So who do we as Christians look to today as these rightful leaders of “the Church”? Who are these people who, today, can assemble and have authority to make binding judgments about what divine revelation is and means?

Where are the councils being held that are the modern-day equivalents of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus, Rome, and so on? Who are the people holding them, and are their decrees binding upon all Christians as Nicaea was?

Sure, toss out infallibility for now for the sake of argument. Please tell me where to find the rightful leaders of the Church.

But remember Athanasius plainly stated that it was not the practice of the Church at his time to accept the Apocrypha. Now later there were particularly some North African churches who also wanted to include additional books

This is a bit inaccurate. Athanasius stated that

But for greater exactness I add this also, writing of necessity; that there are other books besides these not indeed included in the Canon, but appointed by the Fathers to be read by those who newly join us, and who wish for instruction in the word of godliness. The Wisdom of Solomon, and the Wisdom of Sirach, and Esther, and Judith, and Tobit

Notice 1) he includes Esther in the deuterocanonicals (“Apocrypha” by your phraseology) and 2) he includes Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah in the “Protocanonicals”.

However, in other writings Athanasius cited as Scripture Tobit, Sirach, and Wisdom, indicating variability in what he understood as the canon. When Athanasius is against your position, you downplay the importance of his opinion “Athanasius speaks to the canon not in a prescriptive, but rather a descriptive manner,” but when he favors it, he is to be looked to as the norm. You cannot have it both ways.

I have demonstrated that even 4th century St. Athanasius doesn’t provide you with corroboration of your sixty-six book Bible.

But at least Devin, grant that the Protestants who had already sided with Jerome on the matter were not judging capriciously.

If I said it was a “capricious” decision, that wasn’t good word choice. Is there historical evidence that favors the sixty-six book canon over others? Sure there is. This or that saint favored many or most or even exactly those books during sometime in his life. But that fact cannot give certainty for the canon you have chosen.

The same God who oversaw the writing of the individual texts oversaw their collection into the canon. Thus again, we are not being random or capricious in making this delineation.

We agree that He oversaw the collecting of the canon, but the historical evidence indicates that He oversaw it through the agency of His Church, as He oversaw (and guided) the discernment of doctrine after doctrine. The canon’s discernment cannot be said to be inspired like the books of the canon are. I recall in an earlier Called to Communion article you commented attempting to combine both the writing of the books and their collection as if they were one and the same thing that just kind of happened. I see how this idea would be helpful to your position, but historically it doesn’t seem to align with reality.

God bless,
Devin

I don’t think that the question is whether Trent’s reasoning was correct. The Protestants had schismed decades previously. The die was cast. They made their decision that the Church had erred on many doctrines and was not the Church that Christ had established.

Another small point: Catholic teaching on infallibility says that the Church will not err in her decrees on faith and morals but does not say that the reasoning given for the decision is infallible or necessarily the best way of supporting the decree.

To the second half of your statement, I would dispute that Trent “attacked” the conciliar understanding that allegedly gave us the earlier ecumenical councils. What makes a council ecumenical? Whose authority decides that? Those are more fundamental questions that precede the one you are asking, I think.

Any to that I agree. But the curious spin that the Catholic theologian puts on the matter here is that binding = infallible. As I noted before, there is nothing in general that would necessitate us making this sort of equivalency. We don’t believe that authority in general must be infallible to be binding.

So could you have the Church as the binding-yet-fallible, rightful authority for Christians? I would say that that is possible, though it doesn’t help us get around the question of which “Church”, exactly, is “the Church” whose is this rightful authority and also it raises the difficult problem of being bound by teachings which are false on faith and morals. That would mean Christians following the rightful, Christ-ordained Church’s teachings and yet committing sins and believing falsehoods in doing so.

It is true that authorities in general are not infallible, but of course the Church is unique in the universe as a creation of Christ, His Mystical Body, and so on. It is greater by far than a corporation, university, nation, family, or any other group of humans, and it is supernatural as well as natural.

In general do we need things to me irrreformable in our world before we say that they are not open for debate?

Well it’s all about authority. Who is the authority in Protestantism that says “the debate ends here”? There isn’t one. Every passage of the Bible can be interpreted differently to come up a unique set of beliefs, and this is in practice what has happened in Protestantism. One of my friends is a particular kind of dispensationalist that hinges it core differentiating teaching off of one obscure verse in the Bible. Who is to say [in Protestantism] that they are wrong?

Is there wide agreement within Protestantism on, say, the canon of Scripture. Yes there is, but what is the foundation for that agreement? It comes from the fact that 99.999% of Protestants just accept whatever Bible they have been given because “that’s what all their [Protestant] friends, pastors, and family uses.” They’ve accepted various authorities that came up with that particular canon from the early Church to the Protestant Reformers but they don’t realize that. So their agreement is only as strong as the shaky foundation of a bunch of men over the course of 1500 years who came up with (one of several) different canons.

So Protestantism can today say that the canon is not open for debate, but any person with some charisma could start a new denomination and decide to toss out five more books or add some others, and who could say that he was wrong?

I plan to respond more this weekend. God bless!

And here Devin, is where I don’t think your analogies don’t really fit. In the case of the women’s ordination, we don’t have Catholic theologians in the history of the RCC teaching that women should be ordained. Of course in the modern RCC you have all sorts of liberal theologians teaching all sorts of things just as in Protestantism, but this is not part of the history of the RCC before the modern era. But the history of the Church on the Proto/Deuteros debate is far different. Athanasius and Jerome taught explicitly that there was no possibility that the Deuteros should be part of the canon. There were of course other theologians such as Augustine who disagreed. And that debate goes on until Trent. So the question that is obviously raised is whether Trent’s reasoning was correct. What the Catholic apologist likes to tell me is basically that Trent decided the matter and thus end of story. But I think it is fair to ask as to what Trent’s reasoning was especially given her attack on the conciliar understanding of the Church which gave rise to the original ecumenical councils and creeds. Is that a reasonable question Devin?

Either the Church has the authority from Christ to speak binding proclamations about the content of divine revelation or she doesn’t.

Any to that I agree. But the curious spin that the Catholic theologian puts on the matter here is that binding = infallible. As I noted before, there is nothing in general that would necessitate us making this sort of equivalency. We don’t believe that authority in general must be infallible to be binding. When I ask Mike L this as in #88 he appeals to RCC dogma. This is why I suggested you read Mike’s whole reply in #88 and tell me if you think he answered me. I’m not planning to answer Mike again with the same answer to his same point he has made so many times before, but I would generally be interested in your thought here. Do you think that Mike is answering me here or is he just appealing to RCC dogma? Read particularly his last paragraph in #88 speaking on a lack of irreformability meaning that everything is legitimately open for debate. That’s a very clear statement of RCC understanding of the matter, but does one of necessity follow the other? In general do we need things to me irrreformable in our world before we say that they are not open for debate? And if no, why is this true in theology any more than any other subject which God has ordained?

The Church can teach and write documents that express very clearly whether X or Y is true on some given area of theology/morality. Read the Catechism and then read the Bible: the Catechism is much “clearer”, more like a textbook or instruction manual (though far more interesting) because, say, you want to learn about what baptism is and what it does. Just turn to the Catechism chapter on baptism and there are the bullet points! It does A, B, and C for reasons X, Y, and Z. Those teachings are supported in the Bible but the passages are scattered across many books and chapters and oftentimes the passages that do refer to baptism aren’t very clear (e.g. John 3:5, Romans 6, etc.). The Bible’s purpose is different than the Catechism’s purpose. No one would say that you should read the Catechism for “devotional purposes” nor as “lectio divina”–that’s what the Bible is for; it’s God-breathed. So the Church is able to speak in a way that is clearer in some sense than the sacred Scriptures, rendering the Scriptures intelligible in many areas of doctrine.

But Devin, why do you think that there is anything I would disagree with above? The point I made was that debates over “infallible” pronouncements of the Church have the same problems as debates over the infallible words of Scripture. Yes, absolutely we need creedal/confessional statements about what the Bible teaches on subjects. But if we say that we have to have infallible creedal statements (as Rome defines these) to bring to rest what the Scripture says about certain matters in Scripture then we are in the same predicament when we have to interpret the “infallible” statements of the creeds. The resolution here is to note that we do not have to have infallibility in order to have authority. If to take the example of Nicea, when the delegates returned to the congregations of Christendom and passed on the decisions of Nicea to the congregations, these churches recognized the right of the leaders of the Church to assemble so (as the Church had assembled in Acts) and knew that the leaders of these congregations had the authority to make these judgments. There is no reason to bring in ecclesiastical infallibility here.

On N.T. Wright, he does not come up with a new theory on justification (although that’s sometimes the charge against some of his followers); he is not debating forensic justification as summarized in the various reformed confessions. He just does not feel that the matter of individual forensic justification is the particular focus of the Pauline corpus. I’m not apologizing for Wright by any means, but it’s a complicated matter since even those who are adherents to FV/NPP say theirs is not a precise system of theology but rather a movement to bring back certain emphases to Reformed theology.

Protestants I know hold to a pick-and-choose ecclesiastical infallibility where the early Church was protected from error on the New Testament canon and the 16th century Protestants were protected from error on the Old Testament canon. That’s the ad hoc that I mentioned (which I recognize you take issue with). The other option is to presuppose the 66 book Bible as the starting assumption, which other Protestants do. Having an ad hoc or such a bald-faced assumption at the root of one’s basis for faith could be considered intellectual suicide.

But remember Athanasius plainly stated that it was not the practice of the Church at his time to accept the Apocrypha. Now later there were particularly some North African churches who also wanted to include additional books. There was no resolution to the debate in the Medieval era. Trent later makes her statement on the matter. So the obvious questions are 1) was Trent was right or not and 2) what were Trent’s reasons were for accepting the Deuteros? Either Trent’s reasoning was good or it was not. For the Catholic the correctness of her arguments really doesn’t matter, just the fact that Trent did make the decision that she came to. It’s the end of the story for the Catholic. But at least Devin, grant that the Protestants who had already sided with Jerome on the matter were not judging capriciously. If in fact Trent’s position was incorrect then we are left with the Protocanonicals as those books which were chosen by God through the instrumentality of the Church (as that Church is defined in Scripture) to be included in His Word. And thus to get back to your original post, the differentiation of the Church’s work in receiving the canon from other things the Church does is based on the fact that God inspired one but did not inspire the others. The same God who oversaw the writing of the individual texts oversaw their collection into the canon. Thus again, we are not being random or capricious in making this delineation.

When Athanasius speaks of the canon, he uses the term “receive” to indicate the Church’s role.

Athanasius’ festal letter also gives an OT canon of 22 books.

continuing…

If God works through the Church as that Church is outlined in Scriptures and this Church produces a given canon, then why would a fallible Church cause you to doubt? I’ve been around and around this topic with so many of the CTC folks and I think it interesting that while they concede that God could work through a fallible Church to produce an infallible canon, they won’t in effect concede that God could work through the minds and hearts of His Church to convince them beyond any shadow of a doubt that the canon is accurate. Somehow not conceding a chrism of ecclesiastical infallibility equals committing intellectual suicide with respect to the canon.

Well the first problem is, as we have previously in this article’s comments argued about, it isn’t clear which canon “the Church” gave us: the Protestant “Church” gave us 66 books, the Orthodox 75 books, and the Catholic Church 73. The three biggest “Churches” in Christianity give three different canons. If you further stipulate that all of those Churches are fallible, then I would say that that gives you good reason to doubt the canon!

Somehow not conceding a chrism of ecclesiastical infallibility equals committing intellectual suicide with respect to the canon. And as an aside, it is further puzzling since, with all of the epistemological problems in moderns Evangelicalism, with the matter of the canon they have picked an issue where there is virtually no lack of surety. You will not find any Evangelical bookstore anywhere that has any Bibles that leave out any of the Protocanonicals! So why don’t the Catholics pick epistemological problems in Evangelicalism that really manifest themselves as problems?

Protestants I know hold to a pick-and-choose ecclesiastical infallibility where the early Church was protected from error on the New Testament canon and the 16th century Protestants were protected from error on the Old Testament canon. That’s the ad hoc that I mentioned (which I recognize you take issue with). The other option is to presuppose the 66 book Bible as the starting assumption, which other Protestants do. Having an ad hoc or such a bald-faced assumption at the root of one’s basis for faith could be considered intellectual suicide.

Mormons have no lack of “surety” about their sacred Scriptures. I doubt you could go into a Mormon bookstore and find lots of different books of Mormons with different books, but what does that prove? Someone can have a “surety” based on a blind leap of faith or on ignorance.

When Athanasius speaks of the canon, he uses the term “receive” to indicate the Church’s role. The Church received the books, but did not define them. I’m not aware of a Church Father speaking of defining the books of the Bible that are in the canon, and I was just asking you if you are aware of some of other term(s) used to convey the relationship of the Church and canon in the writings of the ECF’s.

I have read various passages where Church Fathers mention this or that book or set of books, but I haven’t paid close attention to their wording. Given the historical fact that various writings (both inspired and non-inspired) were in existence and being read in the churches as well as the fact that the canon took centuries to crystallize, it seems most reasonable to me to recognize that the Church actively discerned which books were which. If God protected that discernment from error, we can have certainty that the canon is correct. If He did not, then we cannot have very much certainty, especially given the fact that at least three different canons now exist among the three largest Christian groups.

God bless,
Devin

I cannot say how the examples above track with the example of the Protos/Deuteros. It’s not that there was a debate in the Medieval Church over, to take one of your examples, whether women ought to be ordained.

This is how it tracks: there can be discussion, debate, questioning, challenging, and arguing of different ideas when a doctrine has not been settled dogmatically. And the less firmly settled a doctrine is, the more leeway there is to debate it–embryo adoption is a good example–this is a completely new area of bioethics that the Church is still discerning its way through. Can a family “adopt” a frozen embryo “left over” (so horrible) from IVF-using couples? Faithful theologians can be found on either side of the issue.

Contraception and women’s ordination are more firmly settled, some would argue they are now de fide teachings. However, there has been much debate and discussion about them in the past 50 years. The Church has continued reaffirming her unchanging teaching about both of them: contraception is immoral and women’s ordination is not possible. So while that has been the Church’s teaching on these doctrines (just as the 73 books of the Bible was the teaching from 400 – 1500 AD), many theologians and other Catholics over the past decades have challenged these doctrines (just as some Catholics challenged certain books of the 73 books of the Bible).

And that’s okay to do, within limits, until the doctrine is settled dogmatically. Then the case is closed on that particular issue. No more discussion. The Trinity is not up for re-invention or challenge of the dogmas concerning it (though we may still deepen in our understanding of the mystery of it). Christ’s two natures and two wills are not up for challenge. So when you bring up the fact that X theologians in the Middle Ages or during the time of the Reformation questioned the inclusion of the deuterocanonicals, it matters no more than the fact that there have been thousands upon thousands of Catholics who have questioned the Church’s teachings on contraception and women’s ordination over the past century.

Either the Church has the authority from Christ to speak binding proclamations about the content of divine revelation or she doesn’t. Protestantism says “the Church”–whatever it might be–has no such power, even if certain Protestant Ecclesial Communities will try to exercise some disciplinary power over their members as if they did has this power. More on that later.

Do you see the problem here? I am asking him about the definitive teaching of the Church and he appeals to this teaching to answer me. Please read #88 yourself and tell me if you think he has answered me.

The Church can teach and write documents that express very clearly whether X or Y is true on some given area of theology/morality. Read the Catechism and then read the Bible: the Catechism is much “clearer”, more like a textbook or instruction manual (though far more interesting) because, say, you want to learn about what baptism is and what it does. Just turn to the Catechism chapter on baptism and there are the bullet points! It does A, B, and C for reasons X, Y, and Z. Those teachings are supported in the Bible but the passages are scattered across many books and chapters and oftentimes the passages that do refer to baptism aren’t very clear (e.g. John 3:5, Romans 6, etc.). The Bible’s purpose is different than the Catechism’s purpose. No one would say that you should read the Catechism for “devotional purposes” nor as “lectio divina”–that’s what the Bible is for; it’s God-breathed. So the Church is able to speak in a way that is clearer in some sense than the sacred Scriptures, rendering the Scriptures intelligible in many areas of doctrine.

Really quickly on N.T. Wright, his position is a very nuanced one that is not so much trying to deny traditional Reformed position on justification, but rather claiming that the focus of the Pauline corpus is not individual but corporate with respect to justification.

I follow Rev. Jason Stellman’s blog and am reading the ongoing saga of the “discipline” (booting out? excommunication? barring from fellowship?) of the Federal Visionists, who are offshoots of the N.T. Wright/New Perspectives on Paul camp. Apparently, though Wright’s views on justification are “nuanced,” they are significantly wrong enough compared with traditional Reformed theology that people who follow his ideas are being disciplined in their churches (and they’re wrong enough that Reformed Baptist pastor John Piper spends lots of time writing entire books trying to refute Wright).

Interestingly, Wright “gets” Protestantism more than most Protestants seem to. He points out louder than anyone that Luther and Calvin weren’t infallible and so his fellow Protestants should refrain from reading the WCF to him or Calvin’s Institutes, as if they were dogma (or indeed, as if they were anything more than one man’s opinion). He has come up with a new theory of justification with the “justification” that the founding principles of Protestantism completely support his endeavor: the “truths” of the faith that have been so long held have all been theories and opinions which (fallible) men have come up with, subject to revision and even radical modification by Christians (like him) who come later, have access to more historical documents and scholarship, and in whom the Holy Spirit leads.

Need to run–I’ll try to respond to the rest of your response later. God bless my internet friend!
Devin

And as I pointed out to Mike on this thread, the problem with interpreting the infallible statements of Scripture has just the same challenge as interpreting the “infallible” statements of the tradition of the Church that have been certified with this given level of certainty. Now Mike tried to answer my objection in #88 by appealing to “the definitive teaching of the Church.” Do you see the problem here? I am asking him about the definitive teaching of the Church and he appeals to this teaching to answer me. Please read #88 yourself and tell me if you think he has answered me.

That just seizes on a phrase I used while utterly ignoring my argument.

You agreed that the definitions of Chalcedon, etc., are interpretive advances that clarify our understanding of divine revelation. My argument had been, and remains, that such advances count as definitive expressions of divine revelation, rather than as human opinions about how to interpret the sources, only if propounded by an infallible ecclesial authority. Apparently it needs to be stressed for the umpteenth time that, if such expressions are only opinions, then the belief that they are advances is, itself, only an opinion that might be wrong. That, indeed, is a key tenet of the Protestant hermeneutical paradigm. So your refusal to accept the epistemic significance of my distinction between definitive teaching and opinion only means that you adhere to the Protestant HP–which we knew already and merely begs the question. Put another way: what you say is a problem is only a problem given the Protestant HP, which we reject to begin with.