Hans Boersma has written a fine book in Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry. Boersma is a Christian Reformed theologian who is the J.I. Packer Professor of Theology at Regent College in Vancouver, BC, and Co-Director (with Matthew Levering) of the Center for Catholic-Evangelical Dialogue. Boersma’s recent work is an engagement with the twentieth-century nouvelle théologie or ressourcement movement in Catholic theology exemplified by Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, and others. Heavenly Participation contends that both evangelicals and Catholics need to appropriate the “sacramental ontology” formulated by the early Christian Fathers and recovered by the ressourcement theologians. The sacramental ontology of the early Church was generated by the encounter of Platonism and Christianity. While many evangelical theologians argue that the encounter with Platonism corrupted a pure biblical worldview, Boersma contends instead that Platonic philosophy gave the early Christian theologians the conceptual tools to express the fundamental truths of the Christian faith.

Heavenly Participation is written by an evangelical for his fellow evangelicals. Specifically, Boersma calls for evangelicals to recover a view of creation as a “sacramental tapestry.” What does Boersma mean by this?

“The ‘sacramental tapestry’ of the subtitle speaks of a carefully woven unity of nature and the supernatural, according to which created objects are sacraments that participate in the mystery of the heavenly realty of Jesus Christ. [Orthodox theologian Alexander] Schmemann makes the point that everything in the so-called world of nature is meant to lead us back to God. In that sense, created matter is meant to serve eucharistically. By treating the world as a eucharistic offering in Christ, received from God and offered to him, we are drawn into God’s presence” (p. 8). “The entire cosmos is meant to serve as a sacrament: a material gift from God in and through which we enter into the joy of his heavenly presence” (p. 9).

Boersma summarizes the project of the ressourcement theologians and its significance for today’s evangelicals:

“They [the ressourcement theologians] recognized in the Platonist-Christian synthesis a sacramental ontology that they believed had been lost through the modern separation between nature and the supernatural. As a result, nouvelle théologie set out to reintegrate the two by pointing to the sacramental participation of nature in the heavenly reality of Christ. The ressourcement theologians were convinced that the vision of sacramental participation was the only viable answer to the secularism of the modern age” (p. 16).

Furthermore, Boersma sees an evangelical appropriation of the ressourcement theologians as a fruitful avenue for ecumenical dialogue with Catholicism.

The organization of the book echoes the received-from-God-and-back-to-God pattern. Part One of the book, titled “Exitus: The Fraying Tapestry,” sketches out the contours of this sacramental worldview in its classic patristic form, traces the fraying of this “tapestry” in the Middle Ages and its final cutting by the “twin blades” of modernity: the emergence in medieval theology of the philosophical doctrines of univocity and nominalism. Univocity means that “[a]ll being is being in the same sense. Put philosophically, all being is univocal in character.” Thus we exist in the same sense that God exists (p. 74). Nominalism is the belief that “universals were simply names (nomina) that we apply to individual objects that happen to look alike.” In this view, universals don’t have existence in the mind of God. There is no common humanity; we only are alike because of the will of God. “In no way was their [human beings’] likeness based on a sacramental connection with the eternal Word” (p. 80-81). The two doctrines framed the relationship between natural and supernatural in non-sacramental terms. These doctrines challenged the older doctrines of the analogy of being and realism. Nominalism challenged the analogy of being, where “…the being of creation (as well as its truth, goodness, and beauty) was similar or analogous—and thus not identical—to the being (and the truth, goodness, and beauty) of the Creator. Analogy (or sacramentality) implies that, while creatures may be similar to the Creator, they are in no way identical to him” (pp. 70-71). This doctrine was classically expressed by Thomas Aquinas (p. 72). Nominalism challenged realism, which held that universals such as “humanity” or “felineness” had real existence, an existence rooted in the eternal Logos. “This christological anchor made it possible to assert, for example, that human beings participated in a common humanity” (p. 80).

Boersma contends that both Catholicism and evangelicalism have suffered from this loss of a sacramental worldview: the loss of the sense of the sacramental connection between nature and the supernatural has enabled the secularization of the modern world as well as leading to some distorted theology. Because of the decline of the doctrines of analogy and realism, a sharp distinction between nature and supernatural was drawn, eventually leading to strong claims about the autonomy of the natural and the dispensability of the supernatural. Boersma argues that despite the Reformers’ attempt to critique late medieval scholastic philosophy, they were unsuccessful in fully recovering the patristic Platonic-Christian synthesis. For Boersma, Calvin seems more successful than Luther; he contends that Luther’s account of justification by faith alone seems more strongly nominalist, while Calvin’s tighter link between justification and sanctification seems closer to the patristics’ participatory ontology (pp. 91-94). On the other hand, “[t]he Fall, according to Calvin, had rendered the human will radically incompetent. The resulting opposition between human inability and divine grace caused Calvin—despite his best humanist intentions—to pitch grace over against nature. Calvin’s theology was unable to avoid the desacramentalizing of nature that late-medieval nominalism had introduced” (p. 92).

In Part Two, “Reditus: Reconnecting the Threads,” Boersma contends that both evangelicals and Catholics need a revitalized sacramental ontology. In particular, evangelicalism needs to rethink its views on the Eucharist, tradition, scriptural interpretation, and truth. In all four of these areas, Boersma calls on evangelicals to reappropriate the patristic Platonic-Christian synthesis. Boersma draws on the ressourcement theologians, especially de Lubac, to argue that standard evangelical positions are inadequate. Perhaps most strikingly, Boersma contends that “it is time for evangelicals to celebrate much more unambiguously the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist” (p. 119). He refuses the standard evangelical opposition between scripture and tradition, seeing them as inextricably linked. He also calls for the recovery of patristric and medieval modes of biblical exegesis which involve the multiple senses of scripture. Finally, Boersma presses for the recovery of the idea of “truth as a sacramental reality that lies anchored in the truth of the eternal Word of God” as a contrast to modern rejection of mystery and postmodernism’s skepticism of truth claims (p. 169).

In his Epilogue, Boersma concludes:

“Christology, then, lies at the heart of the Christian transposition of the Platonic tradition. Past, present, and future cohere in Christ, the eternal Word become flesh. The Incarnation becomes the norm and standard that reaches backward and forward, redeeming past and future through God’s gracious entry into the created order. It is by taking the Word, incarnate in Christ, as the interpretive key to all reality that we will be able to make theological progress and draw evangelicals and Catholics closer together. This is what I have tried to make clear throughout part 2 of this book. The church is the body of Christ, and thus does the church make Christ present in the world. Through the Eucharist, the unity of the church takes sacramental shape” (pp. 188-189).

In sum, Boersma’s aim is to re-catholicize evangelicalism. (I use the lower-case “c” catholic as inclusive of the patristic theologies of East and West.)

Boersma’s call to re-catholicize evangelicalism is the most radical and profound one that I have come across. There has been a “catholic turn” in evangelicalism in recent decades, first manifested in the turn toward liturgy and sacraments in the “evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail” movement. That has been followed by a massive growth in interest by evangelicals in the patristic era. Books by evangelical scholars on topics such as patristic theology, biblical exegesis, and the nature of tradition are flowing from evangelical presses such as InterVarsity and Baker Academic; these books make arguments that signal a convergence with Catholic and Orthodox thinking on these topics. However, Boersma tops them all in essentially calling for a fundamental rethinking of evangelicalism’s identity. Here the crucial question confronts us.

Daniel Young

Boersma calls on both Catholicism and evangelicalism to reappropriate the Platonic-Christian synthesis of the early Church. This seems to have happened to some extent in Catholicism, given the influence of the ressourcement movement on Vatican II and after. However, as Boersma notes, Protestantism was born in the midst of the modern revolution and its foundational thinkers were unable to escape the “twin blades” of univocity and nominalism. The key question is whether Protestantism’s fundamental identity is bound up in a rejection of the Platonic-Christian synthesis. In other words, is evangelicalism of its very nature committed to an anti-sacramental worldview? Or as Boersma argues, can the fundamental insights of the Protestant Reformation be strengthened and corrected by their reintegration into a sacramental ontology? And if they can, do traditional evangelical arguments against restored communion with the Catholic Church hold any weight?

There is an interesting exchange that takes place all the time in evangelical churches, organizations, and Bible studies, especially in the United States. It is that moment when former-Catholics discover an ally, a fellow journeyman who found his or her way out of the Church and into evangelicalism, someone who can relate to the many negative experiences or unbiblical beliefs they endured during their time as Catholics. These conversations can be a great source of encouragement, discovering that others had experienced what we experienced in our path of following Christ.

As a former Catholic who spent years in evangelical and Reformed circles, I myself had my fair share of those conversations. So has Chris Castaldo, an Italian American and former Catholic who worked full-time in the Catholic Church for several years, and has published a book, Holy Ground: Walking with Jesus as a Former Catholic (Zondervan, 2009). In this book Castaldo explains his own conversion from Catholicism to Protestantism through a series of chapters assessing what he believes to be the five predominant reasons why Catholics leave the Church for evangelical Protestantism, based on two years of research interviewing Catholics and former Catholics across the United States. Castaldo is a graduate of Moody Bible Institute and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and currently serves as Director of the Ministry of Gospel Renewal for the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College.

As a descendant of Catholic Irish and Polish immigrants to the United States, I too was raised Catholic but ultimately chose evangelicalism, and later Reformed theology, in my desire to follow Christ faithfully in my search for biblical Christianity. Except, unlike Castaldo, I’ve come to realize that the five reasons typically given by former Catholics, though I am sympathetic to them, are not sufficient to warrant leaving the Church Christ founded, nor were any other reasons I sought to employ in rejecting Rome’s claims. In sharing some reflections on my reversion to Catholicism, I would like to contrast briefly my own experience with that of Castaldo and those he describes in Holy Ground in order to demonstrate the inadequacy of their reasons for abandoning Catholicism and identify a few concerns with their manner of assessing Catholicism’s claims.

Encountering Christ in Evangelicalism

I was born into a Catholic family, though both of my parents would readily admit that they were not devout, did not accept some Church teachings, and were both drawn to elements of evangelical Protestantism. Following my first communion at age eight, my parents left Catholicism and eventually landed in a non-denominational evangelical community. Their decision was at first disconcerting to me, given that their departure from Catholicism was upsetting to our Catholic extended family. However, I witnessed throughout my adolescence a profound change in them as they fell in love with Christ and His Scriptures and appeared to be transformed into more loving, patient people. I too, in my senior year of high school, was exposed to a classmate whose suffering and personal trials were so overwhelming that I cried out to God to make sense of such evil – and found the answer in Christ’s death and resurrection. As for Catholicism, it was something I had come to distrust and question, especially based on the sermons I heard at our evangelical church declaring the Catholic Church to be in grave theological error. By the time I left for college, I was a fervent evangelical, convinced that I had found the purest form of Christianity.

That fervor met a rude awakening in religion classes at the University of Virginia where I was exposed to strong academic criticisms of the historicity and coherence of Scripture by religion professors who took a particular delight in turning the worlds of evangelical students upside down. Unfortunately, I think many evangelical college students come to grips with the disconnect between what their secular university religion classes teach and what they grew up believing, by embracing the modern, almost Kantian dichotomy between academia and their personal faith. I suppose it’s an easy way to avoid the dilemmas we confront in the wake of several centuries of Protestant scholarship defined by historical criticism, source criticism, and form criticism, as well as a strong distrust of the supernatural.

However, I did not view such a dichotomy between the intellectual and spiritual life as intellectually coherent. Either Scripture was historically reliable, Protestant theology logically consistent, and evangelicalism a defensible form of Christianity, or it was time to abandon the whole project. I took it upon myself to go in search of evangelical scholarship that could provide me with an adequate defense of Scripture. What I found was a wealth of evangelical scholarship, some apologetic, some more scholarly, presenting a formidable defense of Scripture’s historicity and veracity. I confess, of course, my natural bias – within evangelicalism I had experienced a dramatic spiritual communion with Christ through prayer and meditation on Scripture, and matured in my love for others. I wanted to prove to myself and others that my faith was not some sort of wish fulfillment.

This leads me to a reflection that would be influential in my eventual return to Catholicism: neither I, nor I doubt many evangelicals, have systematically engaged every single attack on the historicity or veracity of Scripture. At least for myself, I read enough to be satisfied that there were reasonable defenses of Scripture, and moved on with my life. Was that intellectually lazy? Possibly, but we all must do it, to some degree. It is simply impossible to reserve judgment until we address every single challenge presented against Scripture, or any other belief, for that matter. I think to a degree I justified my lack of comprehensiveness by noting the flawed reasoning of those who attacked Scripture: they refused to accept the possibility that the supernatural could exist, and this predisposed them against the content of Scripture, and inclined them to seek flaws within it. To me this seemed intellectually dishonest and unfair. This reflection would in turn be helpful as I considered the claims of Catholicism several years later.

Amidst my studies to defend Scripture, I was introduced to Reformed theology through the Presbyterian Church in America’s (PCA) Reformed University Fellowship (RUF), as well as through authors like R.C. Sproul, D.A. Carson, and J.I. Packer, among many others. This marked a transition in my faith journey. For one, the Reformed faith seemed to make more sense of Scripture in its entirety than did my non-denominational evangelicalism, and explained many passages neglected by other evangelicals. Secondly, the Reformed faith introduced me to Reformed writers such as John Calvin, John Piper, and Michael Horton, whose reflections on Christ, the gospel, and the Scriptures were far more inspiring and intellectually robust than what I had previously experienced. Finally, the Reformed faith and its links to Calvinist scholars of the previous centuries was the answer to my concerns as a history major that American evangelicalism seemed largely disconnected from the history of Christianity. I became a passionate defender of Calvinism, and upon graduation, enrolled in Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS) and became a member of a PCA church. I was ready for a lifetime of theological study and service in the Reformed tradition, and had no doubts or concerns with Reformed theology. To put it simply, I was more proud of being Reformed than I was of anything else in my life.

Encountering Problems in Evangelicalism

Several years later, however, I was confronted with an unusual dilemma when my best friend, a student at Covenant Theological Seminary (PCA) in St. Louis, Missouri, started to question the Reformed faith shortly before finishing his Master of Divinity degree. His concerns with the Reformed faith and his interest in Catholicism led me to employ all the tools at my disposal to counteract what I perceived as one of the gravest theological errors, and to prevent my friend from making what I perceived to be possibly the greatest mistake of his life. I should know, of course, because I myself had been a Catholic and had grown up around many Catholic extended family. So I read Reformed critiques of Catholic faith and practice, engaged the faculty at RTS, and consulted the pastors and elders at my PCA Church, several of whom were, like myself, former Catholics. The enterprise, was, I admit, entirely biased. I was seeking to find the “silver bullet” to demonstrate the errors of Catholicism. However, in less than a year, the tables had turned and I was consistently finding myself on the defensive, seeking to defend numerous theological and historical issues, including sola scriptura, sola fide, and the supposed connection between the faith and practice of the early Church and that of the Reformed tradition.

Catholicism, meanwhile, was at least plausible, if still a very unappealing option for a number of theological and personal reasons. Some concerns seemed larger than life. How was I suppose to assess the Catholic claim that Catholic tradition and the the teaching of the Magisterium had authority that was binding on the conscience? Did I have to read, study, and assess prayerfully every official Church document ever written in order to determine whether its doctrine was compatible with Scripture? I’d have to quit my job and devote the rest of my life to such a pursuit. And meanwhile, was I suppose to abstain from communion or resign from my PCA church and become some sort of “independent” Christian until I had resolved these dilemmas? That certainly seemed contrary to Scripture’s calling to unite ourselves to a visible community of Christians (e.g. Hebrews 10:25). I could spend the rest of my life in some sort of theological limbo, only to find some new scholarly analysis throw the whole Protestant experiment into flux, as the New Perspective on Paul has done since the 1970s. Is this really what Jesus intended for us, that every Christian study Scripture, theology and Church history until we are each able adequately to resolve such controversies as justification? And adequate to whom, exactly? The short history of Reformed denominations such as the OPC and PCA and their own battles with the Federal Vision should be enough even for the casual observer to recognize the complexity of these issues. The complexity certainly seemed at odds with the Reformed understanding of the perspicuity of Scripture, where the ordinary individual Christian is supposed to be able to determine from a “plain reading” of Scripture what is necessary for salvation. (WCF 1:7).

My work sent me overseas to Qatar and Thailand for a time. I viewed the trip as an opportunity to clear my mind, read a number of books and articles that Calvinists and Catholics had recommended, and pray through the theological issues apart from the increasingly emotional conversations at church and seminary. While in Thailand, I journeyed to the historic capital city of Ayutthaya for a day-trip, walking among the ruins and exploring the architecture of Buddhist shrines, an unlikely and entirely unfitting location to reflect on Christian theology, I admit. However, by the time I was on the train back to Bangkok, I had concluded that Reformed theology is not an accurate or adequate explanation of Scripture or Christian history. I returned to the United States, and within two weeks had submitted my formal resignation to my PCA church, received the sacrament of reconciliation (my first in about 18 years), and entered into an RCIA program at a local Catholic parish.

Although there were many reasons that precipitated my return to Catholicism, I think the most foundational were my growing concerns with the Protestant understanding of the formation of the canon, and the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura. Concerning the formation of the canon I doubt I can add much to Tom Brown’s analysis of the canon question (see his “The Canon Question“), but I will add that I encountered a very unsatisfying answer to my question of why Protestants do not accept the Deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament as Scripture, as Catholics and Orthodox do. The Westminster Confession of Faith’s proof-texts (i.e. Luke 24:27, 44; Romans 3:2; and 2 Peter 1:21) for the rejection of the Apocrypha in WCF I.3 are puzzling and easily refutable, given that none of the passages address the Apocrypha and its inspiration or inerrancy. More substantively, many Protestant and Reformed scholars argue that the Apocrypha contains historical errors and that its theology directly contradicts the rest of Scripture. The claim that the Apocrypha contains historical errors seemed oddly similar to what more liberal Protestant scholars have been saying about the Old and New Testament for several centuries, as I discussed earlier. And the claim that the theology of the deuterocanonical books is at odds with Protestant doctrines such as sola fide (e.g. Tobit 4:11, 12:9) only begged the question, and would have applied no less to James’ epistle in the New Testament. (e.g. James 2:24)

My study of the canon also led me to read and study the Apocrypha myself, something that most Protestants in my experience have never done. What I found was at times notably different in style and content from the Hebrew Bible. However, I also read passages such as Wisdom of Solomon 2:12-20, which would be difficult not to see as a prophecy fulfilled in the passion narratives of the gospels. Indeed, the following passage inspired in me a deeper love for Christ:

“Let us lie in wait for the righteous one, because he is annoying to us; he opposes our actions, Reproaches us for transgressions of the law and charges us with violations of our training. He professes to have knowledge of God and styles himself a child of the LORD. To us he is the censure of our thoughts; merely to see him is a hardship for us, Because his life is not like that of others, and different are his ways. He judges us debased; he holds aloof from our paths as from things impure. He calls blest the destiny of the righteous and boasts that God is his Father. Let us see whether his words be true; let us find out what will happen to him in the end. For if the righteous one is the son of God, God will help him and deliver him from the hand of his foes. With violence and torture let us put him to the test that we may have proof of his gentleness and try his patience. Let us condemn him to a shameful death; for according to his own words, God will take care of him.” [RSV]

Concerning sola scriptura, I wish to tread lightly, doubting whether I am able to add to Bryan Cross’s, Neil Judisch’s, Matt Yonke’s, David Anders’, and Michael Liccione’s arguments critiquing sola scriptura as neither scriptural, historically defensible, or logically consistent.¹ However, I would like to add a few of my own reflections on the inadequacy of sola scriptura. First, Reformed and other Protestants will often argue that it is better to trust in the authority of Scripture alone as opposed to the Magisterium and Sacred Tradition. However, I found that as a Protestant I trusted the authority of historians, biblical scholars, and theologians to provide me with the most reliable texts, the most accurate translations, and the most historically and culturally faithful interpretations of those texts. And yet I had never met any of these individuals, had only indirect access to how they had gone about their research, and was largely ignorant of the biases they may or may not have brought with them in their work. I started to realize that as a Protestant I was just as much trusting in a “magisterium” of Protestant historians, scholars, and theologians as the Catholic who trusts in the Church.

This has become even more noticeable as evangelical scholars have begun to cast doubt on the inspiration of certain texts in the New Testament, such as Mark 16:9-20 and John 8:1-9, because those passages do not appear in the earliest New Testament manuscripts. This assessment of debated passages of Scripture places a problematic emphasis on palaeographist’s present best determination of the chronology of manuscripts as the primary determinant of authentic Scripture, an imperfect science to say the least. Such a method undermines sola scriptura by seemingly placing the equivalent of magisterial authority in the hands of archaeologists and New Testament scholars, and may influence what future generations of evangelical Protestants view as authentic, inspired, Scripture, especially if further archaeological developments unearth further manuscripts, or Protestant scholars decide to employ some other criteria to determine what is true Scripture.

On a more psychological level, I came to realize that no Christian can possibly approach Scripture without a host of predetermined data points that inform his or her interpretation. There can be no “Scripture alone,” because our interpretive lens will be inherently defined by the sermons we’ve heard, books we’ve read, or theological concepts we’ve been taught. The Reformed Christian, in essence, believes in Scripture plus whatever interpretations he inherits from Calvin plus Warfield plus Bavinck plus whomever has informed his interpretive paradigm. The same can be said for the Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, and even Catholic. However, only the Catholic’s interpretive paradigm allows him to reply to such a charge by saying “yes, exactly, that IS how I interpret Scripture; how could I do any other?”

In turn, although I had many strong reservations about the Catholic Church, I had read enough to see the Catholic interpretation of Scripture as plausible, at the very least. However, more fundamentally, I became persuaded that Jesus Christ was actually bodily present in the Eucharist, a belief informed by Scripture, the writings of Catholic apologists, and the testimony of Catholic friends experiencing spiritual transformation through the sacrament. It was an incredibly strange, but ultimately enlightening experience to observe some of the most intelligent and pious people I knew bowing before and worshiping what I had assumed were simply bread and wine. In the midst of my many remaining doubts, I sensed His call in the sacrament, a pull very similar to my initial conversion to know and love Christ when I encountered evangelicalism. I wanted to receive Him, to be united to Him and to His Church.

Initial Reflections on Castaldo’s Project

Given this short background, let’s consider the reasons given by Castaldo and many other Catholics for their rejection of the Catholic faith in favor of Protestantism. They are: (1) former Catholics want a “full-time faith” rather than Catholicism, which draws a sharp distinction between the responsibilities of the clergy and the laity; (2) former Catholics want a “personal relationship with Jesus,” as opposed to a set of rules; (3) former Catholics want “direct access to God,” rather than accessing Him through the papacy and the priesthood; (4) former Catholics want “Christ-centered devotion,” as opposed to what Castaldo argues are the “aspects of Sacred Tradition [that] can eclipse the Christ-centered message of Scripture; and (5) former Catholics want to be “motivated by grace instead of guilt.” Although Castaldo does not state explicitly that these were his own “top five” reasons for leaving the Catholic Church, he intersperses personal anecdotes related to all five reasons, and never raises any objections to these reasons, suggesting that these were very much at work in his own conversion, and may be considered his own.

As a preface, some of Castaldo’s reasons resonate with me given our similar experiences, but for the reasons I explain below, they are largely irrelevant to the more foundational issues dividing Catholicism and Protestantism. Most notably, much of Castaldo’s research demonstrates that peoples’ experiences in the Catholic Church are incredibly varied, and that what they often experienced as Catholicism was in some sense an inadequate or inaccurate reflection of authentic Church teaching. Multiple times, Castaldo refers to some bad experience in a Catholic parish that pulls someone away from Catholicism and toward evangelicalism, but then qualifies the story by noting that the experience or doctrine is not what the Catholic Church formally teaches. Such bad experiences or poor catechesis are unfortunate, but an assessment of a religion’s veracity should not be based on the subjective experience of individuals in a particular place, but on that religion’s official doctrines and authentic practice. Castaldo may not believe such experiences are sufficient grounds for abandoning Catholicism, but these anecdotes consistently obscure , rather than clarify, the true lines of division between Catholic and Protestant doctrine. If I were to reject Catholicism because a priest tells me Scripture is inconsequential in Catholic doctrine, I would not have rejected Catholicism, but a faulty depiction of it. Likewise, if I were to reject Reformed theology because the female pastor at a PCUSA church encourages me to pray to “mother, child, and womb” instead of the Trinity, all the OPC and PCA pastors who hear of it would likely start pulling out their hair. We are all called to seek the truth in honesty and charity, even when it is obscured by poorly-informed or even dissenting religious practice.

Secondly, Castaldo’s project is not so much a systematic analysis of the historical and theological debates between Catholicism and Protestantism than it is a cultural analysis, discussing the values and practices that shape American Catholics and lead many to become evangelicals. Though this presents an interesting vignette of the Catholic-Protestant debate, it suffers from an inherent weakness: examining what former Catholics want from a Christian community or religious experience, rather than what is true or what they truly need. Castaldo recognizes this weakness, acknowledging that evangelicals sometimes form their beliefs to their own tastes, rather than to Scripture. He even jests that some evangelicals act as if they believe in a Jesus “in running shoes sporting a Sergio Tacchini sweat-suit jogging beside us on the treadmill.” Castaldo’s answer to this problem seems to be a more theologically-robust, biblically-informed, and tradition-friendly evangelical Protestantism, built upon the core tenets of the Reformation (pp. 61, 94-96, 103). Yet Castaldo’s research exposes the degree to which Protestant religious experience suffers inherently from a problematic ecclesial consumerism (see “Ecclesial Consumerism“), according to which one is guided by what one perceives one’s spiritual desires to be, and what one perceives to be the best way to satisfy those spiritual desires, according to one’s own interpretation of Scripture. Fundamentally, this project starts with what the individual Christian consumer wants in his spiritual life, rather than “What did Christ establish?”

Cataldo seeks to combat this tendency by urging individuals to base their conversions to Protestantism on Scripture, rather than on spiritual preference. But implicit even in this model is the assumption that individuals have the interpretive authority to determine for themselves from Scripture how best to worship Christ and form Christian communities. Whether one is determining what is most spiritually beneficial or what Scripture teaches, if one is treating oneself as Scripture’s highest interpretive authority one is implicitly taking to oneself more authority than any semblance of Church hierarchy. In essence, even Castaldo’s attempts to avoid ecclesial consumerism in evangelical Protestantism fail, because not believing in a hierarchical Church founded by Christ makes everyone an authority unto him or herself. Yet if following Christ means following Him not according to our own whims or personal interpretations but via the authorities and shepherds He has established, it is spiritually dangerous to establish religious markers based on personal preferences or private interpretations, lest we become like Cain or Korah, two Old Testament personalities known for prioritizing their own preferences in their worship. Choosing to leave a religious faith or join another based on what we want is in that way a subtle form of idolatry, insofar as one creates ‘church’ in one’s own image, according to one’s own judgment of what one needs spiritually and how best to worship God.

Finally, Castaldo invests notable energy in emphasizing the importance of the visible Church to Catholicism’s theological self-understanding. On several occassions Castaldo summarizes the centrality of the risen Christ’s continuing role in the visible Church to Catholic theology, referring to the Catholic understanding of totus Christus, “total Christ,” according to which Christ is manifested through the Catholic Church and her members (pp. 30-31, 97-98, 132). Castaldo further acknowledges the Catholic critique of Protestant tendencies toward individualism, calling this individualism a “legitimate flaw within evangelicalism,” and urges Protestants to take the importance of the visible Church more seriously (133). However, Castaldo fails to provide a positive Protestant alternative to what is or isn’t the visible Church, something that Jesus (John 17:11) and Paul (1 Corinthians 1:10) seem to have believed was a reality.

At times Castaldo appeals to the divergent doctrines that many Protestants have argued separate the orthodox (historical Protestantism) from the heretical (Catholicism), doctrines such as justification, in order to bolster his five reasons. But then he approvingly cites examples of devout Catholics who followed Christ, such as Ignatius Loyola (pp. 77-79). Castaldo appears to waver between viewing the Catholic Church as a perpetuator of heresy or alternatively as just one of thousands of Christian denominations that compose the visible Church. If the Catholic Church is a legitimate part of the visible Church, Castaldo leaves unresolved how this is to be reconciled with five hundred years of Reformed Protestant theology that has argued otherwise. Moreover, if Castaldo approves of these five reasons, it seems reasonable that evangelicals are free to leave their evangelical denominations or churches if they cease holding the five reasons Castaldo outlines in his book. Indeed, it is possible Castaldo has not provided an exhaustive list, and that there are other things individuals are entitled to receive from their Christian religious communities that, if not provided, justify their exit from the Church for a different religious institution. The absence of a Protestant alternative to Catholicism’s recognition of the necessity of the unified visible Church, and what, if anything, obligates Christians to remain united to it calls into question the role this doctrine plays in Castaldo’s thinking.

Full-Time Faith

The first reason Castaldo gives in Holy Ground for Catholic conversions to Protestantism is that former Catholics want a “full-time faith,” something which Catholicism, with its sharp distinction between the responsibilities of the clergy and laity, supposedly cannot provide. Castaldo argues, “for many, the unfortunate result of such a sharp Catholic clergy-laity distinction is an undermining of Christian calling and purpose.” He qualifies this statement by saying that “this is not to say that Catholics can’t enjoy a lay vocation. Indeed some do. However, for many, encouragement to engage in ministry was nonexistent.” He adds, “from Scripture they came to believe that in Christ they are actually spiritual priests whose ministries are on equal footing with ordained clergy” (p. 39).

It is worth noting firstly that Castaldo’s objection is question-begging in that it assumes that every Christian is called to an ecclesial ministry, and that therefore the Catholic clergy-laity distinction prevents lay Christians from fulfilling their ministerial calling. Catholic teaching indeed does not share this assumption. That issue aside, Castaldo readily admits that Catholicism teaches a form of the “priesthood of all believers, which applies to the entire church.” He even notes two documents from Vatican II that addressed the need for more lay ministry participation: Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity and the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World. Although Castaldo is indeed taking issue with Catholic doctrine on the role of the clergy in the Church, he seems more concerned with the poor or varied application of Catholic doctrine at the parish level.

In my own experience, I have been encouraged by Catholic priests, laymen, and literature to view my family, my work, and the entirety of my life as an “apostolate” where I am called to love, serve, and proclaim the gospel. The Arlington Diocese (where I live) is full of opportunities for laymen to invest whatever skills or passions they possess in the work of the Church: to name but a few, Knights of Columbus, Legion of Mary, Regnum Christi, Opus Dei, RCIA, CCD; the opportunities for service are practically endless. The mission of Opus Dei, in particular, is to “spread the message that work and the circumstances of everyday life are occasions for growing closer to God, for serving others, and for improving society,” and is found in nineteen cities interspersed throughout the United States. Of course I am well aware that I am fortunate enough to live in a diocese well known for being one of the strongest, most devout dioceses in the United States, which may give me an unfair advantage over those in parts of the country with less of a presence of devout Catholics. However, as discussed above, to eschew Catholicism because of its varying practice geographically fails to engage Church teaching adequately and creates a standard for determining religious truth based on an assessment of the relative spiritual strength of a Christian community, rather than the trustworthiness of that religious community’s doctrine and authentic practice. It may be the case that some dioceses offer more opportunities than others for lay ministry – but this is an experiential, rather than a doctrinal concern.

On a different level, however, I can relate to Castaldo’s concern with the alleged Catholic clergy-laity distinction. When I was considering the claims of the Catholic Church, I was put off by the high esteem given to the priesthood and consecrated life – it sometimes did feel, as Castaldo argues, that those unconsecrated Catholics could never reach the degree of holiness or importance reserved for those embracing the religious life. Indeed, one will often hear people refer to the religious life as a “higher calling.” However, I came to see that my fears were illogical and overlooked scriptural distinctions between clergy and laity. For one, Christ himself appointed twelve men as apostles, whom Protestants themselves argue had a level of authority unequaled among the rest of the early Church – as their writings were believed to be inspired by God and inerrant. Was the special authority given to the apostles a threat to the role and significance of other early Christians? Or am I jealous that the apostles received such a high calling I cannot attain, something that remains true for all eternity (Revelation 21:14)?

Furthermore, the Church has never taught that the distinction between the clergy and laity means the work of the laity is unimportant or cannot be spiritually significant and rewarding. Indeed, there is a significant distinction between a calling to Holy Orders or religious life, and the calling to sanctity. We are all called to sanctity, and Holy Orders does not guarantee greater sanctity, nor does a lay vocation entail lower sanctity. The Church teaches that all have the opportunity to grow in sanctity and virtue, and Church teaching on the higher calling of religious vocation does not preclude those called to the lay vocation from receiving the grace needed for sanctification or heroic virtue (CCC 1803-1845). An examination of the many saints revered by the Church demonstrates this clearly. Take for example, Saint Germaine Cousin – a poor French girl in the late sixteenth century who prayed the rosary, attended Mass, and was abused by her father and mother-in-law until the point of death at the age of twenty-two. Her life consisted of no formal “ministry” as we might understand it, and she leaves us no writings. Yet her humility and acceptance of suffering stand as a testament to her faith; so much so that a friend of mine who came into the Church last Easter chose her as her confirmation saint. Or examine Saint Gianna Beretta Molla, an Italian wife, mother, and physician in the twentieth century who refused to undergo an abortion despite a fibroma in her uterus that threatened her life and the life of the child. She died in childbirth, a testament to her faith in the value of human life. These saints, and many others, demonstrate the clergy-laity distinction does not prevent the Church from honoring lay Catholics for their role in the “priesthood of all believers.”

Castaldo’s first objection to Catholicism thus fails on several grounds, including the question-begging nature of assuming that all Christians are called to ecclesial ministry, elevating the subjective experience over doctrine and authentic practice as a means of evaluating Catholicism’s truth claims, and failing to recognize the strong and ongoing tradition of the spiritually significant roles of the laity in the Catholic faith.

Relationship with Christ or A Set or Rules

Castaldo secondly claims that many former-Catholics want a “personal relationship with Jesus,” as opposed to a set of rules, which is what many former-Catholics experience during their time in the Church. From not eating meat on Fridays to confessing one’s sins, the Church has seemingly created an intricate, overbearing system of regulations that are often seen as straying far from the Bible. Instead, Castaldo claims that in their encounter with evangelicalism Catholics find an intimate and inviting relationship with Christ, where He is a close friend (John 15). As before, Castaldo is quick to note that many Catholics have also taught and exemplified the idea of a deep and personal relationship with Christ, including Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Blaise Pascal, Brother Lawrence, Thomas Merton, Therese of Lisieux, and many others (p. 81).

I can easily resonate with Castaldo and other former-Catholics on this subject, because I remember the great freedom I felt in believing that my status before Christ was determined not by my strict adherence to a long list of Church-concocted rules, but by His work on the cross and my trust in it. However, in returning to Catholicism I have found just as much teaching and exhortation to pursue a deep and personal relationship with Christ. When I meet with my spiritual director on a monthly basis, his response to my reflections, concerns, or anxieties is often simply to ask “have you brought it before the Lord?” Castaldo notes the presence of Catholic saints, priests, and writers who fostered an incredibly intimate love for Christ – there are many such people in dioceses throughout the country. Indeed, there is absolutely nothing in Catholic teaching that discourages us from such a pursuit, and everything in Catholic doctrine is ultimately aimed at achieving the deepest possible communion with Christ. For example, the prologue to the Catechism begins:

God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.

So what then of the many rules the Church mandates? Is this not a hindrance to our relationship with Christ, in that we will lose sight of knowing and loving Him in the midst of all these rules? As a former “Christ-Centered” Reformed Christian, I think it is easy to hold this assessment, and I have certainly felt this tension as a Catholic. However, it is worth noting that there are only five precepts of the Catholic Church in the United States: (1) attending Mass on Sundays and the six Holy Days of Obligation; (2) receiving the sacrament of reconciliation once a year; (3) receiving the Eucharist during the Lenten season; (4) observing the prescribed days of fasting and abstinence; and (5) providing for the needs of the Church (CCC 2042-2043). Are these rules “heavy burdens, hard to bear,” unnecessarily laid on the shoulders of the faithful, as Christ condemns in Matthew 23:4? Some of them, such as Sabbath observance and church attendance, are familiar to evangelicals and Reformed – indeed, I knew many Reformed folk who were far stricter in their observance of the Sabbath than what is mandated by the Catholic Church. Other precepts could hardly be considered burdens – to receive the sacrament of reconciliation once a year is unlikely to require more than one or two hours of one’s time, depending on one’s distance from a Catholic parish. Indeed, many Catholics are happy to go to confession monthly, if not more often, as a means of grace in their battle with sin. Likewise, to view the precept to receive the Eucharist during the Lenten season (especially if one is already attending weekly Mass) as a burden would be a strange assessment, especially if it is indeed the body and blood of Christ, the “source and summit of the Christian life” (CCC 1324).

Furthermore, on what basis are these Church-mandated rules to be rejected? If it is because there is no explicit scriptural mandate for Holy Days of Obligation or days of fasting and abstinence, this again begs the question, because it presumes sola scriptura, a problematic doctrine that Called To Communion has addressed elsewhere. As an aside, there is indeed scriptural precedent for the five Catholic precepts mandated in the United States – especially if the Church hierarchy is instituted by Christ and has authority to mandate areas of discipline such as mass attendance or fasting (cf. Acts 15:28-29).

Finally, the Church urges us to view every rule as a means by which to foster closer communion with Christ. The sacrament of confession, rightly understood, is a means by which Christ Himself offers forgiveness, operating through the priest. As the Catechism teaches, “reconciliation with God is thus the purpose and effect of this sacrament” (CCC 1468). Participating in fasts, be they from meat or otherwise, are a means by which we can unite ourselves more deeply to Christ in His sufferings, deepening our spiritual understanding and union with Him, as well as removing ourselves from undue affections for this world. Fasting helps us “acquire mastery over our instincts and freedom of heart,” freeing us to more fully love and appreciate Christ (CCC 2043). Holy Days of Obligation are also intended to deepen our relationship with Christ, as evidenced most recently in the Solemnity of the Mother of God, celebrated on the first day of January. Though Mariological, it is also deeply Christological, with its scriptural reflections on the sonship Christians acquire through Christ (Galatians 4:4-7) and the wondrous circumstances of the incarnation (Luke 2:16-21). Any and all of these precepts holy Mother Church, acting on behalf of Christ, has the authority to establish as a means of forming the spiritual life of her children, thereby sanctifying them through habits of religious practice.

Who Needs a Priest When I Can Pray to God Myself?

The third reason Castaldo gives is that former-Catholics want “direct access to God,” rather than accessing Him through the papacy and the priesthood. He explains that ex-Catholics have concerns with the “visible authority structure rooted in the popes and bishops,” and the pope’s “clerical function, his relationship to the priesthood” (pp. 72-73). He goes on to provide several scriptural proof-texts to argue that in order to “access God’s presence,” we need only the “one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5). The argument, essentially, is that the Catholic hierarchy of priests, bishops, and popes is an unnecessary hindrance to direct access to God, and there is no scriptural warrant for the mediatory nature of the priesthood as Catholics understand it.

I confess that this issue was not a major stumbling block in my return to Catholicism, although I remember an elder at my PCA church telling me that he was concerned that in returning to the Catholic Church I had embraced a form of “sacerdotalism” that he viewed as unbiblical and unjustified. Contrary to what non-Catholics, or unfortunately ex-Catholics may believe, there is nothing in Church doctrine that suggests that Catholic laypeople cannot pray on their own, read Scripture on their own, or foster spiritual intimacy with God on their own. Of course ordinarily the sacraments can only be administered by priests or bishops, and the Church does indeed teach that these sacraments are the place where we most fully meet Christ, especially the sacrament of the Eucharist.

Castaldo’s objection was of less concern for me for a few reasons. First, I recognized that the entire Old Testament spoke to a priestly system where some individuals served a mediatory role between God and His covenant people. As one steeped in covenant theology during my time as a Reformed seminarian, it became increasingly strange to believe that with Christ’s role as the perfect great high priest, the priestly system was done away with entirely. Wouldn’t it make more sense, and foster more continuity between Old and New Testaments, for a priesthood to continue, now only greater than that of the old covenant? Indeed, whereas in the old priesthood, priests offered bloody sacrifices for the sins of Israel, and were unable to effectuate God’s redemptive power, priests in the new covenant offer a non-bloody sacrifice, Christ Himself, which is fully effective to forgive sin, unite us to God, and change us within. As I made that intellectual transition, much of the New Testament began to elucidate this idea of a continued priesthood (e.g. 2 Corinthians 5:18; Hebrews 10: 19-22).

Secondly, I was excited, rather than dismayed at the prospect that the priest’s mediatory role could extend to me graces I had hitherto lacked while Protestant. For example, the sacrament of reconciliation does not simply forgive sins. By grace it also strengthens the Christian against whatever sin he or she is struggling with – a very exciting proposition I have found to be true in practice! If Christ established the sacraments, then there is more grace available to us through communion with the Church than through an individualism that makes the Church quite unnecessary.

Finally, I recognized that as a Protestant I had another mediator between myself and God, though few Protestants would ever look at it as such. Whenever I sat down to read Scripture, I read a particular translation offered by a particular group of scholars with a certain theological bent (the NIV, evangelicals; the ESV, Reformed scholars). I had essentially accepted their mediatory role as translators, bringing the vernacular language of the Old and New Testaments to me as an English-speaking American. Not only that, but I had also accepted their mediatory role in determining what is and isn’t Scripture – for example, they had determined to exclude the deuterocanonical books accepted by the Catholic Church. In turn, I had trusted other scholars, theologians, and pastors to mediate to me the meaning of Scripture, especially those passages that were confusing or appeared contradictory. They may not have been priests, but I certainly needed them both to gain access to Christ in His Word, and to understand it properly.

”Christ-centered Devotion”

Castaldo’s fourth reason is that ex-Catholics want “Christ-centered devotion,” as opposed to what he argues are the “aspects of Sacred Tradition [that] can eclipse the Christ-centered message of Scripture,” which he claims is that Jesus is “the one intermediary between God and humanity,” referencing 2 Corinthians 4:6 and 1 Timothy 2:5 (p. 103). Castaldo is referring particularly to such devotions in Catholicism as praying to saints, devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and that of the rosary.

I can very much appreciate this argument, as it was a central stumbling block to my return to Catholicism. Even after I started to be convinced that Catholicism had a better explanation for the relationship between Scripture and tradition, and a more biblically faithful theology, when I looked at the Church’s practices, it seemed like Christ often took a backseat to other devotions. To one who wholeheartedly accepted Michael Horton’s “Christ-centered Christianity” as gospel, Catholic devotional life seemed to muddy the waters, if not lead people away from Christ. I wondered, “if we as Protestants have enough trouble keeping our eyes and hearts focused on Christ, won’t devotions to saints and Mary complicate things further?” Even after I had come to accept that asking for Mary’s intercession in the rosary was not a violation of Scripture, I remember thinking “There’s six ‘Our Fathers’ and fifty-three ‘Hail Marys’? How can this be right?” However, a few concepts re-aligned my thinking on Catholic devotion such that I came to realize that Christ still remains the very center of Catholic devotional life.

First and foremost is the centrality of the Eucharist to Catholic devotional life, what the Church has termed the “source and summit” of the Christian life, a topic I intend to address in further detail in a subsequent article. From a Catholic perspective, the Eucharist is Christ himself, and receives far greater honor and attention than anything else in the liturgy or popular devotion. Indeed, unlike Mary or any other saint, the Eucharist is worshipped as God. From the very beginning of my exploration into Catholicism, I came to realize how very central the Eucharist is – it is quite simply impossible to speak too highly of the Eucharist. It is “our daily bread,” the means of salvation, the source of all grace, the remedy for every ill, anxious thought, or sinful habit… and most radically, it is Jesus Himself. There is a reason why every priest and parish is required to offer Mass daily, and why so many spiritual directors, Catholic literature, and Church documents urge Catholics to receive the Eucharist as frequently as possible, and to spend time in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. If the Eucharist is Christ, it’s hard to imagine getting more Christ-centered than that.

As for the rosary and devotions to the Blessed Virgin Mary or other saints, it is important to keep in mind that the rosary as well is a Christ-centered devotion. In it, the Catholic asks Mary to pray for him or her to meditate on the mysteries of Christ’s life. Although the Catholic verbally says many “Hail Mary’s” the purpose is not to elevate Mary above Christ, but to allow the repetition of the prayers to enable the Catholic to enter into a meditative form of prayer, focused particularly on Christ. Once I understood this, and tried to pray the rosary with this in mind, I saw Scripture and Christ’s life in a way that richly deepened my knowledge and love of Christ. Certainly in Catholicism one may find misapplications or misinterpretations of Marian devotion, or devotions to other saints, that obscure the centrality of Christ. But to reject Catholicism for misapplications of its teaching is to reject a straw-man, just as if I were to reject Reformed theology because some Reformed theologian or pastor advocated something at odds with traditional Reformed theology or practice.

”Grace Instead of Guilt”

Castaldo’s fifth and final reason for the exodus of Catholics to evangelicalism is that ex-Catholics want to be “motivated by grace instead of guilt” (p. 105). In describing another ex-Catholics’ move to evangelicalism, Castaldo explains that “unlike his rules-oriented experience of the Catholic Church, Andy now enjoyed a personal relationship with Christ by faith.” Other ex-Catholics tell Castaldo, “instead of religion, I now have a relationship with God.” Castaldo asserts, “it’s not necessary for one to first get right with the Catholic Church by observing the sacramental stipulations before receiving salvation from Christ. Rather it comes by faith alone” (p. 111). Castaldo then goes on to explain how the Protestant doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone serves as a counteractive force to guilt, by enabling the Christian to rest in God’s salvific work through Christ’s death and resurrection (p. 116-120).

Of Castaldo’s five reasons, I find this one most compelling, as I reflect on the great comfort that came from my acceptance of the Protestant doctrine that I was saved by grace through faith alone. To accept the Catholic position, an internal spiritual transformation had to occur so as not to be overcome with guilt in the face of the depravity and continuance of my sin. It would be impossible to explain fully my spiritual transformation in rejecting the Protestant model that Castaldo and so many ex-Catholics have come to accept and love, but a more modest endeavor would be to highlight a couple key points. First, it is worth noting that the belief that we are saved by “faith alone” in Christ’s redemptive work may be a doctrine that brings great spiritual consolation, but as other CTC contributors have argued, it is a faulty methodology that compares competing versions of the gospel based on how good they seem to us.² Moreover, if the Protestant conception of justification by faith alone is a novel interpretation that departs from the ancient tradition (cf. “Tradition I and Sola Fide,” and the Catholic understanding is fully compatible with Scripture (cf. “Does the Bible Teach Sola Fide?“), then it seems we should follow the traditional understanding of justification preserved by the Church at the Council of Trent and more recently in the Catechism.

Furthermore, Catholicism does not teach that being “right with the Catholic Church by observing the sacramental stipulations” is the only way one may receive grace from Christ. It teaches that the sacraments are the “ordinary means” by which this takes place. As CCC 819 teaches, wherever Christians participate in the sacraments, or read, meditate, or preach Scripture, they may access the grace of Christ. Reformed theology likewise has a doctrine of “ordinary means,” claiming that Christ comes to Christians through the preached Word of God, but noting the possibility that Christ may use other means as He sees fit, given His sovereignty.

These issues aside, I think the claim that Catholicism presents a theological model more motivated by guilt than grace is a penetrating one that deserves attention. Although the Church does indeed teach that guilt may be a beneficial force in encouraging Christians to avoid sinful behavior, this is seen as the lowest form of obedience to God – as one who “stands before God as a slave, in servile fear” (CCC 1828). Rather, it is far better for the Christian to act as a free son out of a love for God and love for virtue, precisely because the Christian in fellowship with God is filled with thanksgiving and understanding of God’s gracious movements toward the Christian, and wants to worship Him in thought, word, and action (CCC 1822-1828). Former Catholics do Catholic teaching a disservice when they claim that disregard for Church mandated fasting or Holy Days of Obligation should engender guilt by adding to “Jesus’ suffering on the cross” (pp. 115-116). Any rule in Catholicism is oriented towards deepening our love of Christ, growth in holiness, and participation in the divine nature — the exact “personal relationship with Christ,” ex-Catholics yearn to acquire. Adherence to the law, rightly understood, should be a means of growing in the blessed life, rather than a deterrent to it. Furthermore, the Church encourages consistent return to the sacrament of reconciliation – not simply because it is a great blessing and benefit to receive consistently both absolution for sins and the grace to fight sin, but also because it enables Catholics to better form their consciences precisely so they are not racked by guilt or confusion when they fail to honor a fast or forget to attend Mass on a Holy Day of Obligation. The longer I am Catholic, and the more I go to confession, the more I understand my sin, its gravity, and what it does to my relationship with Christ. Again, we must carefully distinguish between the misapplication or poor catechesis often found in Catholicism, and authentic Catholic practice in accord with what the Catholic Church actually teaches.

Finally, Castaldo’s charge seems to place Catholicism and its alleged guilt-inducing rules at odds with the Protestant faith and its emphasis on God’s gracious acceptance of the sinner, not based on adherence to a set of a religious obligations but solely on the basis of divine favor. Yet Castaldo and other former Catholics could hardly be implying that God accepts even the defiant sinner who has no intention of repentance, and intends to continue actively disobeying God’s commands. Certainly even the Protestant would hold that the converted sinner must desire holiness and seek to reject sinful patterns of behavior. It seems then that Castaldo and other former Catholics equate “rules” with “guilt,” in that one “feels guilty” more often in Catholicism, because there are seemingly more rules to violate, or that there are more opportunities to “incur guilt” in Catholicism because of its rules. Determining which system of doctrine to follow based on which offers the fewest rules or incurs the least guilt again returns us to fashioning a religion according to one’s own desires, rather than receiving the religion Christ has revealed through the Church He founded.

”Final Reflections”

In assessing the conversion stories of those who have left Reformed theology for the Catholic Church I have witnessed a trend. Before I returned to Catholicism, I had my own assessments of these Catholic conversions – assuming they were due either to a desire for the “smells and bells” of a deep, historical liturgy, or the possibility that the convert didn’t really understand the Reformed faith. There were many theories I and others proposed to negate these Catholic conversion stories. Now that I am on the other side, I realize how such hypothesizing failed to further ecumenical dialogue, in the same way that accusing Castaldo or other former-Catholics of not understanding Catholicism, or conjecturing as to their hidden motives would be counter-productive. The reasons given by Castaldo’s study are reflective of general trends in the United States, and Castaldo appears both to have his finger on the pulse of this particular subset of evangelicals, and to possess a much more nuanced view of Catholicism than do many evangelicals. I might also add that upon reading his book, I am inclined to believe that Castaldo is a devoted Christian with a serious mind, that he is after the truth of Scripture and of Christ, and that he is desperate to know Christ more.

That said, the two most apparent problems throughout Castaldo’s analysis are (1) the disconnect between what many experience in Catholicism and what the Catholic Church formally teaches, and (2) evangelical ex-Catholics appear to place their own personal interpretations or consumerist demands over the models of religiosity established by Christ in His Church. Regarding the first, that Catholic catechesis in the United States and elsewhere has been so poor for so long is a very sad reality, and I empathize with my many former Catholic brothers and sisters who found great spiritual benefit in evangelicalism since leaving the Catholic Church. However, evangelicalism presents a new series of intellectual and theological dilemmas that are not easily addressed, including the nature of the visible Church, and what reasons may justify severing oneself from the Church. I think Castaldo would agree that choosing a church is not like choosing one’s favorite ice cream – something formed simply by preference. If there is indeed a visible Church, and that Church is the Catholic Church, and if what that Church offers is Christ and what that Church teaches is scriptural, we must beware of abandoning it for any reason, let alone the five offered by Castaldo.

Regarding the second problem, the assessment Castaldo and other Catholics have made in their decision to choose evangelicalism over the Catholic Church reveals an implicit form of ecclesial consumerism that fails to address the possibility that the Catholic Church is the institution founded by Christ, and that what former Catholics think they need may in certain respects be opposed to what Christ Himself wants for them. If Christ has established a clergy-laity distinction, then wanting a Christianity without such a distinction is wanting something contrary to what Christ has established. If Christ through His Church has given us precepts to obey, then wanting a spirituality without such precepts is wanting something contrary to what Christ has established. If Christ has established a priesthood in the New Covenant by which His grace is given to us through sacraments, then wanting a Christianity without sacraments or without any other human beings acting as channels of divine grace is wanting something contrary to what Christ has established. If Christ through His Church has provided devotions that incorporate the communion of the saints, then wanting a Christianity devoid of such devotions is contrary to the form of religion Christ has provided to us through His Church. And if Christ has established laws that induce guilt when they are disobeyed, then wanting a Christianity in which there is no guilt is wanting something other than what Christ has established.

Claire and Casey Chalk

In each case, therefore, we return to the question of whether or not the Catholic Church is the Church Christ founded, and whether Christ teaches and guides the faithful through His Church. I believe evangelicals truly want more of Christ, but our love and desire for Christ should lead us to follow Him and grow in Him in the way He has established. I hope even my Protestant brothers and sisters would agree that Christ knows better than we do what we need. If the Catholic Church is Christ’s Church, then we should follow Him by following His Church, and we may find, surprisingly, that what He provides us through His Church is ultimately what we truly need and want.

1. See “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority,” “The Tu Quoque,” “Mathison’s Reply to Cross and Judisch: A Largely Philosophical Critique,” “Some Preliminary Reflections on Mathison’s Dialectic,” “Hermeneutics and the Authority of Scripture,” “Sola Scriptura vs. the Magisterium: What Did Jesus Teach?,” and “Sola Scriptura: A Dialogue Between Michael Horton and Bryan Cross.”
2. See the blockquoted section in comment #39 of the “Is the Catholic Church Semi-Pelagian?” thread.

Summary: In this article I attempt to explain three different frameworks for interpreting the Church Fathers (patristic literature) and the consequences for adopting one over the others. I first describe each framework in a general manner and then show by way of illustration how these apply to the task of interpreting the Church Fathers. Secondly, I discuss some key texts from the earliest patristic literature (Ignatius of Antioch, Didache, Clement of Rome) that serve as tests cases for the three frameworks. Finally, I argue for one of these frameworks as the most productive and truest to Christian ideals. The themes presented here are treated in more detail in two works: Ignatius of Antioch: A New Translation and Theological Commentary and Clement of Rome and the Didache: A New Translation and Theological Commentary, both of which are published by CHResources.¹

Outline
Introduction
Part One: Three Frameworks for Interpreting the Church Fathers
Part Two: The Earliest Patristic Literature
Part Three: Deciding Between Frameworks

Introduction

Kenneth Howell

This article treats the central problem facing Christian scholars who wish to interpret the early church fathers. The problem concerns how one’s theological framework interacts with, influences, or is influenced by the historical data encountered. My concern is not with extensive documentation but to lay out an argument for consideration and evaluation. Although I will cite various historical facts and times, I will focus on the three earliest expressions of the Christian faith available to us. They are the seven authentic letters of Ignatius of Antioch, the Letter to the Corinthians by Clement of Rome, and the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, commonly known as the Didache.² I will look at the historical data as they relate to three frameworks of interpretation: the Classic Protestant Framework (CPF), the Modern Critical Framework (MCF), and the Classic Catholic Framework (CCF). I offer this as a working document rather than as a finished product.

It is important to gain clarity on what these three frameworks hold in common and what makes them different. Assuming good will on the part of the historian, we can say that the frameworks have in common the original texts to be investigated along with a desire to interpret them accurately within their historical milieu. Yet, two of these frameworks, the CPF and the CCF, have something in common that the MCF lacks, or at least, does not share to the same degree. The first two share the assumption that the documents named above have some relevance to the contemporary understanding and formulation of the Christian faith. In other words, in the CPF and in the CCF, the scholar attempts not only historical description but theological application.

Part One: Three Frameworks for Interpreting the Church Fathers

Classic Protestant Framework (CPF)

Confessional Protestantism attempts to establish its doctrines and practices on the basis of the Bible alone (Sola Scriptura). The notion of Sola Scriptura, however, admits of two interpretations. One, more recently dubbed solo scriptura,³ insists on using the Bible as the only source and criterion of doctrinal formulation. The other interpretation of Sola Scriptura seems closer to the original intention of the magisterial Reformers (Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, etc.). It recognizes the necessity and value of secondary authorities such as historical creeds which summarize and organize the biblical truths. The approach of Sola Scriptura has several advantages. One is that the creeds, whether ancient or modern, tend to be a source and impetus of unity in their respective ecclesial communions while the modern fundamentalist solo scriptura carries within it the seeds of radical disunity and individualism. A second is that those who espouse the classic notion of Sola Scriptura also tend to be more hermeneutically self-conscious than the proponents of solo scriptura who simply and facilely identify their interpretations of the biblical texts with “what the Bible teaches.” The CPF seems much more open to considering alternative interpretations of the Bible and therefore using secondary authorities in attempting to grasp the meaning of the Bible. In this article I will not deal with the solo scriptura position.

Protestants working in the CPF are disposed to consider the secondary authority of the church fathers, not as sources of Christian truth, but as conduits of biblical teaching. This is confirmed when one reads the writings of the magisterial Reformers who often cited the fathers. They made extensive use of the church fathers in their theological argumentation. The CPF looks to the fathers as secondary, confirming authorities to reinforce biblical teachings. To the extent that a particular father reflects, reinforces, and develops biblical doctrine, he is to be embraced. To the extent that he does not reflect biblical teaching, he is to be rejected. The CPF tends to view the ancient church as possessing an incomplete and partial understanding of biblical truth with some fathers (e.g. Augustine) being more faithful to the biblical witness than others (e.g. Leo the Great). Their selection of fathers and texts is not always systematic or consistent but it tends to be guided by a prior understanding of the Bible made possible by the confessional tradition in which they live. Let’s illustrate that with an example.

One commonly hears from classic Protestants that there were at least two different views of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist in the early church, one represented by Ambrose and the other by Augustine. In many Protestant accounts, Ambrose is viewed as holding to a physically realist view of the Eucharist in much the same way that the Roman Catholic Church would later embrace. Augustine, on the other hand, is viewed as holding to a more “symbolic” view in which there is not, or at least not as strictly, an identification of the bread and wine with the body and blood of Christ. This supposed difference is only a specific instance of a more general view among classic Protestants that the early church had some teachers who were closer to the biblical teachings while others were farther away. Who each was and how far some departed from biblical truth are matters of dispute. But in most Protestant accounts, there is little or no sense of the whole church adhering to a unified doctrine at any time of the early church.

Modern Critical Framework (MCF)

The emergence of a Modern Critical Framework (MCF) began in the 18th century when the historical-critical approach to the Bible began in earnest. Historians generally believe that the notion of critical history arose in the 17th century but it was not until the 18th that biblical studies began to adopt this approach in a widespread fashion. The historical-critical method began as a “back to the Bible” movement because its proponents believed that interpretation had become encrusted with a Protestant confessional framework. They thought they were continuing and extending the Reformation’s emphasis on Sola Scriptura by casting aside Protestant confessions in favor of finding the meaning of the Bible in the actual history in which it occurred. The same idea was applied to the church fathers. They wanted to transcend the Protestant-Catholic polemics over the fathers. What emerged over time was an awareness of just how difficult it is to jettison a theological framework when dealing with history.

A monumental watershed in the MCF came with Walter Bauer’s 1934 Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. Bauer wanted to cut through some of the assumed interpretations of early church history in his day. One consequence of Bauer’s research was a greater emphasis on the diversity of belief and practice in the early centuries of Christianity. As an illustration of how the MCF works in practice, consider the positions of Boniface Ramsey and Bauer on Ignatius of Antioch. No one doubts that Ignatius of Antioch expressed a hierarchical view of the church with a threefold structure of bishops, presbyters, and deacons. The question is why he held this view and how widespread it was in early Christianity. The answer to the question of why Ignatius sees the structure of the church as he does and of what importance that episcopal structure holds for modern views of the church remains of vital practical importance. One of the most telling differences exists between those who see Ignatius’s witness to the episcopacy as an inherent feature of the early church and those who see his views as one among many that may or may not have been shared by others.

For example, the patristic scholar Boniface Ramsey once wrote, “Just because Ignatius of Antioch, to take one famous example, emphasizes the role of bishop in the early second-century churches of Antioch and Asia Minor does not mean that anyone else felt the same way about the bishop at that time, or even that bishops existed in other churches at such an early period.”⁴ Ramsey here expresses a view common among modern scholars of the early church, a view that has roots in the nineteenth-century liberalism epitomized in the theology of Adolf Harnack and furthered by Walter Bauer.

In this view, Ignatius does not stand as a witness to the faith of the early-second century church but as one holding to a somewhat idiosyncratic view of church structure. Bauer discusses Ignatius and Polycarp in chapter three of his 1934 book.⁵ Bauer assumes without argument that there was no need for a monarchical episcopacy prior to the problems of heresy facing Ignatius. He saw the rise of a hierarchical structure advocated by Ignatius as only necessary when a more collaborative form of church government failed to deal with problems. Bauer tends to see the issue only in terms of the exercise of power.

Bauer’s perspective is alive and well today among patristic scholars of both Protestant and Catholic creeds. In some circles, it is the assumed position that in early Christianity there were only local Christian communities with no single bishop or much, if any, connection to other communities in other places. Bauer still has many intellectual heirs among early church scholars. One of the most radical is Bart Ehrman whom I will mention later but another example is Roger Collins. Speaking of Christianity in Rome, Collins says:

There was … no individual, committee or council of leaders within the Christian movement that could pronounce on which beliefs and practices were acceptable and which were not. This was particularly true of Rome with its numerous small groups of believers. Different Christian teachers and organizers of house-churches offered a variety of interpretations of the faith and attracted particular followings, rather in the way that modern denominations provide choice for worshipers looking for practices that particularly appeal to them on emotional, intellectual, aesthetic or other grounds.⁶

Now it should be evident that the MCF grew out of and extended the CPF of viewing the church in a piecemeal way. The diversity of the ancient church in doctrine, government, and liturgy implied in many classic Protestant accounts is pushed to a greater extent in the MCF. Although classic Protestants may react to the extreme views of a Bauer or Collins, some of them will find solace in seeing early Christians as diverse and different from one another. This stands in stark contrast to the Classic Catholic Framework.

Classic Catholic Framework (CCF)

An honest historian working within the Classic Catholic Framework (CCF) will face all the diverse and varied expressions of Christian belief brought forth from the relevant texts. He will, however, ask different questions about those texts from those who work in the CPF or the MCF. Central to inquiry in the CCF is the notion of witness. Witnesses point to something greater and more enduring than themselves. In the CCF, the goal is to study the relevant witnesses in order to discover the deposit of faith which is the doctrinal content of the Christian faith. This approach assumes continuity across space and time. That continuity may not be total or exhaustive but it has essential qualities and characteristics which are transmitted over time.

With regard to space, the CCF seeks to understand how at any given period of time, the whole church believed in certain doctrines and practiced certain liturgies or pieties. With regard to time, the CCF seeks to trace continuities of doctrine and practice through the ages in order to see how the Christian faith has been faithfully transmitted. One ancient expression of this approach is found in the so-called Vincentian canon. Vincent of Lerins in the fifth century faced exactly the same problem that arose later in the Reformation and that we still deal with today. The problem is how to decide which interpretations of Scripture are acceptable within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy and which are not. Vincent proposed the following criteria in chapter 4 of his Commonitorium:

Now in the catholic church itself we take the greatest care to hold that which has been believed everywhere, always and by all. That is truly and properly ‘catholic,’ as is shown by the very force and meaning of the word, which comprehends everything almost universally. We shall hold to this rule if we follow universality, antiquity, and consent. We shall follow universality if we acknowledge that one faith to be true which the whole church throughout the world confesses; antiquity if we in no wise depart from those interpretations which it is clear that our ancestors and fathers proclaimed; consent, if in antiquity itself we keep following the definitions and opinions of all, or certainly nearly all, bishops and doctors alike.⁷

This passage from Vincent is worth sustained meditation. Here Vincent expresses what was widely held in the early church, namely, that the way in which the faith is defined consists of continuity in space (ubique), in time (semper), and in consensus (ab omnibus). It reflects the method used by the early general (ecumenical) councils. At the time of the Reformation, of course, this method was called into question again but the Protestants were not radical individualists. They believed in the objective tenets of the Christian faith as seen in their own councils attempting to define their creeds. They sought consensus among themselves though it was never achieved on a large scale. They sought to root their convictions in the church’s history; thus their appeals to the church fathers.

The Roman Catholic Church at the time of the Reformation was convinced that the Protestants had abandoned the faith “once for all delivered to the saints.” (Jude 3). A response was necessary. The answer given by the Council of Trent, was “the unanimous consent of the Fathers.” This was another way of expressing the Vincentian canon but applied to the situation facing the Church in the 16th century. The problem posed by the Protestant interpretation of early church history was as follows: how do you know what in the Fathers should be taken as binding and what should not? The Protestant answer was clear if not always easy to apply in practice: measure the Fathers against Scripture. Of course, the learned Roman Catholics believed this was an insufficient answer. How does one know if one’s interpretation of Scripture, which is being used as the criterion of judging the Fathers, is correct? The criterion of “the unanimous consent of the fathers” turned the Reformation’s answer on its head. It said that the way we know what interpretations of the Scriptures are legitimate is by the universality, antiquity, and consensus of the fathers. In this view, what was unanimous among the fathers, such as the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the Eucharist, was binding on the church. What was not unanimous, such as how the creation narratives of Genesis were to be interpreted, was not binding.

Now this Catholic view is rooted in a different conception of the church from that found in CPF. The CCF sees the church as an institution which has been faithful to Christ in every age and generation. This does not imply that there have been no departures from faith, or infidelity to vows, or lack of consistent teaching, but it sees the church as a whole as faithful to Christ. Christ intended to establish a church that would perdure in truth until his second advent. The classic Protestant assumes something similar but tends to locate faithfulness in individuals like Augustine. The Reformed, for example, see themselves as faithful to the Augustinian heritage but not necessarily to the whole ancient church. The Catholic tends to locate faithfulness in the offices (e.g. bishop) of the church as well as in individuals. This is especially true of the Bishop of Rome.

Part Two: The Earliest Patristic Literature (Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Rome, The Didache)

With some understanding of the three frameworks for interpreting the church fathers, now let us examine some primary sources and observe how each would treat the earliest Christian writings. Ignatius of Antioch, Clement of Rome, and the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (the Didache) are among the earliest Christian writings outside the NT itself.

When we examine the whole of these sources there is at least one prominent theme which surfaces in all three, the topic of unity. Ignatius of Antioch emphasizes unity more than any other Christian author in the first or second century. What kind of unity does he propound? First, there is clearly a sense of mystical unity with several dimensions: unity in God himself, unity among believers in the church, doctrinal unity, unity in the celebration of the sacraments, unity of the laity with the hierarchy of the church.

In Ignatius’s mind, these different types of unity are intimately intertwined. In Ephesians 5:1, Ignatius writes, “As the Church belongs to Jesus Christ, and as Jesus Christ belongs to the Father, that all may be harmonious in unity.” The unity of the church with Christ is likened to the unity between Christ and the Father, a thought much like Jesus’s words in John 17:21 “that all may be one, Father, as you are in me and I in you that they may be also in us that the world may believe that you sent me.” The unity of the church with Christ is tied to and modeled on the unity in the Trinity.

Unity is so important for Ignatius that he views himself as “a man made for unity.” (Philad 8:1). Why is unity so important? Because “where there is division and anger, God does not dwell.” (ibid.). To this he adds, “I appeal to you to practice nothing from a spirit of factionalism but only what you learned from Christ.” (Philad 8:2).

Second, Ignatius sees mystical unity as expressed and fostered by sacramental unity. It is unity at the same altar which legitimatizes the celebration of the Eucharist. Ephesians 5 cited above expresses it thus:

Let no one deceive you. Unless someone is inside the sanctuary, he does not have the bread of God. If the prayer of one or two has such great power, how much more does the prayer of the bishop and the whole church” (Eph 5:2).

Ignatius here refers to the liturgy of the church where the bread of God can only be found on the altar on which the Eucharist is celebrated. Similarly, The Letter to the Philadelphians is instructive because of its many exhortations to unity. In Chapter 4 this unity is linked to the celebration of the Eucharist:

So be diligent to use one Eucharist for there is [only] one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one cup for unity in his blood. There is one altar as there is one bishop together with his presbyters, and deacons, my fellow servants. This is so that whatever you do, you may do in accord with God. (Philad 4:1).

And this text parallels his condemnation of the heretics who abstain from the Eucharist:

They abstain from the Eucharist and from [set times of] prayer because they do not confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, that flesh which suffered for our sins but which the Father raised in his kindness. (Smyrn 7:1).

Notice that unity in this text has two shades of meaning. Absenting oneself from the Eucharistic liturgy is a sign of disunity but there is also the lack of doctrinal unity which refuses to “confess that the Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ.” These heretics, whoever they were, at least had the integrity to absent themselves from the church’s liturgy because they were not in doctrinal agreement with it. That in itself is an indicator that doctrinal unity and sacramental unity mutually implied one another in the minds of ancient Christians.⁸

Third, mystical and sacramental unity is rooted in hierarchical unity, i.e. unity with the bishop, his presbyters, and his deacons. Careful readers of Ignatius’s seven authentic letters cannot miss his emphasis on the hierarchical structure of the church. His copious use of the terms bishop (episkopos), presbyter (presbuteros), and deacon (diakonos) obviously has to do with the structure of the church. His many exhortations to obedience and submission to the bishop and presbytery (e.g. Eph 2:2; 5:3; Trall 2:1,2; 13:2; Polyc 6:1) reinforce his ideal of a church unified in belief and practice around the central figure of the bishop. The appearance of this strong language of a hierarchical episcopacy at such an early date in the history of Christianity has surprised readers for centuries. The lack of unity and harmony in the church is a grievous sin and requires repentance on the part of those who break it. But “the Lord forgives all who repent if their repentance leads back to unity with God and the council of the bishop.” (Philad 8:1).

The judgment of P.Th. Camelot, a French translator of Ignatius, seems justified when he called the Bishop of Antioch the “doctor of unity.”⁹ I would suggest that the key to understanding Ignatius’ view of the church lies in his broader concept of unity: the unity of God, the unity of Christ, unity with God, with Christ, with the bishop, presbyters, and deacons. This unity is first and foremost a mystical one. It is not a unity within one locale or bishopric; it is an organic unity which flows from God himself and which is communicated through the sacrament of the Eucharist. The structure of the church flows out of that unity.

The question then facing the reader of these letters has to do with how this monepiscopal structure of the church in Ignatius relates to our conception of the church today. It is precisely here that the interpreter’s presuppositions can influence how he assembles and interprets the evidence. Many scholars have seen this emphasis on the monepiscopacy in Ignatius as a departure from the collaborative structure of the church which they see in the NT. As Bart Ehrman put it, “in the early modern period [i.e. Reformation] it was precisely this witness to the monepiscopacy at such an early date that drove scholars to determine whether Ignatius of Antioch had in fact penned all, or some, or any of the letters that appear under his name.”¹⁰ Those who questioned Ignatian authorship were motivated by their prior conception of the church as a more democratic organization in its earliest stages of development. Naturally, those who believed that the NT authorized the episcopacy had no reason to doubt the authenticity of the claims of Ignatian authorship found in the letters.

Now let us consider Clement of Rome. After centuries of study, most scholars agree that we have one document which can be reasonably ascribed to Clement of Rome. The Letter to the Corinthians was probably written in the 90s of the first century by a man whom the whole ancient church regarded as the third bishop of Rome after Peter (after Linus and Anacletus).¹¹ Careful study of this letter of approximately 10,000 words reveals that its main purpose was to correct the church in Corinth in its attempt to oust the ordained leaders of the church. Unlike the schism and heresy which Paul faced when he wrote the Corinthians in the 50s of the first century, the same church was riddled with sedition in the 90s. The overriding concern that the author has is to call the Corinthian church back to unity through submission to its divinely appointed leaders.

Clement’s method in addressing the problem of sedition (rebellion) and schism in the Corinthian church is at least twofold. First, he recounts the history of rebellion and its concomitant sins in the history of humanity as revealed in the OT as a negative example of what to avoid. Second, he reminds his addressees that the structure of the church is divinely given, not a human creation. Consequently, rebellion against God’s chosen servants (bishops and deacons) is a rebellion against God.

For Clement, the church is more than a collection of believers or loosely organized congregations; it possesses a definite structure and order. But what is that structure? Clement’s Letter to the Corinthians is one of the earliest and most important witnesses we possess to the notion of apostolic succession. Clement’s fullest and clearest statement occurs in chapter 44, but he adduces examples and illustrations of good order in earlier chapters to lend support to order in the church. This plan always consists of the elimination of jealousy and envy because the peace and harmony of the church are paramount. But what order is necessary in order to keep unity and harmony in the church? To understand chapter 44, we must begin with chapter 42 of Clement’s letter:

The apostles received the Gospel for us from our Lord Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ was sent from God. So Christ was from God, and the apostles from Christ. So both came by the will of God in good order. Once they received commands, once they were made confident through the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and once they were entrusted with God’s word, they went out proclaiming with the confidence of the Holy Spirit that the kingdom of God would come. Preaching in lands and cities, by spiritual discernment, they began establishing their first fruits, who were bishops and deacons for future believers. And this was nothing new because for many ages it had been written about bishops and deacons, as Scripture says somewhere, “I will appoint bishops for them in justice and deacons in faith” (ClCor ch. 42).

According to Clement, the honor that the lay faithful owe to their pastors lies in the dignity of the offices that derive from Christ himself. In language reminiscent of Hebrews 2:4 (“salvation which at first was spoken by the Lord was confirmed to us by those heard”), Clement ties together the preaching done by the apostles with the appointment of bishops (including presbyters) and deacons. He strengthens the connection between proclamation and church structure in chapter 44:

Our apostles knew from our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be contention over the title of the bishop’s office. For this reason, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those mentioned before and afterwards gave the provision that, if they should fall asleep, other approved men would succeed their ministry. Now as for those appointed by them [the apostles], or by other men of high reputation with the approval of the whole church, that is, those who have ministered without blame to the flock of Christ with humility, quiet, and, beyond perfunctory service, those who are well attested by all for a long time, we do not consider it right to eject them from the ministry. It will be no small sin against us if we eject from the bishop’s office those who have offered the gifts without blame and with holiness. Blessed are the presbyters who have gone before us who had a fruitful and perfect departure for they no longer run the risk of someone removing them from their established position. For we see that you have removed some who have ruled well from a ministry that is honored by their blameless lives (ch. 44).

Here Clement details the structure that gives stability to the church. It was the deliberate intention of the apostles to establish continuity in the church through a succession of offices. He links this foreknowledge to Christ by calling it “perfect.” Apostolic succession consists of the endurance of an office and a procedure for filling that office. When he speaks of those “other approved men” who “would succeed their ministry,” he is clearly stressing the continuity between the apostles themselves and their successors. The task of those who follow is clear; it is to continue and to advance the same ministry that they received. The procedure for filling the office consists of (1) a testing or probation of a man and (2) the approval of the whole church.

I will not be able to deal with the question of whether apostolic succession is taught in the NT. I refer the reader to my book where I argue that the notion of apostolic succession is not absent from the NT.¹² Yet, it should be evident that this early church father believed that structure serves unity, that the way to peace and harmony in the church was to submit to its properly ordained leaders. This maxim, that structure serves unity, is also apparent in Clement’s quotations from what appears to be liturgical prayers in chapter 59-61 of his letter. If we ask why Clement should give extensive quotations from a liturgy in the midst of dealing with a problem of sedition and schism, the answer is twofold. He is using a principle of theology that would later be called Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi (the rule of prayer is the rule of believing). The saying summarizes the belief evident in many church fathers that how the church prays in its public worship is also how it believes in its doctrine. When Clement invoked liturgical prayers, he was doing more than adding flowery garnish to his hard exhortations. He was reminding the Corinthians of what they professed about God. This is evident in how he brackets the liturgical texts:

If some are disobedient to the things said by him through us, let them know that they will involve themselves in not a little transgression and danger. As for us, we will be innocent of this sin and will with intense request and entreaty ask for the Creator of all to preserve the number of his elect throughout the world unharmed through his beloved child Jesus Christ our Lord. It was through him that he called us from darkness to light, from ignorance to the knowledge of his glorious name. (ch. 59:1-2)

This preface makes Clement’s mind clearly known. The liturgy which he is about to quote is linked with a call to obedience and prayer for the preservation of the elect. Then on the other end of the liturgical quotation Clement sums up his letter thus:

We have instructed you well enough, brothers, about those things fitting for our religion and most useful for a virtuous life for those who wish to pursue a holy and just life. We have handled every topic having to do with faith, conversion, authentic love, self-control, discretion, and perseverance, recalling that you should be completely pleasing to the Almighty God in righteousness, truth, and longsuffering. You should be united in love and peace, forgetting evil [done against you] with earnest forbearance just as our forefathers, shown earlier, humbly did the things pleasing to the Father, the Creator God, and to all men. (ch. 62:1-2)

The long liturgical prayer functions to remind the Corinthians of the urgency to restore peace and harmony in the church. But there is another implication. The fact that Clement quotes from a liturgy suggests that the church in Corinth shared the liturgy of the Roman church and therefore that his appeal would be meaningful to his audience. Or, at least, it suggests that Clement knew there were some liturgical patterns to appeal to which could motivate the Corinthians toward unity. It means that at this early date, the church in both Rome and in Corinth were highly liturgical in their worship. We will return to the implications of Clement’s teaching in section three.

The third major source of early Christianity is the Didache, a document consisting of about 2300 words and usually dated in the late first or early second century. Since its discovery in 1873 and subsequent publication, the Didache has been an object of intense investigation. As with the NT itself, this document has been subject to a wide range of interpretations. Still, the text is there for all to read. That text has the character of a church manual rather than a well-crafted letter or treatise. Many scholars believe that it originates from Syria and that our Greek text may be a translation of an earlier Syriac document.

For our purposes, the Didache contains several chapters that bear on our understanding of the liturgy of ancient Christianity. Chapters 7-10 and 14 show the signs of being pastoral directives given to leaders of a community who are responsible for the worship of the church. That these chapters do reflect a standardized liturgy at this early stage of Christian history is indicated by the directives about baptism in the name of the Trinity (chapter 7), and guidelines for corporate fasting and the recitation of the Lord’s prayer (chapter 8). Most striking, however, are the directives on the celebration of the Eucharist in chapter 9, 10 and 14. Here the noun eucharistia takes on a technical meaning of designating a sacrament or liturgical celebration rather than the simple meaning of “thanksgiving” found in the NT. The Didachist’s use is consistent with the usage of Ignatius of Antioch (see above Philadelphians 4:1; Smyrneans 7:1).

In addition, chapters 9 and 10 contain standardized prayers which bear the marks of Eucharistic prayers found in later liturgies. For example, ancient liturgies always contained petitions for the perfect unification of the church, a fact reflected in this early document:

As the broken bread was scattered on the mountains and then gathered into one, thus let your church be gathered from the ends of the earth into your kingdom because yours is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ forever. (Didache 9:4)

Remember, Lord, your church, to rescue it from every evil and to make it perfect in your love, and from the four winds gather it completely sanctified into your kingdom which you have prepared. (Didache 10:5)

Given the profound concern for unity expressed by Ignatius, we are not surprised to find a similar concern in the Didache. But there are other standard liturgical markers as well. “Hosanna to the God of David” that occurs in Didache 10:6 is a literary form that was pervasive in ancient liturgies. Already transliterated by the Jews into Greek from the Hebrew of Psalm 118:25, as seen in Mt 21:9, hosanna was a plea for salvation. Of course, it was entirely appropriate for the entry of the Messiah into Jerusalem (see Mt 21:1-11). By the adoption of this plea into the liturgy, the early church was expressing its awareness that the church still needed the coming of the Savior to rescue it from danger and destruction. And the guidelines regarding worthy reception of the sacrament known from other ancient sources occurs here as well:

Let no one eat or drink from your Eucharist except those who are baptized in the name of the Lord. For the Lord said about this, “do not give holy things to dogs.” (Didache 9:5)

If anyone is holy, let him come. If anyone is not, let him repent. (Didache 10:6)

On the Lord’s day, once you have gathered, break the bread [of the Lord], and hold Eucharist, confess your transgressions that your sacrifice may be pure. Let not anyone who has a quarrel with his friend join you until they reconcile that your sacrifice not be defiled. (Didache 14:1,2)

These prerequisites and warnings not only reflect Paul’s admonition about unworthy reception of the sacrament (see 1 Cor 11: 27), they are linked in ancient texts to the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist. The verses from Didache 14:1,2 quoted above is followed by a quotation from Malachi 1:11,14:

This is what was spoken by the Lord, “In every place and time offer to me a pure sacrifice because I am a great king, says the Lord, and my name is marvelous among the Gentiles.”

This text is quoted later by Justin Martyr in chapter 41 (sec 3) of his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew to emphasize that Christians have the real sacrifice spoken of by the prophet. This doctrine became a universal conviction of the ancient church that the Eucharist was a true sacrifice offered to God.¹³

It is of course possible to delve into each of these points in more depth but this survey of the Didache suffices to show that we have valuable information on the beliefs and practices of ancient Christians not found explicitly within the NT. And these pieces of information are seen and developed in later centuries in a rather consistent manner. Most noteworthy of all is the fact that ancient Christians apparently had a standardized liturgy very early. Perhaps these liturgies were given directly by various apostles or their companions to different churches. In any case, these liturgical indicators belie the contention that early Christian worship was free flowing, unstructured, and unpremeditated. All the available indications are that the churches had structured patterns of worship handed on to them from the very beginning of the church.

The end or goal (telos) of teaching, liturgy, sacraments, and governmental structure was unity. The unity conceived and taught was not a monolithic uniformity but a harmonious interplay of the parts in which each member found his proper place. The church, then as now, was always assaulted with disunity, disaffection, and dissolution. Schism and sedition were constantly knocking at the door. The only answer which could match the threat was God’s freely given grace in word and sacrament combined with a God-ordained structure of worship and government. This was the problem and these were the solutions offered by Ignatius, Clement, and the author of the Didache.

Part Three: Deciding Between Frameworks

Now we can step back and ask if these data from the three earliest Christian sources indicate which, if any, of the three frameworks of interpretation is to be preferred. I will argue that only the Classic Catholic Framework does full justice to these and other church fathers. The answers can be partitioned into two broad categories: content and methodology.

The content of these three sources and ones from later centuries favors a Catholic understanding of the deposit of faith (fides quae creditur). There can be no doubt that unity, both as a fact and as principle, was of prime importance. For Ignatius and for Clement, unity was not a vague wish or sentimental hope but a mystical reality and a moral mandate. No doubt the prayer of “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” escaped from the lips of Christians out of a conviction that unity was truly God’s will and not simply human aspiration. Yet, what kind of unity did they pray for? For them, the answer lies in heaven. The unity of God himself is the ground and animating force of unity in the church. It seems that for these early Christians unity was more than a feeling of fellowship and camaraderie; it was a living presence in the midst of the church, Christ’s body. As a corollary of mystical unity, structural unity was thought to be the means toward a greater realization of the unity given by Christ’s presence in the church.

Catholics and classical Protestants see the church as an ordered society wherein believers live out their faith. Protestants differ among themselves as to the nature and extent of this structure but it is hardly possible to deny that some structure exists in the NT to be perpetuated until the parousia of Christ. For some Protestants the structure of the church is a matter of convention while for others that structure results from a divine mandate. Clearly, in Catholic teaching the structure of the church (episcopacy, presbyterate, diaconate) is of divine origin and must be preserved. Among Protestants who hold to church structure as a matter of divine obedience, the purpose of structure may serve the end of unity but not necessarily.

In Catholic teaching, structure serves, reinforces, and preserves unity because the unity of the church in all its dimensions (mystical, sacramental, governmental) is essential to the church. When the Apostles’s Creed affirms belief in “the holy catholic church” and the Nicene Creed in “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church,” they are reinforcing in the minds of believers that Christ founded one church whose presence on earth is a sign of the eschatological unity of redeemed humanity with God. The unity of the church is not a dispensable attribute, nor only a goal to reach if humanly possible. Unity is a gift of Christ to the church. That is why schism and sedition are such a heinous sin. They are injuries to the essence of the church. What unity entailed would only become clearer in time but Ignatius and Clement are clear witnesses to what was sparsely indicated in the NT (e.g. John 17; 1 Cor 1:10-18; Eph 4:1-6).

If my reading of Clement’s Letter to the Corinthians is legitimate, it bears directly on our question of which framework best interprets this early church father. The Modern Critical Framework would see Clement as one among many voices in the Roman church and one especially that felt justified in its overreach to impose its authority on a different church in the East. The Modern Critical Framework may even view Clement’s letter as an attempt to grab power. It would see little or no relevance to Christianity today. The Classical Protestant Framework might appreciate Clement’s extensive quotations from the OT (in the Septuagint version) as evidence of how the church father depended on the Scriptures in a manner similar to the methodology of Sola Scriptura. Yet, with the exception of High Church Anglicans and some Lutherans, the Classical Protestant Framework would most likely view Clement’s insistence on apostolic succession as a misguided and unscriptural addition to the core of Christian belief. It might even fault Clement on two counts. One is Clement’s belief that unity demands submission to a hierarchical authority and that a hierarchical structure is necessary to quell sedition. Clement’s second fault would be his adding to scriptural authority the notion of apostolic succession, a needless and unfruitful tradition which detracts from the sufficiency of Scripture. Those working in a Classical Catholic Framework view Clement and his letter as a witness to the early church’s faith in apostolic succession and the primacy of the Roman church. For them, structure serves unity and so they view Clement’s appeal to ecclesiastical structure as a natural outgrowth of the belief in and desire for greater visible unity.

A second implication of our survey of Ignatius, Clement, and the Didache has to do with their connection to one another. If we view Clement’s and Ignatius’s forms of Christianity as separate and unconnected, as the Modern Critical and even the Classic Protestant Frameworks tend to do, then we will not see any relation between the latter’s exhortations to obedience to episcopal authority and the former’s doctrine of apostolic succession. In these frameworks, moral obedience has little or nothing to do with church structure. However, if we view Clement and Ignatius as geographically diverse witnesses to a common faith, as later writers like Irenaeus tend to do, then Ignatius’s call to obedience is tied to something identifiable and concrete, namely, those bishops who were ordained by the apostles or their successors. The former view with its emphasis on diversity exerts a centrifugal force on the modern mind and tends toward ecclesial diversity and dissolution. The latter view with its emphasis on an underlying unity across space, time, and authors exerts a centripetal force on the modern mind and tends toward ecclesial unity.

If we view the liturgical expressions and doctrines in Ignatius, Clement, and the Didache as originating in and limited to the local communities where they are found, as the Modern Critical and even the Classic Protestant Frameworks tend to do, then they can be dismissed as irrelevant to the worship of the modern church, or at best treated as adiaphora which can be utilized or not utilized according to some modern (local) norm. However, if we view these liturgical expressions and doctrines as witnesses to an underlying structure of a common liturgy with local variations on shared themes, then their commonalities can and often do function as liturgical norms for the modern church. The former view exerts a centrifugal force on the modern mind and tends toward ecclesial diversity and dissolution. The latter view exerts a centripetal force on the modern mind and tends toward ecclesial unity.

The second broad category which argues for the superiority of the Classic Catholic Framework has to do with methodology. How does one come to know the proper content of the Christian faith? The simplest answer is provided by the solo scriptura approach but I have not addressed that here because I have assumed its inadequacy. If one looks to the church fathers at all, as the Classic Protestant Framework does, this question is inevitable. How do we know whether the CCF is a better way of interpreting the church fathers than the CPF or the MCF? The answer is illuminating. The CCF reflects better the views and the assumptions of the church fathers themselves. The CCF naturally claims that the doctrine of the Catholic Church is the same as the church fathers but it also maintains that the methodology used by the Church today is the same as or at least in continuity with that of the church fathers. The church fathers sought unity through universality (ubique), historical continuity (semper), and church consensus (ab omnibus). The CPF does not maintain any necessity of being in continuity with the historic church in its universal dimension. It tends to identify with certain strains of patristic thought, not necessarily with the whole. And certainly the MCF does not.

One example is the Arian controversy of the early fourth century. When Arius, a presbyter in Alexandria, began proclaiming, “There was a time when the Word (logos) was not,” the response was not simply that his teaching was against Scripture. It was that Arius was teaching something contrary to the faith of the whole church. That’s what makes sense of the call to and execution of the first ecumenical council of Nicea in 325. The same was true of Nestorius, the patriarch of Constantinople. When he taught that Mary was not the theotokos, the church responded by proclaiming that this was not the faith of the church. And when the respective councils (Nicea, Ephesus, Chalcedon) were formulating their responses, they appealed to Scripture, to earlier church tradition, and to consensus among the bishops in conscious continuity with the earlier church.

The historian of early Christianity who wishes to argue for the relevance of the earliest writings to our contemporary conception of Christianity is on the horns of a dilemma. He is forced either to accept these doctrines and practices as a natural development of the NT faith or to dismiss them as a devolution and/or aberration from the purity of the NT faith. Accepting these authors and writings as legitimate expressions of Christian belief entails acknowledging the hierarchical nature of church structure, the centrality of the Eucharist in Christian worship, and a number of other catholic notions. Rejecting these early manifestations of catholicity entails the belief that the church was involved in unfortunate (tragic?) departure from the NT faith immediately after the apostolic era. Locating these departures from the purity of the apostolic faith in a later century, be it the fifth or the fifteenth, is not historically or logically possible. The developments that emerged in the subsequent centuries stand in direct continuity with these earliest expressions of the Christian faith. Some may attempt to remain neutral, giving only historical descriptions and generalizations but in that case these students of early Christianity have nothing of relevance to say to the contemporary church.

1. Parts of this article are taken from the books mentioned here.
2. For the sake of brevity and readability I shall not quote many of the relevant texts in detail but the reader is encouraged to examine them in online versions or printed translations.
3. Solo Scriptura is a mixing of English and Latin and does not make any grammatical sense in Latin but does serve to emphasize the point that the advocates of Sola Scriptura wish to make, namely, that their position is not one described in this paper as solo scriptura.
4. Boniface Ramsey Beginning to Read the Fathers (New York: Paulist Press, 1985) p. 10. Ramsey does proceed to outline some common themes among the Fathers but these are more problems they all addressed than beliefs they shared in common.
5. A second edition of Bauer’s book was issued in German in 1964 and was only recently translated into English.
6. Roger Collins, Keepers of the Keys of Heaven: A History of the Papacy (London and New York: Weidenfeld & Nicholson/Basic Books, 2009) pp. 15-16.
7. I have taken the translation available at Fordham University’s Internet Ancient History Sourcebook.
8. It is striking that many modern Christians believe that it is perfectly permissible to commune in a church with whose doctrine they do not agree. I have never traced out the history of this notion but I suspect that it is almost entirely unique to the 20th century and explained by the doctrinal indifferentism of contemporary Christianity.
9. Camelot, P. T. Ignace d’Antioche. Polycarpe de Smyrne. Lettres. Martyre de Polycarpe, 4th edn. Sources chrétiennes 10. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1969. P. 19.
10. Bart Ehrman The Apostolic Fathers.
11. For discussion of the ancient documents witnessing to Clement as the author, see chapter 1 and 3 of my forthcoming Clement of Rome and the Didache A New Translation and Theological Commentary (CHResources, 2012).
12. See note 11.
13. For a list of patristic selections referring to the Eucharist as sacrifice, see the section titled “Proof of Sacrificial Priesthood” in Tim Troutman’s article titled “Holy Orders and the Sacrificial Priesthood.”

Jason Stellman

Part of me has wished for a while now that I was born early enough to have been a fan of The Clash back in the Seventies. The first song I ever heard by them (several years after its release) was their cover of Sonny Curtis’s hit, the chorus of which goes, “I fought the law, and the law won.” Despite being a fairly law-abiding guy, I can relate to being on the losing side of a battle, only mine was not against the law, but against the Church.

As many of you know, I recently resigned from my pastoral ministry in the Presbyterian Church in America (you can read my resignation letter here, as well as some clarifying posts here and here). My stated reasons for stepping down were that I could no longer in good conscience uphold my ordination vow that as a PCA minister I sincerely accept the Westminster Confession and Catechisms as containing the system of doctrine taught in Holy Scripture. More specifically, I no longer see the Reformed doctrines of Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide as faithfully reflecting what the Bible teaches, which is why I will, Lord willing, be received into full communion with the Catholic Church sometime in the next several months.

The purpose of this piece is not to unpack those claims in detail (there will be plenty of time for that in the future), but rather to provide a little more insight into the process that led up to my resignation, as well as to respond briefly to those who have sought to analyze me and the supposed internal psychological factors that must have led to my making such a drastic decision.

The Lure of Rome?

One of the things I found especially curious (slash bemusing, slash maddening) while reading the diagnoses of my volunteer analysts was the fact that my being drawn to, or lured by, Rome was simply assumed, and that the only real question was what, exactly, was it that ultimately did it. Was it some positive aspect of Catholicism that appealed to me, or was it a nagging drawback of Protestantism that finally proved to be the deal-breaker?

Now, I realize that I went into a period of radio silence during the weeks following my resignation (one that was not exactly self-imposed, but that has turned out to be a blessing), and that this created something of a vacuum that invited speculation on the part of some. But now that I am no longer “off the grid,” I would like to clear something up once and for all:

Catholicism never held any allure for me, nor do I find it particularly alluring now.

Now to be honest there has always been an attraction of a “Wouldn’t-it-be-nice” or “stained-glass-windows-are-rad” variety, but when it came to an actual positive drawing to Rome or a negative driving away from Geneva, there has never been any such thing. In fact, since much of my theological output has been part of the public domain for so long (especially in the form of my preaching, teaching, and writing), this claim of mine can actually be proven. If anyone cares to go back and listen to or read what I was talking about right up until the day I was confronted with the claims of the Catholic Church as they relate to those of Protestantism, the inquirer will easily discover that I was about as staunchly confessional an Old School Presbyterian as anyone would want to meet. There was not even the slightest hint of discontent with my ecclesiastical identity, not a trace of longing for greater certitude, nor a smidgen of regret that my soteriology didn’t have enough works in it.

I will raise the pot even more: I wrote a book whose entire purpose was to demonstrate, in the highest and most attractive terms possible, how ironically boastworthy all the supposed disadvantages of amillennial Protestantism are. Messiness? Lack of infallible certitude? The need for faith over sight? Check, check, and check.

Further still, so far from longing for a type of kinder, gentler Catholicism that I could disguise in Reformed garb, I was the prosecutor in a doctrinal trial against a fellow minister in my presbytery for espousing views that I, and many others, considered dangerously close to being Catholic. No, there was never any desire to place human works anywhere but where the Reformed confessions say they belong: in the category of sanctification and never justification.

In a word, I was as happy and comfortable in my confessional Presbyterian skin as anyone, and the trust I had earned from many well-known and respected Reformed theologians, as well as having graduated with honors from one of the most confessionally staunch and academically rigorous Reformed seminaries in the nation, should be sufficient to dispel any notions that I never really understood Reformed theology in the first place or that I was always a Catholic in Protestant clothing.

Driven, Not Drawn

One of the things that made fighting against the claims of the Catholic Church so frustrating was that there was no single, knock-down-drag-out argument to refute; neither was there an isolated passage of Scripture or silver-bullet issue of theology to deal with. If it had been simply a matter of answering one specific challenge that came from a single direction, the battle would have been much easier to win. But as it happened, there were two distinct issues that were coming under attack (Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide), and the attacks were coming from multiple directions: the biblical, the historical, and, in the case of Sola Scriptura, the philosophical as well.

In the case of Sola Scriptura, I, as a self-described Reformed non-evangelical, considered the distinction between Solo- and Sola Scriptura as absolutely essential to my own spiritual identity. It was the evangelicals who were the heirs of Anabaptism, not the Reformed; it was the evangelicals who espoused “no creed but Christ,” not the Reformed; it was the evangelicals who interpreted the Bible in isolation from history and tradition, not the Reformed. Therefore as one can imagine, when I was confronted with Catholic claims that called this crucial distinction into question, it was a sucker-punch of epic proportions. Needless to say, my confessional brethren and I did not appreciate our ancestral city of Geneva being confused with Saddleback.

But the more I read and wrestled, the more I began to see that Geneva was not being “confused with” Saddleback at all; the two were just different sides of the same coin (or to be more precise with the metaphor, they were sister-cities in the same Protestant county). Readers of this site have no need for the arguments to be rehearsed here, so suffice it to say that, philosophically speaking, it became clear to me that Sola Scriptura could not provide a way to speak meaningfully about the necessary distinction between orthodoxy and heresy (or even between essentials and non-essentials); neither could it justify the 27-book New Testament canon, create the unity that that canon demands, or provide the means of avoiding the schism that that canon condemns.

Historically speaking, the idea that the written Word of God is formally sufficient for all things related to faith and practice, such that anyone of normal intelligence and reasonably good intentions could read it and deduce from it what is necessary for orthodoxy and orthopraxy, is not a position that I see reflected in the writings of the early Church fathers. While there are plenty of statements in their writings that speak in glowing terms about the qualitative uniqueness of Scripture, those statements, for them, do not do away with the need for Scripture to be interpreted by the Church in a binding and authoritative way when necessary.

This discovery in the church fathers is unsurprising if the same position can be found in the New Testament itself, which I now believe it can. To cite but one example, the Church in her earliest days was confronted with a question that Jesus had not addressed with any specificity or directness, namely, the question of Gentile inclusion in the family of God. In order to answer this question, the apostles and elders of the Church gathered together in council to hear all sides and reach a verdict. What is especially interesting about Luke’s account of the Jerusalem Council is the role that Scripture played, as well as the nature of the verdict rendered. Concerning the former, James’s citation of Amos is curious in that the passage in the prophet seems to have little to do with the matter at hand, and yet James cites Amos’s words about the tent of David being rebuilt to demonstrate that full Gentile membership in the Church fulfills that prophecy. Moreover, Scripture functioned for the Bishop of Jerusalem not as the judge that settled the dispute, but rather as a witness that testified to what settled it, namely, the judgment of the apostles and elders. Rather than saying, “We agree with Scripture,” he says in effect, “Scripture agrees with us” (v. 15, 19). And finally, when the decision is ultimately reached, it is understood by the apostles and elders not as an optional and fallible position with which the faithful may safely disagree if they remain biblically unconvinced, but rather as an authoritative and binding pronouncement that was bound in heaven even as it was on earth (v. 28). Despite some superficial similarities, no existing Protestant denomination with an operating norm of Sola Scriptura can replicate the dynamic, or claim the authority of the Jerusalem Council (or of Nicaea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon for that matter). The fact that the Bible’s own example of how Church courts operate was hamstrung by Protestantism’s view of biblical authority was something I began to find disturbingly ironic.

Moving on to Sola Fide, I found myself wrestling with this issue from both a historical and biblical perspective as well, and this is what ultimately proved to be the coup de grâce for me as a Protestant. As long as I believed that Catholicism mucked up the gospel so severely, its arguments about authority remained merely annoying, like a stone in my shoe that I would eventually get used to (after all, better to be unauthoritatively right about justification than authoritatively wrong about it). But when I began to dig into the issue more deeply and seek to understand Rome on its own terms, I began to experience what some have referred to as a “paradigm crisis.” A severe one.

As a Protestant minister, I had always operated under the assumption that the fullest treatment of the gospel, and of justification in particular, came from the apostle Paul, and that the rest of what the New Testament had to say on these issues should be filtered through him. But as I began to investigate again things that I had thought were long-settled for me, I began to discover just how problematic that hermeneutical approach really was. If justification by faith alone was indeed “the article on which the church stands or falls,” as Reformed theology claimed, then wouldn’t we expect it to have been taught by Jesus himself, somewhere? Moreover, wouldn’t John have taught it, too? And Peter, and James? Shoot, wouldn’t Paul himself have taught the imputation of alien righteousness somewhere outside of just two of his thirteen epistles?

Having realized that I was using a few select (and hermeneutically debatable) passages from Romans and Galatians as the filter through which I understood everything else the New Testament had to say about salvation, I began to conclude that such an approach was as arbitrary as it was irresponsible. I then sought to identify a paradigm, or simple statement of the gospel, that provided more explanatory value than Sola Fide did. As I hope to unpack in more detail eventually, I have come to understand the gospel in terms of the New Covenant gift of the Spirit, procured through the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ, who causes fruit to be borne in our lives by reproducing the image of the Son in the adopted children of the Father. If love of God and neighbor fulfills the law, and if the fruit of the Spirit is love, having been shed abroad by the Spirit in our hearts, then it seems to follow that the promise of the gospel is equivalent with the promise of the New Covenant that God’s law will no longer be external to the believer, but will be written upon his mind and heart, such that its righteous demands are fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. And again unsurprisingly, when I turned to the early Church fathers, and especially Augustine, it was this very understanding of the gospel that I encountered over and over again.

Conclusion

While the case for the Catholic Church may not be immediately obvious or easily winnable, the fact remains that Rome’s claims are philosophically compelling, historically plausible, and biblically persuasive. Yet despite the claims of most Reformed believers who, when wrestling with the issue of people like me leaving Geneva for the supposedly-greener pastures of Rome, insist that such a move betrays a “quest for illegitimate religious certainty,” the fact is that if it is a sense of personal and psychological certitude that one is searching for, Catholicism will more than likely disappoint. Ironically enough, Protestantism provides more certitude for the seeker than Catholicism does, since the ultimate basis for the truthfulness of its claims is one’s agreement with one’s self and one’s own interpretation of Scripture. But if what you are searching for is not subjective certitude but the Church that Jesus founded, the Catholic Church’s case for being that Church, when harkened to with charity, humility, and faith seeking understanding, is as compelling as it is disruptive.

And make no mistake, the Catholic Church is disruptive. It is audacious and confrontational, sucker-punching and line-in-the-sand drawing. Like the Lion Aslan from C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, it is not a tame Church, and will make no promise not to devour and discomfit its subjects as they partake of its life-giving water, causing them to constantly bend the knee and cede their worldly wisdom to the foolishness of the cross. In the words of Aslan to Jill, who expressed fear about letting down her guard to drink from the water by which he stood, “There are no other streams.” Or the words of Peter to Jesus when asked if the Twelve would forsake Him because of His difficult and demanding message, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

The Catholic Church, wistfully alluring? Hardly. Tidy and tame? Not by a long shot, for once discovered it demands that the seeker relinquish the one thing above all others that offers him confidence, namely, his own autonomy. In fact, submitting oneself to the authority of the Catholic Church is the most harrowing experience a person will ever endure, which is why the suggestion that converts from Geneva to Rome are simply opting for a feel-good, fairy-tale romance betraying an “over-realized eschatology” and desire to skip blissfully down the yellow-brick road to heaven, utterly trivializes the entire ordeal.

In a word, I fought the Church, and the Church won. And what it did was beat me, but it didn’t draw me, entice me, or lure me by playing upon some deep, latent psychosis or desire on my part for something Protestantism just couldn’t provide. Catholicism went from being so obviously ridiculous that it wasn’t even worth bothering to oppose, to being something whose claims were so audacious that I couldn’t help opposing them. But what it never was, was attractive, and in many ways it still isn’t.

But what Catholicism is, I have come to discover, is true.

The Stamper Family

Here at Called To Communion, much has been said about the epistemic problems with sola scriptura and the way in which the Catholic paradigm is not subject to those criticisms. In addition, much has been written by Bryan and others in response to the tu quoque rejoinder brought to bear on the Catholic position.¹ Nevertheless, the refrain seems to keep recurring, even from the pens (keyboards) of well regarded Reformed theologians. For example, in a recent article written by Michael Horton titled “Which Church Would the Reformers Join Today? Avoiding a False Choice,” Dr. Horton wrote the following in the second to last paragraph:

And make no mistake about it: Anyone who does convert out of a desire to surrender responsibility for interpreting Scripture in exchange for the infallible certainty of an earthly teacher is making a very “Protestant” move. At least that first leap is a personal judgment and interpretation of Scripture, every bit as individual as Luther’s “Here I stand.” The decision to embrace any confession or ecclesiastical body is a personal commitment that involves (at best) one’s own discernment of the plain teaching of Scripture.

In fact, having read Dr. Horton’s recent articles, as well as “Keith Mathison’s Reply” to Bryan and Neal’s article “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority,” it seems to me that the general approach of Reformed theologians to the Catholic authority critique of Protestantism reduce to the following 1-2 response: 1.) “tu quoque,” namely, the claim that the Catholic epistemic approach fares no better than the Protestant approach, and 2.) The Catholic position must be false because there is either zero or grossly insufficient New Testament or early evidence in the sub-Apostolic writings to warrant the embrace of Catholic (and especially Petrine) ecclesiology.

While I think response number 2 is worthy of a broad and substantial response by Catholics, I would like to offer some thoughts that might clarify further why response #1 fails. In particular, I take my lead from Bryan’s recent response to the Horton quotation provided above. In Bryan’s recent post titled “Some Thoughts Concerning Michael Horton’s Three Recent Articles on Protestants Becoming Catholic,” he responded to Horton’s quote as follows:

“. . . Horton here conflates the role and position of human reason in coming to faith, and the role and position of human reason after discovering divine authority. His claim presumes that because we must rely on human reason in coming to faith, therefore human reason must remain the ultimate arbiter once we are in a state of faith. But surely he himself does not believe that. He knows that even if one must use human reason in coming to believe that the Bible is God’s word, that does not entail that human reason must remain the authority to which Scripture is subject. Of course Horton doesn’t believe that. So likewise, the fact that the use of human reason and private judgment are necessary in order to come to discover the divine authority of the magisterium of the Church Christ founded, it does not follow that human reason must remain the ultimate arbiter standing in judgment over magisterial teachings on the basis of one’s own interpretation of Scripture.” (emphasis mine)

What I wish to do in this post is expand upon that last line of Bryan’s response to Horton, in an effort to clarify further why it is that the Protestant tu quoque challenge to the Catholic authority paradigm fails, and, therefore, why the Catholic and Protestant authority paradigms are not epistemic equivalents.

Persons and Books: A Thought Experiment

The tu quoque challenge has been met repeatedly by Catholics who point out the crucial difference between the role of human reason before and up to the moment of recognizing a locus of some divine authority; and the role of human reason after having recognized such authority. Both Catholics and Protestants use (as they must) fallible human reason in coming to embrace the claims of some purported divine authority. For instance, both Catholics and Protestants use reason as it considers the motives of credibility for the claim that Jesus of Nazareth was sent from God. Further, I think both Catholics and Protestants would readily admit that if Jesus Christ were physically still walking the earth, we would all face a lesser quandary differentiating between orthodoxy and heresy.

We could go straight to Jesus and ask for clarification on any given issue. It is true that we would still have to use our fallible intellect to understand whatever responses He might give to our doctrinal questions. But even if we were unclear as to His exact meaning with reference to some point, He would be personally available such that we could come back to Him again and again for further clarification until the precision of His responses reached something approaching a yes/no level of simplicity. In other words, with a living, speaking, Jesus Christ right in front of us, we could ask first order, second order, third order, fourth order questions (and so on) until simple clarity was achieved. And this is possible because the fact that the human intellect is fallible does not entail that it must, or always, does fail. With sufficient clarification, the human intellect is perfectly capable of reaching such clarity – we do it all the time in common areas of life.

As a thought experiment, imagine that Jesus Christ personally and directly began commenting on the Called To Communion site. Further, imagine that both Catholic and Reformed Christians acknowledged that it was indeed He who was submitting combox responses. Is there any doubt that the very best Catholic and Reformed theologians could join the discussion and begin asking Him precise questions about a highly divisive doctrine like justification (questions about semi-pelagianism, synergism/monergism, grace as infused versus imputed, merit, cooperation, etc., etc.) in such a way that after “x” amount of entries we would know, with certain clarity, whether the Catholic or Protestant (or neither) position was correct? Under this scenario no one is going to enjoin theological blog debate with Jesus! There will simply be a sequence of clarifying questions, at the end of which, there will be a definitive, precise resolution. And this brings me to the key point with reference to the Catholic versus Protestant authority paradigms.

Why will no one in such a scenario use their reason to argue with Jesus? Or asked another way, why will all parties in the discussion (both Catholic and Reformed) restrict the use of their reason simply to gaining a clarified understanding of Jesus’ position? Why will all theological argument or dispute with Jesus be off the table? It is because, having used reason to arrive at an acceptance of Jesus’ divine authority, thereafter whatsoever He says – no matter how counterintuitive or contrary to our previous confessional commitments – simply must be accepted as the truth – as theological orthodoxy.

Comparing the Authority Paradigms

With that scenario in mind, we can temporarily set exegetical and historical debates aside and ask how the Catholic and Protestant authority paradigms compare – as paradigms. Given what I have just said above, the paradigm difference becomes clear. Both Catholics and Protestants use (as they must) their fallible intellect in coming to an acceptance of the real-world locus of some divine authority based on various motives of credibility. In the case of Catholics, we use our fallible reason to assess the motive of credibility and thereby come to accept that Jesus is from God, that Scripture has divine authority, and that the Catholic Church was founded and organized by Christ and invested with the Holy Spirit such that she can act as the living voice of Christ in the world. Protestants use their fallible intellects to come to an embrace of the first two propositions, but not the third.

Keeping the above scenario in mind, let us explore the Catholic and Protestant authority paradigms (again, prescinding from exegesis and historical quarrels). Jesus Christ has ascended to heaven and is no longer among us in the same way as He was in first century Palestine. So in what way – from a communicative point of view – is He still with us? The Catholic paradigm claims that by leaving us with a living, personal, communicative authority that can speak repeatedly and definitively in His name, we therefore, still have a means of reaching clarity and certainty regarding the orthodox understanding of revealed data, not entirely unlike if Christ were still personally walking among us. Hence, Christians can repeatedly ask clarifying questions and arrive at doctrinal clarity and certainty over time – and that is just what the history of Magisterial pronouncements and the development of doctrine entail.

Therefore, similar to the scenario mapped above, the Catholic use of reason changes radically after having come to recognize the locus of Divine authority in the living voice of the Magisterium centered in the Petrine office. There is no theological arguing with the Magisterium about the content of her definitive statements, because she speaks with the authority of Christ in such instances. Yet, we necessarily use our reason to understand what the Magisterium teaches. And, in fact, the people of God, across time, have required repeated input from the Magisterium to gain clarity on this or that issue, as will continue to the end of time. But there is no question of “holding our own” in matters of theological doctrine, over against the definitive teachings of the Magisterium. That notion would be as bizarre as a Reformed theologian having a combox dialogue with Jesus Christ, and after reaching a clear understanding of Jesus’ position on some theological matter, then beginning to offer exegetical and/or historical arguments to rebut Jesus’ theological claims!

The Protestant paradigm, on the other hand, insists that the sole remaining divine communicative authority after the ascension of Christ and the death of the last apostle is a book. However, a book cannot answer for itself; it cannot respond to second, third, fourth order questions, and so on.² No doubt there are sections of Scripture (“Thou shall not kill”) that are already so precise that no second order questions are necessary, because the compact quality and clarity of such passages fall easily within the competence of human reason to understand without error (remember fallible means only that we are subject to the “possibility” of failure).

But given the diversity of authors, genres and historical epochs from which, and out of which the various books which comprise the biblical codex are derived, it is no surprise that other questions – often of great theological and salvific import – simply evade the possibility of clear, certain, understanding in the absence of some means of asking second, third, fourth order clarifying questions and receiving some definitive answer. This is the only reasonable explanation of the widespread disagreement among Christians who do not follow the magisterium but instead rely on Scripture alone. It is implausible and ad hoc to assume that all who disagree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture are either not intelligent enough to understand what is plain in Scripture, or so depraved as to deny the truth they see plainly in Scripture. The bible is no systematic theology text.

Here again the controverted doctrine of justification provides an excellent example of just the sort of crucial theological doctrine that does not lend itself to a simple, clear, grasp by the intellect upon first reading of scripture. As anyone who has engaged in high-level Protestant – Catholic debates about the correct Pauline understanding of justification knows, it is a theological matter which simply begs for answers to second, third, and fourth order clarifying questions. The hard truth is that scripture is only partially perspicuous and that perspicuity – quite frankly – does not cover all the essential doctrines of salvation. For however the “essential” doctrines might be defined, justification is clearly one of those essential matters, if not the penultimate case. Yet, the biblical data pertaining to the doctrine of justification, perhaps more than any other doctrine, requires assimilation and coordination of more texts from more authors and from more biblical books than any other. Moreover, each one of those texts, in turn, are open to serious scholarly disagreement as to the proper “context” in which the text itself is to be interpreted. Hence, from a strictly exegetical point of view, the doctrine of justification is possibly the most synthetically difficult doctrine known to theology – but it lies at the soteriological core of Christianity!

However, according to the Protestant authority paradigm there is no magisterium that acts as a personal, living voice imbued with Christ’s own divine authority, to offer second order, third order, fourth order (and so on) communicative clarification. As a result, the Protestant is left to his own fallible resources in concert with the fallible resources of his coreligionists to achieve clarification and definition with regard to such a difficult theological matter. When faced with the necessity to ask second, third, and fourth order questions in order to achieve clarity and certainty about some crucial theological matter – such as justification – he must appeal to a person rather than the book, for only persons can provide that kind of clarification. But within the Protestant authority paradigm, there is no person recognized as possessing divine authorization to speak with the infallible authority of Jesus Christ so as to achieve the sort of clear, certain, and binding clarifications that one could expect within the context of my thought experiment above. Any and all persons working within the Protestant authority paradigm specifically deny such authority so that they must carry with them – so to speak – their rational fallibility with each order of theological precision they attempt. No matter how many second, third, or fourth order questions are asked within the Protestant authority paradigm, whatever clarifying responses are given always carry with them the explicit qualification of fallibility.

It is for this reason that no matter how much theological precision goes into the drafting of a Protestant confessional creed, nor how much deference is given to the ecumenical councils of the first millenium, all such theological clarifications must remain forever provisional and open for debate in principle. In the Protestant paradigm, there is no dogma, because there can be nothing like the thought experiment discussed above, where the theological argument is off the table and the role of reason humbly limits itself to attempting to understand through asking second, third, fourth order clarification questions concerning the authoritative teaching of Christ. But the role and limits of reason in the Catholic authority paradigm essentially mirror the role and limits of reason in the thought experiment discussed above. And that should reveal something important about the difference between the two paradigms.

Like the Catholic, the Protestant theologian must use his fallible intellect to locate the source of divine authority. Also like the Catholic, the Protestant theologian must use his fallible intellect to construct clarifying questions regarding the content of divine revelation. But unlike the Catholic, the Protestant theologian must also utilize his fallible intellect to construct clarifying answers to whatever second, third, or fourth order questions must be asked in order to arrive a definition or determination of the content of a revealed doctrine. For in order to clarify or determine the content or scope of some theological matter, such as justification, one must necessarily seek answers to second, third, and fourth order questions as described above.

The problem with this last move, wherein human reason is utilized to provide answers to clarifying questions asked about the content of divine revelation, is that human reason has neither the competency nor the authority to provide such clarifications. In order to entertain and answer a series of increasingly precise clarifying questions, the person providing clarifying answers must have a sufficiently comprehensive grasp of the subject matter so as to guide the questioner to the point of intellectual clarity. But when the subject matter is divine revelation, only God can possibly possess such comprehensive knowledge. For according to the very notion of divine revelation, if revealed articles of faith were not knowledge that transcends the capacities of the human intellect, they would not need to have been divinely revealed. But clear and certain knowledge of crucial matters of faith such as justification require that human beings ask and receive answers to second, third, or fourth order questions.

Further, as I have argued, only persons, not texts, are capable of supplying such answers. Further still, only God ultimately (or remotely as the scholastics might say) possesses a sufficiently comprehensive knowledge of divine revelation to answer a series of increasingly precise clarifying questions with regard to any matter of revealed truth. Therefore, in seeking to gain clarity and certainty regarding crucial matters of faith, unless God invests His own authority and guidance in a proximate, living, personal authority that can speak in the world on His behalf, we are left with either fallible human opinions or a gratuitous and unfalsifiable appeal to bosom-burning or direct divine illumination.

But within the Protestant authority paradigm, no persons are recognized as possessing divine authority when offering clarifying answers regarding crucial matters of faith. Therefore, such answers can only be the product of fallible human reason – they are at best educated guesses. As such they remain perpetually open to educated debate. Within the Catholic authority paradigm, however, a living, personal voice is recognized as the very voice of Christ, such that second, third, and fourth order questions can be asked and answered with increasing clarity and even finality.

Reply To An Objection

Protestants sometimes claim that their submission of reason to Scripture is equivalent to the way in which a Catholic submits to the living teaching authority of the Catholic Church. Yet, that claim is not defensible because a book has absolutely no means of answering second, third and fourth order questions in the repeated, clarifying manner that a person can. And in lacking any recognition of a living personal authority vested with the authority of Christ to answer such questions, the Protestant is forced to clarify and determine his understanding of the orthodox content of divine revelation by means of his fallible reason as just described. He can attempt to play down this fact by reading widely the clarifying answers of other fallible persons who themselves deny any divine authorization. This may give the illusion that his doctrinal positions are arrived at in a more democratic or intellectually sophisticated manner – but this does not make the problem go away. When it comes to divinely revealed truths, his use of fallible reason does not end with the task of asking second, third, or fourth order questions designed to gain clarity with respect to answers offered with divine authority (as is the case with the Catholic). He must go further and deploy fallible reason not only to ask the clarifying questions, but also to provide the clarifying answers! That is the crucial epistemic difference between the two paradigms. And that is why, contrary to Horton’s claim, Luther’s famous “Here I Stand” speech simply takes reason into domains which no Christian had taken it before.

The bottom line is that by placing a book, rather than a divinely authorized living authority, at the center of his epistemic paradigm, the Protestant not only must use his fallible human reason to arrive at the locus of divine authority and to ask clarifying questions regarding the content of divine revelation, as the Catholic also must do. He must continue the use of fallible reason to construct the clarifying answers to the questions he asks. But as I explained above, fallible human reason has neither the authority, nor the competency to supply such answers. Hence, the Protestant cannot escape the fallible interpretive spiral that does not allow him to achieve clarity and certainty on some crucial matters of faith (such as justification). Such is the problem with any “religion of the book” or any other system which exclusively places a text at the fundamental base of its epistemic edifice.

The Catholic, while in the same boat up to the point of locating the source of divine magisterial authority in the world, leaves that boat (for the solidity of dry land) after having located such a divine source. For the Catholic discovers a divine magisterial authority, thereby placing a divinely authorized, living, personal, voice at the center of his epistemic paradigm. And the ability of such a voice to provide clarifying responses to second, third, forth (and so on) order questions over time, removes the requirement for the Catholic to continue utilizing his fallible intellect to define or determine the orthodox content of revelation, a job description for which fallible human intellect has no competency as discussed above. For while the clarifying questions must necessarily arise from the fallible intellect, the clarifying answers that provide the clarification, definition, and determination of a doctrinal matter arise from a divinely authorized source. Within the Catholic authority paradigm, in order to know the orthodox content of revelation with certainty and clarity, a Catholic need only utilize his reason to gain an increasingly clarified understanding of the Magisterium’s definitive teachings. He can do this by researching the Magisterium’s responses over twenty centuries, where such clarification has often reached a significant level of perspicuity, and this activity of the intellect does indeed fall within the competency of fallible human reason because “fallible” human reason which is merely able to fail, does not generally do so when the questions it asks and the answers it receives have reached a sufficient level of simplicity or perspicuity.

For all these reasons, the tu quoque response fails to achieve its goal. The two paradigms are simply not epistemic equivalents. Therefore, if there be even equal persuasive force to the exegetical and historical arguments for the Catholic and Protestant authority paradigms, the Catholic paradigm would remain manifestly superior because of its fundamental epistemic superiority even prior to an assessment of the data. If the exegetical and historical data should, in addition, weigh in favor of the Catholic paradigm (as I think it does), that would only solidify the warrant for embrace of the same. As stated at the beginning of this post, a successful reply to the Protestant tu quoque rejoinder only addresses one of the two principal lines of objection generally brought to bear against the Catholic position by Protestant theologians. To further the cause of Christian unity, it remains for Catholics and Protestants to survey and discuss charitably the question whether or not Christ did indeed establish a living, personal, enduring teaching authority in His Church.

1. See, for example, “The Tu Quoque.”
2. Bryan Cross has provided a helpful explanation of the significance of the ontological difference between persons and texts in his Modern Reformation “Dialogue” with Michael Horton in the section titled “Persons and Texts.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins

“TRUMPERY, MUMMERY, AND G.M. HOPKINS FLUMMERY? …REMOVED TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WAY” So Gerard Manley Hopkins laughingly writes to his concerned friend Robert Bridges in 1866. Knowing that his impending conversion to the Catholic faith will damage his position at Oxford and change his life forever, laughter is all Hopkins can manage. Not that he is insincere. Rather, his studied unseriousness is a learned reaction from John Henry Newman, who upon hearing of the difficulties Hopkins is about to get himself into, can only laugh and remark that, indeed, there is “no way out” of coming to the Church. We would do better to interpret the laughter as intense, pure happiness. Hopkins himself remarks on this point over and over again. After having felt as an exile and as “a penitent waiting for admission to the Catholic Church” for a good long while, he has finally made up his mind. Consequently, the cares of the world have slipped entirely away.

Even post-Tractarian Oxford was not a hospitable place for a convert. In fact, Hopkins is ruining his life. Such are the words that his father uses to describe the situation. Here is his eldest son, who after a spotless course at Oxford, is preparing to leave it all behind for what appears to be a passing fancy, a youthful attraction. In hindsight, we know that Hopkins’s conversion comes from a far deeper place. His love for the Catholic Church never wavers. Indeed, his career prospects disappear and he, like all other Catholics, is banned from government posts. He never advances far in the Catholic Church as a priest. He never feels comfortable in his role as a pastor. The Society of Jesus, of which he becomes a member, never finds him entirely satisfactory. He ends his life in Ireland as a college teacher; at that time hardly considered a successful conclusion. Certainly Hopkins himself feels the strain of being sent away, as he writes in To Seem the Stranger, “I am in Ireland now; now I am at a third / remove.” The enjambment of the word “remove” emphasizing the physicality of his estrangement is a nice touch from the poetic genius who was read and appreciated by exactly two people at the time of his death. And yet, his last words as he lies dying at a young age are “I am so happy. I am so happy.”

What is it that compels this bright young Oxford man, impels him inexorably onward to the Catholic Church? How is it that the obstacles imagined and the failures experienced never shake his happiness?

There is a simple answer:

Beauty.

Hopkins is a man who recklessly and relentlessly searches for beauty. Those around him, perhaps, look at his thirst for beauty as an aesthete’s dandyish affectation, hardly a matter to ruin one’s life over. But for Hopkins, beauty is a far more serious matter. It is not a passing fancy. It is not an effete gloss on the surface of deeper, serious thoughts. To him, beauty is immortal; the sparkling diamond of the divine by which all other things are made to shine. His father notices the attitude, admitting that he has noticed his son’s “growing love for high ritual.” His father, however, understands this to be mere attraction to the liturgy itself. In reply, Hopkins sets the matter straight by noting that the Tractarian movement has had its effect; when it comes to surface aesthetics, the Anglican Church wins hands down over the Romans. This, however, is not what compels him. Instead he notes that Catholicism is meant “to be loved — its consolations, its marvelous ideal of holiness, the faith and devotion of its children, its multiplicity, its array of saints and martyrs, its consistency and unity, its glowing prayers, the daring majesty of its claims.” These are not the words of a mere enthusiast attracted to smells and bells. These are the words of a man who has recognized true beauty. It is this which compels him onward.

In the poem Duns Scotus’s Oxford, Hopkins writes,

this air I gather and I release
he lived on; these weeds and waters, these walls are what
He haunted who of all men most sways my spirits
to peace;

The allusion in the poem is first and foremost to the man who was a great promoter of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the man who “fired France for Mary without spot.” Beyond this specifically we find brought together two formative influences on Hopkins: there is Oxford with her “coped and poised powers” and there is Duns Scotus and his metaphysics.

To understand what is so compelling about beauty, we must start at Oxford. It is here that Hopkins first develops a particular sensitivity to beauty. He becomes a disciple of Ruskin while at Oxford, at least partially through the influence of the artist Walter Pater. Ruskin teaches that beauty is found in close attention to every particular of a thing, trying to get at the essence of it. He holds that if an artist can paint a leaf, he can paint the world. The role of the artist is to describe his subject in accurate detail. As the inner form, or the inscape (a Hopkins neologism), of the subject comes out, the artist beholds the divine and is beheld by the divine. There is a sort of communion here that ties the perceived and the perceiver together.

In Wreck of the Deutschland we see how a few years after conversion Hopkins explicitly connects beauty to the theological. Through finding the instress of a tempestuous sky he finds that he meets God.

I kiss my hand
To the stars, lovely-asunder
Starlight, wafting him out of it; and
Glow, glory in thunder;
Kiss my hand to the dappled-with-damson west:
Since, tho’ he is under the world’s splendour and wonder,
His mystery must be instressed, stressed;
For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand

Hopkins might not always recognize exactly how the beauty of Christ is present in the world, but theologically he knows that if anything is beautiful it is so by the mystery of God’s presence. The world is God-shaped; fathered forth by “the one whose beauty is past change.”

In addition to Ruskin, there is Duns Scotus. Hopkins is a close reader of Scotus already at Oxford and the influence is easy to recognize in his theory of intuitive cognition, which says that our instincts often point to the truth even if we can’t explain why or how. The beauty of poetry, for instance, is located in that realm of intuition. This is reflected in language, which Hopkins employs by taking apart. His poems aren’t just a string of affected metaphors. Rather, they are an attempt at using language in such a way that it is almost musical, or pre-cognitive. It is word placed in the unique context of Jesus Christ the Word. He is trying to find that precognitive moment, the inscape of the thing, and by so doing he is locating an inexpressible beauty and giving it back to God as worship. Hopkins affectingly writes in a minor poem, “give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty’s self and beauty’s giver.” Beauty shows us truth and the truth is Jesus.

Thus, after his conversion, Hopkins’s conception of beauty finds a natural development in the thought of St. Ignatius of Loyola. I would argue that the Society of Jesus never was a good fit for Hopkins temperamentally or professionally. He takes vows anyway, drawn in by the tender heart of St. Ignatius whose theme on the practice of the presence of Christ must have been irresistible to a man such as Hopkins.

For instance, notice how the Incarnational worldview of St. Ignatius comes through in The Windhover.

To Christ our Lord
I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.

The poet is awestruck. At the moment of the bird’s beauty, the bird becomes more than itself and is revealed in its Christed nature. It stirs his heart. Even below in the plowed fields there shines in the dirt a gold-vermillion through a seemingly ordinary nature. In other words, the Incarnationalism is so strong that for Hopkins, he is not just being pointed to Christ, but the flight of the falcon or the overturned dirt in that moment is actually mediating Christ. In the impossible to define world of the poetic, we are somewhere between a metaphor and sacrament. Compare this with St. Ignatius, who writes, “I will consider how God dwells in creatures, in the elements…” Hopkins further points us in this direction when, later in his life, he writes that “my life is determined by the Incarnation down to most of the details of the day.”

We’ve just read through a number of sources that show the development of Hopkins on beauty as his life progresses. We should take careful note of the fact that his early aestheticism as learned at Oxford is not channeled into service of the Church of England’s undoubtedly gorgeous liturgy as an Anglican priest. This is a future that he actively rejects. No, Hopkins’s conception of beauty runs much deeper than an appealing veneer. We can trace the maturation of his thought as his poetry develops. He is not a romantic. Rather, his poetry is unprocessed, wild, and primeval. It is focused not on feelings or individuality, but on wording Christ. The kenosis of the Son into matter is the heart of all beauty and it is only in Christ that beauty is to be found and it is to Christ that beauty leads.

Now we can circle back again and reexamine the conversion to Catholicism. We have an idea of how Hopkins is thinking about beauty, the seed of his thought, so we can ask another question. What beauty does the Catholic faith have that Hopkins denies to the Church of England?

Simple:

The Real Presence.

In The Half-way House, he writes:

My national old Egyptian reed gave way:
I took of vine a cross-barred rod or rood.
Then next I hungered: Love when here, they say,
Or once or never took Love’s proper food;

But I must yield the chase, or rest and eat.-
Peace and food cheered me where four rough ways meet.

The “national old Egyptian reed” is a reference to the Church of England, which he finds giving way as he stands at a crossroads. At the intersection he finds life is suffering and life is pain. He is slowly starving for want of proper food. Life is either meaningless agony or it is the redemption of the Cross. Having examined his old faith, Hopkins finds that it lacks the one thing he needs. It has beautiful worship but it lacks Beauty. Beauty is only found in the Real Presence of Christ immolated on the altar; true food for the hungry.

The Eucharist is Hopkins’s answer to “Why Catholicism?” It is also his answer to “Where Beauty?” Both are perfected by the “better beauty,/ grace.”

In retrospect, I suppose that it is difficult for one as enamored of beauty as Hopkins to be a member of any Church that does not offer the sacramental grace of the Real Presence. This, after all, is the most beautiful expression of God’s nature that there can possibly be. Of course, all Christians are at least to a minimal degree supportive of the fact of the Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity. Because of this, we Catholics and Orthodox would be uncharitable to deny beauty present in the lives of other churches. There is a hidden lack at the center of it, though, that we cannot deny. It is this lack that Hopkins noticed which produced his conversion. In the Catholic Church, we understand that in the Real Presence, Christ is present Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.

Michael Rennier

I suspect that for many of our separated brethren, only the last formulation would hold true in their conception. The Communion is symbolic and in one way or another makes present the spiritual Christ. This is true enough insofar as it goes; Christ is of course Divine, fully God. But if we really, truly believe that he assumed humanity, we also must affirm that the Real Presence includes his Body, Blood, and Soul. Once becoming one with us, Christ does not willingly relinquish his role as head of our family. He remains united with us until all things are made new. A God who is any less is not enough. It seems quite clear that Hopkins is correct in his logic that a God who having once become Incarnate, has now withdrawn to Heaven and now manifests himself only spiritually, is a God who has somehow withdrawn the concept of Beauty from the human experience. So it has to be the Real Presence or nothing. This Incarnate Christ, as Hopkins recognized, is the only true food. It is this beautiful food which brought him eternal happiness.

How could anyone help but to be happy when we finally understand:

I am all at once what Christ is, ‘ since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ‘ patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.

Judged on their own terms and with respect to the objectives of their own leading protagonists, medieval Christendom failed, the Reformation failed, confessionalized Europe failed, and Western modernity is failing, but each in different ways and with different consequences, and each in ways that continue to remain important in the present. This sums up the argument of the book. (p. 365)

Indeed, in his new book The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (released January, 2012 by Belknap Press of Harvard University), historian Brad Gregory does not shy from bluntly assigning blame for contemporary problems, and there is a lot of blame to go around.

Drawing on an astounding breadth of knowledge across multiple disciplines, and with writing that is clear, poignant, and at times even funny, Gregory expertly tells the story of the western world of the last five centuries in a way that both enlightens as well as challenges. Gregory lays out the hard facts of history that force all in the western world, regardless of their religious persuasion or lack thereof, to confess mea culpa.

But, as indicated in the quotation above, Gregory doesn’t think that all are to be given the same kind of blame. Medieval Christendom’s failure historically speaking, Gregory insists throughout the book, “was not a function of the demonstrated or demonstrable falsity of central doctrinal claims of the Christian faith as promulgated by the Roman Catholic Church.” Instead, it was due to the

pervasive, long-standing, and undeniable failure of so many Christians, including members of the clergy both high and low, to live by the church’s own prescriptions and exhortations based on its truth claims about the Life Questions [meaning, purpose, and goal of life, etc]. It was at root a botching of moral execution, a failure to practice what was preached. (p. 366)

The Protestant Reformers were disturbed by this moral failure, as had Catholic reformers for centuries (e.g. St Francis of Assisi, St Catherine of Sienna, Erasmus, etc). But the Protestant Reformers differed from the Catholic reformers, and followed in a long line of those declared to be heretics by the Church, by diagnosing the problem as a theological one at its core. That much Protestants could agree on. But what exactly was wrong with Catholicism’s beliefs, or what its correct alternative was, as Gregory demonstrates, Protestants have been unable to agree on from the 1520s to the present, with disagreement increasing rather than diminishing over time.

This failure of the Reformation, according to Gregory, was “derived directly from the patent infeasibility of successfully applying the reformers’ own foundational principle [sola scriptura].” As a result,

the unintended problem created by the Reformation was therefore not simply a perpetuation of the inherited and still-present challenge of how to make human life more genuinely Christian, but also the new and compounding problem of how to know what true Christianity was. ‘Scripture alone’ was not a solution to this new problem, but its cause. (p. 368)

He concludes, and this is a primary point made in the book:

Hence, the Reformation is the most important distant historical source for contemporary Western hyperpluralism with respect to truth claims about meaning, morality, values, priorities, and purpose. (p. 369)

Brad Gregory

The failure of sola scriptura was quickly recognized by many, even in the 16th century, and the proposal of sola ratio – or, reason alone – was an attempt by some to circumnavigate the new theological impasse. Unfortunately, sola ratio, and its secularization of all realms of life, has also failed dramatically in achieving any kind of consensus regarding the Life Questions that are necessary for successful human community. Instead, the hyperpluralism created by sola scriptura, which was exacerbated rather than corrected by sola ratio, has led many contemporary people to conclude that all truth is relative and all morality subjective, leading to what Gregory calls the “Kingdom of Whatever.” Thus, Protestantism’s sola scriptura and its secular analog sola ratio are both failed attempts at articulating a coherent, workable alternative to Roman Catholicism (which never went away, but was sidelined relative to its previously prominent position).

Gregory deftly traces the effects of these two separate though closely linked attempts in six chapters that each focus on a particular area of life: ‘Excluding God,’ ‘Relativizing Doctrines,’ ‘Controlling the Churches,’ ‘Subjectivizing Morality,’ ‘Manufacturing the Goods Life,’ and ‘Secularizing Knowledge.’

In the end, Gregory contents himself with only one seemingly modest proposal:

Therefore, consistent with the academy’s commitments to the open pursuit of intellectual inquiry without ideological restrictions, to critical rationality, to the importance of rethinking and reconsidering, to the questioning of assumptions, to academic freedom, and motivated by the desire to shed light on our current problems and to seek more fruitful ways to address them, the contemporary academy should unsecularize itself. (p. 386)

He asks not for religion to be embraced necessarily, but only that the possibility of religious truth be brought back on the table.

In addition to the wonderfully clarifying main argument of the book, there were also other, smaller helpful insights scattered throughout: e.g. I was personally unaware of the adventist expectations of many of the initial reformers. I particularly appreciated Gregory’s insistence that the radical Reformation be given its due, pointing out that the radical reformers fundamentally differed from magisterial reformers only in their lack of success, or purposeful refusal, to wed themselves with secular power. Gregory argues that a hard distinction between magisterial reformers and radical reformers is ultimately unhelpful and only masks the truly vast diversity of Christian belief created within a few years of Luther’s insistence on sola scriptura.

And Gregory’s scathing critique of the modern normalization of avarice via capitalism in chapter five (‘Manufacturing the Goods Life’), particularly when put in its historical context (Gregory argues that consumerism was intended to be a common activity to unite and pacify otherwise divided and increasingly violent Christians), is a welcome and much needed challenge to our modern world’s consumerism.

Also, the main text’s 390 pages are supplemented by a further 150 pages of footnotes that greatly complement and often either further expound the main text or point to what appear to be other great resources. I kept a second bookmark in the footnotes section and checked it often, and I recommend any reader to do the same.

I have only two complaints:

The first is that while most of Gregory’s writing throughout the book is exceptional, I must warn the reader that at times he gets wordy and repetitive. At those times, I exhort the reader to trudge on: the book is more than worth it.

The second is that, and perhaps this is only because the last book I read before reading this one was by Marshall McLuhan, the role of new technology isn’t given any consideration. Gregory does note in his conclusion that one could analyze how other areas of life, including new forms of communication, were affected by the Reformation and its ensuing hyperpluralism. But Gregory seems to be saying that one could analyze how communication was changed by the Reformation rather than how the new forms of communication – namely, the printing press – affected or helped precipitate the Reformation, which to me seems to be an oversight, and might add further explanatory power to his assessment that the Reformation was inspired by widespread immorality in the medieval Church.

I also must note, and this is not a criticism but a heads-up to potential readers, that due to its attempt to pull together a great breadth of content, many theological, philosophical, and historical concepts and terms are assumed or given little explanation. While I encourage anyone to give the book a shot, those unstudied in those subjects will most likely find themselves lost or spending a good amount of time looking things up.

Gregory’s masterpiece is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand why the world is the way it is and has the potential of becoming a landmark book of our times. In other words, if you decide to take a pass, and it later becomes big, remember that I told you so.

The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society is available at Amazon in hardcover ($25.20) and for Kindle ($22.68).

There’s a great interview with Brad Gregory about the book over at the Harvard University Press website.

About the Author: Brad S. Gregory is the Dorothy G. Griffin Associate Professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Notre Dame. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University (1996) and was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows (1994-96). Before joining the faculty at Notre Dame in 2003, Gregory taught at Stanford University, where he received early tenure in 2001. Gregory has two degrees in philosophy as well, both earned at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. He has received teaching awards at Stanford and Notre Dame, and in 2005 was named the inaugural winner of the Hiett Prize in the Humanities from the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture as the outstanding mid-career humanities scholar in the United States. Gregory’s research focuses on Christianity in the Reformation era, the long-term effects of the Reformation, secularization in early modern and modern Western history, and methodology in the study of religion.

Brantly Millegan

Brantly Millegan is a part-time MAT student at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity in St. Paul, MN, while also working full-time as the Director of Family Faith Formation at St Francis Xavier Parish in Buffalo, MN. He and his lovely wife Krista joined the Catholic Church in 2010 while they were both undergraduates at Wheaton College (IL). They have two children (one of whom is due by the end of March). He blogs at Young, Evangelical, and Catholic.

John Armstrong recently responded to my review of his book. Here I’ll offer a reply to the points he raises.

Preconditions for Fruitful Ecumenical Dialogue

John Armstrong

In my “Reflection” on Armstrong’s book I made several arguments showing important problems with the fundamental program for unity that Armstrong sets out. One of my arguments showed that Armstrong’s criterion for Church unity — the first creeds and councils — is ad hoc. In his reply, he did not address this argument, or show how his position avoids the problem I raised. I’m not sure why he did not address my argument. From what he said, it seems he thinks that such discussions are intrinsically “polemical.”

He uses the terms “combat zone” and “polemical zone” to refer to the realm in which theological positions are criticized. He explains that he wants to avoid that realm, and thus avoid that discussion. I too surely do not want to engage in unnecessary polemics, or debate for debate’s sake. At the same time, I think that genuine ecumenical dialogue requires that we not only affirm the positive common ground we share, but also explain the problems and flaws we see in each other’s positions. It wouldn’t be a truly open or ultimately fruitful ecumenical dialogue if we could neither express our objections to each other’s positions nor present our replies to objections raised against our own. And if this open exchange is done in genuine charity and good will, it can help us mutually evaluate each other’s positions, and move forward together toward unity in the truth.

In his book Armstrong presented various criticisms of the Catholic position. So Armstrong himself enters “the combat zone” (in the sense of offering objections and criticisms) when he wants to criticize Catholic positions or arguments, including the ones I brought up. And I welcome criticisms of my position. I see that as a healthy part of robust, authentic truth-seeking ecumenical dialogue. But when I raised objections to his position, Armstrong responded by saying he wants to avoid the “combat zone.” My concern is that this rhetorical technique allows him to criticize my position while dismissing and not addressing the good-faith objections and criticisms raised against his own position. I think that the conditions for genuine ecumenical dialogue require us to try to avoid that technique. Genuine ecumenical dialogue not only admits criticism (in charity) of each other’s positions, but requires that we be open to consider and address carefully the criticisms raised against our own.

Armstrong says he does not have a “divine vocation to serve in the same space that [I feel] called to work within, namely one committed to the apologetical defense of various inter-church debates that, in my estimation, hinder missional-ecumenism.” But it seems to me that he is already in that space, defending a particular theological position. In that way he is using the same technique I mentioned above to advance and defend a position, criticize other positions, and then avoid addressing objections to his own position, by saying that he doesn’t have a divine vocation to serve in that space. I don’t think he is intentionally engaging in this technique; my impression is that he does not realize he is doing it. The fact is that we must employ reason and arguments, and be open to receiving and engaging objections against our own position, for ecumenical dialogue to advance. Focusing on what we have in common is a good place to start ecumenical dialogue, but if we stayed at that level, our ecumenical engagement would remain only superficial.

While building friendships with other Christians by working together to serve others in the corporal works of mercy is helpful, this by itself cannot overcome our divisions or lead to the perfect unity for which Christ prayed. It is possible to raise objections and point out problems, while ensuring an irenic tone in sincere charity. Arguments in their true sense do not have to devolve into polemics, insults, or mud-slinging. So I think Armstrong could (and should) irenically engage my arguments and objections, as part of an ongoing dialogue in which together we evaluate each other’s positions, carefully considering our mutual objections to and concerns regarding each other’s positions.

Apostolic Succession

Armstrong claimed that I “use apostolic succession … as a wedge for separation (unless you convert and come home to mother church) you are not truly catholic.” But the point of disagreement between Protestants and Catholics regarding apostolic succession is not whether I used it as a wedge when I referred to it as something that now separates us. The point of disagreement is rather the objective difference between what the Catholic Church teaches and practices regarding apostolic succession, and what Protestants believe about apostolic succession. The Catholic Church teaches that Protestant ecclesial communities are not Churches, precisely because these communities do not have apostolic succession. See Responsa ad quaestiones, ratified and confirmed by Pope Benedict in June, 2007. And Protestants explicitly reject apostolic succession, claiming instead to be apostolic through having the Apostles’ doctrine as contained in Scripture. So there is a real, objective, and important disagreement between Catholics and Protestants regarding apostolic succession. I’m not using that disagreement as a wedge of separation; the disagreement over apostolic succession is itself part of what in fact already objectively separates Protestants and Catholics, a separation I hope to help resolve at least in some small way. We cannot resolve this objective separation by refusing to talk about it, or by claiming that those who point out this disagreement are using it as a wedge. A blame-the-messenger approach would never allow us to engage the issues that presently separate us.

Yes, the Catholic Church believes that catholicity as a mark of the Church is present only where apostolic succession is present. From a Catholic perspective, to reject apostolic succession is to reject something that has been believed always, everywhere, and by all the faithful. The bishops who met at Nicea in AD 325 clearly believed and practiced apostolic succession. The practice of apostolic succession was not a novelty invented after the fourth century. So, the onus is on Armstrong to show how it is possible to be “catholic” while rejecting something that the unified Church of the first millennium believed and practiced. This is especially applicable since Armstrong claims that we should base our faith on the common doctrines and tradition believed and practiced by both East and West in the first millennium of the Church. Apostolic succession is indisputably one of these doctrines and practices, as evidenced by the fact that the Eastern Orthodox Churches and the Oriental Orthodox Churches also believe in it and practice it.

Armstrong’s reply included this statement by a friend of his:

“Rose [in this review] really shows his bias against Protestants when he says that even if Protestants agree with Catholics on the doctrine of apostolic succession, it doesn’t matter since they don’t possess it. Even if Protestants agree with Catholics, they are still wrong!” This is the rub for all evangelical ecumenists like me. Telling one side in this sadly divided state with a response that says “You are wrong and we are right” is not the type of ecumenism that will lead us to deeper (experienced and shared) Spirit-given relational unity.”

I would like to point out that I did not say, “they are still wrong.” My point, with respect to apostolic succession, was not “Protestants are wrong and we are right.” Protestants themselves, insofar as they understand what Catholics and Orthodox mean by “apostolic succession,” affirm that they [i.e. Protestants] do not have what Catholics and Orthodox refer to by “apostolic succession.” Protestants deny that what Catholics and Orthodox refer to by ‘apostolic succession’ presently exists. My point was that even if Protestants came to accept the Catholic doctrine of apostolic succession, that in itself would not be sufficient for healing the way in which Protestants and Catholics are divided over apostolic succession. That’s because in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, apostolic succession is not merely a doctrine to be affirmed, but also a means by which apostolic authority has been handed down within the Church. And because of the organic ontological nature of apostolic authority transmitted through apostolic succession, that apostolic authority cannot be acquired or recovered merely by assenting to the doctrine of apostolic succession; it can be recovered only by reunion with those already having it.

Catholic Teaching on the Goal of Ecumenism

Armstrong claims that the post-Vatican II Catholic Church does not believe or teach that Protestants should come back to the Catholic Church. But that is not accurate. Of course Catholic ecumenical engagement with Protestants does not begin with a call to come back to the Catholic Church. That wouldn’t be helpful as a point from which to begin ecumenical dialogue. But that does not mean that the return of Protestants to full communion with the Catholic Church is not the hope, prayer, and vision of the Catholic Church. When we pray for “the reunion of all Christians” in the Daily Offering, we are not praying for the founding in the twenty-first (or any subsequent) century of a new, man-made institution composed of Protestants and Catholics. We are praying rather for the return by Protestants into full communion with the presently existing Catholic Church from which sadly the first Protestants went out in the sixteenth century.¹

The Catholic Church teaches the following:

Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.” (CCC 846)

According to the Catholic Church, Protestants who die as Protestants can be in a state of grace at their death only if they are in sufficiently non-culpable ignorance regarding the identity of the Catholic Church as the Church Christ founded and to which all men are called to enter for salvation. From a Catholic point of view, because Protestants do not have apostolic succession, they do not have the Eucharist. And that places Protestants in a gravely deficient position with respect to salvation: having only two (baptism and marriage) of the seven sacraments Christ instituted in His Church as means of sanctifying grace, not having the fullness of the truth of Christ’s revelation contained both in Scripture and in Tradition, as it has been developed and defined to this day in the Church by the Holy Spirit living in her, and not having the shepherds Christ has authorized through apostolic succession to lead and feed His sheep.

Is Return to the Catholic Church the way to Unity?

Armstrong wrote:

In Rose’s understanding the way to unity is simple and straightforward. I should come home to Rome! Yet in the practice of post-Vatican II ecumenism, and the teaching and practice of the last five popes, this is not what I see nor is it what I have experienced in my thousands of hours of conversation with Catholics. The lone exception to my experience usually comes from converts who have left Protestantism and seem to feel a deep need to do a kind of apologetics that shows why Rome is the ‘true church.’

If the Catholic Church is what she claims to be, then yes Armstrong should become Catholic. If the Eastern Orthodox Churches are what they claim to be [the true Church], Armstrong should become Eastern Orthodox. If neither are what they claim to be, then these Churches are making false claims about themselves, and Protestants are right to remain Protestant. How can we know? By studying history, examining evidence, laying out the arguments, and together comparing and evaluating our respective positions, all done prayerfully and charitably. I have come to believe that the Catholic Church is what she claims, and so, like someone who has discovered Christ, I seek to share it with others, the pearl of great price, so that they too may have it. I remain open to considering evidence that the Catholic Church is not the true Church, but Armstrong has not presented any in his response.

The ecumenical task requires that we address both the question of criteria by which each side defines itself, and what charity requires with respect to defining respective positions. I think charity requires that in ecumenical dialogue we allow each participating party to define its own position, rather than impose on that party our own understanding or interpretation or construal of its position. So this requires that I allow Armstrong to define and determine what his position is with respect to ecclesiology, soteriology, etc., and that he do the same for me. This requires of us the virtues of listening, patience, and humility, as we each allow the other to shape and correct our conception of the other’s position. Armstrong seemingly wants to define Catholic doctrine by way of his own experience, and by discrediting me as a “convert” from Protestantism who now feels a “deep need” to justify becoming Catholic. Catholic doctrine, however, is not rightly defined by one’s experience, but by what the Church formally teaches in her authoritative documents. And Armstrong should respect the rule of charity that (a) allows each side to define its own position, rather than attempting to stipulate the Catholic position based on his own experience, and (b) avoids the bulverism that dismisses the other person’s evidence and argumentation by way of deconstructive psychoanalysis (e.g. that I only say what I am saying because I have a “deep need” to justify my becoming Catholic).

The Catholic Standards: Experiences or Church Documents

Armstrong wrote: “But even here I have scores of Catholic friends who do not adopt Rose’s view.” Again, as I explained above, the standard for the doctrine of the Catholic Church isn’t ultimately our own personal experience; nor is it even what some percentage of Catholics happen to believe. It is the magisterial teaching of the Church inscribed in her authoritative documents and taught by the pope and the bishops in communion with him. (See Cardinal George’s statement about that recently in the first minute of this video.) Sadly, sometimes even clergy can misrepresent Catholic teaching, and it is possible that this has happened with some of those who have interacted with Armstrong. I would invite and challenge him to present these questions to Cardinal George in his upcoming dialogue.

Armstrong continued by saying:

Conservative Catholic apologists take the supposed high ground by using the official teaching of the church on most matters but they seem to miss that there is a continued unfolding of what their church is also saying about unity with non-Catholics, especially since Vatican II. Having spent time inside the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity I speak from firsthand experience, not simply from books and documents. (I have read scores of these books and documents as well and find in these a rich treasury that calls us to new ecumenism!) Having read and discussed ecumenism in inter-church contexts, both in and outside of the United States, I have a perspective which clearly is not the same as Devin’s.

While I acknowledge a continued unfolding — the legitimate development of doctrine — of the inexhaustible treasure that is the deposit of faith, what Armstrong must realize regarding the Catholic Church is that the Church cannot reverse her dogmas. Genuine ecumenical dialogue, in which we allow each participating party to define its own position requires of participating Protestants that they acknowledge that according to the Catholic Church, no Catholic dogma can be reversed or negated, not even by the Catholic Church. According to the Catholic Church, the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church. Armstrong does not quote anything from the Catholic Church supporting his position regarding what he thinks Catholic teaching is; he only appeals to his experience. But again, the Church’s teaching is not defined by his experience, but in her authoritative documents.

In spite of what I presented in my reflection, Armstrong persists in thinking that there is a legitimate strain of thought — a “new ecumenism” — in the Catholic Church that can win out and become the Church’s teaching, essentially falsifying certain ecclesiological dogmas formulated over the past two millennia. But that’s not ecumenically charitable. Charity calls Protestants to acknowledge that according to the Catholic Church, Catholic dogmas are irreversible, and therefore that from an authentic Catholic self-understanding, these ecclesiological dogmas cannot be overturned. Because Armstrong is a Protestant and doesn’t believe that the Catholic Church is what she claims to be, I can understand how he rejects the belief that Catholic dogmas are irreversible. This seems to be why he continues to wait for substantial changes to the “sectarian” view that the Catholic Church is the true Church Christ founded. But I think charity requires allowing the Catholic party in ecumenical dialogue to define its own position, and thus acknowledging that from the Catholic perspective, the Catholic Church can never deny that she is the Church Christ founded, and that true unity requires a return to full communion with her. Accurately understanding and depicting each other’s positions seems to be the proper ecumenical point of departure.

Baptism and Eucharist

Armstrong and his friend write:

“While the Catholic Church accepts my baptism they do not, in most contexts, commune me. Am I the only person who finds this stance in-congruent? … “What is amazing from an ecumenist’s viewpoint [is] that one doctrine makes us one in Christ while the other keeps us separated.” Sadly, this is my conclusion as well.”

The Catholic Church teaches that only those who are in full communion with the Church should receive communion. The Eucharist is a sign of our full communion, including our affirmation of the “one faith” taught by the Catholic Church. The act of receiving the Eucharist is itself saying “I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.” So one who does not believe that should not receive the Eucharist. The Catholic Church is a visible body, and persons who have not even requested to be admitted to full communion with that body, and do not affirm the faith of that body, would be denying the communal meaning of the Eucharist if they were to receive the Eucharist.

Concerning this question, in 2003 Pope John Paul II wrote:

The celebration of the Eucharist, however, cannot be the starting-point for communion; it presupposes that communion already exists, a communion which it seeks to consolidate and bring to perfection. The sacrament is an expression of this bond of communion both in its invisible dimension, which, in Christ and through the working of the Holy Spirit, unites us to the Father and among ourselves, and in its visible dimension, which entails communion in the teaching of the Apostles, in the sacraments and in the Church’s hierarchical order. The profound relationship between the invisible and the visible elements of ecclesial communion is constitutive of the Church as the sacrament of salvation. Only in this context can there be a legitimate celebration of the Eucharist and true participation in it. Consequently it is an intrinsic requirement of the Eucharist that it should be celebrated in communion, and specifically maintaining the various bonds of that communion intact.²

A bit later in the document he wrote:

Precisely because the Church’s unity, which the Eucharist brings about through the Lord’s sacrifice and by communion in his body and blood, absolutely requires full communion in the bonds of the profession of faith, the sacraments and ecclesiastical governance, it is not possible to celebrate together the same Eucharistic liturgy until those bonds are fully re-established. Any such concelebration would not be a valid means, and might well prove instead to be an obstacle, to the attainment of full communion, by weakening the sense of how far we remain from this goal and by introducing or exacerbating ambiguities with regard to one or another truth of the faith. The path towards full unity can only be undertaken in truth. In this area, the prohibitions of Church law leave no room for uncertainty, in fidelity to the moral norm laid down by the Second Vatican Council.³

These quotations explain briefly why the Catholic Eucharist is limited only to those who affirm the Catholic faith. Armstrong’s objection to the restriction of the Eucharist to those professing the Catholic faith raises the authority question. Who has the authority to decide for the Catholic Church which persons are permitted to receive the Eucharist? Surely the answer to that question cannot be non-Catholics. And in the Catholic paradigm it makes perfect sense, according to the meaning of the Eucharist, why only those persons holding the Catholic faith may receive the Eucharist. This sacrament would have no such communal significance if it were given indiscriminately, even to those who knowingly deny Catholic dogmas.

As a Baptist, I would not have dreamed of receiving communion in the Catholic Church. I intuitively understood that Catholics believed something about the Eucharist that was quite different from what I believed. And in any case, who was I as a Baptist to argue that the Catholic Church should give me communion?

The doctrines surrounding the sacraments developed over centuries. Who are valid ministers and recipients of a particular sacrament? What is the form, and what is the matter for each one? What renders a sacrament invalid? As noted in my article, Armstrong mentioned somewhere that he believes that there are more than seven sacraments. Who gets to decide these questions? John Armstrong? The Reformed Church in America (RCA)? The Catholic Church? This is the question of authority, always lurking just behind such dialogues. We cannot ignore it, but must face it head-on by employing arguments and providing principled reasons for our beliefs, to determine who has the authority to give a normative answer to such questions for the Church.

From my point of view as a Catholic, I would respond in the following way to Armstrong’s question regarding the asymmetry between the Catholic position on the Protestant relation to baptism and the Catholic position on the Protestant relation to the Eucharist. The Catholic Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, discerned that baptism, as the sacrament whereby one is regenerated and united to Christ and His Church, could in necessity be administered validly by anyone who used water and the proper Trinitarian formula with the intention of doing what the Church does.⁴ Hence from a Catholic perspective Protestants have a valid baptism and are thereby incorporated into Christ. We rejoice in this. But she also discerned that the Eucharist should be received only by those who affirm the Catholic faith. This is not incongruent. We need not presuppose that all the sacraments must have the same kinds of possible ministers and recipients. Such a presupposition almost undermines the very plurality of the sacraments, since if the sacraments all did the very same thing, there would be no need for more than one.

Does Silence Equal Ignorance?

Armstrong wrote:

Devin Rose does not seem to recognize some of the very official agreements that the Vatican has signed that are game changers in terms of using “old” arguments and recognizing “new” groundbreaking agreements that we now have at many levels. I think especially of The Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (1999).

None of my arguments depends on the Joint Declaration. The fact that I did not mention the Joint Declaration does not falsify anything I said. In fact I have read the Joint Declaration, as well as the writings of various theologians and popes on the weight and authority that it has. I do think that Catholics and Protestants have made progress in our mutual understanding of each other on scores of doctrines, including justification. Called to Communion has published many blog posts and articles that have focused on this important doctrine.

But though we have made progress in some ways, we still remain divided. The Joint Declaration is a sign of a greater warmth and openness in dialogue between Catholics and Lutherans. And it helps clarify the common ground we can affirm together regarding justification. And this is a cause for gratitude to God, and rejoicing. But the Joint Declaration did not result in the unification of any Lutheran denominations with the Catholic Church. This declaration, while noteworthy and important, has not changed the Church’s dogmas on justification or been to this point a “game changer” (in terms of effecting visible reunion) with respect to healing the Protestant-Catholic schism.

Problems Left Unaddressed

Finally, I would like to point out that Armstrong did not respond to the following objections I raised in my review of his book: (a) the arbitrariness of his “core orthodoxy,” (b) the absence of a principled basis for distinguishing between branches within and schisms from, (c) his justification for redefining ‘schism’ as heresy, and thus losing the very concept of schism, (d) the error of appealing to dissenters, to determine what the Catholic Church formally teaches, and (e) the limitations to missional-ecumenism, which I carefully explained and defended in my article. To move forward toward mutual understanding and therefore to unity in the fullness of the truth, I would like to see Armstrong carefully engage these objections offered in humility and charity.

Devin Rose

Devin Rose is the author of If Protestantism is True: The Reformation Meets Rome (2011). He blogs at St. Joseph’s Vanguard.

1. For an examination of the ecumenism of non-return, see, “Ecclesial Unity and Outdoing Christ: A Dilemma for the Ecumenism of Non-Return.”
2. Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 35.
3. Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 44.
4. Catechism of the Council of Trent.

John Armstrong is a Protestant professor of evangelism at Wheaton College Graduate School, a former Baptist pastor for twenty-one years, and founder of ACT 3, an apostolate for helping Christians work toward unity. He has written articles for Modern Reformation, was the editor of Reformation and Revival Journal, and has previously authored, contributed to, and edited many books, including The Catholic Mystery: Understanding the Beliefs and Practices of Modern Catholicism (1999), Roman Catholicism: Evangelical Protestants Analyze What Divides and Unites Us (1998), The Coming Evangelical Crisis (1997), and A View of Rome: A Guide to Understanding the Beliefs and Practices of Roman Catholics (1995).

His most recent book is titled Your Church is Too Small (Zondervan, 2010). In this book Armstrong shares how his own understanding of unity and the Christian Church changed over the years, and lays out how he believes we can achieve the unity that Christ prayed for in John 17.

Summary

The book is divided into three sections: past, present, and future. In the first section he explains how he abandoned the narrow sectarian conception of Protestant fundamentalism according to which his own denomination was the best, and others, even other conservative Protestant denominations, were seriously flawed. He came to embrace a broader conception of Christ’s Church, one that included so-called liberal Protestant communities as well as the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. He then discusses how the desire for unity grew within him and took shape as a “missional-ecumenism” (more on this below).

Armstrong draws a brief sketch of the Church during the time of the New Testament and how its unity was later “split” both by the Eastern Orthodox schism and the Protestant Reformation. This first section reaches its climax with his chapter discussing John 17, Jesus’ high priestly prayer for unity, which Armstrong interprets as a call to relational and co-operational unity between Christian groups. He concludes with a chapter revealing how he interprets the four marks of the Church included in the Nicene Creed.

The second section focuses on how we can restore unity in Christianity today. He explains the causes of disunity, especially sectarianism — which he defines as the belief that one’s own Church or denomination is the Church of Christ — and explores what the universal Church is and how local congregations and denominations relate to it. Armstrong lays out his idea that a “core orthodoxy” consisting of the Apostles’ Creed and decrees of the first ecumenical councils should be the basic criteria for Christian unity. He then spends a chapter on the meaning of the “Kingdom of God,” including a discourse on how Catholics “discovered” the right understanding of the Kingdom during the Second Vatican Council. He ends this section with an explanation of Tradition and its importance for rightly understanding divine revelation.

The third and final section contains Armstrong’s vision for the future work of unity through the missional-ecumenical movement. He warns against uniformity or trying to find “the ideal Church” and explains how Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox view the Church. The next chapter argues against the tendency to try to figure out who is a “real” Christian and who is not. Armstrong then describes how the Church must become missional, not only sending out missionaries to far off lands, but embodying and being the mission of Christ in every place that Christians live. The Church, he argues, should not focus on influencing politics or changing the culture but should instead be about living the Kingdom of God in the midst of society. Churches and ecclesial communities should join together in this mission, united by the core orthodoxy described earlier. He ends the book with a call to all Christians to work toward unity and realize its importance in their life.

What’s Great about the Book

John Armstrong

I deeply appreciated this book. Armstrong asks the questions on unity that need to be asked by every Christian, questions I had asked myself as a Protestant and continued asking as a Catholic.

First and foremost, he takes Christ’s prayer for unity seriously, rejecting interpretations of John 17 that seek to diminish the scope of Christ’s mandate. Many Protestant pastors he has listened to claim Jesus was praying for the unity of the invisible collection of all believers. Armstrong disagrees, writing, “to assume that the invisible church is the ‘one holy catholic and apostolic church’ of the Nicene Creed or that it is the answer to this prayer is a serious interpretive mistake.”¹ Instead, Christ must mean a visible unity of some sort, a theme explored throughout the book.

While the book’s audience includes Christians from every Church and community, Armstrong writes especially for American Evangelical Protestants, a group that is generally uncomfortable with the notion of Tradition and which in some sections holds what Armstrong would call sectarian views of the Church. He writes: “In fact, I will show how your biblical faith is rooted in the living Christian tradition, a tradition found in all the classical historical expressions of the one faith.”² He goes on to say:

True Christian faith is not found in personal religious feelings but in the historical and incarnational reality of a confessing church. Therefore, if we refuse to come to grips with our past, our future will not be distinctively Christian. The result will be new forms of man-made religion that embrace recycled heresies…. Building one’s faith and life on various passages in the Bible understood through private experience results in nothing less than a confusing cacophony of Christian noise…. Scripture alone, without human life and community consensus, is subject to every human whim and fancy.³

Catholics agree that the Bible must be read within the living Tradition of the Church and also that there is always a danger of recycling old heresies. But this kind of language has placed Armstrong on the wrong side of Evangelicals, some of whom have sundered their association with him, fearing that he is embracing error in his desire to cast a broad net for Christian unity.

Armstrong also sees the problem of letting the Bible alone resolve our differences. He writes:

Everyone interprets the Bible. This truth may be abundantly clear to you, but I have found that it is easily forgotten by “Biblecentered” Christians. Quoting the Bible rarely settles disagreements. By themselves, Bible verses fail to promote unity. Consider the fact that many cults will affirm the inerrancy and authority of the Bible, yet they interpret its meaning in ways that suit their own personal preference. In truth, we need to have a way of grasping the answer to a larger question: What is the essential message of the Holy Scriptures?

Answering this question takes us back to the Bible as our foundation of truth, but it also incorporates the faithful witness of the ancient church. We ask such questions as: What did the first Christians believe and why did they believe it? How did they hear the gospel? Before there was a completed Bible, how did the church understand and confess the living message of Christ? (Even when the church had the completed Scriptures, most Christians never had the opportunity to read them, much less study them.) How has the church heard the Scriptures down through the ages? Questions such as these lead us to a study of history, an area of study known as historical theology, covering the church’s understanding of the development of theology and its interpretation of the Scriptures over the past two thousand years. We never stand alone when we read and interpret the Bible. With a grasp of history and tradition, we are able to read the sacred Scriptures in communion with the “one holy catholic and apostolic church.”⁴

Armstrong’s insights here are key. We hear in them the same realization to which Keith Mathison came, namely, that someone has to interpret the Scriptures, and that the Church (whatever it is) must be intimately involved. Catholics also agree with him that we must study history and learn how the Church has interpreted the Bible throughout her existence.

Armstrong also points out that American congregationalism is foreign to the historic understanding of Christ’s Church. He writes, “During the first eighteen hundred years of Christian history almost no one understood the church as a myriad of independent and unrelated congregations and movements that interpreted the Bible as each saw fit.”⁵ Yet that is what we have in much of Protestantism, and Armstrong rightly sees the problem with it. It leads to the proliferation of denominational divisions, and makes achieving unity that much more difficult.

He explains that when he reached his forties, he came to doubt the concept of a purely invisible Church, and this spurred him on to engage with other Christians, ones outside his tribe, and to understand them better. He writes:

Today, my passion for the church has led me to monasteries and Methodists, to Anglicans and the Assemblies of God, and to a growing respect for Mennonites and Moravians. It took me, an evangelical and a Reformed Protestant, deeper into the words of Luther and Calvin, who left a profound mark on a large portion of the Christian church. To my great surprise, it propelled me back to the church fathers and the Christian past — a past that is both Roman Catholic and Orthodox. In Catholicism, I discovered a community so vast that it overwhelmed me in its richness, beauty, and diversity. Over time, I came to love this community, a community I had once feared so deeply.⁶

These are conciliatory words, and they don’t fall on deaf ears. Rare is it to hear such a compliment about the Catholic Church from a Protestant minister. One of the great strengths of Armstrong’s book is his irenic tone and desire to see the good in all Christian Churches and communities.

Armstrong ends the book with vignettes of Christians working together to do good things. This is how the missional-ecumenical paradigm is put into practice via relational and co-operational unity. What can real Christians — who belong to different ecclesial communities and Churches — do to unite together in a practical way? Armstrong gives one example where many Protestant churches collaborated together to put on a vacation Bible school program. Another example he offers is the Taize community and their inter-denominational services. Catholics can agree with Armstrong that we should work together with other Christians: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, standing up for the pro-life cause together, and so on. Our theological differences should not stop us from joining together to serve others in these ways, particularly in the corporal works of mercy.

In his book Armstrong is asking the questions that need to be asked and not shying away from the reality of disunity that exists in Christianity. By calling for a study of history, the inclusion of Tradition, and for an understanding of the Church as visible, Armstrong has taken significant steps toward the Catholic conception of how we must proceed to identify the Church and unify with her. In the next section I will examine where Armstrong stops short of Catholicism and instead takes a different path in the hopes of finding unity.

Where We Differ

John Armstrong is not a Catholic. He is a Protestant Christian and remains within the Protestant paradigm. Specifically, Armstrong resists the notion that there is presently “one, true Church,” or that God protects any one Church or community from error in its teachings. Because of this belief (or lack of belief), he sees Protestant denominations and the Catholic and Orthodox Churches as the three “great Traditions” of Christianity, none teaching the fullness of the truth or the truth without error, but all three holding to the “core orthodoxy” of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds and the first two ecumenical councils. Let’s examine his thoughts here more closely.

Unity

The first question to ask is: has the Church ever been unified? Armstrong seems to answer in the affirmative. He writes:

The New Testament sees unity as a reality to be protected…. [The Apostles] wisely recognized that while Christ should be at the center as Lord of the church, every effort must be made to preserve unity.⁷

According to Armstrong, unity in the early Church was “a reality to be protected” and something that must be preserved, which means that in his view the early Church was unified. This is an important starting point for dialogue with Catholics, since we also believe that the Church at this time was unified.

Armstrong then describes what he thinks happened to the Church’s unity:

By the medieval period, the visible church was tragically split into two huge and virtually unrelated branches — East and West (1054).⁸

However, in 1054, this unity was radically and tragically altered by the East/West split. Centuries later, the Protestant Reformation broke the Catholic Church’s unity in Europe.⁹

According to Armstrong, the unity of the visible Church was “altered,” “split,” and was broken. This is in effect the “branching” theory of Christianity put forth by many Protestants: the trunk of the tree, representing the unity of the Church, split into multiple different branches — Protestantism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy being the largest — but the trunk itself no longer exists. The unity has been divided, which means it is gone and now the Church is in disunity.¹⁰

But this theory raises the question: How does Armstrong make a principled distinction between a branch within the Church and a schism from the Church? Piecing together several different passages from his book, his answer seems to be that a schism occurs when someone or some group rejects “core orthodoxy,” defined by the consensus of the early Church in the writings of the Fathers and especially in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds.

First he associates core orthodoxy with the Apostles’ Creed, writing:

When core orthodoxy, as represented by the Apostles’ Creed, is not of primary importance, the result will always be a small view of the church.¹¹

Then he asserts that the one Church is rooted in core orthodoxy:

I will make a case for how the one church of Jesus Christ, ministering out of its spiritual unity in Christ and rooted in core orthodoxy, can best serve Christ’s mission.¹²

Finally he cites the Reformers’ recognition that the “common faith,” or core orthodoxy of the Church is found in the “consensus of the early church fathers” and the “earliest ecumenical creeds.” He writes:

Even the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers, especially magisterial men like Martin Luther and John Calvin, understood that there was an established historical foundation deeply rooted in the Scripture. The creeds and the doctrines taught by a consensus of the early church fathers were continually appealed to by all the great Protestant Reformers. For them, common faith was expressed in the earliest ecumenical creeds. The Reformers never encouraged people to pick through the Bible and concoct a better version of Christianity.¹³

The Nicene Creed was formulated at the first two ecumenical councils: Nicaea in the year 325 and Constantinople in 381. But taking only the first two councils and these two Creeds as the criteria for orthodoxy raises the following questions: Why do we stop with those? Why not also accept the third and fourth ecumenical councils? As it is, the Nestorians and Monophysites could affirm the first two councils. We would need a principled reason for making the decisions of these first two councils and no others the standard for orthodoxy.

Armstrong does not answer this question in his book, and so his basis for what constitutes core orthodoxy is ad hoc, at least as he has presented it in his book. This is a critical flaw in his thesis, and is the reason why I said above that he stopped short of going all the way down the road to Catholicism. Understandably, he wants to find common ground from which all Christians can work toward unity, realizing that doctrinal chaos can never be true unity. And so he chooses criteria that (rightly) begin with the founding of the Church by Christ and the sending of the Apostles and continue to the first two ecumenical councils and the Creeds. But why it should stop there requires a principled reason. Armstrong does not offer one, and of course an arbitrary stipulation by Armstrong cannot be the basis for a unity to be pursued by all Christians.

Catholics believe that the essential unity of the Church can never be lost. The unity can be (and has been) wounded by the schisms from the Church that have occurred over the centuries (CCC 817), but since the Church is Christ’s Mystical Body, her unity can never be destroyed. Ecumenism seeks to heal these wounds and so answer Christ’s prayer that we become perfectly one.

Armstrong implies that the Church’s unity, enjoyed in the first century of her existence, was definitively broken and lost at least twice: in the Orthodox-Catholic schism in AD 1054 and then again in the Protestant-Catholic schism in the sixteenth century.¹⁴ Interestingly, he does see the divisions between Christians, the schisms, as being something bad. But rather than see the solution as healing these schisms — something he implies is a practical impossibility — he thinks instead that we should accept the permanence of these “three traditions” and their equal legitimacy. But accepting them in this way undermines the notion that it was wrong for them to separate in the first place. Armstrong cannot have it both ways: either the separation was wrong, and we must work to heal the schism, or it was no true separation at all, just another valid “branching within” the Church.

Tradition

A related problem has to do with how we identify the Christian Tradition to which we all should look. Armstrong writes:

With a grasp of history and tradition, we are able to read the sacred Scriptures in communion with the “one holy catholic and apostolic church.” Studying how the historical church understood the Scriptures greatly helped me, but it wasn’t easy. I had to learn to humble myself and truly listen to other voices outside of my cultural and generational context. My teachers included Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Christians. If it helps, think about it this way: Are you the first person to ever read the Bible and attempt to understand its message? Of course not. People before you wrestled with these same writings and expressed what they understood in plain language. They confessed a “core orthodoxy.” They celebrated the “Great Tradition” — those elemental truths representing the theological consensus of the first thousand years of Christian history. Wisdom should lead us to listen to these early Christians before we try to work out some of the difficult issues we face today.¹⁵

This sounds good, but Armstrong does not provide a principled basis for distinguishing between what does and does not belong to “the theological consensus” during the first thousand years of Christianity. In addition, he has no principled reason for determining who is and is not among those forming this consensus in the first thousand years of the Church. The Armenians and Copts, for example, would take issue with important Catholic doctrines during the first thousand years of Christianity, the ones over which they broke in schism. Further, Apostolic Succession is certainly a part of that “Great Tradition,” but Armstrong and Protestants reject it.¹⁶ Baptismal regeneration was also assuredly part of that consensus, yet Protestants reject that doctrine as well. So picking and choosing is still going on, in an ad hoc way. And this ad hoc picking and choosing by Armstrong, in order to determine for all Christians which first millennial doctrines and practices are orthodox, and who does and does not belong to those among whom the consensus is to be found, amounts to an implicit exercise of [presumed] magisterial authority on his part.

The Church’s Oneness

Armstrong spends some time offering his interpretation of the four marks of the Church: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Most relevant to the subject of unity is the first mark, namely, that the Church is one. He begins well when he says:

I have argued that the early church held an extremely high view of oneness and catholicity. We do not have to search far to understand why: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” (Ephesians 4:4 – 6)¹⁷

The Catholic Church strongly affirms this biblical oneness through the three visible bonds of communion:

1. Profession of one faith received from the Apostles
2. Common celebration of divine worship, especially of the sacraments;
3. Apostolic succession through the sacrament of Holy Orders, maintaining the fraternal concord of God’s family.¹⁸

But Armstrong’s vision of unity does not go this far. He affirms that the Church is found where “Word and sacrament” are celebrated.¹⁹ By ‘sacrament,’ he seems to mean only baptism and the Lord’s Supper. However in a recent blog comment, he says that he is persuaded that there are more than seven sacraments, and that washing of the feet is one of the additional sacraments. So it is unclear how many sacraments he thinks there are and how we know what the criteria are for determining what is a sacrament.

Regarding unity of faith, Catholics too believe that we profess the “one faith” received from the Apostles. But it is clear to everyone that there are major differences between Protestants and Catholics regarding what that one faith is. Armstrong attempts to solve this problem by appealing to the “core orthodoxy” of the creeds, claiming that “uniformity” of doctrinal belief is undesirable and contrary to legitimate diversity. But the Catholic way lies between the two extremes of absolute uniformity of belief and the absence of a shared faith. The bounds of the Church’s dogmas circumscribe the area of unity within which we can have legitimate diversity of theological beliefs. That’s not absolute uniformity, but neither is it agreement through lowest common denominator Christianity, where we find the minimal subset of beliefs about which we happen to agree, even if it be only the one doctrine that Jesus died to save us.

The problem again, for Armstrong, is that he has no non-arbitrary basis for determining that upon which we all must agree, and that about which we may disagree. Uniformity is not bad when it is uniformity in the one faith; in that case it is a beautiful thing. But there can be diversity in non-essentials and unity in essentials, only when there is a principled way of determining which is which.

“A Conversation on Unity”

Armstrong does not mention these three bonds of unity but instead interprets the “oneness” of the Church as meaning that the Church is a unique institution. He also emphasizes the diversity that should be found in the Church, something with which Catholics can agree, so long as it is within the bounds of the Church’s teachings. The difficulty here for Armstrong lies in reconciling his notion that the Church is “a unique institution” with his notion that the Church is presently divided into Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants. If it is divided, it is not a single institution, unless these divisions are branches. But as I have pointed out above, he has no non-arbitrary way of distinguishing between a branch within the Church, and a schism from the Church. That’s why if what he is referring to as “a unique institution” were in fact three (or more) institutions, and not one institution having these three as branches, nothing would be any different than it is right now. Without a principled basis for distinguishing between branches within and schisms from, one can falsely label as ‘one,’ many bodies that are not one institution, but are actually in schism from each other. Armstrong defines ‘schism’ as deviation from “core orthodoxy,”²⁰ but by defining ‘schism’ as heresy (a conflation examined here), he loses the very concept of schism.

Finally, and significantly, Protestants have rejected Apostolic Succession, and even if they believed in it, they do not possess the sacrament of Holy Orders through Apostolic Succession. Hence from a Catholic point of view, Protestantism has completely discarded one of the bonds of visible unity. In this way the “core orthodoxy” with which Armstrong wants Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox to be content as the totality of what is essential to the faith, is, from a Catholic perspective, deficient not only with respect to doctrines that have been subsequently defined by the Church over the centuries of her development in opposition to heresy, but is deficient even as an attempt to capture what was essential to the Church of the fourth century, during which time the Nicene Creed was written. In this way, Armstrong’s ecumenism is a lowest-common denominator ecumenism. Catholics can affirm the common ground we share with Protestants as an ecumenical starting point, but not as an ecumenical ending point.

Enlisting Catholics in His Cause

Throughout the book, Armstrong quotes from the writings of several Catholics to bolster his conception of Church unity. Under the provocatively titled section “Vatican II: Catholics Discover the Kingdom,” Armstrong writes:

Prior to Vatican II, many Catholics saw the parables of Jesus as synonymous with the church. Cardinal Walter Kasper rejects this idea: “The church is only an effective and accomplished sacramental sign, not the reality of the kingdom of God itself.” Some Roman Catholics disagree with Cardinal Kasper and look with suspicion at anything outside the Catholic Church. The Catholic conflation of the church with the kingdom was clearly a reaction to Protestant interpretation. A Catholic archbishop [Rembert Weakland] notes that this view led some to conclude that “the ultimate fulfillment of the kingdom will come when all have converted to Catholicism.” But Vatican II opened a new door of Catholic understanding about the kingdom.”²¹

Cardinal Kasper’s statement is ambiguous and potentially misleading. Quoting Lumen Gentium from the Second Vatican Council, the Catechism states that:

‘To carry out the will of the Father Christ inaugurated the kingdom of heaven on earth.’ Now the Father’s will is ‘to raise up men to share in his own divine life.’ He does this by gathering men around his Son Jesus Christ. This gathering is the Church, ‘on earth the seed and beginning of that kingdom.’²²

And we also read in Lumen Gentium that “The Church, or, in other words, the kingdom of Christ now present in mystery, grows visibly through the power of God in the world.”²³ So the Church is the Kingdom in seed form, analogous to the acorn and the full-grown tree. A direct, organic connection exists between them, as between a baby and the adult he grows up to be. And since this Church, founded by Christ, subsists in the Catholic Church, insofar as Cardinal Kasper’s statement implies that the Church is not the present form of Christ’s Kingdom on earth, it is not just that “some Catholics” disagree with his statement, but rather that the Church herself does. Further, as this document from Vatican II demonstrates, the Council did not change Catholic doctrine and declare the Church and the Kingdom to be separate entities.²⁴ Even so, Catholics do affirm that Protestants are our separated brothers and sisters in Christ and that the Holy Spirit dwells in them through baptism.

In addition to quoting Cardinal Kasper, Armstrong also appeals to Archbishop Weakland. Weakland is the disgraced former archbishop of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His statement that some kinds of Catholics believe that “the ultimate fulfillment of the kingdom will come when all have converted to Catholicism” is unhelpful and a red herring, because the important question is not what some Catholics believe, but what the Catholic Church teaches. The Catholic Church teaches that the fulfillment of the Passover in the Kingdom occurs in her celebration of the Eucharist (CCC 1403) and that the ultimate fulfillment of the Kingdom will occur when Christ returns in glory. So while Catholics certainly work toward the healing of the schisms and the full reunion of all Christians with the Catholic Church, this does not mean we think that the Kingdom’s “ultimate fulfillment” will be accomplished before Christ’s second coming.

Armstrong also quotes heavily from the writings of Catholic scholar and laicized priest Luke Timothy Johnson. The excerpts chosen seem at best ambiguous and at worst at odds with the Church’s teachings. For example, Luke Timothy Johnson wrote:

The church in every age must be measured by the standard of the apostolic age as witnessed not by the later tradition but by direct appeal to the writings of the New Testament. Placing the contemporary church against the one depicted in the Acts of the Apostles makes clear how much the prophetic witness of the church has been compromised by its many strategies of adaptation and survival over the centuries. This is the sense of the word employed by reformers like Martin Luther, who combated the excrescences of medieval Catholicism by appealing to the teaching and practice of the New Testament. Where in the New Testament do we find pope or cardinals? Where do we find mandatory celibacy? Where do we find indulgences, or even purgatory? Where do we find the office of the Inquisition? These are powerful questions. Equally needed is the prophetic call to a simpler and more radical “New Testament” lifestyle by Christians.²⁵

Firstly, the Tradition of the Church is Apostolic in origin, a river of living water within the Church that, guided by the Holy Spirit, connects us to Christ its Source. So it is inaccurate to describe it as something “later” than the Apostolic age and then pit it against the sacred Scriptures of the New Testament. Scripture and Tradition complement each other and form the deposit of faith. While the Scriptures do hold a unique position within the Church, Johnson’s statements regarding Tradition advocate a position aligned with sola Scriptura Protestantism rather than with Catholicism.²⁶

Secondly, Johnson’s claim that the prophetic witness of the Church today has been compromised is a denial of the Catholic doctrine of the indefectibility of the Church.²⁷ It’s unclear what exactly he has in mind here, but we can infer it from his later statements of Luther’s protests against the papacy, indulgences, purgatory, and so on. The key point, however, is that a Catholic who rejects the belief that the office of the papacy is divinely established is not orthodox. Similarly, the doctrines of purgatory and indulgences have been dogmatically defined, and to reject them is to reject Catholic orthodoxy.²⁸

Johnson claims to be a Catholic but he dissents from the Church’s defined doctrines, and insofar as he does that, his position is heretical. Though not quoted on these doctrines in Armstrong’s book, Johnson also dissents from the Church’s teaching on women’s ordination and same-sex issues. While I know that Armstrong does not endorse all of Johnson’s beliefs, it must be made clear that in these quotations Johnson is not presenting authentic Catholic teaching, but is instead presenting his dissenting opinion, as if it were a legitimate position within the bounds of Catholic orthodoxy. Armstrong and anyone else can discover this by reading the magisterial documents of the Church and learning her teachings, summarized helpfully in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The reality of the situation is not he-said, she-said, where one Catholic scholar’s opinion is pitted against that of another. Rather, here we have authentic Catholic doctrine versus the heterodox opinions of someone who openly dissents from the Church’s teachings.

Armstrong cites Johnson in an attempt to show that there is a stream of thought within Catholicism that is aligned with his understanding of the Church and unity. We see this in evidence when Armstrong discusses Vatican II’s Decree on Ecumenism. Armstrong writes:

Earlier the [second Vatican] council has said that other Christian communities should “return” to the Catholic Church. Later statements have suggested much the same, but many Catholics [e.g. Johnson] believe there is an element of tension between the council’s dogma about the church and its expressed desire for unity with non-Catholics. I believe the stronger voice, the one expressing desire for unity, will ultimately win.²⁹

We can see then that Armstrong is relying on Catholic dissenters as though they add Catholic support to his ecclesiology and his ecumenical vision. This is problematic for at least two reasons. First, practically, it sets him up for failure and disappointment at the actual ecumenical dialogue table, when he is confronted with the fact that what these dissenters claim is not what the Catholic Church actually believes and teaches. Second, authentic ecumenical dialogue requires that each party construct its conception of the other’s position by way of its authorized persons or documents, not by relying on persons who claim to belong to that institution but openly dissent from its authoritative teachings.

The Catholic Church teaches that the Church of Christ subsists in her. There is no ambiguity there and no way for that teaching to change. The Catholic Church teaches that full unity between Protestants and Catholics is achieved ultimately only through Protestants entering into full communion with the Catholic Church. That might be through means that allow them to retain authentic aspects of their patrimony — see the Anglican Ordinariate for an example — but it cannot mean agreeing to a unity that violates or falls short of the three visible bonds of unity, compromises any Catholic dogmas, or makes apostolic succession optional. I do not think Armstrong realized that some of Johnson’s opinions are contrary to the Church’s teachings and that these opinions can never “win” out in the Catholic Church. Rather, I think Armstrong read ideas from a Catholic scholar that were sympathetic with his own and considered this to be an area of legitimate theological speculation that could eventually become the Church’s teaching.

Missional-Ecumenism

Armstrong sees missional-ecumenism as the path to the best unity we can have this side of heaven. Pastors, churches, and individual Christians can live in a missional-ecumenical way by working together to love Jesus and incarnate His love in their neighborhoods, overlooking their theological differences and focusing on the fact that we’re all Christ-followers.

For Armstrong, missional-ecumenism is not just about doing corporal works of mercy together, but about spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world. This idea sounds good, but serious problems emerge immediately. To share the gospel requires that we understand what the gospel is, and is not. If we cannot agree on that, then we will not be able to share the gospel in unity. To take just one example, justification is an important part of the gospel, yet Catholics and Protestants do not agree on how one is justified before God. We also do not agree on which books comprise the Bible, whether the Bible is the sole infallible rule of faith, whether Apostolic Succession is a divine institution, the nature and number of the sacraments, and many other doctrines.

Armstrong wishes for Christians to take a mindset that does not allow these differences to stop collaboration in evangelizing, but their existence throws a large wrench into the missional-ecumenical scheme. The differences are in the very essence of what the gospel is, and how we are to be saved.

I have had direct experience evangelizing with a Protestant brother. Due to our serious theological differences, I found myself nuancing or outright correcting his statements toward an atheist friend. He likewise was frustrated by the claims I made with which he disagreed. While we both shot for a “mere Christianity” approach so as to present a united front to our non-believing colleague, the differences between our beliefs quickly became apparent.

The takeaway lesson is that Catholics and Protestants can and should work together in areas and ways that we can do so. But when we come to sharing the gospel, the differences between us cannot be hidden, and we must either adopt a lowest common denominator approach to evangelization to avoid these differences, which is problematic for the reason I showed above, or witness them ruin the whole missional-ecumenical scheme, insofar as that scheme involves shared doctrinal evangelism, beyond the corporal works of mercy. For Catholics, the gospel includes the visible Church Christ founded and submission to her teaching authority, along with the seven sacraments and the belief in sacred Tradition. For Catholics, the content of the gospel includes the content of the Creed, which requires believing in the Catholic Church. Hence, reducing the gospel to the bare bones of what we have in common with our Protestant brothers is simply not an option for Catholics. We cannot sell someone short of the full truth found in the Catholic Church. At the same time, Protestant evangelists would no doubt object to a Catholic they were with sharing the full Catholic gospel, since Protestants think much of it to be wrong, and vice versa. Armstrong desires “missional-ecumenism” to embrace the sharing of the gospel together, but as we see, accepting this idea is intrinsically problematic for Catholics.

Concluding Thoughts

I knew little about John Armstrong before reading his book. I had run across his blog a few times and knew he was keen on unity, but otherwise was unfamiliar with his work. As I read his book I felt like I was getting to know a kindred spirit. He believes God has called him to work toward Christian unity; I have felt the same calling, and it is rare to encounter another with a passion for it. In fact, his calling and journey fascinate me because they are so similar to my own, and as I read his book I felt like I was reading my own book, but from someone who has not quite been able to believe the Catholic Church’s claims.

Armstrong’s humility comes out as well throughout the book, as he shares stories of his encounters with other Christians. He isn’t afraid to admit his weaknesses and fears, which is incredibly refreshing. I actually hate to disagree with him, because it is apparent that he is a man who longs for the unity of Christ’s Church. But in spite of this desire, there are significant differences between us, and his vision for the solution, while helpful in several ways, cannot ultimately bring about the unity Christ desires and for which He prayed.

Devin Rose

I hope that Armstrong will continue along the path that he has already begun, and continue to ask the questions that he has raised concerning the nature of the Church that Christ established and His prayer for our unity. And I pray others will read his book and ask those important questions as well.

Devin Rose is the author of If Protestantism is True: The Reformation Meets Rome (2011). He blogs at St. Joseph’s Vanguard.

UPDATE: John Armstrong has responded here.

1. Armstrong, John H. (2010). Your Church Is Too Small: Why Unity in Christ’s Mission Is Vital to the Future of the Church. Zondervan. Kindle Edition. p. 43.
2. Ibid. p. 14.
3. Ibid. pp. 18-19.
4. Ibid. pp. 80-31.
5. Ibid. p. 19.
6. Ibid. p. 32.
7. Ibid. p. 35.
8. Ibid. p. 36.
9. Ibid. p. 62.
10. See, for example, “Branches or Schisms?”
11. Ibid. p. 81.
12. Ibid. p. 81.
13. Ibid. pp. 19-20.
14. His definition of ‘sectarianism’ presupposes that no existing institution is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church Christ founded, and therefore with respect to Catholicism and Orthodoxy, his definition of ‘sectarianism’ is a question-begging definition, as was shown here.
15. Ibid. p. 81.
16. See, for example, here.
17. Ibid. p. 77.
18. See the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 815.
19. See p. 117 of Your Church is Too Small.
20. See also, for example, this comment, where he writes, “A schism from the Church is a break-away “church” that denies or opposes the creed and core of the faith found in Scripture.”
21. Ibid., pp. 117-118.
22. CCC 541.
23. Lumen Gentium, 3.
24. See also Dominus Iesus, 18-19, 21.
25. Quoted by Armstrong on pp. 71-72.
26. See Session 4 of the Council of Trent, Session 3 (2.5 and 3.8) of Vatican I, and Dei Verbum 9 and 10 from Vatican II.
27. The Catholic Church teaches the following: “Furthermore, the promises of the Lord that he would not abandon his Church (cf. Mt 16:18; 28:20) and that he would guide her by his Spirit (cf. Jn 16:13) mean, according to Catholic faith, that the unicity and the unity of the Church — like everything that belongs to the Church’s integrity — will never be lacking.” Dominus Iesus, 16.
28. See Session 25 of Trent.
29. Ibid. p. 120.

I. Same Team: Fighting the Abuses of Higher Criticism

The Stubbs Family

In this essay, I will show that although Protestants and Catholics share common interest contra the secular exegetes who desire to undermine the innerancy of Sacred Scripture, certain Protestant theories of the canon, by denying the authoritative agency of the Church in the formation of the canon, follow a very similar script to that of the secular exegetes who deny the divine agency of Christ and His Church.¹ This becomes an oddly shared assumption between evangelical Protestants and secular exegetes — an unlikely agreement. Moreover, without the authoritative agency of the Church, the events of history leave us with no canon, and “inner witness” theories leave us without a credible one. Thus, the canon is made truly “impossible.”

Most Protestants love Jesus. These Protestants are “Jesus people,” and this love for Jesus gives them something in common with Catholics.² Catholics, as the people who partake of Jesus’ body, blood, soul and divinity, cannot help but be endeared to them. Enter Bart Ehrman. A seeming enemy of both Jesus-loving Protestants and Catholics alike, Ehrman and his associates attempt to “debunk” the Sacred writings that we both hold in high regard. Much like the Jesus Seminar, Ehrman believes that through textual criticism and the historical critical method, he can prove the Bible to be an unreliable source and therefore not a supernatural book.³ Ehrman wields what he thinks are devastating blows to Christianity’s claims about Scripture. At this time, I will only mention that there is strong evidence to combat his arguments. Nevertheless, we can set those arguments aside and proceed having in our mind the obvious theological tension between Ehrman and evangelical Protestants.⁴

Thus, the Catholic Church and most Protestants are on the same team regarding the problems with the abuses of the historical-critical method. We both object to Ehrman’s claim that modern science disproves much of the New Testament. His position unnecessarily forces him to conclude that the Biblical witnesses could not have seen what they said they saw, and thus that they did not intend to convey what they apparently meant to convey. Conversely, the Catholic and Protestant approach to the texts does not close us off to the possibility of the supernatural. But in addition, the Catholic ‘approach to the text’ is altogether different from that of the historian looking back 2,000 years. We as a community extended through time from the day of Pentecost to the present, were there when the events happened, and bring these events forward to the present as a living memory preserved in our community in the form of Sacred Tradition.

II. History Will Not Give You A Canon

The Sacred Tradition is revealed and handed down within history, but is not the same as history. Unlike the Sacred Tradition, natural history does not require an infallible Magisterium to be understood or known with the certainty proper to our natural cognitive ability. History is not revealed religion but instead is something we can apprehend through the right use of our reason. History is the unfolding of and subsequent record of reality, not the in-breaking of the divine through accommodation and condescension as is the case for revealed religion. An article of faith and an article of history require different evidence and different authorities for that evidence, and that fact draws out the epistemological differences between history and theology (e.g., St. Mark and an eye-witness to a car accident). Of course, as I said, articles of faith come to us in history, but the fact that St. Mark said such-and-such at time “x” is different than the article of faith to which he gives witness. For example, the fact that Christ rose from the dead is a part of history.⁵ His descent into Hades and His sacrifice in the heavenly realm is not.

What does this have to do with the canon — as my title alludes? The canon is relevant because any student of ecclesial history, employing the right use of reason on the evidence from the early Church, must acknowledge that there was not consensus regarding the canon in the early Church. For example, Melito’s list excluded Esther. Origen is suspicious of James, II Peter, II and III John. Cyril of Jerusalem and Gregory of Nazianzus exclude the book of Revelation in their New Testament lists. 1 and 2 Clement were read in the liturgies of the early Church for some time.⁶ The book of Hebrews was called into question and a third letter to the Church in Corinth was revered in the East as canonical until as late as the fourth century.⁷ Lastly, we must admit that some canonical lists in antiquity provide us a 22-book N.T. canon while others do not. All of this without even mentioning the spurious and wildly redacted canonical lists of various sects!⁸ Thus, no list or set of lists in the historical writings of the early Church sufficiently corroborates a Protestant or Catholic canon in such a way as to necessitate the assent of the intellect.

In turn, it cannot be argued that the canon of Scripture comes to us as a fact in the same way as “the sky is blue” or “George Washington was our first president.” No, both of those latter facts are easily confirmed either through direct sense experience or indisputable historical evidence preserved by credible witnesses. Further, one cannot arrive at an article of faith — the canon being one such article — by using reason alone. An article of faith is a gift of grace. Thus, to receive it, grace must build upon nature (reason), so that the dogma we receive is not against nature nor is it merely the by-product of it. This particular type of argument was seminal during the Counter Reformation. If, as the Protestants claimed, the Magisterium of the Church was not needed as the “ground” for dogma, and reason was tainted by sin, how could Scripture alone plus reason alone get one to pure, undefiled Christian dogma? So in the case of the canon, if the historical record does not evidence consensus until the mid-fourth century, and none of us individually has been promised infallible judgment, what are we to think of the Christian canon?⁹

III. From Historical Fact to Subjective Fiction

In the face of the traditional view of the relationship between Church and dogma, Magisterial Reformer, John Calvin, decided to dismiss the Catholic view in favor of what he would call the “inner witness.”¹⁰ In the Institutes of the Christian Religion, he writes:

Therefore, illumined by his power, we believe neither by our own nor by anyone else’s judgment that Scripture is from God; but above human judgment we affirm with utter certainty (just as if we were gazing upon the majesty of God himself) that it has flowed to us from the very mouth of God by the ministry of men. We seek no proofs, no marks of genuineness upon which our judgment may lean; but we subject our judgment and wit to it as to a thing far beyond any guesswork! (book I, ch. 7)

Notice that Calvin, like Ehrman, denies the agency of the Church (“our own nor by anyone else’s judgement”) in discerning the canon. We trust the canon not because God worked through the Church. We trust the canon because we feel it in our soul, before God alone. This reminds me of St. Francis de Sales’ words in Controversies:

Now let us see what rule they have for discerning the canonical books from all of the other ecclesiastical ones. “The witness,” they say, “and inner persuasion of the Holy Spirit.” Oh God, what a hiding place, what a fog, what a night! (Ch. V)

Calvin wants us to believe that the Spirit gives us an inner witness. Yet, where was this inner witness for the first four centuries of the Church? Why do not all of our canonical lists agree? We admit that St. Jerome was at first hesitant about the deuterocanonicals, but latter he defended them.¹¹ Did he lose and then gain the Spirit? Did he have and then dispossess it? Surely we must believe — in view of the “inner witness” theory — that no one in all of patristic history had the Spirit!

So, how shall we proceed? At this point, we should admit that the canon is not and cannot be a mere “fact of history.” The evidence is such that reasonable men, apart from faith, will agree to disagree. Why? Because the facts themselves do not warrant one particular position over another. Thus, reason alone leaves the canon open. Similarly, the “inner witness” theory leaves the canon to subjective speculation. Why? Because it would seem that if the theory were to work at all, it should at least work best in the patristic period — when the Spirit was “fresh off the presses” so to speak. Even if we do not grant that period some special status, the vast array of canon theories amongst believers throughout all of ecclesial history, even among Reformers,¹² makes the “inner witness” an apparently unattainable anomaly. Therefore, the only other option is the authorized agency of the Church guarding, clarifying, and providing an authorized determination of the Tradition regarding which books are sacred and which are not.

Fast forward a few hundred years. As I mentioned, some Protestants — like Ehrman and company — deny the supernatural agency of the Church in the determination of the canon in order to preserve their theory of Christian history which excludes the possibility of a divinely authorized, infallible Church.¹³ Starting with a theory — that the canon was already settled well before the Church “spoke”¹⁴ or that Christ must have implied what it was, they go on to do the same thing to the reality of the history of the canon that the Jesus Seminar types do to the Person of Christ. The Jesus Seminar and Ehrman reject “who” Christ is. Those who reject the Church’s role in defining the canon reject “who” She is as well. In other words, because Ehrman is committed to a scientistic, materialist worldview, he will not allow the evidence to point to a divine Christ. So, too, the Protestant — deeply committed to a theory of ecclesia that excludes the possibility of her exercising divine authority — puts forward claims that will not allow the evidence to point to a divinely authorized Church. For both, it is like watching a mime stuck in a fictitious box. It is clear that there is a way out, but the actor seems unwilling to do the obvious. For example, Micheal Vlach, Ph.D., a Professor of theology at Master’s Seminary, argues that we must distinguish between the canon’s nature and the canon’s discovery. He cites an argument made by James White that he thinks illustrates this point:

“I have written eight books. The action of my writing those books creates the canon of my works. If a friend of mine does not have accurate or full knowledge of how many books I have written, does that mean there is no canon of my books? No, of course not. In fact, if I was the only one who knew how many books I had written, would that mean that the canon of my books does not exist? The point is clear. The canon is one issue, and it comes from God’s action of inspiring the Scriptures. Our knowledge of the canon is another. Our knowledge can grow and mature, as it did at times in history. But the canon is not defined by us nor is it affected by our knowledge or ignorance.” (James R. White, The Roman Catholic Controversy, Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1996. p. 94)

White and Vlach are right that all truth exists in the mind of God. No true existing thing has existence apart from God. However, almost everything we know, we know not because God knows it, but because God has used something or someone to communicate it to us. Through nature we know certain eternal qualities of God. Through the Church, we know the truth of Christian dogma. It is fine to assert that God knows the canon, but the question is how do we know the canon? That is the important question if the canon is to function at all as a dogma for Christians. Moreover, the Church must be a trustworthy conduit of this fact, in the same way that nature must be a trustworthy conduit of the eternal attributes of God. If not, St. Paul is wrong to tell us that natural theology portends the knowledge he claims for it. Of course, nature does in fact communicate what he claims regarding the eternal attributes of God, and, similarly, the Church (as St. Paul also claims) is the “ground and pillar of truth.” Thus, Valch and White unnecessarily divorce the canon from its epistemic conduit. This unnatural dislocation is motivated, no doubt, by Valch and White’s insistence that no authoritative Church is necessary to know the canon. Yet, such a dislocation makes certain knowledge of the canon impossible or merely subjective at best.

We might also turn to popular evangelical apologist, Josh McDowell, for an example in his book Evidence that Demands a Verdict, where he argues that the Church did not define but rather perceived or recognized the canon. This seems like a step in the right direction inasmuch as it is the Church, and not each individual, but of course we would want to ask how and who acted to perceive and recognize the canon, and what would motivate us to care that they did so. Further, it is not clear how this definition does not necessitate a Catholic view of the Church — one that McDowell would no doubt reject. ¹⁵ This particular view necessitates a Catholic notion of the Church because if the “who” and “how” were not divinely granted grace to perceive the canon, we are left with the epistemic despair of something approaching R.C. Sproul’s “fallible list.”¹⁶ In reply, McDowell might say that this is a grace given to all the faithful, and therefore doesn’t require a special charism given to the Magisterium. However, this is problematic on at least two levels. First, on the level of the individual, this is as specious as the “inner witness” theory — only at a grand scale. Also, considering various “Christian” groups who would appose the Protestant canon — even, for example, Catholics — it suffers from the “No True Scotman” ad hoc fallacy:

1. All Christians are given a grace to recognize the Protestant canon
2. Brent is a Christian; he does not recognize the Protestant canon
3. Therefore, Brent is not a true Christian

Second, on the level of the community, the canon is a part of the Sacred Tradition of the Church. For that reason, the Magisterium is required as the authoritative steward — to determine what in fact constitutes authentic Christian Tradition. In this way the Church does not “create” Sacred Tradition, in much the same way that She is not the author of Scripture. It is her role to interpret, to “canonize” so to speak, the Sacred Tradition in such a way as to say “this” not “that” is included therein. If, however, McDowell grants the Catholic Church only this one infallible perception and reception, it would be ad hoc to do so. There would be no good reason not to attribute this grace to the Catholic Church’s other dogmatic decisions. Instead of either option, his argument does not address the question of agency — who receives or recognizes the canon — which is at the heart of the Catholic position.

McDowell might argue here, pace Catholicism, that at the time of the canonization of the New Testament, the Church was unified, unlike today. However, such an argument would suffer from negligent handling of the historic facts of that time on at least two counts. First, if we place the official canonization date in the early-fourth century — excluding earlier dates because of a lack of consensus or dogmatic action of the Church, at that same time Donatism and Arianism are in full swing. This is hardly a picture of a “unified Church” in the sense that an evangelical would qualify.¹⁷ Also, the Arian canon of Scripture was acutely different from the canon used in the Catholic Church.¹⁸ Second, the historic record simply does not evince that the various churches throughout Christendom were using all and only the same books. Thus if one abandons the authority of the Church to circumscribe, defend and interpret the deposit of faith, one is left with only two other options: either an ad hoc decision or the “inner witness.” One fails the mark of reason, the other the mark of faith.

IV. Different Teams: An Unlikely Agreement

What are the implications of such arguments to the credibility of Christianity and what is the relationship to Ehrman? First, Ehrman and the Jesus Seminar types are thinking within the theory-paradigm of higher criticism. They reject the authority of God’s divine agent — the Church — to canonize Scripture. For those in that camp, the canon does not rest upon the authority of Christ’s presence in His Church — mediated through His Apostles and their successors. On their view, no such authority can exist! No, under Erhman’s theory, the canon must be known like any other historic fact (like “George Washington was our first president”). Thus, Ehrman arrives at a much different canon than the Christian one, not because he ignores historic facts but because he includes those facts (e.g., the lack of consensus) while rejecting the authority of the Church. This is motivated by a commitment to a theory that excludes the work of the Holy Spirit through the agency of the Church, and such a movement necessitates a position that leaves the canon question open.

Similarly, some Protestants are committed to a theory-paradigm that excludes the possibility that God used the Church authoritatively — forming an unlikely agreement with Ehrman’s camp. So, on the one hand Catholics and Protestants are on the same team — defending the inspiration of Scripture and attesting to the historical reality of the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. However, on the other, the Protestant who does not recognize but even rejects Christ’s authority mediated through His Apostles and their successors (the ones with the keys of the kingdom) encourages what I believe to be an intellectual quagmire that bolsters Ehrman’s right to put forward a mythic view of Christianity. Why? Because Ehrman understands that reason alone will not get you to dogma — that is why he has none. From there he makes an intellectual leap that makes Christianity out to be merely a personal and psychological catharsis. This mythic view of Christianity is only perpetuated when the rule (canon) of Scripture finds its final ground in the subject’s intense experience of God (à la Calvin).

“What a hiding place, what a fog, what a night!”

V. Why We Trust “The Canon”

In truth, history does not give us either a Protestant or Catholic canon. The Church does. Her actions are not a-historical, but neither are they merely the work of an historian. Having the “mind of Christ” and the Divine paraclete given to “guide into all truth” of the “things that are to come”¹⁹ , the Church faithfully guards the deposit of faith — in history — and when prompted, defines those dogmas which act as boundary markers of orthodoxy.

The Christian canon does not act like the “rule” (the meaning of the word “canon”) of the Iliad, as if the textual analysis that would lead one to circumscribe what is and is not a part of Homer’s epic poem could also lead one to what is and what is not God’s Holy Writ. A method to circumscribe the Illiad is not sufficient to circumscribe Sacred Scripture. While an academic panel may suffice for the Illiad, no such panel has the authority or divine guidance to lead us to a “Christian canon” worth trusting. This notion certainly is not foreign to the Protestant faith. As a Protestant, I accepted that the gospel of St. Matthew is supernatural while at the same time acknowledging that God used St. Matthew to write it. I did not trust St. Matthew’s gospel because God dropped it out of the sky or because my heart burned within me when I read about Jesus’s genealogy in Matthew chapter one. In a similar way, as a Catholic, I trust the canon of Scripture I have because it came to me by way of God’s working through His Church. It is the Church’s signature–so to speak–that is at the bottom of the table of contents. Invested with divine authority and guaranteed divine guidance, She has led the people of God into the truth regarding the dogmas of the faith throughout time. One such dogma is the canon.

Lastly, and to draw an analogy, Christ is trustworthy because He is God not because our senses can perceive that He is. Faith is not against reason or our senses, but the faith is not a by-product of rational process alone. No, it is precisely when St. John the Baptist said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” that men and women were compelled to exercise the virtue of faith and believe in that which they could not see. This faith is not against reason (e.g., history affirms the reality of the resurrection) but also is not grounded purely in reason. So, too, the Scriptures receive their authority directly from God. Yet, just as we perceive the Father through the Son, so too do we in the age of the Church perceive the Son’s working to bring about a canon of Scripture through His Church empowered by the Holy Spirit, the one called along side to help (παράκλητος-paraclete). This does not detract from God’s glory. On the contrary, it proclaims and affirms His divine plan to build a Church, a family, against which not even the gates of hell will prevail, and Who would be a sign to the world of the eternal reality of the Kingdom of God.

1. I should note, that when I say ‘canonize,’ I do not mean to imply that the Church imbues particular books with the quality of inspiration. God does that. Instead, like all doctrine, I mean that the Church has been authorized by God to determine, to interpret what in fact God has done. In this case, it would imply that the Church would declare “these” and “not those” books are to be read in the liturgy, studied for doctrine and venerated as a part of Christian piety.
2. See Dr. Michael Liccione’s guest post here that distinguishes between two species of Protestants.
3. For a discussion of how the historical critical method can be used for the glory of God, see Verbum Domini.
4. The point of this post is not to combat Erhman’s particular arguments. For an accessible and academic treatment of the topic, see Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ: A Journalist’s Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus. You can find a number of YouTube video responses to Ehrman by Norman Geisler and William Lane Craig here. See also http://ehrmanproject.com/index.
5. I do not mean to imply that the resurrection is a natural act. I only mean to imply that it is an act that is subject to public scrutiny. We have a record of those who witnessed His death and we have a record of what He said after He resurrected. On these facts alone is the resurrection properly understood as a part of “history.”
6. Clement of Alexandria actually called 1 Clement Scripture. See “The Church History of Eusebius,” book 3, Ch.16.
7. Canon of the NT: Its Origin, Development, and Significance, by Bruce M. Metzger, 1997.
8. See the Nag Hammadi Corpus.
9. See CCC paras. 120 & 1117.
10. “John Calvin on the True Method of Giving Peace to Christendom and Reforming the Church,” in Tracts and Treatises in Defense of the Reformed Faith, by John Calvin; trans. Henry Beveridge. Vol. 3. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1958 (reprinted from Calvin Trans. Soc., Edinburgh, 1851), p. 267.
11. Against Rufinus, 11:33 [AD 402].
12. See Luther’s Antilegomena.
13. See former Roman Catholic Williams Webster’s essay here, where despite casting aspersions on the Catholic canon, his very evidence casts aspersions upon a Protestant one. You can also find a list of essays here from various Protestant scholars discussing the canon in a similar way. See especially Professor Micheal Vlach, Ph.D’s article, “How We Got Our Bible.” (I. Introduction of Canonicity, Sec. C). Also, see James R. White, The Roman Catholic Controversy, Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1996. Lastly, for a perspective that admits that the canon is not closed see this guest post by Lutheran Josh Strodtbeck.
14. ibid.
15. See CCC, para. 1117.
16. For a more thorough discussion of Sproul’s view found in Scripture Alone: The Evangelical Doctrine, see Tom Brown’s analysis in Sect. 3 of “The Canon Question.”
17. In a Catholic sense, unity is achieved through communion with Christ through His Apostles and their successors in union with the Chair of St. Peter. For the evangelical argument, unity would have to mean a lack of “sects” or “branches” as there are today. However, the Donatists would have to be described as a branch in evangelical ecclesiology. See St. Optatus on Schism and The Bishop of Rome.
18. You can find a discussion of the Arian canon here.
19. John 16:13, D-R.