The professors acknowledged that many Protestants simply take the wrongness of Rome for granted, unconsciously adopting a kind of “Protestant triumphalism.” As a result, they are left “complacent about the challenge that Rome can pose to us,” mistaking easily refuted caricatures of Catholic teaching for actual Catholic teaching. Regrettably, despite these observations, there are several serious misconceptions along with arguments by innuendo in this brief conversation. These include the baffling suggestion that the Pope does not do much preaching (cf. the Vatican’s collection of Pope Benedict’s homilies and other pastoral addresses), an unfortunate slur concerning what lurks “below the surface” of Catholicism, and a passing reference, drawing from a somewhat sensationalistic secondary source, to John Henry Newman’s supposed doubt and discontent after his conversion. The latter is a canard that was current during Newman’s lifetime, and easily disproved by his own testimony. As for secondary sources, the professors would have done far better to refer their listeners to the new edition of Ian Ker’s meticulously researched biography, which is imbued with Newman’s own private writings, giving us an intimate portrait of this faithful Catholic priest and Cardinal.

Although I will address a few more particular problems in the professors’ attempt to unmask Catholicism (such that by the end of the podcast they are claiming that the Catholic Church is a “false Church”), my focus will be primarily on one topic, albeit the one that runs like a thread through the entire discussion, which is the development or germination or evolution or whatever you think best describes the changes exhibited in the Catholic Church over time.

I. Emerging Catholicism

A prevailing theme of the talk was the non-primitive nature of some core Catholic institutions and beliefs. For example: The medieval and modern papacy is not exactly like the early and original papacy. Or if that characterization is considered too compliant, then you can say with the professors that the medieval and modern papacy is not much like the papacy of the ancient Roman Church, which in its turn was not much like the congregational leadership structure of the really ancient church in Rome. On their view, furthermore, neither is the early nor medieval nor modern episcopacy very much like the very early churches that the Apostles founded throughout the Roman Empire.

The professors went on to mention the fact that the seven sacraments were not specifically delineated until the Middle Ages, and not dogmatically defined (at least by an extraordinary act of the Magisterium) as to source, number, and efficacy until after the Reformation. And the very controversial definition of papal infallibility did not occur until 1870, when the Fathers of Vatican I defined the doctrine of papal infallibility. The Catholic Church’s rites, ceremonies, and devotions were also alluded to in the talk, in connection with development. Certainly these are saturated with changes. I don’t suppose that anyone thinks that the liturgy celebrated in a Jewish house church in 50 A.D. was that of John Chrysostom, though maybe some believe that it bore a striking resemblance to the liturgy that developed under the headship of John Calvin. (Tim Troutman discusses the earliest Christian liturgies in his post and accompanying podcast, Christian Worship in the First Century.)

Development has been abundant and evident in the Catholic Church from East to West. Since the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), the Church has held 21 Ecumenical Councils (by Catholic reckoning), many of these defining some fundamental matters of doctrine. As regards religious ceremony and devotion, the Byzantine liturgical (and often imperial) processions (echoed today in the various “entrances” of that Rite), the iconostasis, hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer (which blows away the Rosary for sheer repetition), the Latin Church’s Corpus Christi processions (still proceeding through the broad streets of our marvelous modern cities), the elevation of the Host, the confessional box, the Gothic Cathedral, etc. are all obvious developments. We don’t find much of this in the New Testament or the first few centuries or even the first several centuries of Church history. This list could easily be greatly multiplied. There is simply no denying the fact that the Catholic Church has changed over the course of time. The question is, how do we explain this fact?

The Catholic Church has given various accounts of the Catholic developments. As to essential things, she maintains that they have been there from the beginning, and are either clearly presented in the sources, or implicit in them, or else were known and preserved among the faithful in a secret discipline, hidden from profane eyes and the as yet not fully initiated catechumens. As to those things that are related to the essential things, but not themselves essential, e.g., the prayer beads, the processions, the elevation, the College of Cardinals, these need little more explanation than, say, the hymns of Charles Wesley, standing for the reading of God’s word, receiving the communion wine in separate, individual-sized cups, or the General Assembly. Out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks–and the body aligns. The heart of Catholic worship is of course the Holy Eucharist. A large part of Catholicism’s rich liturgical heritage is but the progressive aligning of the “body” in visible forms of worship expressive of belief in the Real Presence. The relative poverty of Protestantism with regard to the visible dimension of worship is largely a consequence of denying the Real Presence and the Sacrifice of the Mass, or else redefining the doctrines such that the consecrated elements are supposed to remain or revert to bread and wine, and the sacrifice is supposed to be something other than the self-oblation of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby our sins are forgiven.

Clark and Godfrey touch briefly upon this issue, claiming that the Church Fathers were ambiguous on the Eucharist as a sacrifice, and that it is contrary to Scripture (the Epistle to the Hebrews in particular) to suppose that the church building is a temple, having a sanctuary and an altar, as we find in Catholic churches. In connection with the Eucharist, particular mention is made of St. John Chrysostom. Here the professors assume a false dichotomy between the Eucharist as the anamnesis of Christ’s sacrifice, and the Eucharist as actually being that sacrifice. Thus they suppose that St. Chrysostom, who uses both expressions, is vacillating and non-committal on the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist. Tim Troutman has addressed these matters at some length in his articles, The Church Fathers on Transubstantiation and Holy Orders and the Sacrificial Priesthood. As Tim argues, the Catholicism that emerges over the centuries, with its variety of ritual centered upon the Eucharist, is an expression of fidelity to, rather than a departure from, the doctrine of the Church Fathers. (The same goes for the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration, concerning which the professors give a hasty account, badly misconstruing the Catholic doctrine and ignoring the patristic evidence.)

The piety of the early Protestants, on the other hand, was iconoclastic, expressed by smashing sacred art, purging prayers, whitewashing church buildings, and in many cases desecrating consecrated hosts reserved in the tabernacles of Catholic parishes. (For historical accounts of early Protestant iconoclasm, see Carlos M. Eire, War Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin, and Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400–1580.) The result, naturally, was a wreck, followed by a blank.  That blank was bound to be, and was, written over by someone’s conception of what ought to be said and done when folks gather for worship, and this in turn was informed by what that someone believed, and perhaps just as importantly, what he did not believe. But once we admit the principle that allowed for this kind of revision, the someone who gets to do the revising turns out to be just about anyone. Eventually, schism breeds competition, competition breeds consumerism, and consumerism prompts more schisms, as well as conversions to Catholicism (getting off the wheel, so to speak).

II. Imagining the Catholic Church

The professors at one point surmised that people might very well turn Romanist because of the romantic appeal of Rome, at least as compared to the slavish contemporaneity and/or plodding iconoclasm of Evangelical and Reformed worship services. There is surely something to the supposition that people turn to Rome through a longing for romance.  But the desire of the convert is for something significantly more than vestments, chants, thuribles, and stained-glass windows. After all, as was noted in the podcast (in connection with Evangelicals’ penchant for guitar-strumming praise songs), Catholicism has of late been tainted by some of the same ills that plague Evangelicalism, including liturgical banality, architectural functionalism, and artistic modernism. These phenomena, unhappy in themselves, nevertheless serve to highlight an essential element of Roman romanticism, one that cannot be completely overwhelmed by underwhelming or even egregious aesthetics. [1] Basically, many would be converts begin by imagining the Catholic Church to be a secure haven from a rudderless and consequently fissiparous Protestantism. As they progress, they realize that the image of a haven or harbor, while certainly applicable, is not completely adequate, and must be joined by a Barque. And once one gets the picture of a ship, sometimes tossed about by perilous seas, but ever remaining intact and afloat, one is nearer to understanding that Catholicism is like a marriage, in which romance does not reduce to sentimentalism, nor prescind from difficulty and pain, but rather flows from the realities of a life shared together, come what may.

Thus the essential element in the love story that is Catholicism does not ultimately depend upon the aesthetic appeal of the concrete expressions of the Church’s piety. These do pertain to the essence, and so enter into the image that prompts and entices the convert, but the more fundamental thing, that which gives form and focus, provides sense and stability, to the “smells and bells” and proliferating forms of art and devotion in the Church, is the unity and enduring identity-in-continuity-through-history of the Catholic Church herself. Nothing is more romantic than enduring unity, which is why we are so moved by a Golden Anniversary. The convert to the Catholic Church is likewise moved. He thinks that here he has found the “pearl of great price,” the precious Bride of Christ, the Mystical Body. Of course, in the end (which is really the beginning), conversion involves an act of faith that cannot be ultimately vindicated by imagination. But as it turns out, the romance of Rome has more than a little to do with the reasons for Rome, and lies largely in the fact that Christ established one Church (Matthew 16:16-18), which is his Mystical Body, which has endured through time (according to his promise and by the power of the Holy Spirit), having visible roots in and historical continuity with Cephas and the twelve, to which the relics of Sts. Peter and Paul, the succession of Popes, and the very name “Catholic” bear witness.

III. The Image and the Essence

Such is the essential structure of the lure of Rome, that which most appeals to many would be converts. The Catholic Church’s formal unity and antiquity in (at least) material continuity with the Apostles, and through them with Our Lord Jesus himself, are all evidences of its identity as that one Church which Christ founded (cf. the quotation from John Henry Newman in this section). The professors immediately pick up on this point, and commence by asserting the necessity of the Reformation, which they maintain was the product of very talented and well-educated men, who severally came to the conclusion that the whole Church was not properly ordered according to the New Testament. Their claim is that the Catholic Church’s essence, regardless of her image, is other than the essence of the Church that Christ established. The evidence adduced on behalf of this claim is that the Catholic Church, at least as constituted sometime prior-to (and since) the Reformation, and sometime after the [fill-in-the-blank] century, is discernibly different from the original Church, which can be identified by talented and well-educated persons through critical interpretation of Scripture and history.

It is one thing to enjoy material continuity with the past, and another thing to be the same thing as that which existed in the past. The former kind of continuity is exemplified by the way that, per evolutionary theory, a modern mammal, let’s say an elephant, is related by an unbroken succession of life forms to an ancient animal that for all we know was (to paraphrase Chesterton) some kind of fish but certainly no kind of elephant. That sort of change does not constitute a continuity of essence, as does, for example, the biological process which we observe all around us and commonly call “reproduction”–elephants giving birth to elephants. The reproductive process involves identity of essence as well as the material continuity of life forms, whereas evolution only involves the latter. The professors’ contention is that changes in the Catholic tradition, including the definitions of some essential Catholic doctrines, exhibit an evolutionary kind of development, by which one thing turns into something else.

As concerns the Catholic conception of development, it is necessary to note that the Church is not best likened to either the evolution or the reproduction of a species. According to the New Testament, and St. Paul in particular, the Church exists after the manner of a living body, an individual substance having an essence, including an inherent principle of movement, which constitutes its identity-in-continuity-through-change-over-time. Staying with this “form of sound words,” i.e., the image of a living body as indicating the nature of the Church, we would expect the Church, like a body, to change according to its own inherent principle of motion, i.e., to grow and develop. This too, at least by analogy (begging no question as to the relation of the Church to the kingdom of heaven), is in accordance with Scripture, which describes the kingdom of heaven as a tiny mustard seed, which grows into a tree, becoming a home for all the birds of the air (Matthew 13:31-32).

Catholics maintain that changes in the Church, such as the accumulating definitions of doctrine, ritual embellishments in the celebration of the Sacraments, proliferating forms of religious art and devotion, and varying arrangements in the organization of the Magisterium, are like the growth and development of a living being, a quite natural and indeed indispensable facet of its life. Thus Newman remarked on the life of material beings: “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.” Furthermore, as we know, a fully grown tree look less like a mustard seed than an elephant looks like a fish. So even from remarkable changes it does not follow that there has been an essential change. In fact, if we are thinking along the lines of an individual thing, rather than a chain of related things, then material continuity itself will strongly suggest identity, as Newman notes at the beginning of his essay on development:

Till positive reasons grounded on facts are adduced to the contrary, the most natural hypotheses, the most agreeable to our mode of proceeding in parallel cases, and that which takes precedence of all others, is to consider that the society of Christians, which the Apostles left on earth, were of that religion to which the Apostles had converted them; that the external continuity of name, profession, and communion, argues a real continuity of doctrine; that, as Christianity began by manifesting itself as of a certain shape and bearing to all mankind, therefore it went on so to manifest itself; and that the more, considering that prophecy had already determined that it was to be a power visible in the world and sovereign over it, characters which are accurately fulfilled in that historical Christianity to which we commonly give the name. It is not a violent assumption, then, but rather mere abstinence from the wanton admission of a principle which would necessarily lead to the most vexatious and preposterous scepticism, to take it for granted, before proof to the contrary, that the Christianity of the second, fourth, seventh, twelfth, sixteenth, and intermediate centuries is in its substance the very religion which Christ and His Apostles taught in the first, whatever may be the modifications for good or for evil which lapse of years, or the vicissitudes of human affairs, have impressed upon it.

Of course I do not deny the abstract possibility of extreme changes. The substitution is certainly, in idea, supposable of a counterfeit Christianity,—superseding the original, by means of the adroit innovations of seasons, places, and persons, till, according to the familiar illustration, the “blade” and the “handle” are alternately renewed, and identity is lost without the loss of continuity. It is possible; but it must not be assumed. The onus probandi is with those who assert what it is unnatural to expect; to be just able to doubt is no warrant for disbelieving. (An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, p. 5-6.)

The Catholic Church’s persistence in material continuity from the time of Christ and the Apostles is a strong indicator that she is also formally, and therefore bodily (a body being comprised of form and matter), the proper subject of the entirety of Church history. In which case, the Catholic Church is the Church of Justin Martyr and John Chrysostom, Constantine and Charlemagne, John of Damascus and John of the Cross, the Thomas Christians and Thomas Aquinas, Saint Patrick and Saint Nicholas, and of course the Venerable Bede. The professors certainly object to this claim of formal identity, but they do not, it seems to me, sufficiently take into account the force of the Catholic Church’s material continuity with the Apostles (particularly Peter), which cannot be dismissed merely by pointing out, as they do, that the Orthodox Church is also contiguous with the churches founded by the Apostles. [2] I hope that the following analogy will serve to underscore the point that Newman was making in his Essay: The Catholic Church looks upon the persons just mentioned, and their times and places, much as an experienced, well-traveled, and variously adept man looks on his own life. That man would be bemused but unpersuaded if you told him that the enormous variety of his past is evidence against the essential identity of his person.

IV. The Tradition of the Fathers

Before proceeding further in our consideration of development, I want to take a moment to clarify, or at least acknowledge, something about Tradition. The fact that Catholics refer to many of the aforementioned men as “fathers” is an indication that development is not the end all and be all of the life of the Church. Our seasoned man in the preceding paragraph might, after all, have himself converted to various incompatible doctrines concerning “essential matters” over the course of his long and illustrious life. Such a change in the Catholic Church would falsify her claim of identity in continuity through history with the Church that Christ established. There are also crucial differences between the origin of an individual man and the origin of the Church, with a corresponding difference in how the concept of growth or development applies to each. The Christian appeal to antiquity has to be understood from the doctrinal standpoint which one finds, to take an authoritative and ecumenical example, in the Nicene Creed, as concerning Jesus.

When we come, with this point of reference, to consider history, we are profoundly affected by the facts that the Apostles knew our Lord personally, and their immediate successors knew the Apostles personally. Before the second generation from Christ passed away, the Church was already referred to as “the catholic Church,” having an institutional identity that was clearly distinct from the already proliferating sects. (I don’t think that many people will disagree with this claim, though there will of course be disagreement over a host of related matters.) But this institutional identity, which (as Catholics believe) is perpetual and essentially involves a teaching authority that has been guaranteed enduring doctrinal integrity, is not opposed to a special deference and veneration for the early Fathers, who personally and/or by virtue of historical and social proximity had the teaching of the Apostles “ringing in their ears,” who, in their turn, had heard, seen, and touched the Word of Life.

John Henry Cardinal Newman, now Blessed, who is known for developing the theory of doctrinal development, is likewise known for his devotion to the early Church Fathers. Newman once wrote of antiquity, in connection with development:

For myself, hopeless as you consider it, I am not ashamed still to take my stand upon the Fathers, and do not mean to budge. The history of their times is not yet an old almanac to me. Of course I maintain the value and authority of the “Schola,” as one of the loci theologici; nevertheless I sympathize with Petavius in preferring to the “contentious and subtle theology” of the middle age, that “more elegant and fruitful teaching which is moulded after the image of erudite Antiquity.” The Fathers made me a Catholic, and I am not going to kick down the ladder by which I ascended into the Church. It is a ladder quite as serviceable for that purpose now, as it was twenty years ago [i.e., when Newman converted]. Though I hold, as you know, a process of development in Apostolic truth as time goes on, such development does not supersede the Fathers, but explains and completes them. (Letter to Dr. Pusey, p. 24.)

Contrary to the claim of at least one Reformed (or ersatz Reformed) Protestant, the Church Fathers were not “Church babies.” There is a sense in which the deposit of faith is better understood by latter generations who can see more of the tree, as it were, due to centuries of growth and development. However, there is a kind of concentration of the arboreal life in its earlier stages, which renders the writings of the Fathers extremely potent, such that they are rightly called fathers, to whom later generations, as faithful children, turn for knowledge and wisdom. The same goes, a fortiori, for the writings of the Apostles and their associates, even apart from consideration of the unique status of those writings as divinitus inspirata. The Church both begins from and moves towards perfection. Born from the wounded side of the Son of God (CCC 766), and from the beginning having the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16), the Church “according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love” (Ephesians 4:16).

V. On Appealing to the Past

I can understand Protestant frustrations with what might be perceived as the Catholic’s proprietary use of the theory of the development of doctrine. Protestants introduce a new idea, e.g., justification as extra nos imputation received by faith alone, and it is called a break from the Fathers. Catholics introduce a new idea, e.g., the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist as involving a transubstantiation of the elements, and it is called a development of the Fathers, i.e., explaining and completing them. As for the indisputably old ideas, Catholics take credit for holding those intact, and then accuse the Protestants, where they hold the same ideas, of being inconsistent and unprincipled. It seems like Catholics get to have their cake and eat it, and also to turn the cake into pumpkin pie and eat that too, calling it a development of the dessert implicit in the original cake. As for Protestant developments, such as Reformed ideas that are hard to find in the early Fathers, well, those aren’t dessert at all.

Catholics, in turn, experience their own frustrations with what is sometimes perceived as the Protestant’s selective application of the theory of doctrinal development. On the one hand, the theory is dismissed as an unprincipled way to account for the lack of explicit testimony in either Sacred Scripture or early Church history for some essential Catholic doctrines. But on the other hand, some of these same objectors begin to sound like development theorists when attempting to account for the continuity, or at least congruence, of Protestantism with the historical Church. Something like this seems to be going on in “The Lure of Rome” podcast. After dismissing the Catholic appeal to development as a way to gloss “radical” changes in the Church, the professors went on to account for the classical Protestant doctrine of justification relative to the testimony of the ancient Church (which lacks “repeated, clear articulations of 16th century Protestant doctrine of justification”) by claiming that the latter’s doctrine of grace “resonated in many of its parts” with the teaching of St. Augustine, which in turn is supposed to be amenable to Protestant soteriology. Thus, something like Protestantism is supposed to be implicit in parts of the testimony of the Fathers, such that the Reformers had as least as much of a claim to the mantle of antiquity as did Tridentine Catholicism. [3]

After some consideration of the professors’ manner of appealing to the Fathers, I have come to the conclusion that they are not being inconsistent or selective in their use of any one theory of doctrinal development. Rather, they are attempting to find a point or points of contact in the early Church Fathers that is sufficient, granted certain assumptions, to guarantee that the essence of the Protestant churches, or of some subset of these churches, can be found not only in the New Testament, but in the early Church, and perhaps even in the medieval Church. Such similarities are supposed to be sufficient to establish the identity of the Protestant churches with, if not the historical Church, at least the true Church throughout history. Thus, proceeding upon Luther’s maxim that the doctrine of justification is the article by which the Church stands or falls, if one can find here and there, prior to the Reformation, certain claims and practices which are maintained by Protestants, or are at least consistent with the Protestant doctrine of justification, then one can reasonably conclude that the true Church might have existed at those times, although she exists more perfectly at later times, i.e., in the Protestant churches after the Reformation. The possibility that the true Church has existed throughout history is supposed to hold even if the doctrine, organization, and forms of worship and devotion of the historical Church, taken as a whole, are very different from the doctrine, polity, and piety of the Protestant churches.

The professors are attempting to maintain a middle position between Spirit-guided-development-in-continuity (ala St.Vincent and Newman) on the one hand, and outright [explicit] ecclesial deism of the Restorationist sort on the other hand. So they take a view in which the gist of the Gospel (as understood by Reformed Protestants), and with it the Church, can be glimpsed here and there, as a more or less developed instance of a discernible species, even if it is significantly different from the other animals in its environment, including its direct ancestors and direct descendants. But this method of locating the Church requires the professors to be highly selective in their appropriation of the past, which renders circular their appeals to history. They seem prepared to accept only that testimony of the early Church which conforms to their Reformed theology, in which case the obvious question is: Why should anyone be measured by the standard(s) of Reformed theology? (I discuss this question in the post, Westminster in the Dock: Reflections on the Peter Leithart Trial.) That question, in turn, leads clearly back to the many discussions on this website concerning Sola Scriptura and its non-principled-distinction from Solo Scriptura.

We have seen that, from a Scriptural point of view, the Church is not like a species, but like a substance, and particularly a living body. But this implies that the Church is visible. In consequence, we can, with Newman, locate her in space and time by tracing her “external continuity of name, profession, and communion.” Locating the Church’s identity-in-continuity-through-history, proceeding from Christ, through Peter and the Twelve, is how one identifies the true Gospel, because the true Gospel comes to us from Christ, through the Apostles, in the Church, which is visible, like unto a body. Yes, there are developments in the Church’s understanding of revelation, but whenever some such development comes to be articulated by the Church in a doctrinal definition, we know that the definition is leading us into a fuller apprehension of the truth, precisely because it is an expression of the mind of the same Church that Christ established and preserves as the “pillar and foundation of truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). The alternative, which no one seems to like but which Protestants cannot seem to avoid, is Solo Scriptura.

VI. The Nature of the Body

Catholics concede that the Scriptural description of the Church as a living body is something of an analogy, a form of sound words that truly but imperfectly conveys a mysterious truth. More specifically, or more literally, Catholics believe that the Church is one visible society (CCC 771), having an essential purpose (CCC 759) and structure (CCC 765), that is not reducible to the sum of its parts (CCC 835). In his encyclical on the mystical Body of Christ, Pope Pius XII distinguished this Body from both a physical and a moral or political body:

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

For this reason We deplore and condemn the pernicious error of those who dream of an imaginary Church, a kind of society that finds its origin and growth in charity, to which, somewhat contemptuously, they oppose another, which they call juridical. But this distinction which they introduce is false: for they fail to understand that the reason which led our Divine Redeemer to give to the community of man He founded the constitution of a Society, perfect of its kind and containing all the juridical and social elements—namely, that He might perpetuate on earth the saving work of Redemption—was also the reason why He willed it to be enriched with the heavenly gifts of the Paraclete. The Eternal Father indeed willed it to be the “kingdom of the Son of his predilection;” but it was to be a real kingdom, in which all believers should make Him the entire offering of their intellect and will, and humbly and obediently model themselves on Him, Who for our sake “was made obedient unto death.” There can, then, be no real opposition or conflict between the invisible mission of the Holy Spirit and the juridical commission of Ruler and Teacher received from Christ, since they mutually complement and perfect each other—as do the body and soul in man—and proceed from our one Redeemer who not only said as He breathed on the Apostles “Receive ye the Holy Spirit,” but also clearly commanded: “As the Father hath sent me, I also send you”; and again: “He that heareth you heareth me.” (Mystici Corporis Christi, 64, 65; cf. Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, 10.)

It does not automatically follow from the Catholic’s conception of the Church as a society that every change in that society is a change for the good, i.e., an authentic development rather than a corruption. But on the Catholic understanding of the nature of the Church, not only is development acceptable, it is to be expected, and those particular developments that are definitive teachings of the Church are to be received with the full assent of faith, as being the correct interpretation of divine revelation, authoritative and irreformable. Newman wrote that the theory of the development of doctrine is “an hypothesis to account for a difficulty.” (If this description alone renders the theory suspect for some, they should remember that the same thing can be said of gravity.) The difficulty to which Newman refers is precisely that to which the professors point: the lack of explicit testimony in antiquity for some doctrines that the Catholic Church considers to be essential (as in part of the deposit of Faith) and for those peculiar liturgical, disciplinary, and devotional practices that pertain to the essence of the Faith, as this is understood by the Catholic Church. Conversely, the difficulty for Protestants is how to accept any doctrine defined by the Church as anything other than a mere interpretive opinion which can legitimately be discarded by talented and well-educated Bible scholars whose exegetical conclusions are not consistent with the doctrines of the Church. The professors seem not to consider, in all their talk of the changes in the Catholic Church, that that Church accepts as irreformable the doctrinal decrees of all the Ecumencial Councils, going back to and including Nicea. These doctrines do represent developments, but they are not up for debate.

Much of what the Protestant perceives to be the magical production of pumpkin pie, a veritable transubstantiation of doctrine and discipline, the Catholic receives as authentic developments in the Church’s understanding of the original deposit of Faith, even where these are not simply logical deductions from the deposit. On the Catholic view, the universal Church does not exist after the manner of an abstract entity, such that one should look for a more or less perfect instantiation of ecclesia Christi here and there throughout time and space, and set about reforming or reproducing the Church according to the image of the most favored instance. This is not to say that the Church cannot be reformed according to timeless truth, only that the Church herself is not merely a timeless truth, and her historical existence cannot therefore be understood as the iteration of an idea (e.g., locating the true Church by locating the true Gospel). Particular instances of development that cause the most trouble for non-Catholics ought to be accounted for on a case by case basis, and the Church should certainly be defended from charges of contradiction. But the phenomenon of development is in general explicable when we consider that Christ founded a visible Church, a society that is explicitly likened to a body, having an inherent principle of motion, including the power to bind and loose, whereby the whole body grows and develops in unity, according to its God-given purpose (Ephesians 4:11-16).

VII. Conclusion

We have not even begun to explore the theory of doctrinal development, so to assess whether and in what form and to what degree it is successful. At some point, we hope to do this at Called to Communion. [4] For now, I will conclude with two simple suggestions: (1) Catholics cannot in good conscience wield the theory like a magic wand, which with an elegant wave and a few muttered words renders any doctrine “historical” and “implicit in the original deposit of faith.” We must actually show how the theory makes more sense of the relevant data than does any alternative explanation. (2) Critics of the theory of doctrinal development need to get right down to it and examine actual explanations and applications of the theory, preferably those versions that are widely accepted. To this end, there is no better place to begin than the locus classicus, Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. As for the podcast that prompted this post, I will only say further that I share the professors’ interest in the phenomenon of conversions to the Catholic Church, though of course my understanding of its source and significance is fundamentally different from their own.

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[1] Even though many modern Catholic church buildings and appointments rival their Evangelical counterparts for bland and boring iconoclasm, there remain in Catholicism those traditions, still represented in her rites and uses, variously inscribed in her abiding material heritage, and ever alive in the Church’s collective memory, which offer encouragement and consolation to those not determined to be dismayed. The living memory of Catholic tradition, though it may balk at more modern arrangements, is not a mere wistfulness. This memory resides in human persons, alive, active, and able to impose the Church’s aesthetic heritage upon the stuff of earth, thus giving new, concrete expression to “the beauty of holiness” after the manner of the Church’s long tradition. Just in my own vicinity, several examples of this sort of thing come immediately to mind; for a few depictions, along with some excellent explanations, see here, here, and here.

[2] Mutually exclusive claims to be the one Church founded by Christ do not in themselves constitute proof that Christ did not establish one visible Church that has endured, undivided, through time. One need not adopt an alternative ecclesial ontology (according to which the Church is not a visibly unified body enduring through history) in order account for Orthodoxy as a Church or collection of churches not in full communion with the Catholic Church. It is true that the exclusive claims of both Catholicism and Orthodoxy are the occasion, for some, of an epistemological quandry: which of these ancient churches is the Church founded by Christ? Since one cannot be in full communion with both the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church, one must choose between them or else abandon either history (i.e., remain Protestant) or the historical orthodoxy of the first millennium (i.e., become Nestorian or Monophysite).

[3] As a matter of fact, the early Church Fathers did not stint in their teaching on salvation. In his article, Tradition I and Sola Fide, David Anders notes: “Although the Fathers rarely employed the term ‘justification,’ they wrote extensively on sin, forgiveness, redemption, and the conditions of eternal life.” David argues that the early Fathers’ clearly and repeatedly attested doctrine of salvation is not consistent with the Protestant doctrine of justification, particularly as this is held by Reformed Protestants. The teaching of St. Augustine is no exception to this rule, being explicitly inconsistent with essential features of both the Protestant doctrine of grace (mere favor) and the Protestant doctrine of justification (mere imputation).

[4]  The Orthodox Church is well-known for its conservatism, which is supposed by some to be inimical to the theory of doctrinal development. However, as Daniel Lattier argues in “The Orthodox Rejection of Doctrinal Development” (Pro Ecclesia 20:4 [Fall 2011]: 389-410), there simply is no Orthodox consensus on the theory of development. Lattier also argues that “Newman’s understanding of doctrinal development is in fundamental harmony with the Orthodox understanding of Tradition” (Ibid. 390). This article warrants careful consideration and comment, which we hope to provide in an upcoming post.

Our modest venture in some way constitutes a distinct community, of which you are all a part. The ties that bind us together include common interests and concerns, mutually enriching debate, personal encouragement, and even a kind of friendship. It is in this spirit that I am pleased to share with our readers the news that CTC’s Taylor Marshall has successfully defended his dissertation, “Thomas Aquinas on Natural Law and the Twofold Beatitude of Humanity,” and earned his Doctorate in Philosophy. This is an outstanding achievement, requiring years of hard intellectual work. I can speak for every member of our project in saying that we rejoice with Dr. Marshall, and are grateful for his partnership and friendship, at Called to Communion and beyond. Congratulations Taylor!

You can read Taylor’s announcement and acknowledgements at his personal blog, Canterbury Tales.

This Baptist-turned-Catholic went on to say that, in addition to his love of history (think of Newman’s famous aphorism), it was his passion for doctrine that led him to the Catholic Church. Those who are to be received into full communion with the Catholic Church must first make the following profession of faith: “I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.” So, when the Catholic Church “believes, teaches, and proclaims” that something has been revealed by God, every Catholic is solemnly bound to believe and profess the same, with the full assent of faith, with no exceptions. That, at the very least, is what it means for a Catholic to “take doctrine seriously.”

(Presumably, most readers of this website will already agree that doctrine is important. However, for the sake of clarity, I should at least define the term. Christian doctrine is the concise, propositional expression–that which is believed, taught, and confessed–of the content of divine revelation, as interpreted by the Church, the churches, and individuals. It is true that doctrine, in this sense, is not to be conflated with revelation. It is also true that the Church’s way of life, her tradition, is much more than an exercise in doctrinal development. However, the Church’s tradition is not less than doctrinal, and the way that her doctrine develops has profound consequences for her life.)

In their own way, confessional Protestants also take doctrine seriously. The Leithart trial is evidence of this. Leithart was charged “with holding and defending theological views that strike at the fundamentals of the doctrinal system of the Westminster Standards, against the peace, unity and purity of the Church, and the honor and majesty of the Lord Jesus Christ, as the King and Head thereof” (source). Specifically, Leithart was charged “with contradicting the Westminster Standards and Scripture” on five counts, in his teaching concerning: (1) baptism, (2) the covenant of works, (3) justification and sanctification, (4) imputation, and (5) union with Christ and apostasy. (Leithart’s views on each of these matters are well worth considering, especially his “socio-theological,” or personalist-relational, understanding of Baptism. At one point in the trial, Leithart and his interlocutors touched on the question of how a priori theological commitments can dictate the way we interpret what Scripture says about Baptism. This is something that was considered on this website a couple of years ago in the post, Baptism Now Saves You: Some (More) Prolegomena. Leithart also alluded to the relation of Baptism to personal assurance of being a part of God’s family. This topic was discussed at CTC as well, in the post, Protestant Angelina, Catholic Angelina.)

I am not particularly interested in the question of whether Leithart is guilty of contradicting the Westminster Standards. One could say that that is none of my business. (As it turned out, the Standing Judicial Commission, in a unanimous decision, declared Leithart not guilty on each charge.) However, I am interested in those aspects of the trial that bear upon issues that have been discussed and debated here at Called to Communion. These include (though are by no means limited to) the differences between the prosecution and the defense on the necessity of conjoining “and Scripture” to “contradicts the Westminster Standards” in the charges against Leithart. Sorting through the different perspectives on the place of Scripture in this controversy of religion led me to wonder, “What is ultimately at stake here? What of real consequence would follow if Leithart’s views are shown to be incompatible with the views expressed in the Westminster Standards?” This aspect of the Leithart trial, which calls to mind the extensive Sola versus Solo Scriptura discussion at CTC (see the entries under Keith Mathison’s The Shape of Sola Scriptura), is the subject of the reflections in this post.

Scripture within the Limits of Westminster Alone

In its opening statement (from Transcript of Proceedings, PCA v. Leithart), the prosecution claimed that “we [ministers in the PCA] are not Biblicists who insist on retaining ultimate interpretive authority but are members of a confessional denomination that is supposed to take very seriously the theological tradition handed down to us.” Furthermore, the prosecution maintained that Leithart’s views being in some sense based on Scripture is a “non-issue,” due to the facts that (1) Scripture needs to be interpreted, and (2) Leithart has vowed to uphold the interpretation of Scripture put forward in the Westminster Standards. (It might be instructive, however, to compare these claims to the first of the “Preliminary Principles” in the Preface to the PCA’s Book of Church Order:

God alone is Lord of the conscience and has left it free from any doctrines or commandments of men (a) which are in any respect contrary to the Word of God, or (b) which, in regard to matters of faith and worship, are not governed by the Word of God. Therefore, the rights of private judgment in all matters that respect religion are universal and inalienable.

I am not sure that the above conclusion follows from the stated premises, but in any event the affirmation of a universal and inalienable right to private judgment in all matters that respect religion seems a lot like individuals “retaining ultimate interpretive authority.”)

As related in Attachment B: Chronology, no reference to Scripture was made in the original charges against Leithart. The defense requested that “portions of the word of God” which Leithart is supposed to contradict be listed in the charges. The prosecution amended the indictment, adding “and Scripture” to “contradicts the Westminster Standards,” together with 20 Scripture citations. The prosecution refused, however, to assume the burden of proving the case against Leithart from Scripture. This was presumed to be unnecessary,

Given that (1) our denomination’s constitution already states that the Westminster Standards are “standard expositions of the teachings of Scripture,” and (2) in our ordination vows all PCA ministers promise that they “sincerely receive and adopt Westminster Confession and Catechisms as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Holy Scriptures,” the prosecution’s answer to the defense is that we will neither comply with request #1 by confirming for the record that we will attempt to prove that TE Leithart violates each and every passage listed in the indictment….

Nor is it our aim to prove to the court that the Westminster Standards provide us with the Bible’s system of doctrine (since we have already vowed before God and his Church that such is the case).

Given that “the Westminster Standards provide us with the Bible’s system of doctrine,” it would seem to suffice, at least for the “us” for whom those Standards are a given, to resolve the issue, which of course involves the doctrinal content of Scripture, with reference to the Westminster Standards alone. The prosecution continues:

Our aim is not to reinvent the wheel or to reconvene the Westminster Assembly and redo all its hard work. Our aim, rather, is to take seriously the vows we affirmed at ordination and demonstrate that Leithart’s views and teachings, while perhaps proof-textable, are not confessional and, therefore, are not biblical either.

In the second sentence of this statement, the first clause should probably be taken as qualifying the second, to the effect that Leithart’s views are “not confessional and, therefore, given our ordination vows in which we all affirmed that the Standards are biblical, not biblical either.” That is, this statement of the prosecution is probably not meant to imply that the views set forth by the Westminster Assembly are ipso facto biblical. Nevertheless, it remains a strong assertion of confessional authority.

The defense’s interpretation of how Scripture and confession are related as standards by which Leithart should be judged was made evident in its response to the prosecutor’s comments about how Scripture relates to the indictment and the trial. The defense was quite eager to appeal to the “supreme judge” in this controversy of religion, relegating the confession to a subordinate and “helping” role:

It is an absolute and fundamental confession of our heritage and faith that the only rule of faith is the Word of God. To set this rule aside in judicial process within the church courts, the highest place in which the rule must be kept, would be to set aside one of the fundamentals of our system of doctrine, if not strike at the vitals of religion. To assert that one need only appeal to the constructions of the Westminster Assembly to act as a judge by which this controversy of religion is to be determined, would be an assertion in direct violation of the very standard adopted by that Assembly:

The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture. (WCF 1:10.)

As a theological and historical note, it is impossible to overestimate the centrality of this statement in the Confession to our Reformed tradition. To set it aside for any reason, so that the decrees of a council might act as the judge in this matter with only indirect or secondary reference to the Word of God would amount to a repudiation of the driving doctrine of the early Reformed churches and the principle by which all Reformed churches derive their name.

Pursuing the thesis that judgment in a religious controversy must ultimately depend upon the law of Scripture alone, the defense went on to quote F.P. Ramsey (1856-1926) from his Exposition of the Form of Government and the Rules of Discipline of the Presbyterian Church in the United States:

But if [the church] should be on the point of judicially prosecuting for something  contrary to the standards indeed, but not to the Word of God, she must not enforce the standards as law rather than the Scriptures; for only the Scriptures is law in this Church.

In human government, where the legislature is as fallible as the judiciary, the interpretation of the law by courts may be treated as itself law, within certain limitations; but not in the Church, whose law, the Scriptures, is infallible, but whose standard interpretation, the symbols of doctrine and order, are fallible.

In its appeal to Scripture, the defense seemed to be pulling back the lens, so to speak, indicating that the significance of the charges against Leithart is not ultimately relative to the opinions found in a fallible document affirmed by the ministers of a single denomination. The defense appeared to be urging the prosecution to go to the heart of the matter, i.e., the truth or falsehood of Leithart’s views, by appealing directly to the absolute law that alone can bind the (Protestant’s) conscience–the written word of God.

Clearly, the prosecution did not want this trial to devolve upon its own interpretation of Scripture versus Leithart’s interpretation of Scripture. Therefore, the Westminster Standards were invoked as the interpretation of Scripture having authority in the PCA, as containing, by the common agreement of the ordained ministers in that denomination, the essentially correct interpretation of God’s word. In which case, the charge that Leithart “contradicts the Westminster Standards and Scripture” reduces to “contradicts Scripture as understood within the limits of the Westminster Standards.” In what follows, I will examine the significance of the charge that Leithart has contradicted God’s word in the relative sense of contradicting the Westminster Standards.

Confessional Authority and the Rules of Golf 

Appeal to confessional authority is only so good as the authority of the confession to which one appeals. Almost everyone agrees that the Westminster Standards are both fallible and (in principle) subject to the higher authority of infallible Scripture. But being both fallible and subject (in principle) to an infallible authority is not sufficient for derivative or secondary authority, at least, not in any interesting sense of “authority.” Every (Protestant) interpretation based on the Bible is both fallible and (in principle) subject to the word of God, but not every such interpretation is authoritative. This is, I think, the point that the prosecution was making in its opening statement: “basing one’s beliefs on the Bible is easy as long as we remain the ultimate arbiter of what the Bible means. In fact, it’s not just easy, it’s almost tautological and self-evident.”

The Westminster Standards are obviously distinct from the private interpretation of a single person in that they are the result of the collaborative effort of some 150 men, working together for six years, towards the reconstruction of the Church of England, as instructed by the Long Parliament in the context of the English Civil War (cf. The Westminster Assembly). However, given the prosecution’s claim that “we are not Biblicists who insist on retaining ultimate interpretive authority but are members of a confessional denomination that is supposed to take very seriously the theological tradition handed down to us,” it is ironic that the men who produced the confession to which the prosecution appeals did not take seriously the theological tradition handed down to them, nor did they take seriously the secondary authority by which that tradition was handed down, as evidenced by the fact that they cast aside both the doctrine and the bishops of the Church of England, and set up themselves, and their own doctrine, instead. In other words, the Westminster Standards represent a repudiation of church authority. Granted that a stream cannot rise higher than its source, the authority of these Standards cannot be ecclesial authority, at least, not in the conservative sense of passing on a tradition that has been received from the ecclesia.

Nor are the Westminister Standards authoritative in the sense of being the collective interpretation of Scripture that is agreed upon by the majority of people who desire to be subject to the supreme authority of Scripture. The Standards are consensus documents, but they do not represent the consensus of most Bible believers. Furthermore, the environment of collective interpretation of Scripture is a competitive one. The Westminster Assembly does not stand out among the groups of Bible believers who have composed collective interpretations of the word of God, either by virtue of institutional prestige, or scholarship, or antiquity, or some other indicator of relative authority, so to be able to say, with distinct authority, that such-and-so is the system of doctrine taught in Sacred Scripture. What seems to be the case is that the Westminster Standards are authoritative in the way that club rules are authoritative for everyone who plays golf at a particular course. Club members do not, in principle, conflate the authority of their club rules with the authority of the rules of golf. They simply insist that, if you are going to play golf at our course, you play by our rules.

Something like the latter sense of authority was obviously involved in this trial. Leithart’s club membership (i.e., his place among the ordained ministers in the PCA) hung in the balance. However, it seems almost as obvious that the prosecution had something more in mind, in its appeal to the Westminster Standards. In fact, those who adhere to the Westminster Standards as authoritative in matters of religion commonly claim that this authority depends upon the conformity of those Standards to the word of God. The prosecution appeared to be maintaining that the Standards conform to the word of God in such a way that to break the club rules on a matter that is essential to those rules (as Leithart was accused of doing) is to break the rules of golf. Thus, the “club rules” sort of authority, while applicable here, does not cover the case. The prosecution, as made clear in the revised indictment, was charging Leithart with breaking the rules of golf (contradicting Scripture), as judged by the authority of club rules (the Westminster Standards). And that, if nothing else, makes this case a matter of interest for everyone who plays golf. (I hope that this analogy does not seem trite. Its the most handy thing I could come up with so to convey my understanding of the dynamics of the prosecution’s appeal to confessional authority.)

Westminster in the Dock

How do its adherents, including (by profession) all parties in the Leithart trial, know that the Westminster Standards are conformable to the word God, such that the system of doctrine set forth in this confession is essentially that system of doctrine taught in Scripture? If the Westminster Assembly is not distinctly authoritative in essence, in either an absolute or relative sense of authority (excepting the “club rules” sort of authority), then the distinct authority of its teaching can only be grounded in some accidental property of that Assembly. Having the correct interpretation of Scripture would be an accidental property for an ecclesial community not protected by the gift of infallibility. Unfortunately, for those who appeal to the Westminster Standards as a secondary authority, being correct in this way does not involve any interesting sort of authority, since any individual or group (Christian or otherwise) can be “authoritative” in the sense of being correct in its interpretation of Scripture. Furthermore, this sort of “authority” is obviously unhelpful as an indicator of the correct interpretation of Scripture, that is, for those who have qualms about begging the question. In the prosecution’s own words, “basing one’s beliefs on the Bible is easy so long as we remain the ultimate arbiter of what the Bible means” and “basing one’s own doctrine upon one’s own interpretation of scripture apart from being sort of obvious is tantamount to saying that one agrees with himself….” These claims, made in the context of arguing that Leithart’s views should be subject to the confessional standards of the PCA, have the same force when applied both to those very standards and whatever group subsequently adopts them as its own. The “we” who remain the ultimate arbiter of what the Bible means could just as easily be the Westminster divines, or the ministers of the PCA, whose “biblical basis” is just as tautological as Leithart’s own biblical basis, i.e., agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.

The prosecution asserted, and the defense agreed, that the Westminster Standards were not on trial in the case at hand. However, the significance of that case does depend, from the prosecution’s point of view especially, on the intrinsic authority of those Standards. Thus, if we wish to understand what is ultimately at stake in the Leithart trial, we must put the Westminster Assembly itself in the dock. That is what I have tried to do, briefly, in this post. Bryan and Neal, extensively and more generally, have done something similar in their article on Sola Scriptura and the question of ultimate interpretive authority. If these analyses are right, then the authority of the Westminster Standards is in principle no greater than the authority of one’s own interpretation of Scripture, since this confession is not authoritative in any sense other than being the club rules of one among many denominations, and the only way to judge of the correctness of those rules is by private interpretation of Scripture.

I can appreciate the fact that the prosecution was, at the very least, concerned to maintain the relative doctrinal integrity of the PCA, to hold a brother presbyter accountable to their common, agreed-upon (though in principle reversible) system of doctrine. But that system of doctrine, insofar as it originated from men who were contradicting and rebelling against their own church’s doctrine and government, and insofar as it is not unique in kind nor notably distinct from its competitors in any respect other than content, cannot plausibly be taken as a correct exposition of the teaching of Scripture on grounds other than private interpretation; i.e., agreement with the Westminster Standards is not in principle distinct from agreement with oneself. Insofar as the Leithart trial was an internal matter of the PCA (and was not a case involving a proposed revision of its doctrinal standards), this fact is irrelevant. But insofar as the trial involved absolute truth claims on matters of doctrine, then the status of the Westminster Standards as an indicator of doctrinal truth is relevant to anyone interested in assessing the truth of various doctrines, including the doctrines of baptism, grace and works, justification and sanctification, imputation, and union with Christ and apostasy. For the reasons given in this post, it seems to me that the Westminster Standards are not particularly significant as an indicator of doctrinal truth. This does not entail that the collective opinions of the Westminster Assembly, as adhered to by their denominational posterity for some 350 years, are in all respects insignificant (far from it), only that they do not bear such marks of authority as should make for a substantial difference (say, anywhere from indicating probability to being decisive) in the hermeneutical process of discovering the doctrinal content of Sacred Scripture.

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It is difficult to say anything about this particular thing, beyond St. Paul’s exclamation: But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world (Galatians 6:14). The Catholic Church takes Paul’s words about the Cross symbolically and, much to the consternation of some, literally. Bits of wood are preserved around the world and presented to the faithful as fragments of the very cross upon which our Lord was crucified. For the life of me, I cannot see how this is any more offensive than the claim that, as a matter of historical fact, the Son of God was put to death by being nailed to this gibbet.

Of course, some have tried to say something about this archetype of our faith, and among many attempts I particularly appreciate the following, especially in light of today’s Feast: The Dream of the Rood (Old English poem, c. 7th century) and The Elevation of the Cross (Alexander Schmemman, Celebration of Faith, vol. II: The Church Year. See Part II, Chapter 1, “The Elevation of the Cross,” beginning on page 41.)

The Exaltation of the Cross is Good Friday viewed through the prism of Easter Day, which is to say that today is something like the epitome of Christianity.

And the serpents bit the people; and much people of Israel died.  Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people.  And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a brazen serpent, and set it for an ensign ; and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live.  And Moses made a serpent of brass, and set it up for an ensign, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.

(Numbers 21:6-9, Lesson for Matins)

Dearly beloved, when we look to Christ lifted up on the Cross, the eyes of faith see more than what the wicked saw, unto whom it was said through Moses : And thy Life shall hang in doubt before thee, and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of thy Life.  They saw in the Crucified nothing but the work of their own wickedness.  As it is written : They feared greatly.  But their faith was not unto faith, which giveth life by justification, but unto the torture of their own bad conscience.  But our understanding is enlightened by the Spirit of Truth.  And so with pure and open hearts we can see the glory of the Cross shining over heaven and earth, and discern by inward sight what the Lord meant when his passion was nigh at hand, and he said : Now is the judgment of this world ; now shall the prince of this world be cast out ; and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.

(From a Sermon by Pope St. Leo, Lesson for Matins)

The Catholic Encyclopedia addresses this aspect of the biblical account of Jesus’s lineage as follows:

How can Jesus Christ be called “son of David”, if the Blessed Virgin is not a daughter of David?

(a) If by virtue of Joseph’s marriage with Mary, Jesus could be called the son of Joseph, he can for the same reason be called “son of David” (St. Augustine, On the Harmony of the Gospels, II, i, 2).

(b) Tradition tells us that Mary too was a descendant of David. According to Numbers 36:6-12, an only daughter had to marry within her own family so as to secure the right of inheritance. After St. Justin (Adv. Tryph. 100) and St. Ignatius (Letter to the Ephesians 18), the Fathers generally agree in maintaining Mary’sDavidic descent, whether they knew this from an oral tradition or inferred it from Scripture, e.g. Romans 1:3; 2 Timothy 2:8. St. John Damascene (De fid. Orth., IV, 14) states that Mary’s great-grandfather, Panther, was a brother of Mathat; her grandfather, Barpanther, was Heli’s cousin; and her father, Joachim, was a cousin of Joseph, Heli’s levirate son. Here Mathat has been substituted for Melchi, since the text used by St. John Damascene, Julius Africanus, St. Irenæus, St. Ambrose, and St. Gregory of Nazianzus omitted the two generations separating Heli from Melchi. At any rate, tradition presents the Blessed Virgin as descending from David through Nathan. (Source)

The Gospel reading for this feast thus underscores Jesus’s identity as an Israelite, a son of Abraham and son of David. The Evangelists’ parenthetical comments at the end and beginning, respectively, of the genealogies does not negate the significance of Joseph in this lineage. Rather, they indicate that Jesus is more than the legal or covenantal “son of God.” Jesus’s Father really is God; therefore, Jesus really is God, the Son. Likewise, the significance of the mention of Mary in Matthew’s genealogy, and in these narratives more generally, is that Jesus is really, not just legally (or only in appearance), human, a descendant of Abraham and (per the tradition referenced above) of David. The Son of God really is the offspring of the Virgin Mary.

The earliest source of material on the birth of Mary is the apocryphal “Protoevangelium of James,” written around 145 A.D. The Catholic Encyclopedia summarizes some of the evidence that, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, gave rise to the Catholic tradition concerning Mary’s parentage and birth:

According to Luke 1:26, Mary lived in Nazareth, a city in Galilee, at the time of the Annunciation. A certain tradition maintains that she was conceived and born in the same house in which the Word became flesh. Another tradition based on the Gospel of James regards Sephoris as the earliest home of Joachim and Anna, though they are said to have lived later on in Jerusalem, in a house called by St. Sophronius of Jerusalem Probatica. Probatica, a name probably derived from the sanctuary’s nearness to the pond called Probatica or Bethsaida in John 5:2. It was here that Mary was born. About a century later, about A.D. 750, St. John Damascene repeats the statement that Mary was born in the Probatica.

It is said that, as early as in the fifth century the empress Eudoxia built a church over the place where Mary was born, and where her parents lived in their old age. The present Church of St. Anna stands at a distance of only about 100 Feet from the pool Probatica. In 1889, 18 March, was discovered the crypt which encloses the supposed burying-place of St. Anna. Probably this place was originally a garden in which both Joachim and Anna were laid to rest. At their time it was still outside of the city walls, about 400 feet north of the Temple. Another crypt near St. Anna’s tomb is the supposed birthplace of the Blessed Virgin; hence it is that in early times the church was called St. Mary of the Nativity…. (Source)

These traditions, together with the opening chapters of Matthew and Luke, witness to the Church’s love for and devotion to Mary, because of her special role in the plan of God for the redemption of mankind. May all Christians, who confess that the Virgin’s Son is Lord and Christ, join together today in the celebration of her birth. Out of love, we make sure to celebrate the birthdays of our family members and closest friends. How shall we do less for the Mother of God’s family, the Church? (On a related note: CTC’s own Tim Troutman has the distinction of sharing a birthday with the Blessed Virgin. Happy birthday, Tim!)

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From a Sermon by St. Augustine, as cited in the Office of Matins for this Feast:

Dearly beloved brethren, the day for which we have longed, the Feast-day of the Blessed and Worshipful and Alway-Virgin Mary, that day is come.  Let our land laugh and sing with merriment, bathed in the glory of this great Virgin’s rising.  She is the flower of the fields on which the priceless lily of the valleys hath blossomed.  This is she whose delivery changed the nature that we draw from our first parents, and cleansed away their offence.  At her that dolorous sentence which was pronounced over Eve ended its course ; to her it was never said : In sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.  She brought forth a Child, even the Lord, but she brought him forth, not in sorrow, but in joy.

Prayers from the Office of Matins in the Roman Breviary:

Let us keep the Birth-day of the Virgin Mary: Let us worship Christ her Son, our Lord.

This day was the Blessed Virgin Mary born of the lineage of David; The same is she through whom the salvation of the world hath been manifested before the eyes of all believers, and whose glorious life hath given light to the world. With joy let us keep the Birth-day of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The same is she through whom the salvation of the world hath been manifested before the eyes of all believers, and whose glorious life hath given light to the world.

Thy Birth, O Virgin Mother of God, was a message of joy to the whole world, * For out of thee rose the Sun of righteousness, even Christ our God: Who hath taken away the curse and brought a blessing, confounded death, and given unto us everlasting life.

V.  Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the Fruit of thy womb.
R.  For out of thee rose the Sun of righteousness, even Christ our God.
V.  Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
R.  Who hath taken away the curse and brought a blessing, confounded death, and given unto us everlasting life.

In light of this area of agreement among Catholic and Reformed Christians, I want to take the occasion of September 1st, which marks the beginning of the Church Year in the Byzantine Rite, to again raise the topic of the sanctification of time, this time with respect to the liturgical year. In the introduction article for this website, I noted that, in becoming Catholic, I had left some things behind, and found other things (while some things remained the same). Among the things found is a greater application of the principle that, through the Passion, Resurrection, and Ascension of our Lord, Christians have been brought out from under the tutelage of the Mosaic Law, not by way of the destruction of the Law, but through its fulfillment in Christ. The corporate life of God’s people is no longer conformed to the pattern of the things revealed to Moses, but to the pattern of Christ, who is the reality (the “body” and the “true form”) to which those former things testified (Colossians 2:16-17; Hebrews 10:1-10).

Therefore, Christians no longer observe the “holy days” and “sabbaths” of the former Covenant, nor do we offer sacrifices “of bulls and of goats.” Yet, there “remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God,” and “we have an altar” from which we are mystically nourished by the Body and Blood of Christ. Likewise, we have been given an example, or pattern, for the sanctification of life as lived in the course of the natural year. We have annual holy days and seasons of festival and fasting, as a fulfillment of the religious feasts of Israel before Christ. This new pattern has been given to us in the Gospels, so that the people of God journey together, throughout the year, in the steps of our Lord, from his Advent to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the Church. Pentecost then leads us back to Advent, not so much in a circle as a spiral, since Advent has a two-fold significance, corresponding to the Incarnation (the “first coming” of the Son of God) and the Eschaton (the “second coming” of Christ). The seeds of the liturgical year are therefore present in Scripture, and develop over time through the life of the Church. This development, which includes the growing sanctoral cycle, or synaxarion, is a function of that liturgical spiral in which time is both infused with and moves towards the “fullness of time.”

Easter, or Pascha, is historically and theologically central to the liturgical year. This year, though one in its essential orientation (Pascha), pattern (the life of Christ) and purpose (the sanctification of time), has been variously developed in the Eastern Church (where the Byzantine Rite is predominant) and the Western Church (where the Roman Rite is predominant). In short, the traditional Western liturgical year has more of a bipolar aspect (of course I do not mean that in any pejorative sense), with a “Christmas cycle” (inclusive of Advent and Epiphany) and an “Easter cycle” (inclusive of Lent and Pentecost), whereas in the East, Pascha stands out more clearly as “the Feast of feasts,” accompanied by twelve “great feasts,” including Christmas, the Feast of the Nativity. Christmas is therefore not as prominent in the Eastern arrangement as in the Western. In both ritual traditions, every Sunday is “Resurrection Day,” a “mini-Easter,” though this Paschal theme is more pronounced in the Byzantine Rite. Finally, both Roman and Byzantine rites follow our Lord’s intention that his disciples should fast (Matthew 9:15) by observing seasons of corporate fasting. Lent is, of course, the most notable among these. For Byzantines, Advent is also a season of corporate fasting (often referred to as the “Nativity fast,” or “St. Philip’s fast,” as it begins the day after the feast of St. Philip and lasts through Christmas Eve). In the West, Advent has the character of a “penitential season,” though not to the same degree as Lent. Christians of the Byzantine Rite also observe two additional (though relatively short) fasts.

What follows is an outline of the liturgical year in the Roman Rite and the Byzantine Rite, respectively. For the sake of those who want more information, I have inserted links to wikipedia articles for each liturgical season and great feast, along with some of those particular feast days by which the beginning or end of a liturgical season is marked. Easter is a moveable feast, so the holy days and seasons associated with it do not fall on the same calendar day each year. Christmas, of course, is an immovable feast, always celebrated on December 25th, and the observance of associated holy days and liturgical seasons is relative to that date.

You might notice that the linear development of the Byzantine calendar (analogous to the prayers in the Divine Liturgy) is distinctively Marian. The first major feast is the Nativity of the Theotokos, and the twelfth great feast marks her Dormition. This, it seems to me, underscores both the temporal sequence and the soteriological effectiveness of our Lord’s life and mission; i.e., obviously, the Mother was born before the Son (according to his human nature), and she is, from her conception to dormition, the crowning achievement of her Son’s work of redemption.

Is there anyone who is a devout lover of God?
Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival!
Is there anyone who is a grateful servant?
Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!

Are there any weary with fasting?
Let them now receive their wages!
If any have toiled from the first hour,
let them receive their due reward;
If any have come after the third hour,
let him with gratitude join in the Feast!
And he that arrived after the sixth hour,
let him not doubt; for he too shall sustain no loss.
And if any delayed until the ninth hour,
let him not hesitate; but let him come too.
And he who arrived only at the eleventh hour,
let him not be afraid by reason of his delay.

For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first.
He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour,
as well as to him that toiled from the first.
To this one He gives, and upon another He bestows.
He accepts the works as He greets the endeavor.
The deed He honors and the intention He commends.

Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord!
First and last alike receive your reward;
rich and poor, rejoice together!
Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!

You that have kept the fast, and you that have not,
rejoice today for the Table is richly laden!
Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one.
Let no one go away hungry. Partake, all, of the cup of faith.
Enjoy all the riches of His goodness!

Let no one grieve at his poverty,
for the universal kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again;
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.
Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free.
He has destroyed it by enduring it.

He destroyed Hades when He descended into it.
He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh.
Isaiah foretold this when he said,
“You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below.”

Hell was in an uproar because it was done away with.
It was in an uproar because it is mocked.
It was in an uproar, for it is destroyed.
It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.
It is in an uproar, for it is now made captive.
Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.
O death, where is thy sting?
O Hades, where is thy victory?

Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!
Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!
Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;
for Christ having risen from the dead,
is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!

(source)

The principal reasons given by people who leave the church to become Protestant are that their “spiritual needs were not being met” in the Catholic church (71 percent) and they “found a religion they like more” (70 percent). Eighty-one percent of respondents say they joined their new church because they enjoy the religious service and style of worship of their new faith.

In other words, the Catholic church has failed to deliver what people consider fundamental products of religion: spiritual sustenance and a good worship service. And before conservatives blame the new liturgy, only 11 percent of those leaving complained that Catholicism had drifted too far from traditional practices such as the Latin Mass.

In other words, these former Catholics are ecclesial consumerists.

A subset of these Catholics-turned-Protestant become evangelicals. For these, disagreement with Catholic teaching and a desire for a more “literal” approach to the Bible ranked third and fourth behind style of worship and “spiritual needs” as reasons for leaving the Catholic Church. An underlying assumption that is apparently shared by these former Catholics, the Catholic who wrote the article, and those who are encouraged by this phenomenon, is that corporate Christian worship is primarily about me, my felt needs, my music preferences, my opinions.

By way of counter-acting the departures, the author recommended that: “Programs and liturgies that cater to their needs must take precedence over the complaints of fuddy-duddies and rubrical purists.” Millions of Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, would agree. However, catering to felt needs at the expense of orthodox doctrine and reverent liturgy is not very compatible with Catholicism. The author’s advice, for all intents and purposes, is that Catholic parishes need to become more like Protestant communities. But there are already thousands of Protestant denominations and hundreds of thousands of independent churches serving made to order doctrine and worship. Why settle for an imperfect Catholic knock-off of the original ecclesial Burger King? I can understand the departures of the consumerists, especially as it becomes more and more apparent that the Catholic Church is committed to maintaining her traditional faith and worship.

For my part, I am encouraged by the fact that the Catholic Church perceives no dichotomy between God-centered worship and meeting the needs of her members, which is why the Sacrifice of the Mass has always been the heart of Catholic liturgy. What does a person need more than Jesus Christ, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity? The Church is not insensitive to the fact that many of her children have walked away. Catholics are making a concerted, public effort to encourage these precious brothers and sisters to come home. This appeal is not based on felt needs or personal perferences, but upon what the Church essentially is, what she does accordingly, and the idea that the Catholic Church is one family, with one faith, enduring for two millenia, founded by Christ.

Many of us can remember a time when the Christian faith seemed arbitrary, rote, or otherwise unpersuasive or unappealing. But when we read Lewis, the thing snapped to life. Book theology, the stuff we were supposed to say, became something we wanted to be a part of because it was invigorating and imaginative and made sense of so much stuff, including the stuff we thought we already “knew.”

Once we found that Lewis could do that for our faith, we tended to unconsciously, easily, take him as a sort of authority, which is the very thing that he claimed not to be. Lewis showed us so much unexpected depth and richness in “the basics” that we became more or less open to what he said about the things of which we were ignorant, or not so sure. At the very least, someone who so obviously saw the worlds so rightly could not easily be dismissed, even where we thought he might be wrong.

For most of my life, I thought that anyone who believed that “you can lose your salvation” was an emissary of Satan. Yet I barely blinked when Lewis basically said exactly that in Screwtape and Mere Christianity. You have got to have skills to get past the guard of a sensitive fundamentalist. Lewis had skills.

Now that I see both salvation and C. S. Lewis in a somewhat different light, I still take Lewis as an unofficial guide in the realm of faith. After all, he has done more than almost anyone else to make the Faith appear to me as something true, and alive, and joyful, like kings and ships and pomp and philosophers and all the rest of the bright, shining, dark, furry, wise, merry panoply of things gathered together in the great realm of being.

All of this, and he helped us to make some small, inadequate but important sense out of suffering, especially when he suffered greatly, seeing his wife living with terrible physical pain and finally dying from cancer. We learned that Lewis was not just a bright philosopher and writer and mythopoeic theologian. He was a prayerful and deeply charitable man, who learned first hand that a Christian person can in his own flesh supply that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, in love with one another, en route to God.

Agape, angels, and animals. And then there is man, placed in the world.

You can listen to the talks, including a roundtable discussion, at the website of the Ordinariate Group of Our Lady of Walsingham and St John the Evangelist.

Not long after the announcement of this Apostolic Constitution, Called to Communion recorded a podcast, in which Taylor Marshall and I discussed various aspects of Anglicanorum coetibus.