Why Protestantism has no “visible catholic Church”
Sep 16th, 2009 | By Bryan Cross | Category: Blog PostsPart of the content of the Christian faith is the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church,” because that is one article of the Church’s Creed. Concerning the Church, the Westminster Confession of Faith reads:
The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the Gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), 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.1
But, as I show below, Protestantism itself has no visible catholic Church. It has only denominations, congregations, believers and their children. Within Protestantism there is not some one additional entity to which the term “visible catholic Church” refers, consisting of these denominations, congregations, believers and their children.
St. Peter (c. 1708-13)
Pierre Etienne Monnot
San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome
What allowed the authors of the Westminster Confession to believe sincerely that there was a “visible catholic Church” other than the Catholic Church headed by the Pope, was a philosophical error. This was the error of assuming that unity of type is sufficient for unity of composition. In actuality, things of the same type do not by that very fact compose a unified whole. For example, all the crosses that presently exist all have something in common; they are each the same type of thing, i.e. a cross. But they do not form a unified whole composed of each individual cross around the world. This crucifix, for example, in the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica, is not a part of a unified whole consisting of all the crucifixes in the world. All crucifixes are things of the same specific type, but that does not in itself make them parts that compose a unified whole spread out around the world. Similarly, all the apples in the world have something in common — each one is an apple. They each have the same nature or type. But they do not compose a unified whole of which each apple is a part. And other examples can be multiplied ad infinitum.
One way to determine whether something is an actual whole or merely a plurality of things having something in common, is to determine whether everything could be exactly the same, including all the alleged ‘parts,’ except without the alleged ‘whole.’ If the ‘whole’ can be removed without changing anything about its ‘parts’ and without changing anything else in the world, then there is no actual whole, only a mere plurality. If there is merely a plurality of things having something in common, and not an actual whole, then we can remove the alleged ‘whole’ without needing to change anything in the world. But if there is an actual whole, then in order to remove the whole and leave the parts, we would need to change the world.
For example, in order to remove me and leave all my parts, you would have to change the world, by reconfiguring my parts such that I was dead. But in the case of the alleged entity composed of all the apples in the world, we can take away this whole without needing to change anything about the location, arrangement or motion of any apple in the world. And this shows that in actuality there is no such entity, that is, there is no whole composed of all the apples in the world. If someone used the word ‘Panapple’ to refer to “the entity consisting of all the apples in the world,” then by this test we would know that the term ‘Panapple’ does not refer to an actual unified entity consisting of all apples. Instead, we would know that the term refers to what is in actuality merely a plurality of things, each sharing unity of type.
We can apply this same test to the term “visible catholic Church” in the Westminster Confession to see whether it refers to an actual entity or only to a mere plurality. The “visible catholic Church” is defined by the Confession as consisting of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, and of their children. If there were no actual visible catholic Church, but only the term ‘visible catholic Church,’ the Protestant denominations, the Protestant congregations, and the individual Protestant believers and their children, nothing in Protestantism would be any different. All the denominations, congregations, individual believers and their children would be exactly as they are, if there were not, in addition, this entity referred to by the term “the visible catholic Church.” 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, just as “Panapple” could be used to refer to all apples, even though in actuality there is not one thing consisting of all apples.
When we apply this test to the Catholic Church, by contrast, we find that in order to remove the whole and leave the parts, we have to change the world. This is because the Catholic Church’s hierarchical unity changes and orders the activity of her members.2 And this is also true of a society, on account of its singular government.3 But what allows the removal of the “visible catholic Church” from Protestant ecclesiology, without changing anything else, is that Protestantism mistakenly denies the necessity of hierarchical unity for visible unity at the universal (i.e. catholic) level. Reformed Protestantism recognizes that local churches, in order to be visible, must be hierarchical. No one would say that the fact of there being believers in a city ipso facto constitutes a local visible church. But, this fact is arbitrarily set aside in Reformed ecclesiology’s conception of the visible catholic Church, through its denial that the “visible catholic Church” need be hierarchical. If the local church must be hierarchical in order to be visible, then Reformed Protestants must either form a worldwide hierarchy if they wish to affirm a “visible catholic Church,” or drop the claim that there is a “visible catholic Church” to which they belong.
What are the implications of Protestantism having no visible catholic Church? If Protestantism has no visible catholic Catholic, then given Protestantism, the catholic Church is only invisible. This entails that the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church is the set of all the elect. This is the route of those Protestants who deny that Christ founded a visible Church. But this position runs contrary to Scripture, because we know from Scripture that there will be tares within the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, until the angels remove them at the end. And yet by definition there can be no tares within the set of the elect (i.e. elect-to-glory). Likewise, when Matthew records Jesus saying to Peter in Matthew 16:18, “upon this rock I will build My Church”, and then saying, in Matthew 18:17, “tell it to the Church”, and “listen to the Church”, the most natural way of understanding these passages is that the term ‘ekklesia’ (‘Church’) is being used in the same way in all three places. And it is clear in the Matthew 18 passages that ‘ekklesia’ there refers to the visible Church, not a merely spiritual entity. Matters of discipline cannot be brought before the set of all the elect. This shows us that the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church of which Christ speaks in Matthew 16 is not a mere set; Jesus was not meaning “upon this Rock I will build my set.”
Since, as I have shown above, Protestant ecclesiology has no visible catholic Church, and yet since from Scripture we see that the one catholic Church that Christ founded is visible, Protestantism must either give up the word ‘catholic’ in the Creed (as some Lutherans have done, replacing it with the word ‘Christian’), or seek reconciliation with the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church that Christ founded, the Catholic Church from which Protestants separated in the sixteenth century.
- WCF XXV.2 [↩]
- Catholic ecclesiology is not subject to this elimination of the “visible Catholic Church” because the Catholic Church is a hierarchically organized institution. Reductionism (as applied to living organisms) is the opposite error of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, which is exemplified in treating a plural-referring term as if it referred to an additional singular entity that in some sense includes all the other singular entities within itself. While misplaced concreteness treats mere pluralities as if they are actual wholes and thus mistakenly inflates the account of ontology, reductionism treats actual wholes as mere pluralities of smaller simples, and in this way fails to account fully for the being and activity of actual wholes. (See Leon Kass’s “The Permanent Limitations of Biology.”) Because the Catholic Church has hierarchical unity, as do organisms, it is not subject to eliminative reductionism, for the same reason they too are not subject to eliminative reductionism. To try to explain the activities of Catholics without referring to the institution to which they belong would necessarily leave out a significant part of the full explanation. It would be like trying to explain the daily life of a human being solely in terms of the movements of the particles of which he is composed. But a complete explanation of the activities of Protestants as such need not refer to some world-encompassing entity, “the visible catholic Church,” over and above the influence of other believers, their local congregation and denomination. [↩]
- The human race is not a whole; all humans have unity of type, but do not compose a whole. [↩]
Bryan,
Well done.
Another alternative would be to posit visibility on some sort of state-chuches-with-fraternal-relations model, much like the Orthodox. So the English and Scottish Presbyterians would be united with the Dutch Reformed Church, with the Swiss, etc. In this case, unity would have a certain hierarchical element and would have common faith and (I suppose) common sacraments. I think about how at the Synod of Dordt, there were Calvinist divines present from other nations, like delegates from the Anglican church.
This would have to meet the composition test twice: first at the national level of each church (e.g., the congregations are united by a general assembly, discipline recognized by all other congregations, admission to sacraments in all other congregations for members, etc.) and then again at the international level. I think the second would be more difficult. An analogy could be drawn to the UN or the modern WCC, which unifies nations and denominations respectively. However, each of these are voluntary organizations.
Even if some argument could pass the composition test at the international level, there would be a problem in accepting non-Reformed “visible churches” such as the Lutherans. LCMS churches practice closed communion. In order to have a real visible church, Protestants would have to go back to closed communion days. Because so many in the PCA (and the PCUSA, for that matter) pride themselves on open communion, I doubt this would ever happen.
Thoughts? Do you see any way that Reformed denominations could pass the composition test at the international level? I’m struggling at the moment.
Pax,
“3. The human race is not a whole; all humans have unity of type, but do not compose a whole. ”
This may be a minor point, but it’s one I’m curious about. Frank Sheed writes in Theology and Sanity at some length about the unity of the human race in a way that seems to go beyond a unity of type: “[There is] a failure to grasp the
organic solidarity of the human race. We are not isolated units, but even in the natural order members of one thing” (p. 167, emph. added). He’s responding to complaints against the doctrine of Original Sin at that point in the book. I don’t think this affects your thesis, but I thought I should bring it up. Do you think Sheed’s wrong on this point, or are you talking about different things?
Barrett,
Great question — exactly what needs to be asked. Can “fraternal relations” between denominations (or between state churches) be sufficient for there to be a visible catholic Church? The answer is no. That’s because the denominations and their interelations are sufficient to explain their behavior. There is no need to posit some additional entity “the visible catholic Church” that is directing the activities of these denominations. The alleged ‘whole’ can be removed without changing anything about its ‘parts.’ What is necessary to make the denominations compose a whole is a single shared government. Only in this way can a plurality of institutions become (or form) a single institution. Mere cooperation or collaboration of denominations is compatible with there being only a plurality of institutions, not a single whole. In order for their activity to be an operation, and not merely a co-operation, there needs to be a unified government, i.e. the hierarchy must be unified at its highest level, so that it is not merely a plurality of hierarchies related horizontally, but a single hierarchy unified vertically under a unified head.
NAPARC, for example, is an organized collaboration of participating Presbyterian and Reformed denominations. NAPARC is not a church, nor is it the government of the participating demominations. For good reason no one claims that NAPARC is the visible catholic Church, or that it is the Church that Christ founded, and of which He speaks in Matthew 16. To be visible, the Church must be hierarchically unified, and to be catholic, it must not be provincial, but universal, something like this:
“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 28:20)
“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)
“For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall” (Ephesians 2:14)
“Worthy art Thou to take the book, and to break its seals; for Thou wast slain, and didst purchase for God with Thy blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.” (Revelation 5:9)
“After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands.” (Revelation 7:9)
And I saw another angel flying in midheaven, having an eternal gospel to preach to those who live on the earth, and to every nation and tribe and tongue and people.” (Revelation 14:6)
So to be the “visible catholic Church”, it must be both hierarchically unified and universal, not limited to a region, province, ethnicity, etc.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
St. Gimp,
Good point. What Sheed is saying, and what I am saying are not incompatible. Unity of type can be had either by organic derivation or by direct creation. Angels and humans are both rational. But this is not something derived from the other species. We did not receive rationality from the angels, nor did they receive it from us. In both cases this was given to us directly by God. But corporeal living things are so made by God that descendants receive their type from their progenitors. In this way, the members of an animate species are united not only by unity of type (one form), but also through lines of descent to one original body (one matter). But this does not make all members of a species into a whole of which these members are parts. Material unity by generational derivation is another kind of unity; it is not compositional unity. But derivational unity is not sufficient to make the visible catholic Church one, because every heresy and schism of history could likewise claim derivational unity from the Catholic Church, as something tracing its roots back to the Catholic Church — see here. So Sheed is right, but that doesn’t conflict with what I’m saying here about compositional unity. I hope that sheds some light on your question.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Bryan,
This is all so very closely related to the moderate realism vs. nominalism debate. Nominalism seems to get traction from the fact that we do sometimes mistakenly assign names to types of things as if there is a whole above and beyond the individual entities which are an example of that type, as with the ‘panapples’ example or the ‘visible catholic church’ from some sects of Protestantism, where, in fact, there is no unity of composition, but only a unity of type.
Speaking of the type, we sometimes assign a term to it and use it as a noun, making the mistake of objectifying that which exists, but not as an object, or reifying that which does not exist at all, except in the mind of the knower as a universal, recognzing unity of type or form. Moderate realists sometimes make such errors, though this is not an argument against moderate realism itself, only against errors made in its context and we must recall, of course, that abuse does not nullify proper use, just as an error made classifying x within a set of categories does not nullify the categories themselves. But nominalists want to treat, it seems, far too many things as merely names, as merely nominal, denying the reality of real objects- in the most extreme cases-, real relations between objects, real commonality between things, real classes of things, real groups of things, real membership, and perhaps even real types of unity, be they compositional, derivational, material, or formal, though more work would need to be done here.
And so it seems that puzzles like ‘Is this philosophy *class* a real thing or merely a name given to refer to a plurality of things in shorthand notation, with their being nothing more than the plurality of individual things?’ and other such puzzles has relevance to the Protestant-Catholic controversy as well.
The class is not a unity of composition. It is not a separate entity apart from all of the individuals who meet. The nominalists are right about that. But it is not a mere name, without any reality at all, as the nominalists might have it, for there seems to be some organization of purpose and some sort of reality to it such that when we refer to it we are not merely referring to nothing.
Similarly, ‘Protestantism’ has a reality. It is not just a name. There is a unity of type, but there is not a unity of composition to which the term ‘Protestantism’ refers. There is not an object to which the term refers that is separate from all members of the type. If all Protestants got together and called themselves a ‘church’, the unity of composition would still be lacking. If would be something, like the class, and not a mere name or unreality with a name attached to it. But, without a deeper unity and a deeper structure, it does not rise above the panapples example, whereas the Catholic Church claims a unity of composition and heirarchy such that there is something more than just the common belief of the members.
We might think of a group of people in a given area living amongst one another without an organized government, all having similar ideas about freedom. Still, that is not a government organized around the same concept in a specific way, passing authority through the generations through tradition.
And so it is that the P-C controversy has something to do with that older moderate realism-nominalism debate, though I would not want to say that one side represents the moderate realist position and the other the nominalist position, for people can error when trying to be moderate realists otherwise, sometimes thinking that something is not real when it is, real when it is not, or, less crudely, real in a certain way that does not apply or not real in a certain way that really does apply, i.e., is actually the case. Protestants, then, have failed to appreciate the way in which the Catholic Church is real and why that is significant. They have also failed to appreciate the way in which they are not, as a ‘Church’, real, thinking that the way they, as a ‘Church’, are real is enough to make the Reformation acceptable, despite the fact that with the Reformation they sacrificed the realness that had existed prior to the Reformation for nearly 1500 years, discoverable in the Church Fathers, the Bible, and Church Doctors, cutting themselves from the realness created by Christ and limiting themselves to a more limited form of realness, i.e., ‘pan-appleness’.
But with the Catholic Church Christians were already Christians by type and had that in common. Protestants added nothing in that regard. Rather, Protestantism is a reduction, a subtraction, subtracting out greater realities and, in fact, a unified reality, and then trying to take this or that part, as if the part can survive in true, authentic form without being a part of the whole to which it belongs.
Bryan, no doubt, can clarify or correct or modify any errors I have made here, as needed.
Eric
Or, Protestants may look all of this squarely in the face and say that unity of hierarchy and tradition and, if applicable, composition, though intended by Christ and though perhaps important throughout history, even today, should not be placed over and above a true interpretation of Scripture. That is, if a unity, no matter how great and superior, is wrong in its interpretations of Christ’s intentions and message, the unity has to be put aside so that the truth can survive. I think this may also be how a great many Protestants see the matter, though I doubt most have adequately considered the importance of Christian unity, especially the deeper forms that the Catholic Church claims to offer, presently and historically.
Bryan,
Excellent post. Your conclusion made me think of the Reformed Churches which continue to say the Apostles Creed, always with the asterisk at the bottom redefining the word “Catholic”.
You write, “What are the implications of Protestantism having no visible catholic Church? If Protestantism has no visible Catholic Church, then given Protestantism, the catholic Church is only invisible.”
In my discussion with friends at RTS, the doctrine of the invisible Church is always used to justify the disunity of the visible churches.
Hey again, I didn’t mean to submit that yet. Anyway, my Reformed friends make the argument that the Churches referred to in the book of Revelation are distinct and resemble the Protestant scene today (different Churches with unique issues). They argue that there is no hierarchical Catholic Church which unifies the local Churches which Jesus addresses.
In regards to this specific argument, what do you see in the book of Revelation and the Churches addressed there, that would affirm the hierarchical unity of the Church?
.
I see the St. John the Apostle having the authority to write to all of them.
Eric, thanks very much for your comments.
Jeremy, we need to keep in mind the distinction between a “particular Church” and the “universal Church”. Jesus said to Peter, “upon this rock I will build my Church”. Notice the singular. The Church is the Bride of Christ; Jesus is not a polygamist. He has only one Bride. This is why singularity is one of the four *marks* of the Church: “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church” taught in the Creed. But there was the Church at Jerusalem, the Church at Antioch, the Church in Rome, the Church in Corinth, the Church at Ephesus, etc. So, do we now have a contradiction: one Church, and yet many Churches? No, there is no contradiction. Those are particular Churches, each a member of the one universal (catholic) Church. And the Churches referred to in chapters 2-3 of Revelation are likewise particular Churches.
They argue that there is no hierarchical Catholic Church which unifies the local Churches which Jesus addresses.
I’d like to see that argument. (I can’t evaluate it, without seeing it.) Around AD 50, or so, the Church held its first Council in Jerusalem. This is recorded for us in Acts 15. The conclusion of that Council was binding on all particular Churches. This shows that the particular Churches were bound under the authority of the universal [catholic] Church. It was not the case that each particular Church was autonomous. That authority of the catholic Church over the particular Churches did not cease at the death of the last Apostle. That’s why as soon as the situation permitted, after the persecution ceased, the Church was able to hold an ecumenical council in AD 325, and its decisions were recognized to be binding on all particular Churches. It would be strange, don’t you think, if all particular Churches understood themselves to be autonomous, for them suddenly and without protest to treat the decisions of an ecumenical council as binding. Surely, there would have been outrage, protest and dissent throughout the entire Christian world, not so much because of the doctrinal decision at Nicea, but simply because of the audacious, presumptuous, arrogation to itself of the council’s claim to a universal ecclesial authority which had hitherto been denied (or at least unknown) by all particular Churches. “Get your universal laws off our particular body” might have been the preferred bumper sticker on Christians’ chariots around that time. But while the decision at Nicea was controversial, it wasn’t because the authority of the council was disputed, but because so many people were sympathetic to Arianism.
But even before this, we can see that while St. John was still alive, St. Clement was writing (around 96 AD) an authoritative command to the Church at Corinth to get their act together. This is the letter of 1 Clement. St. Clement appears to be exercising a shepherding authority from the particular Church where St. Peter and St. Paul had labored and spilled their blood, and handed on their mantle. If each particular Church were autonomous, then St. Clement would have had no right to do what he did, or say things like this:
If St. Clement, writing while the Apostle John was still alive, believed that all particular Churches were autonomous, he could not have written such a statement. So, either St. Clement had already fallen off the cliff of ecclesial deism into the megalomaniacal lust for power, even while St. John still lived in Ephesus, or, it is not true that each particular Church was autonomous.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Bryan’s answer was slightly more thorough and had better grammar.
Chad, awesome point. Wow. That’s should have been more obvious to me. Your grammar is fine too (I teach HS english and this is the one place I never worry about grammar!)
Bryan, your point about St. Clement is very helpful. I will certainly use this quote. I think it will prove valuable, even to somebody who denegrates the Church Fathers out of their committment to sola scriptura.
So…given the clear record of the early Church and the clarity of Scripture regarding Christ’s promise of one Church, how can a Protestant say that the Catholic Church ceased to be a Church at Trent (as they always do)? Does not such a statement require extra-biblical revelation? Even if my Protestant friend is right, when he argues, “The Catholic Church cannot be considered a Church in any sense”, wouldn’t such knowledge require a violation of sola scriptura? This friend (who is a PCA Pastor) makes the specific point that “the only thing that justifies our existence is that the Catholic Church ceased to be a Church at Trent”. I’m seeing from what your’e saying though and to me, it makes clear that from a Reformed perspective, and from the role of tradition in the “orthodox” reformed camp, the reformed doctrine of the Church is indefensible.
Peace in Christ, Jeremy
That didn’t make much sense, I was trying to say that on its own terms (Reformed theology), the Reformed Doctrine of the Church as given in the WCF is untenable.
Bryan:
I don’t know if you realise it or not but the fact is Rome had no Monarchial Bishop until the end of the 2cnd Century. The “Clement” that is cited so often to “prove” that he was the Bishop of Rome and “Pope” who governed the Catholic Church is untenable based on the facts of history. “Clement” was one of many co-equal “Presbyters” who governed the Church in Rome. Each “Presbyter” was delegated certain responsibilities and “Clement” was like a sort of “Secretary of external affairs” whose responsibility was to communicate with Churches outside of Rome. Also the whole idea of a single “Monarchial Bishop” who was in charge of a city or certain geographical area gradually developed over time as the Church gained converts. I suggest you read “Christians At Rome In The First Two Centuries: From Paul To Valentinus”, this is an exhaustive study of the Church in Rome from St. Paul to the end of the 2cnd Century and thoroughly refutes the idea of a central Papacy and Bishop who governed the entire Church done by Peter Lampe.
Neither does the Roman Catholic Church have one visible catholic church … if you mean by “catholic,” uniting all churches. Since it is too narrow to admit Protestants.
Jeremy, (re: #12)
A week ago, Sean posted “Which Lens is the Proper Lens?” In it he quoted from something I had written at Green Baggins, to Protestant pastor Lane Keister. I’ll paste my comment here:
So, in answer to your question: “how can a Protestant say that the Catholic Church ceased to be a Church at Trent (as they always do)?”, they do so by redefining the marks of the Church, such that one of the new marks is “the gospel”, and then “the gospel” is defined according to their own interpretation of Scripture as faith-not-informed-by-agape; see my post titled, “Does the Bible Teach Sola Fide?” There I show that there is not a good case that the Bible defines the gospel as faith-not-informed-by-agape. And as soon as Protestants see that, and given that “the only thing that justifies [Protestantism's] existence is that the Catholic Church ceased to be a Church at Trent,” it follows that not only did the Catholic Church not cease to be the Church at Trent, but Protestants are not (and have never been) justified in being separated from the Catholic Church.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
JohnW,
I’ve read Lampe’s book. Can you name one piece of historical evidence that meets two conditions: (1) it shows that there was no monarchical bishop in Rome until the second half of the second century, and (2) it is stronger evidence than is the list of St. Irenaeus (Against Heresies III.3.3)? (Please show why it is stronger evidence than is St. Irenaeus’ list.) If you can do that, then your assertion will be something more than a mere assertion.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Joe, (re: #15),
Neither does the Roman Catholic Church have one visible catholic church … if you mean by “catholic,” uniting all churches. Since it is too narrow to admit Protestants.
The fact of there being persons in schism from the Church does not refute the visible unity of the Church. To assume that Protestants are not in schism from the Church, or to assume that if there were a visible catholic Church it would necessarily include Protestants, and to use either assumption as evidence against the visible unity of the Catholic Church, is to assume the falsity of Catholicism at the outset, i.e. to beg the question.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Yeah, that was a great article, although I got lost for a moment in all the “whole” and “world” statements! But I got the point.
#10 was extremely interesting to me in your responses Bryan. I never before thought of what you mentioned about the councils. If they were binding, that is indicative of authority and hierarchy. It would seem that, such a council and it’s binding decisions didn’t cause an uproar of people shouting “Who do these guys think they are?!?!”… instead we do see issues arise for the reason you mentioned. That is a wild thought. This was the case from the start with the first council as you mentioned. Very intriguing! Where do you come up with this stuff? :D
Anyway, thanks for stimulating the gray matter!
In the peace of Christ,
-g-
Dear John W,
I’ve written a number of comments regarding the “evidence” that there were no bishops in Rome until the late second century. You can see them in the Ecclesial Deism thread. As you review the evidence, I recommend distinguishing between five types of evidence:
(1) Positive, detailed evidence from people who we have good reasons to believe were honest.
(2) Positive evidence without many details, from people who may or may not have been honest.
(3) Silence that is damning (i.e., silence in areas where you would have strongly expected positive evidence).
(4) Silence that is ambiguous
(5) Silence that is innocent (i.e., silence in areas where you would never have expected positive evidence anyway).
As far as I can tell from the books that I have read, the evidence for the claim that there were no bishops in Rome until the late second century is entirely in categories (4) and (5), which are the weakest forms of evidence (I hesitate to call them evidence at all). For example, people point out that some early Church documents that I see no reason to believe would have complete descriptions of church hierarchies don’t explicitly mention bishops (some do, but some don’t). This is sloppy evidence. The evidence for the claim that there were Bishops in Rome, on the other hand, is in category (1).
The fact that you have lots of ambiguous and innocent silences to bolster your claim is really irrelevant. In fields that depend on analysis of data, one or two really solid observations are inestimably more valuable than one hundred sloppy and biased observations. A case in point is the famous debate over the effect of class size on student achievement. One properly run experiment is much more valuable for determining this effect than one hundred non-experimental surveys — because there are so many biases in these surveys, and because multiplying bad evidence times one hundred still leaves us with. . . bad evidence!
I know of sloppy economists who make the same argument about the class size data as sloppy protestants make about early church history (and these sloppy economists are not exactly well-respected in the centers of the field). But in spite of the fact that careless people in all fields sometimes fall for this falsehood, the same truth holds everywhere: multiplying sloppy and biased evidence times one hundred still leaves you with sloppy and biased evidence.
Sincerely,
K. Doran
Hey all,
I would love help with something somewhat unrelated. Last night I had a fairly intense debate on the phone with one of my RTS Professors. He insisted that Rome “formally” teaches the insufficiency of Scripture and that the Roman formula for doctrinal authority is (Bible + sacred tradition) as two separate authorities. I argued (I don’t know if I understand this right), that these authorities are not two seperate authorites at all, but two aspects of the same authority, both established by God. Rather than the Bible and the Church as two independant authorities, I argued that Rome teaches the formula (in my own words)”BIBLE- AS INTERPRETED BY THE CHURCH”. I know this is a simplification, but is this a fair understanding of the relationship between these two authorities?
Peace in Christ, Jeremy
hey Jeremy,
Henri de Lubac’s work entitled “L’écriture dans la tradition” was first published in English under the title “The Sources of Revelation,” and here’s what he says about that translation:
“You can’t imagine my shock when I read The Sources of Revelation (1968) on the cover! And I was the one who had battled against the famous theory of ‘the two sources’!” [pxv of introduction of his book, ISBN No. 0824518713]
i’ve been reading that book and his Medieval Exegesis series [ISBN No. 056708634] and both reflect exactly what you’re saying, that Catholicism does not teach a strict separation of Scripture | Tradition. i see Catholic authors refer to them as “Scripture and Tradition” in all kinds of contexts, which could easily lead people to believe in a “theory of two sources,” but i suspect that’s just an effect of the coordinating conjunction.
i’d also say your professor’s explanation as you’ve described it directly contradicts the teaching of then Cardinal Ratzinger that can be found in God’s Word [ISBN No. 9781586171797]. you’re about to get much more (and better) feedback than this from others, but for what it’s worth, there’s three sources that have had a deep impact on my thinking.
Cheers,
w
Thanks Wilkens,
Both of us were insisting that we were accurately representing what Rome teaches, so that’s basically how our conversation ended. I will certaintly look at Ratzinger’s article. Do you have a link to it?
– Jeremy
Jeremy,
if you Google in quotation marks ["primacy, episcopate, and successio apostolica"] you’ll see that the introduction to the Cardinal Ratzinger book is available online, but i don’t think there’s on online full-text version (Google Books has a limited preview copy: just type “God’s Word” into the Google Books search box and it will be the first book that pops up, I believe).
what do you think your professor would accept as ‘smoking gun’ evidence of an official Church position? did he offer any clues in that regard?
paragraph 80, p31 of the Catechism has the very bold title line, “One common source…” [and i recommend CCC as primary resource, btw], but my fall-back position (as a happy Protestant) was something like, “Well, yeah, maybe that’s what this catechism says today, but for 1900 years the Catholic Church has been about Tradition only.” in other words, i wouldnot have accepted the CCC as a true testimony of Church teaching.
what have you read that led you to the conclusion you articulated to your professor?
Best,
w
Hey W,
My conclusion is from the language of the catechism which speaks of the magisterium as the servant of Scripture. I argued that the two are in complete agreement, with the magisterium fleshing the original apostolic deposit for various contexts. He argued that doctrines such as the assumption of Mary, immaculate conception, ect, are not hinted at in Scripture and therefore, the two authorities are not “one common source”, but two different sources.
I’ll check out Ratzinger, Jeremy
Wilkins,
I think you did a fine job of answering. Jeremy/Wilkins: here is Dei Verbum:
And…
So it is not the teaching of the Church that Scripture is insufficient but that Scripture removed from the context of Sacred Tradition is insufficient. It is not demeaning to a fish to say it belongs in water. He fails to appreciate the nature of a fish who says the fish is useful outside of water!
hey Jeremy,
there’s something odd about that objection… if ‘tradition’ must mirror Scripture, then isn’t the only possible source Scripture? [on the other hand, it seems like an objection to specifically Catholic dogma (which is, in fact, reflected in Scripture) is unhelpfully conflated with the question of Scripture's relationship to tradition; ack! it's quite a knot you're pulling on]
= : )
i suspect this book (God’s Word:Scripture, Tradition, Office) is going to make a very big contribution to your discussion. i’m just flipping through my copy: page 51 is point of departure for ‘Theses on the Relation between Revelation and Tradition’:
“The fact that there is ‘tradition’ rests first of all on the incongruence between the two entities ‘revelation’ and ‘Scripture’. For revelation signifies all God’s acts and utterances directed to man; it signifies a reality of which Scripture gives us information but that is not simply Scripture itself. Revelation goes beyond Scripture, then, to the same extent as reality goes beyond information about it. We could also say that Scripture is the material principle of Revelation (perhaps the only one, perhaps one of a number—we may leave that point open for the moment) but is not that revelation itself… you cannot put revelation in your pocket like a book you carry around with you. It is a living reality that requires a living person as the locus of its presence.”
and p56,
“The reality that comes to be in Christian revelation is nothing and no one other than Christ himsef. He is revelation inthe proper sense: ‘He who has seen me has seen the Father’, Christ says in John (14:9)… on this basis, light is thrown of its own accord on the question of the sufficiency of Scripture in terms of content, which has so dominated the discussion since Geiselmann’s work. We would nevertheless have to ask here: ‘What can “sufficiency in terms of content” mean at all, speaking in Christian terms? Only the reality of Christ is ‘sufficient’.”
the whole thing is like a kick in the solar plexus, this book. it’s entirely too good.
On second thought, fish are useful outside of water; namely for eating. :) He fails to appreciate the nature of a fish who says the fish can live outside of water. That’s better.
hey Tim,
“He fails to appreciate the nature of a fish…” is perfect, both iterations! (lol)
W,
That’s good stuff. It seems to lend itself, and has, I’m sure, to a connection with the Thomistic/Aristotelian epistemology wherein the knower goes beyond storing and perceiving data about known things and actually becomes them (without losing self).
To treat Scripture as formally sufficient for salvation fails to appreciate what salvation requires (which is beyond what Scripture, per se, can provide).
Furthermore, as stated, the record of revelation is not the revelation itself anymore than a photograph of a mountain is the mountain.
Thank you guys both a ton. C2C is a goldmine. This is incredibly helpful. – Peace in Christ, Jeremy
W,
To answer your question from earlier, no, my Professor does not believe that the CCC accurately represents the true teaching of Rome precisely because he believes the magisterium teaches other doctrine contrary to scripture. For him, Dei Verbum and the teachings of the CCC, actually make the sin of Rome more severe because they claim to be doing the exact opposite of what Protestants accuse them of. So…the conversation tends to become a big unfruitful circle.
I really can’t tell you how helpful your explation of this has been. I had read excerpts from Dei Verbum before, but I’m a pretty simple guy and Tim’s simple explanation of the fish in water makes all the sense in the world to me.
Thanks again, Jeremy
thanks, Jeremy,
and you’re right about this place—i’ve learned a lot from the articles, podcasts and comment reading.
and i totally respect your professor’s concern; he’s articulating what my parents and friends believe—what good, and decent, and often very brilliant people taught me (and you, all of us) for many years.
i think it’s good to be simple. i happen to be unusually slow about ‘getting’ things. much of the crucial reading (like the suggested Cardinal Ratzinger book) is difficult—and untranslated Latin sometimes makes me curse. we need each other in forums like this. I don’t know Tim or any of the others but their explanations and questions have really helped a lot of my reading gel up and make sense.
Pax Christi,
w
“But this position runs contrary to Scripture, because we know from Scripture that there will be tares within the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church, until the angels remove them at the end. And yet by definition there can be no tares within the set of the elect (i.e. elect-to-glory).”
Bryan, you seem to be reading scripture through a Catholic lens, or “begging the question” as you sometimes put it. Nowhere in that passage in Matthew 13 does it mention the “one holy, catholic, apostolic church”. Instead, Jesus uses the term “kingdom of heaven” and then goes on to tell the parable. And in fact, rather than a description of the church, later in Matthew 13:37 – 43 Jesus tells us exactly what he meant – the field is the world – not the church. He is describing believers and unbelievers living together until the time of the judgment, not believers and unbeliever residing together in a visible church.
Matthew 13 has a number of these parables about the “kingdom of heaven” and it does not look to me like many of them are describing the church. The kingdom is variously described as field of wheat and tares, mustad seed, yeast, a hidden treasure, a valuable pearl, and a great net. Again, these are parable about the “kingdom of heaven” which I don’t think can be equated easily to the institutional hierarchical Catholic church.
So while you may yet be able to disprove from scripture the position of some Protestants whether the church is visible or invisible, I don’t think you done it here.
“Likewise, when Matthew records Jesus saying to Peter in Matthew 16:18, “upon this rock I will build My Church”, and then saying, in Matthew 18:17, “tell it to the Church”, and “listen to the Church”, the most natural way of understanding these passages is that the term ‘ekklesia’ (’Church’) is being used in the same way in all three places. And it is clear in the Matthew 18 passages that ‘ekklesia’ there refers to the visible Church, not a merely spiritual entity. Matters of discipline cannot be brought before the set of all the elect. This shows us that the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church of which Christ speaks in Matthew 16 is not a mere set; Jesus was not meaning “upon this Rock I will build my set.”
I disagree that the natural reading of “ekklesia” is the same in all three places. In Matthew 18 it would appear to me that he is talking of the local church or “assembly”, not the “catholic” church or “church as a whole” or whatever term you wish to use. How could you even do that? Indeed the emphasis on going yourself, then taking 2 or 3 brothers, then taking the unrepentant sinner to the “church” as a whole being the local “assembly” makes much more sense to me as a natural progression of steps.
I don’t find the most natural meaning to be the one you are applying. Again, I don’t think you’ve proven anything at this point. The scripture examples you’ve used to prove a “visible” church seem to fall short to me.
Steve, (re: #34)
You’re right that the passage doesn’t say “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church”. But I’m following the Church fathers, in understanding the Church to be the Kingdom, in its present stage. Otherwise Jesus would have two entities to which He is joined: His Church (i.e. His Bride), and His Kingdom. But when He gave Peter the keys of the Kingdom, He wasn’t giving him keys only to be used in the eschaton; He was giving him keys to be used in the Church. See also the section titled “The Church and the Kingdom” in the article by Tom Brown and myself titled “Christ Founded a Visible Church.” But, my argument does not hang on that prooftext. Matthew 18 shows that the Church Christ founded (referred to in Matt 16) is visible, for the reasons I explained in the body of my post. Presbyterians and Reformed Christians have explicitly rejected the claim that there is no visible catholic Church. So, I don’t need to establish that the Church is visible, because the persons to whom I am writing already agree with me that the Church isn’t just the set of all the elect. This is precisely why the Westminster Confession makes a distinction between the invisible Church and the visible Church, and affirms both.
So, my argument shows that Protestant ecclesiology does not have a visible catholic Church. And that means that Presbyterians and Reformed Christians can either embrace the notion that Christ founded only an invisible Church (i.e. the set of all the elect), or they can be reconciled with the visible catholic Church from which they separated almost five hundred years ago. We hope and pray that they will choose reconciliation.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Bryan,
The concept of the invisible church is just a reflection of God’s knowledge of the Church vs. ours. We don’t know all of God’s Church. For instance, there are all sorts of folks in the far corners of the earth who are beloved by God even though He has not revealed Himself to them. They are not part of the visible Church right now, but they are part of the invisible Church. God knows them even if we do not know them.
What Christ ordained when He came to earth was visible. There is a description of what the Church ought to be doing in the Scriptures and a description of characteristics of the officers of the Church. These are the foundational documents of the Church. The question of the invisible Church does not enter in here that I can see. Christ set up a visible Church. The question as I see it concerning Rome is whether or not the visible Church that Christ ordained is the same as what Rome proclaimed at the Reformation. If it is not then Catholics should not claim that Rome is faithful because they can claim direct their bishops were descended from the earliest bishops. This is the same error that the Jews of the Apostles time fell into when they claimed that they were the spiritual children of Abraham because they could draw a straight line of descendency from them to Abraham (which of course they could).
Andrew,
My purpose in this post is to lay out an argument for a thesis. That thesis is that Protestantism has no visible catholic Church. None of what you say in #37, no matter how true, addresses or refutes my argument. So, if you want to argue that the Catholic Church presently headed by Pope Benedict is not a visible Church, or has been unfaithful in some respect, that would be an argument for a different post. My argument shows that the WCF’s statement about the “catholic visible Church” is incorrect, at least within Protestantism. That means that, besides the Catholic Church headed by the successor of Peter, and besides the Orthodox Churches (which are not catholic, for the same reason given in the argument of my post), the only catholic Church Protestants are left with is the invisible Church, i.e. the set of all the elect. And that implication runs into exegetical problems, as I pointed out in the post. Jesus was not saying to Peter, “Upon this rock I will build my set.” Nor was He teaching them in Matt 18 to take matters of discipline to the invisible set.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Andrew,
If Protestantism had a visible Church what would it look like? (e.g. same sacramental theology, same doctrine on government etc…). In short, if I wanted to find this Protestant visible Church how would I know that I have found it, what should I look for?
None of what you say in #37, no matter how true, addresses or refutes my argument.
Bryan – What I’m trying to suggest is that you are barking up the wrong tree. What I say does not address your argument because your argument does not have resonance with the Reformed Protestants. You speak of the infallible church and try to connect it with what Christ established. But the concept of the invisible church has no relevance in this context, at least none that I can see. The invisible church is what God ordained from all eternity, not what Christ established when He came to the earth as a man. The concept is just looking at God’s covenant people from the perspective of God as we hear Him speak. He knows His people even if we don’t. It’s about His eternal covenant, not about the specifics of the NT church.
OK, so we agree that Christ did not establish an invisible Church because this had already been established from all eternity in the plan of God. Now you say in #36 that either we embrace the notion that Christ established an invisible Church or we return to Rome. But I think this is a tad premature. First we have to define what we are talking about when we use the term “visible church.” This is what I was trying to do in #37. You responded that you thought this was a different question for a different post, but I disagree. What we mean by the visible church is central to the matter. We read of the elements of the visible Church that are in the original documents of our faith. We see that there are elders/bishops/deacons established. We see that there are certain tasks to be performed by the Church (preach the gospel, care of the poor, etc). And then we see these practices continued in the Sub-apostolic era. So at the center of the matter is whether, at the Reformation, Rome still held to a conception of the visible church that was compatible with these early teachings on and expressions of the visible church. Rome felt she was the expression of the true church but were her actions compatible with those of the earliest centuries of the visible church? Either they were or they were not. And then of course either the Reformed churches did or did not bring reformation to reestablish the elements of the visible church as we read about them in the documents of Scripture and the Sub-apostolic era.
If Protestantism had a visible Church what would it look like? (e.g. same sacramental theology, same doctrine on government etc…). In short, if I wanted to find this Protestant visible Church how would I know that I have found it, what should I look for?
Tom,
The Evangelical churches generally don’t dwell on such matters. But generally see each other as faithful expressions of Christ’s Church even though we may disagree on some of the non-fundamentals. So the local Baptist church near me is a true expression of the visible Church. Of this I have no doubt. Now perhaps you are wanting an exact definition of where the boundaries of the visible Church are so that you can match this up with Rome?
Andrew,
If in fact there were no visible catholic Church, but only denominations, congregations, believers, and their children, what exactly would be different?
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Dear Andrew M.,
You said: “The question as I see it concerning Rome is whether or not the visible Church that Christ ordained is the same as what Rome proclaimed at the Reformation. If it is not then Catholics should not claim that Rome is faithful because they can claim direct their bishops were descended from the earliest bishops. This is the same error that the Jews of the Apostles time fell into when they claimed that they were the spiritual children of Abraham because they could draw a straight line of descendency from them to Abraham (which of course they could).”
I think you’re right that it does matter whether or not the visible Church that Christ ordained is the same Church that the bishops united with the Pope proclaimed during the Reformation — in fact it matters during every era. But I think you’re wrong when you say that claiming faithfulness on the grounds that our Bishops were directly descended from the earliest Bishops is the same error as the Jews who claimed to be spiritual children of Abraham at the apostle’s time. There was something that happened at the apostle’s time that did not happen at the time of the reformation. Namely, a new revelation was sent by God. And the one who brought that new revelation had three important things: (1) he was, in a sense, in the line of King David; (2) he had great holiness; and (3) he performed mighty miracles.
None of these marks were present with the leaders of the Reformation: Martin Luther and John Calvin. They didn’t have the right spiritual descent (they weren’t bishops); they were not spectacularly holy; and they did not perform miracles. Without these marks, the Jews would have been wrong to accept a messiah. And without such a new revelation, there is no leaving the legitimate priesthood of the existing revelation.
Sincerely,
K. Doran
Bryan
I still see a whole lot of problems:
1) Whatever Jesus means by the kingdom of God in this passage, he doesn’t mean the church in this case. He specifically says it is the world, not the church. You can’t get around that. Kingdom does not necessarily mean the church. It appears here to me that the kingdom in these parables means in some sort of sense, God’ reign on earth, while the church is God’s people on earth.
2) Even if he did mean the church, you’re still begging the question. You argument depends upon this being the “one, holy, apostolic catholic church” as being the Catholic Church that we know of today. You still haven’t proven that. Again, you’re reading this through your Catholic lens.
3) Again, Matthew 18 which you refer to does not prove your argument. You say Matthew 18 is the same church in Matthew 13, which again, I disagree with. You haven’t proven to me that they are the same as you have not addressed what I said that I can tell.
You don’t see to me to be addressing my points directly. You say that some Protestants believe in an invisible church. You then use two scripture passages in your next to last paragrah to show that the Protestant position is “contrary to scripture”. Yet, I have just shown that in the first example, you’ve ignored the plain words of Jesus, and in the second you’re not proven that the most natural reading (your assertion) is that what is meant by the word “church” in Matthew 16 and 18 are the same thing.
So while you may be causing problems for those Protestants that believe in a visible church, your two scripture passages don’t seem to refute those Protestants that don’t believe in a visible church. That is your claim in that paragraph, and that is the claim that I fail to see as proven.
Andrew,
I understand what you are saying about the local baptist congregation and the disagreement on non-fundamentals. And it is precisely in my understanding that I can say that Protestantism does not have a visible catholic Church. If the Church is the Church then to think that there can be a variety of teachings about baptism, the presence of Christ in the Supper, the assurance of a believer’s salvation, the nature and authority of government, says, regardless of what the Bishop of Rome would have to say, that Protestantism has no visible catholic Church.
Steve,
I’m not intending to establish here (in this particular post) that the Church Christ founded is a visible Church. Tom Brown and I did that already in our previous article this summer, titled, “Christ Founded a Visible Church.” If you want to discuss the evidence and argumentation regarding whether Christ founded a visible Church, I recommend directing your comments to that article.
My argument here, in this post runs like this:
(1) Presbyterians and Reformed Christians claim that there is a visible catholic Church.
(2) Unity of type is not sufficient for unity of composition.
(3) A plurality having only unity of type can be shown to be so by the remove-the-whole-without-changing-the-parts test.
(4) Applying this test to the “visible catholic Church” shows it to have only unity of type.
(5) Applying this test to the Catholic Church shows it to have unity of composition.
(6) A plurality of things having only unity of type, and not unity of composition, is not an actual entity.
(7) The “visible catholic Church”, in Protestant ecclesiology, is not an actual entity.
(8) There is, within Protestantism, no “visible catholic Church”.
(9) If the catholic Church is not visible, then it is invisible, i.e. the set of all the elect.
(10) But the Church Christ founded, as presented in Scripture, is not the set of all the elect. (See our “Christ Founded a Visible Church” article, for substantiation of this premise.)
(11) Therefore, Presbyterian and Reformed Christians should either give up the word ‘catholic’ in referring to the visible catholic Church (and thus speak only of local visible churches), or seek reconciliation with the Catholic Church from which the first generation of Protestants separated in the sixteenth century.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
There was something that happened at the apostle’s time that did not happen at the time of the reformation. Namely, a new revelation was sent by God.
K. Doran,
I agree with you – there is no new revelation at the time of the Reformation. But my point is simpler. We as Protestants are often faced with the charge that our ecclesiastical officers have broken with the line of succession that can be traced back to the 1st century. And it’s an important discussion since in the RCC the validity of a given officer is contingent upon this succession and this succession alone. So part of our response is that this succession does not guarantee that the officer in question is valid in a biblical sense. When the Apostles spoke with the Jews in their time (and when we speak with Jews even today) there was a very similar sort of argument from the Jews that based the validity of their office upon the literal succession back to the original Patriarchs. And while we cannot deny that the Jews could claim such literal succession, they had to be reminded that this succession alone could not guarantee that the Jews’ officers were valid and faithful. We see Paul spending quite a bit of time arguing from the Scriptures that their confidence in their pedigree was misplaced.
If in fact there were no visible catholic Church, but only denominations, congregations, believers, and their children, what exactly would be different?
Bryan,
I’m not sure how to answer this one since as soon as someone starts talking about any physical manifestations of the Church on the earth, even a simple group of congregations, you have a visible church in some sense. So what is the visible church and how do we define it? In the Scriptures you have definitions for officers and functions for the various congregations. There are to be elders/bishops and deacons. They are to preach the gospel, administer the sacraments, etc. There is nothing invisible about this, these were distinctly visible elements of the visible church and they comprise the biblical concept of the visible church. Now it seems to me that in the RCC’s concept of the visible church there are vital elements which say something about 1) the connectivity of the congregations, 2) the hierarchical nature of this connectivity, and 3) the place that the Church at Rome had in this hierarchy. The Church of Rome holds that these elements of the visible Church are necessary and essential. But given the documents primarily of Scripture and secondarily of the Post-apostolic church, are they essential? I would definitely hold that by inference from the accounts in Acts that #1 ought to be present. But are #2 and #3 vital elements and how do we decide?
Cheers for now….
Dear Bryan,
This is, yet again, another example of you critiquing Protestantism from a Catholic set of presuppositions. It just won’t convince Protestants.
[1] When one looks at how the word “church” is used in the NT it is far from RCism.
[2] The “visible” church if the early centuries is so radically different from high medieval Catholicism. (Development of doctrine hardly explains this).
[3] RCism runs into its own problems with its doctrine of the visible church: this visible church has been involved in murder, sex abuse, etc. etc. This is only a problem for the RC doctrine of the visible church.
Cheers,
Marty.
Andrew,
Consider the story by Hans Christian Anderson “The Emperor’s New Clothes“. When the Emperor is walking naked down the street, the proper question is: If the Emperor were, in fact wearing no clothes, how would he appear any different? If the answer is, “we don’t know,” that can only be because he would look exactly the same if he were in fact naked. And if the answer is, “He would look exactly as he appears to us now,” then the proper follow-up question is, “Then why should we believe he has on invisible clothes?”
Similarly, if you don’t know how to answer the question, “If in fact there were no visible catholic Church, but only denominations, congregations, believers, and their children, what exactly would be different?,” that can only be because things would be exactly the same if there were no such thing as “the visible catholic Church.” And if things would be exactly the same if there were no such thing as “the visible catholic Church”, then there is (within Protestantism) no visible catholic Church. What is referred to as “the visible catholic Church” is merely a mental concept mistakenly treated as though it were an actual entity (e.g. “panapple”).
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Marty,
There are only two ways to refute a deductive argument: show one of the premises to be false, or show that the conclusion does not follow from the premises. If you wish to refute my argument, then you need to do one of those two things. In comment #46 I’ve summarized the argument of my post, to make it easier to see the syllogism. If you do not show one of the premises to be false, or show that the conclusion does not follow from the premises, then the argument remains unrefuted.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Dear Andrew M.,
You said: “When the Apostles spoke with the Jews in their time (and when we speak with Jews even today) there was a very similar sort of argument from the Jews that based the validity of their office upon the literal succession back to the original Patriarchs. And while we cannot deny that the Jews could claim such literal succession, they had to be reminded that this succession alone could not guarantee that the Jews’ officers were valid and faithful. We see Paul spending quite a bit of time arguing from the Scriptures that their confidence in their pedigree was misplaced.”
The reason that the Jewish succession alone could not guarantee that the Jew’s officers were valid was because there was a new revelation. To put it another way: how do you know that the reason was NOT because there was a new revelation. Do you have another example from the bible in which valid ministers are no longer valid even apart from a new revelation? If you don’t, then your example is what we would call in economics “unidentified.”
To be more precise, two things are happening at the same time: Jewish people are making an argument that is refuted by Christians (and Christ); and a new revelation has arrived. You want to say that the Jewish argument is false in general, even when used in other contexts in which no new revelation has arrived. But you don’t know whether it is false in general, because the only example you have of it being false is an example which occurs simultaneously with the arrival of a new revelation. Do you see what your biblical example is not sufficient for your argument?
If you don’t have another example, then you may be implicitly comparing the arrival of the Protestant reformers with the arrival of Christ. That is dangerous water.
Sincerely,
K. Doran
Similarly, if you don’t know how to answer the question, “If in fact there were no visible catholic Church….
Bryan,
Before any two people can have a discussion on a given entity they have to define the entitiy so they are sure they are speaking of the same thing. We have not agreed on the definition of “visible church” so how can I asnwer your question? I think it is likely that you are asking me about an aspect of the visible church that that reflects on its hierarchial and Roman nature. But you have not said this so I don’t know. For the Protestant we look at the visible church church from the perspective of a time before there was any obvious or explicit imvolvement of Rome and before there was any defined hierarchial structure to the visible church. We have this perspective because the foundational instructions concerning the visible church apply to individual congregations, not to the whatever entity might coordinate the relations between the congregations. But when RC’s speak of “visible church” they are generally referring to the hierarchial and Roman superstructure of which individual congregations are a part of. Philosophically you are speaking of the One while I am speaking of the Many. So our definitions are different and I can’t see that much progress can be made until we are are sure we are speaking of the same thing.
Andrew,
I’m using the definition of ‘visible catholic Church’ found in the WCF. See the first quotation in my post.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
You want to say that the Jewish argument is false in general, even when used in other contexts in which no new revelation has arrived.
K. Doran,
But take new revelation out of the picture entirely. Let’s say that we are speaking of a time well before there was any NT revelation. Did the Jew’s argument work then? Did their literal succession from Aaron and Abraham guarantee anything concerning their validity and fidelity?
And then even when there was new revelation, when Paul argued with the Jews in the synagogoue, he started not with the new revelation but he pointed them back to the old revelation, right?
Bryan,
OK then, so you agree that when we say “visible church,” we are speaking of an entity that has no Roman or hierarchial elements?
Andrew,
OK then, so you agree that when we say “visible church,” we are speaking of an entity that has no Roman or hierarchial elements?
Yes, exactly. My argument shows precisely that there is no such entity.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Andrew,
In St. Matthew, ch. 23 Christ says: “The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but they do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them.
In this passage Christ affirms the validity of the Jewish claim to successional authority (that of Moses). Therefore, authority properly derives from BOTH succession AND the Holy Spirit’s anointing. So though a Protestant minister may have a claim to righteous teaching and a heart that seeks God’s will, he may never claim succession. Whereas, though Catholics may (often) fail as individuals, they always have a valid claim to succession. And that’s the proper place for true reformation- from within the Apostolic line. It’s only within an ancient communion that one finds Apostolic Succession.
Marty,
You said that this kind of argumentation just “won’t convince Protestants.” I was a Protestant until I was 30. I’m 32 now. And my family of 7 is Catholic. Yes, I’ve got a lot of Protestantism in my blood. But it’s arguments like Bryan’s that overcame my Protestant heritage. Indeed, many Protestants find such argumentation thoroughly convincing. thanks! herbert
Yes, exactly. My argument shows precisely that there is no such entity.
OK, fair enough. Yes, there is nothing in the Protestant conception of the visible church which is Roman or hierarchial. At that is because there is nothing in the foundational documents (promarily Scriptre and secondarily the writings of Sub-aposotlic Church) that is Roman or hierarchial. The instuctions for the visible church applied to congregations, not to any sort of superstucture that coordinated the congregations. The administrative coordinating entity which evolved into what we know today as the RCC ecclesiaistical system was not part of the orginal visible church.
Andrew,
So do you reject WCF XXV.2′s teaching that there is a visible catholic Church?
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Dear Andrew M.,
Can’t you just cut to the chase and give me an example from the Bible in which an office of ministry that began as divinely ordained is later overthrown by men who don’t carry a new revelation? The only example I know of any divinely-begun office being overthrown is the ending of legitimate Jewish authorities and the establishment of the NT priesthood (which, I suppose, is meant to be called a fulfillment, rather than a contradiction of what had come before). And this took place with a new revelation. Is there another example that takes place without a new revelation? This is an honest question. I’m not trying to bait you. You know the old testament better than I do. There may be such an example. If there is, please share it.
Please tell me whether there was a “reformation,” so-to-speak, in the old testament. Was there a case in which men who neither performed miracles, nor were validly ordained to a ministry (nor were God incarnate) nevertheless utterly overthrew and abolished the office of a priesthood that had been in its origin divinely ordained? If this didn’t happen, then I don’t see your case that Catholics are making a biblical mistake by resting assured in the authority of their divinely-begun priesthood. I’m asking you real questions. Can you answer them without asking me more questions?
Regarding your questions, you asked: “But take new revelation out of the picture entirely. Let’s say that we are speaking of a time well before there was any NT revelation. Did the Jew’s argument work then? Did their literal succession from Aaron and Abraham guarantee anything concerning their validity and fidelity?” As Herbert mentioned in #58, it seems that Jesus felt that something, at least, was guaranteed by sitting in the chair of Moses. What exactly, I’m not sure, but it had something to do with their teaching. If there is something in the old testament that I don’ t know about that disagrees with this interpretation, please share it with the class.
You also asked: “And then even when there was new revelation, when Paul argued with the Jews in the synagogoue, he started not with the new revelation but he pointed them back to the old revelation, right?” I don’t know what you’re getting at. You need to just cut to the chase and say specifically how this has anything to do with the question of whether there is biblical precedent for overthrowing a divinely-begun priesthood.
But, if you’d be so kind, can you address my original question as restated in my first two paragraphs above before you spin off into responding to your questions about my responses to your questions about my questions, etc. . . ?
Sincerely,
K. Doran
Hey there, Andrew.
I’m always confused (honestly) by the parallel you wish (and have, as long as I’ve known you, tried) to draw between the genealogical succession from Abraham in the OT as understood by the NT Jews (whom Jesus rebukes) and apostolic succession of the NT priesthood.
For one thing, biological succession from Abraham was thought to be both necessary and sufficient for inclusion in the covenant community. Jesus shakes this up: it’s not sufficient after all (cf. Rom 9) and it isn’t necessary either, since God can raise up sons of Abraham from the stones of the earth.
How does anything very interesting about the priesthood follow from this? So far as I can see, nothing about the necessary (and sufficient) conditions for priesthood, as laid out by Moses, e.g., follows from the contention that Abrahamic biological succession is neither necessary nor sufficient for inclusion in the covenant community. You tend to treat these two issues as if they were just the same. But they’re not.
What I think you really want to say is this: Levitical biological succession is neither necessary nor sufficient for priesthood in the New Covenant.
Okay. That seems right. What of it? How does it follow that no form of succession whatever is either necessary or sufficient for priesthood in the NT?
We can stipulate that there is a real and important sense in which all believers possess a kind of priesthood in the New Covenant, in virtue of (i) the character of the New vis-à-vis the Old and (ii) the fact that members of the New Covenant community have all undergone the sacrament of baptism. Nothing in that conflicts with Catholic doctrine, and nothing in that conflicts with the claim that there is nevertheless a salient distinction between two types of priesthood – a distinction you yourself will be happy both to admit and to retain.
What you need, so far as I can see, is an argument to the effect that, since Jesus has come, there is no longer any sort of priestly succession whatever; or that, if there is one, priestly succession in the New Covenant is not in any sense better than Abrahamic biological succession in the New Covenant – just as “succession” in the Old is consistent with apostasy and grievous error, so too “succession” in the New is consistent with apostasy and grievous error. So present day Christians ought to throw off the constraining yoke of New Covenant priestly succession quite as happily and eagerly as they threw off the yoke of Old Covenant Levitical priestly succession, so long as they figure that the New Covenant priests have gone awry doctrinally.
But I’ve never seen you give an argument for either of these very interesting and controversial claims. All I’ve seen you do, so far, is point out the relatively pedestrian fact that, according to Jesus, biological descent from Abraham isn’t necessary or sufficient for New Covenant inclusion, and that just being a Levite doesn’t mean you’re right about everything, a point nobody (aside, perhaps, from some very confused and enthusiastic dispensationalists) wishes to controvert. You seemingly wish to use this as a premise, the repeated deployment of which is sufficient to demonstrate that there couldn’t be anything analogous to priestly succession in the New Testament. But there is nothing about your initial point (“Hey – biological descent from Abraham is neither necessary nor sufficient for salvation, nor for the claim that the Jewish priestly class had everything right!”) that entails the thesis that there is no such thing as priestly succession in the New Covenant, nor that the authorized priestly class of the New Covenant is in precisely the same boat as the Levitical priesthood, given the changes brought about by Good Friday, Easter, and Pentecost. (To say nothing of the fact that “apostolic succession” doesn’t ential that any person with Orders must never themselves commit theological errors. I cannot say why you’d think any of these things.)
It isn’t news to anybody that Abrahamic succession isn’t necessary or sufficient for New Covenant membership, nor is it news to anybody that Levitical succession is neither necessary nor sufficient for doctrinal rectitude. These things are simply New Testament givens.
It is obscure to me exactly what mileage you think you are supposed to get, from a Protestant perspective, by pointing out these obvious things that no Catholic would think of disagreeing with. Can you please specify (here or in email to me) the argument running from the fact that Abrahamic succession doesn’t entail rectitude of doctrine to the conclusion that all of the New Covenant apostles and their successors must be in the same unenviable boat of theological uncertainty and inevitable error? And can you do it without flagrantly begging the question against those who believe that the New Covenant Church, invested as it is by the Holy Spirit, under the auspices of the promises of Christ, is at least marginally better off than the Levitical priesthood under the old covenant?
Best,
Neal
Dear Andrew M.,
Don’t feel obliged to answer my questions. I am more interested in your answers to Neal’s questions.
Sincerely,
K. Doran
Dear Andrew,
I hate to respond to myself, but here is perhaps another way to put the point I wish to raise with you.
Consider this argument schema:
(1) There is a reality of the New Covenant (call it ‘NC’).
(2) NC has an analogue or typological precursor in the Old Covenant (call it ‘OC’).
(3) NC has property P only if OC has property P.
So for instance, we may argue that New Covenant apostolic (priestly) succession has an analogue or typological precursor in Old Covenant levitical succession, or biological-Abrahamic succession. Since neither of the latter entail rectitude of doctrine, we infer that apostolic succession does not entail doctrinal fidelity.
That’s what it seems like you’re arguing (and have, repeatedly, argued here and elsewhere). But this is problematic. Here are some arguments that would by parity be valid if the argument schema above were valid:
Jesus is the High Priest of the New Covenant. Christ’s status as high priest has an analogue or type in the institution of high priest within the Old Covenant. Since high priests in the Old Covenant were not supernaturally protected from doctrinal or moral error (qua high priest), neither is Jesus. (From (1) and (2) and (3).)
No Protestant with their heads about them would be impressed with this argument.
Consider then another. Suppose a Zwinglian were to argue in this way: the New Covenant sacrament of baptism has an analogue or typological precursor in the institution of circumcision. Since circumcision does not confer supernatural grace, neither does baptism, the New Covenant antitype of circumcision. (I assume you wish to distance yourself both from the Catholic [/Lutheran/Anglican/Eastern] view of baptism, and also from the mere-symbolic-Anabaptist view of baptism.)
In both cases (1) and (2) above are true while (3) is false. It follows that the argument schema is invalid.
This doesn’t mean that particular instances of (1), (2) and (3) can’t all be true together. What it does mean is that a person cannot rely upon (1) and (2) in particular instances so as to establish that (3) holds in that instance, or to establish the conclusion generated by the conjunction of (1)-(3). But that is what you seem to want to do. You want to argue that, since in the Old Covenant neither Abrahamic nor Levitical succession ensured doctrinal fidelity, therefore in the New Covenant Apostolic succession (as understood by Catholics) carries no guarantee of doctrinal fidelity, or at any rate is irrelevant to the individual’s determination concerning magisterial authority for the Church. But the argument schema upon which you rely here is invalid.
You may wish to claim, in response, that you believe in apostolic succession, but that this is a spiritual matter rather than an historical/sacramental one, and that it depends wholly upon fidelity to the Scriptural “essentials” as you understand them to be.
Suppose it so. Then still, the argument schema above is invalid: for you are still supposing (I take it) that in the New Covenant Church fidelity is ensured by way of succession – it is just that “succession” has nothing to do with anything historical or sacramental, but rather concerns fidelity to whatever you (e.g.) believe to constitute faithfulness to the essential teaching of Scripture. In this case our disagreement isn’t over whether “apostolic succession” in the New Covenant is a cut above “priestly succession” in the old, it is just about the criteria for succession in the New Covenant.
So that is the real issue: what are the criteria for Apostolic Succession in the New Covenant? If you disagree with what the Catholic says on this score, well and good: lay out the considerations and we can evaluate them together. But pointing out that “succession” didn’t “really matter” in the Old Covenant when it came to rectitude of doctrine, then, even supposing that that is true, and even allowing that the criteria for succession and covenant membership are different in the New than they are in the Old, it doesn’t follow that no form of succession at all is relevant to rectitude of doctrine or to who has a magisterial authority in the New Covenant. That’s basically why I’ve never understood why you’ve made such heavy weather about the obvious fact that Abrahamic and Levitical succession has, in the New Covenant, given way to something else.
Best,
Neal
[NB: Lest anyone feel the need to point this out: Yes, I'm aware that (1)-(3) is strictly just a set of propositions and not an "argument schema;" it is however an invalid argument schema generator (premise (3) is the culprit). I assume readers will assume I know how to adjust the precision, and I assume readers will have understood what I was saying.]
[quote]Please tell me whether there was a “reformation,” so-to-speak, in the old testament. Was there a case in which men who neither performed miracles, nor were validly ordained to a ministry (nor were God incarnate) nevertheless utterly overthrew and abolished the office of a priesthood that had been in its origin divinely ordained?[/quote]
I think the rebellion of the Northern Kingdom bears a striking resemblance to the reformation. They thought they were doing the right thing by leaving Israel during the time of a bad king. They set up their own cult sites and ritual observances. Eventually they were worse idolaters than the ones they had left and they never made it back from Assyrian exile.
You want to argue that, since in the Old Covenant neither Abrahamic nor Levitical succession ensured doctrinal fidelity, therefore in the New Covenant Apostolic succession (as understood by Catholics) carries no guarantee of doctrinal fidelity, or at any rate is irrelevant to the individual’s determination concerning magisterial authority for the Church. But the argument schema upon which you rely here is invalid.
Hello Neal,
I’m really not trying to make a OT/NT connection or trying to argue from type to reality or anything so grand. Just consider the arguments the Jews made considering their succession to Abraham. They were convinced that this succession demonstrated God’s faithfulness to them. So why aren’t we impressed with this argument? And don’t think of it in necessarily in terms of OT or NT. And then if we reject this argument from the Jews, then what is the difference between that appeal to succession and the one by the RCC at the time of the Reformation?
I can’t say I have ever heard any other Protestant try to make a similar sort of argument but it seemed like it might be a helpful analogy. But maybe it isn’t. But even if it isn’t, what I always try to get at is what can we make of succession from something God instituted? Whether we are speaking of OT or NT, what does God’s establishment of an institution guarantee in general to the successors and inheritors of that institution? Now I would have thought that the case of the Jews both ecclesiastically and civilly might be an interesting case to look at, but maybe you think that’s not necessarily relevant. But what can we say about such succession? This is a big issue in Catholics/Protestant dialogues since so much of RCC ecclesiology rests on its conclusions. For someone like you who has come from the Protestant world, there must have been something that caused you to think that this is not just AN important issue in determining validity of the officers of the Church, it is in essence THE dominant issue.
So do you reject WCF XXV.2’s teaching that there is a visible catholic Church?
I’m not sure why would you ask this, Bryan. You say you are using the WCF standards for your definition, but now it seems like you are switching to the RCC as your definition. So again what do we mean by the visible church? Before the Apostles were on the scene there was no visible church in the NT sense. Then in the Apostolic writings we have the definitions of the elements of the visible church. These apply to the various congregations that are set up. There are to be elders/bishops and deacons. There is to be administration of the sacraments, preaching the gospel to the people, etc, etc. These are the characteristics of the visible church. There are no direct stipulations concerning how these congregations are suppose to interrelate either in the biblical texts or in the writings immediately following the Apostles. So yes the Reformed churches were part of the visible church by these standards.
I get the feeling that you are now switching to a Roman standard for concepts like “catholic” and visible church.” When you say “catholic” do you mean Roman Catholic? If so, you are going beyond the WCF/Reformed definition of “catholic” meaning universal. Maybe you need to define things a little tighter. Or maybe you need to explain why there is no real visible church given the WCF/Reformed standards without appealing to RCC concepts of the visible church.
And if you just want to say that the Reformed congregations fall short of the standards of what it means to have a visible church by RCC standards, then I agree. The Protestant congregations do fall short. So do the Apostolic and Sub-apostolic congregations.
Andrew,
You say you are using the WCF standards for your definition, but now it seems like you are switching to the RCC as your definition.
No, I’m not sure how to say it any more clearly: I’m using the term ‘catholic visible Church’ exactly as it is defined in WCF XXV.2. My question is essentially: do you affirm or deny WCF XXV.2?
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Andrew,
Or maybe you need to explain why there is no real visible church given the WCF/Reformed standards without appealing to RCC concepts of the visible church.
The assumption underlying this exhortation is incorrect. Bryan has not used a Catholic concept of the visible church to show that Protestants have no visible catholic Church. He has used the philosophical concepts “unity of type” and “unity of composition” together with a straightforward philosophical argument to the conclusion that the “visible catholic Church” posited by Protestants does not feature unity of composition and is, therefore, not an entity; i.e., something in reality.
Your task, if you want to engage this argument (and maybe you don’t), is not to ask if Protestant conceptions of the Church match up with the Catholic definition of the Church. Everyone knows that they do not. Your task is to demonstrate that the visible catholic Church posited by Protestants is in fact something in reality, an extra-mental entity, and not only an idea. If you can show this, then it will not matter, for the purposes of falsifying Bryan’s conclusion, whether or to what degree that entity is like the Catholic Church.
Dear Andrew M.,
You said: “And then if we reject this argument from the Jews, then what is the difference between that appeal to succession and the one by the RCC at the time of the Reformation?”
What is the difference? First, your comments referred primarily to a lack of fidelity in biological succession, not a lack of authority in succession to a teaching office (Jesus seems to allow for some kind of authority to those who succeed to the teaching office of the Chair of Moses, though not unlimited teaching authority — just like the Catholic church today!). Second, to the extent that your comments refer to authority at all, they refer to authority associated with a teaching office that was not personally established by Christ’s better promises, while he walked in the flesh on this earth.
We’ve pointed out these differences. Why are you still trying to use the lack of fidelity among those with a biological succession to a covenant established before Christ to say anything about lack of authority among those who succeed to an office established by Christ?
Let me outline the differences again, where != means “not necessarily equivalent to”:
biological succession != succession to an office
infidelity in personal behavior != infidelity in official teaching
old testament promises != new testament promises
Sincerely,
K. Doran
Andrew,
Thanks for the reply, and for the clarification. If I’m understanding you correctly, you are not trying to rely upon features (present or absent) of Abrahamic or Levitical succession in order to undermine the Catholic doctrine of Apostolic succession. If that’s correct, then we’re cool. You wondered aloud whether this was an unhelpful analogy or whether perhaps it is not relevant. I think I would say it is not really relevant and not really helpful, if for no other reason than that it may lead people to think that you are trying to mount an argument of some kind. Perhaps it is just an “illustration” of a kind of “succession” that does not entail doctrinal rectitude. But I don’t really think anyone is in need of an illustration of this. It would perhaps be helpful if a Catholic were to say: “Apostolic succession is a kind of succession; succession always entails doctrinal rectitude; therefore, Apostolic succession entails doctrinal rectitude.” But nobody I know argues this way. So I think it is ultimately unhelpful and potentially misleading to lean (apparently) heavily on this illustration in this context of discussion.
Best,
Neal
Your task, if you want to engage this argument (and maybe you don’t), is not to ask if Protestant conceptions of the Church match up with the Catholic definition of the Church. Everyone knows that they do not. Your task is to demonstrate that the visible catholic Church posited by Protestants is in fact something in reality, an extra-mental entity, and not only an idea. If you can show this, then it will not matter, for the purposes of falsifying Bryan’s conclusion, whether or to what degree that entity is like the Catholic Church.
Andrew P,
I hope you understand that I’m not trying to back away from the philosophical aspects of this discussion. The One/Many and Realist/Nominalist paradigms are the ever present philosophical backdrop of these sorts of discussions. They really do interest me because in so many cases I hear Protestant and Catholic talking past each other because they are thinking about concepts like “church” in different philosophical senses. But what I am trying to do is draw Bryan out with respect to the biblical and historical foundations for this debate. Is not this where we find the definitions for the visible church? The “unified whole” and “unity of composition” are nice philosophical constructs, but do they have anything to do with unity in the biblical sense? Bryan seems to assume so and I am challenging this. Fair enough?
I do understand some of the attraction towards having the tight well defined visible system that Rome does. But as I say this is not something that we are looking for. We don’t have any concerns about the limits of the visible church. I have all sorts of Christian friends from outside my denomination. We are all part of the same Church even if our congregations are not administratively unified. So then, how is it that our respective visible structures are “just an idea?” And more importantly how do the visible structures of our congregations differ from the elements of the visible church that we see in Scripture and then secondarily in the congregations immediately after this time?
No, I’m not sure how to say it any more clearly: I’m using the term ‘catholic visible Church’ exactly as it is defined in WCF XXV.2. My question is essentially: do you affirm or deny WCF XXV.2?
Yes Bryan, as long as we qualify this with the rest of the WCF and Reformed standards, particularly here XXV.3-6.
It would perhaps be helpful if a Catholic were to say: “Apostolic succession is a kind of succession; succession always entails doctrinal rectitude; therefore, Apostolic succession entails doctrinal rectitude.”
Neal,
When we point out how far so many of the bishops (including and most famously, the Bishops of Rome) of the RCC drifted from basic Christian principles at the Reformation era we are often pointed back to succession. And we are pointed to this as if nothing else matters. There you have it – Aposotlic succession! And our answer tends to me, “and your point would be what?”
So what does succession prove?
Andrew, (re: #73)
Now that we are agreed that you affirm that there is a “visible catholic Church,” we can return to the question I asked you in #42: If in fact there were no visible catholic Church, but only denominations, congregations, believers, and their children, what exactly would be different?
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Bryan,
If the congregations, people, etc comprise the visible church and then we suppose that there is no visible catholic church then we are left with nothing. The Church, both visible or invisible, vanish into a puff of rhetorical smoke.
I still wonder why you don’t want to go back to the biblical and historical roots for definitions of “visible church.”
Andrew,
My understanding is that there is not a single example of the word for Church, ἐκκλησία, being used to refer to a non-visible entity in the entire corpus of ancient Greek writings. This being the case, why would we assume the invisible Church to be the fullest manifestation of Christ’s promise in Matthew 16:18 and Ch. 18? In addition, Christ uses the word in the singular. So, as Protestants, we are left to assume that Jesus was merely referring to a small local congregation…or he was referring to something we don’t have.
Peace in Christ, Jeremy
Andrew, (re: #76)
If the congregations, people, etc comprise the visible church and then we suppose that there is no visible catholic church then we are left with nothing.
Right. But that’s exactly what we are trying to determine, whether in fact those denominations, congregations, believers and their children compose some one thing, or not. So your reply does not answer the question.
The question is not about the meaning of the term “visible catholic Church”. The question is about whether the term “visible catholic Church’ has a referent, i.e. picks out an actual entity in reality, or only refers to a mere plurality of entities.
Imagine that there is someone who believes in the panapple. So, we ask him, “If there were in fact no panapple, but only apples, what would be different?” He replies, “If all the apples of the world comprise the panapple, then if you remove the panapple, there would no apples.” We reply, “If there is in fact such a thing as a panapple, and it is composed of all the apples in the world, then indeed, if the panapple were removed, there would be no apples. But, what we want to know is whether there is in fact a panapple, or whether there is only the term ‘panapple’ and all apples referred to by the term ‘panapple’, but not some additional entity composed of all apples. In order to determine which is the case, we have to examine whether, if there were only apples, and no panapple, anything would be different. If nothing would be different, then we know that there is no actual entity referred to by the term ‘panapple.’ ”
That’s exactly what’s going on in our conversation, except replace ‘panapple’ with ‘visible catholic Church’, and replace ‘apples’ with “denominations, congregations, believers and their children.” Here too we are not looking for the meaning of the term ‘visible catholic Church.’ We already know that. We are seeking to determine whether or not this term has an actual single referent in reality. And that question is not answered by noting that if the term ‘visible catholic Church’ means all denominations, congregations, believers and their children, then removing the visible catholic Church would require removing all believers and their children. Hence your reply does not answer the question. Does that help clarify the question?
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
The question is not about the meaning of the term “visible catholic Church”. The question is about whether the term “visible catholic Church’ has a referent, i.e. picks out an actual entity in reality, or only refers to a mere plurality of entities.
And this Bryan, is exactly why I wanted to bring the question back to the history of the Church. You say you are utilizing the definitions of the WCF, but I’m having trouble seeing that definition come through. But humor me. Let’s go back to the 1st century church. How would we have experienced the visible church in a given city and what were the elements of the visible church? Well, we would have come to homes where elder/bishops ruled, where deacons assisted, where the gospel was preached, where people were baptized after confessing something like what we now call the Apostles Creed. And so on. The church was not not a philosophical construct unlike some of the other religions of the time, it had real extension. So given what we have found of this actual entity in the 1st century, now when we use this standard for what a visible church is, where do the Reformed churches fail?
And then if we were to do the same with the RCC Churches at the time of the Reformation, how would they stack up against this 1st century standard for the visible church?
My understanding is that there is not a single example of the word for Church, ἐκκλησία, being used to refer to a non-visible entity in the entire corpus of ancient Greek writings. This being the case, why would we assume the invisible Church to be the fullest manifestation of Christ’s promise in Matthew 16:18 and Ch. 18? In addition, Christ uses the word in the singular.
Jeremy,
If you mean by “invisible church” to refer to all of God’s people from all time, then we would say that yes, all of God’s children gathered to Him would be the eschatological goal of the church on earth so it would be the fullness of what the Church is today. We as the Church long for God calling together all of His people. Ekklesia is used in Eph. 5:27 to speak of this. I don’t want to say that it is a non-visible entity since it speaks of real physical believers. Ekklesia is also used in Heb 12:23 to again refer to all of God’s Church. The referent here is not to the physical institution of the Church on earth, but to all believers throughout all time.
Andrew,
My post is not about local visible churches. If you wish to discuss the necessary “elements of a [local] visible church,” please wait for a thread on that subject. To do so here would be to change the subject, present a red herring, and avoid the question on the table: Is there a visible catholic Church, as the WCF states?
I’ve given an argument (in the body of my post) that in Protestantism there is no such thing as a visible catholic Church. I’ve laid out the argument in stepwise detail (see #46). So far, my argument remains unrefuted.
Here are your three options. You can try to refute my argument. Or you can say you need time to think about it. Or you can accept the conclusion of my argument. Anything else would be intellectual sloppiness at best. Genuine truth-seekers do not change the subject when they encounter an argument having a conclusion contrary to their own position. Wrestling with such an argument is precisely how they evaluate whether their own position is true. Ideologues, on the other hand, aren’t interested in the truth; they only wish to push the party-line, and so when presented with an opposing argument which they cannot refute, they create a diversion, or leave.
Wrestling with an opposing argument is the same sort of mental exercise as explained in my argument itself. We do so to answer this question: If I were wrong, how would I know? We are much less likely to come to discover which of our beliefs is false, if we flee from arguments that oppose our position, just as you won’t come to know whether there is a visible catholic Church, until you allow yourself to ask how you would know there is no visible catholic Church, if in fact there were no visible catholic Church, but only denominations, congregations, believers and their children. Those onlookers watching the Emperor walk down the street naked, need to be asking themselves this question: If in fact the Emperor is not wearing invisible clothes, how would I know?” Otherwise, they remain deceived.
Notice your line to Jeremy in #80:
That’s like saying that because apples are visible, therefore the panapple is a visible entity. That conclusion does not follow from the premise. Just because apples are visible, it does not follow that there is a visible entity composed of all apples. Nor does it follow that the set of all apples is visible. The visibility of members of a set does not make the set itself visible. Likewise, just because individual believers and their children are visible, it does not follow (1) that there is a catholic Church or (2) that it is visible.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Hi, Andrew,
If you take a look at the portion of what I wrote that you’ve quoted, you’ll notice that I didn’t say Apostolic succession did not entail doctrinal rectitude. The minor premise was that succession (of any kind — Abrahamic, levitical, whatever) entails doctrinal rectitude, and so because AS is a “form” of succession generally, therefore AS must ential doctrinal rectitude. That is the argument nobody (at least nobody here) would give for the Catholic doctrine of Apostolic succession.
I figured it was relevant to point this out, because you’ve repeatedly insisted that not all kinds of succession entail doctrinal rectitude, and you point to Abrahamic descent as an example. But the only reason this would be relevant is if I or the others you’re talking to here believed that whatever we can say about AS we must be able to say only because it is true of succession generally or any form of succession. Nobody believes that. That’s why I don’t see how the Abraham business is relevant or helpful.
Best,
Neal
Andrew,
I am not against the doctrine of the invisible Church (Hebrews 12:23 is a great proof text for it) and neither is the Catholic Church (I’m sure we would all agree that Augustine taught it long before the Reformers). The objection comes when Protestants want to redefine the visible Church or want to speak of a purely invisible Church. Augustine’s doctrine of the invisible Church did not damage the doctrine of the visible Church as Protestantism’s has. The cliché response when Catholics question Protestants about denominationalism is, “We believe there is only one Church too.” This response misuses the doctrine of the invisible Church because it is being used to justify the very things which Paul condemns in Galatians 5:19-21 as sin (divisions, factions, rivalries)
Peace in Christ, Jeremy
Bryan, please don’t preach at me about “truth seekers” and so on. If you don’t like the way I answer you, just tell me. From my standpoint I’m addressing your argument head on, you just don’t like the way I’m doing it. I could start preaching at you about evading the truth by refusing to define what I have asked you to define and refusing to start with the biblcial data, but I’m sure you have some sort of reason for this. Please give me the benefit of the doubt – I’m trying to address your points. Maybe you just don’t understand yet what I am doing.
You still have not defined what “viisble church” and “catholic” is from the standpoint of the WCF. You have stated that you are using the WCF definition, but it does not seems you understand. Why don’t you just state what the WCF/Reformed defintions of these words are rather than me trying to guess if you really know what you are talking about? And don’t just say you are using the WCF definition – state these definitions.
The visibility of members of a set does not make the set itself visible.
But there is a relationship between the members of a set and the set, right? And the relationship bears on this issue, at least from a Protestant standpoint. I am trying to start with the origins of the the visible church. There were congregations and there were connections between the congregations, right? So what were these relationships? The answer to this is important because you have to start with the definition of 1) the members of the set and 2) the set itself before you can establish the connections. But curiously in your first paragraph above, you say that raising the issue of the members of the set (the local visible churches) is a “red herring.” So you apparently want to discuss the set without the discussion of the members of the set. If you really want to discuss the visible church universal without discussing visible local churches, then fine. But then you are eliminating the possibility of meaningful interaction with Protestants on this issue.
I believe the striking irony of the subject statement in the WCF is what’s being alluded to by Bryan.
Whereas in the early church, you had local churches that submitted to the One, Holy, Catholic & Apostolic Church that submitted to a common theology and ecclesiology, amongst other things; thereby, separating what was genuinely Christian from what wasn’t.
In contrast, in Protestantism, you don’t have the same but instead a myriad of denominations that submit to varying theologies and ecclesiologies, that even contradict those of the other.
In the latter case, it would be very difficult to determine what exactly is heretical sect from what is actually a “church”, since there is not one defining, common theology and ecclesiology that all members submit to other than a membership of contradicting denominations that perhaps even other heretical sects could themselves be considered a legitimate part thereof.
Andrew,
This has nothing to with “my likes”. For you to take it in that direction is to resort to the implicit ad hominem; so is your speculation that perhaps I don’t understand what you are doing. I laid out my argument in #46. I explained in #51 the only two ways to refute a deductive argument. Your latest comment (#84) neither shows one premise of my argument to be false, nor shows the conclusion not to follow from the premises. Therefore, my argument remains unrefuted.
If you want to talk about other things, and not refute my argument, please wait for another thread addressing those things you wish to discuss.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Hey, Andrew.
I do hate to interject myself into a discussion you’re having with somebody else; but I think I’d do this even if we were on the same team, at least in this instance.
You say to Bryan: “You still have not defined what “viisble church” and “catholic” is from the standpoint of the WCF. You have stated that you are using the WCF definition, but it does not seems you understand. Why don’t you just state what the WCF/Reformed defintions of these words are rather than me trying to guess if you really know what you are talking about? And don’t just say you are using the WCF definition – state these definitions.”
But it’s totally weird that you’d say this to Bryan, isn’t it? I mean, one of your main complaints against us, and against all persons who reject Reformed theology in favor of something else, is that we (they) don’t really or never really did understand Reformed theology. And you wish that we’d not try simply to reconstruct Reformed theology by our own lights, but that we would, instead, go to reputable Reformed sources, and use those sources as our reference points as we discuss the ins-and-outs of Reformed theology.
And so Bryan, it appears to me, is simply conforming to your wishes. He’s going to the WCF, saying that what that confession says is going to provide the definition of the ‘visible church’ in his subsequent discussion with you, and then trying to have that subsequent discussion with you.
What could be objectionable about that? He’s using your own authoritative reference point, as you’ve asked us to do. If he’s misunderstanding what that authoritative reference point really says, well and good. Tell him how he’s misunderstood it, and supply for us the appropriate understanding. That would be an excellent and very useful contribution to the discussion. But notice: if you are to supply for us the appropriate understanding and explain to us why exactly our understanding of it is flawed, then you will of course have to “state these [properly understood] definitions” in the WCF for us. For how else are we supposed to be disabused of our misunderstandings?
It isn’t illegitimate for Bryan or for anyone else to rely upon the sources you’ve asked us to rely upon, nor to ask you to explain the content of the WCF definitions for us if we’ve (by your lights) misappropriated or misunderstood these definitions. It is inappropriate for you to ask to us to state our own understandings of the WCF formulae, if all we do is appeal to those particular formulae in acc0rdance with your wishes and you either cannot or will not explain to us why we’ve failed to understand what those formulae really say.
So your first point against Bryan seems inconsistent with the point you’ve typically tried to make here: that none of us really understands Reformed theology, that you yourself really do, and that you are in a position to disabuse us of our misunderstandings if we’d only but listen. But look: we’re listening. Bryan’s question is whether you accept the WCF definition of the visible church or no; if you do, but don’t think we’re getting what that definition really says, then lay out for us what that definition really says so we know exactly what it is you (and every informed Reformed person) accepts. But don’t think it’s illigitimate for any of us to ask you what the definition really says. That’s precisely what you’ve been wanting us to do. So I’ll ask you the same as you’ve asked Bryan: you state the definition, and you tell us why Bryan’s confused about it. That’s not a deck-stacking challenge or anything; it’s only fair; it’s only what you’ve been asking us to ask of you throughout.
Your other remarks to Bryan (about sets and elements of sets) also misfire, I think. You say Bryan wants to discuss the set members and the set itself without also saying anything about the relations between the set members that constitute the set. But why think that, from a Catholic perspective, there are no relations between set members and the set itself? Unless the set is an arbitrary or gerrymandered confabulation, then of course there will be relations between the set members justifying the inclusion of each set member within the set proper. No Catholic denies that there were local congregations and that all of these congregations were related by something that makes them part of the Church. What Catholic would deny this? What Catholic would fail to insist upon this? You and Bryan disagree about how local congregations are related in such a way as to constitute a unified (visible) Church, transcending but including the localized congregations that constitute it. But how does it follow from this that, according to Bryan, the relations between the “set elements” are totally irrelevant to the construction of “the set?”
Best,
Neal
Neal,
No, I think your interruption is good. Trying to communicate with Bryan is not going anywhere once again so I’m going to give up trying.
Anyway, I do think it’s good to go right to the sources when you are trying to represent a position. I like using the CCC or the CE or a direct quote from a bishop as a starting point for this reason. But there are times when I do this and I’m told that I have not understood what I’m quoting. Take all of the discussion around EENS when we quote from Unam Sanctam or Cantate Domino. Apparently we don’t understand what we are quoting or so say our RC friends. And maybe we don’t understand, but it’s still good to go to the relevant primary sources. Now with Bryan what I hoped he would do is try to restate the WCF and other relevant Reformed confessions in his own words. I think this would have helped him understand that he was just stating the obvious. Of course the concept of the visible church does not define an entity in the same sense that it does in the RCC understanding of things. Protestants don’t want the concept of the visible church understood in such a way. But the interesting question which I tried to push Bryan towards is how the respective concepts of visible church relate to the understanding of the visible church in the 1st century. There was no defined entity called the visible church in the RCC sense in the 1st century, but the visible church really did represent something.
Concerning sets and members of sets I’m sure that Catholics do believe there is some relationship. It would have been nice to find out. But Bryan told me in #81, that raising this issue was a red herring and this eliminated any discussion of the matter. For the Protestant the relationship does relate and must relate, but Bryan would not listen to this.
Whereas in the early church, you had local churches that submitted to the One, Holy, Catholic & Apostolic Church that submitted to a common theology and ecclesiology, amongst other things; thereby, separating what was genuinely Christian from what wasn’t.
Roma,
At the point of establishment of the visible church and immediately following, there was no hierarchical and Roman sense of the visible Church. There was a visible church and it really did represents something, but it did not represent the same thing that the RCC speaks of as the visible church in later centuries.
Andrew,
“At the point of establishment of the visible church and immediately following, there was no hierarchical and Roman sense of the visible Church.”
That is a strong statement. What evidence do you have that St. Ignatius was wrong calling the Church of Rome the Church that presides in love or St. Irenaeus was wrong in saying all the Churches of the world must agree with this most glorious Church established in Rome? Or of the early Fathers, especially St. Augustine, appealing to succession by ordination of Bishops for valid authority and rule?
Andrew,
Of course the concept of the visible church does not define an entity in the same sense that it does in the RCC understanding of things.
Once again, here is the Presbyterian concept of the visible catholic Church, which Bryan used as the starting point for his post:
This very section of the Confession defines the “visible catholic Church”, so there is no need for Bryan to do so. The question is, is the Presbyterian definition such that “visible catholic Church” denotes a single entity (“catholic Church”) that exists in extra-mental reality (“visible”)?
Since the Catholic “understanding of things” is that the visible catholic Church is a visible unified whole, its parts having unity of composition, and since you maintain that this is not the Presbyterian understanding of things, then it follows (granted your understanding) that the WCF does not affirm that that the visible catholic Church is a unified visible whole, its parts having unity of composition.
So it remains to those who subscribe to the WCF to account for the visibility of the “visible catholic Church” in a manner that does not involve unity of composition vis-a-vis the individual churches but still delivers a “visible catholic Church” the existence (or removal) of which makes some difference in extra-mental reality. If this cannot be done, then the WCF should be modified accordingly.
Would it be analagous to the difference between a nation and a nation state?
A nation, even if scattered throughout the world, has unity of type, but no visible unity. The Irish nation, in Ireland, America and elsewhere, has unity of type, but no visible unity or unity of composition.
Even if all the people of a single nation were put together on an island, there still would only be unity of type between them.
It is only when a state is formed, such as Ireland (Irish nation state), with a hierarchical and governmental structure, laws etc. that the unity of type extends to compositional unity.
Or consider the U.S. Without the president or the federal government, it would become a collection of states (like Protestant denominations) with unity of type and would cease to be the U.S.; it would rather become like South America; but the compositional unity that makes it the U.S. only comes about with the institution of the federal government, it’s laws etc.
It’s as if to say that Protestants are a nation of people with unity of type, but they have no nation state and therefore no visible unity.
Andrew M (re: #88)
Trying to communicate with Bryan is not going anywhere once again so I’m going to give up trying.
Recall the three options open to a truth-seeker in response to an opposing argument: (from #81)
Recall the only two ways to refute a deductive argument: (from #51)
Your choice of response, i.e. complaining to Neal that “Trying to communicate with Bryan is not going anywhere once again, so I’m going to give up trying” does not show which of the premises of my argument (#46) to be false, nor does it show how the conclusion does not follow from the premises. Therefore, it does not refute my argument. Nor does it ask for more time to think about my argument. Nor does it accept the conclusion of my argument. Therefore, you have not chosen one of the three options of a truth-seeker. Your response is therefore a case of running away from my argument. And this is precisely why your discussions with me do not “go anywhere,” as you have said to me before, because you choose to avoid the three options of the truth-seeker. If you want our conversations to “go somewhere”, you need to love truth more than you love “what I [Andrew] presently believe.”
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
If the visible church is all those who profess Christ around the world, then isn’t professing Christ the same as being part of the visible church? How would this definition exclude my friends in college who thought that formal churches gatherings were superfluous, didn’t go to worship on Sunday and administered communion to themselves in their dorms were, and how is it helpful, in a definition of the Church, to say that “outside being one of those around the world who profess Christ there is no ordinary possibility of salvation”?
Have you even ever read about the great ecumenical councils?
One can simply read the proceedings of the Council at Nicaea itself to see that those who gathered there then represented an ecclesiology that can only be found in the Catholic Church.
Indeed, one need only read the early fathers of the church themselves to see that none of the Protestant sects resemble the very practices and beliefs of the early church, which is only to be found historically in the Catholic Church.
Dear All,
Various protestants establish different times when the Church that called itself Catholic went astray. I don’t know if Kenny said this, but I believe that he (in a previous thread) said that he felt that councils and teachings post the great schism were invalid. I never responded to that as much as I wanted to, because I was arguing about other things. But Andrew M.’s historical claims brought it to my mind again. If there are any protestants who would like to see some of the evidence from 350 A.D. through 1000 AD of the general belief of the Church about, for example, papal jurisdiction and infallibility, please feel free to email me: KBDh02@yahoo.com
Andrew M., I don’ t know when you thought things went wrong in the Catholic Church, but in case you are swayed by evidence before the great schism but after Constantine, this offer goes to you too. Here’s a nice quote that expresses the view of some Eastern abbots writing to Pope Paschal around 800 AD. I like it not because it is the earliest example of its kind (for we can find numerous examples of such language in at least the 300′s AD if not considerably earlier) nor because its writer is of the highest authority (similar language can be found in saints and patriarchs) but because it’s well-written and emotionally moving:
“Hear, O apostolic head, divinely appointed Shepherd of Christ’s sheep, keybearer of the kingdom of heaven, rock of the faith, upon whom is built the Catholic Church. For Peter art thou, who adornest and governest the chair of Peter. . . Hither, then, from the West, imitator of Christ, arise and repel not for ever. To thee spake Christ our Lord: ‘And thou being one day converted, shalt strengthen thy brethren.’ Behold the hour and the place. Help us, thou that art set by God for this. Stretch forth thy hand so far as thou canst. Thou hast strength with God, through being the first of all.”
You can find a lot of examples that explicitly lay out the lack of a final appeal on doctrinal matters beyond the pope, the lack of validity of ecumenical councils that are overruled by the pope, and yes — even though the Easterns don’t like to admit this — universal jurisdiction of the Pope. All before the great schism, and including prominent voices from the East.
Sincerely,
K. Doran
My argument aims to show that given the WCF definition of “visible catholic Church,” there is no entity [given Protestant ecclesiology] to which that term refers, because [given Protestant ecclesiology] (1) there is no unity of composition among all Christians, such that all Christians compose a whole, and (2) sets are not actual [extra-mental] entities, nor are they visible entities. The notion that sets are actual [extra-mental] entities, would be a form of Platonism. (And we all know that we should see to it that no one takes us captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men – Col 2:8.)
The mind is capable of abstracting forms from particulars, by abstracting away [in the mind] the matter of each particular, and then noting that this same form type can be found in many different particulars, and in that sense that they have something in common. The type or form, as abstracted from matter, is immaterial, but the abstraction of matter is a mental act, and hence the abstracted form exists as such only in the mind, not extra-mentally in Platonic ‘heaven.’ (Of course it exists first in God’s mind.) For that reason, even if one concedes that the visible catholic Church is not a composed whole, but tries to claim that the visible catholic Church is a set [i.e. the set of all professing believers and their children], the problem is that the set exists only in the mind, not in extra-mental reality, even though the members of that set exist in extra-mental reality. In other words, claiming to believe in a visible catholic Church would be either claiming to believe only in an idea or concept, or it would be claiming to believe that all professing Christians and their children have something in common, namely, the property of either professing Christianity or being the child of one who does. The latter is a tautology, and is in that sense entirely uninformative. But the former doesn’t work either, because it wouldn’t be possible for a mere idea [i.e. the *set* of all those who profess the true religion, and their children] to be “given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints” (WCF XXV.3) A set cannot do anything; it cannot discipline or teach or gather or perfect the saint, because it is a mere concept/idea. That’s why the referent of Jesus’ words in Matthew 18 cannot be a set (whether of the elect, or of all professing Christians and their children). And that’s why the referent of St. Paul’s statement in 1 Tim 3:15 that the Church is “the pillar and ground of the truth” cannot be a set (whether of the elect, or of all professing Christians and their children). It needs to be a hierarchical unity, as Tom Brown and I explained in “Christ Founded a Visible Church.”
Bryan,
Excellent summary!
Ironic that the Protestant conception of “visible church” resemble a more Platonic one with respect to the Universals.
that the WCF does not affirm that that the visible catholic Church is a unified visible whole, its parts having unity of composition.
Andrew P,
If I were to ask a knowledgeable Catholic today to demonstrate for me the fact the RCC is a “unified visible whole,” what would he say? Well I imagine that he would point me to the very complex administration system of Rome – the popes and the archbishops and the cardinals and all of the personnel and organizational structure that comprise the visible church in the RCC understanding of it. If he knew his CCC he might say that the visible church is a “society structured with hierarchical organs.” And I would have to reply that yes, there is unmistakable evidence that the RCC today is administratively a “unified visible whole.” So you are correct that in this understanding, the WCF would not affirm that the visible church is a “unified visible whole.” And why is this? Because most of the elements of the RCC that define it as a “unified visible whole” were not present at the origins of the visible church in the NT. The things that distinguish Rome as an organized and unified entity were not present when the NT visible church was formed. And this is why it is so important to define the terms (such as “visible” and “catholic”) and understand the matter historically. The RCC did not invent the concept of visible church. The visible church was of Apostolic origins and we can read about the elements of these origins in the Scripture. And in the Scriptures there are descriptions of various elements of the visible church. And as I have detailed several times on this thread, these elements all relate to congregations, not to any organizational structure that unites the congregations. Now of course we can by inference from Acts 15 say that the congregations should speak with each other when a problem arises, but there is no definition as to how the congregations should interact and certainly nothing hierarchical about the interaction. And of course the church in Scriptures was generally unified by a common confession. But there are no bishops and popes and administrative mandates for any sort of superstructure over and beyond the congregations. So the visible church is a distinct concept in the Scriptures even though it does not define a distinct administrative entity as it does with the RCC. So both the Reformed as well as the Apostolic churches fall short of Rome’s definition of the visible church.
So for me and my EPC and SBC friends down the road, we are all part of the same visible church (although they might not use this term). We never have to worry about this too much unless we get queried about it from Catholics and Orthodox folks. And we do have a common confession for the most part. At least our respective confessions unite us much more than the RC’s down the road who are quite a blend of different thought systems form the very conservative to the very liberal.
Dear Andrew M.,
You said: “in the Scriptures there are descriptions of various elements of the visible church. And as I have detailed several times on this thread, these elements all relate to congregations, not to any organizational structure that unites the congregations. Now of course we can by inference from Acts 15 say that the congregations should speak with each other when a problem arises, but there is no definition as to how the congregations should interact and certainly nothing hierarchical about the interaction.”
Really? Saint John Chrysostom’s analysis of Acts 15 suggests that people in the early Church did definitely claim that there was something “hierarchical about the interaction.” Why don’t you read what he said and tell me if you agree?
You said: “And of course the church in Scriptures was generally unified by a common confession. But there are no bishops and popes and administrative mandates for any sort of superstructure over and beyond the congregations.”
Well, Andrew, I completely disagree. We’ve talked at length about why Clement was exercising jurisdictional authority. Presumably we can talk about why Ignatius’ letters suggest that Bishops were an important part of early church life, and why the mid second century lists of Bishops strongly suggest that the early “colleges of presbyters” also had “head presbyters” who were very important. If you’re going to claim that there were no bishops and popes with administrative mandates over and beyond congregations then you are making a very sloppy argument from silence. You are refusing to let the positive extra-scriptural witness of Clement, Ignatius, and the mid-second century gnostic controversy tell you anything about the correct interpretation of the scriptures. In fact, you are relying on ambiguous and innocent silences in scripture and in these extra scriptural sources to unreasonably ignore the positive evidence for hierarchy in these sources. If you want to argue this fully, there are a lot of people here who are happy to discuss the matter at length.
Do you really believe that your protestant arguments from silence are so very very strong that they ought to obviously outweigh the unbroken string of evidence for visible hierarchy stretching from the early second century to the present day?
Let me give you some advice about analyzing data: when the signal to noise ratio is bad, any story — and I mean any story — can be constructed to fit the “evidence.” Therefore, every heresy in the world claims the very early “scriptural” church of the first century as its precedent. It’s easy to see patterns in sparse noisy data that are just a result of the noise. But as soon as the data gets plentiful, your story of no hierarchy disappears. Don’t you think that’s a little suspicious?
Sincerely,
K. Doran
Andrew,
If I could jump in; How is Petrine primacy not clear in Acts 15? Debate, debate, debate, and then Peter speaks and the matter is settled. This is after Scripture calls him first among the Apostles (Matt 10:2) and after Christ established him and his confession as the rock upon which the Church would be built. How is this not a hierarchy? As a Protestant I always assumed that the hierarchy developed from the bottom up, this is not so. It developed from the top down. I have not read all the posts, but I think that at least the seeds of the hierarchy you are asking for are clearly present.
Much love in Christ, Jeremy
Andrew,
So for me and my EPC and SBC friends down the road, we are all part of the same visible church….
Thus far you have agreed with Bryan that the “visible catholic Church” affirmed in WCF is not a visibly unified whole. You go on to assert that the NT Church was not a visibly unified whole. But you have not shown how a “visible catholic Church” (singular) that is not a visibly unified whole is possible. Unless you are prepared to show this, then it seems that the most consistent thing to do is to admit that reference to the “visible catholic Church” in the WCF is misplaced, since, in your opinion, the NT references to the (whole) Church do not refer to a Church that is a visibly unified whole.
Dear Andrew M.,
To back up what Jeremy was saying about Acts 15, I will quote from Chrysostom:
“This (James) was bishop, as they say, and therefore he speaks last, and herein is fulfilled that saying, “In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.” Deuteronomy 17:6; Matthew 18:16 But observe the discretion shown by him also, in making his argument good from the prophets, both new and old. For he had no acts of his own to declare, as Peter had and Paul. And indeed it is wisely ordered that this (the active) part is assigned to those, as not intended to be locally fixed in Jerusalem, whereas (James) here, who performs the part of teacher, is no way responsible for what has been done, while however he is not divided from them in opinion.”
Thus, you will notice that while James does speak after Peter in Acts 15, a very good biblical scholar (and saint) affirms what Jeremy is saying: the scriptures attest to a role that is above and beyond a local bishop, and at the Council of Jerusalem that role is not held by the bishop of Jerusalem, but rather by the key saints and founders of the Church at Rome. Of course, Chrysostom believed that among Peter and Paul, Peter’s role was more important. But that is for another day to discuss. For now, we just want to show you that there is scriptural evidence for our position of extra congregational authority in Acts 15. I will trust Chrysostom’s exegesis over yours.
Sincerely,
K. Doran
p.s. Once again, I also recommend that when you make historical claims from scripture, you treat extra-scriptural sources as having a good deal of interpretive weight. This does not reduce the importance of scripture for our souls and our relationship with Christ. But it does place scripture in the proper light for historical argumentation.
By the way, David, good point in #65
it seems that the most consistent thing to do is to admit that reference to the “visible catholic Church” in the WCF is misplaced
That’s fine. As long as you will admit that referring to the Apostolic Church as the “visible Catholic Church” in the same sense as the RCC later claimed this, then I think we are on the same page. If the CCC is right that the church is a “society structured with hierarchical organs” and there are no such hierarchical entities, then there must be a contrast between the visible church as it was founded and the RCC which contained all of these elements that were not part of the Apostolic church. Now some of the others above have tried to point to some evidence of an inchoate hierarchy, and perhaps there is. But, there is no definable institution that we can call a hierarchy in the Apostolic and post-Apostolic churches. So the visible church of this time is evidenced by the characteristics of her congregations, not by the characteristics of any sort of institution that oversees the congregations (as is the case with the RCC today). Fair enough?
it seems that the most consistent thing to do is to admit that reference to the “visible catholic Church” in the WCF is misplaced
Andrew P.,
That’s fine. As long as you will admit that referring to the Apostolic Church as the “visible Catholic Church” in the same sense as the RCC later claimed this, then I think we are on the same page. If the CCC is right that the church is a “society structured with hierarchical organs” and there are no such hierarchical entities, then there must be a contrast between the visible church as it was founded and the RCC which contained all of these elements that were not part of the Apostolic church. Now some of the others above have tried to point to some evidence of an inchoate hierarchy, and perhaps there is. But, there is no definable institution that we can call a hierarchy in the Apostolic and post-Apostolic churches. So the visible church of this time is evidenced by the characteristics of her congregations, not by the characteristics of any sort of institution that oversees the congregations (as is the case with the RCC today). Fair enough?
If I could jump in; How is Petrine primacy not clear in Acts 15?
Jeremy,
Nobody would debate Peter’s authoritative role as the spokesperson of the Apostles. The difficulty lies in making the jump from an Apostle to a non-Apostle and trying to draw a straight line of authority in the manner which the RCC does. And the other issue is trying to establish Peter’s role in Rome to begin with.
So the visible church of this time is evidenced by the characteristics of her congregations, not by the characteristics of any sort of institution that oversees the congregations….
This will not hold up unless you can explain how the Church, at any time at which it is not a visibly unified whole, is “the visible church.” The “characteristics of her congregations” do not suffice for the visibility of the one Church, for reasons that Bryan has given in his post and subsequent comments.
Here is my perception of this discussion so far:
Everyone seems to agree that the Church (singular) is an actual entity. Thus far, we have only two options whereby to account for the catholic Church as an actual entity:
(1) We confess that the catholic Church is characterized by hierarchical unity of organization, wherein it resembles an organism, a living body. Baptized persons and local churches are related to one another and to the body as members of the body. This body is what “the catholic Church” refers to.
or
(2) We confess that the catholic Church does not resemble a living body; rather it resembles a set, the members of which are persons, local churches and denominations which are related to one another by sharing certain characteristics in common. Collectively, these set members are what “the catholic Church” refers to.
We all agree that the Catholic Church resembles (1). Andrew M. has argued that the Catholic Church does not, however, resemble the Church described in the New Testament. Others have argued that it does resemble the Church in the New Testament after all.
Granted that the New Testament posits that the Church is an actual entity, but not after the manner of (1), it follows that she is an actual entity in some other manner. The only other option I have seen is (2).
But that brings us back to the substance of the original post, which is that anything existing after the manner of (2) is not an actual entity.
These are the key premises at work here:
(a) The Church that Christ founded is an actual entity.
(b) “A plurality of things having only unity of type, and not unity of composition, is not an actual entity.”
The interesting thing is, after all of this discussion, I have yet to see anyone object to either premise. Am I missing something?
Dear Andrew M.,
You said: “Nobody would debate Peter’s authoritative role as the spokesperson of the Apostles. The difficulty lies in making the jump from an Apostle to a non-Apostle and trying to draw a straight line of authority in the manner which the RCC does. And the other issue is trying to establish Peter’s role in Rome to begin with.”
As far as I know, every early Church father who mentioned Peter’s geographical position at all, mentioned his geographical position in Rome. Tertullian mentioned that Peter baptized Christians in the Tiber River, for goodness’ sake! The history of Protestant denial of Peter’s presence in Rome is a complete embarrassment, and I stand amazed that you would mention that history without blushing. Here are some Father’s who mentioned Peter’s presence in Rome:
Ignatius of Antioch 107 AD
Dionysus of Corinth 166 AD / 174 AD
Irenaeus 180 AD
Gaius 198 AD / 217 AD
Tertullian
Clement of Alexandria
Origen of Alexandria
Porhyry of Tyre
Eusebius
Peter of Alexandria
Lactantius of Africa
Cyril of Jerusalem
Pope Damasus I
The list goes on, through Jerome and Augustine and so forth. As for making the jump from Peter’s primacy to his successor’s primacy. . . are you interested in discussing Clement and Ignatius in more detail? Because the jump looks clear to me.
Finally, you said: “But, there is no definable institution that we can call a hierarchy in the Apostolic and post-Apostolic churches.”
Andrew, have you read carefully the arguments that we’ve made about hierarchy in the apostolic Church? In what way is Peter’s primacy, and the apostle’s authority over others, and the deacon’s authority over still other matters not evidence for a definable institution that we can call a hierarchy? If that is not a hierarchy, then what is?
Sincerely,
K. Doran
Andrew M.,
One thing that I’ve noticed with your qualms about the Catholic Church is that they appear to be philosophical, but as your arguments progress your real concerns are historical. You seem to think there is undeniable historical evidence that the Early Church had features that are incompatible with the Catholic Church of today (i.e., that couldn’t at least be the seed of what we have today, but rather were something whose fundamental nature contradicts what we have today). Because of your firm belief in this supposedly undeniable evidence, you won’t even get deeply into the philosophical argument that Bryan and Andrew P. are trying to engage you with.
Other people have emailed me personally to ask for more discussion of historical matters. I think you should do so. Or you should at least read some of the historical sources that we’ve been pointing you to.
The thing that surprises me the most about your historical objections is that you think the early evidence is so clear at all. I don’t think its clear without using evidence from many sources over about 100 to 150 years of Christian history, as well as applying a good dose of uncommon common sense. Given that, in what way is early Christian history going to provide _clear_ testimony against the Catholic Church?
You are looking at the one place in the historical data set where the data is most sparse and fuzzy in order to construct an argument against the great mass of data from the second century onwards in which one clearly sees the “Catholic” things that you don’t like. I’ll say it again: don’t you find such a mode of argument suspicious? Not every heresy can claim the Church of 600 A.D. as part of its history — the evidence is too clear of what the Church was and what it believed. But every heresy under the sun claims the utopian Church of the first century as its predecessor. Maybe that’s because the data there is too sparse for totally unquestionable identification of key features of Christian life?
Let me pose this mathematically. If there are more parameters in your model then there are observations in your data set, then you can’t test your model against the data. Protestants have a complicated argument with many parameters to argue that the original Church did NOT have a hierarchy, and did NOT have a Pope and did NOT have apostolic successors and did NOT have a whole bunch of other things. But you’ve got too many parameters to test on the small data set of early Christian historical sources (including the scriptures). That’s why a bunch of models can “fit” the data, and why your claim of clear evidence from these sparse early sources that can be used to counteract the evidence from the much larger set of later sources is a bunch of baloney.
Sincerely,
K. Doran
One more point: the richness of scripture as a theological data set may well be infinite. But it is scripture as a historical data set that is lacking. Scripture is at least consistent with several different views of the history of the first 30 years of the Church (at least if one views scripture without the kind of philosophical nuance that the writers at CTC have, or without the help of another 50 to 100 years of historical data).
Andrew M., if you take these points to heart, then you are going to have a hard time convincing yourself or anyone else that scripture is actually INconsistent with a Catholic view of the first 30 years of Church history. You don’t have nearly enough evidence to prove your case. And without a firm case there, the supposed historical problems with the Catholic claims are really just wishful thinking on the part of sects and communities that don’t want to join the current manifestation of the historic Christian Church.
Sincerely,
K. Doran
As far as I know, every early Church father who mentioned Peter’s geographical position at all, mentioned his geographical position in Rome.
K. Doran – I did not mention the question of Peter’s presence in Rome, I spoke of his role. In the Scriptures we have no mention of Peter’s playing any part of the Church of Rome as an officer. Apart from his possible allusion to Rome (“Babylon”) in his epistle there is no evidence that he had any part of the church in this city. The church fathers you mention were likely repeating what they had learned from Clement, but exactly what Clement means by his brief reference to Peter and Paul in regards to Rome is a matter of considerable scholarly dispute. I think it could be something like Simon Magus – many of the Church Fathers had all sorts of stories about Simon which later turned out to be mostly untrue. One father picked up the previous father’s accounts, and so on.
have you read carefully the arguments that we’ve made about hierarchy in the apostolic Church
You have talked about people like Peter who had authority. But this is not a hierarchy. I am using hierarchy to say what the CCC references in the term “hierarchical organs.” In other words, hierarchical institutions, not just people in authority. It is these institutions which are what is visible in the RCC today and these institutions which do not seem to be present at the formation of the NT Church.
The thing that surprises me the most about your historical objections is that you think the early evidence is so clear at all. I don’t think its clear without using evidence from many sources over about 100 to 150 years of Christian history
No, like you, I think the evidence of from the early church is often very hazy. But if this is the area of history most likely to be knowledgeable about given events (i.e. Peter being the Bishop of Rome) and there is great uncertainty, then there ought to be unmistakable evidence to bolster the case of those who later come to a certain conclusion. Just the fact that there is consensus on a matter does not prove anything. The question ought to be whether evidence existed to conclude such consensus is justified. Let me give you one example. In the sixth century the writings of Dionysius became part of the corpus of Christian literature. Dionysius was very important because he was known to be a companion of Paul. For almost a millenium the theology of Dionysius was accepted as an important part of the Catholic heritage. No church father between the sixth century and the Renaissance doubted Dionysius’ authenticity. Aquinas quotes Dionysus almost as much as Augustine in the Summa. However in the 15th century the Humanist scholar Lorenzo Valla demonstrated that Dionysius could not have been Paul’s companion and was in fact a sixth century Neo-platonist. The RCC of course resisted such claims, but to make a long story short, eventually the RCC gave up and agreed that the Church had been wrong. He is now known as Pseudo-Dionysius. The point here is that even if there is 100% consensus concerning a matter in a given age it does not prove the belief is justified. If there is a period of haziness and uncertainty on a given question which is followed by a period of certainty over the question, it seems to me that the first question that should be asked is what evidence was brought forward to gain such clarity.
Andrew,
“I think it could be something like Simon Magus.” To equate Peter with Simon Magus as it concerns people knowing much about him, where he lived, went etc…is not real credible for this simple fact: the prominence of this man, Peter. This man, Peter, was not like Carmen San Diego :) for the early Church! If they say he was in Rome why would we think they got it wrong?
Dear Andrew,
At this point, it might be useful for yourself and others to recap your style of argument. I will use numbers below to denote the steps that typically ensue, and letters to refer to particular instances at each step.
STEP 1: Members of CTC write an article attempting to engage you and other Protestants on philosophical and theological grounds, with a bit of history thrown in.
STEP 2: You write a comment that dodges the main argument, refusing to refute it directly — often this comment includes a bold and unsupported historical claim, such as (my paraphrases):
(A) Trent was the first Council that Rome completely dominated; the earlier councils were conciliar, and Rome played little part in them!
(B) You can’t see evidence of hierarchy beyond local congregations in scripture
(C) Peter’s role at Rome is difficult to establish
STEP 3: Someone points out that your historical claim is untrue
(A) I wrote that several first millennium councils were either dominated by Rome or involved Rome as an extremely important player, including the famous council of Chalcedon.
(B) We pointed out that Acts 15 involves extra-congregational authority
(C) I pointed out that Peter’s geographic connection to Rome was completely obvious through the universal witness of antiquity, with evidence beginning nearly as soon as we have any evidence about the church of Rome at all. I also noted some of the evidence of his role there (baptizing in the Tiber)
STEP 4: You bring up small details or distant analogies to attempt to bolster your case.
(A) You wrote that only two papal legates were present at Chalcedon.
(C) You wrote that there is an example (pseudo-Dionysius) of universal patristic testimony needing to be revised in the face of superior later scholarship.
STEP 5: Someone points out why the small details and distant analogies that you use are irrelevant and misleading.
(A) The empress who convened the council specifically did so with the expressed wish for the Pope to be its head. The papal legates were the ecclesiastical presidents of the Council. Like many early Councils, the emperor’s chosen leader was expected to obtain a unanimous vote in favor of that leader’s theological view. It did, and the council specifically claimed that Peter had spoken through Leo. Do you see how misleading it was for you to say that only two papal legates were there?
(C) Now I will point out why the pseudo Dionysius episode is an irrelevant comparison. As Tom Riello pointed out: there were people alive who knew Peter when Ignatius of Antioch wrote to the Roman Church that Peter and Paul had instructed them. When Tertullian wrote that Peter baptized in the Tiber, he was only a few old men removed from those who knew Peter. This is a completely different case from the universal testimony of the authorship of pseudo-Dionysius, in which the consensus was formed at a time when no one could have been even close to having testimony from their own grandfather about who wrote the works in question. And furthermore, the number of liars necessary for the patristic testimony about Dionysius to be wrong was mainly one: the actual author of that work. Entire communities of early Christians would have had to have been liars for the stories about Peter’s deeds in Rome to be based on no teaching role of him there at all. You have both the closeness of the testimony and the type of testimony against you in this comparison.
STEP 6: You either say nothing in reply or change the subject
(A) I don’t believe you admitted publicly that you were dead wrong about Trent compared with Chalcedon. If you did, I missed it.
Regarding the points on how to analyze data, you said: “The point here is that even if there is 100% consensus concerning a matter in a given age it does not prove the belief is justified. If there is a period of haziness and uncertainty on a given question which is followed by a period of certainty over the question, it seems to me that the first question that should be asked is what evidence was brought forward to gain such clarity.”
You are wrong. In order to claim either development or corruption from the early Church in Acts and Clement to the hierarchical, petrine, sacramental, mystical Church of Augustine, you need to have clear evidence from the earlier period to compare with the clear evidence that we have from the later period. While we can’t follow up on WHY people in Augustine’s period believed the things they did about the early Church (if we could, we would have by definition clearer evidence from the earlier period!), their testimony of what the Church was like in their day, and their calm statements about how this was always how it had been, are the BEST EVIDENCE WE HAVE. You simply cannot refute the better later evidence without equally good evidence form the earlier period. That is why the people who attempt to do so each pick their own fairy tale about what the earlier period looked like: Morman, Presbyterian, Baptist, Jehovas Witnesses, etc. They would all pick the same fairy tail if the early evidence was of the same quality as the later.
Sincerely,
K. Doran
Bryan,
While it MIGHT be the case that immersion in my own paradigm leaves me unconvinced by your arguments, it seems much more likely to me that your argument is wholly incomplete. Otherwise, you have just disproven the existence of my family. Namely, you say that Protestant theologians made “a philosophical error. This was the error of assuming that unity of type is sufficient for unity of composition. In actuality, things of the same type do not by that very fact compose a unified whole. ” Using this logic, the people who are the same type — related to me biologically (and/oror by marriage) — do not by that very fact compose my family. If this is true, I am somewhat shocked but grateful that I can reduce some of my Christmas Card mailing expenditures. Of course, another [fairly well-established] view might be that my family does exist but that it is NOT a unified whole. We could then debate what makes any particular family “unified” and/or “whole”. Regardless, I am remain convinced that my family, like the visible church, does exist and in fact the two share many attributes: unified in some senses, diverse in others, variously hierarchical with no clear single human leadership — and likely none on the horizon.
Let me say it this way: The WCF notion of the visible catholic church is just that, a notion. It is a notional set — not a philosophical error. All of those who are part of the set are by definition part because they are of the same type — professing belief and/or through affiliation with, etc. etc. The major use of the visible church within the WCF is to denote that there are plenty of people in a variety of congregations around the world who are aligned with the teachings of Christ. Some hold His teachings more dear than they hold Him. Some show up on Sunday and roll their eyes. Some worship in a different building than they did last year because someone upset them. Some only worship in private. But they are all unified in their OUTWARD (hence “visible”) affiliation with the teachings of Christ. At least some of them worship Satan or Buddha or Oprah or themselves, because INTERNALLY they are not authentically part of the “invisible” church. The notion on the visible church is to define the venn diagram circles associated with biblical teaching that some (invisibly) are ACTUALLY redeemed and some within the visible church are not. The very nature of the visible church is that it is what can be seen to APPEAR to be Christian. The degree to which its constituent parts are unified under hierarchical authority is not germane — and certainly does not deny its existence. The “catholicity” of the visible church refers to the tautological aspect that the “true religion” defines who is part of the one body and therefore who is not. In other words, for example, the visible church includes all who can be counted as Christian, not those who reject the teachings of Christ. As such, for example, Latter Day Saints cannot reasonably be called “Christian” and are not appropriately part of the visible church. That said, there is no earthly authority determining the reasonable definition, so people might wrongly include or exclude, but the Lord Jesus has dominion over this kingdom, and He knows what His dominion is. As such, this catholic body is generally apparent, hence visible, even if you can’t actually “see” it. Bottomline, people can see who are participating in religion — only God knows who is authentically His.
(Note: as an extreme example, Christians huddled in a basement in China are part of the visible church, even though nobody else sees them — they are visibly apparent to the naked eye as outwardly participating in the Christian religion. They are part of the same visible catholic church that I am. I am united with them in upholding Christ as the Savior. Who knows? I might disagree with a lot of their doctrine and practices and preferences. Still, I pray that I could be united in the exact same way with even more people throughout China and Arab nations the and the US.)
Duncan, (re: #116)
Welcome to Called To Communion. Thanks for your comment. You wrote:
That conclusion would follow if what constitutes a family is only unity of type. But a family has visible unity, by way of a visible hierarchy, as St. Paul says: “For the husband is the head of the wife” (Eph 5:23), and the children are subordinate to the parents, as St. Paul says: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord” (Eph 6:1). So, my argument does not eliminate families.
What is a philosophical error is to consider a set (which is something merely notional — i.e. in the mind) a visible something in extramental reality, i.e. “the visible catholic Church.” When Jesus said in Matthew 16 “Upon this rock I will build My Church,” He wasn’t saying, “Upon this rock I will build My set.” Hence in Matt. 18 he gives disciplinary instructions in which people are to “tell it to the Church.” But it makes no sense to bring disciplinary concerns before a set. It makes sense to bring disciplinary issues before persons in an authorized hierarchy.
I agree that there are plenty of people who are aligned on many things. But the point I’m making here is that there being many people who believe in Christ and seek to follow Him does not bring into existence an entity, i.e. “the visible catholic Church.”
The problem with that statement is that there is no such thing [given Protestantism] as “the visible [catholic] church.” It is like talking about unicorns and leprechauns as though they actually exist.
The argument in my post shows why there is no such thing as “the visible [catholic] church.” You can find a summary of my argument in comment #46, and also in comment #97. So far the argument has not been refuted.
Duncan, if there were no visible catholic Church, but only embodied believers in Christ (who accept His teachings), local congregations and denominations, what would be different? How would the present situation be any different? Your claim that it is visible even though you can’t actually see it, sounds very much like “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” So it is important in this case to be able to show that you’re not actually in an Emperor’s New Clothes situation. That’s why I am asking you this question (i.e. “if there were no visible catholic Church, …?”)
If they were only part of the invisible Church, and there in fact were no actual “visible catholic Church,” what would be different? How would you know the difference?
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Bryan,
Protestantism has a visible catholic church.
1) The entire argument against this position rests on a false assumption, namely, that the term “visible catholic church” refers to the same sort of thing as an apple or “panapple.”
2) But the visible catholic church is not just any ordinary thing in this world; it is the body of Christ. Christ, the head, is in heaven, and his visible body is his catholic church, which is scattered all over this world. To be sure, the language of the “body of Christ” in the NT applies first of all to specific local churches (e.g., Corinth) and not to the visible catholic church. But in the epistle to the Ephesians it seems to be extended to comprehend the universal church.
3) The visible catholic church has an invisible principle of unity, namely, the Spirit of Christ. Furthermore, there are other ways in which we can speak of “invisible” aspects of the church, as Augustine recognized. If one uses the term “church” to refer to “elect,” i.e., to the wheat as distinguished from the tares, that church is “invisible” to us. But the fact that there are invisible aspects to the church (Catholics and Protestants are agreed on this) does not mean that the church is invisible. The church is always visible; it appears in concrete local instantiations.
It is rather Catholicism that has no visible catholic church.
1) Catholicism limits its definition of the visible catholic church to churches in communion with the pope of Rome. This seems catholic, because there are 1 billion members of this church; however, there are more than 500 million Protestants + Orthodox + Anglican that are regarded as outside of Christ’s visible catholic church.
2) The use of Paul’s doctrine of head/body to apply to the Catholic communion alone is a perversion of Paul’s teaching. Paul’s entire point in Ephesians is that the catholic church is a new humanity. The church is the “fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph 1:23). It is “one new humanity” of Jew and Gentile alike (Eph 2:15). It is one temple in Christ (Eph 2:21-22). “There is one body and one Spirit” (Eph 4:4): that is a confession of faith in the visible catholic church. Catholics today are in the position of the Donatists whom Augustine opposed; they deny the true catholicity of the Church by claiming to be the only instantiation of the visible catholic church. Paul’s entire point, that the visible catholic Church is the new humanity in Christ, is thereby obscured.
Blessings,
Dave
David, (re: #118)
If there were no “visible catholic Church,” but only visible local churches and an “invisible catholic Church,” what would be different from the present situation? What would be different as we looked around at the world?
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Bryan,
I find your question difficult to answer. The only possible referent I can think of that applies to the term “invisible church” would be the sum of the elect. (I don’t think Catholics and Protestants are disagreed on this.) The elect are “invisible” only in the sense that it is not always apparent to the human eye who is truly a member of Christ.
You seem, however, to be using the term “invisible church” in a different way. To me, the term seems inherently self-contradictory since any other usage of the term “church” implies visibility; i.e. it implies an actual gathering of Christian believers under Word and sacrament.
David, (re: #120)
Ok, I’ll rephrase my question, in order to avoid the problem of defining an invisible Church. If there were no “visible catholic Church,” but only persons who profess the true religion, and their children, meeting in local visible local churches, what would be different from the present situation? What would be different as we looked around at the world?
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
David,
Combining your two points, you wrote: “Catholicism limits its definition of the visible catholic church to churches in communion with the pope of Rome. . . Catholics today are in the position of the Donatists whom Augustine opposed; they deny the true catholicity of the Church by claiming to be the only instantiation of the visible catholic church.”
The problem with your comparison of the Catholics of today with the Donatists whom Augustine opposed, is that when Augustine opposed the Donatists, he used exactly the “limited” definition that you have rejected.
Following Optatus before him, Augustine pointed out that the true Catholic Church was the one that was in communion with the Bishop of Rome. He even composed a little ditty (it sounds better in Latin) to help the people remember this fact in their apologetics against the Donatists:
The Donatists, not to be outdone, established a Donatist bishop in Rome. Both sides knew that communion with Rome was essential to be considered to be part of the Catholic Church. The issue was settled because of apostolic succession: the Donatist bishop of Rome had no predecessor, so was obviously not the real Bishop of Rome.
Sincerely,
K. Doran
Bryan,
I believe that, if there were no visible catholic church, there would be no visible local churches, and no Christians. So I believe that everything would look very different.
There are some Protestants who might accept your argument and say, ok, who cares, we have no visible catholic church. I reject this and think it very dangerous. To say there is no visible catholic church but only visible local churches would be to say that Christ is a king without one church. But Christ has one church. Therefore, there is a visible catholic church.
Blessings,
Dave
K. Doran,
“The issue was settled because of apostolic succession.”
The Donatists persisted as a movement for centuries after Augustine, so the issue was not exactly “settled” because of apostolic succession. Both sides claimed apostolic succession; the issue, I think, was ultimately settled because the Donatists had no genuine catholicity.
Protestants have largely (not wholly) abandoned apostolic succession, although strictly speaking there is no reason why a Calvinist system of church government should not affirm it. After all, ministers are ordained by ministers who were ordained by ministers stretching back to the Reformation. And in the time of the Reformation, all sides claimed to be the legitimate continuation of the church. No one said, “who needs tradition?” I would affirm the efforts of various Protestants to recover the concept of apostolic succession.
Dave,
Do you acknowledge that Augustine and Optatus before him used the lack of communion with the Bishop of Rome to explain why the Donatists were not the true Catholic Church? If you do, we can move forward to the next step, if you don’t, why not?
Sincerely,
K. Doran
Well, I would acknowledge that this was one of a variety of arguments Augustine used.
David,
Your answer indicates that the term “visible catholic Church” is just another word for the mental sum of visible local churches. Your answer entails that there is no additional singular entity to which the term “visible catholic Church” refers. There is no panapple; there are only apples. In our minds, we can consider as one all the existing apples, and join a word ‘panapple’ to this concept “all the existing apples,” but there is no actual singular referent in the world to which this concept corresponds, just as there is no actual entity consisting of my piano, the Empire State building, and the planet Venus. Only the individuals exist. The unity of those three exists only in the mind, as a mental construct. Likewise, given your answer, “visible catholic Church” is only a mental construct; what actually exists are only visible local churches. The danger is treating what is only a mental construct, as if it is an actual entity.
Now, I suppose you might disagree with my argument that your position entails that the “visible catholic Church” is only a mental construct. If you disagree, then here’s my next question: If the visible catholic Church were in actuality only a mental construct, and only visible local churches actually existed, what would be different from the present situation? What would be different as we looked around at the world?
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Dave,
I agree completely. Then the question that will help us see where and why we differ is: why was this argument a valid and important argument for Optatus and Augustine, but not a valid and important argument today?
Sincerely,
K. Doran
K. Doran,
I do believe it is a valid and important ecumenical consideration today. Communion with the bishop of Rome is certainly desirable; much more desirable than most Protestants would assert. I am not trying to say it is not a valid and important consideration; it is not, however, the only or solely relevant factor. (Otherwise I would have to say that all Anglicans are not in the visible church simply because Henry wanted a divorce.)
Blessings,
Dave
Bryan,
No, it is not. I believe one holy catholic and apostolic church. That is the visible catholic church of Christ. It is not just a mental sum. It really exists.
It’s lack of apparent unity of composition troubles you. Well, it obviously troubles me as well (I wholly support efforts at ecumenical reconciliation), but that does not mean I do not accept by faith that there is one visible catholic church.
Your problem is that you are forgetting the first two words in the article on the church: I believe. I believe one holy catholic and apostolic church. It is an article of faith that this church exists and is visible. It is not something we can simply verify and quantify according to ordinary procedures, such as by looking for the panapple. This robs it of being a genuine confession of faith.
Yes, I disagree. And you have already asked the “what would be different” question (121), to which I say, there would be no visible local churches if the visible catholic church did not exist. I think, however, we are now going in circles. Thanks for the interesting article and argument. It poses an impressive challenge to Protestantism, which I did not want to leave unanswered.
David,
Just a quick chime in from a fellow Protestant:
“The church, Hans Kung has stated, is one, though divided (Kung, The Church, 320). This unity is not visible at the organizational level; it is a spiritual reality, consisting in the fellowship of all true believers sharing in the Holy Spirit. It becomes visible when believers share the same baptism, partake of the same supper, and look forward to sharing one heavenly city.”
~Mark Dever
Peter
#130 David
I would ask what is it that the multiple visible catholic churches hold in unity? Would you please enumerate to me what is necessary and binding upon all true Christians to believe so that there might be unity?
What could a true Christian do if he was in communion with a Socinian body and looked around at the different choices in order to determine if his beliefs were correct?
Also, would you be comfortable saying that the Roman Catholic Church is included among all of the visible(mystical) catholic bodies and is therefore also a visible local body?
David, (re: #130)
I understand that you accept the line from the Creed by faith. I do too. But, we are talking about whether the conception of “visible catholic Church” in your ecclesiology reduces the “visible catholic Church” to a mental construct, or allows it to correspond to an actual entity. That is, we are talking about whether your ecclesiology conforms to the Creed. I’m arguing that your ecclesiology does not conform to the Creed, in that, according to my argument, in your ecclesiology your concept of “visible catholic Church” reduces the Church to a mental construct. And it is no refutation of my argument to point out that the Creed demands you believe that there is “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.” Of course it does. That’s simply not the point in question. The fact that the Creed requires you to believe that there is “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” does not show that your ecclesiology avoids reducing the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” to a mental construct.
You claim that because we must accept this line of the Creed by faith therefore the existence of “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church,” is not something we can verify. But I don’t agree. That would entail that while Jesus was on earth, the Apostles could not have had faith in Christ, because they could verify His existence by way of their senses. And that implication is obviously false. So the Church does not need to be invisible, and our concept of the Church does not need to make the Church reducible to a mental construct, in order for us to affirm in faith this particular line of the Creed.
These four terms (“one,” “holy,” “catholic,” and “apostolic”) are the four marks of the Church. They are the very means by which we discover or ‘pick out’ the Church in the world, because among all the institutions of the world, only the Church Christ founded possesses all four marks. Even atheists can believe that the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” exists, just as atheists can believe that Jesus “suffered, died, and was buried.” What requires faith, for believing this line of the Creed concerning the Church, is what follows from its place in the Creed, in relation to everything preceding that line, and everything following that line. That is, the Church is not a merely human institution, but a divine institution established by the Son of God, animated by the Holy Spirit, and in which and through we receive His Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of sins, and participate in Christ’s work of redemption that culminates in His glorious return and the resurrection of our bodies. That’s the aspect of the ecclesial line in the Creed that requires grace to believe, not the existence of the visible catholic Church, but the divine ‘dimension’ of the Church that is invisible to the natural man, just as Christ’s divinity while on earth was invisible to the natural man, and so only by the Father’s revelation could St. Peter declare that Jesus is the “Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Mt. 16:16)
So the fact that we need faith in order to believe this line of the Creed does not mean either that the Church referred to in this line is invisible or that in our ecclesiology our concept of the Church must allow the Church to be reducible to a mental construct such as the panapple or the set whose members including only my piano, the Empire State Building, and the planet Venus.
Nor does the fact that you affirm and assert the existence of “the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church,” show that your concept of the Church avoids reducing it to a mental construct. It is not impossible for those who believe that the panapple exists to assert its existence. Asserting the existence of the panapple, and asserting that it is not just a mental construct does not demonstrate that the panapple actually exists and is not merely a mental construct.
Imagine that you ask the panapple believer “If there were no panapple, but the panapple were only a mental construct, what would be different as we look out into the world?,” and he responds, “there would be no apples.” What is he not getting? He is not grasping that in order for the panapple to be something other than a mental construct, what makes it one cannot only be his mind. The panapple must have extra-mental unity, actual unity. He therefore has to acknowledge that if the panapple did not exist, but only apples existed, there would be a real difference in the world as we look around. Claiming that if apples exist, therefore the panpple exists, and that if there were no panpple there would be no apples, is exactly what would be the case if the panapple were merely a mental construct. So such a reply does not show that the panapple is anything other than a mental construct, and, by the principle of parsimony, reduces the panpple to a mental construct.
So likewise, responding to the question “If there were no visible catholic Church, but only visible local churches, what would be different?” with, “there would be no visible local churches,” is to give an answer identical to what would be the case if there were no actual visible catholic Church, and the “visible catholic Church” were only a mental construct. And because of the principle of parsimony, such a position thereby reduces the visible catholic Church to a mental construct.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Peter G, 131.
I agree. The church is visible; its principle of unity is invisible.
Dave
Dave,
You said: “I do believe it is a valid and important ecumenical consideration today.” The problem is you have shifted the goal posts. Optatus and Augustine did not use the criteria of communion with the Bishop of Rome as an “ecumenical consideration” to be mulled over by various legitimate groups which were sadly not in communion with each other. Rather, Optatus and Augustine first assumed that there was only one legitimate visible communion, and then proved that they were part of that one legitimate communion because they were in communion with the Bishop of Rome (Optatus calls this the “First Endowment” from which the others, such as the Trinitarian creed, flow). The Donatists also assumed that there was only one legitimate visible communion, and in order to defend their claim to being that one they established a Bishop of Rome for themselves as well. Thus both sides explicitly or implicitly affirmed the following two things:
(1) There is only one legitimate visible communion, and
(2) That communion had better have a Bishop of Rome in it.
It seems to me that you explicitly deny both of those things. And the question is: if you do deny them, and if you do admit that these were not denied by Optatus and Augustine, then why are you right and Optatus and Augustine (and, for that matter, the Donatists) wrong?
Sincerely,
K. Doran
David,
Following up my #133.
Imagine that I gave the name “Trires” to the following three things taken together: my piano, the Empire State Building, and the planet Venus, and I claimed that Trires “is not just a mental sum; it really exists.”
Imagine then, that you asked me the following question: “If Trires were in actuality only a mental construct, and what actually existed [relevant to this question] were only your piano, the Empire State Building, and the planet Venus, what would be different from the present situation? What would be different as we looked around at the world?”
Imagine then that I replied: “If there were no Trires, neither my piano, nor the Empire State Building, nor the planet Venus would exist.”
Would you then believe that I had shown that Trires is not a mental construct? If so, then how would you propose showing that mere mental constructs are only mental constructs, or do you think there is no way to distinguish between mental constructs and actually existing entities? But if not, then why do you (apparently) think that a parallel answer in the case of the visible catholic Church is sufficient to show that the “visible catholic Church” does not reduce to a mental construct?
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Alicia,
The ecumenical creeds.
Exercise some discernment.
Absolutely. Of course.
David,
I would further ask, if a Christian( at least he believes himself to be a Christian because of an inner witness) wants to play “spot the heretic”, from where does he begin? Is the herectic all of those who have gone out from the church that claims that it has apostolic authority or all those schismatics that came after the earlier part of the Reformation? Where does this place the Reformers who adopted their own confessions in order to keep a bond of unity?
How does a person objectively say who ‘they’ ” that went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us”? (1 John 2:19)
I have a hard time figuring out the locus from which an accusing finger can point and who the finger points at.
Alicia
K. Doran,
I actually don’t need to deny either of them, since I believe that the Catholic communion (and therefore the bishop of Rome) is a part of the visible Catholic church!
As a Protestant, I believe that I do have communion with the bishop of Rome. We are joined by one faith and one Spirit; we have the same Lord who is Christ. Sadly, our true and deep spiritual unity has not found visible expression. That does not mean we have no unity; to assert so would be to deny the Spirit or unjustifiably limit the Spirit to one particular church body.
The question is, because unity has not found visible expression, does that mean then that the catholic church is invisible or only a mental concept? No: the principle of its unity is invisible (the Spirit); but the Spirit is always manifest in visible local churches, producing fruit. So I insist that the catholic church is visible and not just a mental concept. And that I and the bishop of Rome are both members of this visible catholic church, on the basis of the invisible unity we have.
Would you say that Anglicans are not members of the visible catholic church? They have apostolic succession.
I think there are 2 ways to view ‘heresies’. Rome’s way says that a difference in opinion from what Rome teaches is a heresy. The locus of power is Rome, which allows for Rome to ‘develop’ doctrine in whatever way it sees fit. It is all acorns turning into oak trees over there.
The Protestant way (and I believe the way outlined in the Bible) is to discern, compare the teachings and toss out the one that deviates from ‘what has been taught’. If early Christians didn’t need to believe the Marian dogmas, modern Christians don’t. If early Christians didn’t need to believe in Papal Infalibility or the popes universal juristiction, we don’t.
It is likely that the Protestants threw the baby out with the bath water in many areas… there is something to be said for Apostolic succession (though I think most protestants have it, even if they don’t recognize it through laying on of hands). Certainly there are more groups that have apostolic succession than are recognized by Rome.
I would ask, why play ‘spot the heretic’? According to the Bible, Heretics have a couple of characteristics. They are divisive, and salacious, and ‘teach’ something different. I believe it is possible for members to have differing opinions about certain doctrines without needing to label them.
In necessary things, unity;
In doubtful things, liberty;
In all things charity.
As the moderator of this thread, I want to remind those who wish to comment that comments should be about the content of the article. (See the comment guidelines.) Any further off-topic comments will be deleted. Thanks.
K. Doran (#122)
O please, o please! Send us the Latin (or tell us where we can find it). That sounds so cool!
jj
David (#137)
I must admit I find it confounding that the circularity in this doesn’t appear to bother you – the principle of unity is the ecumenical creeds – and what are the ecumenical creeds? Why, those that are the principle of unity!
Surely in order for the creeds to be called ecumenical, you have to know what churches are in the οἰκουμένη in the first place??!! Or, alternately, you have to have some principle for determining just what are the ecumenical creeds independently of saying they are the ones held by the οἰκουμένη??
I sob (virtually, of course :-)) when I hear this sort of circularity pronounced without explanation, justification, or reasoning!
jj
PETER G.
Why would you use a quote from Hans Kung? He hasn’t been able to teach Catholic Theology for many years, He barely hangs in as a Catholic. Go to the Church if you want to know how the Church functions ( Use the Catechism of the Catholic Church)
Blessings
NHU
#138 David,
You said: “I actually don’t need to deny either of them, since I believe that the Catholic communion (and therefore the bishop of Rome) is a part of the visible Catholic church! ”
I ask: Why then do many other Reformered Christians disagree with you,and even are mean spirited when a Protestant chooses to switch churches and become Roman Catholic?
#140 Bob,
The reason I want to play spot the heretic is to be certain that I, a Reformed Christian who am leaning towards Catholicism, can be sure that doing so is not a herectical move. I am not seeking to be subversive and I am not lewd. If heresy is entirely ethical and not in the realm of dogma and doctrine than that would mean that I should enter communion with the nicest of people rather than where truth lives.
Alicia
JJT,
I hope K. Doran won’t mind me pinch-hitting for him:
best,
John
John S (#146)
Thanks, John! I found a scan of the Migne version of the Psalmus and it was very long.
jj
David DeJong,
I walked away and ruminated on what you said:
“As a Protestant, I believe that I do have communion with the bishop of Rome. We are joined by one faith and one Spirit; we have the same Lord who is Christ. Sadly, our true and deep spiritual unity has not found visible expression. That does not mean we have no unity; to assert so would be to deny the Spirit or unjustifiably limit the Spirit to one particular church body”
I think that you are right that the faith is one and the Spirit is one and that we do have a deep spiritual unity where Christ is our head. This is too important to push aside, and is the whole reason, I would think, that Christ prayed that we would be one without any divisions. Is it possible that our Lord meant unity under a hierachy of real Apostolic succession where the Bishop of Rome is more than a figure head?
If I am involved in a dispute in a local Protestant body where I disagree with my Pastor because I believe that the Roman Catholic Church might just be correct, do I submit to my pastor or put myself under the authority of a priest who is in unity with the Bishop of Rome per the Catholic Church’s doctrine of authority?
You see, I don’t know where I am suppossed to submit.
Alicia
Alicia,
In 138 you asked:
From my position (a Protestant perspective, to be sure), there is no objective position from which one can determine this. All that we can do is prayerfully study Scripture, history, and tradition and use our discernment (and rely on the wisdom of the church!) in order to come to conclusions on who/what is truly ecumenical. This also answers John in 143. I understand that you are sobbing at my circular reasoning. But it is not an uninformed and random judgment. It is a serious consideration of Scripture, history, and tradition, recognizing the complexity of the issues involved and also recognizing the power and vitality of the Spirit’s work in the broad streams of Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism. Sometimes rushing to a position based on “principle” is not necessarily the wisest move.
Alicia, 145. I agree that there are many uncharitable Protestants. If uncharitable Protestantism drives you to Catholicism, that is understandable. I think every individual situation is complex and there are those for whom I think converting to Catholicism has been a blessing from God. It’s not black and white; that is my whole point in retaining a philosophically problematic belief in the one holy catholic and apostolic church.
Bryan, 133 and 136.
For the sake of argument I will accept your terms, since otherwise we will go in endless circles. The Creed reads, “I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.” You essentially are saying: because Protestantism has no visibly unified organized church, its ecclesiology does not “conform to the Creed.” Correct? Further, you are interpreting the Creed as a call to discern which church, of all those that claim to be churches, is the one holy catholic and apostolic church. Finally, you identify this church with the church of Rome.
A question: do you also believe that “outside of this church there is no salvation”? There is perhaps no saying in the tradition that has a greater pedigree than that one!
Later I have more comments on 133/136.
Alicia, 148:
It is possible, certainly. I’m sure you are in a difficult situation and I hope you will be given clarity. The main thing I am emphasizing, as an ecumenical Protestant, is that Christ is not divided. Certainly if you join Rome you will be in a visible church of Christ, but (my argument is) not the ONLY visible church of Christ, not the ONLY part of the one holy catholic and apostolic church. And (this is definitely from my Protestant perspective) to join Rome is not only to join a church that has many serious errors, but also compounds those errors by asserting its infallibility (thereby not allowing for any genuine process of self-criticism).
Blessings,
Dave
David, (re: #150)
You wrote:
There are visibly unified denominations and congregations among Protestants, but none has all four marks.
I wouldn’t say that the line in the Creed is explicitly a call to discern which church, of all those that claim to be churches, is the one holy catholic and apostolic Church; it is an article of the faith of that very Church, about its own four essential marks. Indirectly, of course, it has the implication for the inquirer that to find the Church referred to in the Creed, he must look for the Church having all those four marks. This was especially important, at the time, for Catholic travelers who arrived in a city and wanted to find the true Church among all the heretical sects — see the patristic quotations I included in comment #12 of “The Tu Quoque.”
Regarding “outside the Church there is no salvation,” yes, that is a dogma of the Church. But it is important to understand correctly the meaning of that dogma, in conjunction with concepts such as invincible ignorance and baptism of desire. Tom Brown has addressed this in more detail here.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
David DeJong,
You said: “From my position (a Protestant perspective, to be sure), there is no objective position from which one can determine this. All that we can do is prayerfully study Scripture, history, and tradition and use our discernment (and rely on the wisdom of the church!) in order to come to conclusions on who/what is truly ecumenical.”
1. So maybe we should consider walking outside our Protestant positions and embrace the objective way that is offered; could it plausibly be as equally objective as submitting to the Holy Scriptures?
2. Discernment is an empty concept unless it connotes something that can be known. How do I practically practice discernment about issues that so many sects are divided over?
3. What church’s wisdom are you speaking of? There is much disagreement.
You said: “ I understand that you are sobbing at my circular reasoning. But it is not an uninformed and random judgment.”
4. You sit comfortably in your admitted circular reasoning, yet you have chosen a church body. Please tell me what led to your conclude that your church is the one you should be worshiping in if not on doctrines that are in agreement with your choice?
“It is a serious consideration of Scripture, history, and tradition, recognizing the complexity of the issues involved and also recognizing the power and vitality of the Spirit’s work in the broad streams of Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Protestantism.”
5. Ok, so the Spirit works in broad streams, I can accept this, but it also looks as if the Orthodox and Protestant coalesce around The Catholic Church. Personally, I am finding if I want to know if something, my “go to” resource are Catholic theologians and philosophers.
You also said: “Sometimes rushing to a position based on “principle” is not necessarily the wisest move.”
Hypothetically, and because you come from the URCNA denomination…If you were a pastor or an elder in your church and someone was flirting with Catholicism, maybe someone very close to you, on what grounds if not principled grounds would you seek to compel them to not leave the Dutch Reformed Church? I don’t know what you’ve seen in your church, but they aren’t sent off with a blessing.
Alicia
Re: “outside the Church there is no salvation”.
David, I’m curious why you asked about this, whether you believe this tradition or not.
Those who will be “saved” will have an eternal destiny in heaven. And when we get to heaven someday, there won’t be anyone there who is “outside” the Church – because being in heaven is equivalent to having eternal membership in the Church.
Inversely, if someone were to reject membership in the Church, then he would be rejecting anything to do with heaven. So – outside the Church there is no salvation.
David DeJong, you wrote:
If you have received a valid Sacrament of Baptism, then the Catholic Church would acknowledge that you have communion with the true church. Your communion would be real, but imperfect.
All Christians should seek full union with the true church:
Dominus Iesus also touches on your question about the possibility of salvation for those who are not formally and visibly members of the Church:
I hope this helps gives some clarity to what the Catholic Church teaches. I highly recommend reading all of Dominus Iesus.
Nelson, (re: #144)
I didn’t quote Kung; Dever did. And I don’t think he was using the quote as an appeal to authority but rather as illustrative.
Thanks,
Peter
Bryan, 133 and 136
Everything you are saying here is true. I cannot prove or demonstrate that the church actually exists and is not merely a mental construct. Perhaps we need to distinguish between two claims:
a) I believe that Protestantism’s visible catholic church actually exists and is not merely a mental construct.
b) I believe that I can demonstrate that this church exists and is not merely a mental construct.
I affirm (a), but realize that for skeptics such as yourself, I cannot satisfactorily prove (b). There is just no way to do that.
Ok, but I am noting that here your claim is stronger. You need to say not only that the Protestant visible catholic church is reducible to a mental construct but also simply is a mental construct. To get from one to the other you invoke the “principle of parsimony.” This works philosophically, but philosophy isn’t always real life. Why should the principle of parsimony apply to belief in the church as confessed in the Creed?
The way I see it, there are three options.
1) I could accept your critique, remain Protestant, and claim that the catholic church is “invisible.” Some Protestants do this. This makes no sense to me: the only possible referent for “invisible church” is the body of elect, which cuts across a variety of “visible” communions and is not the church confessed in the creed.
2) I could accept your critique, decide that whatever the church is, it must have visible organizational unity, and become Catholic (or Orthodox, I suppose).
3) I could accept your critique, realize that I cannot avoid the possibility that my belief in the one holy catholic and apostolic church is reducible to a mental construct, but nevertheless continue to believe in the visible catholic church as a Protestant.
We both agree that (1) is not a good option. Should I choose (2) or (3)? You invoke the principle of parsimony and want me to choose (2). I want to stick with (3). Why?
Basically, I want to stick with (3) even though I cannot finally philosophically justify to you that the visible catholic church is more than a mental construct. Nevertheless I believe it is real, and visible, and much more than a mental construct. I believe in the Holy Spirit, and I believe that the Holy Spirit works not only in the Catholic communion, but also in Protestant and Orthodox churches. I believe that the Holy Spirit works through visible churches by means of word and sacrament in a variety of denominations, and I believe that Christ has only one church. So, though I cannot finally prove it to you, I believe in a visible catholic church.
What is a more parsimonious explanation: (a) that in schisms that have basically been political power struggles, the Spirit nevertheless remains only legitimately with one Church and not the other, or that (b) the Spirit continues to guide the church despite the obvious failures of its all-too-human leaders? To me, it is less “parsimonious” to adopt a hermeneutic of history in which I have already decided that there is only one visibly organized true church, so that I have to sift through each and every schism to find an “us vs. them,” i.e., the “right” side with whom the church continued, and the “wrong” side who need to repent of their error. To do this might make me a better philosopher, but a worse historian.
So: when I look at the world, and the church in the world, I don’t believe that the Catholic (or Orthodox, or Missouri Lutheran, or URCNA [which I am not, by the way, Alicia]) are the ONLY true church, nor do I think a mature historically-informed judgment would conclude that only one of these is the true legitimate visible catholic church, while all others only take the name of the “church” without being so in reality. I realize you disagree, but I hope that helps you understand my position.
Blessings,
Dave
Alicia 153,
I realize you have many questions but not all of them are strictly speaking relevant to this debate (about whether Protestantism has a visible catholic church). I will answer them now but do ask after this that we refrain from following too many rabbit trails.
1. I don’t believe there is an “objective” way out there (or I would be Catholic). I realize the Catholic church makes claims to be an objective infallible authority; this is probably not the thread to discuss those claims.
2. God can be known. He has revealed himself in Scripture, in nature, in history, in the church. Discernment is not an empty concept, but it does involve wrestling with scripture, history, tradition, etc.
3. I agree that there is much disagreement. Nevertheless there is a common core of agreement, for example I continually cite (to John’s dismay) the ecumenical creeds. Look, I believe the church has wisdom. Submit to it. But the church is not infallible. Don’t stop reading Scripture or praying or exercising critical thinking about what the church is saying.
You also asked,
By the way I am not URCNA. Look, I wouldn’t try to compel people to remain in one particular denomination. I view that as tribalism. We’re not in a “competition” with every other denomination. If people want to become Catholic, I would explain to them my grave concerns with Catholicism, pray with them, and offer them any advice they solicit. If they decided to become Catholic, I would wish them well and pray that they would be productive in Christ’s kingdom in the Catholic church.
Blessings,
Dave
Dave, (re: #157)
Ok. To me, your answer is like the case of the Emperor’s New Clothes, and the boy is crying “He’s naked,” and the ‘tailors’ (who are usually depicted as having absconded by this point) are asserting, “No, he is wearing visible clothes, but you can’t see them.” So the reply by the Emperor should be, “What do you mean by ‘visible’? Can you see the clothes?” And, if the tailors are being honest, they will reply, “No, we cannot see them ourselves, or show them to you or anyone else under any possible conditions.” To which the Emperor should reply, “So, it seems that they are in fact invisible, if they even exist. You are saying that they are visible, but you are also saying that under no conditions can you or anyone see them, which is synonymous with ‘invisible.’ So either you are mistakenly using the word ‘visible’ in a way that directly contradicts its actual meaning, or you are contradicting yourself (when claiming that the clothes are visible while admitting that neither you nor anyone else, under any conditions, can see them), or you are lying when you claim that they are visible. Which is it?”
And that’s similar to what I would say to you as well regarding your claim that there is a visible catholic Church here on earth that neither you nor anyone can see under any condition because you cannot show anyone that it is not merely a mental construct, i.e. that it exists outside your mind.
The difference between “invisible catholic Church” ecclesiology, and your “visible catholic Church” ecclesiology is entirely semantic. In substance the two ecclesiologies are identical, because everything would be exactly the same if your “visible catholic Church” were in fact invisible. Nothing at all would change, except the word ‘visible’ would be replaced by the word ‘invisible.’
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Bryan,
Way back in 118 my very first comment in response to your article was to claim that the “visible catholic church” is not an ordinary thing like Venus, emperor’s clothing, an apple, etc. It is an extraordinary thing in this world; it is the body of Christ.
You responded in 133 by saying that just because the church is extraordinary doesn’t mean it is not susceptible to ordinary procedures of verification:
I agree with this. “Our concept of the Church does not need to make the church reducible to a mental construct.” It is possible that the church is verifiable in the ordinary way. But, it is also possible that the church is only verifiable in an extraordinary way, by the power of the Spirit. With the eyes of faith we see the visible catholic Church.
You will then say that this means I believe an “invisible Catholic church,” as you are saying above in 159. Are you saying then that to be a consistent Protestant I need to take option (1) above? What about your comment in 121, where you seemed to acknowledge my problems with the concept of an “invisible church”? Are you taking away now what you gave me then?
One of our main disagreements seems to be between the concept of visibility as a mode of verification and the concept of visibility as an intrinsic property. You want to say the church is visible in both senses because it is like other ordinary things in this world (apples, etc.). I reject the assumption that the church is like other ordinary things in the world. I believe the visible church is invisibly apprehended (i.e., by faith). You say this involves me in clear contradiction: how can one apprehend by faith that which is visible? If it is visible, it’s mode of apprehension ought to be visible. (Side note: the author of Hebrews 11 does some great stuff with this contradiction, speaking of the patriarchs: “they persevered because they saw him who is invisible”).
Well, the reason I continue to insist that the church is visible is because I can see it. It always appears in local instantiations which we both agree are visible. It meets in visible places under visible preaching and sacraments.
But, how do I know that this visible local church is part of the visible catholic church? If, as you say, the visible catholic church is an ordinary thing in this world, apprehended by ordinary means, the answer is easy: is there communion with the bishop of Rome? If so, it is; if not, it’s out. To me, the judgment as to whether any particular visible local church is a part of the visible catholic church is much more complex than this. (I’m not saying it necessarily has to be more complex than this, i.e., as you’ve stated, it is possible that the church is simply ordinarily perceived.) It involves being attentive to whether a church maintains the “unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.”
I’m not sure what else you want me to say. I feel like I’ve acceded to 95% of your critique (note that all three options began, “I can accept your critique”) and yet you are hammering away for the final 5%. Do you want me to affirm option 1 in 157? Because I’m not happy with that. Option 2? Also fails. In the end, despite the fact that even the emperor may doubt whether he is wearing clothes, I believe in the visible catholic church. I think this is my last comment on the matter; I’m not sure whether continued dialogue will be helpful.
Blessings,
Dave
I’d like to take a stab at re-translating the emperors new cloths analogy. We are trying to ascertain weather or not the cloths (church under a protestant eschatology) is ‘visible’ or not. The emperor and his tailors (protestants) say ‘yes’ (or ‘maybe’, or ‘it doesn’t matter’), and the Roman Catholics (little boy) say ‘no’.
My question is why should we trust the little boy’s judgment? Perhaps the little boy is blind (willfully or not) and cannot see the emperors cloths. Perhaps the boy has an agenda.
How can we know that the little boy is authoritative? I could ask the little boy why he sees what he sees, but that would be circular. I can ask scripture, but it seems to be unclear. So I am left with discernment, reason, history, and tradition.
All this begs the question ‘why Rome’? History indicates that Peter laid hands on people in Antioch before Rome, and spent much more time there – and they are not a part of the Roman Communion now. I don’t accept the argument ‘because he died here’ – if that were the case, if Peter had died on the road to Rome in some 2 horse town, then that would be the center of Christendom. Perhaps Jerusalem should be the center of Christianity – it is in the promised land and has been the Center of God’s people for centuries.
David, (re: #160)
My discussions with Protestants not infrequently lead back to appeals to bosom burning, so I’m not entirely surprised that you take this option. With the eyes of faith, you claim to be able to see this alleged entity, which is otherwise invisible. But, notice the implications. What seemed to be intended as opposition to such a narrow, rigid view of the Church as a visible (in the ordinary sense of the term) entity from which many persons are presently in schism, turns out to be an even narrower, self-aggrandizing view in its appeal to be able to see by the eyes of faith what most all other Christians in the whole world (myself included) do not see, apparently, because we lack the special faith you have. As it turns out, what follows from your position is that only those persons who see a “visible catholic Church” bounded by adherence only to the ecumenical creeds have faith. The rest of us, apparently, are still dead in our sins, since if we had faith, we too would see the “visible catholic Church” as do you. The Catholic Church and the Church Fathers are wrong about the definition of schism, but you are right, because you have a special supernatural vision that allows you to see the Church and its boundaries.
I guess I don’t see how that sort of ‘arrogance’ or self-importance (I can’t think of a less abrasive word) is a kinder, gentler, more ecumenically sensitive Christianity than the successor of St. Peter claiming to be the Vicar of Christ. At least he has some historical basis for his claim to authority. But with you, I have no basis for trusting your bosom-burning (special vision thing). I don’t grant persons prophetic status just because they say so, unless they can perform miracles or declare truthfully in advance what will come to pass, neither of which I’ve seen you do.
I do find it odd, however, that you switch definitions of ‘visible’ when you get to the local congregation. Otherwise although non-Christians would be aware of Christians, non-Christians would never be aware (by observation) of local churches, since non-Christians do not have faith, and therefore could not see what can be seen only by faith. They could hear about local churches when Christians told them about them, but the existence of these local churches would be like the existence of the other ghosts in the film The Sixth Sense; only the other ghosts (i.e. Christians) could see them. If you were consistent in your use of ‘visible,’ you would be emergent, which is just the further out-working of invisible Church eccleisology, down to the local level.
I’m also glad that you are not consistent in using this same definition of ‘visible’ with respect to the incarnate Christ. Your inconsistency keeps you from docetism. But your ecclesial docetism (i.e. the Church is visible only through the eyes of faith) is inconsistent with your denial of Christological docetism. Eventually one of those two has to conform to the other.
Having spent a summer debating Mormons, I know there is no point debating with those whose starting point is an appeal to a burning in the bosom, or magical glasses, or things said to be visible only to those who hold their faith. The only recourse, in such cases, is to consider together how we would know whether these bosom burnings (or special visions) were not only fallible, but in error. When the Mormon treats them as infallible, that nullifies the possibility of fruitful dialogue.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
David (#157)
If I may make so bold as to interpret David to David, what I think you saying is that you choose option 3) because you don’t think it is right to ‘unchurch’ all those groups – whether Protestant or Orthodox – who are clearly in love with Jesus.
David (#157)
Somehow the thing posted my post when I hadn’t finished!! I was just going to add the question, whether my understanding at all adequately represents your mind in the matter.
jj
David (#157) PPS :-)
Of course, when I suggest that you don’t think it right to unchurch those groups, I understand that – if that is your view – what you mean is that you don’t think God – Who, after all, has providentially at least permitted the multiplicity – intends to unchurch them. I am not trying to impute simply personal preferences to you.
jj
Bryan 162,
This is a really appalling and uncharitable comment and belies your signing off “in the peace of Christ.” I’m sorry that our discussion has broken down.
It is ironic that you accuse me of arrogance and self-importance. I have made every effort to patiently listen to and carefully understand your claims. You, on the other hand, have not made any appreciable effort that I can tell to consider sympathetically the dilemma I am in. On the one hand, I accept that your philosophical argument has a certain force. On the other hand, I have real historical concerns, as spelled out in 157 under option 3, which compel me in another direction. You have not shown any evidence of being aware of historical problems at all, but consistently move the conversation in a completely philosophical direction (as you did in 159), as though there were no other relevant considerations. It is all well and good to accuse someone of arrogance, but I would say humility starts with carefully listening to one another and attempting to empathize with their position.
Where do I claim to have “special supernatural vision” or to be “infallible”? These kind of retorts are totally inappropriate. Where do I say that Catholics are still “dead in their sins” because they disagree with me over the concept of a “visible catholic church”? It is absolutely uncharitable to say that this follows from anything that I’ve written. I’m frankly just appalled and I’m finished with this conversation.
Dave
John, 163-65. Absolutely correct. I don’t believe God has unchurched them, and so neither should I. This does not make either infallible or necessarily arrogant, Bryan’s claim notwithstanding.
Dave
correction: This does not make *me infallible, etc.
David (#167)
Thanks – I just wanted to be sure I was understanding you.
And I absolutely share your views – except that perhaps my understanding is – well, I would like to call it ‘nuanced’ but some might just say ‘weasely’ :-)
The thing is, when I was Reformed, our church accepted the Westminster Confession, which says something like (too lazy to look it up) that different churches may be more or less pure. In other words, we officially accepted the Baptists (for instance) but thought them ‘less pure’ – because, amongst other things, they rejected infant baptism – of course we didn’t accept the Catholics at all – but that’s a different story :-)
Now it is my understanding is that something like this ‘nuanced’ view is what the Catholic Church holds – that in the Catholic Church is the fulness of faith – and only in the Catholic Church, since the Church believes that part of that ‘fulness’ includes the whole form of unity that Catholics believe in, including the Papacy. Some churches, like the Orthodox, are, the Catechism says somewhere, lacking little for full ‘churchness.’ Others, like most Protestants, are ‘ecclesial bodies’ – but in which are found many signs of grace.
Would something like this – I don’t mean the Catholic view, just the WCF view that there are ‘more or less pure’ churches around – what something like that characterise your own view? I mean, are there churches, groups, whatever, that you would consider, yes, are part of the Body of Christ, but are less ‘pure’ (if that is not too loaded a word) than others?
jj
John,
Sure, that would be fair. I probably wouldn’t use the terminology of “pure” to apply solely to doctrinal considerations, but I have no major problems with this view.
David,
Bryan can more than speak for himself, but, I can assure you that he is not attacking your person or your character. I can understand how these discussions can sometimes make us feel as though we ourselves are being attacked and I know that does happen at times. But, while I may be accused of being biased, Bryan Cross does not take the low road and seek to score points in a discussion. Please be assured of this. Your comments and positions are worthy of respect and I hope that you do recognize that they are being respected and engaged with in a charitable and generous manner.
David, (re: #166)
To be clear, I didn’t accuse you of arrogance and self-importance; I think you (the person) are trying to be inclusive, as John said. So, I’m not talking about *you*; I’m talking about your *position*. Please keep those two things distinct. I’m not criticizing your person; I’m criticizing your position. The irony, in my opinion, is that your *position* ends up doing the opposite of what *you* want. It elevates you above all those other Christians who don’t see the “visible catholic Church” as you do, and who therefore, given your “it is visible through faith” premise, must be lacking in faith. You can acknowledge that implication, or show how that implication does not follow, but I don’t think it helps to attack the messenger.
I’m quite aware of the dilemma. But I’m sure I don’t yet understand your reasons for not seeing the Catholic option as a live option for getting out of the dilemma.
I don’t see anything historical spelled out under option 3 in 157.
I completely agree with this. At the same time, perhaps you can at least recognize, if you were to try and put yourself in my shoes, how arrogant it sounds to be told that this thing you see (and which I do not see) can only be seen with the eyes of faith. That’s all I’m trying to point out in my previous comment; from my point of view on the receiving end over here, it is an elitist position that implies everyone who doesn’t see what you see, lacks faith. But I’m willing to stand corrected. However, if you want to claim that lots of other people, who don’t see the “visible catholic Church” as you see it have no less faith than do you, then it isn’t *faith* that explains why you see it and they don’t. So, in that case, you need a different explanation for why you see it and they don’t.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
David (#170)
OK, thanks. I have a feeling that these short comments of mine must feel like I am sneaking up on something – I am not, really! I am just so aware that a long comment may obscure a lot of assumptions that may or may not be true and I am trying to understand where you are at.
With that, if you can tolerate one more question: would it be correct to say that you think it a moral duty on you – or, indeed, on anyone – to do one’s best to find a church that is at least amongst the ‘purest’ (again, using that term which, like you, I feel uncomfortable with, but we could use it as a kind of marker for whatever we think the proper place to be is)? Or – I think this a possibility, at least, and one that I think a lot of people take, including some Catholics I have talked to – would you say that you should just belong to whatever church ‘feels right’ – or where you are ‘fed’ – or where your children are best taken care of – something like that?
In other words, does God want me to find a certain church that I am supposed to belong to for reasons having to do with what I suppose I can call objective criteria – pure doctrine, holiness of life, right sacraments, whatever – or is my choice of a church supposed to be based on essentially subjective criteria – it helps my spiritual life the best, or is embracing, or helps me towards holiness, or whatever?
Not sure I am being clear?? Perhaps I can illustrate by saying that for the 20 years that I was Reformed, I was Reformed because I believed it was the place that taught the Word of God most accurately, did the sacraments the way I thought the Bible wanted, etc – even although on subjective grounds I found it pretty … yuck :-)
So it was, to put it gnomically (if there is such a word) a matter of truth vs convenience.
Can I take it that it would be the same for you?
jj
Well, John, I think I used to think that doctrine was the sole criterion, but no more. There are more than doctrinal considerations; you also need to find a community that truly embodies the love of Christ for each other and the world, has a passion for social justice (it may be no bad thing if they are accused of having a “social gospel”!), etc. And personal “fit” is important as well.
By the way, regarding the “nuanced” Catholic view you describe in 169: would you say then that Catholicism is close to acknowledging that there are more than just Catholic churches in the one church of Christ?
David (#174-2)
Two different matters in your comment, so I thought I’d deal with them separately – herewith the second:
My understanding – and I would love to hear more from others better-educated than I am – is that the Catholic Church uses the word ‘church’ in two senses – as the New Testament does. In one sense it refers to the whole ball of wax (whatever that comprises – which is, of course, what is under discussion here!). There is only one church in that sense.
But of course the Catholic language refers to member churches within the ‘one, holy, catholic and apostolic’ church, and in different ways. E.g. I think each of the different member rites – I mean the ones having separate canonical laws, like the Maronite Church – and of course the Latin church – is called a church. And then the very Biblical language of bodies under a bishop – e.g. I am a member of the Church of Auckland.
And certainly Dominus Jesus calls the various Orthodox bodies ‘churches.’ It reserves the term ‘ecclesial bodies’ for those that it considers not to have a valid apostolic succession. To some extent we are just dealing with terminology here.
But in a sense, I think the Catholic Church would agree with your conception of the Catholic Church as including those other bodies – but not on the same level. That’s why I brought up the WCF’s “more or less pure” idea – which I don’t think just means doctrinally, but I could be wrong.
jj
David (#174-1)
OK, I think this is clear – and it does seem to me to be a pretty basic difference between us. I thought it my duty to be a member of that Reformed Church – which I helped to start! – even though I often had to sit through church services in some considerable discomfort. And, in fact, Mass at my Catholic parish is almost equally frustrating. We have the most god-awful … well, I won’t entertain you with my view of the people who manage the liturgy :-)
But, you see, I really really really think it the case that God has established the (Roman! – in the sense of being in the same visible body as the Bishop of Rome) Catholic Church as the only normal way that He works in the world; that He has promised unique graces to those who submit to that Church; and, indeed, that there – and not in any Protestant body – I receive the unspeakable gift of receiving His Son, Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity, which to receive is eternal life.
Even though I wish my parish (and I strongly believe in the parish system) embodied much better the love of Christ, and, in general, was a far better personal fit for me. Given my ‘druthers, I think I’d ruther be attending one of the Orthodox bodies that know how to do liturgy – my word, they do!!
jj
Bryan 172,
I believe most Catholics do see this. I believe that if you and I sat down for coffee, you would see it too. You would see that I am a sincere Christian believer, and would experience the unity that comes from the bond of faith. Maybe, as you are saying, you wouldn’t see it. In that case, I would have to say, yes, that comes from a failure of faith. Not a complete lack of faith (I certainly would not regard you as “dead in your sins” as you put it in a previous comment) but a failure of faith in the God who is bigger than our institutions. Basically, the problem with Catholic ecclesiology is the overly confident identification of God with one particular institution. It is the sin of 1 Samuel 4, when the Israelites presumed that victory was theirs based on their possession of the ark. The lesson of that chapter, very literally, is that you cannot put God in a box.
I am mystified when I see John say in 176 that God has established the Roman church as the normal way he works in the world. The reason I don’t understand this is because as a historian I see church structures and doctrines as part and parcel of their formative cultures. Catholicism and Orthodoxy are hierarchical, authoritarian, mystical, etc.: it is all a part of a more medieval worldview and in fact can be shown to map clearly onto medieval society. Modern, egalitarian, democratic cultures have also created new church cultures, such as those in which individual judgment becomes far more important. What I would be wary of is saying: God works through this culture but not through that one. I don’t understand why I would make that choice.
Take Anglicanism. The Roman Catholic needs to unchurch them; they are not in communion with the bishop of Rome. But has God unchurched Anglicans? Why? Because of the increasing political independence and eventual dominance of England, which basically guaranteed a church split at some point? In my mind, to say Anglicans are not a part of the visible catholic Church is akin to saying that the British never should have had an empire at all, especially not one on which the sun did not set.
Dave
Hello David, (re: #177)
Welcome back. You wrote:
I already see that you are a sincere Christian believer. And I already experience, in our conversation, the [imperfect] unity we have through our shared baptism, the love we both share for Christ, and the other doctrines that we share in common. At the same time, I already see, and would see even more clearly if we were to sit down and have a longer conversation with you, your rejection of all the Catholic dogmas that Protestants reject and which I believe and profess to be revealed by God and taught by His Holy Church as definitively to be believed by all the faithful. The truth does not hide from me those points of disagreement, and my awareness of those points of disagreement does not constitute a failure of faith on my part, but a recognition that on these points of dogma, you dissent. Of course, you would claim that they are not dogma. But at that point the magnitude of the disagreement can not longer be obscured by coffee and sentimentality. We don’t even agree on the basis for what counts as dogma. You believe that the basis for dogma is the ecumenical creeds, and as I have explained above, and won’t go through again, that position is ad hoc.
It is convenient, of course, to stipulate that those who don’t hold your own particular view lack faith. I could do the same. And then we would be in an intractable impasse. But, it seems to me that we have to be aware precisely how easy it is to resort to this sort of ideology-protecting rationalization, and how unhelpful and non-conducive to attaining agreement concerning the truth it would be if everyone did this, each concluding that all those disagreeing with his own position ipso facto lack faith. With that realization, we ought instead seek out a position that provides a principled (i.e. not ad hoc) basis or standard for measuring what counts as the fullness of faith, and what counts as falling short of that fullness, rather than merely positing that those who don’t hold one’s own position are ipso facto deficient in faith.
Of course, as you surely know, in Catholic doctrine, God is ‘bigger’ than the Church. But you mean, of course, that the Catholic Church is merely a man-made institution, and that all denominations are just branches, some with more truth than others, some bigger than others, but all just branches, and none being the Church Christ founded, and referred to in Matthew 16, and again in Matthew 18. However, what is the standard of ecclesiology by which you determine that my belief that the Catholic Church is the Church Christ founded, and that all other groups not in full communion with the Catholic Church are in schism from from the Church Christ founded is a “failure”? What is that standard by which you are determining it to be a “failure”? Is it your own interpretation of Scripture? If not, then please disclose your standard. Otherwise, why should I treat your interpretation of Scripture as the standard by which failures and successes of faith (my own and that of all others) are measured?
What is the standard by which proper confidence, over-confidence, and under-confidence are measured, and to which you are appealing when you claim that Catholic ecclesiology is “overly confident”? Is it your own interpretation of Scripture? Is that the standard against which all ecclesiology is to be measured?
You seem to be claiming that 1 Sam 4 rules out the possibility that Christ would (could) found a visible Church, with essential hierarchical unity. That is, you seem to be assuming that if the Israelites were wrong to believe that the ark guaranteed them victory in battle, then therefore the Catholic Church cannot be the Church Christ founded. I want to make sure I’m understanding your position before I explain why I think that’s not a safe inference.
I agree. No one, so far as I know, is presenting you with that dilemma. Catholics are not deists about God’s operations outside the bounds of the visible Church. On the contrary, we believe that the Holy Spirit is at work in the heart of every human being on the face of the earth. But, that does not mean that there are no divinely instituted means by which and through which Christ has revealed that He ordinarily works. Otherwise, the peanut butter sandwich I had for lunch would be no less a ‘sacrament’ than my baptism. Or, another way of saying it is, there would be no such thing as sacraments, since God would work equally through every thing. So, your argument against the Catholic Church, on the basis of the fact that God also operates outside the Catholic Church, does too much, because it eliminates sacraments, and it eliminates the uniqueness of the God’s presence with the Hebrews under the Old Covenant, it eliminates the uniqueness of Scripture, etc. and it makes all religions equal. So, that’s a bad argument, unless (and even if) you really want to bite all those bullets.
The Anglicans “unchurched” themselves, when they changed the form of ordination, making it invalid, as I explained in comment #128 of The Tu Quoque thread.
If you don’t agree that the form of ordination adopted by the Anglicans was invalid, then before we go on, please answer the following question: What is the basis for the standard by which the form of ordination can be determined to be valid or invalid?
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
We could use the Roman standard – which says this of the ‘Old Catholics’: “The Churches which, while not existing in perfect communion with the Catholic Church, remain united to her by means of the closest bonds, that is, by apostolic succession and a valid Eucharist, are true particular Churches”
The vast majority of Anglican Bishops are co-ordained by Old Catholic bishops (which the RCC recognizes as valid) ergo, those Anglican orders are by your own standard valid.
It is far easier to argue that the ‘standard’ as applied by Apostolicae Curae comes out of the desire to maintain power rather than any real objection to the ‘changing of the form’. It seems to me that if one is to object to changing the wording of the ordination form, and using that as a basis for invalid orders – then one should apply the same exact standard to the changing of the Nicean creed. Or is what’s good for the goose not also good for the gander?
Bob, (re: #179)
Regarding your objection concerning Anglican Orders and Old Catholics, Taylor addressed that recently here.
You wrote:
That’s not an argument, but rather an assertion. And it is without any basis. Neither is it charitable. You wouldn’t want me to assume that your only or primary reason for commenting here is to acquire power, or to justify rebellion or rationalize sin, or some other nefarious motive, so the Golden Rule calls you to the same standard when making assumptions about the motives of the Catholic Church and her leadership.
The Nicene Creed was changed from the AD 325 version to the AD 381 version, and then later the Filioque was added. These changes are further elucidations, not changes of the essence. The change made by Cranmer in the ordination rite was a change in the essence of the form of the sacrament of ordination, not a re-wording that retained the essence of the form.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
When I see the POTUS decreeing things, creating law, and expanding power through those means – I assume that it isn’t to make a more righteous society. Rather, I assume that his human nature when given a taste of power does these things to strengthen and maintain that power.
The same applies to the Pope. The history of the church is full of power struggles – as evidenced by simony (thankfully mostly cleared up now) the great schism, crusades – even the wording of these bulls is all about power. The Pope, despite his office, is not immune from the influences of the corruption of power.
There are also at least 2 versions of history. If you ask the powerful their version… things tend to line up with whatever their agenda is. According to the POTUS, there are all kinds of evil doers out their threatening our way of life. Give him more power and all will be well.
And according to Rome, the great schism is the fault of the Orthodox, the crusades are justified (the sack of Constantinople was a few hot-heads who did it on their own), the reformers are heretics, and the true church is centered in Rome.
However, you can also ask the protestants, the Anglicans, the Orthodox and the Afgans what their version of history is. Why should I assume a non-nefarious motive when history has already shown that this (and all) powerful institutions abuse their power?
The Orthodox disagree with you on weather or not the filioque retain the ‘essence of the form’. Likewise, we could have a similar debate over the changes to the ordination. All you have done is made an assertion (or the pope did in Apostolicae Curae which you are bound to believe). we’ve just asked the powerful for their version of history – and surprise surprise, it lines up with their agenda.
Bob, (re: #181)
I agree that no pope is immune to the temptation of the corruption of power, but the Church is the Body of Christ, not a mere human institution. It would therefore be improper and unfitting to treat the Church and her leadership as if she were a merely human institution or equivalent to such, and not also divine in the life and power and wisdom in which she lives and moves and has her being. This is why Christ’s words to Saul were, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?”
I also agree that if we have evidence from a person’s prior words or actions that he is more interested in power than in justice and benevolence, then when he exercises authority in such a way as to expand his power, we could be justified in assuming that he is doing so primarily to gain power. But, if we have no such evidence, or if we have evidence to the contrary, then such an assumption is contrary to charity. And there is no evidence that Pope Leo XIII was more interested in power and control than in faithfully shepherding the flock entrusted to him by Christ. The evidence from his life and papacy indicates just the opposite, namely, that he was a holy and pious man, deeply devoted to serving Christ and His Church.
No historical study has ever shown that all persons in authority, when exercising that authority, are more interested in exercising power than in upholding justice or orthodoxy.
Your stance, it seems to me, is one of cynicism, which, if applied consistently, would undermine your own position if, for example, you were a pastor. It would entail that you acquired such a position only or primarily in order to exercise control over people, rather than to feed them the truth and protect them from evil. Therefore in order to exercise such a role, you would have to make an arbitrary exception for yourself — i.e. all men, except for me, exercise authority only to maintain power, not for the good of those over whom they have charge. And that would be an example of the fallacy of special pleading. And if you are a layman, then this cynical stance would likewise undermine the authority of your Protestant pastor, because his efforts to guide his flock would be construed by you as efforts to hold on to or expand his power.
Such a stance would likewise entail that every judge, when rendering a verdict, is only doing so in order to maintain and exercise his own power, not in order to uphold justice. It would imply that every police officer, when arresting a criminal, is doing so only to exercise power, not to uphold and maintain justice. Such cynicism is common today, but it is unjustified, and is destructive to society as a whole. It is a reflection of the “Question Authority” motiff of the 1960s. If Lucifer had a bumpersticker, that would be it. It would also have made you a cynic toward Jesus in the first century, and toward the Apostles in the same century, just as it is making you cynical toward the successors of the Apostles in the twenty first century. If Christ promised that the gates of hell would not prevail over the Church, and that His Church would be the pillar and ground of truth, then we exercise faith in Christ *through* trusting and obeying those whom He has established to speak and govern in His Name, until His return in glory.
In addition, your cynical stance used as an argument against the Catholic Church is question-begging, because it presupposes that there is no individual or group of persons who are in fact exercising authority for the good of those over whom they have charge. But that is precisely what is in dispute between Protestants and Catholics, namely, whether or not there is a divinely established and divinely protected magisterium that faithfully shepherds Christ’s flock for the good of His sheep. So assuming that there is no such group of persons assumes precisely what is in question between us, and in that respect begs the question. In order to compare the paradigms, we need to attempt to approach the question without begging the question.
Let’s address that fallacy. The fact that atheists disagree with you regarding the existence of God is not a good reason to believe that God doesn’t exist. Pointing to the fact of persons who disagree with one’s interlocutor does not refute the interlocutor’s position. Likewise, merely pointing to the fact that certain persons do not accept a Catholic dogma does not refute that dogma.
Indeed we could, but we didn’t.
That’s true, but all you have done is assert, without any evidence, that Pope Leo XIII issued Apostolicae Curae out of a desire to maintain power rather than in order to uphold orthodoxy regarding what makes ordination valid. The difference, however, for the reason I explained in comment #340 in the Joshua Lim thread, is that I don’t have the burden of proof. So, a mere assertion on your part is not enough.
Satan could say the same thing about God’s version of history. He could have said that looking forward from the time of the Garden of Eden. And he could say that even after the Final Judgment, after he is bound forever and cast into the lake of fire. Such cynicism presupposes that truth and authority never go together. But that’s not a safe assumption, especially for a theist, because we know that in God truth and authority are the same. This is why divine authority is a surety of truth, even when we cannot see that truth for ourselves.
But going into this in more depth would take us off topic for this post, which is about ecclesiology.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Bryan 178,
No. History is the standard. When I pose this question: “is there historical evidence that there is an infallible church?” the answer is no.
No, I am not claiming or assuming any such thing. It’s just an analogy. It shows that Scripture is aware of the human propensity to put too much confidence in an institution (the ark) and consistently reminds us of the freedom of God. It does not rule out any possibilities about the visible church Christ founded.
And let me affirm that I do believe there are divinely instituted means, and there are sacraments.
You would really have to expand your argument to convince me of this. I am arguing that the Catholic church is not the only divinely instituted means; it does not have the only valid sacraments. That is different than saying: there are no sacraments. What I affirm is that God works sacramentally through the eucharist at the Baptist church down the road, at the Orthodox church around the corner, at the Reformed church in the countryside, and at the Catholic cathedral downtown. To those who receive the sacraments by faith, the Holy Spirit is present and working.
If you would affirm (as you say) that I am a “sincere Christian believer,” as you put it, then you are affirming that (as you see it) God has been at work in my life. The Spirit dwells in my heart. How has this happened? Through the Protestant church, through the baptism and communion administered there, through the exposition of Scripture, through the mutual encouragement of fellow believers. This could conceivably take place for the rest of my life (without me ever setting foot in a Roman church). To have an ecclesiology that puts its money where its mouth is, you would either need to affirm that God works (even sacramentally) through Protestant churches, or, if you rejected that, you would have to be agnostic (at best!) about whether I am genuinely a true Christian believer. I don’t think you can affirm both: 1) Protestants are true Christians; 2) God does not work sacramentally in Protestant churches.
As far as Anglicanism goes, I will say this: I agree with Bob. There have been schisms in the church that were nothing more than political power struggles. The reason I believe Roman ecclesiology commits the sin of 1 Samuel 4 is because through every church split it claims God for its side. And nobody here (certainly not Bob) is saying that every police officer or judge is necessarily corrupt. Just this: power tends to corrupt, and some people, including some popes, have throughout history been corrupted by their grasping at power. That should be obvious and Catholics should be able to acknowledge that (or what is Dante all about?).
David, (re: #183)
In #177 you wrote:
So in #178 I asked, “What is the standard by which proper confidence, over-confidence, and under-confidence are measured, and to which you are appealing when you claim that Catholic ecclesiology is “overly confident”? Is it your own interpretation of Scripture?”
In #183 you replied:
First, notice that the question was about whether the Catholic Church is the Church Christ founded, and your claim that such an ecclesiological claim was “overly confident.” Now you seem to have shifted to the question of the infallibility of the Church, which is a related, but different question. But, nonetheless, let’s get behind the hand-waving, and unpack exactly what you have in mind behind your use of this term ‘history,’ because anything at all could be defended with a general claim that “history is the standard.” Which historical event, in particular, do you think is incompatible with (a) the Catholic Church being the Church Christ founded, and/or (b) the Catholic dogma concerning infallibility? [Yes, I'm going to respond by showing why that historical event is compatible with the (a) and (b), so make sure you do the necessary leg work.]
You wrote:
Ok, since that’s fully compatible with everything I’ve said, it is not evidence one way or another. Scripture is also ‘aware’ of persons trusting their own judgment, and rebelling against God-given authorities, etc.
It is easy to assert that, but again, what is the standard to which you are implicitly appealing, for determining the validity or invalidity of the Eucharist?
Yes, as I see it.
Through baptism, yes. That’s a Catholic sacrament that can be administered validly even by non-Christians. And God can and does work in the lives of persons (Catholics and Protestants) through non-sacramental means as well, such as the ones you mention. But the Eucharist is the most important sacrament, and persons who do not receive a valid Eucharist are not receiving the grace they could be receiving, through the means Christ established by which we are nourished and built up in the faith.
You are presenting a false dilemma: either God works sacramentally [in the same degree] in Protestant communities as He does in the Catholic Church, or I can’t justifiably claim that you are a Christian. The fact that baptisms (for the most part) in Protestant communities are valid (see here) does not entail that Protestant communities have a valid Eucharist, or have all seven sacraments. Most Protestants, as you know, deny five of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church. And because Reformed Protestants explicitly abandoned apostolic succession, they lost the sacrament of Holy Orders, and therefore lost a valid Eucharist, as I explained in comment #311 of the “Keith Mathison’s Reply” thread. This is why they are not even “Churches,” as Responsa ad quaestiones makes clear. (You have not yet answered the question I asked you in #178: “What is the basis for the standard by which the form of ordination can be determined to be valid or invalid?”) So just because I affirm that Protestants are Christians, it does not follow that Protestants are not in heresy, are not in schism from the Church Christ founded, and possess the fullness of the means of grace Christ established in His Church. It is possible to be a Christian and have some sacramental graces, and yet be in a state of imperfect communion with Christ’s Church, and not yet have the full means of grace Christ established within His Church. The Donatists were Christians, but they were in schism from the Catholic Church, as St. Optatus makes clear.
You wrote:
According to that criterion, every time Jesus kept claiming God for His side, after another group of disciples left Him, He was committing “the sin of 1 Sam 4.” So, if it is not ipso facto a sin to claim God for one’s side after a schism, if one is the Church Christ founded, then it does not follow that because after every schism the Catholic Church continues to claim to be the Church Christ founded, therefore she is sinning. What you are doing here is using a question-begging criterion. Your criterion presupposes that no Church can be, from AD 33 to Christ’s return in glory, the Church Christ founded. And therefore, given that presupposition, to continue to claim to be that Church Christ founded, is a sin. But if she was and is and will always be that Church that Christ founded, then your criterion would falsely accuse her of sinning, just as your criterion would falsely accuse Christ of sinning. Why even bother using question-begging criteria? Why not simply pound the table and assert that you are starting with the assumption that Christ never founded a visible hierarchically unified Church? There’s just no point to go through the motions of seeming to reason through the question of the two paradigms, while using a question-begging criterion that already presupposes the falsehood of one of the paradigms.
Of course. But we’re also quite aware of the falsehood of Donatism and the error of schism from the Church. All the Donatists believed in the deity of Christ. All the Montanists did too. Tertullian died believing in the deity of Christ, but in schism from the Church, as a Montanist. We know that rigorism is the opposite error of laxity. We know that Christ promised there would be tares in the wheat, and He never said that when we find tares, or more tares than we want, even tares in positions of Church government, then we get a free pass for forming or joining a schism from the Church.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
David (#183):
David, I do think there is a misunderstanding here. The infallibility of the Church is a proper inference from the question of what the Church is. In the nature of things, I don’t see how there could be historical evidence for an infallible church. You would have to have an independent standard by which to judge the infallibility of the claimant.
What there is is historical evidence that ought to lead us to believe in a Church that Christ founded as His authority in the world. Both you and we agree there is such evidence. You call it the church of the Apostles. The only question is whether there is evidence of the continuation of such authority. It seems obvious to me that there is such evidence – and not historical only. The very words of Christ about the Church, and the words of His apostles about the Church, lead me to think that Christ intended an authoritative Church. It seems to me far harder to believe that He intended it to cease with the death of the last apostle – and the history of the Church since then shows the Church itself believing such a thing.
jj
Bryan,
Well, I am not able to do all the “leg work” right now in terms of detailed discussions of historical incidents, though this would undoubtedly be fascinating. Are there historical incidents about which you would say: “the Catholic church was wrong about that”? (E.g., the martyrdom of Hus, for which JP II apologized.)
Well, I never said God works sacramentally in the same degree in every church. So I think we are agreed here. We agree:
a) that God works sacramentally both within and beyond the bounds of the Roman communion
b) that by these operations of God there are true Christians to be found both within and beyond the bounds of the Roman communion
I think your charitable view of Protestants as Christians is commendable and this is the fruit of “reformation” in the Catholic church.
Since you raise the example of the Donatists, I have a question: what was Augustine’s opinion on the salvation of Donatists? I honestly don’t know the answer and am curious about it.
This comment implies that I would defend the proposition “Christ founded a visible hierarchically unified church,” which I certainly would not defend! However, I would defend the proposition, “Christ founded a visible church.” If it was hierarchically unified, someone forgot to tell the writers of the New Testament, who are engaged in endless disputes and have no central authority to settle the issues for them! (The consistent rhetorical appeal is to Scripture and its interpretation, and not to an infallible magisterium. And yes, this does involved the writers of the NT, particularly Paul, in the problem you continually raise with Protestants: whose interpretation is to be preferred? I’m pretty sure Paul’s opponents in Galatia would have been exceedingly unconvinced, to say the least, by Paul’s attempt to reframe the Abraham/Isaac/Ishmael tradition to his advantage in the circumcision debate.)
Blessings,
Dave
John 187,
I have no substantial disagreement with your comment, except with the assertion that infallibility is a proper inference from what the Church is. Obviously I don’t make that inference. Other than that, I am happy to say that Christ established the church as his authoritative presence in the world.
I wonder how human freedom and papal infallibility coincide. What if there were a renegade pope (a jokester, perhaps, or a crypto-Protestant) who decided to infallibly declare that 2 + 2 = 5? The scenario is ridiculous but does not strike me as logically impossible. Of course, such a declaration would not damage the faith of the church because the pope would not be speaking on a matter of doctrine. But what if the hypothetical renegade pope did decide to infallibly speak on some matter of doctrine in a way that contradicted previous teaching? Is this a logical impossibility, or is this a matter of faith that this will not occur, or will any statement made by any Pope, no matter the degree of tension with previous statements, be interpreted as in conformity with the tradition? I suspect the latter.
There are already degrees of difference in teaching over the years on matters of faith and morals (doctrine) within the RCC. However, they would still claim that this does not undermine the infallibility of the pope.
A couple of examples have to do with abortion and sex. It used to be taught that an abortion wasn’t an abortion before ‘quickening’ (end of 1st trimester). In fact, some clergy even performed early term abortions (pressing on the stomach and praying – and the ‘spawn of satan’ goes away)… and it was viewed as a small miracle. The teaching that ‘life begins at conception’ has not always been the position of the church.
It was also commonly taught that sex within marriage was sinful. Not even martyrdom can wash away the stain of the marital bed (and much other similar baloney). Obviously the RCC has tempered its message in those areas, but the fact remains that the teaching then differs from the teaching now.
Ahh, but these aren’t ‘ex cathedra’. Catch 22. Any teaching that isn’t accepted by the church as a whole can’t be considered as being infallible, even if it is the pope who teaches it or if it had a plurality of support at one time. We are 100% sure on the (un-provable) assumption of Mary, and 100% certain that the claim of infallibility is itself infallible – but disregard these other historical teaching since they don’t pass the ‘ex cathedra’ test. What we teach on sex and abortion ‘now’ is 100% infallible – at least we think so.
Bob B. (#188),
I find your claims suspicious at best. Even if these practices did exist and even were widespread, that doesn’t mean they were correct as the Church did not teach them as dogma. Regardless, you have not provided evidence of your assertions in the form of magisterial statements (papal bulls, ecumenical councils, etc.) or even documentation that these practices and beliefs were, in fact, widespread. In fact, you ignore how the Catholic Church explains her authority and infallibility to construct a strawman of her claims.
IC XC NIKA
Garrison
David (#187)
I guess I am saying that infallibility is a necessary inference because for an authority to really be an authority, it seems to me that there has to be some kind of buck-stops-here rule.
That said, of course, the infallibility can only be so if it is guaranteed by God. Thus your example:
Of course, as you say, that is not a matter of faith or morals. But I think, regarding matters that are under the Church’s (and the Pope’s only as the final arbiter) authority, it just comes to a factual question: is the Church infallible or not? That is what I think Christ’s “the gates of Hell will not prevail” includes. And, as I said, it seems to me necessary if the Church is to have real authority – as opposed simply to being at best a wise counsellor, but who might be wrong.
jj
John 190,
But there are many authorities that have real authority, ordained by God, that are not infallible (parents, state, etc). It is unclear to me why the church should be different. It still is a human organization, though it is also much more than that.
If the church is infallible, does the church need repentance? One of the major struggles I have with this dogma is that it seems to preclude the self-criticism that is essential to the Christian tradition and also precludes genuine repentance.
David (#191)
Thanks, David, for this. Excellent point, I think – I mean that ‘authority’ is not the same as ‘final authority,’ even in a particular area.
And it is quite possible, I mean in a theoretical mannar – Jim Jordan thinks this – that God has not intended there should be any final authority in the realm of guarding the deposit of faith. He could have left men with nothing but their own reason to discern truths – to be sure, from Scripture, from tradition, from one another – but, still, without any ‘supreme court’ authorised to make the final decision.
It is just that, given what Our Lord says about the authority of the Church in a number of places – not just Petrine passages, but, e.g., the John chapter 20 (is it?) where he talks, again, about ‘whose sins you forgive…’ etc – and given the actual history of what the Church seems to me to have believed about itself, I think He did intend there to be such a final authority.
But I think your second paragraph above is ambiguous. No one claims the Church is impeccable – God help us, it is far from that! Repentance, therefore, is definitely and constantly needed – and at times the whole Church must repent – as, with the Popes’ saying so, it has done, e.g. in the matter of the sex scandals, and, for the matter of that, Galileo – many others, I suppose.
But if by ‘repent’ you mean ‘repent of having falsely declared this or that to be dogma when, in fact, it is not, then, of course, that begs the question. If the Church is infallible – why, then, of course there must not be repentance from genuine declaration of dogma; and if it is not, then it ought to repent of ever having made the claim to infallibility.
That said, not everything that appears dogmatic is so, at least things may need explanation. A well-known example, of course, is the on-going business about extra ecclesiam. SSPX are, it seems, inclined to the belief that if you are not a formal Catholic, you are going to Hell. Yet not only does the church not now teach this, it is clear, from the Fathers, and from even the 1950 Feeneyite business, that this is not what the dogma means.
jj
David (#191),
I am going to do what perhaps shouldn’t be done: tune in, then tune out. I am teaching an intensive summer course right now and have little time for sleeping, let alone perusing C2C. But I happened to see your comment this lovely Sunday afternoon and have some thoughts in response.
First, when I was considering whether to become a Catholic, I agreed with you that real authority (buck-stopping authority) can exist without it having to be infallible. In fact–though this may be idiosyncratic–I began to think that the question of interpretive authority was muddied (at least a little) by the question of infallibility. As a Protestant, the problem I began to see was not that we need an infallible authority, but that my Reformed Protestantism couldn’t account for or accept that. The problem was that we need at least a buck-stopping authority (infallible or not), and my Protestant paradigm couldn’t even account for that.
I have been in the Catholic Church now for over a year, and still tend toward the same view. Unlike John, I am wary of saying that infallibility is a “necessary inference.” I am beginning to be persuaded of his view, but I am not yet fully persuaded. In any case, I still think that, dialectically speaking, the issue of infallibility is distinct from the issue of real authority. The Catholic must, of course, be able to respond to alleged inconsistencies in Church teaching. But the Protestant also has a task: he or she must explain how even fallible, buck-stopping authority is justifiable, within his or her paradigm. Of course, one may be unable to do this and still justifiably worry about alleged inconsistencies in Catholic teaching. But one recognizes that one’s own position is at sea, it rather changes the spirit of one’s investigations of the alleged inconsistencies.
Second, I think one needs to be careful about analogies with parents and civil government. Parental and governmental authority does not, in general, apply to beliefs. I say “in general” because, e.g., parents do have a responsibility to raise their children to believe certain things. But when the children mature into adults, they have the responsibility to reflect on what they believe and determine independently whether those beliefs are true, or determine whether their parents are trustworthy sources of information. Neither a parent qua parent nor a government qua government can expect a mature, rational adult to believe what it says, simply in virtue of its authority. This is because epistemic authority (and in particular, interpretive or doctrinal authority) is not the same kind as parental of governmental authority. So, from the fact that parental and governmental authority don’t require infallibility, it does not follow that doctrinal authority doesn’t require infallibility.
Finally, infallibility in no way precludes the need for repentance–unless, by ‘repentance’ you mean recanting that which it has universally taught and accepted as infallible. But repentance from wrong-doing? Of course the Church needs it. Self-criticism? Well, it depends on what kind of self-criticism you have in mind. Some Catholics, I think, are a little too fond of it. But if you mean openness to the possibility that we have been wrong in various ways and times, infallibility is perfectly consistent with that–again, unless you mean openness to recanting the deposit of faith, or that which can be validly inferred from it.
Best regards,
Max
David and Max:
When I call infallibility a ‘necessary inference,’ I should make clear that I do not mean this in anything like a mathematical sense. I only mean that – reasoning from the love of God shown in His sending His Son to die for our sins – that it seems right that He would give us what we need to benefit from that Sacrifice. But if, as I believe, that includes our needing to know certain things, He would want us to be able to be confident in our knowledge.
Now, as so many have argued in C2C, it really seems to me that, even given an inerrant Book, we will have questions – questions the answers to which must often perplex men of good will and reasonable intellect – and questions the answers to which it is important for us to know. Thus it seems to me a reasonable inference – but not unavoidable, I agree – that He would provide a final means of arbitration – and one that would not lead us astray.
Just wanted to be clear about what I meant by ‘necessary inference!’
jj
John and Max, thanks for your comments. A few thoughts:
1) John, 194, it always seems dangerous to reason from “what God would be likely to do.” Are we really sure what God would do concerning interpretive authority? I don’t believe God has given the church an infallible interpreter (in fact such a concept is almost an oxymoron). Interpretation is never over, never finalized. When I read the church fathers, I am appreciative of and amazed at their interpretation of Scripture. What stands out to me is how clearly it is influenced by its culture and how clearly it speaks to issues of the day. As an academic biblical scholar, I could never simply rehash patristic exegesis without “translating” it into modern categories of interpretation. So my view of interpretation is that it is a part of human culture and can never really be “infallible” in any meaningful sense. (This doesn’t address the issue of further scientific discoveries; e.g. what if the Catholic church had given the “infallible” interpretation of the flood account before scholars discovered the Epic of Gilgamesh in the nineteenth century?)
2) Max: why do we need a “buck-stopping authority”?
3) Max, you said:
I believe Christians ought to do the same with the church, albeit recognizing that you can never truly determine this “independently.”
You continue:
I don’t think the church can require this either. Take the dogma of the perpetual virginity. Now, historically, either Mary was a perpetual virgin or she wasn’t. It either is true or it isn’t. The authority of the fifth ecumenical council (I believe that’s the one) cannot add anything to whether it is true or not. If it isn’t historically true, their authority cannot make it true. If it is historically true, their authority cannot add to its truth or guarantee it.
I know many Catholic biblical scholars. In their profession, they cannot operate as though the church has infallibly decided on all sorts of issues. They have to work within the rules of historical criticism, in which ultimately the rational judgment of the individual scholar is paramount. However, this does not mean endless subjectivity: there are standards of argumentation and exegesis, and there is an academic community (peer review) that weighs and tests scholarly offerings. If they believe in the existence of an infallible interpreter, they need to bracket that belief in their day jobs.
4) On repentance: it may be, however, that the Church needs to repent of things it has believed (for example, the issue of Galileo) and the issue of infallibility may be a stumbling here.
David – (Re: 195)
You wrote:
Because without it doctrinal unity is impossible (or something close to it), given the complications of textual communication here below.The idea is this: if buck-stopping authority (let’s just call it “real” authority) is necessary for doctrinal unity among Christians, and if we have good reason to believe that God wants doctrinal unity (among other kinds) among Christians and that he will provide a way for His will to be fulfilled,then we have good reason to believe that there is real doctrinal authority somewhere. But there is indeed good reason to believe that God wants such unity. This can, I think, be reasonably inferred from John 17. It follows that we have good reason to believe there is real doctrinal authority somewhere.
There’s much more to say here, but time is short.
I wrote:
To which you responded:
In general, I agree with you. Here’s a more expansive view of what I had in mind.
With respect to some of the claims the Church teaches (e.g., that God exists and that Christ rose from the dead), every Christian should, in the ways and to the extent appropriate for them, seek evidence for those claims–evidence which does not presuppose the authority of the Church qua Church. But there is another class of claims–claims which are more detailed and therefore divisive–that should, I think, be approached differently. I have in mind here doctrines regarding the nature and number of the sacraments, the nature of justification, the nature of Christ, and such like. Some Christians can and perhaps should attempt to seek confirmation of these doctrines which does not presuppose the authority of the Church qua Church.
But many (maybe most) have neither the money, nor the time, nor the intellectual faculties, nor the training it takes to do this in anything close to a reliable manner. I, for one, fall into this category. Even then, people who can and should seek such “external” confirmation should not carry out their inquiries independently of the authority of the Church. This is because equally rational and informed people can disagree on the evidence (or so common experience tells us). And this means that being rational and well-informed is insufficient for getting at the truth. It is, no doubt, the most reliable means of getting the truth, if one must do this on one’s own. But then, it is false that one “must” do this on one’s own, if real doctrinal authority exists somewhere.
If there is real doctrinal authority somewhere, then the rational thing to do is to pay attention to it. Granted, there is an unavoidable degree of subjectivism in one’s judgment that any particular claimant to authority is authentic. But if one has made a reasonable judgment that the Church is indeed a reliable authority, then one is justified in taking its word on various doctrines–i.e. believing doctrines just because the Church teaches them. Those doctrines are justified, for me (the individual), by my judgment that the Church is a reliable authority.
Now, I agree with your statement above in the sense that we can do a similar thing with parents. When we come of age, we begin to seek evidence for our beliefs independently of our parents. With some beliefs we may judge that our parents are reliable authorities (in some domain). However, I think my original point–about parental authority being essentially different than ecclesial, doctrinal authority–still stands, for this reason. When I judge that e.g. my mother is a reliable authority on some subject, she does not have that authority in virtue of being my parent. She has that authority in virtue of being more knowledgeable in that subject than I. So in this kind of case, the operative authority is not parental authority; it is a kind of epistemic authority that can hold between any two rational agents.
Next, you write:
I join you in denying that the Church can add to the truth of something. But that is not what Catholics believe about doctrinal authority. Doctrinal authority is epistemic. Epistemic authority exists in virtue of being epistemically situated in a better way than others to some domain. An authority in some domain is more likely to get the truth in that domain than are others. The epistemic advantage which underwrites epistemic authority can come about in various ways. For Catholics, the Church has real doctrinal authority because the Holy Spirit protects it from error. (We can debate about whether real authority requires divine protection, but if the Church has divine protection, surely the Church counts as a real authority!) But if we can be rationally justified in believing something solely on the word of an epistemic authority in general, then we can be rationally justified in believing a doctrine solely on the authority of the Church. And if this is true, it seems that it is not unreasonable for the Church to expect some people to believe things just because it said so. Of course, almost all doctrines have some evidential base which is independently available to those who care to look. But the evidential bases for most (all?) Christian doctrines (in general, not just Catholic doctrines) are not dispositive. The epistemic gap between the evidence and the corresponding doctrine–the gap which explains doctrinal disagreement at large–is the gap that is filled by the doctrinal authority of the Church.
Unfortunately, I must stop here, with one quick word on your fourth point. I see now what you mean about repentance and how it relates to infallibility. In my view, there is no stumbling block, as long as the belief from which the Church repents is not dogma. To my knowledge, no such dogma exists in the case of Galileo.
I don’t know when I’ll be able to respond again. Thank you for your interest and sincere dialogue.
Peace,
- Max
David (#195)
Yes, of course, and I completely agree with you. Naturally, I haven’t become a Catholic because I thought, ‘Well, surely God would give us an infallible authority. Wonder where it is? Ah! Obviously it’s the Catholic Church!’
But, given, as I say, what seem to me plenty of reasons to think that He has done that, it seems ‘condign’ – appropriate to His character and love for us. I do not, for a moment, suppose this ‘what God would have done’ is some sort of clinching argument.
But of course I think the limits of our ability to discern these things – whether regarding Scripture, or even the existence of God Himself – are such that we must act on less than perfect knowledge. And – I confess it! – you could well say in a certain sense – please don’t get me wrong and suppose I think there is no evidence! – but in a certain sense, I believed in the Church because I wanted it to be so.
I do not think this is wrong. I think something like this is what C. S. Lewis says, talking about the existence of our longing for ‘joy’ – something like: ‘we thirst – well, there is water! We are hungry – well, there is such a thing as food. And we long for the absolute – well, there is God.’
That God might have provided a Church that was one; that would teach me and I could trust it; that would feed me with God’s own Body and Blood – this was such an incredibly desirable thing that I began to see if there were evidence that it could be so. I found there was.
I think there can be two attitudes towards these sorts of things: either a sceptical, ‘I-won’t-be-taken-for-a-fool,’ or a generous ‘If-I-err-I-would-rather-err-in-trusting-God-than-doubting-that-this-is-from-Him.’
Those who would come to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.
jj
Max,
A few thoughts:
1) “Doctrinal unity necessitates doctrinal authority.” I agree – if what God wants is that we all think the same. I’m not sure doctrinal unity is rated at such a premium in the NT. Many times, the message seems to be: God wants unity despite the fact that we don’t agree. See Paul in Romans 14.
2) If the church has epistemic authority, it would behoove me as a biblical scholar to look to the church for guidance in biblical interpretation. But in fact the field of biblical scholarship has its own canons and rules, and listening to the church is (unfortunately) not one of them. Catholic biblical scholars do not in fact treat the church as an infallible epistemic authority in their discipline. So what do we do about this?
You mentioned justification. The fact is, no serious Pauline scholar can take the decrees of the council of Trent on justification as an adequate scholarly interpretation of Paul today (the same is true for many of the interpretations offered in sixteenth century Protestant confessions). The fact is, with the discovery of the scrolls and the recovery of much pseudepigraphal Jewish literature (think of the manuscript finds in the 1800s) we know much more about first century Jewish eschatology than the Reformers or counter reformers did. Few Pauline scholars would read Rom 1:17 in the way Luther read it OR in the way his opponents read it. The problem is with the medieval conception of righteousness as a substance, which pervades the Tridentine decrees (see N. T. Wright on this).
So, I am very happy to listen to the wisdom of the church from all ages, but because interpretations of scripture are so thoroughly entangled in specific cultural and philosophical contexts, it seems very strange to suggest that there even can be such a thing as an “infallible interpreter.” What would that imply about, e.g., the relevance of the Council of Trent for interpreting Paul today? Would you really suggest that Pauline scholars submit to its epistemic authority?
3) On the church’s doctrinal authority filling the “epistemic gap” between text and interpretation, evidence and doctrine: maybe we need to be more ok with diversity of interpretation. That’s also an option. Also, this looks very much like the church’s doctrinal authority is a matter of “wish-fulfillment,” as John acknowledges in 197. Of course, that doesn’t count against the claim. Maybe an infallible interpretive authority that can resolve all our disagreements has been appointed by God and does exist! Maybe. I am skeptical. This cultural moment (post-Protestant, when everyone is absolutely tired of endless arguments over scriptural interpretation and the way that one minor issue leads to endless multiplication of denominations) suggests that a major reason for conversion to Catholicism is indeed the attractive idea that there is an infallible interpretive authority. Precisely, however, because the wave of returnees to the catholic fold is so bound up with this particular cultural moment (it is specifically a post-Protestant return to Catholicism), I am skeptical that what you have discovered is in fact a trans-cultural (universal) interpretive authority.
David, (re: #198)
I don’t mean to interrupt your conversation with Max, but I couldn’t help but notice this statement:
Which Tridentine decrees in particular do you think treat righteousness “as a substance”?
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Hi Bryan,
Don’t worry about interrupting, these are obviously public conversations and anyone can weigh in.
I think Session 6, Ch 7 is a clear instance where to be “justified” is not understood as a forensic declaration (i.e. a legal verdict) but as the beginning and increase of “grace-stuff” in the Christian (trans. Schaff):
Later in ch.7 (emphasis added):
See also Session 6, Chapter 10, “On the increase of Justification received” (trans. Schaff):
The italicized portion makes it clear that “righteousness” is something “received” (Trent uses the verb accipio) which can increase, leading to “further justification.”
See also chapters 15, 16, about how the “received grace of Justification” can be lost and recovered. Ch 16 is especially clear (with apologies, Schaff again):
See also Canons 11, 12, 24.
Blessings,
Dave
David, (re: #200)
Those passages are referring to sanctifying grace, which is not a substance, but a participation in the divine nature. You seem to be assuming that if grace is infused, then grace must be a substance. But that is not a good inference. That would force you into the following dilemma: either grace is not infused (in which case sanctification is ‘sola Pelagius‘), or grace is a substance.
St. Thomas explained that sanctifying grace is not a substance (and Trent followed him in this respect) when he wrote:
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
Bryan,
1) It’s possible to assert that grace is not infused without being Pelagian. So I don’t have a major problem with that dilemma.
2) How do you know, from the canons and decrees of Trent on justification, that you are to use this passage from Thomas to interpret them?
3) It is hard for me to understand clearly what Thomas is saying. He says grace “has its being in the soul in a less perfect way than the soul subsists in itself.” This seems to mean that grace is accidental in the soul. It is “nobler than the nature of the soul, though not in its mode of being.” But it is the very idea that grace needs to have a “mode of being” in the soul that is questionable, of course. So I don’t see how this quotation from Thomas clears everything up.
4) Are you saying that Trent’s language about “justice” as something that “inheres” and can increase and be infused ought to be taken into serious consideration by NT scholars today?
Dave
David,
To supplement what Bryan has said, note that scripture itself speaks of “receiving” grace. See especially John 1.16 and Rom 1.5 (in both of which the Vg uses accepimus, translating elabomen); cf. 2 Cor 6.1 (Vg: recipiatis, translating dexasthai). So it doesn’t follow that language of “reception” implies that that which is “received” is “stuff.”
best,
John
David,
I appreciate your reply. As an academic myself, I particularly appreciate your concern that what we believe about the Church needs to line up with our academic practices, and if it doesn’t, we have some hard questions to ask and to answer.
I have quite a few thoughts in response to your post, but I must regretfully refrain from continuing the conversation at this time. Perhaps later I can rejoin. But in parting I do want to offer one thought and register an autobiographical fact, with respect to your comment about many conversions to Rome being a cultural moment.
My thought: I agree with your suspicion: many conversions to Rome are no doubt due to our cultural moment–depending, of course, one what that means. To the extent that the problems I found bothersome and the arguments I found of particular importance were colored by my cultural context, I suppose my conversion was due to the cultural moment. I am not much bothered by this. The Church has many doors (all of them being Christ in different forms) and I suppose cultural movements and problems tend to light up some doors more than others. What would bother me is if all the arguments that were central to my conversion were shown to be unsound (soundness of course being independent of cultural moments). That hasn’t happened yet.
Now the autobiographical fact. The issue of interpretive authority was indeed one of the big reasons I left Protestantism for Rome. But it was by no means the only reason and by no means the only big reason. In one sense, the more I learned about the Church (and now, the longer I am Catholic) the smaller the issue becomes for me–not because I think it is unimportant, but because there are so many other dimensions of Christian thought and practice which, for me, continue to converge and point in the direction of the Catholic Church. I could almost think that any one of the major reasons on the basis of which I first joined the Church could be shown to be unsound, and I would still have more than sufficient reason to stay. (I know this sounds paradoxical, given how I ended the previous paragraph.)
This better be all.
Best regards,
- Max
Max,
Thanks for the dialogue. If you have time in the future, feel free to return to some of my questions. I appreciated the discussion. God bless.
Dave
David (#198)
It is interesting to me the emphasis you place on scholarship. It had long ago seemed clear to me – when I had no thought whatever of the Catholic Church – that ‘scholarship’ had to take the place of the magisterium of Rome. I wondered at the time, though, what to do about the fact, not merely that scholars disagree, but that the range of Biblical scholarship includes everything from extreme dispensationalism on the one side to virtual infidelity on the other.
The same, certainly, is true amongst Catholic Biblical scholars – but then the Catholic doesn’t depend on them as magisterial.
jj
David (re: #202),
You wrote:
If grace is not infused, then either heaven is something less than the beatific vision, or man is God. I explain why in comments #19 and #25 in “Michael Horton on Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life” thread. See also Barrett Turner’s article “Pelagian Westminster?“.
Detailed accounts of the Council of Trent show that the bishops were drawing significantly from St. Thomas’s Summa Theologica. In the Catholic mind, the Church follows the theological tradition, and that’s what these bishops were doing. They wanted to stand in continuity with the tradition, not be innovators. And that’s why interpreting them rightly requires understanding them in continuity with the tradition. Like St. Thomas they conceived of justifying grace as a participation in the divine nature, and thus as not a substance (because a participation is not a substance).
If grace did not have a mode of being, then it would not exist. The quotation from St. Thomas is meant to show that St. Thomas explicitly denied that grace is a substance.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
It’s interesting that much of Roman catholicism as portrayed on this site, aside from the philosophers here and trained theologians who apparently can tell you how many angels can stand on the head of a needle, propositionally considered of course, propound a doctrinal substance that doesn’t exist among the vast number of the faithful both in the pew and in the clergy. And even here in this forum, the argument keeps melting down to, ‘yes, but we have form’, and ‘we believe that as well’ AND we have the magisterium. Which as it turns out often can’t do the spade work that gets done even here. That’s why the pageantry and the mass and priestcraft and mystery become the undergirding of practice among the faithful. The common refrain becomes; ‘I believe what the church believes’. In practice, I light candles and pray to saints and with deep earnestness engage in the sacraments, because somehow my truncated faith is covered for by my earnestness and at least minimal understanding that the magisterium is safeguarding and superintending the maturing of the deposit of faith, while I partake in the mass and accompanying sacraments. In the meantime it’s a big enough tent to house doctrinal diversity from functioning agnostics to liberation theologians to contemplatives. ‘But we have a visible catholicity’. Really, come on guys, there’s a visible unity among human beings as, well, human beings. This ‘form’ of structure without substance is somehow superior to that unity that attains among protestantism? And this unity which you have is somehow more ‘true’ to the catholicity prescribed in the NT canon? I’m sure you guys can make argument for yourselves and those within your sphere. But to look out at protestantism as popularly practiced and say ‘our’ unity of faith and practice is better than what attains within protestantism is beyond a perspective colored rose.
John 206,
I place the emphasis on scholarship that I do because as a Protestant this is an area in which I am envious of and appreciate the Catholic tradition. Catholicism has learned from Galileo, while many Protestant fundamentalists seem to be bent on repeating the error of entrenching the church in a culture war with science. I appreciate the tradition of “faith seeking understanding” and the way Catholicism has incorporated a respect for modern science (esp. biology) and, in the study of Scripture, historical criticism.
That’s not to say modern scholarship is a “magisterium” – for one thing, there is absolutely no claim to infallibility! But it is to recognize that certain disciplines do have “experts” and are governed by certain rules. And in principle anyone can contribute to those disciplines, whether they believe or not.
My suspicion is that modern scholarship, in all fields (history, philosophy, theology, science, etc.) owes much to the Enlightenment and in turn to the Protestant Reformation. Basically, the rise of individual critical judgment as exemplified in the Reformation lives on in every discipline of the academy today. Of course this does not mean that the individual is king, there is peer review and each discipline has its own rules, etc. But the standard for argumentation is always rational, logical persuasion. Individuals who gain a degree of “epistemic authority” in a particular field do so because they have seemed convincing to many people.
So, one of my issues is, how does Catholicism navigate its acceptance of modern scientific inquiry (in all disciplines) with its rejection of individual critical thought (of the Reformers)?
Dave
David (#208
I suppose the answer is that the Catholic Church has never rejected individual critical thought per se; it reserves the right and duty to correct such critical thought when it departs from the deposit of faith.
The question of the means used for such correction is a prudential matter. Would one wish to defend Pius’s actions against Elizabeth I? Few would think so. Might one wish the present Pope were more vigorous in dealing with some of the more outspoken dissenting Catholic theologians? Some would think so. None of these issues amount to the Church’s rejection of critical thought qua critical thought.
It seems to me the essential thing is to concentrate on whether the Church is what it says – or even if it believes itself to be what it says. If so, then, naturally, it must speak out against what it considers heresy. My Reformed church certainly would agree; it would only disagree on whether what the Catholic Church spoke out against was heresy – and, indeed, whether the Catholic Church had the right to claim the title of divine teacher.
What I meant about scholarship, of course, was simply that, as it seems to me, if one rejects the idea of divine authority to teach, one must then do the best one can with scholarship. The alternative, I suppose, is spirit-filled enthusiasm, which seems often to lead to even more bizarre conclusions.
jj
John 203, Bryan 207:
Unfortunately I can’t get into a long discussion of nature/grace right now. Though important in its own right, it is somewhat tangential to this conversation. Leaving the thorny issue of whether grace is a substance to the side, perhaps we can agree that, whatever Trent meant, they described “righteousness” as something that can inhere, and be infused, and wax and wane? Even if Trent is right (let’s say they are), that does not mean they are correct as interpreters of Paul. Most Catholic biblical scholars, I think, would accept the authority of Trent (and infallibility), but wouldn’t take their teachings on justification as authoritative or binding for reading Paul.
As far as whether the denial of the infusion of grace either denies heaven as beatific vision or blurs the Creator/creature distinction: some have said the opposite, that the Catholic doctrine of the infusion of grace is what really blurs the Creator/creature distinction. In any case, I have no time to get into a long discussion about this right now. It does seem Bryan, that as a philosopher you must be aware of the complexity of the issues and the intricacy of the arguments here.
Best,
Dave
David (#210),
Of course Trent is binding when reading Paul. Your statement assumes we must read Paul in isolation from the rest of the New Testament (or at least read the rest of the New Testament through Paul). We do not and cannot read Paul outside of the New Testament and what the Church Fathers have also written about this subject.
IC XC NIKA
Garrison