesses, the same command to faithful men, who shall be fit to teach others also” (2 Tim. ii., I-2). Wherefore, as Christ was sent by God and the Apostles by Christ, so the Bishops and those who succeeded them were sent by the Apostles. “The Apostles were appointed by Christ to preach the Gospel to us. Jesus Christ was sent by God. Christ is therefore from God, and the Apostles from Christ, and both according to the will of God. . . . Preaching therefore the word through the countries and cities, when they had proved in the Spirit the first-fruits of their teaching they appointed bishops and deacons for the faithful . . . . They appointed them and then ordained them, so that when they themselves had passed away other tried men should carry on their ministry” (S. Clemens Rom. Epist. I ad Corinth. capp. 42, 44). On the one hand, therefore, it is necessary that the mission of teaching whatever Christ had taught should remain perpetual and immutable, and on the other that the duty of accepting and professing all their doctrine should likewise be perpetual and immutable. “Our Lord Jesus Christ, when in His Gospel He testifies that those who not are with Him are His enemies, does not designate any special form of heresy, but declares that all heretics who are not with Him and do not gather with Him, scatter His flock and are His adversaries: He that is not with Me is against Me, and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth” (S. Cyprianus, Ep. lxix., ad Magnum, n. I).

    Satis Cognitum, 8. [↩]

22. St. Paul, speaking of Christ, writes in Romans 6:9 that Christ, “having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him.” [↩]
23. Mystici Corporis Christi, 38. [↩]
24. Mystici Corporis Christi, 40. [↩]
25. Matthew 16:19,  Luke 22:32, John 21:15-17. [↩]
26. St. Jerome, Contra Jovinianus I.26. [↩]
27. Satis Cognitum, 10. The last sentence is a quotation from St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II Q.39 a. 1 [↩]
28. Not only that, but if the Church were the accidental unity of separate hierarchies, the only remaining essential unity would be that of each individual. The separate hierarchies would each be reduced to accidental unities when not either themselves essential or part of another hierarchy that is essentially unified. [↩]
29. “The bishop of the diocese is the only official teacher, guardian, and interpreter of the Catholic tradition (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 888, 894, 895, 1560; Code of Canon Law 375.1, 392.1, 393, 394.1, 394.2) While the bishop may appoint others, i.e. priests, deacons, lay people, to work and act on behalf of the Church, the task of authentically transmitting the deposit of Faith belongs to the bishops of the Church.” Source [↩]
30. e.g. Hebrews 13:17 [↩]
31. 1 Corinthians 5:5. [↩]
32. 1 Corinthians 1:13 [↩]
33. St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, d. AD 258, On the Unity of the Church, 23. [↩]
34. Catechism of the Catholic Church 2089. [↩]
35. Mathew 18:18 [↩]
36. Cf. Mystici Corporis Christi, 16. [↩]
37. Charles Journet, Theology of the Church, 13. [↩]
38. Cf. “Institutional Unity and Outdoing Christ.” [↩]
39. Epistle to the Smyrnæans, 8.2. [↩]
40. Epistle to the Magnesians, 7. [↩]
41. Epist., lxvi, 8. [↩]
42. In Ep. ad Tit., iii, 10, emphasis added. [↩]
43. Satis Cognitum, 3. [↩]
44. Mystici Corporis Christi, 14. [↩]
45. Mystici Corporis Christi, 64. [↩]
46. Mystici Corporis Christi, 65. [↩]
47. For a more detailed explanation, see Baptism, Schism, Full Communion, Salvation.  See also Thomas Storck’s very clear answer to the Vatican II charge, What is the Church of Jesus Christ? Finally, Responsa ad Quaestiones gives the Church’s own recent clarification. [↩]
48. Mystici Corporis Christi, 13. [↩]
49. Lumen Gentium, 3 [↩]
50. Matthew 16:19 [↩]
51. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 567 [↩]
52. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 763 [↩]
53. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 865 [↩]
54. Matthew 13, Mark 4, Luke 13 [↩]
55. I wrote about this earlier this year; see “Feast of the Chair of St. Peter the Apostle.” [↩]
56. St. Luke 1:32-33 [↩]
57. 1 Kings 9:5 [↩]
58. 1 Kings 5:5 [↩]
59. Romans 15:12 [↩]
60. Acts 15:16-17 [↩]
61. Hebrews 3:4-6, 12:22-28 [↩]
62. Isaiah 9:7 [↩]
63. Daniel 2:34,35,44 [↩]
64. Luke 22:29-32 [↩]
65. Matthew 16:18-19 [↩]
66. Isaiah 22:15-23 [↩]
67. Luke 12:42 [↩]
68. 2 Timothy 2:19 [↩]
69. Matthew 7:15-23; 13:24-30, 36-43, 47-50; 25:1-46. [↩]
70. See The Reformation Study Bible, “The Church.” Cf. Belgic Confession, art. 27 (“We believe and confess one single catholic or universal church—a holy congregation and gathering of true Christian believers.”). [↩]
71. Ephesians 4:3-6. See also PCA BOCO ch. 2-2 (“This visible unity of the body of Christ, though obscured, is not destroyed by its division into different denominations of professing Christians; but all of these which maintain the Word and Sacraments in their fundamental integrity are to be recognized as true branches of the Church of Jesus Christ”). [↩]
72. Ephesians 2:21. [↩]
73. Ephesians 2:20. [↩]
74. The Reformation Study Bible, “The Church.” [↩]
75. Martin Luther, On the Councils and the Church – Part III (1539). [↩]
76. Institutes of the Christian Religion IV.1.7. [↩]
77. Institutes of the Christian Religion IV.1.9. [↩]
78. Westminster Confession of Faith XXV 1-2. The Book of Church Order for the Presbyterian Church in America defines the “Visible Church” as consisting of “all those who make profession of their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, together with their children.” Ch. 2-2. [↩]
79. T.M. Moore, A Foundation of Truth: Studies in the Westminster Confession of Faith, 50 (1993).  Notice that the invisible church transcends time, which can be considered as vertically universal, and the visible church transcends place or nation, so can be thought of as horizontally universal. [↩]
80. Scott Clark, a professor of Church history and historical theology at Westminster Seminary, refers to ‘connectionalism’ in his article on ecclesiology. There he writes:

    Closely related to the Biblical understanding of the relationship of the Church Universal to the Church individually considered is the question of connectionalism in the New Covenant. It is often assumed in the American Church that the New Testament Churches were independent of one another and autonomous, that is, subject to no one’s authority but their own. In fact this is less a New Covenant picture than an amalgam of the historic Anabaptist view of the Church with traditional American self reliance. Connectionalism is sometimes portrayed by its opponents as a Roman Catholic corruption of the true Church. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

    This thesis would require its adherents to treat the visible Church as either their own denomination or the group of denominations having some minimal level of formal relations with one another. In Prof. Clark’s case, the implication would seem to be that the visible Church Christ founded is NAPARC. [↩]

81. Cf. Westminster Confession of Faith, XXV.2 [↩]
82. See Leon Kass’s “The Permanent Limitations of Biology.” [↩]
83. Epistle to the Smyrnæans, 8.2. [↩]
84. Adv. Haer., 1.x.2 [↩]
85. Ecclesiastical History, 4.7.13 [↩]
86. De Utilitate Credendi [↩]
87. Commentary on Twelve Psalms of David 40.30 [↩]
88. Matthew 16:18 [↩]
89. Matthew 28:20 [↩]
90. John 16:13 [↩]
91. Matt 16:19, 18:19 [↩]
92. 1 Timothy 3:15 [↩]
93. John 16:13 [↩]
94. Institutes IV.1.1-4 [↩]
95. Institutes IV.1.4 [↩]
96. Cf. Here and here. [↩]
97. “Journey Home to the Catholic Church: I Have Jumped into the Tiber to Swim Across“ [↩]
98. John 14:6 [↩]

Tags: Ecclesiology

195 comments
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1. Fr. Deacon Daniel June 8th, 2009 11:02 am :

   A great article!

   I have often thought that our separated brethren have inherited an ecclesiology which emphasizes the “mystical” in opposition to the “visible” because so many contradictory systems of doctrine developed out of the Reform. The only way to transcend the differences is to diminish the importance of certain doctrines, making the Church a loosely knit spiritual union with a bias towards minimalism to keep the peace between denominations. Once there is no head of a local church with an historical line of succession going back to Christ and the apostles, Acts 2:42 risks becoming an ideal which can only be partially achieved. The sheer range of differences around styles and structures of worship among denominations is a manifestation and fruit of a fractured ecclesiology. How can one truly believe that the same God of OT Israel is unconcerned about the unity & structure of leadership & worship in the NT Church? Without a unified Tent of Meeting, there is always the risk of descending into tribalism.

2. Neal Judisch June 8th, 2009 11:41 am :

   This one was especially timely, guys, in view of Pentecost and Trinity Sunday. As I read this my mind was drawn particularly to St. Cyprian’s budding ecclesiology as expressed in the Unity of the Catholic Church, which reflects an understanding of the Body of Christ as deriving from the fundamental mysteries of the Faith. That is, his vision of the Church — as the one visible, material organism uniquely invested with the Holy Spirit — had crystallized not only around the doctrine of the Incarnation, but also around the developing doctrine of the Trinity.

   To the minds of the early Fathers, the essential unity of God who is Father, Son and Holy Ghost was the thing that guaranteed the objective and continuing unity of all the different members constituting Christ’s Body on earth, because the Church’s unity was precisely a sharing in, or partaking of, the indivisible unity of God the Three-In-One. In other words, the Church was the place where people who were by nature divisive and closed-off from one another got swept up into the life of the Triune God, where they could then be “patched up” together again in one and learn how to love.

   What that meant for the Fathers was that the Church – in her capacity as sacrament – was marked by a visible, objective unity which flowed from the invisible unity of the Godhead as its source. That was a reality, a given. But to whom much is given much is expected: it also meant that the Church – in her capacity as the Body and thus the collective Image-Bearer of God – had to reflect the Trinitarian image of unity-in-diversity-in-love before the watching world (Jn 17). That was both the Church’s nature and her vocation: she was to be the earthly thing which realized and exemplified physically both the plurality and the indivisible unity of the One Triune God, whose Temple and visible reflection she really was.

   And that was also what made her a specifically Christian Church. She was the Church of Incarnation, of Sacrament, of Trinity. Far from mere theological abstractions, these things were as practical as potatoes and as real as eighteen-wheelers.

   Seen from this perspective it becomes easier to grasp why folks like St. Cyprian (in AD 250-ish) could speak as though the indivisibility of God and the indivisibility of the Church almost amounted to the same thing:

   He who breaks the peace and the concord of Christ, does so in opposition to Christ; he who gathereth elsewhere than in the Church, scatters the Church of Christ. The Lord says, “I and the Father are one;” and again it is written of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, “And these three are one.” And does anyone believe that this unity which thus comes from the divine strength and coheres in celestial sacraments, can be divided in the Church, and can be separated by the parting asunder of opposing wills? He who does not hold this unity does not hold God’s law, does not hold the faith of the Father and the Son, does not hold life and salvation … Who, then, is so wicked and faithless, who is so insane with the madness of discord, that either he should believe that the unity of God can be divided, or should dare to rend it – the garment of the Lord – the Church of Christ?

   For those guys, the notion that the Church could be visibly chopped up into a gazillion disunited bits was quite as inconceivable as the Father splitting up with the Son, or either one of them filing for a divorce with the Holy Ghost. And I think in this case the Fathers can be seen as faithfully carrying forward the spirit of the Scriptures to which you advert in this article.

   Sorry for hijacking the article and getting preachy. But I guess if I’ve got a hotbutton issue this is it! Thanks for writing this.

   Neal

3. Neal Judisch June 8th, 2009 12:27 pm :

   Brothers and Fellows,

   The discussion of ecclesiological docetism and the relation between kingdom and Church, together with the Trinitiarian reflections, have also reminded me of this nice passage in the late Fr. Neuhaus’ Catholic Matters:

   The Church participates in nothing less than the very community, or communio, of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (Although the English word “community” can hardly bear the full weight and depth of what is intended by communio.)

   This is an unabashedly theological, even mystical, way of understanding the Church. It in no way excludes the very human, historical, and even sociological ways of thinking about the Church. After all, we are not ecclesiological docetists. Docetism was an early (and ever recurring) heresy that Christ did not really have a human body, that he did not really suffer and die on the cross. Ecclesiological docetism is to view the Church as a theological abstraction that remains aloof from the very human messiness of history. As important as it is, however, to understand the “pilgrim Church on earth” in earthly and even earthy terms, she remains always and primarily the temporal communio with the eternal life of the triune God; she is that part of history which, by virtue of the incarnation in which God becomes man, guides and impels humanity’s pilgrimage toward our transcendent destiny. She is the prolepsis – the present anticipation – of the fulfillment of the story of the world. If that is not, above all, how we understand the Church, it is not evident that the Church has a major claim on our attention, never mind our allegiance, at all.

   More fuel for devotion or food for thought, as the case may be.

4. Zach Brissett June 8th, 2009 4:24 pm :

   Excellent article, Bryan and Thomas. I look forward to digesting it more thoroughly as time allows. Am I incorrect to quibble with your prefatory statement that a Catholic is removed from the Church “either by heresy, apostasy, schism, or excommunication”? My understanding — and it’s a point that arises often in my discussions with Reformed brethren — is that neither heresy nor excommunication necessarily revokes one’s membership in the Church.

   The quotation that you twice note from St. Jerome seems to speak to heresy’s inability, in and of itself, to do so. And although excommunication is the most serious medicinal penalty that the Church can dispense to its members, I think that an excommunicated person remains a Catholic (albeit one with severely diminished rights). Thanks to you all for the important work that you’re doing here.

5. Bryan Cross June 8th, 2009 6:33 pm :

   Hello Zach,

   The word ‘member’ is used in different senses, and that creates the ambiguity to which you are referring regarding membership. So, let’s define some terms.

   By ‘heresy’ here we are speaking of formal heresy, as it is defined in the Catechism:

   “Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same.” (CCC 2089)

   This is the definition used in Canon Law (see Can. 791).

   Notice the repeated word ‘obstinate’. This involves a person who isn’t merely accidentally or unknowingly denying something that the Church teaches must be believed with divine and catholic faith. (Doing so unknowingly or without an awareness or understanding that the Church taught otherwise, would be material heresy.) In a case of formal heresy, the person is told clearly what the Church teaches must be believed with divine and catholic faith (the phrase ‘divine and catholic faith’ is a technical term, and refers to that which requires the highest level of assent — see Canon 750 in the Code of Canon Law), and he obstinately denies it or obstinately doubts it.

   Formal heresy incurs automatic (latae sententiae) excommunication:

   Can. 1364 §1. … [A]n apostate from the faith, a heretic, or a schismatic incurs a latae sententiae excommunication.

   The word ‘heresy’ there is being used as it was defined in Canon 791. In other words, it is referring to formal heresy, not material heresy. In light of that, now consider what Pope Pius XII says in Mystici Corporis Christi:

   Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed. “For in one spirit” says the Apostle, “were we all baptized into one Body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free.” As therefore in the true Christian community there is only one Body, one Spirit, one Lord, and one Baptism, so there can be only one faith. And therefore, if a man refuse to hear the Church, let him be considered – so the Lord commands – as a heathen and a publican. It follows that those who are divided in faith or government cannot be living in the unity of such a Body, nor can they be living the life of its one Divine Spirit. (Mystici Corporis Christi, 22)

   So this gives us the definition of the word ‘member’ as we were using it in the article. A member (in this sense) of the Catholic Church is a person who has been baptized and professes the true faith (i.e. and therefore is not a formal heretic), and has not separated himself from the unity of the Body (by entering a schism), and is not in the excommunicated state. Clearly then, a formal heretic is not a member of the Catholic Church, in that sense of the term ‘member’, because he does not profess the truth faith, and on account of his [formal] heresy has incurred latae sententiae excommunication, according to Can. 1364.

   But does the formal heretic remain under the jurisdiction of the Church? Yes. Excommunication does not take the excommunicated person out of the jurisdiction of the Church. So in that sense, the formal heretic remains a Catholic, but not a Catholic in full communion with the Catholic Church, and thus not a member according to the necessary conditions listed in Mystici Corporis Christi 22.

   I hope that helps answer your question.

   In the peace of Christ,

   - Bryan

6. Zach Brissett June 8th, 2009 8:18 pm :

   Thanks, Bryan. Your answer is very helpful, and I agree that we’re coming at the term “membership” from slightly different perspectives. When these topics come up in ecclesiological conversations with my Reformed friends, they are fond of pointing to dissident theologians and arguing that there are “schisms within the Catholic Church”. My reply is that although a dissident may be guilty of many sins (heresy, perhaps, being among them), so long as he does not depart the Catholic Church for some other communion, schism is the one sin of which he is not guilty.

   I find that many Protestants think excommunication does (or should) entail “kicking the bums out”, but that’s not how the Church operates. The continued presence “within” the Catholic Church of excommunicated persons (whether latae or ferendae sententiae) is baffling–even scandalous–to these Protestant brothers. I like to point out that despite the errors that Luther and Calvin espoused, the Church did not force them into schism (as is often claimed). Schism was a step that they took in addition to their prior errors. Thanks again for your explanation.

7. Fr. Deacon Daniel June 10th, 2009 8:35 am :

   “Indeed no true and perfect human society can be conceived which is not governed by some supreme authority. Christ therefore must have given to His Church a supreme authority to which all Christians must render obedience. For this reason, as the unity of the faith is of necessity required for the unity of the church, inasmuch as it is the body of the faithful, so also for this same unity, inasmuch as the Church is a divinely constituted society, unity of government, which effects and involves unity of communion, is necessary jure divino. “The unity of the Church is manifested in the mutual connection or communication of its members, and likewise in the relation of all the members of the Church to one head” Leo XIII

   A futher point…

   For the Fathers, the Head of the Church was ultimately Christ with the Bishop of the local Church as the visible sign of unity for all Christians within his fold, the icon of the Father (cf. St. Ignatius of Antioch’s ecclesial typology). The Petrine ministry exercised by the Apostolic See of Rome and its bishop who presides “in love” (“Roma presides in amor”) is one which must uphold the service of of his brother bishops, and not undermine them. “Unity of governance” cannot and should not be equated with the notion of the local bishop simply acting as the Pope’s delegate. He is the Pope’s equal in ministry as a bishop. That said, as Patriarch of the Latin Church the Pope is the proper head of the sui juris Latin Church, responsible for all matters pertaining to the disciplines, practices and governance of that particular Church, the largest of all the 21 or 22 autonomous Churches that form the communion of the Catholic Church. As Successor of St. Peter (the Vicar of Peter, as he was called for centuries) he stands as head of the college of Catholic bishops throughout the world, exercising the power of the Keys when and where necessary, but always (it is hoped) to uphold the ministry and unity of his brother bishops and, ultimately, the one flock of Christ. To the extent that a Pope fulfills this mission of feeding the flock and strengthening his apostolic brethren, he is fulfilling his proper role within the communion of the Catholic Church.

   Historically, however, this has not always been the case. There has sometimes been a “union with confusion” of these roles (Bishop, Patriarch and Pope), a fact bemoaned by then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. The imposition of all sorts of Latin disciplines upon Eastern clergy and faithful is just such an example. (e.g., the imposition of mandatory celibacy and fasting rules and regulations) In acting in this manner, various Popes have attempted to be “more than a Pope,” acting like a monarchial head and ultimately undermining both his ministry and the ministry of his brother bishops.

   I say this because the pendulum appears to be swinging back regarding the need for unity within the Latin Church. Such a “swing” is a welcome one on many levels, since it will mean a return, hopefully, to liturgical and doctrinal sanity within that jurisdiction. The much smaller Eastern Catholic churches can only stand to benefit from this shift, since it means the strengthening of our brethren in the West, SO LONG AS the traditions of the East that differ from the West are protected, vigorously defended and upheld. The push towards unity in principle can often be corrupted in practice and turned into a push towards uniformity.

   Ultimately the Church cannot descend, as I said before, into rank tribalism, which, I am sad to say, has often become the fate of the Protestant communities and Orthodox churches. The Church’s unity must reflect the Divine Unity which is ultimately a Tri-Unity of Persons (unity and diversity). The Catholic Church with its representatives of East and West, is a vast mosaic which forms the icon of Christ to the world and can speak prophetically and polyphonically with “one voice,” much like a liturgical choir. The unity of the Church can only be strengthened by a corresponding commitment to its organic and orthodox diversity.

8. JamesD June 11th, 2009 1:49 am :

   Thanks for the useful info. It’s so interesting

9. Jonathan Brumley April 17th, 2010 6:13 am :

   Hi guys,

   I have read this article again and again over many months, (ever since Brian referred me to it from the Ecclesial Deism article), and I really am trying to understand your argument. But the fact is I am still not getting it.

   It seems to me that Christ can be the invisible head of an invisible Church without requiring a “visible” head of a human hierarchy/institution.

   Is Christ’s body divided? No, because Christ knows the members of His Body. But are we in perfect unity with one another? No, far from it. But why would we be urged by Jesus and Paul to work for unity if we were already perfectly united?

   Is believing that unity in the Church is currently imperfect a contradiction with Jesus’s prayer in John 17? I don’t see how that is necessarily so. I think it is only in heaven that our unity will be perfected.

   Can we be ordered to a common purpose without a visible hierarchy? I think so. All members of the Church can be ordered to a common purpose because of their living faith in the living Christ. We cannot see Christ, but we can still follow Him.

   Here’s a couple things that seem inconsistent in the RC position:

   Putting the pope in place of Christ as a “visible” head seems to contradict Paul’s declaration that Christ (though invisible) is the head. Doesn’t it make more sense that Christ, even though invisible, is the head, and the Church is therefore invisible as well (currently, at least)?

   It seems these three beliefs are inconsistent when taken together:
   1. Baptism is the sacrament by which one enters the Church
   2. Vatican II recognizes trinitarian baptism outside the RC Church
   3. The Church is the RC Church

   How can someone enter the Church and be in schism from the Church at the same time? Is the visible Church made up of all the Saints, or just some of them?

   As for these last two points, I am sure you have an explanation that is consistent – I would just like to understand it.

   Thanks for your consideration here.

   PS I am still eagerly awaiting the article on apostolic succession…

10. Bryan Cross April 17th, 2010 12:43 pm :

    Jonathan,

    You wrote:

    It seems to me that Christ can be the invisible head of an invisible Church without requiring a “visible” head of a human hierarchy/institution.

    The question is not what Christ could do, but what Christ did. Tom and I have provided much evidence and argumentation in the article that Christ founded a visible Church. Is Christ the Head of the Church? Of course. But a visible Church cannot lack a visible head, just as every society on earth has a visible leader, from the family, to the local community, to the state. Grace does not destroy nature, but builds upon it. Hence the supernatural society founded by Christ does not nullify the natural principles of a human society. It belongs to human nature to be ordered in societies, and thus to be unified under visible unified leadership. This belongs to human nature in the way that marriage belongs to human nature. So the Church, being visible, needs a visible head. And Christ was not unaware of this. This is why He gave the keys of the Kingdom to St. Peter, to be the steward (i.e. visible head as Christ’s representative) until He returns.

    You wrote:

    Is Christ’s body divided? No, because Christ knows the members of His Body.

    Christ’s Body is not divided. But the basis for its unity is not that Christ knows the members of His Body. He knows all human beings, but not all human beings are members of His Body. So the basis for membership in His Body cannot be that Christ knows them. Nor can the basis be that He knows they are members, because that just pushes the question back: On what basis does He know that those who are His members are His members, and know that those who are not His members, are not His members? Something about the members must make them members, and on that basis He knows them to be members, and knows that others not having it are not members.

    You wrote:

    But are we in perfect unity with one another? No, far from it. But why would we be urged by Jesus and Paul to work for unity if we were already perfectly united?

    I’m not sure who the ‘we’ here refers to, whether only Catholics, or all Christians. Catholics who hold the same faith, participate in all the same sacraments, and submit to the same government, are in perfect unity, because this is the peace and unity of the Spirit of God, our participation in the unity of the Trinity. The bond of charity is expressed through each of these three bonds of unity (i.e. same faith, same sacraments, same government). But insofar as we [Catholics] do not love one another, our union with each other is less than perfect. Regarding this, we are urged to love another, and to abound further still in our love for one another. And insofar as some dissenting Catholics reject certain doctrines of the Catholic faith, they remove themselves from the Church’s perfect unity; it is part of our task to help them be brought back into that perfect unity of the one faith of the Church. And insofar as others (e.g. Protestants) are separated from us by schism, heresy, or ignorance or unbelief, we are to seek their reconciliation with the Church, in Christ’s Name, that we all may be brought into full communion within Christ’s Church, to the glory of God the Father and an incontrovertible testimony to the whole world that Christ is the Light of the world, the only One through whom all men of good will may have true peace with one another.

    You wrote:

    Is believing that unity in the Church is currently imperfect a contradiction with Jesus’s prayer in John 17?

    There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one body, and one Spirit. St. Paul tells us this in Ephesians 4. Jesus’ prayer recorded in John 17 is infallible, because He is God. The Church has always maintained the three bonds of unity (i.e. same faith, same sacraments, and same government), and those who have fully embraced all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches and proclaims to be revealed by God enjoy this perfect unity with each other, a unity which will be perfected still further in the age to come, when concupiscence is done away, and we behold Him face to face.

    It is one thing to say that there are many who believe in Christ who are in schism from the Church. That is true, and in that sense, Christians are divided. But it is not true to say that the Church is divided or fragmented. If that were so, there would be no visible unity into which, by incorporation into it, those now divided could be united. The unification of men would be into a unity that is not now present on earth, and which therefore remains to be established by men. But, any unity established by mere men is a natural unity, not a supernatural unity. And no natural unity is capable of uniting all men. Only the God-man, Jesus Christ, could establish a supernatural unity. And this is exactly what He did, when He founded the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church and gave to St. Peter the keys of the Kingdom. This unity is supernatural, and cannot be lost or destroyed by men or devils, because it is a divine unity, and God cannot be divided. This supernatural unity is located in the Church, which is His Mystical Body. And men are truly and divinely united to each other through being incorporated into this supernatural unity, by being incorporated into His Church.

    You wrote:

    Can we be ordered to a common purpose without a visible hierarchy? I think so.

    That’s like saying that societies and nations can function in an ordered way without a government. This is a common notion among twenty-something anarchists and anarchist-leaning libertarians, and hippies. But it is naïve. In reality, throughout the entire history of civilization all societies have understood that without a visible hierarchy, the immediate result is that each man does what it is right in his own eyes, and the short-term result is chaos, which inevitably and shortly leads to tyranny. (See Plato’s Republic, Bk VIII) No country sends out an army that has no hierarchy. An army has a hierarchy, precisely so that they will work together as one body. And that is why Christ established Apostles in His Church, and gave them authority. And it is why they ordained bishops to succeed them, in a perpetual succession until He returns, so that His Church is never left as sheep without a shepherd.

    You wrote:

    All members of the Church can be ordered to a common purpose because of their living faith in the living Christ. We cannot see Christ, but we can still follow Him.

    Without a shared visible hierarchy, what it means to “follow Him” will be different for every man, and in many cases, contradictory, in part because who “He” is, will be different for every man. This is why there had to be ecumenical councils in the fourth and fifth centuries, regarding who Christ is. If you don’t believe me, just look around. Think about all the contradictory claims the world is hearing about Christ and His Church, from all the thousands of sects each divided from all the others in matters of doctrine, sacraments, morals, and practice. Imagine if all Christians were truly united under the Pope, all holding and teaching the same faith, sharing all the same sacraments, and submitting to the same visible leadership. For example, instead of millions of people hearing Benny Hinn teach that there are nine members of the Trinity, they would hear the teaching of the Nicene Creed on the Trinity. Or instead of this:

    they would hear what the Church has always taught about suffering for Christ (here and here).

    You wrote:

    Here’s a couple things that seem inconsistent in the RC position:

    Putting the pope in place of Christ as a “visible” head seems to contradict Paul’s declaration that Christ (though invisible) is the head. Doesn’t it make more sense that Christ, even though invisible, is the head, and the Church is therefore invisible as well (currently, at least)?

    There is no contradiction between Christ being the Head of the Church, and the pope being the head of the Church, so long as we are very clear that the word ‘head’ is being used in two distinct senses here. Christ is the Head of the Church, because He is the Church’s source, life, highest authority, and end (i.e. telos). But the pope is the vicar of Christ, that is, the visible representative of Christ, under Christ’s authority but acting in His authority as steward of the Church until Christ returns. So the pope is the head of the Church in a different sense than Christ is the Head of the Church. The pope is subordinate to Christ. But we are subordinate to Christ by being subordinate to the pope, as Jesus said, “The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the on who rejects you rejects Me; and he who rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me.” (Luke 10:16) But if it were true that no one could speak for Christ without undermining Christ’s unique authority, this verse could not be in the Bible. This verse (along with others) shows how Christ’s delegation of authority in His Church does not undermine His unique authority, but allows others to participate in it, in a subordinate way.

    You wrote:

    It seems these three beliefs are inconsistent when taken together:

    1. Baptism is the sacrament by which one enters the Church
    2. Vatican II recognizes trinitarian baptism outside the RC Church
    3. The Church is the RC Church

    How can someone enter the Church and be in schism from the Church at the same time?

    Baptism is that sacrament by which one enters into sacramental communion with the Church and by which, if one publicly affirms the faith of the Church one is incorporated into full communion with the Church. But those who do not publicly affirm the faith of the Church are not, by their baptism, brought into full communion with the Church. As the Catechism teaches:

    Baptism constitutes the foundation of communion among all Christians, including those who are not yet in full communion with the Catholic Church: “For men who believe in Christ and have been properly baptized are put in some, though imperfect, communion with the Catholic Church. Justified by faith in Baptism, [they] are incorporated into Christ; they therefore have a right to be called Christians, and with good reason are accepted as brothers by the children of the Catholic Church.” “Baptism therefore constitutes the sacramental bond of unity existing among all who through it are reborn.” (CCC 1271, my emphasis)

    They reason why such men have only an “imperfect” communion with the Catholic Church is because, though they are baptized and believe in Christ, they do not hold the Catholic faith, but depart from it in some respect. For a fuller explanation of this, see my “Baptism, Schism, Full Communion, Salvation.”

    Lastly, you wrote:

    Is the visible Church made up of all the Saints, or just some of them?

    Pope Pius XII explains:

    Actually only those are to be included as members of the Church who have been baptized and profess the true faith, and who have not been so unfortunate as to separate themselves from the unity of the Body, or been excluded by legitimate authority for grave faults committed. (Mystici Corporis Christi, 22)

    Does that mean that all these members are in a state of grace? No. Nor does it mean that all members die in a state of grace. There are wheat and tares together as members in the visible Church. (cf. Matthew 13)

    In the peace of Christ,

    - Bryan

11. Tom Riello April 17th, 2010 7:31 pm :

    Jonathan,

    If I may suggest, I would encourage you to read Lumen Gentium (Vatican II document on the Church). As Bryan stated the Church believes and knows Christ to be the Head of the Church. The Pope does not rule in the place of Christ but on behalf of Christ as His Vicar. The Apostolic structure of the Church is of its essence for it was willed and instituted not by men but by Christ. Thus, the structure of the Church, the hierarchy, the magisterium is something given by Christ and without this structure it would be impossible to know where the Church is and what the Church believes and teaches. Doctrine would be reduced to mere opinion and could have no binding authority. As DeLubac once said, “An invisible Church is no Church at all.”

12. Jonathan Brumley April 18th, 2010 2:33 am :

    Bryan,

    Thanks for the explanation about the pope and baptism. Is it correct then that Catholics believe that someone enters the Church through baptism only if the baptism includes a statement of faith?

    You said:

    “Tom and I have provided much evidence and argumentation in the article that Christ founded a visible Church.”

    I should have clarified. The article doesn’t have a _convincing_ argument why the Church is _necessarily_ visible.

    Here are the arguments I see in your article:
    1. The Church is a Body (by Paul’s analogy), and Bodies are always visible.
    – But I think Paul wasn’t necessarily saying that the Church is in _every way_ like a human body. He was making an analogy to say in what ways the Church is like a Body. And a Body is not always visible, if you include Christ’s body, which is invisible to us mortals.
    2. In the Church there is “one faith”.
    – OK, but that doesn’t mean the “one faith” is the creed of the RC Church. When Paul says “faith” is he saying one set of beliefs, or a shared following of Christ? I think the latter.
    3. “We who are many are one body; for we all partake of the one bread.”
    – I agree, but lots of Christians, not just Catholics, partake the bread. Surely you would consider Orthodox at least as participating in the same sacraments? Does that not make them part of the one Body, by Paul’s very statement?
    4. Bodies are unified in hierarchy. There is one head.
    – I agree, but I would disagree with the Pope being the head, and I would say the head of that Body is Christ.

    Regarding your new argument, I see how it is possible that Christ worked with human nature to structure a Church that was structured like a human society, but I do not see how that is necessarily so. The gospels go on and on talking about the Kingdom of Heaven and how things are different in the Kingdom. So it would be more obvious to me if the Church were quite different from a human society. I do not disagree that the Church is hierarchical. But the straw man I am proposing (which is only what I have believed for a long time) is that the hierarchy of the Church is pretty flat. There is Christ, on top, and then there are the members, united in an invisible way directly below Him.

13. Fr. Deacon Daniel April 18th, 2010 8:34 am :

    Jonathan,

    Very interesting points. Here are a few questions

    1. What do you think are the practical consequences of a Church which is purely invisible?

    2. What are the principles which define the nature of the (presumably universal) “shared following” of Christ? What is the origin of these principles and who determines them?

    3. Orthodox and Catholics share a common understanding as to the nature of the “One Bread” that most Protestants do not share and in fact in many cases explicitly reject. What are the implications of this as it pertains to the unity that is supposed to be signified and effected by the “One Bread”? What unity does it signify then? I’m also curious if you see any relationship between the understanding of the One Bread and Acts 2:42?

    As to your 4th point, I am inclined to agree with you in certain respects. Christ is the head of His Body and the Pope is the Petrine head and spokesperson of the College of Bishops (just as Peter was for the apostles). As Vatican II affirmed quite properly, every bishop is the Vicar of Christ and, according to Ignatian typology, the “icon of the Father” to his local Church, but the Pope alone is the Vicar of Peter serving his brother bishops and through them each of the local Churches, without neglecting, of course his own diocese.

    I think a more balanced ecclesiology would recognize the need to properly weigh the concerns of the local Church with the regional and the universal. Each Bishop is the apostolic head of the Catholic Church within the jurisdiction he has been called to serve. To the extent that the Pope in essential matters serves his brother bishops’ headship defined by service, he is fulfilling his Petrine ministry. To the extent he undermines or overpowers it in the interest of his own sui juris (self-governing) Church – (and there are examples of this historically, especially with the Eastern Catholic Churches) he weakens his brethren and fails to fulfill his vocation. Local, Regional and Universal dimensions of the Church must always work to maintain the balance of its dual hierarchical and conciliar nature.

14. Bryan Cross April 18th, 2010 9:46 am :

    Jonathan,

    You wrote:

    Is it correct then that Catholics believe that someone enters the Church through baptism only if the baptism includes a statement of faith?

    No, because that over-simplifies what it means to “enter the Church.” As I said in my previous comment, those who do not publicly affirm the faith of the Church are not, by their baptism, brought into full communion with the Church, but are brought into an imperfect communion with the Church. When a man is validly baptized in a heretical sect, for example, he does obtain an imperfect communion with the Catholic Church, but he does not thereby enter into full communion with the Catholic Church.

    I should have clarified. The article doesn’t have a _convincing_ argument why the Church is _necessarily_ visible.

    The article doesn’t contain any argument that the Church is necessarily visible. The article argues that Christ founded a visible Church, and that He did so for good reasons.

    Here are the arguments I see in your article:
    1. The Church is a Body (by Paul’s analogy), and Bodies are always visible.
    – But I think Paul wasn’t necessarily saying that the Church is in _every way_ like a human body. He was making an analogy to say in what ways the Church is like a Body. And a Body is not always visible, if you include Christ’s body, which is invisible to us mortals.

    Christ’s physical body is not invisible per se, but only because He ascended into Heaven. When He ascended His physical body did not turn invisible; it departed, with the result that His physical body is not visible to us, though it remains visible in itself. The ascension is thus not a defeater for the claim that bodies are visible. If the Church were not visible, then it would not be like a physical body; it would be like a pile of amoebas. What makes the Church visible is its hierarchy. If the Church’s only hierarchy were Christ the Head, then the Church would not be visible, since Christ is now invisible to us. But in order to adopt such a view (i.e. that the Church’s only hierarchy is Christ), you have to be an ecclesial deist, because all the Church Fathers believed and taught that Christ established a perpetual hierarchy, being themselves members of that hierarchy. (Just read the seven epistles of St. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, who died around AD 107.) And that is because they believed that Christ authorized and commissioned Apostles, who then authorized and commissioned bishops as their successors.

    Consider Jesus’s statement to the Apostles in John 20:23, “If you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they have been retained.” He is not saying that any Christian can forgive any other persons sins, or retain a persons sins. He is talking about an authority He gave especially to the Apostles (and through them to their successors) to forgive and retain men’s sins in His Name and as His authorized representatives. So the idea that the only hierarchy in the Church is Christ, is contrary to all the Fathers, and contrary to much of the New Testament, insofar as it denies the special authority of the Apostles, and thus denies that they are part of the hierarchy of the Church. It denies that the Apostles authorized bishops and presbyters and deacons. But this is what all Christians have believed from the beginning, so the burden of proof is on the person who denies that the Apostles had any unique authority in the Body of Christ, and denies likewise that the bishops, presbyters, and deacons had any unique authority.

    2. In the Church there is “one faith”.
    – OK, but that doesn’t mean the “one faith” is the creed of the RC Church. When Paul says “faith” is he saying one set of beliefs, or a shared following of Christ? I think the latter.

    The heretics would have loved that. That way, fidelity to Christ would allow them to deny any line of the Creed, and still be ‘following Christ.’ They could deny any line of the Bible too, and still claim to be following Christ. Nobody in the history of the Church has ever believed this. The Church has always taught that believing in Christ included believing certain truths revealed by Christ and about Christ. Before anyone was baptized, he had to affirm publicly the articles of the faith. And this is still the practice in the Church to this day, which you will see if you witness a Catholic baptism. The catechumen must affirm all the articles of the Apostles Creed, a Creed which we can trace back, in nascent form, to late first century / early second century Rome. Here’s an excerpt from St. Hippolytus, describing the baptismal rite, in the early third century in Rome:

    When the person being baptized goes down into the water,
    he who baptizes him, putting his hand on him, shall say:
    “Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty?” And the
    person being baptized shall say: “I believe.”
    Then holding his hand on his head, he shall baptize him
    once.

    And then he shall say: “Do you believe in Christ Jesus,
    the Son of God, who was born of the Virgin Mary, and was
    crucified under Pontius Pilate, and was dead and buried,
    and rose again the third day, alive from the dead, and
    ascended into heaven, and sat at the right hand of the
    Father, and will come to judge the living and the dead?”
    And when he says: “I believe,” he is baptized again.
    And again he shall say: “Do you believe in the Holy Spirit,
    in the holy church, and the resurrection of the body?”
    The person being baptized shall say: “I believe,” and
    then he is baptized a third time.

    It is done almost exactly like that to this day.

    You wrote:

    3. “We who are many are one body; for we all partake of the one bread.”
    – I agree, but lots of Christians, not just Catholics, partake the bread. Surely you would consider Orthodox at least as participating in the same sacraments? Does that not make them part of the one Body, by Paul’s very statement?

    Lots of Christians partake of bread. Lots of non-Christians partake of bread too, whenever they eat a sandwich or toast. Eating bread doesn’t make us one. Only where men are validly ordained is the bread by consecration transformed into the Eucharistic Body of Christ, such that by eating His Eucharistic Body we are incorporated into Him and thus unified. Regarding your question, yes, the Orthodox participate in the same sacraments. But as I explained above, Protestants who are validly baptized also have the same sacrament of baptism, and yet that it is not sufficient for full communion with the Catholic Church. Schism and heresy prevent full communion. Sharing in the same sacraments is only one of the bonds of union. The other two bonds of union are sharing in the same faith, and sharing in the same ecclesial government. Without all three bonds of union, there is not full communion. And the Orthodox do not share the other two bonds of unity with the Catholic Church, though with respect to “one faith” it is very close.

    4. Bodies are unified in hierarchy. There is one head.
    – I agree, but I would disagree with the Pope being the head, and I would say the head of that Body is Christ.

    If you don’t believe in the visible Church, then not only can you not recognize the Pope as in any sense being the head of the visible Church, but you cannot recognize any pastor of any local congregation as having any authority. It is just you and Jesus.

    Regarding your new argument, I see how it is possible that Christ worked with human nature to structure a Church that was structured like a human society, but I do not see how that is necessarily so.

    I agree that God was not bound to do it this way. God, being omnipotent, could have done it other ways. God could have set up His Church such that it had no visible hierarchy, and each man was guided entirely by the Holy Spirit through his own reading of Scripture. But, that would be entirely unfitting to human nature. We are social beings, and our nature is expressed in societies, as Aristotle explains in his Politics. In addition, God delights in allowing us to participate in His work, and by setting up a hierarchy, Christ has given men the gift of participating in many unique ways in the extension of His work, with His authorization. The Body is an extension of the Head. The Apostles and their successors have been given the great gift of participating in a very special way in the work of Christ, governing Christ’s Church, sharing in His priesthood ministerially, and guarding and providing the authentic interpretation of the deposit of faith.

    The gospels go on and on talking about the Kingdom of Heaven and how things are different in the Kingdom. So it would be more obvious to me if the Church were quite different from a human society.

    The difference is that it is from above, not from below. That is, the authority is supernatural, not natural. But the general principle in theology is that grace perfects nature; grace does not destroy nature. So the Kingdom does not destroy or obliterate human nature; it perfects human nature. The same God who made us, is the same God who glorifies us. To deny that grace perfects nature is to adopt a kind of Manicheanism, wherein the God of Jesus acts in a way contrary to the God of Genesis chapter 1.

    I do not disagree that the Church is hierarchical. But the straw man I am proposing (which is only what I have believed for a long time) is that the hierarchy of the Church is pretty flat. There is Christ, on top, and then there are the members, united in an invisible way directly below Him.

    Start noting the Apostles in the New Testament, then the bishops, presbyters, and deacons. Then read the epistles of St. Ignatius (read them slowly, out loud), the letter of St. Clement, the writings of St. Justin, St. Irenaeus, Tertullian, etc., and ask yourself if anything even remotely resembling gnostic egalitarianism can be found in Scripture and in the Fathers. Such a notion is entirely foreign to Scripture, the Fathers and Church history.

    In the peace of Christ,

    - Bryan

15. Fr. Deacon Daniel April 18th, 2010 8:14 pm :

    Bryan,

    You wrote:

    “And the Orthodox do not share the other two bonds of unity with the Catholic Church, though with respect to “one faith” it is very close.”

    Not just simply close in matters of faith, but in matters of ecclesiastical governance (many of their Churches are as ancient as – and some more ancient than – Rome and have maintained apostolic succession and governance since the time of the apostles), and the full sacramental life of the local Churches which is perfectly Catholic. These Churches are in fact Catholic Churches, albeit in an imperfect communion with the Apostolic See of Rome. Their union with the Catholic Church is much more profound then I think you acknowledge here. It is for this reason that Dominus Jesus ascribes the title “Sister Churches” to them alone, and does not extend it to any Protestant communion or ecclesiastical body. And Pope John Paul II of blessed memory made it clear that the term “schism” is perhaps too drastic to apply to the Orthodox Churches not in full communion with Rome. I am in inclined to agree.

    God bless,

    Fr. Deacon Daniel

16. Bryan Cross April 18th, 2010 11:50 pm :

    Fr. Deacon Daniel

    I won’t quibble about how close is close, or debate about informal comments made by any Pope. I agree that many of the Orthodox Churches are ancient, but the age of particular Churches does not in itself demonstrate anything about the degree of closeness between them and Catholics with respect to faith or governance. The Anglican Church, for example, is also quite old, but there are now significant differences between the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church, with respect to faith and governance.

    Regarding schism, the Catholic Church’s definition of ‘schism’ is:

    schism is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.” (CCC 2089)

    Since the Orthodox Churches satisfy this definition, it follows that according to this definition they are in schism. If they weren’t in schism, there would be no point in trying to reconcile with them, because we would already be reunited. The Catholic Church doesn’t have two definitions of ‘schism,’ one for the Orthodox, and one for all other non-Catholics. And if we don’t call a schism what it actually is, we won’t properly understand it or rectify it. The intention of the Pope’s comment was, I suspect, to emphasize the mutually shared hope of reunion, and the desire to avoid insinuations of culpability. That was probably prudential and conducive for furthering reconciliation. But it doesn’t change the fact that logically there are only three options: the Catholic Catechism’s definition of schism is false, the Orthodox Churches are submitting to the Roman Pontiff, or the Orthodox Churches are in schism from the Catholic Church.

    In the peace of Christ,

    - Bryan

17. Fr. Deacon Daniel April 19th, 2010 12:53 am :

    Bryan,

    You wrote:

    “I agree that many of the Orthodox Churches are ancient, but the age of particular Churches does not in itself demonstrate anything about the degree of closeness between them and Catholics with respect to faith or governance.”

    Yet you completely ignore my second (and more critical) point that these are infact true Churches which have in fact maintained apostolic succession which would include the charism of governance and sactification shared with their Catholic brethren (a claim Cantebury can’t possibly maintain). Orthodox Churches are in fact true Churches, albeit suffering from what the clarification of Dominus Jesus describes as certain defects.

    I think your point about Pope John Paul II’s assigning culpability for the break in communion between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches through the application of the term “schism” or “schismatic” is true. While I certainly do not disagree with the definition of the Catechism as to the “canonical facts” which define schism (drawn from the Code of Canon Law), I would not limit my understanding of “schism” or “schismatic” in its moral sense to this rather one-sided definition.

    Sectarianism and schismatic attitudes and behaviors can even be ascribed to the activities of certain Popes in history, and more recently by certain liberal (even heterodox) theological and liturgical elements in contemporary Western Catholicism. Schism is at its heart an attack upon the communion of the Church, and there is plenty of historical guilt to be spread around with hierarchs in East and West in this regard. That we have inherited a history none of us helped to create I think should inspire some reticence on our part to label as “in schism” those who are members of the Orthodox Churches. It is perhaps more accurate to say that we all function as “schismatics” to the extent that we are indifferent to or actively opposed to the reconciliation of our Churches. I certainly would include in that those Orthodox (many monastics) who radically and sometimes violently oppose any effort to dialog with the Catholic Church. But for the average faithful Orthodox Christian in the pew or Orthodox cleric who does not suffer from an explicit anti-Catholicism as referenced by Vladimir Soloviev, I am far more sympathetic to Pope John Paul’s attitude that the term “schism” is not appropriate.

    God bless,

    Fr. Deacon Daniel

18. Jonathan Brumley April 19th, 2010 8:00 am :

    Hi Bryan and Father Deacon,

    Thank you for the comments. Bryan, I agree with the implications of an invisible Church, which are explained and discussed pretty well in your Ecclesial Deism article. What I am unsure of is whether those implications are better or worse than the concept of a Church structured as a human hierarchy. It is really unclear to me whether the hierarchical RC Church of today is what Christ intended to establish.

    As for your suggestion, I have read, out loud, parts of Ignatius’s and Irenaeus’s epistles, as described in Rod Bennett’s book the Four Witnesses. (My wife and I read that book together some months ago).

19. Bryan Cross April 19th, 2010 8:40 am :

    Fr. Deacon Daniel, (re: #17)

    I think we are talking past each other. You are focusing on ‘schism’ in its moral or formal sense which includes the notion of culpable defiance, and I’m talking about schism in its material sense, according to the definition provided in the Catechism. Just as true Christians can be in schism from the Catholic Church in that latter sense of the term, so also true particular Churches can be in schism from the Catholic Church in that sense of the term. And that’s where the Orthodox Churches are. My point is not at all about the attitudes or behaviors that led to (and perpetuated) this schism, but about the present standing of the Orthodox Churches in relation to the visible Church that Christ founded, i.e. that they are not in full communion with the Church Christ founded, but are in schism from her.

    In the peace of Christ,

    - Bryan

20. Tim A. Troutman April 19th, 2010 9:04 am :

    Jonathan –

    You said: “It is really unclear to me whether the hierarchical RC Church of today is what Christ intended to establish.”

    Stay tuned. We will be publishing a major article arguing for this very thing shortly – probably within the week.

21. Fr. Deacon Daniel April 20th, 2010 10:36 am :

    Bryan,

    Christ is Risen!

    Yes, I think you are indeed correct. Thank you for making such a helpful distinction.

    BTW, you (and Jonathan and other readers) might find this article extremely insightful regarding the 2008 incident where a Romanian Orthodox Metropolitan received communion at a Greek-Catholic Divine Liturgy.

    http://bekkos.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/fr-paul-on-the-timisoara-incident/

    The blog where this is posted is a wondrous source of insightful dialog on matters pertaining to East-West unity, and the author of the article is known only as an English (Latin) Catholic priest, Fr. Paul, currently studying the thought of Patriarch John Bekkos. (I have my own speculation on this point…it could possibly be Fr. Paul McParltan who authored “The Eucharist Makes the Church” which compares the Eucharistic ecclesiologies of Henri Cardinal de Lubac and Met. John Zizoulas. ) The blog is owned by Orthodox theologian, Dr. Peter Gilbert, who is one of the most lucid and balanced authors on matters pertaining to East-West unity, most especially the “divisive” issue of filioque.

    I think that there are some intersting connections here to our discussion on the One Bread, the Church, Christian Unity and Schism and the One Faith in Christ.

    Hope you enjoy it!

    God bless,

    Fr. Deacon Daniel

22. Jonathan Brumley April 20th, 2010 11:58 am :

    Hi Father Deacon,

    Thanks for the post. You said this in the post “Since that Church is indeed one, and since it has to be visible on earth if Christ’s will is to have been efficacious, then you are either in it or you are not.”

    Why do you believe a visible Church is Christ’s will?

    Thanks,
    Jonathan

23. Michael Liccione April 20th, 2010 2:35 pm :

    Jonathan:

    I can’t speak for Fr. Deacon, but I’d answer your question thus: “For the same reason God became a man.”

    Best,
    Mike

24. Michael Liccione April 20th, 2010 2:36 pm :

    Fr Deacon:

    I concur with your view of Peter Gilbert and his blog. I stop in there regularly, though I rarely comment unless the Orthodox start piling on.

    Best,
    Mike

25. Fr. Deacon Daniel April 20th, 2010 4:10 pm :

    Mike,

    You took the words right out of my mouth…

    Because the Word was made flesh and “pitched His tent” in our midst. The Church lives in this Divine Tent of Meeting – a communion of all the saints in heaven and on earth.

    Jonathan,

    I’m not sure that I wrote that particular quote…at least I cannot find it!

    Nevertheless, bear in mind that the Catholic position is that the Church has both invisible and visible, divine and human, heavenly and earthly dimensions to it.

    You might consider reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church which identifies the relationship between all of these dimensions.

    http://www.usccb.org/catechism/text/pt1sect2chpt3art9.shtml

    God bless!

    Fr. Deacon Daniel

26. Donald Todd September 4th, 2010 11:31 am :

    When I was reading through this, including the comments, I was reminded that the Church was the fulfillment of both Israel and the Temple, as well as being the successor to both. Israel was a kingdom, with a King, a Queen (the King’s mother), and a chamberlain or major domo who held the keys, representing access to the king. The description of King David’s chamberlain and of Jesus’ chamberlain read a lot alike; one is tempted to say almost verbatim.

    This is important because, like both Israel and the Temple, the Church is a visible (as contrasted with invisible) manifestation that God has involved Himself in the world He created for our use, in order to reveal His salvation to mankind. We are invited into His Kingdom, and we are invited to participate in His Sacrifice.

    The Temple was the site for the sacrifice to be performed. The High Priest and His associates would handle that function, which was reserved for them. The old covenant sacrifice was limited to the Temple in Jerusalem. The new covenant is universal and there are altars all over the world on which the perfect Sacrifice is offered. The new Sacrifice is a visible Manifestation of God, even as the animals offered on the altar at the Temple in Jerusalem were visible. No invisible animals were sacrificed at the Hebrew Temple in Jerusalem. No symbolic animals were sacrificed at the Hebrew Temple in Jerusalem. No symbolic blood was sprinkled on the people or the altar.

    Peter and his successors have a dual role as both the chamberlain, who is responsible for access to the King (hence the keys); and as the senior member of the priestly caste who is responsible for the maintenance of the Sacrifice (the altar).

    Peter and his successors are the symbol of unity within the universal Church, tying all those altars together in unity in a Kingdom Whose Head is also the Head of the Church, and are generally the Church’s most visible member on earth. Peter is not Jesus’ replacement as the Head of the universal Church, but rather His servant. I pray for Peter each and every day. I pray to Jesus each and every day. It is a major difference in focus relating to the ability of each. Should Peter be moved to pray for me, it is most welcome. Should Jesus decide that something needs to be done to my internal or external circumstances, may it be according to His word.

27. Benjamin Keil December 13th, 2010 9:59 pm :

    Hey Bryan!

    An excellently-argued article, and one that I’ve reread slowly a few times to at least (try to) diligently seek out the meat of your position. I’m saddened at the (relatively) few comments this work of yours has received – definitely find myself hoping the fellow who refers to himself as a fan of Turritin, Bugay, or some actual Protestant academics would respond to the challenges you give. No doubt such persons are busy putting out Catholic brushfires on other blogs, or (gasps!) perhaps spending time with their families. It’s crazy, I know…

    Regardless, your thesis not having been refuted thus far, I’d like to inquire about the implications of your position. First, do you think that this question (of the visibility of Christ’s church) should be resolved prior to, posterior to, or simultaneously with the topic of sola scriptura? I can see both sides, after their own fashion (If one doesn’t decide on whether or not sola scriptura should be accepted, one can’t decide whether or not the church is visible. But, alternately, if one decides the church is (in)visible, that would seem to have massive implications as to whether or not one accepts sola scriptura). Thoughts/suggestions?
    Secondly, in your implications section, I didn’t notice something roughly like the following: If Christ founded a visible church, it seems to me that one should then ask which one (among the many visible churches) is the one that Christ founded. Would something like that indeed be an implication of your thesis, or have I misunderstood something?

    Thanks, and I hope your semester is wrapping up well!

    Sincerely,
    Benjamin Keil

    PS: Bryan, I’ve found out what you do in your spare time. ;-)

28. Michael Liccione December 13th, 2010 11:19 pm :

    Benjamin:

    In my experience, adherents of the Protestant hermeneutical paradigm (PHP) see little need to engage directly the claim that “Christ founded a visible Church.” The PHP itself excludes it. And its inherent methodology explains why.

    It goes roughly like this. The way to learn the Christian religion is to study and interpret “the sources”–primarily Scripture, and secondarily the documented evidence from the post-apostolic church–independently of the claim of any visible church to be “the Church” Christ founded. Assuming further, as most Protestants do, that one ought to be “churched,” one must accordingly pick or found a church on the basis of the interpretation one’s study has led to. Since no church is ever infallible, however, its orthodoxy always remains subject to assessment according to the criteria that one’s favored interpretation of the sources establishes as such. Of course, if that interpretation changes enough, then one’s ecclesial affiliation changes with it. What that entails, among other things, is that no visible church has the authority to propound doctrines that bind the consciences of believers as de fide. Hence, no visible church can be “the” Church Christ founded, if by ‘the Church’ is meant a body that speaks with his full authority. “The Church” is simply the collection of individuals, across time as well as space, who share a certain fallible interpretation of the s9urces faithfully enough. That collectivity can intersect with, but can never be identified with, any visible, hierarchical body. Some Protestant churches call such a collectivity “the saved”; others, “the elect.” But those are just the conservatives. The more liberal the church, the less likely its members are to believe that strict adherence to the sources, or to any particular interpretation thereof, is necessary for salvation. But liberals are at one with conservatives in denying that one can identify a visible body of people simply as “the Church.”

    When Protestants argue for that position, they do it in two ways: by pointing out that the Catholic Church’s claim to be “the Church” cannot be logically deduced from the sources, and by pointing to the many sins of Catholic hierarchs, especially popes. From the Catholic standpoint, of course, both arguments are profoundly question-begging. But the notion that any visible body can just be The Bride of Christ, one body with him in a mystical marriage, and bearer of his full teaching authority, seems absurd to committed Protestants as such. So a case such as Bryan’s above seems to them hardly worth refuting on its own. For somebody operating within the PHP, the evidence of logic and history amply suffices.

    Best,
    Mike

29. Canadian December 14th, 2010 3:34 pm :

    Mike,
    I tried to find your email to contact you, but I will ask here.
    Can I have permission to quote some of your remarks on the PHP?
    Not as my own, of course, but for both written and verbal interaction with my Protestant brethren.
    Could you also “nutshell” some remarks like you have for the PHP, but as if adressing the Eastern Orthodox. I could probably glean it from the “I love the Orthodox too much” post, but I will have to go back and re-read it first.
    Pax Christi.

30. Bryan Cross December 17th, 2010 11:01 am :

    Benjamin, (re: #27)

    You wrote:

    First, do you think that this question (of the visibility of Christ’s church) should be resolved prior to, posterior to, or simultaneously with the topic of sola scriptura?

    The two questions (visibility of the Church, and sola scriptura) are not entirely separable. If sola scriptura is true, then the Church is not visibly one (in which case the Church is not visible). On page 319 of his book The Shape of Sola Scriptura, Keith Mathison writes:

    The first observation we must make is that if sola scriptura is true then some form of a “branch theory” of the visible church is a necessary corollary- not as an expression of the ideal, but as a description of the reality.

    Likewise, if the Church is essentially visible, then the Church is essentially visibly one, and this requires not only a necessarily unified hierarchy, but also a charism of truth, in which case sola scriptura is not true. So the two questions cannot be separated.

    You wrote:

    Secondly, in your implications section, I didn’t notice something roughly like the following: If Christ founded a visible church, it seems to me that one should then ask which one (among the many visible churches) is the one that Christ founded. Would something like that indeed be an implication of your thesis, or have I misunderstood something?

    Yes it is. One finds the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church Christ founded by starting in the first century from the time of the Apostles, and then tracing it forward, decade by decade, to the present day. As one traces it forward through the centuries, one encounters schisms from the Church (e.g. Novatians, Donatists); in each case, one notes the criterion by which the party in schism is the one in schism from the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church Christ founded, and not the other way around.

    St. Augustine said concerning the Donatists:

    How many, believing that it mattered not to which party a Christian might belong, remained in the schism of Donatus only because they had been born in it, and no one was compelling them to forsake it and pass over into the Catholic Church! Others say: We thought, indeed, that it mattered not in what communion we held the faith of Christ; but thanks to the Lord, who has gathered us in from a state of schism, and has taught us that it is fitting that the one God be worshiped in unity. (Letter 93)

    Such a statement makes sense only if there are genuine criteria by which to distinguish schism within the Church from schism from the Church.

    One of the primary purposes for Christ founding a Church is to undo the division of men against men, the divisions of the human family effected by sin. These divisions began when Adam sinned, but were manifest in a universal way at the Tower of Babel. Pentecost is the supernatural reversal of Babel, and this is why the Church is the anti-Babel. (I discussed this more in “Pentecost, Babel and the Ecumenical Imperative.”) This is why it is fitting that she is built on Rome, which Peter refers to as Babylon (1 Pet 5:6), and which is the natural kingdom taken over by Christ’s supernatural Kingdom, according to Daniel’s prophecy in Daniel chapter 2. All the nations of the world are to stream into her doors (Isaiah 2:2), into one household, the household of faith. And so any candidate for being the visible Church Christ founded must be universal (catholic), not ethnically or politically defined, and must be intrinsically one, having a principium unitatis that does not allow the Church to lose her visible unity, even as it allows schisms from her.

    Sinful man cannot form such a unity, though he thinks he can. But sinful man’s attempt to do so is the mission of the Antichrist, to form by the mere natural power of man the whole of mankind into a universal social and political unity ordered to this present world as man’s final end. By contrast, the Church that Christ founded is a supernatural unity, coming down from Heaven, in Christ, and by His Spirit, at Pentecost. And this is why this [supernatural] unity is the first of the four marks of the Church, specified in the Creed: one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. The Life of the Church is the supernatural Life of the Trinity, not from man, but from the God-man, and not ordered to natural earthly bliss, but to the supernatural end which is the very perfect and eternal communion of the Three Divine Persons. If the Church were founded by mere men, it would have earthly, natural happiness as its end. Heaven would merely be a return to an earthly paradise, without disease, suffering or death, on and on forever without end, grace without glory.

    But Heaven is infinitely beyond the natural happiness of paradise, as the Life of the Creator infinitely transcends the life of mere creatures. Heaven is the eternal inner Life and Happiness of the Triune God, into which we are graciously called to participate. To have Heaven as its end (i.e. its telos), the Church must have Heaven as its principle and source, which is why the Church must be founded by the God-man, Jesus Christ. This is why no society founded by mere men can be the Church. Because the Church has a supernatural origin, it therefore has a supernatural end. And this is why apostolic succession is essential to the Church, because only by apostolic succession is the activity of the Church the continuation and extension of the supernatural Life and mission of the incarnate Christ, oriented toward a supernatural end. Hence the necessity of the third mark of the Church: apostolic.

    In the process of tracing the Church from the first century forward, when we get to the end of the eighth century and the beginning of the ninth, I think we will still be agreed concerning what and where is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church that Christ founded. (I went into that in more depth in comment #12 of the Tu Quoque post.) When tracing apostolic succession in an effort to find the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church Christ founded, it is not that difficult to make a good deal of progress in short order, and narrow the question down to Orthodoxy or Catholicism. Those are the only two real candidates. Even if it were a toss-up at that point, needing to examine in greater depth only two possibilities to determine the identity of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church Christ founded is a very different situation than just picking (or forming) a denomination or confession that most closely agrees with one’s own interpretation of Scripture and calling it a branch of the Church.

    You wrote:

    PS: Bryan, I’ve found out what you do in your spare time. ;-)

    Must be some other person with the same name; I’ve heard of WOW, but I’ve never seen it or played it.

    In the peace of Christ,

    - Bryan

31. Canadian December 17th, 2010 12:34 pm :

    Bryan,
    Your comments are very helpful.
    Great quote from St. Augustine as well!

32. Jonathan Brumley January 24th, 2011 9:25 pm :

    The King James translation of 1 Corinthians 12:25 uses the terminology “that there should be no schism IN the body”. According to the Catholic view of schism, is this an incorrect translation? Would it be a more correct for this to be translated “that there should be no schism FROM the body” ? Or is it incorrect to use the word “schism” here?

    The RSV uses the word “discord” instead of schism. Other translations (NIV,ESV) use the word “division”.

33. Bryan Cross January 25th, 2011 1:49 pm :

    Hello Jonathan, (re: #32)

    Schism is of two sorts: in and from. This can be seen even in the definition of schism given in the Catechism:

    [S]chism is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him. (CCC 2089)

    Refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff is schism from the Church, because it is a separation from the visible head of the Church. Christ gave the keys of the Kingdom to St. Peter in Matthew 16, and thus being in communion with the one holding those keys determines the visible extension of the Church. But the second part of the definition of ‘schism’ shows us another form of schism, namely, schism in the Church. In such a case, there are two parties who are each in communion with the Pope, but one or both of the parties refuse communion to the other party. Such a situation is necessarily short-lived, precisely because the Pope will issue an order of some sort either to one or both parties, requiring that they repent and restore communion to each other. If they comply, the schism is healed. But if one or both parties refuses to comply, then what was schism in the Church turns into schism from the Church, and the unity of the Church remains intact. So, translating 1 Cor 12:25 as “that there be no schism in the body” is fully compatible with Catholic doctrine.

    In the peace of Christ,

    - Bryan

34. Jonathan Brumley January 26th, 2011 1:46 am :

    Hi Bryan,

    Hmm… if you say “schism” in scripture may refer to schism “in the Body”, then that weakens the argument you made in the schism section, since a symmetrical schism “in the Body” is compatible with the invisible Church paradigm.

    Each of the schism references above (John 17:11,21-23; Romans 16:17; 1 Corinthians 1:10; 1 Corinthians 12:25; Galatians 5:19-20; Ephesians 4:3; Jude 1:18-19),
    could easily refer to a schism “in the Body”, as opposed to a schism “from the Body”.

35. Jonathan Brumley January 26th, 2011 2:07 am :

    Hi Bryan,

    Oh – I see -

    1 Corinthians 12:25 is indeed referring to schism “IN the Body”, but it is saying that schism “IN the Body” is not possible, because of the way God has put the body together.

    I totally missed the point before. Thank you for your response.

36. Tobey February 10th, 2011 4:46 pm :

    By way of critique:

    1/ To be fair, you are reading the text through your prior commitment to Roman Catholic theology. Protestants read the scripture through their prior commitment to their particular Protestant theology. Each hermeneutical approach is a wash unless one is committed to have their presuppositions challenged by exegetical work. Thus, which ever “tradition” is assumed the only way each generation can determine which tradition is faithful, more faithful, less faithful, or unfaithful is careful exegesis of scripture. If that is the case, and I am convinced it is the only way to proceed in determining what is true, then sola scriptura stands. (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

    2/ Assuming your premise that the church needs a “visible head” (which I am not persuaded is biblical), mutual submission to one another solves the philosophical problem of needing a “visible head”. That is, the corporate nature of the covenant provides for corporate submission to one another without sacrificing authority or visible ecclesial connection. In the Presbyterian form of government, for example, the mutual submission of the courts of the church to one another provides for visible accountability, visible authority, and visible connection while preserving sola scriptura.

37. Michael Liccione February 10th, 2011 5:07 pm :

    Tobey:

    You wrote:

    …you are reading the text through your prior commitment to Roman Catholic theology. Protestants read the scripture through their prior commitment to their particular Protestant theology. Each hermeneutical approach is a wash unless one is committed to have their presuppositions challenged by exegetical work.

    There’s a pretty elementary problem with that argument: it assumes that one can conduct “exegetical work” adequate for the purpose at hand without first settling on either “hermeneutical approach,” or some other that would be equally controversial. We don’t accept that premise, and you have said nothing to show why we should. Thus your argument begs the question.

    Assuming your premise that the church needs a “visible head” (which I am not persuaded is biblical), mutual submission to one another solves the philosophical problem of needing a “visible head”.

    There are two difficulties with that argument. The first is elementary: Bryan does not “premise” that the Church needs a visible head; he argues for it, and you have not addressed his argument. The second is subtler. “Mutual submission” on the Presbyterian model addresses the issue at hand only if the authorities submitting to each other have the authority of Christ to begin with; otherwise, their mutual submission is by merely human agreement, which is not divine authority, and therefore can only propound doctrinal opinions that no Christian is bound to accept. The Catholic Church claims such authority; you deny that claim; yet you have said nothing to show that Presbyterian churches have the requisite authority.

    Best,
    Mike

38. Tobey February 10th, 2011 6:00 pm :

    Mike

    Related to the question of by “whose” authority does one speak…

    Your statement “the Presbyterian model addresses the issue at hand only if the authorities submitting to each other have the authority of Christ to begin with… the Catholic church claims such authority.” Two thoughts:

    1/ Obviously and historically, many people disagree with Rome’s claim on scriptural grounds. There is a long well documented history of that. Protestants for example disagree with Rome’s reading of Matthew 16:18 and there have been exegetical reasons offered in doing so. To say Rome has authority and Protestants do not is analogous to the authority a girlfriend claims when explaining to her longtime boyfriend why she is breaking up with him. “I prayed about it and I don’t believe God wants us to date.” His retort, “I prayed about and I believe God does want us to date.” Who is to mediate that?!?

    2/ The authority Protestants claim is apostolic teaching as God has preserved it in the Scripture. When pastors, elders or any Christians restate apostolic teaching they speak with Christ’s authority (Matthew 28:18-20). Sola Scriptura is the requisite authority. When pastors, elders, any Christians, or even Apostles for that matter, are unfaithful to Scripture they are in league with Satan (Matthew 16:23).

    3/ Regarding hermeneutics, I don’t claim anyone comes to the text without presuppositions, including a presupposition about hermeneutics. We all do. My point is that the text has authority over those presuppositions regardless of time and place and thus is, at least in theory (and I would affirm in practice when it comes to Scripture) able to confront and correct those presuppositions.

    4/ “Premise”… wrong choice of words. I stand corrected. Bryan “argues” for a visible head. The point I was trying to make in a brief amount of space though is still the point – “That is, the corporate nature of the covenant provides for corporate submission to one another without sacrificing authority or visible ecclesial connection.” One person (the Pope in this case) filling the role is not required to fulfill the condition. Thus, even though disagreeing with Rome’s exegesis of Matthew 16:18 it does not mean that the visible church (in this case the Presbyterian form of government) cannot have a visible authority. The Elders of the church exercise the authority of Christ as they are faithful to the Scripture. Otherwise, they have no authority. Christ is the Head of His church. (For the sake of space I’ll just assume for now the reader of this blog has some familiarity with the Presbyterian form of government or at least is interested enough to research it.)

39. Deacon Bryan February 10th, 2011 8:26 pm :

    Tobey –

    It seems like you’re accepting an awful lot a priori in the statement, “My point is that the text has authority over those presuppositions regardless of time and place and thus is, at least in theory (and I would affirm in practice when it comes to Scripture) able to confront and correct those presuppositions.”.

    Coming to a text with a presupposition that that text alone is able to determine whether or not our presuppositions are in need of correction is a pretty difficult presupposition to disprove.

    Can you think of any type or argument or line of reasoning that would disprove it?

40. Ray Stamper February 10th, 2011 8:36 pm :

    Tobey,

    My point is that the text has authority over those presuppositions regardless of time and place and thus is, at least in theory (and I would affirm in practice when it comes to Scripture) able to confront and correct those presuppositions.

    If you think deeply about that statement, I think you will begin to see the unavoidable problem in your approach. No “text” – as a text – can “confront and correct . . . presuppositions”. Texts simply do no such thing. People interpreting texts might attempt to do so. Yet the act of interpretation itself, entails fundamental cognitive presuppositions brought by the reader to the text through which he attempts to understand (i.e. interpret) and perhaps communicate what he reads. Your statement inadvertently glosses the necessary role of the interpretive agent, making it seem as though the “text” has some ontological life of its own by which it might do something so marvelous a correct a presupposition. Therein lies the central interpretive problem for Protestantism; any “authority” putatively assigned to the Scriptural text – as text – really amounts to nothing other than the fallible authority of the textual interpreter himself, since the meaning of the text makes its way to the reader’s mind ONLY through a fallible act of interpretation. There is no such thing as the text – simplicter -standing outside of the human interpretive process declaring a universal meaning capable of guiding the interpretive process. The notion that the Scriptural text “acts” as an independent, solitary, arbiter of presuppositions or interpretations results from an unreflexive semantic slight of hand.

    Pax et Bonum,

    Ray

41. Michael Liccione February 10th, 2011 9:16 pm :

    Tobey (#38):

    Obviously and historically, many people disagree with Rome’s claim on scriptural grounds. There is a long well documented history of that. Protestants for example disagree with Rome’s reading of Matthew 16:18 and there have been exegetical reasons offered in doing so. To say Rome has authority and Protestants do not is analogous to the authority a girlfriend claims when explaining to her longtime boyfriend why she is breaking up with him. “I prayed about it and I don’t believe God wants us to date.” His retort, “I prayed about and I believe God does want us to date.” Who is to mediate that?!?

    That overlooks a crucial distinction. If the Catholic Magisterium’s claims for itself are true, then it just does have divinely bestowed authority to “mediate”–better, “adjudicate”–between conflicting interpretations of the sources by which divine revelation is transmitted to us. Accordingly, when you ask “Who is to mediate that?,” you’re only begging the question—unless the word ‘that’ refers to the debate between Catholics and Protestants about which understanding of authority is the more reasonable one to adopt. But if that’s what the debate is about, nothing you’ve said so far has managed to contribute to the debate.

    I say so not despite the following, but because of it:

    The authority Protestants claim is apostolic teaching as God has preserved it in the Scripture. When pastors, elders or any Christians restate apostolic teaching they speak with Christ’s authority (Matthew 28:18-20). Sola Scriptura is the requisite authority. When pastors, elders, any Christians, or even Apostles for that matter, are unfaithful to Scripture they are in league with Satan (Matthew 16:23).

    The problem with all that can be exposed with a pair of questions which are by no means rhetorical: Why believe that all and only what’s in Bible is “apostolic” teaching? And why believe that only “apostolic” teaching is normative for Christians? Answers to such questions can only be supplied by Tradition. But if Tradition and/or those who appeal to it are always fallible, then the answers to the questions are just posed are also fallible. If so, then their authority is defeasible; and if their authority is defeasible, it can’t be divine. They are only human opinions. What we really need is a way to distinguish between divine revelation and human opinion about how to interpret the sources. You have offered no such way.

    You may think you have, by asserting that

    …the text has authority over those [hermeneutical] presuppositions regardless of time and place and thus is, at least in theory (and I would affirm in practice when it comes to Scripture) able to confront and correct those presuppositions.

    That faces the difficulty which Ray Stamper has just described, and therefore contributes nothing to the debate about authority. Again, you might think you’ve avoided that difficulty by asserting that “When pastors, elders or any Christians restate apostolic teaching they speak with Christ’s authority (Matthew 28:18-20).” But that just brings us back to the difficulty I described in my previous paragraph.

    With your last paragraph, you compound your difficulties:

    One person (the Pope in this case) filling the role is not required to fulfill the condition. Thus, even though disagreeing with Rome’s exegesis of Matthew 16:18 it does not mean that the visible church (in this case the Presbyterian form of government) cannot have a visible authority. The Elders of the church exercise the authority of Christ as they are faithful to the Scripture. Otherwise, they have no authority. Christ is the Head of His church.

    First of all, the Catholic Church does not teach that only “one person” has teaching authority in the Church. Every bishop does, and the college of bishops as a whole can teach infallibly even when the papacy has not formally ruled on a question (cf. Lumen Gentium §25). Second, you’re assuming that we may label as “the visible church” just any church with an authority structure, which begs the question by assuming what Bryan argues against. Third, when you imply that elders have authority only when they are “faithful to Scripture,” you’re dodging the question: “According to whose interpretation of Scripture,” which cannot be answered with a prior knowledge of which church actually has divine authority to adjudicate between conflicting interpretations of Scripture. Finally, nobody denies that “Christ is the Head of his Church.” The question at issue is which churchmen speak authoritatively for Christ. For the reasons already stated, the answer “those who are faithful to Scripture” does not help us answer that question.

    Best,
    Mike

42. Michael Liccione February 10th, 2011 9:19 pm :

    Oops, that’s “Third, when you imply that elders have authority only when they are “faithful to Scripture,” you’re dodging the question: “According to whose interpretation of Scripture?”, which cannot be answered without a prior knowledge of which church actually has divine authority to adjudicate between conflicting interpretations of Scripture.

43. Tobey February 11th, 2011 11:53 am :

    Ray & Mike,

    Actually… I do affirm that Scripture as the Holy Spirit uses it and works in us does have an “ontological” life of its own. The reason Protestants want people to read Scripture is because it is not just another text. It is the text of all texts! Scripture is sufficient for confronting and saving the reader… despite the spiritual, cognitive, emotional psychological condition of the reader!

    Hebrews 4:12-13, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

    1 Peter 1:22-25, “Having purified your souls by your obedience to truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for ‘All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.’ And this word is the good news that was preached to you.”

    1 Corinthians 2:10-13, “These things God revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.”

    2 Timothy 3:14-17, “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.”

    Acts 17:10-11, “The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.”

    Q: Does Scripture have an “ontological life of its own”?
    A: Yes.

    Q: Can Scripture overcome the presuppositions of the reader?
    A: Yes.

    Q: Does Scripture have authority over the visible church?
    A: Yes.

    Q: Does God instruct His people to use Scripture to discern truth from error?
    A: Yes.

    Since you closed in latin I will too.

    Sola Scriptura. Soli Deo Gloria.

    Tobey

44. Ray Stamper February 11th, 2011 5:07 pm :

    Tobey,

    Of course all Catholics affirm the Scriptural passages you cite above. Nevertheless, you have in no way established that the text has an “ontological life of its own”. On the contrary, you explicitly affirm otherwise:

    I do affirm that Scripture as the Holy Spirit uses it and works in us does have an “ontological” life of its own

    I must point out that you are no longer proposing that the text simply taken as a text (which was your initial claim) is capable of somehow speaking to human interpretations and presuppositions. Rather, your re-tooled position is that Scripture carries out such a function only insofar as the “Holy Spirit uses it and works in us”. How does this in any way support your position concerning the manner by which interpretive presuppositions might be adjudicated? How is one to determine when the Holy Spirit is working “in the reader” such that any faulty presuppositions or interpretations are being overcome?

    You are attempting to alleviate the intrinsic problem of fallible private judgment by adding the notion that the problem is resolved by an appeal to the assistance of the Holy Spirit during the interpretive act. Yet, given the vast array of conflicting interpretations of holy writ among persons all claiming to be guided by the Holy Spirit, what criteria do you propose for adjudicate mutually exclusive interpretive claims? Who has the Spirit and how do you know? Again, any subjective claim that one’s interpretation of Scripture is Spirit-guided, and therefore free from errant presuppositions or interpretations must always be experienced by the one evaluating such a claim as subjective and non-verifiable. It amounts to table-pounding for the veracity of one’s own (or one’s confession’s) particular interpretation over against the many others which contradict it.

    All I am trying to point out to you is that your employment of notions such as

    1.) Scripture (considered strictly as a text) being able to confront or correct presuppositions

    or else your modified edition

    2.) “Scripture as the Holy Spirit uses it and works in us” is able to confront or correct presuppositions

    are both instances of the employment of semantic terms whose effect is to obscure the problem of personal subjectivism in Protestant exegesis. Whether you hold up the text by itself, or else the text as mediated by the Holy Ghost; in both cases, there are absolutely zero non-subjective means by which to determine when any given person or Christian communion is – in fact – accurately interpreting Scripture according to the “mind of the Spirit”. One’s personal insistence that his or her interpretation – just is – the Spirit guided interpretation is manifestly unverifiable and haughty – unless one is prepared to offer some motive(s) of credibility as to why anyone should accept such a claim (say performance of miracles or verifiable prophetic utterances, etc).

    Pax Christi,

    Ray

45. Sebron February 11th, 2011 6:25 pm :

    Tobey,

    An honest question: In your above scriptural citations, why do you assume that “word of God” exclusively equals your Bible?

    Thanks for your response.

    Sebron

46. Tobey February 11th, 2011 9:39 pm :

    Ray & all,

    In reading the “About Us” section of this blog the gentlemen who are highlighted take pains to make clear they have some type of Reformed or non-Catholic background. That being the case, I haven’t been going into great detail because I am assuming a Reformed understanding of Scripture, the nature of the church, the office of Elder and Deacon, the place the confessions and creeds have in the life of the Reformed church, soteriology, etc. If that is not the case I can take the time to be more precise.

    The Inspiration of Scripture – in addition to 2 Timothy 3:14-17, I would add 2 Peter 1:20-21, “No prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Scripture comes from the mouth of God.

    The Inerrancy of Scripture – truthful in all that it affirms in its original manuscripts. Since God authors His Word and because God does not lie, His Word as originally given is without error. Proverbs 30:5, “Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.” As 2 Timothy 3:16-17 states, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” Because it is inerrant and inspired by God this is true.

    Regarding the issue of the Clarity or Perspicuity of Scripture – the Bible is “clear” that some things in the Bible are “unclear”. 2 Peter 3:15-16, “…as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and the unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other Scriptures.” However, that does not mean ALL Scripture is “hard to understand”. 2 Timothy 2:7, “Think over what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.” In general the emphasis and expectation in the Bible as well as the emphasis and expectation of Jesus, (Matthew 12:3, “He [Jesus] said to them, ‘Have you not read…’”) is that the Scripture is clear and is to be understood. Thus, when there is a disagreement over what the Bible teaches we are to assume the problem does not lie in the text but in the interpreter.

    This is why as Protestants and Catholics discuss these issues, particularly issues on which we disagree, the only source to turn to in light of its inspiration, inerrancy, and perspicuity is Scripture. Misunderstandings of Scripture are due to many factors but the emphasis in Scripture is that God’s people can read and study God’s Word and understand it. Certainly God provides teachers of His Word to help His people understand the Scripture, (Ephesians 4:11-12, “And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, building up the body of Christ.) And since some of those connected to this blog have Reformed backgrounds I’ll simply assume some understanding of the place and role of the Teaching Elder in the Reformed church.

    So Scripture is inspired, inerrant, clear, and thus sufficient for its God-given purpose (2 Timothy 3:15-17). Scripture contains everything that we need to know in order to know God, for salvation, for trusting God, for obeying God.

    Since Scripture has these characteristics it also contains a warning not to add anything to it that it does not teach.

    Deuteronomy 4:2, “You shall not add to the word which I commanded you, nor take from it; that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you.”

    Deuteronomy 12:32, “Everything that I command you you shall be careful to do; you shall not add to it or take from it.”

    Proverbs 3:5-6, “Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you, and you be found a liar.”

    Thus, no other writings nor any other teachings are of equal value to Scripture. We are not to believe anything about God or His church that is not taught in Scripture. And that is the crux of this debate… What does Scripture teach and what is the place of Scripture?

    Because the Roman Catholic Church (I know, thankfully, you will correct me if I am wrong) would add that we cannot understand Scripture until we have listened to the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church throughout its history, those in the Reformed camp would say that the RCC is adding to what the Scripture clearly says about itself – the addition being, Scripture + official teaching of RCC = understanding. Reformed people would gladly affirm the value of church history in helping us understand God’s Word, but no where in the Scripture does God require us to believe or obey anything that has been added to it.

    Having stated that, I want to address a couple of the points that were raised by others.

    1/ To Deacon Bryan’s question, “Coming to a text with a presupposition that that text alone is able to determine whether or not our presuppositions are in need of correction is a pretty difficult presupposition to disprove. Can you think of any type or argument or line of reasoning that would disprove it?”

    I’m not trying to disprove it, I’m trying to prove it. The proof lies in understanding the Fall of man and the nature of Scripture. Because of sin man is in rebellion against God. His/her presuppositions about everything are thus tainted by sin. All of us need the confronting and correcting ministry of Scripture. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 says Scripture serves that very purpose; “…profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” Scripture itself, being God’s Word has power inherent in it (Hebrews 4:12-13, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”) to accomplish all that God intends for it to accomplish. Isaiah 55:8-11, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” And because it is God’s Word it does that very thing, whether for salvation, 1 Peter 1:23, “Since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.” Or for condemnation, John 5:45-47, “Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words.”

    So my question in to Deacon Bryan would be, “If not the text of Scripture and in light of what the warnings of Scripture not to add anything to it, what other text would you point someone to?”

    2/ To Michael’s question, “Why believe that all and only what’s in Bible is “apostolic” teaching? And why believe that only “apostolic” teaching is normative for Christians? Answers to such questions can only be supplied by Tradition.”

    Because the Scripture itself defines the qualifications to be an apostle. As Peter says in Acts 1:20-26, “For it is written in the Book of Psalms, ‘May his camp become desolate, and let there be no one to dwell in it’; and ‘Let another take his office.’ So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us–one of these men must become with us a witness to his resurrection.” And they put forward two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also called Justus, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, ‘You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place.’ And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias, and he was numbered with the eleven apostles.”

    To be an apostle one had to be appointed by Jesus (Mark 3:13-19), with Jesus from his baptism to his ascension, and an eyewitness to Jesus’ resurrection, or according to the process described in Acts 1 as it relates specifically to and only to Matthias. Paul of course was uniquely chosen as recorded in Acts 9, and as Paul himself described it was as one “abnormally born”, 1 Corinthians 15:8. That is, Paul understood that he fell outside the normal process and qualifications of being an apostle except for one very important qualification – Paul was a witness to the resurrected Jesus.

    So, the answer is that to qualify as an apostle is to meet certain very specific conditions that would be impossible for anyone after the first century to meet. Your claim, that answers are “only supplied by Tradition” is a false claim. Scripture is clear who and who is not an apostle. Any other teaching contrary (i.e. “Tradition”) to that is a new teaching added on to Scripture and would be found to be both false teaching in light of what Scripture teaches as well as disobedient to the warnings of Scripture not to add anything that Scripture does not teach.

    3/ To Ray’s point about subjectivity… I tried to address some of that when I discussed the nature of Scripture – inspiration, inerrancy, clarity, sufficiency. More directly to your point regarding the “problem of personal subjectivism”… I would simply add that if a person were to claim that Jesus was incarnate as a dog, because God spelled backwards spells dog… none of us would take that person seriously. When Benny Hinn claims the Trinity is 9 persons, only a fool who does not know the Scripture would believe that lie. The reason being, Scripture is in general clear and consistent in what it teaches, and God preserves orthodox belief in the church – intramural debates within the church not withstanding.

    4/ To Sebron’s question, “An honest question: In your above scriptural citations, why do you assume that “word of God” exclusively equals your Bible?”

    If your question is, “What is the canon of Scripture?” there is a lot of stuff out there to read. I’ll make one book recommendation and 4 brief points. The book addresses the four gospels but it is also helpful in considering the canon of the New Testament. “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses”, by Richard Bauckham.

    Four brief points (as summarized by Wayne Grudem in his “Systematic Theology”):

    The Apocrypha should not be regarded as Scripture: (1) they do not claim for themselves the same kind of authority as the O.T. writings; (2) they were not regarded as God’s words by the Jewish people from whom they originated; (3) they were not considered to be Scripture by Jesus or the New Testament authors; (4) they contain teachings inconsistent with the rest of the Bible. Thus we must conclude that the Apocrypha were just human words, not God-breathed words like the words of Scripture, and thus have no binding authority.

    I want to close by saying that the Bible itself then teaches us how to interpret the Bible. Hermeneutics is not a philosophical science. It is part of doing theology. We know how to handle the Bible because the Bible teaches us what it is and how it speaks. Thus, I gratefully conclude with the five solas:

    Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Solus Christus, Soli Deo Gloria!

    Tobey

47. Michael Liccione February 11th, 2011 10:08 pm :

    Tobey:

    You’ve just written:

    To Michael’s question, “Why believe that all and only what’s in Bible is “apostolic” teaching? And why believe that only “apostolic” teaching is normative for Christians? Answers to such questions can only be supplied by Tradition.”

    Because the Scripture itself defines the qualifications to be an apostle….

    I’ve left out what follows because your very first sentence shows you have not even understood my questions. You’re assuming the very things I asked you to show. That’s why your answers, to me and others, are useless.

    Best,
    Mike

48. Tobey February 11th, 2011 10:51 pm :

    Mike

    Thanks for the grace and the benefit of the doubt in our correspondence. It’s real manly of you. I appreciate it.

    If I misunderstood your point its either because I misunderstood your point or you weren’t clear. If you’d like a thoughtful reply take the time to give a better explanation of your question. It’s a blog. Not a verbal conversation.

    And if you find my posts to be “useless”…. The solution is simple. Don’t respond.

    Tobey

49. Tobey February 11th, 2011 11:09 pm :

    Ray,

    Q: How would do you or the RCC understand what is taking place in Acts 17:10-11, “The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.”

    Isn’t this an example of the proper use of Scripture? “Examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” Even if it comes from the mouth of the Apostle Paul?

    It’s the use of Scripture I am arguing for.

    Tobey

50. John Thayer Jensen February 11th, 2011 11:31 pm :

    @Tobey:

    The Apocrypha should not be regarded as Scripture: (1) they do not claim for themselves the same kind of authority as the O.T. writings; (2) they were not regarded as God’s words by the Jewish people from whom they originated; (3) they were not considered to be Scripture by Jesus or the New Testament authors; (4) they contain teachings inconsistent with the rest of the Bible. Thus we must conclude that the Apocrypha were just human words, not God-breathed words like the words of Scripture, and thus have no binding authority.

    Not sure this will work for everything, Tobey.

    (1) Does, to take an example, Esther claim to be Scripture? In fact, I would say that most books of the Bible, except some of the prophets, don’t say “this is the Word of the Lord.”

    (2) What you are calling the ‘Apocrypha’ – which Catholics refer to as the Deutero-canonical books (thus recognising their secondary nature) – were part of the Septuagint, which was the Greek translation of what the Jews in – what? 120BC? – thought were Scripture.

    (3) Again, some of the OT books aren’t quoted in the NT, which is how I suppose you think that Jesus and the NT authors considered them Scripture – and doesn’t St Paul quote from a pagan writer in one of his letters? Don’t know how you know which books Jesus considered Scripture. And of course to say that what a New Testament writer considers Scripture must be Scripture already assumes that the NT writer in question had the authority to say.

    (4) Even the consistency of, say, Paul and James on salvation by faith (alone?) needs some explanation. And though I have read the ‘Apocrypha,’ I don’t know of anything in them that is inconsistent with the other books.

    I confess that this issue of the Canon – of what books are and what are not Scripture – was one of many that finally brought me out of the Reformed Church (that I had helped to found, here in our part of New Zealand) and into the Catholic Church.

    jj

51. Sebron February 11th, 2011 11:43 pm :

    Tobey,

    I’m not a Catholic (yet?) but a fellow Protestant. However, my question was not concerning the canon of Scripture. My question, perhaps I’ll be more specific, was why do you assume in your scriptural citations that the “word of God” equals the words of any Bible? In the quotes from I Peter and I Corinthians, it seems that “word of God” does NOT equal the words of your Bible, but rather “word of God” equals the spoken words of divinely authorized men (namely, Peter and Paul). To grant that, at least for the sake of argument, unloads some of my Protestant uneasiness that “word of God” could also equal the spoken words of other divinely authorized men (namely, Pope Pius IX, Pope Pius XII, et al.)

    It is not my intention at all to derail your conversation with Mr. Liccione or Mr. Stamper. Just curious.

    Thanks for your response.
    Sebron

52. Tobey February 12th, 2011 1:19 am :

    Sebron,

    Your question might be to broad for me to answer in detail. And I’m not entirely certain what you mean by “words of any Bible.” I don’t know what you are stating/implying by that phrase.

    I’ll post this as it relates to the N.T. and the apostles and the implications for the church.

    I quote from a lecture given by David Chapman, Associate Professor of N.T & Archeology at Covenant Theological Seminary.

    “In the context of Jesus’ teachings He conveyed that same [prophetic] authority to His apostles. Note that I said “to His apostles.” I did not include His church, His followers, or His disciples. This authority was conveyed to His apostles because they are the ones who testified and witnessed to the revelation that is in Jesus. They did so in a special way that no one else could do. A couple of passages show this theologically in the New Testament. John 14:26 says, “But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” Very often when people are interpreting this passage in John 14, we want to see ourselves everywhere in Scripture that we can. We often interpret “He will teach you” to include all of God’s disciples, and therefore it includes us. But if you look at the context in John 14, He is speaking to His apostles. Therefore it is an argument that the Holy Spirit will teach the apostles all things, and they will remember the things that Jesus said to them. It is not that they will remember because it has been passed down through time. They will remember because they were there, and the Holy Spirit is inspiring them to remember what they account to be of Jesus. Jesus Himself says that the Holy Spirit is the One Who will bring them into the special apostolic authority of remembrance and teaching. John 16:13 says, “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.” In context, this has more to do with apostolic mandate than the authority that we have in the church today.” That is, the same does not apply to those who came after the Jesus’ apostles. See my point above on how Scripture defined the boundaries of who qualified as an apostle.

53. John Thayer Jensen February 12th, 2011 1:54 am :

    @Sebron:

    Just a sort of additional comment on your comment. The Word of God – as I am sure you would agree – is Jesus Himself. The written Word of God is, of course, the Scripture. But as you suggest, the words (if I may put it that way) of God may include things like, for example, the understanding through the Church, illuminated by the Holy Spirit, of the two Natures of Christ, of the three Persons of the Trinity, and other doctrines – doctrines which, I believe, are clearly in the Scripture, but which I would suggest – and my Jehovah’s Witness friends would agree :-) – are not there in so obvious a way as to be unanswerable.

    Newman, whilst still an Anglican, concluded that the Bible is not to be used to deduce doctrine, but to prove and test it. Many Catholics – the convert from Reformed religion Louis Bouyer is one – would say that Sola Scriptura is right, if by it you mean that all the teaching of Christ is contained in it at least implicitly – but that is not the same as saying it is explicit.

    I think Tobey would agree. He did say that not everything is as obvious as everything else. I was just thinking today that Protestants (most of them :-)) worship on Sunday – yet there is little enough in the New Testament to make a forceful case for that, and the Seventh Day Adventists say – correctly enough as a matter of history – that the Roman Church is the reason Sunday is the new Sabbath. Sunday worship is clearly, I would say, not in conflict with Scripture; it would be difficult to make a case for, at least, its obligatory status, though the Reformed Church I belonged to before becoming a Catholic thought there was.

    jj

54. Deacon Bryan February 12th, 2011 4:24 am :

    Tobey –

    Thanks for your responses to the questions being asked of you. The questions pile up fairly quickly for the reformed commentators here, and anyone who patiently answers all of them earns my respect.

    Not to pile even more on you, but a couple of points:

    I agree with you when you said, “Because of sin man is in rebellion against God. His/her presuppositions about everything are thus tainted by sin,” and that is actually what I was sort of getting at with my question. What I’m curious about is how you know that your presupposition that scripture alone is the word of God is somehow not tainted by sin in the same way that you allege my presupposition might be tainted by sin.

    The purpose of my question was to hopefully get you to think about whether or not your presupposition is falsifiable. I’m not sure that it is, and would like to know if you can help me figure out the type of argument that would persuade you so we can (hopefully) learn from each other.

    You posed a question to me as well: So my question in to Deacon Bryan would be, “If not the text of Scripture and in light of what the warnings of Scripture not to add anything to it, what other text would you point someone to?”

    While affirming that the Bible alone is the word of God written, I would use non-scriptural historical texts to try and show you that the “Word of God” may have been a broader concept than the Bible alone and included things passed on orally (2Thess 2:15) through legitimate human authorities.

55. Michael Liccione February 12th, 2011 9:08 am :

    Tobey:

    Forgive me for assuming that my questions and their importance were clear. It’s all clear to me, but of course I shouldn’t assume that it would be to a Protestant.

    My point in raising the questions I put to you was this: unless and until you answer them with an argument, not just with a repetition of your own assumptions, none of your appeals to Scripture can present themselves as anything more than some people’s fallible opinions, as distinct from authentic expressions of the faith “once delivered to the saints.” The most obvious example of the difficulty that poses for you is your evident belief that “the text” itself can enable us to adjudicate between competing hermeneutical paradigms. If the text alone could do that, we could get beyond our respective HPs, so that the true and relevant “meaning” of the text would emerge clearly enough to enable us to adjudicate between competing HPs—such as mine and yours–without itself standing in need of interpretation. But as you yourself have acknowledged, we all bring hermeneutical assumptions to the text whenever we read and interpret it. So we can’t eliminate HPs. All we can do is discuss, on grounds outside the text, which HP is the more reasonable.

    But given your version of sola scriptura, you don’t do that. You just assume that your own HP is unproblematic, by virtue of being identical with “the meaning” of the text. That assumption is unwarranted. It’s what’s called “glossing over the role of the interpreter.” You need to acknowledge and come to grips with that problem before we can have a useful discussion.

    Best,
    Mike

56. Andrew Preslar February 12th, 2011 12:38 pm :

    Mike,

    It does sometimes seem that when Catholics are invited onto the exegetical battlefield, we are expected to there do exegesis as though we were solo scripturists, with the latter conceiving of SS as a hermeneutically neutral point of view. Of course, we don’t want to do that, or grant that, but it might not be that the only other option is to discuss the rationality of various HPs. Do you think that there is a way to resolve our difference with Protestants thorough reading and discussing the texts together, such that the discussion is not only hermeneutical / philosophical but also exegetical?

    Andrew

57. Michael Liccione February 12th, 2011 12:51 pm :

    Andrew:

    In my experience, one can sometimes get a Protestant to see the reasonableness of a Catholic interpretation of this-or-that biblical passage. But I have also found that that just isn’t enough. For if one leaves things there, then everything remains on the level of opinion, so that the Catholic “opinion” appears as just one among others. That’s playing the Protestant game of treating the Catholic Church as just one denomination among others.

    To get beyond that, we need to have a discussion about how one is to identify the doctrinal content of “the faith once delivered” as distinct from mere opinions. To make progress with that, one needs to show that it just isn’t enough to take a certain set of sources and draw from them conclusions that seem plausible, or even irresistible, to this-or-that individual. That is often helpful, but never sufficient. What we need to show is that limiting oneself to that method leaves us unable to make the necessary distinction.

    About that, I agree with Bryan’s comment here.

    Best,
    Mike

58. John Thayer Jensen February 12th, 2011 1:15 pm :

    @Michael Liccione:

    To get beyond that, we need to have a discussion about how one is to identify the doctrinal content of “the faith once delivered” as distinct from mere opinion.

    That sounds reasonable and I have assumed it in discussions with Protestants. But I was just reading what you wrote and reflecting that, at least in my own case, although calling into question the Sola Scriptura assumptions I had was probably important, it was really ecclesiology and then history that were the key.

    It was from my own Reformed Church and its traditions that I learned the importance of the visible Church idea – and it was from history that I realised that the Catholic Church was that continuation of the Church Jesus established.

    I think this was Newman’s experience also.

    In terms of what I was to believe, once I concluded that the Catholic Church was the Body of Christ in the world, I then had to look at what it had taught – and to reason that either there was at some point a charism of infallibility given to that Church – I had not got so far as the Pope – so that I could trust what it trusted, or else there was no way I could be certain of any religious doctrine in the world.

    jj

59. JJS February 12th, 2011 5:23 pm :

    Mike,

    it just isn’t enough to take a certain set of sources and draw from them conclusions that seem plausible, or even irresistible, to this-or-that individual. That is often helpful, but never sufficient.

    I agree with you about the need to step beyond the specific exegesis of particular texts and deal with the bigger, paradigmatic type questions. I tried to argue for this kind of approach here:

    http://www.creedcodecult.com/2011/01/paradigmatic-hermeneutics.html

    Cheers,

    JJS

60. Michael Liccione February 12th, 2011 5:57 pm :

    JJS:

    Thanks, I read that post. It’s a step in the right direction, but still not out of the Protestant HP. Of course you knew I’d say that. :)

    It’s still not out of the woods because it remains at the level of speculation and opinion. Yes, it is a useful exercise to inquire what aspects of Tradition the sacred writers were operating out of. Many Catholic scholars have done that. It weakens the perspicuity-of-Scripture bubble. But unless a Tradition that is not only older but wider than Scripture is identified in normative as distinct from speculative fashion, such an inquiry is just more grist for the sola scriptura mill. What’s really needed is to identify an abiding and living interpreter that can get us beyond mere opinions about what the pre-NT Church believed, and into what the Church of all times and places ought to believe, because those saying it are divinely authorized to say it.

    Best,
    Mike

61. Michael Liccione February 12th, 2011 6:24 pm :

    JTJ:

    I agree that identifying the visible Church is pivotal, and have said so on many occasions, most recently here.

    Best,
    Mike

62. John Thayer Jensen February 12th, 2011 6:45 pm :

    @Michael Liccione:

    I agree that identifying the visible Church is pivotal, and have said so on many occasions, most recently here.

    Thanks for that, Mike. Yes, I was just really commenting on my own experience – that finally it was the beginnings of the discovery that there was a Body in the world that made all the difference. I didn’t first discover the inadequacy of my own Protestant HP, and then discover the Catholic Church. It was almost the other way around.

    I remember saying to my wife once, when were in via, that I had felt my life as a Christian, which only started when I was 27, had been like a man walking through a fog – occasionally glimpsing some Shape appearing through the mists, and then disappearing – and wanting to know more about It – then one day things cleared more than usual and I realised that what I had seen all along was the Catholic Church.

    jj

63. Bryan Cross February 12th, 2011 7:14 pm :

    Jason, (re: #59),

    In addition to what Mike said in #60, hermeneutical presuppositionalism applied to particular passages still underdetermines the choice of hermeneutical paradigms. Whether a passage would likely have been written from within a paradigm is not a view-from-nowhere question, but depends on theological assumptions one brings to the likelihood calculation process, such as whether one includes the data from the Fathers, or implicitly assumes ecclesial deism. Moreover, there are cases even within a paradigm that wouldn’t have been humanly predicted from within the paradigm, and yet truly belong to the paradigm. The Ameriquest commercials come to mind as examples; the reason why the judgment of the onlookers is wrong in those cases is because the appearances have a low probability relative to the actual paradigm but a higher probability in a counterfactual paradigm. In such cases, in order to come to the true judgment (and avoid false judgment), one needs more data, i.e. the bigger picture, etc. That’s why I think that rather than trying to apply the paradigm comparison to particular passages of Scripture in piecemeal fashion, it is better to compare the paradigms as a whole, which, in the case of the Catholic paradigm, includes the data from the Fathers and Tradition.

    In the peace of Christ,

    - Bryan

64. Tobey February 15th, 2011 1:01 pm :

    Gentlemen,

    Thanks for allowing me the opportunity to post a different perspective on your blog. I do appreciate it.

    I’ve been thinking the past couple days about a number of points that have been raised, as well as spending some time reading a number of different articles on this site. The information that is presented and the thought and detail that has gone into the articles and posts is impressive. You all have clearly given a lot of time and thought to this. No small task.

    I have been trying to hone in on the primary issue as it relates to Bryan’s article upon which I and many other Protestants differ and here is how I would express it as succinctly as I can (on a blog).

    In Bryan’s dialogue with Michael Horton, Bryan states that handling the deposit of faith and entrusting it to faithful men is both instructed in Scripture and the means by which the authoritative teaching office in the church would passed on through time within the visible church.

    Bryan writes,

    “Regarding the apostolic office and its closure, obviously because seeing the incarnate Christ was required in order to be an apostle, there could be no more apostles after the apostle John died at the end of the first century. On that we agree. But the point of disagreement, I think, is what kind of authority their successors had and how these successors acquired this authority. Catholics believe that these successors of the apostles were authorized to be such by the apostles themselves. This authorization gave them the authority to teach and govern, bind and loose. No one could take this authority to himself; it had to be given to him by those already having it. When St. Paul writes to St. Timothy, he tells him to guard the treasure that has been entrusted to him and urges him to entrust the things he has heard from St. Paul to faithful men who will be able to teach others also (2 Tim. 1:14, 2:2). So we see in Scripture this apostolic understanding of handing on the deposit of faith and entrusting it to faithful men. We believe also that this ordination involved the laying on of hands, by those having the authority to confer such authority (cf. Acts 6:6; 1 Tim. 4:14).

    Those not having this authorization could not speak for the church or provide the authoritative interpretation of the deposit of faith. Believers who did not have this authority were to be subject to those having this authority. As the author of Hebrews says, “Obey your leaders, and submit to them; for they keep watch over your souls, as those who will give an account” (Heb. 13:17). What is meant by “leaders” here is not “those who agree with your interpretation of Scripture.” The “leaders” referred to are only those authorized by the apostles. The laymen’s understanding of Scripture was to be conformed to that of those authorized teachers. This shows that it wasn’t only Scripture that was normative but also the instruction and teaching by those authorized to explicate the deposit of faith. In that sense, the apostolic office continued after the death of the apostles—not occupied by apostles, of course, but occupied by those authorized by the apostles.”

    Bryan, I believe, rightful states, “When St. Paul writes to St. Timothy, he tells him to guard the treasure that has been entrusted to him and urges him to entrust the things he has heard from St. Paul to faithful men who will be able to teach others also (2 Tim. 1:14, 2:2). So we see in Scripture this apostolic understanding of handing on the deposit of faith and entrusting it to faithful men.”

    Using that as a standard then, here is where Protestants take issue. 2 Timothy 2:1 tells us what the primary qualification and definition of “faithful men” is – those who are “strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”

    2 Timothy 2:1, “You then my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.”

    This is the first and primary qualification for those holding the teaching office in the church. “Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” Because it is, this is the first (not the only but the first and most primary) point where the doctrine of justification prevents Protestants from supporting the Roman Magisterium. Rome fails to preach justification by grace alone, in Christ alone, through faith alone. The doctrine of justification is THE central component of the deposit of faith that is to be guarded. Because Rome fails to guard this doctrine, Protestants looking at Scripture conclude that at best the Magisterium is teaching error, at worse the Magisterium is unfaithful in guarding the deposit of faith and thus unqualified.

    Like Jesus, Protestants do not believe that the “deposit of faith” is necessarily protected simply because of the existence of the visible community. In John 8, Jesus is confronting the visible people of God and their leadership for 1/ failing to guard the deposit of faith, and 2/ trusting in the “authority” they believe was rightfully theirs because of their visible descent from Abraham. John 8:31-32, 37-39, “To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, ‘If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free…. I know you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are ready to kill me, because you have no room for my word. I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you do what you have heard from your father.’ ‘Abraham is our father,’ they answered. ‘If you were Abraham’s children,’ said Jesus, ‘then you would do the things Abraham did.’”

    Visibile descent is not a guarantee of faithfully guarding the deposit of faith. Abraham was strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, Genesis 15:6, “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” The Jews and Jewish leadership were not strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, thus Jesus rebuked them with the strongest of terms, John 8:44, 47, “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire…. He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”

    Point – visible descent, even visible authoritative descent does not guarantee that the deposit of faith has been faithful preserved.

    2 Timothy 2:2 then, has a qualifying ground – those who are “strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.” This is why the battle over justification through faith alone, in Christ alone, by grace alone is so important. Who is it among God’s people who are speaking faithfully on the first, most central, and most primary qualification related to the authoritative teaching office? Protestants have been “protesting” for centuries that it is not the Magisterium.

    Justification by grace alone, in Christ alone, through faith alone is not an example of someone’s “own interpretation of Scripture.”

    It is THE central teaching of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Luke 24:27, 44, “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself….He told them, ‘This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.’”

    It is THE central promise of God the Father. John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 6:28-29, “Then they asked him [Jesus], ‘What must we do to do the works God requires?’ Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.’”

    It is THE central work of Jesus Christ. Romans 3:21-28, “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25 God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished– 26 he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. 27 Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. 28 For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.

    Thus, it is THE central truth that the church must proclaim and live out. 2 Timothy 2:1-2, “You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men who will also be qualified to teach others.”

    Bryan almost gets it right in his dialogue with Horton:

    “Galatians 1:8-9 is not about the authority or infallibility of the church; it is about the established permanence of the deposit of faith within the New Covenant. Because that foundation is fixed forever, the church can never depart from it and can only build upon it.”

    I would agree that “that foundation is fixed forever”. I would disagree (unless one is talking about how gospel-centered sanctification works) with the notion that the church “can only build upon it” (particularly as Rome describes “building upon it.”) The atoning work of Jesus Christ is sufficient to save completely those who hope in Christ. 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24, “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.”

    This then is the response I would offer as a rebuttal to what Bryan proposed in the article. If the teaching office is occupied by men who fail in the first and primary qualification, “be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus”, then those men visibly robed or not, fail in their qualification to hold the teaching office in Christ’s visible church.

    Sola Fide, Sola Gratia, Solus Christus, Sola Scriptura, Soli Deo Gloria!

    Gentlemen, thank you again for the space to dialogue. Although I have enjoyed the interaction I can’t promise I’ll be posting much in the future. I do have a family and a job!

    As Bryan so rightfully offers,

    In the peace of Christ,

    Tobey

65. David Meyer February 15th, 2011 2:04 pm :

    Tobey,
    I’m looking forward to a response to you from Bryan or someone better qualified than myself, but in the meantime could you clear something up for me brother? You said:

    Justification by grace alone, in Christ alone, through faith alone is not an example of someone’s “own interpretation of Scripture.”
    It is THE central teaching of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

    Ok, I am assuming we both are thinking of the same meaning behind your definition of justification (I am assuming you mean the Reformed definition, which as you know has significant differences from many other definitions of the 3 solas you mentioned, namely TULIP), are you saying that (A) your definition of justification is NOT an interpretation? Or are you saying it is (B) an interpretation but that it is so self evidently true that basically it does not need interpreting?

    Either A or B are proveably and quite obviously false, so perhaps I am missing your option C?

    Peace,

    David Meyer

66. MarkS February 15th, 2011 3:54 pm :

    Tobey,
    I too am a protestant working through this site and I share your appreciation for the thoughtfulness and work that has gone into the articles, blogs, and accompanying dialog. As I wrestle with this stuff, here are some thoughts that hit my mind while reading your comments.
    You said,

    Rome fails to preach justification by grace alone, in Christ alone, through faith alone. The doctrine of justification is THE central component of the deposit of faith that is to be guarded. Because Rome fails to guard this doctrine, Protestants looking at Scripture conclude that at best the Magisterium is teaching error, at worse the Magisterium is unfaithful in guarding the deposit of faith and thus unqualified.

    Of course many of us Protestants do and have concluded this. But, how can we be sure that our formulation is without error and must be believed? We have really smart people who study and do research and offer informed opinions and interpretations, but all along our people (including our church councils) contend that their opinions are not protected from error. Further, one of our really smart people, Alister McGrath, contends that Luther’s definition of justification is nowhere to be found in church writings prior to Luther’s time. That gives me pause. I believe McGrath also shows in that work that Luther believed in progressive justification throughout the life of Christian. Add this to the work between Lutheran and Catholic scholars that resulted in the “Joint Declaration” and I think we have serious reasons to consider whether your or my particular standard for defining justification is the standard by which to judge the church.

    Point – visible descent, even visible authoritative descent does not guarantee that the deposit of faith has been faithful preserved.

    I don’t think Catholics believe that visible descent, per se, does this. What does it is what they believe to be the promise and according faithfulness of God to the church as they believe God defines the church.

    You then go on to cite examples from Jesus confronting Jewish leaders to support your point. Of course, this doesn’t prove that your point is valid within the new covenant. Even Paul’s confrontation of Peter, recorded in Gal’s, does not prove your point b/c, as I understand it, Cath’s believe that God’s promise of faithful preservation only applies when the magisterium in communion with the pope, or the pope himself, declares that a position is de fide. They do not deny that there have been bad popes. This confidence that the Catholic church has in the force of its teaching is similar to the confidence and force behind the council of Jerusalem. Even though Peter had made personal errors (denying Christ, being wishy/washy in the face of the Judaizers) the council still taught definitively and with binding force. Now these were the actual apostles, along with elders, but this fact doesn’t disprove the Cath claim.

    Justification by grace alone, in Christ alone, through faith alone is not an example of someone’s “own interpretation of Scripture.”

    Every statement about the teaching of Scripture that is not a direct quote from Scripture is an interpretation of Scripture. See the article on Sola vs. Solo Scriptura, and the very long comments section, if you have not done so already. I don’t think one can prove Matthison wrong on this point. The question is, can any fallible opinion, no matter how well informed or scholary, have de fide binding authority and if not, where does this leave us?

    This then is the response I would offer as a rebuttal to what Bryan proposed in the article. If the teaching office is occupied by men who fail in the first and primary qualification, “be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus”, then those men visibly robed or not, fail in their qualification to hold the teaching office in Christ’s visible church.

    I agree with you that there have been men in the teaching office of the Cath church who have failed this and other qualifications. But, have they taught anything as binding that is contrary to the gospel? I’m struggling with that one. I also struggle with whether the protestant response to unfaithfulness (real or perceived) on the part of church leaders has been appropriate. I think the Bible clearly teaches that believers are to submit to the church. As was argued in the Solo/Sola article, there is no actual submission going on and no actual authority, if the basis of my “submission” is agreement with my own interpretation of Scripture. I believe that submission must be real, that church authority must be superior to private judgment (no matter how many people share the same private judgment), and that God wants us to know what we are bound to believe as opposed to opinions about what we are to believe. I struggle with how the pronouncements and binding statements of all the early ecumenical councils that I accept as a Protestant can be understood as binding (as the council fathers certainly understood their pronouncements to be) if the church does not have authority over my private judgments, whether on justification or any other matter.

    I appreciate you sharing your thoughts. Let’s keep pressing on in this search.

    Mark

67. Bryan Cross February 15th, 2011 4:03 pm :

    Tobey (re: #64)

    There are four assumptions that you are bringing to the table, and these assumptions underlie the division between you and the Catholic Church.

    First, you are using your interpretation of Scripture regarding the subject of justification, to conclude that the Magisterium is in error regarding this doctrine, rather than allowing the authoritative teaching of the Magisterium concerning justification to show you that you have misinterpreted Scripture regarding this doctrine. In this way, you are begging the question, by presuming precisely what is in question between you and the Catholic Church, namely, that you have as much or more interpretive authority than does the Magisterium of the Church Christ founded. That’s the first assumption you are bringing to the table.

    That stance toward the Magisterium is something all heretics throughout the history of the Church have had in common, from the Arians to the Zwinglians. Heretics were heretics not merely because they did not reach your interpretation of Scripture, but because they denied what the divinely established Magisterium of the Church, drawing from sacred Scripture and the Apostolic Tradition, formally determined to be the orthodox doctrine on the doctrinal matters in question. Regarding this assumption, I recommend reading The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, who was the bishop of Geneva in the early seventeenth century.

    You wrote:

    Justification by grace alone, in Christ alone, through faith alone is not an example of someone’s “own interpretation of Scripture.”

    Actually it is, because Scripture does not include that statement, and any attempt to deduce that statement from Scripture requires bringing non-neutral theological and ecclesiological assumptions to Scripture, assumptions that you may not even be aware that you are bringing to the interpretive process. That’s the second assumption that you are bringing to the table, namely, that the Reformed doctrine of justification is not an interpretation of Scripture. See my “The Tradition and the Lexicon.” We haven’t yet posted articles (on CTC) explaining and defending the Catholic doctrine of justification, and how it fits with Scripture, though we intend to do so in the near future. But your statement about justification is not entailed by any or all of the verses [taken together] you cited (i.e. Lk 24, Jn. 3:16, 6:28, Rom 3, 2 Tim 2, and 1 Thess 5. In fact, Catholics affirm all those very same verses as divinely inspired by the Holy Spirit, and therefore as the very words of God. You are using a Reformed conception of grace (which differs from the Catholic conception of grace), in conjunction with 2 Tim 2:2, to argue that Catholic bishops do not qualify as leaders of Christ’s Church. But that argument begs the question, by presuming precisely what is in question between you and the Catholic Church, namely, that the Catholic Magisterium does not provide the authentic understanding of grace. In other words, if you are going to use a Reformed conception of grace, in your argument that Catholic bishops don’t have ecclesial authority, there is no point even making the argument, because you have already assumed your conclusion in your premises. It would be more transparent simply to pound the table, and assert that your interpretation is the correct one, and that all those who disagree with your interpretation ought to conform to your interpretation.

    Third, you are also assuming that if the Pharisees were in error, then the Magisterium of the Church in the New Covenant can formally teach false doctrine. That’s the third assumption you are bringing to the table. But that conclusion does not follow. There is no a priori reason to believe that on this matter there is no change from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant, rather than that on this matter the New Covenant is better than the Old Covenant. The Catholic Church in the second and third and fourth centuries, believed and taught that Christ would never allow the Church to lose the faith. See “Indefectibility of the Mystical Body,” and “The Indefectibility of the Church.” So, one would have to assume some form of ecclesial deism in order to defend the assumption that the early Church was wrong about indefectibility. And that would just beg the question, i.e. assume precisely what is in question. But there is no good reason to believe that ecclesial deism ought to be the default position.

    Fourth, you are assuming that the preservation and authentic explication and development of the deposit of faith within the New Covenant is not through apostolic succession, but through whoever (in the past) agreed, or presently agrees, with your interpretation of Scripture. That’s the fourth assumption you are bringing to the table. The problem with that assumption is that you have no authority to determine for the people of God who has authority over Christ’s Church; your opinion on such matters is subordinate in authority to that of those who received such authority in succession from the Apostles. There is good reason from the record of the Church Fathers not to take the denial of apostolic succession as the default position, as though the Church just is whoever generally agrees with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

    If you had lived during the time of the Apostles, presumably you would defer to the Apostles regarding the proper interpretation of their writings. But, now put yourself (mentally) in the Church at Antioch in the late first-century under the authority of the bishop of Antioch at that time, St. Ignatius, who wrote the epistles to various Churches in Asia Minor on his way to martyrdom in Rome in AD 107. He was the second bishop of Antioch, after Evodious, and according to St. John Chrysostom, who grew up in Antioch, St. Ignatius had been ordained at the hands of Apostles, including St. Peter. If you have read the epistles of St. Ignatius, you have some sense of his understanding and teaching regarding the authority of the bishop. If at that time you held your conception of ecclesial authority, you could not have been a member of the Church at Antioch (or any other Catholic Church), just as you couldn’t have been a member of the Church during the time of the Apostles, if you insisted that they conform to your interpretation of Scripture, rather than allow their teaching to inform and shape your interpretation of Scripture. What St. Ignatius says does not fit with your conception of ecclesial authority. He taught that the bishop has his teaching authority from Christ, through the Apostles, not from agreement with your (or any other lay-person’s) interpretation of Scripture. The lay person is to be subject to the bishop; see all his epistles, and also see Heb. 13:17. You are assuming that magisterial authority died with the last apostle, but that’s not what we find in the Church Fathers, as I explained in “Apostolic Succession.” A bishop could be heretical, and in that case the people ought not to follow him. But heresy and orthodoxy was not determined by one’s own interpretation of Scripture, but by the Tradition that had been received and upheld throughout the Catholic Church all over the world, wherever the Apostles had preached and taught.

    In the peace of Christ,

    - Bryan

68. Tobey February 17th, 2011 11:04 pm :

    Bryan

    Thanks for your reply. A couple brief points

    1/ What Keith Mathison says in his essay “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority. Ditto.

    2/ Regarding the identification of my first assumption… I’m not claiming greater teaching authority than the Magisterium. I am claiming that a Christian can understand the self-attesting teaching of Scripture because the Spirit of Christ loves His child and desires to be known in spirit and truth by His child. I am claiming that throughout the history of the church a significant portion of the church has read the Bible as teaching justification through faith alone by grace alone in Christ alone, so I’m not flying solo with the solas. So, I don’t deny the first assumption. It’s a conclusion, and I’ve yet to hear anything to persuade me otherwise. It’s easy to drop the word heretic in a rebuttal, and the word certainly carries a lot of weight, but as one professor of mine would have asked when trying to clearly understand one’s argument, a heretic “in regard to what?” Failing to submit to all the teaching of the Magisterium? But I don’t see what you see in Scripture and Tradition that would support your conclusion about the teaching authority of the Magisterium.

    3/ Regarding the identification of my second assumption… Of course the conclusion that the Scripture teaches justification by grace alone, in Christ alone, through faith alone is an interpretation of Scripture. Following the lead of my former professor, the proper question would be, “Tobey, what do you mean that justification by grace alone, in Christ alone, through faith alone is not an example of someone’s ‘own interpretation of Scripture?’” What I mean is what I stated above. That I and millions of other Christians throughout the history of the church have understood Scripture to be teaching justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. My “in regard to what” than, is to confront your view of what at least reads as an accusation of out of control subjectivism regarding the individual along with those outside of Rome, and his/her/their reading of Scripture. You fault me for overcoming that apparent subjective reading by using a Reformed conception of grace. Yet you are free to overcome your subjective reading of Scripture by appealing to the authority of the Catholic Magisterium. Using your own argument, how does that not beg the question by assuming precisely what is in question between you and the Reformed church, namely that the Reformed interpretation of Scripture is wrong because the Magisterium says so? If there is going to be any “pounding of the table” why don’t you and I at least have some fun and play “rock, paper, scissors” to decide who’s right and who’s wrong? The question really comes down to this, “Is there an agreed upon starting point to have this conversation?” Your appeal to the Magisterium isn’t working any more than my appeal to Scripture. So what would that starting place be?

    4/ Regarding the identification of my third assumption… Actually, there is reason to believe that the religious leaders in the church could be in error just as religious leaders in Israel could be in error. The N.T. warns the church to beware of false teachers and false prophets. Jude addresses this head on. I don’t think I need to belabor this point because the warnings in the N.T. are so obvious. (However, I would be happy to identify more Scriptural teaching on this if needed.) Again, appealing to the teaching of Rome to support the position of Rome is begging the question. Do you want “rock”, “paper”, or “scissors” on this one?

    5/ Regarding the identification of my fourth assumption… My assumption of the preservation of “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) is not rooted in “whoever (in the past) agreed or presently agrees, with my interpretation of Scripture. God has revealed Himself in the Scripture and in His final Word, the Lord Jesus. Hebrews 1:1-3, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.” (By the way, the Reformed believer affirms Hebrews 1:1-3. Nothing heretical about that.) God’s Word interpreted in God’s community (the church) is how God has and does preserve His revelation in Scripture and in Jesus Christ. I am unaware of any serious teaching in the Reformed tradition that the Church is “just whoever generally agrees with one’s own interpretation of Scripture. The very nature of the covenant and promises of God would defeat that view and it is certainly not held by anyone in the Reformed camp that I know of (although I’m sure if there is someone will find it and point it out. For the record than, I reject that view and characterization.)

    By God’s grace, yes, if I lived during the times of the Apostles I would have submitted to the teaching of the Apostles… but only if it conformed to the teaching of Scripture, as was modeled by the Bereans (Acts 17:10-15) who the Scripture describes as “more noble” and received the word of Paul “with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” Before I move on… that is an amazing text of Scripture and an amazing account of people who received the word of an Apostle… but only as it was in line with what the Scriptures taught AS THEY READ IT IN COMMUNITY. And yes, to the degree that Ignatius was faithful to teach what was recorded of the Apostles teaching (the N.T. Scriptures) by God’s grace I would have submitted to that teaching… but always keeping in mind the warnings of Scripture that false teachers were possible in the church. Reformed folk do not deny that there is authority in the teaching office or deny that some creeds and confessions properly interpret the Scripture and is thus the teaching of Scripture. We affirm that. But we ultimately affirm that Jesus loves His church and will protect and preserve “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.” Ultimately the authoritative Interpreter is the authoritative and faithful Author who is also the authoritative Preserver – the Spirit of Christ. And that, even in the midst of all the fallenness and fallibility and finiteness of His people, is truly the Rock the church is built on.

    I want to close with two final points:

    A. I really appreciated Keith Mathison’s essay. I agree with it. Thank you for posting it.

    B. I always thought in light of the history of Christ’s holy catholic church, in light of all the disagreements and differences, that the Lord Jesus’ command in John 13:34-35 is the key to our witness to the redemption we have in Jesus Christ. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

    With that command in mind, I do wish you the peace of Christ.

    Tobey

    P.S. Can we go best out of seven on “rock, paper, scissors”?

69. Bryan Cross February 19th, 2011 2:45 am :

    Tobey, (re: #68)

    When a person contradicts Magisterial teaching, he is implicitly claiming greater teaching authority than the Magisterium. As for your claim that throughout the history of the church, a significant portion of the church has read the Bible as teaching justification by faith alone [where "faith alone" is understood in the Protestant sense as making repentance, agape and baptism have no part in justification], there is no good evidence that that is true, and much that it is false. See “St. Clement of Rome: Soteriology and Ecclesiology.” See also “The Church Fathers on Baptismal Regeneration,” “Ligon Duncan’s ‘Did the Fathers Know the Gospel?,” and my post titled “St. Augustine on Law and Grace.” See also my “Does the Bible Teach Sola Fide?” Also, to better understand the Catholic doctrine of justification, listen to Prof. Feingold’s lecture titled “St. Paul on Justification”:

    My reason for pointing out (in #67) the four assumptions you were bringing to the discussion was not to persuade you that you are wrong about them (although I do think you are wrong about them), but to highlight the fact that these assumptions underlie your criticisms of the Catholic Church, so that in order to begin to attempt to resolve the disagreement between you and the Catholic Church, we may discuss those underlying assumptions.

    Regarding your question concerning the “Reformed conception of grace,” that conception of grace arose in the sixteenth century. Prior to that, in the works of all the Church’s theologians going to back to St. Augustine and earlier, grace was never a mere divine favor (see the quotation from Scott Clark in comment #3 of the “Pelagian Westminster?” thread.) The mere divine favor conception of grace is in part the result of nominalism, which developed in the fourteenth century, and culminated in de-ontological [and hence stipulative, extrinsic, declarative] conceptions of grace and justification in the sixteenth century. So, it is not question-begging to recognize the older conception of grace as the traditional conception of grace, and the novel conception of grace as the one bearing the burden of proof.

    Actually, there is reason to believe that the religious leaders in the church could be in error just as religious leaders in Israel could be in error. The N.T. warns the church to beware of false teachers and false prophets.

    You are assuming that the fact of there being false teachers means that the Magisterium could fall into heresy. But that’s not a justified assumption. Just because some bishops could (and can) fall into heresy, it does not follow that the Magisterium could do so. Their heresy is known to be such not because they don’t conform to the individual’s interpretation of Scripture, but because they don’t conform to the faith of the Church (where ‘Church’ isn’t defined in terms of one’s own interpretation of Scripture, but in terms of the Magisterium — as St. Ambrose said, “Where Peter is, there is the Church,” and as St. Ignatius said, “Where the bishop is, there is the Church.”)

    am unaware of any serious teaching in the Reformed tradition that the Church is “just whoever generally agrees with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

    Of course it is not worded that way. Instead, it is worded in terms of “the gospel” as a mark of the Church, [a notion unknown to the early Church] where “the gospel” refers to a set of doctrinal propositions that summarize one’s own interpretation of Scripture, typically in the form of a list of solas. And for that reason, in the Reformed tradition only those count as “the Church” who sufficiently conform to one’s own interpretation of Scripture concerning its primary message. (See section IV.A. of the “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority” article. See also PCA elder Andrew McCallum’s claims about who counts as ‘church’ in the comments of this thread.

    You claim that had you lived in the time of the Apostles you would have submitted to the teaching of the Apostles … but only if it conformed to [your interpretation of] Scripture, “as was modeled by the Bereans.” I add “your interpretation of” because that’s the crux of the issue. Presumably the Apostles wouldn’t have been contradicting the actual statements of Scripture, just as the Catholic Church fully affirms the truth of every verse of Scripture. (See “Vatican II and the Inerrancy of the Bible,” and the exchange between TF and myself in the Solo Scriptura thread, beginning in comment #957 and continuing almost to the end.) So the actual question is what you would have done if they had affirmed the truth of Scripture, but you disagreed with their interpretation of Scripture. Would you have you presumed interpretive authority over them, or would you have submitted to their interpretation?

    This passage [i.e. Acts 17] doesn’t say that we should submit to the Apostles only if we agree with their interpretation of Scripture. One would have to bring certain assumptions to the text in order to draw that conclusion from it. One way to learn from a teacher of Scripture is to take the stance: “I won’t believe what you say until I determine for myself that this is in Scripture.” Another way is fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding). The former is not noble when the speaker is divinely authorized. But the latter is noble when the speaker is divinely authorized. Moreover, stating that something is referred to in Scripture, is not the same thing as giving an authoritative interpretation of Scripture. The Bereans were searching the Scriptures primarily to see whether they contained the claims St. Paul said they contained, not to verify or falsify his interpretation of those claims. They were praised because they were truth-lovers, not because they eschewed apostolic authority and preferred the rule of private judgment.

    In addition, the practice of Jewish non-Christians being evangelized by a Christian should not be taken as normative for Christians already incorporated into the Church. Non-Christians would not yet have recognized St. Paul’s authority as an Apostle, since they did not yet recognize Jesus as the Son of God. But those persons already incorporated into the Church recognize the authority of the Apostles and their successors. That’s not to say that Christians should not search the Scriptures, but Christians search the Scriptures not in order to come to faith, but to grow in the faith, not to determine whether the dogmas of the faith are true, but to seek to understand how they are contained and presented in Scripture. This passage in Acts 17 is about the truth-seeking open-mindedness of the [non-Christian] Jews of Berea to the preaching of the gospel. St. Paul was explaining to them that Jesus Christ fulfilled the prophesies and covenant of the Old Testament, and as Jews, they were examining the Scripture to see whether what he was saying about the OT was true. They didn’t yet recognize the authority of St. Paul as an Apostle. The truth-seeking open-mindedness of the Bereans is a model for us all. But their way of verifying what St. Paul said is not a model for how baptized Christians should relate to the Apostles or to a bishop or to the Jerusalem Council (of Acts 15). That’s because becoming a Christian means to come into the Church, and thus come under the authority of the Apostles and bishops. Of course coming under their authority doesn’t mean that one can’t look up verses if an Apostle or bishop says, for example, “The prophet Jeremiah tells us in Jeremiah 31 that in the New Covenant, God will write His law on our hearts.” But it does mean that the Church’s determination of what the Bible says (i.e. what is orthodoxy and what is heresy) is authoritative for us, rather than our interpretation of Scripture being the standard by which the Church is judged to be orthodox or heterodox.

    Reformed folk do not deny that there is authority in the teaching office or deny that some creeds and confessions properly interpret the Scripture and is thus the teaching of Scripture.

    Protestantism came about when certain Catholics in the sixteenth century denied the authority of the Catholic teaching office, and presumed that authority to themselves, in some cases by attempting to exercise it themselves, and in others by choosing as their ecclesial ‘authority’ other unauthorized and heretical Catholics who most closely agreed with their own interpretation of Scripture. (See Bossuet’s History of the Variations of the Protestant Churches, Hughes’ A Popular History of the Reformation, Belloc’s How the Reformation Happened, St. Francis de Sales’ The Catholic Controversy, and Carroll’s The Cleaving of Christendom.) For this reason, the ‘authority’ of a Protestant teaching office is an illusion, for the reasons we explain in the “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority” article.

    In the peace of Christ,

    - Bryan

70. Tobey February 21st, 2011 2:38 pm :

    Bryan,

    There are so many areas where we disagree that for me at least it’s time to wrap up the interaction. I want to reference one final thing you said as an example where I don’t think we will ever find agreement, frankly, because your view and Rome’s view is indefensible based on the observable work of Jesus in the world.

    You write,

    “But it does mean that the Church’s determination of what the Bible says (i.e. what is orthodoxy and what is heresy) is authoritative for us, rather than our interpretation of Scripture being the standard by which the Church is judged to be orthodox or heterodox.”

    Bearing in mind what I have already written on this post, your claim (I take “Church” to mean “Rome”) is contrary to the observable work of Jesus Christ in the world. All of us have a moral responsibility to question and know and love the truth. This nonsensical idea repeated ad nauseam that Christians cannot properly read and understand their Bibles apart from Rome in my view is one of the most farfetched claims one could make. God didn’t give us a mysterious book that only a select few connected to Rome could read and understand and the rest of us just follow “their” interpretation like lemmings.

    Millions and millions and millions of Christians can and have given testimony to the life transforming and saving power of God’s Word experienced in their lives and in their church communities apart from Rome. As long as Jesus is pleased to be known and save His people and fellowship with them and transform them through His Word and through the many different church communities that exist and have existed, frankly, I don’t see how anyone on this site or from within Rome itself can with any integrity make the claims for authority that she is making. The work of Christ around the world and throughout history is strong evidence against such claims. Jesus has shown time and time again that He is pleased to be known and continues to make Himself known within many different Protestant communities and in the lives of His children. Rome is demanding an authority that it was never given and that the church universal does not need her to have. At least Jesus has shown and is showing He does not need Rome to have that authority in order to pour out His saving work, life and joy on His people through the teaching of His Word. The historical and current witness to the mercy of Jesus poured out on His people through the ministry of the Word is strong evidence that what you are arguing for is false.

    May Jesus Christ have mercy,

    Tobey

71. Jonathan Brumley February 23rd, 2011 1:30 am :

    Hello Tobey,

    The issue is not whether the Bible is, on the whole, “understandable”. The point is that Christians disagree on what the Bible means in many places. These disagreements have fractured Christianity so that we don’t believe the same thing, and the result is we are not a unified witness to the world.

    Is Christ divided? Did God design the Church so that it would not be divided?

    If God did this, how did He intend us to be united?

    Did and does God intend unity to be achieved through humility, by asking us to submit to Christ, to one another, to our elders?

    Did the apostles actually work to maintain unity?
    Did they establish elders who continued on this work?

    Did God protect these elders from error in some way?

    Is the Roman Catholic Church the continuation of the unified Church which God built on Christ’s foundation, through the apostles?

72. Brent February 23rd, 2011 7:45 am :

    Tobey,

    You are right, God loves those that love him. The Holy Spirit is interested in the people in those ecclesial communities, but he has no interest in preserving the churches. That is the history of those communities, God’s gratuity to them yet their churches ending in ruin and apostasy.

    Also, I would be interested in how you would confront the “work of the Spirit” in the Mormon church and Jehovah’s Witnesses”? Are they real Christian communities, alive by the spirit?

    I think what you hear in this forum, and it is not what we are saying, is that God is not working in your “group”, but he’s in ours. No, that is wrong. He is working in the lives of people in your group because he cares intimately for all his children. The Holy Spirit goes “to and fro” where he wishes (Gen 1:2).

    What we are saying is that the Reformation was misguided, not a work of the Holy Spirit, has led to 38,000 denominations, division and that Christ established one Church. That looks like cancer to me. We are saying that sola scriptura, the principal that you can interpret scripture authoritatively as an individual is misguided, fails historically, and is harmful to souls (see Mormons). We are not saying that you cannot understand your Bible. In fact, the Church encourages it and reads it to her people in every Mass. Read PBXVI latest exhortation in the reading of scripture here.

    God bless,

    Brent

73. Bryan Cross February 24th, 2011 9:44 am :

    Tobey, (re: #70)

    No one here claimed that apart from the guidance of the Catholic Church, Christians cannot read and understand Scripture to some degree, a degree that allows them to have a conscious saving faith in Christ. Thankfully, they can. All of us at CTC were Christians for many years before becoming Catholic. Part of the reason why Protestants get Scripture right in certain areas (e.g. the Trinity and Christology) is that Protestantism still enjoys a great deal of its interpretive framework by way of inheritance from the doctrines and Tradition of the Catholic Church and the early ecumenical councils — things it brought with it when it separated from the Catholic Church. But sadly, every decade that the Protestant-Catholic schism continues, the memory, inertia and implicit authority of that Tradition dims within Protestantism. This is why the make-up of Protestantism has shifted: confessional Protestantism has mostly all gone liberal, and non-confessional Protestantism has fractured into everything from Benny Hinn and TBN to Brian McLaren and Joel Osteen.

    The more unreasonable, and farfetched claim, would be that the Bible is sufficient for keeping all Christians in the one Church that Christ founded. History and a quick glance around are sufficient to falsify such a claim. The Bible was never intended to be in itself the sufficient means by which Christians are preserved in unity of faith, sacraments, and ecclesiology. That’s precisely why Christ gave the keys of the Kingdom (i.e. the Church) to St. Peter, and said that He would build His Church on him, so that the Church throughout the whole world could be one in faith, one in sacraments, and one in visible authority. And even a cursory study of the early Church Fathers shows that the early Church looked nothing like non-confessional Protestantism. Take the mass, for example:

    In addition, no one here has claimed that Protestants cannot experience the “life transforming and saving power of God.” Thankfully, they can and do, through the sacrament of baptism, through prayer and the study of Scripture. But, it wouldn’t be a good argument to reason from the fact that non-Catholics experience the transforming and saving power of God, to the conclusion that the Catholic Church isn’t what she claims to be, and that Protestants needn’t be reconciled to her, and united in full communion with her. Thinking that the work of Christ outside the Catholic Church is evidence against the Catholic Church’s claim to be the Church Christ founded, would be the inverse of the mistake St. Cyprian made in the third century, when he argued that heretics who had been baptized outside the Catholic Church needed to be baptized upon entering the Catholic Church, because in St. Cyprian’s mind, the boundaries of the Church coincided with the saving and transforming saving power of God in the sacraments. St. Cyprian was arguing that there is no saving activity of God outside the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church, but Pope St. Stephen stood firmly against him (see “The Chair of St. Peter“). Pope St. Stephen understood that the mercy of God extends outside of the Church, precisely in order to lead souls into the Church, not to nullify the necessity of the Church. It would be a very serious error to nullify the necessity of entering the Church by appealing to the Holy Spirit’s activity outside the Church, just as the reception of the Holy Spirit by Cornelius and his family did not make his subsequent baptism superfluous. (Acts 10) The extension of God’s work of grace and mercy in the world does not ipso facto determine or set the extension or boundary of the Church, because Christ is presently working even outside His Church to bring people into His Church. Those who have experienced His mercy should not presume on His mercy by neglecting either to receive His sacraments or to enter His Church. If you want to understand the ground for “the claims for authority that [the Catholic Church] is making,” then read Fortescue, Giles and Chapman in the Papacy section here.

    Yes Protestants can experience grace outside of the Church Christ founded, but there is so much more grace available within the Church, with all seven sacraments and the fullness of the Tradition, the saints, and the sacramentals. It is much more difficult to be saved outside the Church, than it is inside the Church. Moreover, it has always been a doctrine of the Church that no one who, knowing that the Catholic Church is the Church Christ founded as necessary for salvation, refuses to enter her or remain within her, can be saved. (CCC #846)

    In the peace of Christ,

    - Bryan

74. Brent February 24th, 2011 11:45 am :

    Amen Bryan. Growing up in a “full gospel” tradition (as I believe you did), it is wonderful to actually have the FULL GOSPEL now. Not having Confession, Confirmation, and Holy Eucharist handicapped my spiritual progress. I have truly experienced the transforming power of the grace of those sacraments in my life in terms of freedom from sin and a deepening awareness of Christ’s presence in my life. Further, being alienated from my Mother and spiritual family (Saints) made the Christian life unnecessarily an unaided one.

    Note: St. Augustine converted to Christ in 386, yet his baptism (reception into the Church) at the hands of St. Ambrose wasn’t until Easter of 387.

75. Curt Russell March 6th, 2011 11:44 pm :

    Hi Bryan

    Nice work, though I disagree! Let me follow up… You state…

    “Each of the members of the Body has a different place and function in the Body. They do not all have the same function or role. Some are apostles, some are prophets, some are teachers, etc., each according to his gifts. And St. Paul teaches that some gifts are greater than others, even while each member is dependent on the others. This mutual dependency is true not only of the hands and feet, but even of the Head; the Head cannot say to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ In this way, the Body is hierarchically organized, each of the subordinate functions contributing to the unified activity of the whole Body. If the Body were not hierarchically organized, there would be many different activities, but not one unified activity. There would be many different individuals, and not one Body.

    In my humble opinion, you make an intellectual jump from “one body, many parts” to ‘the body must be hierarchically organized’. From the verses cited, one can only reach this conclusion if you assume that “greater gifts” implies a literal organizational hierarchy. I would suggest that this Scripture says precisely and clearly that there is NO hierarchy in the body, based on three principles:

    1. First, I would postulate that there is no concept of hierarchy implied in the term “greater gifts”. The term rather refers to “greater” in the sense of God’s economy, ie, “the love and care of each other”. Paul says “faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love”. Paul’s concept of the body is clearly one of mutual equality, not worldly hierarchy. The very verse you quote says, “On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the Body which seem to be weaker are necessary; and those members of the Body which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our less presentable members become much more presentable, whereas our more presentable members have no need of it. But God has so composed the Body, giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked, so that there may be no division in the Body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.” Paul is saying that we should go out of our way NOT to model the church after a worldly hierarchy … that an emphasis on hierarchy is the CAUSE of division within the body.

    2. You postulate that, without a human hierarchy, there would be disunity. One can only arrive at this conclusion if you accept that unity comes from human hierarchy, not from God. I quote the precursor of the 1 Corinthians 12 scripture that was skipped over when you quoted…

    “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, and to another the effecting of miracles, and to another prophecy, and to another the distinguishing of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues. But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills.”

    This Scripture clearly indicates that the Holy Spirit orchestrates the gifts and activities of the body, not some human hierarchy. Further, this orchestration of humans by the Holy Spirit accomplishes the will of God.

    3. Christ Himself and others subsequent say many times that whoever would be first should be the servant of all, and other similar paraphrases of this concept. Any hierarchy that might be espoused in the Kingdom is called by Christ to be up-side-down from a literal worldly hierarchy. In the up-side-down hierarchy, the Pope would be servant to all. This is clearly antithetical to the current reality… one does not generally kiss the ring of a servant, nor would an apostle of Christ permit this. Could you imagine someone kissing the ring of Peter or Paul? They would go nuts! Even Jesus demanded to wash Peter’s feet. The Kingdom of God has but one head and that is Christ.

    I agree with the notion that we should avoid schism and I confirm with you the verses cited in this regard. However, when the Church leaders leave the faith, it is not the believers who create schism, it is the Church leaders. Sadly, this has been the case. What are we to do in such a case? Ephesians 4:14-16 give us a picture… “As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.” So in such cases, the body is to “grow up” in Christ, and function as a body, taking its lead from Christ who is the head, for the growth and building of the body in love. What we are NOT to do is follow every wind of doctrine… from any source. Christ is the head of the church, as you quoted from Scripture. We are the body, He is the head. The Holy Spirit is our guide.

    I believe in both a visible and invisible church… ie, the body of all who believe that Christ died for their sins. I support missionaries all over the world who are being Christ in the flesh to people in need. I work in my community to do likewise. Obviously, so does the RC church. I would collectively call this the visible church. Likewise, you and I believe in and would agree (I think) on the basics of the doctrine of salvation… we are both saved by Christ. I would call us members of the church invisible, that is, the Holy Spirt is working through us to accomplish the will of God. I do not believe that a visible church means a hierarchy with a guy on the throne at the top (other than Jesus, who is the head of both churches, visible and invisible).

    It would be great if the church could be reunited in polity and affirmed theology. In the mean time, I think we are called to work together for the glory of God in any way we can. If we are truly seeking God, the Holy Spirit will do what man cannot.

    Highest regards
    Curt

76. Curt Russell March 7th, 2011 12:25 am :

    One other thought, as I scanned back up through your previous comments, you say…

    “What we are saying is that the Reformation was misguided, not a work of the Holy Spirit, has led to 38,000 denominations, division and that Christ established one Church. That looks like cancer to me. We are saying that sola scriptura, the principal that you can interpret scripture authoritatively as an individual is misguided, fails historically, and is harmful to souls…”

    I would postulate that a singular apostolic succession eventually led to Papal failures which looked like a cancer to the Reformers. I would further say that, while the reformation church retained the early theology of the orthodox church (The Creeds et al), the RC church has also undergone internal reformation that was spurred by the Reformers. And I would close by saying that if sola scriptura fails historically, then so does Papal succession by the same logic.

    The reality is that, from Abraham through the Pharasees, from Peter to Sixtus IV, from Calvin to Joel Osteen… every church that has been ordained by God has been found to be corruptible by man… no exceptions. This is not due to lack of knowledge, it is due to willful disobedience. This is the power of the body of Christ as previously discussed… that if we “grow up” in Christ, and function as a body, taking our lead from Christ who is the head, guided by the Holy Spirit who is give to each of us, we are less likely to be blown around by every wind of doctrine, no matter where the wind blows from. If Scripture and the Holy Spirit are insufficient, then no manmade institution based on them can be found stronger.

    Cheers
    Curt

77. Brent March 7th, 2011 7:50 am :

    Curt #76,

    I’m sure Bryan will give you an answer that should right the ship, but you said a few things that made me want to comment:

    I would postulate that a singular apostolic succession eventually led to Papal failures which looked like a cancer to the Reformers.

    Were the failures moral or theological? Yes, we cleaned house during and after the counter-reformation, but a couple fixing their marriage doesn’t justify the affair before or after the marriage.

    Also, I don’t think the Reformers saw it as a cancer, but rather as a complete failure, “let’s re-do” situation. 38,000 sounds like a cancerous tumor to me. Lastly on this point, how do you understand, “I will build my church…and the gates of hell will not prevail”?

    RC church has also undergone internal reformation that was spurred by the Reformers. And I would close by saying that if sola scriptura fails historically, then so does Papal succession by the same logic.

    The Catholic IP isn’t Papal succession. The Catholic IP is Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, Magisterium (apostles in union with the Holy See). I would recommend reading Mike’s post here. How has Papal succession failed? We have a fantastic Pope with an unbroken lineage to St. Peter which provides visible unity for 1.2 billion people; dare I say a human phenomenon unrivaled in human history? Hardly a failure. Now, about sola scriptura, even if there were only 5 denominations, the fact that the major denoms (Methodist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Anglican, Lutheran) all teach so dramatically different about the “essentials” demonstrates sola scriptura’s lack of ability to produce even nominal unity but rather evidences its principal effect of schism and theological chaos.

    The reality is that, from Abraham through the Pharasees, from Peter to Sixtus IV, from Calvin to Joel Osteen

    Yes, human history is marked by sinful people. However, that would encompass all of human history both Christian, pagan, jew, gentile. In the OT, the children of Israel by covenant were preserved despite schism (south/north), idolatry, war…

    The New covenant, mediated by Christ, embues his Church with a promise to not fail (gates of hell shall not…), to be the pillar of truth, for Christ to be with her until the end of the age (Eucharist), and for her to grow in holiness (internal reformation). Even when she has teetered on the verge of failure, Christ was faithful to protect her. This is the story of the Catholic Church for 2,000 years. As Newman perceived, every other church squirms at her title, “universal”, and no other church even tries to holds that title. They won’t claim it because they know they cannot. Every other church merely claims a regional, nominal, or or paternal heritage (Lutheran, Baptist, Anglican). Also, your quote demonstrates just how confusing it is outside the Church. Joel Osteen? If we include him, let’s include Arius, Pelagius, Montanus, Eutyches…

    Peace to you on your journey.

    Through the Immaculate Conception

78. Randy March 7th, 2011 1:52 pm :

    Curt,

    I believe in both a visible and invisible church… ie, the body of all who believe that Christ died for their sins. I support missionaries all over the world who are being Christ in the flesh to people in need. I work in my community to do likewise. Obviously, so does the RC church. I would collectively call this the visible church.

    In what sense is this church visible? Can we see who believes Christ died for their dins and who does not? We can make assumptions. Some people we can feel pretty confident about. But for the vast majority we just don’t know. People can have true faith in Jesus despite publicly professing bad theology. They can publicly profess true theology and have no faith.

    There are some organizations we call Christian. But Christians differ on how to define that. There is not easy way to tell if a person or an organization is part of this “visible” church. That seems to mean it isn’t really visible at all. It is something we see in a limited way with the discernment of the spirit. In other words it is what Catholics would call the invisible church.

79. Bryan Cross March 7th, 2011 7:18 pm :

    Hello Curt, (re: #75-76)

    Welcome to Called To Communion.

    In the article, we wrote:

    “Each of the members of the Body has a different place and function in the Body. They do not all have the same function or role. Some are apostles, some are prophets, some are teachers, etc., each according to his gifts. And St. Paul teaches that some gifts are greater than others, even while each member is dependent on the others. This mutual dependency is true not only of the hands and feet, but even of the Head; the Head cannot say to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ In this way, the Body is hierarchically organized, each of the subordinate functions contributing to the unified activity of the whole Body. If the Body were not hierarchically organized, there would be many different activities, but not one unified activity. There would be many different individuals, and not one Body.”

    You replied:

    In my humble opinion, you make an intellectual jump from “one body, many parts” to ‘the body must be hierarchically organized’. From the verses cited, one can only reach this conclusion if you assume that “greater gifts” implies a literal organizational hierarchy.

    Tom and I are not arguing merely from “verses cited.” We are also drawing from the early Church Fathers and from the relation of members of a body to each other and to a whole body. So, we are not jumping from “one body, many parts” to “the body must be hierarchically organized.” Grace builds on nature. Every body is hierarchically organized, and St. Paul wasn’t unaware of this. It is easy to see in the writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch, for example, as I showed in “St. Ignatius of Antioch on the Church.” The only alternative, for explaining what St. Ignatius says, is some sort of ecclesial deism.

    You wrote:

    I would suggest that this Scripture says precisely and clearly that there is NO hierarchy in the body, based on three principles:

    1. First, I would postulate that there is no concept of hierarchy implied in the term “greater gifts”. The term rather refers to “greater” in the sense of God’s economy, ie, “the love and care of each other”. Paul says “faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love”. Paul’s concept of the body is clearly one of mutual equality, not worldly hierarchy. The very verse you quote says, “On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the Body which seem to be weaker are necessary; and those members of the Body which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor, and our less presentable members become much more presentable, whereas our more presentable members have no need of it. But God has so composed the Body, giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked, so that there may be no division in the Body, but that the members may have the same care for one another.” Paul is saying that we should go out of our way NOT to model the church after a worldly hierarchy … that an emphasis on hierarchy is the CAUSE of division within the body.

    He’s not saying that hierarchy is the cause of division, otherwise, that would contradict what he says in 1 Cor 11:1-10, where he says that the hierarchy of man and woman is based on the woman coming from the man, which event preceded the fall, and therefore preceded division. Hence hierarchy per se cannot be the cause of division since it is fully compatible with unity. What you call “worldly” is what God calls “good,” since everything He made is good, and He made hierarchy when He made man and woman (and when He made the angels, since they too are in a hierarchy — this is why some are archangels). Of course man and woman are equal as persons. And yet because of the order of creation, there is a natural hierarchy. This natural hierarchy should not be confused with the domination God speaks of resulting from the fall, when he tells Eve, “your desire shall be for your husband, but he will *rule over* you.” (Gen 3:16)

    Likewise, you are assuming that if there is equality, then there is not hierarchy. That’s not a good assumption. Again, a husband and wife are equal as human persons, but there is an hierarchical order between them, on account of the natural order by God’s design. The verse you cite does not claim that hierarchy is bad or worldly; rather, it speaks of the importance of the strong helping the weak. And that is the purpose of the hierarchy, that those have God-given authority, might serve those entrusted to them. The worldly (fallen) notion of authority is one of domination and tyranny. That’s not the way God has created hierarchy in the family, and in the Church.

    You wrote:

    2. You postulate that, without a human hierarchy, there would be disunity. One can only arrive at this conclusion if you accept that unity comes from human hierarchy, not from God.

    No, that conclusion does not follow. You are positing a false dilemma: either ecclesial unity comes from human hierarchy, or it comes from God. Ecclesial unity comes from God, but grace builds on nature; grace does not destroy nature. Human societies are naturally hierarchical, as shown in Genesis. (The more that society loses sight of the hierarchical nature of husband and wife in marriage, the more difficult it is to see that any human society must be hierarchical to be unified. Otherwise, it is a mere plurality, for the reasons I explained in Why Protestantism has no “visible catholic Church”. The notion of an invisible unity that does not depend on visible unity, and therefore does not depend on hierarchy, is a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes. If such a ‘unity’ were in fact disunity, nothing at all would be any different. Such a ‘unity’ is fully compatible with a plethora of schisms and factions. But that’s not the sort of unity the Church Fathers conceived the Church to have. They spoke about schism frequently, as something contrary to the unity of the Church. For example, look at what St. Cyprian and St. Augustine say about the Novatian and Donatists schisms. These Church Fathers wrote a great deal about these schisms as schisms from the unity of the Church. St. Cyprian and St. Augustine did not think that the Novatians and Donatists remained in the unity of the Church, as the those two schism were still divinely joined to the Church. For St. Cyprian and St. Augustine (and the other Church Fathers) to separate from the visible Church is to form a schism, and no schism can justify itself by claiming that it is invisibly united to the Church than the excommunicated person can justify himself by claiming that he is still invisibly united to the Church. That would make excommunication of no consequence at all. The Church is visible, not invisible.

    This Scripture clearly indicates that the Holy Spirit orchestrates the gifts and activities of the body, not some human hierarchy.

    Once more, a false dilemma. That should be self-evident? Notice the Apostles in the book of Acts. To the question: Who was leading the early Church in the years following Pentecost, the Holy Spirit or the Apostles? The answer is, both. He makes the Apostles the foundation stones of the Church Eph 2:20, Rev 21:14. We are to submit to the leaders of the Church: “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as men who will have to give account.” (Heb 13:17) Does your church have a pastor? If so, then your practice contradicts what you are saying, because then I could say back to you: you should follow the Spirit, not some human hierarchy. Somehow, it seems, it is permissible to follow your own hierarchy, but not the one that Christ founded. But the one Christ founded has divine authorization, whereas no Protestant minister has authorization in succession from the Apostles.

    You wrote:

    3. Christ Himself and others subsequent say many times that whoever would be first should be the servant of all, and other similar paraphrases of this concept. Any hierarchy that might be espoused in the Kingdom is called by Christ to be up-side-down from a literal worldly hierarchy. In the up-side-down hierarchy, the Pope would be servant to all. This is clearly antithetical to the current reality… one does not generally kiss the ring of a servant, nor would an apostle of Christ permit this. Could you imagine someone kissing the ring of Peter or Paul? They would go nuts! Even Jesus demanded to wash Peter’s feet. The Kingdom of God has but one head and that is Christ.

    Indeed the leaders of the Church have been called to serve the sheep, and that is what they do, through their teaching, and their prayers, and their sacramental ministry. The Pope is the servant of all Catholics. He is also the servant of Christ. You seem to think that if someone is a servant, then no one would rightly honor him. But that is precisely why we honor our leaders, because they serve us. We honor the pope and our bishops because they stand in the place of Christ to us, as the Apostles did when Jesus had ascended. Jesus Himself said, “The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me; and he who rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me.” (Luke 10:16) And “He who receives you receives Me.” (Mt. 10:40) So, we honor our leaders as a way of honoring Christ, because they represent Him and serve in His Name and in His place until He returns in glory.

    You wrote:

    I agree with the notion that we should avoid schism and I confirm with you the verses cited in this regard. However, when the Church leaders leave the faith, it is not the believers who create schism, it is the Church leaders. Sadly, this has been the case.

    The Magisterium of the Church has never left the faith, but has always maintained the faith. Of course I understand that the Magisterium has perhaps not followed your interpretation of Scripture, but that is not the same as “leaving the faith.” Their teaching authority entails that it is their interpretation of Scripture and of the deposit of faith that the sheep of Christ’s Church must believe and confess, just as the early Church did that of the Apostles. It never was the case that the Church was beholden to each individual person’s interpretation of Scripture.

    So in such cases, the body is to “grow up” in Christ, and function as a body, taking its lead from Christ who is the head, for the growth and building of the body in love. What we are NOT to do is follow every wind of doctrine… from any source. Christ is the head of the church, as you quoted from Scripture. We are the body, He is the head. The Holy Spirit is our guide.

    Many people who follow their own interpretation of Scripture claim that the Holy Spirit is guiding them; they do so because it gives [at least verbal and psychological] support to their interpretation. Many Pentecostals claim that the Holy Spirit is guiding them to do many different things — you can watch Benny Hinn if you want to see what this looks like. The problem is that they are all going in different theological directions, even while all claiming to follow the Holy Spirit. It testifies that they are not all following the Spirit, but are merely co-opting the ‘approval’ of the Holy Spirit to justify following their own opinions and interpretations.

    I believe in both a visible and invisible church… ie, the body of all who believe that Christ died for their sins. I support missionaries all over the world who are being Christ in the flesh to people in need. I work in my community to do likewise. Obviously, so does the RC church. I would collectively call this the visible church.

    There are visible believers, of course, but Protestantism has no visible catholic Church, for the reasons I explained here. Nor can there be a local Church without apostolic succession, for the reasons explained briefly in Responsa ad quaestiones. Without apostolic succession there is no Eucharist, and without the Eucharist, there can be no Church, only a community of like-minded believers.

    Likewise, you and I believe in and would agree (I think) on the basics of the doctrine of salvation… we are both saved by Christ. I would call us members of the church invisible, that is, the Holy Spirt is working through us to accomplish the will of God. I do not believe that a visible church means a hierarchy with a guy on the throne at the top (other than Jesus, who is the head of both churches, visible and invisible).

    If you can accept that the Church has twelve Apostles as foundation stones (Rev 21:14), and that does not compete with Christ being the Chief Cornerstone and Head of the Church, then there is no principled reason why Christ could not make one of those Twelve Apostles to have a unique authority in relation to the others (Mt 16:18-19), and make him the Rock on which Christ builds His Church, without this in any way competing with Christ. This is what the Church Fathers believed Christ had done in giving the keys of the Kingdom to Peter — see “The Chair of St. Peter.”

    It would be great if the church could be reunited in polity and affirmed theology. In the mean time, I think we are called to work together for the glory of God in any way we can. If we are truly seeking God, the Holy Spirit will do what man cannot.

    The Church is united, in the three ways we describe in the article. Unity is a permanent mark of the Church. Many schisms have departed from the Church, and that is why you think that the Church is divided, because you are counting the schisms as though they too are part of the Church. But those in schism have gone out from us, as St. John says. “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.” (1 John 2:19) Jesus commanded us to seek first His Kingdom, the same Kingdom whose keys He gave to St. Peter. Yes we are called to work together for the glory of God, but we are also called to seek out and find the Church He founded, and enter it without delay.

    I would postulate that a singular apostolic succession eventually led to Papal failures which looked like a cancer to the Reformers.

    You are conflating moral failures with doctrinal failures. See the Donatist controversy, where St. Augustine and others showed that we cannot rightly rebel against a divinely ordained leader of the Church merely because of a moral failure. Moral failure on the part of leaders never justifies schism from the Church.

    I would further say that, while the reformation church retained the early theology of the orthodox church (The Creeds et al)

    Yes, the early Reformers retained the early creeds, but they changed the meaning of the some of the terms. They changed the meaning of “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.” They changed the meaning of “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins” (see “The Church Fathers on Baptismal Regeneration.”) And they came up with an entirely novel soteriology in claiming that justification was by faith alone (see “Does the Bible Teach Sola Fide?“), and an evacuated conception of ordination and the Eucharist, and eliminated the other sacraments.

    And I would close by saying that if sola scriptura fails historically, then so does Papal succession by the same logic.

    No, the Church remains firm, now almost 1.2 billion, almost two thousand years from its inception. The succession of popes continues unbroken, from Peter.

    The reality is that, from Abraham through the Pharasees, from Peter to Sixtus IV, from Calvin to Joel Osteen… every church that has been ordained by God has been found to be corruptible by man… no exceptions.

    No, the Catholic Church has never been corrupted, even though there have been corrupt men who have existed in her.

    If Scripture and the Holy Spirit are insufficient, then no manmade institution based on them can be found stronger.

    Fortunately, the Catholic Church is not a merely man-made institution; it was founded by the God-man, Jesus Christ. And hence it is indefectible (See “Ecclesial Deism.”)

    In the peace of Christ,

    - Bryan

80. Curt Russell March 8th, 2011 3:20 am :

    Hi Brent… thanks for the resonse! To make this easier to follow, I will use “You” and “Me” to identify who said what (since I don’t know how to do the nifty white inserts) I may also use caps as I would to underline or bold something… not to scream :-)

    You: Were the failures moral or theological?

    Me: Well, take your pick. Sixtus IV murdered the previous Pope and then seated himself. I would call that moral failure. Teaching that sins were forgiven through the payment of indulgences… I would call that theological failure.

    You: Yes, we cleaned house during and after the counter-reformation, but a couple fixing their marriage doesn’t justify the affair before or after the marriage.

    Me: I’m not sure I understand your point, but I WOULD understand that having an affair might cause a schism in the marriage.

    You: Also, I don’t think the Reformers saw it as a cancer, but rather as a complete failure, “let’s re-do” situation.

    Me: Well, I wouldn’t personally presume to speak for Luther or the others, but from their writings, I think they took the sinful nature of man and his dire need for salvation pretty seriously. Anyone or thing that was a massive impediment (even if only in their mind) for the common man to access grace would be a serious disease… life threatening… eternal life threatening.

    You: 38,000 sounds like a cancerous tumor to me.

    Me: Well, let’s be a little more practical… there are a handful of denominations that make up the vast majority of Protestant believers. Let’s also remember that there are a handful of denominations that claim apostolic succession right along with the RC church. The church is comprised of people. People are sinful. Schisms happen because of sin.

    You: Lastly on this point, how do you understand, “I will build my church…and the gates of hell will not prevail”?

    Me: Exactly what it says. The only difference between your view and mine is that I view the church as the body of ALL believers… you (I assume) view the church as one particular sub-set of my definition. That’s the first part. The gates of hell have not and are not and will not prevail against the church… that is, again, the body of all believers. Every person that Christ calls is protected and cannot be snatched from His hand. If you want my humble opinion, I believe this is precisely WHY the Reformation happened. The church had been corrupted, but God’s purposes could not be corrupted. God provided the Reformation to maintain communion with the common man even when the Churh had failed in its responsibility so to do.

    You: The Catholic IP isn’t Papal succession. The Catholic IP is Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, Magisterium (apostles in union with the Holy See). I would recommend reading Mike’s post here. How has Papal succession failed?

    Me: First, please understand that I do not want to be a basher of any church. I agree, the RC church has made incredible reform from within. But there were times when the church was led by murders, fornicators and money grubbing thieves who perverted the Gospel at best, or ignored it totally at worst. If this isn’t failure, then I guess you are right. I hope you would agree that most reasonable Christians would pose that Christ probably did not ordain these particular Popes to be His voice on earth.

    You: We have a fantastic Pope with an unbroken lineage to St. Peter which provides visible unity for 1.2 billion people; dare I say a human phenomenon unrivaled in human history? Hardly a failure.

    Me: We should probably try to avoid using numbers as a measure of success, lest we have to become a Muslim at some point to remain intellectually honest. :-) It also kind of smacks of a “might makes right” philosophy which is antithetical to the Christian view.

    You: Now, about sola scriptura, even if there were only 5 denominations, the fact that the major denoms (Methodist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Anglican, Lutheran) all teach so dramatically different about the “essentials” demonstrates sola scriptura’s lack of ability to produce even nominal unity but rather evidences its principal effect of schism and theological chaos.

    Me: First, I would not consider Anglicans to be “Reformed”… they are basically Catholic Lite. Their reason for leaving the church had nothing to do with theology… it had everything to do with Henry VIII wanting a divorce. Regarding your argument against sola scriptura, I would counter that the Roman Church had first crack at maintaining the unity of the church and it failed. There were schisms of the various orthodox churches and ultimately the Reformation churches. This was primarily due to the sin nature of man, manifested in the aforementioned apostolic succession. Had they not been corrupted, many of the schisms would not have occurred. And even if you make the case that it was the fault of the departers, who picked those guys to be leaders? Was it not the aforementioned apostolic succession? This would indicate that not all apostles chosen by men were, by inference, chosen by God.

    You: Yes, human history is marked by sinful people. However, that would encompass all of human history both Christian, pagan, jew, gentile. In the OT, the children of Israel by covenant were preserved despite schism (south/north), idolatry, war…

    Me: Well, not really. You had, for example, the Saducees and the Pharisees who had different theological views. The Pharisees were descendents of the house of Levy, whom God ordained to be the class theologians. One could argue that they were akin to being the first “apostolic succession”. And look where they were by the time Christ arrived… keepers of the Word in their own mind, but hardly in tune with God. Sadly, they took down many of the people of God with them. How? Through abuse of authority.

    You: The New covenant, mediated by Christ, embues his Church with a promise to not fail (gates of hell shall not…), to be the pillar of truth, for Christ to be with her until the end of the age (Eucharist), and for her to grow in holiness (internal reformation). Even when she has teetered on the verge of failure, Christ was faithful to protect her. This is the story of the Catholic Church for 2,000 years. As Newman perceived, every other church squirms at her title, “universal”, and no other church even tries to holds that title. They won’t claim it because they know they cannot. Every other church merely claims a regional, nominal, or or paternal heritage (Lutheran, Baptist, Anglican).

    Me: Well, we say the Apostle’s Creed and claim to believe in the “holy catholic church”. We’re not squirming. The universal church encompasses all who believe in the saving grace of the ressurection, like you, like me. We are not arrogant enough to believe we have a monopoly on the purposes of God. Pardon the directness, but you made a direct affront on other denoms.

    You: Also, your quote demonstrates just how confusing it is outside the Church. Joel Osteen? If we include him, let’s include Arius, Pelagius, Montanus, Eutyches…

    Me: On this we shall agree. You might not have picked up on it, but my examples were intended to represent “good start, bad finish” in the three time segments of the church (Jewish, pre-Reformation, post-Reformation) when I listed “Abraham through the Pharasees, from Peter to Sixtus IV, from Calvin to Joel Osteen”. However, your point is taken. The problem is reconciling theologies, and while I think the churches are much closer than they were, even when I was a child, I don’t see any chance of reunification of the body in my lifetime.

    So what are we to do? I believe that we should work together to present a unified Christian front to the community… and that is happening more now than ever before. I have certainly participated in anti-abortion rallies that were organized by the RC Church. We have RC members who work with us on Habitat houses. As opposed to the disunity that existed when I was a child (I couldn’t go to church with my buddy next door cause he was Catholic… that was my mom’s rule… and he couldn’t come to church with me… that was his church’s rule), we now see Christians of all stripes work for the good together… that’s the message that rings true with folks… while they are different, they are united in Christ.

    As a sidenote… One of the things I love about my church (a Presbyterian USA denom) is the diversity. We are an evangelical church (theologically conservative) in a liberal denom. We have chosen to stay in the denom to be salt and light. Our senior pastor was raised Catholic… our associate pastor was raised Greek Orthodox. We live in Maryland so our church has more members who were raised Catholic than were raised Presby (Maryland was founded as a Catholic colony and is the home of the first cathedral in the US). We have political liberals, conservatives, libertarians and everything in between. All of that, yet I have never seen a body of believers function better as a body. I believe that unity in Christ exists and is a beautiful thing. Actually, its quite amazing. Its something that I pray for in the church regularly.

    Cheers
    Curt

81. Curt Russell March 8th, 2011 4:16 am :

    Hey Randy… great questions! As I did with my responses to Brent, I will use “You” and “Me” to identify who said what (since I don’t know how to do the nifty white inserts)… I may also use caps as I would to underline or bold something… not to scream :-)

    You: In what sense is this church visible? Can we see who believes Christ died for their dins and who does not? We can make assumptions. Some people we can feel pretty confident about. But for the vast majority we just don’t know. People can have true faith in Jesus despite publicly professing bad theology. They can publicly profess true theology and have no faith.

    Me: True… for everyone, I might add! Jesus said, “you will know them by their denomination”… No He didn’t! He said, “you will know them by their FRUIT”. That is the visibility Jesus wants the world to see. Lord knows we have enough institutions… but the world is asking, “what have you done for me lately?” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep”. Hitler claimed to be a Christian, but I don’t think anyone else thought so. If I stand in a garage, it doesn’t make me a car. Likewise, if I go to a church, it doesn’t make me a Christian. In Maryland, we have a Senator who is RC, and she always votes pro-choice. I’m pretty sure that you would stand with me (and my friends both Presbyterian and Roman Catholic) and say she is a woman of little faith. Our chuch is linked up with a number of churches in Baltimore doing a variety of urban missions from aids ministries to habitat houses to battered women shelters, etc. We work with churches from other denoms, and I don’t think the recipients of God’s grace in these ministries really care that we differ denominationally… we are united in purpose. When the Presbys join the RCs at an anti-abortion rally, they speak with one voice… the voice of Christ. That’s what fruit looks like.

    You: There are some organizations we call Christian. But Christians differ on how to define that. There is not easy way to tell if a person or an organization is part of this “visible” church. That seems to mean it isn’t really visible at all. It is something we see in a limited way with the discernment of the spirit. In other words it is what Catholics would call the invisible church.

    Me: The RC church puts great emphasis on faith AND works, the theology of which we won’t jump into now. But that is the very thing I’m talking about… people of faith will produce works (fruit). God has a plan for every person and every church. If a particular church is invisible, then they are not producing fruit. So, ironically, if a church is not visible, there’s a good chance its not invisible either. I think its pretty easy to see examples if you look. I work with an organization called the Helping up Mission. They own a whole city block in Baltimore and provide housing, meals and drug/alcohol rehab for 450 men who have lost everything in life to their addiction. I ran my entire manufacturing plant with guys who came through the mission program (its a year long program of spiritual renewal and physical healing). They have one of the best success rates in the country. The organization is run entirely on the charity of Christian churches around Baltimore. Before I sold the company, I ate lunch every day with guys from the mission and their stories were unbelievable. Men back together with their families… kids going to college…absolute love of God. Not only were we helping them, they were helping us become more Christ-like. What impact do you think that had on the other employees? Let’s just say the Spirit was moving.

    Cheers
    Curt

82. Curt Russell March 8th, 2011 9:12 am :

    Ok… last but not least, its Bryans turn… Thanks for the welcome!

    Me: First, regarding the whole discussion on 1 Cor 12… I would not argue that God does not establish hierarchy. My point was that this particular verse is not an establishment of hierarchy … it is a warning against the human tendency toward hierarchical abuse. The two primary points made are: All gifts are equally important, and hierarchical abuse will sow discontent. Beyond that, I will concede that I overstated the case. I believe that God organizes through hierarchy, though I also believe that Jesus established an up-side-down hierarchy. The problem with the early church was that the only organizational model they had was the Kingdom model. And this was often not good. When we read the aforementioned Scripture and others like it, it seems to me that both Jesus and the Apostles were trying to get a message out… this is the Kingdom of God, but it needs to look different than other kingdoms. The first shall be last, et al.

    I’m jumping past that discussion and picking up on this:

    You: Notice the Apostles in the book of Acts. To the question: Who was leading the early Church in the years following Pentecost, the Holy Spirit or the Apostles? The answer is, both. He makes the Apostles the foundation stones of the Church Eph 2:20,

    Me: I would observe the following: Eph 2:20-22 “having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, [PAST tense] Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, [present continuing tense] in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, [PRESENT CONTINUING tense] in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. [PRESENT CONTINUING tense]”. So the church WAS built on the apostles and prophets, and CONTINUES with Christ as the cornerstone, while WE CONTINUE to be built IN THE SPIRIT.” This is an excellent verse showing the birth of the church through the work of the apostles, being now built by the Spirit working in and through the body.

    You: Rev 21:14.

    Me: This verse confirms that we are all spiritual descendents of the apostles. No surprise there. The apostles were the foundation on which the church was built. All true.

    You: We are to submit to the leaders of the Church: “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as men who will have to give account.” (Heb 13:17)

    Me: The NASB Heb13:17 says, “Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith.” I believe that we honor our Spiritual parents by honoring God, not the man… the Creator, not the creation. Jesus said time and again, “My Kingdom is not of this world”. He did not establish Himself as a worldly king, much to the dismay of the Jews and the apostles. Why, then, should we assume that He wants His church to look like a worldly kingdom, with someone who looks a lot like a king sitting on the throne?

    You: Does your church have a pastor? If so, then your practice contradicts what you are saying, because then I could say back to you: you should follow the Spirit, not some human hierarchy. Somehow, it seems, it is permissible to follow your own hierarchy, but not the one that Christ founded.

    Me: First, I am a Presbyterian. By this, you will know that the pastor serves at the will of the elders, of which I am one. So I do follow the Holy Spirit, as I am supposed to. The purpose of the Pastor is to serve the pastoral duties, not be a dictator. He is ordained (set apart) for that purpose. On Christ’s hierarchy, I’ll see you and raise you one: Here is the hierarchy that Christ founded… 1 Cor 11:3 “But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man”. So the hierarchy that He established was: Christ, me. Now, you show me a Scripture that say Sixtus IV was ordained by God to be someone’s spiritual leader. Eph 1:22-23 “And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in ALL.” Christ is the head. The following is stated to members of the body, not leadership: Eph 4:14-16 “As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.” Christ is the head and builder of the body. Col 2:18-19 “Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking his stand on visions he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.” To summarize, your view of the Holy Spirit, is weak in my opinion. You seem to argue that the common man is incapable of being guided by the Holy Spirit, or worse, that the Holy Spirit is incapable of guiding the common man.

    You: Indeed the leaders of the Church have been called to serve the sheep, and that is what they do, through their teaching, and their prayers, and their sacramental ministry. The Pope is the servant of all Catholics. He is also the servant of Christ. You seem to think that if someone is a servant, then no one would rightly honor him. But that is precisely why we honor our leaders, because they serve us. We honor the pope and our bishops because they stand in the place of Christ to us, as the Apostles did when Jesus had ascended. Jesus Himself said, “The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me; and he who rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me.” (Luke 10:16) And “He who receives you receives Me.” (Mt. 10:40)

    Me: Again, that’s all well and good… I believe we are all descendents of the 12 apostles and accept the teaching of the apostles. Where it goes off the tracks is when you reach the not-so-good popes. The succession and preserving the purity of the church argument goes right out the window.

    You: So, we honor our leaders as a way of honoring Christ, because they represent Him and serve in His Name and in His place until He returns in glory.

    Me: I suggest that we are to honor our leaders by honoring God, not the other way around. God is the One who deserves praise and glory… we are scum, but by His grace. Proverbs says “He who builds his door high seeks destruction.”

    You: The Magisterium of the Church has never left the faith, but has always maintained the faith. Of course I understand that the Magisterium has perhaps not followed your interpretation of Scripture, but that is not the same as “leaving the faith.” Their teaching authority entails that it is their interpretation of Scripture and of the deposit of faith that the sheep of Christ’s Church must believe and confess, just as the early Church did that of the Apostles. It never was the case that the Church was beholden to each individual person’s interpretation of Scripture.

    Me: I agree… actually. I just believe in a bigger Magisterium… one that is not bound by your interpretation of “the Church”. I further believe that the Holy Spirit exists for a purpose, a position I find missing in your doctrine.

    You: Many people who follow their own interpretation of Scripture claim that the Holy Spirit is guiding them; they do so because it gives [at least verbal and psychological] support to their interpretation. Many Pentecostals claim that the Holy Spirit is guiding them to do many different things — you can watch Benny Hinn if you want to see what this looks like. The problem is that they are all going in different theological directions, even while all claiming to follow the Holy Spirit. It testifies that they are not all following the Spirit, but are merely co-opting the ‘approval’ of the Holy Spirit to justify following their own opinions and interpretations.

    Me: I heartily agree. However, that in no way negates the true work of the Holy Spirit. To believe that would be to believe that one bad cop means all cops are bad. I would further observe that that is exactly what the Catholic church did during its “bad years”, only they had power that Benny Hinn could only dream of. “I’m right and if you don’t like it, we’ll burn you at the stake.”

    You: There are visible believers, of course, but Protestantism has no visible catholic Church, for the reasons I explained here.

    Me: With all due respect, you started with a hypothesis and then developed your definitions to support it. I thought your example of the various crosses was an excellent representation of the opposing view. For though there are many shapes and types they are all visibly identifiable as a symbol and conjure up a unity of purpose… just like the body of Christ. Your example of the apples was lacking because it was inanimate, which the body of Christ is not. Now, if you took a box of clock parts that were all different, designed for a specific purpose by a creator, and assembled the into a working clock, then you might have a better model of the body of Christ. Further, you state, “This shows that the term ‘visible catholic Church’ does not refer to an actual unified entity (i.e. the visible catholic Church), but is merely a name used to refer to what is in actuality a plurality of things having something in common.” In saying this, you minimize the oneness we have in Christ through the Holy Spirit to nearly worthless status. The Protestant church has a vibrant visible church that is fully part of the universal church… we don’t exclude you like you exclude us.

    You: Nor can there be a local Church without apostolic succession, for the reasons explained briefly in Responsa ad quaestiones. Without apostolic succession there is no Eucharist, and without the Eucharist, there can be no Church, only a community of like-minded believers.

    Me: Ok, I read the links and pardon me again, but lol. The argument is, “The Pope said so”. Oh… ok. Reality check… Historically, the apostolic succession, if any, fell apart due to the sin of man. The church is what God creates, not what man ordains. I’m a little disappointed in your line of reasoning. It reads like, “my Dad can take your Dad.” To say that there can be no Eucharist is to say that you have the power to deny Christ to me. Sorry friend, your dog ain’t that big.

    You: If you can accept that the Church has twelve Apostles as foundation stones (Rev 21:14), and that does not compete with Christ being the Chief Cornerstone and Head of the Church, then there is no principled reason why Christ could not make one of those Twelve Apostles to have a unique authority in relation to the others (Mt 16:18-19), and make him the Rock on which Christ builds His Church, without this in any way competing with Christ. This is what the Church Fathers believed Christ had done in giving the keys of the Kingdom to Peter — see “The Chair of St. Peter.”

    Me: Again, I read the link. If you want to place the entire foundation of your doctrine on a legend corroborated by people the church excommunicated as heretics… well ok. In a similar story, God gave the Levites the “Keys to the Jewish kingdom”… they were the only of the 12 tribes authorized to be priests. When Jesus arrived, they were better known as Pharisees. Seems to be a pattern here. I accept that the church had 12 apostles and upon their foundation, the Church was built… the whole Church… everyone called of Christ.

    You: The Church is united, in the three ways we describe in the article. Unity is a permanent mark of the Church. Many schisms have departed from the Church, and that is why you think that the Church is divided, because you are counting the schisms as though they too are part of the Church. But those in schism have gone out from us, as St. John says. “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.” (1 John 2:19)

    Me: First, I don’t think the church invisible is divided, you do. I do think the church visible is divided, because it is. In your quote, you conveniently skip over the operative verses… “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.” Yes, this defines the fallen Popes… but there was a problem… they were wrongfully given the full power of the church. From this many schisms were formed, but the bad guys were the Popes, not the ones seeking Gods righteousness.

    You: Jesus commanded us to seek first His Kingdom, the same Kingdom whose keys He gave to St. Peter. Yes we are called to work together for the glory of God, but we are also called to seek out and find the Church He founded, and enter it without delay.

    Me: Yes, we are to seek His Kingdom and His Righteousness… exactly what Martin Luther WAS doing and the Pope WAS NOT doing. Your view of the church is limited… mine is not.

    You: You are conflating moral failures with doctrinal failures. See the Donatist controversy, where St. Augustine and others showed that we cannot rightly rebel against a divinely ordained leader of the Church merely because of a moral failure. Moral failure on the part of leaders never justifies schism from the Church.

    Me: I’ve read about the Donatists, Novations, et al. Ok… so if Satan takes over the church we should just go along. I agree with Augustine’s argument… we cannot rightly rebel against a divinely ordained leader of the Church. I don’t agree that these guys were divinely ordained… in fact it is patently obvious to me. Further, i believe we are calledto maintain the purity of the Church by excommunicating the bad leaders. Hard to do when they have the keys.

    You: Yes, the early Reformers retained the early creeds, but they changed the meaning of the some of the terms. They changed the meaning of “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.” They changed the meaning of “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins” (see “The Church Fathers on Baptismal Regeneration.”) And they came up with an entirely novel soteriology in claiming that justification was by faith alone (see “Does the Bible Teach Sola Fide?“), and an evacuated conception of ordination and the Eucharist, and eliminated the other sacraments.

    Me: I read “Does the Bible teach sola fide?” and came away even more convinced that it does. What it does not teach is the Church dogma which says, “if we add a few words in here or there, then it means what we say it means,” which was the argument attempted. What the Reformers did was revert to the plain, unamplified meaning. When Paul says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” That’s what he meant. God’s grace is sufficient. He loves us too much to leave any part in our hands.” Matt 9:28-30 “When He entered the house, the blind men came up to Him, and Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” They said to Him, “Yes, Lord.” Then He touched their eyes, saying, “It shall be done to you according to your faith.” And their eyes were opened. And Jesus sternly warned them: “See that no one knows about this!” Matt 15:27 “But she said, “Yes, Lord; but even the dogs feed on the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” Then Jesus said to her, “O woman, your faith is great; it shall be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed at once.” I could quote ad nauseum. Salvation is the result of grace through faith, and even that is a gift from God (not the church). Works are the result sanctification, a holy Spirit process that occurs after salvation. To say that salvation is, in part, dependent on works is to say that God’s grace was insufficient… and we have to make up the difference. This is not my understanding of grace defined in Scripture.

    You: No, the Church remains firm, now almost 1.2 billion, almost two thousand years from its inception. The succession of popes continues unbroken, from Peter.

    Me: I would caution, as I did in a previous post… using numbers to claim “rightness” is dangerous… to maintain intellectual honesty using that argument, you might need to convert to Islam. I claim the same 2000 years. And the succession of Popes is severely marred, bringing into doubt whether the succession was God ordained.

    You: No, the Catholic Church has never been corrupted, even though there have been corrupt men who have existed in her.

    Me: Corrupt men did not just exist in her, they led her. Your argument always poses this mutually exclusive dichotomy: The basis of the entire doctrine rests on the apostolic succession through all of the Popes in the physical realm. Yet when there is a flaw in the physical realm, you revert to the mystical realm which relies on the physical realm for its logical being. You can’t have it both ways and be intellectually honest. Either God ordained ALL of the Popes including the bad ones, or the succession argument falls apart. Either way there is a problem with the doctrine. I would agree that the (entire) church invisible has never been corrupted, but that all of the church visible has been corrupted… we’re all sinners… how could it not?

    You: Fortunately, the Catholic Church is not a merely man-made institution; it was founded by the God-man, Jesus Christ. And hence it is indefectible (See “Ecclesial Deism.”)

    Me: God did not create the Roman Catholic Church. He created the Church. I defer to the aforementioned story of the Levites. God creates… man corrupts. This is a Biblical truth as old as Adam, and the only one that explains the schisms.

    Thanks for all your thoughtful responses!
    Pardon my typos… it was late when I was writing this.
    Curt

83. Brent March 8th, 2011 9:41 am :

    Curt,

    Teaching that sins were forgiven through the payment of indulgences

    I would recommend reading Bryan’s post about indulgences. Tetzel’s teaching were rebuked by the Church. He represents a local issue, not an issue worth throwing out 1,500 years of history.

    I wouldn’t personally presume to speak for Luther or the others

    As a PCA, I would recommend becoming more acquainted with his writings.

    there are a handful of denominations that make up the vast majority of Protestant believers.

    No, the largest Protestant denomination is Pentecostals only half of which can be accounted for by one group (Assemblies of God) the other half of which is constituted by a vast array of sects and even non-Trinitarian heretics.

    I view the church as the body of ALL believers

    So does the Catholic Church. We just believe in a visible Church too.

    church was led by murders, fornicators and money grubbing thieves

    Yes, and those men very much wounded the body by their actions. Praise be Jesus Christ that the Petrine seat was preserved from teaching error during those times.

    We should probably try to avoid using numbers as a measure of success, lest we have to become a Muslim at some point to remain intellectually honest.

    Think Newman’s “convergence of probabilities”. The mere size of the church isn’t the sin qua non of her claims. But, we are comparing Christian churches and not merely all religions. Let’s assume we’ve decided upon Christianity. Now what? The preservation of the CC from the beginning of time and her size has to be assigned some value. You may value you it less than I, but it would be intellectually disingenuous to simply disregard this fact because “I want to avoid using numbers”.

    This was primarily due to the sin nature of man

    All this evidences is that schism is not a response to virtue but a response to sin. God required Hosea to marry a whore to demonstrate God’s commitment to his people. How much more should we stay committed to the new covenant Church he established?

    Well, we say the Apostle’s Creed and claim to believe in the “holy catholic church”. We’re not squirming. The universal church encompasses all who believe in the saving grace of the ressurection, like you, like me. We are not arrogant enough to believe we have a monopoly on the purposes of God. Pardon the directness, but you made a direct affront on other denims.

    No need to apologize about being direct. I’m very direct. It affords the opportunity for understanding. Saying the creed and believing in the universality of the Church is good, but doesn’t per se prove anything since Archer’s Farm Community Church down the street started by Billy Bob who had a vision of the God’s real people could do the same. Nonetheless, notice how what you said has meaning for you. Why? Because you (not you per se but your ecclesial community) inherit your doctrine prima facie from Mother Church, and then after suckling at her breast for 1,500 years, threw her off like the arrogant son who wanted his father’s inheritance now. Further, if the CC is the Church Jesus established, we are not being arrogant to defend her but rather loyal.

    As to your other comments:
    Curt, I too appreciate Christian unity towards the common purpose of upholding the dignity of the human person. That is good. The difference between PCA and CC diversity is that the vast theological landscape you describe in the PCA is due to her doctrine and leadership, but in the CC it is in contradiction to her doctrine and leadership. Private judgment ruling the day is a sign of the times, not a sign of unity. Unorthodox Catholics, especially those called to teach, will be held accountable for leading the flock astray. This life isn’t just about standing shoulder to shoulder and working to eradicate the world’s problems (this is a distorted humanism that PBXVI speaks about often), but rather true humanism emanates from the God-Man, Christ, and the truth about Him proclaimed by His Church. As society gets stripped of those teachings (Confession, Mary, Purgatory, Contraception, etc.) society searches for ways to replace those truths with their own version (psychoanalysis, feminism, etc). As our Holy Father said during his visit to the USA at the Ecumenical Prayer Service, “Even within the ecumenical movement, Christians may be reluctant to assert the role of doctrine for fear that it would only exacerbate rather than heal the wounds of division. Yet a clear, convincing testimony to the salvation wrought for us in Christ Jesus has to be based upon the notion of normative apostolic teaching: a teaching which indeed underlies the inspired word of God and sustains the sacramental life of Christians today.” You can find the rest here

    Peace to you on your journey

84. Randy March 8th, 2011 11:03 am :

    Curt,

    The format issue is easy. The instructions are here:

    http://www.calledtocommunion.com/about/comment-formatting/

    Me: True… for everyone, I might add! Jesus said, “you will know them by their denomination”… No He didn’t! He said, “you will know them by their FRUIT”. That is the visibility Jesus wants the world to see.

    Now you said you believe in a visible church? Are you saying you don’t believe in a visible church just the fruit of individual Christians? The trouble is Jesus talked about a church. Mat 18:15-18 says:

    “If a brother or sister sins, go and point out the fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector.

    Was Jesus referring to the fruit of individual Christians when He used the word “church” here? That would make no sense. So Jesus must have foreseen some visible entity that any two Christians would recognize and be able to appeal to. He also expects that entity to get the right answer when they have a dispute. He never says if you disagree with the church’s answer go start your own church.

    The rest of what you say I pretty much agree with. But you imply that if the Catholic church is the church Jesus is referring to then it must be perfect. You seem to think not only its leaders should be perfect but every member as well. But Jesus never says that about His church. Quite the opposite, he says the church has wheat and tares. He says we won’t be able to tell the wheat and the tares apart, mostly because even the wheat sin.

    I work with an organization called the Helping up Mission. They own a whole city block in Baltimore and provide housing, meals and drug/alcohol rehab for 450 men who have lost everything in life to their addiction. I ran my entire manufacturing plant with guys who came through the mission program (its a year long program of spiritual renewal and physical healing). They have one of the best success rates in the country. The organization is run entirely on the charity of Christian churches around Baltimore. Before I sold the company, I ate lunch every day with guys from the mission and their stories were unbelievable. Men back together with their families… kids going to college…absolute love of God. Not only were we helping them, they were helping us become more Christ-like. What impact do you think that had on the other employees? Let’s just say the Spirit was moving.

    This sounds wonderful. This would be a good example of an invisible c