Jason Kettinger
Easter Vigil, 2011

As we survey the interesting “space” that is the internet, we find intellectual pursuits and human interactions of varying quality. This is no less so in the field of religion, where the Lord Jesus Christ is often obscured behind a veil of ignorance and even needless hostility. It is my sincere hope that this meager contribution be a step toward affirmative dialogue and reconciliation.

With my purpose stated, the humble reader turns to ask the question he wants to know: Why? What makes a Reformed future pastor toss it all aside, and become Catholic? That is of course complicated, but I’ll try to explain. The story is really one of the harmony and convergence of truth, and the place where that convergence led was the Catholic Church.

The story begins with God, as it always does. What do we do when we offend God, who has graciously given us all things? Even in light of Christ’s sacrifice for us this turns out to be a deeper question than it seems. A friend once remarked that the sacrament of Reconciliation “does do justice to the existential reality of sin.” Every Christian I know, and every Christian community of which I have been a part, understands and attempts to take account of the individual and personal dimension of sin. The individual and corporate experience of union with Christ tells us that we cannot be cavalier about sin. Our relationship with Christ is bilateral, real, and demanding. We all have done business with God; I’m not surprising anyone here, I trust.

The church family from whom I’ve learned the most taught me that what we did mattered; we had a liturgy that reflected the reality of what I’ve just written. Before we enjoy the benefits of sonship, we have to acknowledge our sins, and allow God to restore us. Then we are exhorted to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. Then we shared the meal which proclaimed our restoration: the Eucharist. We didn’t fear to call it that, because if Eugene Peterson can do it, so can we. We were intentionally liturgical; we were intentionally ecumenical; we were doggedly Eucharistic. We believed that our life in prayer with God would lead us to ask new questions, and that the answers could lead us to revise aspects of our Reformed tradition. At the same time, if the Reformers or others gave us anything, it was that “faith once delivered to all the saints.” Truth doesn’t change; truth stands the test of time; the Church of Jesus Christ is old; His truth is both old and new. We were creedal, because the gospel was given to us, and we will give it in turn. There is a Great Tradition, we said, and we’re only a part of it. We read not only Calvin and Edwards but also O’Connor and Chesterton. I might have heard it a thousand times: “The Church did not start in 1520.” Continuity. Love. Simplicity. Jesus. There are so many stories I could tell. Just know that when I left for seminary in 2005, the unity of all Christians wasn’t some pie-in-the-sky dream; it was how we lived, and what we worked toward. Need I say more about that?

So I had an instinct for unity, and a tendency to express my theology in liturgical action. I was political, which is another way of saying I wanted my faith to make a difference in the world. We chalked up theological disagreements as historical anachronisms that awaited the clarity of God’s grace, which would show a truer, deeper unity in the times to come. I didn’t yet see the tensions which were coming to the fore.

I admit, I always enjoyed being branded as “dangerous.” But what struck me as I read more about liturgy and covenant theology was how warmly these theologians spoke of Jesus, how liturgical action was the way they not only experienced God’s love, but declared it. It was missional. If on some gut level they spoke with such resonance about the Christian life I understand, how bad could they be? If one reflects on what we’re saying here, it’s that liturgy has an ability to speak a language that bridges traditional hostilities.

If we begin theology with the simplicities of liturgy, and work outward, it is highly possible that we will face tensions with traditional formulations. The question we ask is what we will do about it. I’m not a systematic theologian; in the truest sense, I am an evangelist. The life of prayer, the liturgical life, needs settled truth to ground it as we reach out in faithfulness to God. I have never been averse to correction. What I began to experience and to attempt to describe was the inability to reconcile a contradiction, between righteousness imputed and righteousness shared. Essentially, something had to give. Either the righteousness of Christ was imputed to me by faith and fully completed, leaving the life of the church and repentance a good, but not necessary step by us, or Chapter 15 of the Westminster Confession of Faith was more correct: repentance and perseverance are an absolute requirement of the Christian life. It absolutely could not be both, despite how much we may insist on it. The buzzword “union with Christ” only makes it worse. Imputation either puts God in union with manifestly unholy people, or the participation suggested by the life of sanctification undercuts the truth of imputation extra nos. You have to choose.

What I do dare to say is that these sympathies in the direction of continual necessary repentance do undercut the principled basis for the Reformed separation in the 16th century. Why? Because we had insisted that true participation (as it was articulated in medieval Catholic theology) denigrated the work of Christ and the reality of our victory in Him. We had no cause to pretend otherwise, nor to smuggle in that which we opposed in the vanity of having a “fully-orbed” theology. Does this protest still have merit? What should we do if the battle-cries we raised once have no correspondence to our Christian lives? It is a life grounded in experience; we would not dare say that our liturgy, sustained by the interplay of repentance and forgiveness, of humility and exaltation, was a formality. In fact, this was both its liveliness, and its danger. Now on the table as never before are issues of apostasy and sacramental objectivity that never would have been asked among the Reformed. In one sense, there has always been a variety of perspectives within Reformed theology, and tensions therein. But never before have the tensions demanded an answer. Against the backdrop of my basic view of church history — continuity — the tensions or contradictions became such that questions like, “Why do we seek forgiveness for sins we say have already been forgiven?” are brushed aside at one’s peril.¹ What I’m illustrating here is a tension between historic and systematic theology, and lived experience in the pews.

If we might criticize some people with a certain lack of precision, a riposte with no good reply is that we don’t need answers to questions that no one is asking. What we were fighting about is the sacramental life versus an historic faith, with due respect, that is at its core anti-sacramental. If any of the sacraments have an objective character, the Church which gives them must also. Our communities were forged in the white-hot fire of theological disputation; our fathers in Protestant and Reformed faith would not share this new tolerance. If we have been led here because the law of prayer is the law of faith, I reasoned, it is a cause for serious discussion. I need only allude to those Reformed congregations who have opened their Lord’s Supper to Catholics and Orthodox to show that we have arrived at such a moment.² Even if the occasion only served to sober the hasty when such people refrained in obedience to their communities, the discussion will occur by necessity. In any case, we can see that the questions of the 16th century are giving way to the questions of the 21st. At the least, I assert that the issue isn’t on the front-burner. If so, maybe it’s time to lay down arms. For me, I could not stand apart on the strength of a slogan that meant nothing. Not even out of loyalty.

But what of the basic claim of the Reformers, that they had better captured the spirit and intent of the Church Fathers? It’s true that they were not ignorant of them. As for me, I knew nothing of the Fathers on their own terms. It had to be an open question, if I were to be intellectually honest. After all, any group can read history in such a way as to vindicate themselves. And this leads directly to the question of history, and because salvation history is at issue primarily, we are asking, “What is the Church?” This was a question like a shard of glass in my heart starting in 2006. The magnitude of the social and political issues we are facing absolutely demands that we reject most forms of “co-belligerence” as insufficient, because the answer to all of them is Christ; it is our love, it is our striving together in Christ and for Christ that can answer these problems. And they stem from existential questions surrounding the identity and purpose of man. If Christians do not answer these in the same way, how will people know that it is Christ who meets them? Moreover, if we do not accept one another as brothers, which Christ shall they follow? But do we dare force one another to adopt differing paradigms of the Church and salvation? How could that be anything but a failure? We may rightly say there is much that unites us. But if those things do not impel us toward one another, they are folly at best, and a violation of our consciences at worst, if we pretend the differences aren’t real. On both sides of the Catholic-Protestant divide, we conceive of the Church and of history in very different ways. Which view of history and Church does justice to the ancients?

Confessionalism may indeed preserve those ancient elements of truth which predate the schisms, but it does a terrible job of indicating how we are to pursue unity practically. This was the second thing I realized: being confessionally Reformed is in contradiction with the very definition of the Church found in the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter XXV.³ An invisible Church cannot define itself, or what it believes. But the certainty of Reformed distinctives depends on the authority of a visible Church. There is a quotation attributed to one John L. Girardeau within the essay “The Discretionary Power of the Church” that took my breath away every time I read it. It reads in part:

The delivery of Christ’s doctrines and commandments by men does not make them the doctrines and commandments of men. … Their dogmas are not man’s, they are God’s dogmas.

I’ve got to drop the guard a bit, take leave of that measured tone for which this site is known, and I beg your pardon if it sounds rude, but does that sound like an invisible church to you? Take your pick: Either the Westminster divines re-constituted the visible community that Christ established (which was obviously contrary to what I had been taught, not least the promise of Christ in Matthew 16:18) or we cannot be reasonably certain that our conclusions are more than opinion; that is, there could be also more fundamental truth possessed by those who are not us. In fact, our very definition presupposes that that is the case. In the twenty-fifth chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith, the first article tells us that the catholic church is invisible. The second article, by contrast, strongly asserts the visibility of that church. Moreover, the fifth article in this same chapter discusses the purity and truth of various “Churches” on Earth. First, which of the first two articles actually controls here, so that we might find out where we ought to reside, and what we are to believe? Second, what authority did this assembly have to make such a determination? The fifth article utterly depends on the invisible church asserted in Article I, but the comfort of being in the supposed household of God comes from Article II. Which is it? And who are they?

“Ah,” says the alert reader, “but Scripture is our guide.” We’ll get to that. For now, the guest post by Fred Noltie will be my answer. All this is to say that one question would not leave me alone, and it is the question that people of my generation are asking: “What is the Church?” The traditional definition for the Reformed is fine to a point, and that point is where our distinctives meet their doom against the presumption of historical continuity. If our communities as Protestants existed and subsisted on the unstated premise of ecclesial deism, then the concrete action taken in regard to history to explain it is what I call “ecclesial plagiarism.” The ancients may be dead, but we owe them at least the right to tell us what living for Christ was actually like before we retroactively re-write them into a history more amenable to the community we inhabit. I have already said that my fundamental approach to history was and had to be continuity. This is often claimed to refute the charge of schism. I had warmly sung “The Church’s One Foundation” for years as a prayer for unity, unaware that my own ecclesial commitments prevented me directly from ever realizing my hope. That may seem unfair, but I do believe the creeds themselves help explain it.

In that wonderful but critically unexamined tutelage of sympathy and continuity with history, the creeds figure prominently. In even the popular mind, we recite the creeds in solidarity with our ancestors in the faith, and even with those Christians who are separated from us. This is largely a lovely expression of catholicity, and would pass without a mention if not for the minor inconvenience of Sola Scriptura. As a principle, it does not admit any external authority for the creeds. The final authority is presumably Scripture, and the creeds would function as a norm only after they had been tested by it.

But as I heard one elder speak about the creed (the Apostles’, in this case) I came to realize — as though I had been hit by a brick in the face — the truth of this assertion that welled deep within me, first, after I read Mathison’s The Shape of Sola Scriptura, and now loudest in Sunday School just days before I entered the Catholic Church: “Derivative authority is a sham.”⁴ The elder said in effect that if we wanted to edit the creeds (to delete the word “catholic” as I recall) we could, because the Creed wasn’t Scripture. I saw then that Mr. Cross’s claim contra Mathison was true. There is no real, principled distinction between the “Solo Scriptura” that Mathison abhors, and the Sola Scriptura that he commends. If there is a difference in practice or in result, it has to do with the person’s own piety, and God’s grace lovingly keeping him from a more severe individualism. In fact, the chapter in Mathison’s book on the error of Solo Scriptura almost made me Catholic by itself. Why would I pay as much attention to the text, context, place in the canon, authorial intent, and myriad other things in order to rightly handle the word of truth, and completely ignore the same with respect to the creeds? This is the ecclesial plagiarism I mentioned. If I edit the creed, it no longer functions as an authority over me, but I over it. In this sense, we cannot say we are in solidarity with anyone, either today or long ago, in the recitation of the creeds as Protestants. Why would the ecclesiology which gave it birth and the battles therein be incidental to its meaning? Can I think that St. Augustine is with me when I spurn the Church to which he submitted?⁵ Thanks be to God for various creeds and their use in Protestant communities. But it is not altogether clear that a principled creedalism actually exists apart from the Catholic Church and the individualism of “me and my Bible.”

I have made two perhaps frustrating assumptions: that the Church of Christ is visible, and that the Catholic Church today is that Church. I can only say that Petrine primacy was rather easily established from the Fathers,⁶ and that patristic authors on the Eucharist and apostolic succession cast more than a reasonable doubt on both the authority of my community to believe otherwise (and still be the Church) and the antiquity of those particular beliefs. Some might say that I have been a rebel from day one, and there is some truth in that. However, even as I actively investigated Catholic claims, and explored Catholic life, I never lost sight of Christ Jesus. I found Him there as I went; I pleaded with Him to guide me. I gave Jesus every question.

Even as I entered RCIA last August, I was uncommitted. Yes, I had dared to walk on the dangerous ground of uncertainty of all but Jesus. Yes, I put my career on hold, and then ended what it would have been. Yes, I struggled, and hurt, and cried, and prayed. You bet, I was afraid. It wasn’t as bad as what Francis Schaeffer went through, and though he took a different path, I thank God that I never doubted Jesus as he did. I knew Him, and He knows me. But the heart of it all is that Jesus asked me to surrender everything to follow Him, even to Rome, and the vicar who sits on Peter’s chair. The intellectual and historical collided with the personal; I had to do it in the peace of conscience. In that peace, and for that peace.

The most damaging chimera, the most serious error of the Reformation, is Sola Scriptura. It caused me to kidnap our ancient brethren in the faith, to claim them as my own against their wills. I had to ask my own heritage boldly, “Who asked us?” and be willing to live with the reality that no one did. I could not live with a hermeneutic that couldn’t silence the Baptist down the street (and bring us into harmony) much less the heretic. I had to face the reality of Christian division, and the reality that these divisions were caused by false principles I’d inherited from a movement I’d thought necessary. Its animating principle conspires to make invisible and without doctrine the Church we’d rightly claimed as our mother, outside of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. The old saw that, “If I’m wrong, I’ll be on me knees tomorrow morning outside the Vatican doing penance” is just a toothless phrase if one’s hermeneutic of Scripture, history, and Church disallows the very consideration that one is wrong.

My beloved brethren in Christ Jesus scattered in many places, let us prayerfully consider whether the convergence of truth now leads us to begin again, to return home in peace.

Memorial of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mother

1. See “Reformed Imputation and the Lord’s Prayer.”
2. For example, see Trinity Kirk’s “On Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Reformed Catholicity.”
3. See WCF XXV.
4. See, for example, “C. The Delusion of Derivative Authority.”
5. Think of his statement to the Donatists, “You know what the Catholic Church is, and what that is cut off from the Vine; if there are any among you cautious, let them come; let them find life in the Root. Come, brethren, if you wish to be engrafted in the Vine: a grief it is when we see you lying thus cut off. Number the Bishops even from the very seat of Peter: and see every succession in that line of Fathers: that is the Rock against which the proud Gates of Hell prevail not.” (PL 43.30.) See also his statement against the epistle of Manichaeus quoted in The Chair of Peter: D. Fifth Century.
6. See, for example, Steven Ray’s book Upon This Rock. Other relevant works can be found in “The Papacy” section of Suggested Reading.”

Mark Galli

His reasoning begins with a notion of the early Church as “Massive confusion.” He writes, “The Holy Spirit set the pattern for what church would be like at the day of Pentecost. And it looked like this: Massive confusion.” For Galli, the New Covenant introduced “radical leveling” such that there was no magisterium, and widespread doctrinal disagreements, often taking decades to resolve. No decisions by Apostles or councils were authoritative. The Apostles tried to use their authority to settle disputes, but the best they could do was appeal to Scripture just as any other Christian could. Doctrinal disagreements were eventually resolved by Christians who “lived and argued together at the prodding of the Holy Spirit,” without any magisterium. Galli concludes, writing, “We don’t need a magisterium. We already have a Lord, who told us that not even the gates of Hades (whose landlord loves to sows confusion in the church!) will prevail against the church. In short, we don’t need premature closure as much as we need persevering confidence that the Spirit will lead us into all the truth we need, when we need it.”

Did the Early Church have a Magisterium?

Of course having a magisterium is useful, but the utility of having a magisterium is no reason to become Catholic. Ultimately, one should become Catholic only if the Catholic Church is the Church Christ founded, and thus only if the authority of the Catholic magisterium is a divinely established authority, having been established by the incarnate Christ before His Ascension. If the Catholic magisterium was not established by Christ, then the Catholic magisterium is not even useful, because it has no authority at all, and thus cannot authoritatively adjudicate any question whatsoever. But if the Catholic magisterium was established by Christ, then the due response is not determining whether having this magisterium is useful, but submitting to it, as an expression of our submission to Christ who governs His Church through it.

So the right starting question is whether Christ established a magisterium (i.e. a teaching and governing authority) in His Church. For Galli, the day of Pentecost is the paradigm, and he sees there only chaos and confusion. But that conclusion may itself be premature. Between Christ’s Ascension and Pentecost, the only event Scripture records is the filling of Judas’ office, under the leadership of St. Peter. That would have been superfluous and misguided if in a few days there would be a radical leveling that eliminated any magisterium. In fact, nothing about Pentecost is disordered. Those persons who did not understand the other languages the Apostles were speaking were possibly bewildered by the fact that simple men from Galilee were able to speak foreign languages. The event itself, however, was not “massive confusion” but well-ordered for the very purpose that persons of all different languages could hear and believe the one message the Apostles were preaching, not a multiplicity of contrary teachings. The purpose of the birth of the Church at Pentecost was precisely to ‘unconfuse’ the separation and confusion God had sent on prideful man at the Tower of Babel.¹ If the Church were to be “massive confusion,” that would not be any different from the post-Babel situation; disorder and confusion cannot possibly rectify disorder and confusion.

And there is evidence in Scripture not only of order, but of a magisterium. About seventeen years after Pentecost, when a dispute arose in the universal Church, we see in Acts 15 that it was settled in an orderly way at the Jerusalem Council attended by Apostles and elders. And in his first letter to the Corinthians St. Paul writes clearly, “for God is not a God of confusion [ἀκαταστασίας -- disorder] but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.” (1 Cor. 14:33) A few verses later he writes: “But all things must be done properly and in an orderly [τάξιν] manner.” (1 Cor 14:40) To see only confusion on the day of Pentecost and in the early Church is to miss the clear evidence that Christ gave authority to His Apostles, and that they authorized others to succeed them in governing and teaching the particular Churches so that all things would be done in an orderly manner, and that there was an established means by which the unity and peace of the Church would be preserved.²

Confidence in the Holy Spirit Requires not Co-opting the Holy Spirit

According to Galli, even though there was no visible order or structure in the early Church, nevertheless the Spirit always continued to lead the Church into all truth, not only in that first generation of Christians but even down to the Evangelicalism of the present day. He writes:

But even after they [i.e. the Apostles] spoke or wrote, the church had to go through a period of discernment to determine what the Holy Spirit was, in fact, teaching the church. … The full sweep of church history suggests that the Holy Spirit has, in fact, led us into all truth through no other way than men and women, slave and free, Jew and Gentile wrestling with one another about whatever issue is at hand until, in the Spirit’s good time, a consensus emerges. … We mustn’t forget that for a couple of hundred years, most Christians were not Trinitarians in the way we understand the Trinity today, but the Holy Spirit slowly led the church into a fully Trinitarian faith.

Galli’s notion of the Spirit continually and faithfully leading the Church into all truth is something that Catholics also deeply affirm.³ But there is a fundamental incompatibility in Galli’s position, because the notion that the Holy Spirit continually “guides the Church into all truth” justifies the “confidence” of which Galli speaks only if the Church has visible, institutional unity. The claim that “the Church” had to determine something is an objective claim only if “the Church” has a visible unity as a single institution. Otherwise, the claim reduces to “those with whom I agree reached the conclusion with which I agree.” By denying the existence of a magisterium, Galli is left to pick out “the Church” by way of agreement with his own interpretation of Scripture. And there is no basis for confidence that the Holy Spirit is uniquely leading that group of persons into all truth, because any group of heretics could make the very same claim.

For example, the reason the Arians could not credibly claim that the Church had to go through a period of discernment to determine that the Holy Spirit was, in fact, teaching the Church that Arianism is true, that after the Nicene Council the Church continued only with those in the Arian tradition and that those persons who followed the decision of the Council were the heretics who were thereby separated from the Church, is precisely that the visible Church made this decision at that Council by way of the magisterium of bishops in communion with the episcopal successor of the Apostle Peter.

Similarly, the monophysites could not credibly claim to be the continuation of the Church by the leading of the Holy Spirit precisely because the magisterium of the Church decided against monophysitism at the Council of Chalcedon ratified by Pope Leo. And the same is true of each of the heresies the Church faced in her early centuries. A magisterial decision made it possible for the claim that the Holy Spirit is guiding the Church to be an objective claim, rather than a relativistic claim made by one of multiple parties, each attempting to co-opt the ‘guidance’ of the Holy Spirit to support their own particular interpretation of Scripture.

For claims about the Holy Spirit leading “the Church” to determine something to be objective claims, rather than merely self-serving attempts to co-opt the Holy Spirit to support the emergence of one’s own interpretations and theology, the Church must be visible and visibly one. Yet the Church can have a visible unity as a single institution only by way of a hierarchical unity, i.e. only if there is a magisterium, for the reasons Tom Brown and I explained in “Christ Founded a Visible Church.”

Confidence and the Consensus Criterion

Galli claims that “a consensus emerges,” but he does not include the “among whom” qualifier. A consensus did not emerge among the conjunction of those following the decision of the Council of Nicea and those following Arius. The magisterial decision against the Arians forced the Arians out of the visible Church, and thus did not allow Arianism to be even a “branch within” the Church. A consensus did not emerge between Catholics and Marcionites; rather, the magisterial decision by the Church of Rome forced the Marcionites out of the visible Church, and again did not allow Marcionism to be a “branch within” the Church. And so on, with all the heresies throughout Church history.

In order for the “a consensus emerges” criterion to be meaningful as a basis for confidence that this consensus is the result of the Holy Spirit’s guiding, this consensus must be distinguishable in principle from the sort of consensus that heretics can attain among themselves. But without a magisterium, the only kind of consensus possible is a consensus of precisely that sort, i.e. a consensus among those who agree with oneself and one’s own interpretation. Without a magisterium, any heretical group could claim to be the Church, and could claim that its own heretical beliefs are the result of what the Holy Spirit gradually taught the Church, and could claim that consensus was reached among those who agree with their particular heresy. When heretical groups make such claims, each claiming to be the Church uniquely led into all truth by the Spirit, while each group holds beliefs incompatible with beliefs held by the other groups, this shows that in claiming to have been led to their ‘truth’ by the Holy Spirit they are merely co-opting the Holy Spirit to support their own interpretation and the historical process by which their own set of beliefs and interpretations arose. For Galli to have a basis for confidence in the Spirit’s guidance of the group of persons who agree with his own interpretation of Scripture, he cannot be in the same epistemic situation as those heretical groups, groups which he himself would claim to be heretical. And yet that is exactly the epistemic situation he is in, defining “the Church” by way of agreement with his own interpretation of Scripture.

Church history shows that heretical groups naturally treat the divine providence by which they were divinely permitted to fall into heresy as though it were instead the Holy Spirit supernaturally and uniquely leading their particular group into the truth that none of the other sects holds. Any heretical group could claim like Galli that “the full sweep of church history suggests that the Holy Spirit has, in fact, led us into all truth.” Any group of persons can be an “us” and claim to be “the Church.” But without a magisterium instituted by Christ, every claim to be “the Church” reduces to a claim about a group of persons who shares one’s own theological opinion. Without a divinely established magisterium, the confidence one can have that one’s own theological opinion is what the Holy Spirit has led “the Church” to determine cannot be qualitatively greater than that of every heretical group throughout Church history who thought the same about themselves and their theological opinion.

Without a magisterium, therefore, there is no basis for confidence that the set of persons picked out by their agreement with one’s own theological opinion is the Church being led into all truth by the Holy Spirit, and that one’s own theological opinion is that to which the Holy Spirit has been guiding the Church for the past two thousand years. Without a magisterium, confidence in the Spirit guiding “the Church” is actually confidence in one’s own interpretation of Scripture, by which what counts as “the Church” is determined. So for any claim about “the Church coming to determine what the Holy Spirit is saying,” what has always made it possible for such claims to be objective and not a mere retrospective co-opting of the Spirit to give divine sanction to one’s own interpretation, has been the existence of a divinely established magisterium by which that determination was authoritatively made definitive in the visible Church.

Depending on the Magisterium while Denying its Existence

Thus in appealing to what the Church came to determine by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Galli is implicitly depending on the Catholic magisterium of the first millennium. In that sense Galli is implicitly borrowing from the Catholic Church in order to ground the determinations he claims were made by the leading of the Holy Spirit through the early centuries of the Church.⁴ For Galli, however, “there was no magisterium in the early church, but only Christians who lived and argued together at the prodding of the Holy Spirit.”

But as I have just shown, his claim that the Holy Spirit guided “the Church” to make determinations requires that there was a magisterium, because otherwise “Church” would be reduced to “those persons throughout time who generally agree with my own interpretation of Scripture.” In that case Galli’s claim that the Holy Spirit teaches and prods the Church would be a co-opting of the Holy Spirit in support of the process by which those who generally agree with Galli came to the set of beliefs and interpretations he himself affirms. By denying that there was a magisterium in the first millennium, Galli undermines his claim that anything has been determined or settled. Everything remains up in the air, an open question yet to be settled. And thereby he undermines the very story he tells about the Spirit guiding the Church into all truth. There can be no objective development of doctrine without a magisterium, because without a magisterium not only can nothing be definitively determined, but even the identity of the Church cannot be objectively determined; there can only be those who share one’s own interpretation, and all the other groups who do not.

Every heretical group in Church history could claim that it does not need a magisterium because it has has the Spirit, and this fact undermines the objectivity of Galli’s claim, as I have shown above. But no less problematic for Galli’s position is that to hold that things have been determined in any definitive sense over the course of Church history, there has to have been a magisterium. Otherwise, what has happened is not in any sense a ‘determination,’ but merely a choice by Galli to place himself in one among hundreds of different theological traditions that emerged through various schisms and doctrinal disputes, each claiming to have been guided by the Holy Spirit to the ‘truth’ of their own unique position. In order to appeal to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the Church, and this not ultimately reduce to a burning in one’s own personal bosom, “the Church” must be picked out by something other than its agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture; it must be a visible body with a unified magisterium established by Christ. And if that is the case, then the proper response is to find that teaching and governing authority Christ established in His Church, and follow Christ by following it.

What would a Rejection of a Divinely Established Magisterium Look Like?

Galli claims that he does not need a magisterium, because he already has the Spirit:

We don’t need a magisterium. We already have a Lord, who told us that not even the gates of Hades (whose landlord loves to sows confusion in the church!) will prevail against the church.

The notion that “we don’t need a magisterium; we have the Spirit” is not a new one. The Montantists held something quite similar toward the end of the second century. Presbyterian minister Rick Philips replied similarly to Michael Liccione a few years ago.⁵ But there is a principled epistemic difference between submitting in the “obedience of faith” to the Church that Christ Himself founded when He was on the earth, not because it conforms to one’s own interpretation of Scripture but because Christ founded it, and forming or joining a novel community of persons because their doctrines generally match one’s own interpretation of Scripture. When we work our way through Church history and we examine the plethora of heretical sects that arose and decayed over the past two thousand years, we find that these heretical sects all have something in common; they were each formed on the basis of a particular novel interpretation of Scripture, and other persons not infrequently joined them on the basis of their agreement with that interpretation, rather than submitting to the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church Christ founded. Following the Church that is already there and has always been there in continuity from the Apostles, is an act of faith in Christ who founded it. But forming a new sect on the assumption that the Church that has always been there in continuity from the Apostles is wrong, has always been an act of pride and rebellion against ecclesial authority.

As Christians we know both that Satan wants to make us think more highly of ourselves than we ought, and that he wants to destroy Christ’s Church. Pride is the chief of the seven deadly sins, and this was the sin by which Satan fell. So we know that one of his chief goals in attacking Christ’s Church is to entice Christians to rebel against Christ, by rebelling against the teaching and governing authority Christ established in His Church. We also know that he is an angel of light, and that he tempts men by making evil seem good. So how can he persuade men to rebel against Christ, while making them think that they are serving Christ? What would it look like, if Satan were successfully to persuade Christians to rebel against Christ’s Church? He would do this through pride portrayed as zeal for Christ and His gospel, convincing men to think that they can interpret Scripture better than can the magisterium Christ established in His Church. It would in effect reduce to an ecclesial version of Pink Floyd’s ‘we don’t need no education.’

That is not the virtue of faith, but the vice of pride coated in the veneer of love for Christ and His gospel. Such persons take interpretive authority to themselves, rather than submitting in humility to the ecclesial authority Christ established, in succession from the Apostles. This is the way Satan causes schisms and heresies, through a pride in which a person takes to himself an ecclesial and interpretive authority not given to him by the magisterium Christ established. Faith is not expressed through ‘submitting’ to “the Church” as picked out by its agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.⁶ That is neither submission nor faith. That is distrusting Christ, by distrusting the Church He founded, and distrusting His governance of His Church through the persons He chooses and authorizes to teach and govern His Church.

Faith, by contrast, “believes and professes all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.” Because faith does not presume eccleisal deism, faith submits to the Church that has always been there, even before the sixteenth century and all the way back to the Apostles, in the humility that is the very opposite of the pride that takes to oneself an ecclesial and interpretive authority that has not been given to oneself by those already having that authority. This is what St. Thomas Aquinas explained about the relation between faith and the Church, namely, that faith in Christ is faith through the Church Christ founded.⁷ It should be of no small concern that one’s position is indistinguishable in principle from a case of rebellion against divinely established authority. In order to justify separation from the already existing magisterium, one must have a principled basis for distinguishing rightful dissent from rebellion. And “following my own interpretation of Scripture” is no such principled basis, because it is common to all the heretical and schismatic sects and their founders.

We need a magisterium in order to have an ecclesial faith, rather than a me-and-my-Bible [along with whoever happens to agree with my interpretation] faith, and because otherwise Christ would not have established a magisterium in His Church, and enjoined us to “submit” to them and “obey” them as persons who keep watch over our souls (Heb 13:17). Christ chose and authorized Apostles not to force the early Church to choose between following the Apostles and following the Holy Spirit, but so that they could follow the Spirit by following the Apostles. Similarly, Christ’s promise concerning His Spirit leading men into all truth is not a promise that the Spirit will guide private interpretation or private bosom-burning into all truth. It provides no ground for certainty “that I am being guided into all truth” for those persons separated from the magisterium and following their own interpretation of Scripture along with others who share that interpretation. Christ’s promise that the Spirit will guide “you” into all truth has been understood in the visible Church as a promise that the Spirit will lead the Church through the magisterium He established. That is precisely how we can have confidence to know that we are being led by the Holy Spirit, and not co-opting the Spirit to sanction our own private interpretation or subjective bosom-burning.

1. See “Pentecost, Babel, and the Ecumenical Imperative.”
2. See “Sola Scriptura, a Dialogue Between Michael Horton and Bryan Cross, section IX, Apostolic Succession.
3. See “Ecclesial Deism.”
4. Of course this borrowing is arbitrary, since Galli is taking some things determined by the Catholic Church, and rejecting others. But nevertheless, by taking magisterial decisions as determinations produced by the Spirit, Galli is implicitly relying on the Catholic magisterium.
5. My reply to Philips is titled “Play church.
6. See “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority.”
7. See “St. Thomas Aquinas on the Relation of Faith to the Church.”

Mike Hsu

I’m grateful for Mike’s interaction with my article, because I believe that entering into dialogue is a first step toward attaining that unity Christ prayed that His followers would enjoy. At the same time, I would like to clear up a misunderstanding, and explain why a call to seek to establish a “united ecclesial structure” from one that does not already exist is problematic.

I agree that Christians should seek for “united hearts,” if that means to be united in love for Christ, and thereby in love for one another for Christ’s sake. But just as we cannot love what we do not know, so the foundation of charity between believers is unity of faith. St. Peter wrote, “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.” (1 Peter 1:22) And Pope Leo XIII wrote, “But how can hearts be united in perfect Charity where minds do not agree in Faith?”¹ Our capacity for loving one another deeply from the heart as fellow servants of Christ depends on together obeying and sharing the truth from Christ and about Christ. The more a fellow Christian believes that I deny some essential of faith, or believes that I affirm something heretical, the less we are capable of having hearts united in agape. So the pursuit of “united hearts” requires the pursuit of the “one faith” (Eph. 4:5) that has been handed down from the Apostles. But pursuing the one faith by which we can be united in heart requires pursuing a unified ecclesial structure, because otherwise there are as many interpretations as there are interpreters. Therefore, without ever sacrificing truth for unity, all Christians should be pursuing not only unity of faith but also a united ecclesial structure. To deny that would be to abandon altogether the concept of schism as an evil.² Affirming the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds involves affirming the unity and catholicity of the Church, and so recognizing the sinfulness of schism, and thus the necessity of pursuing and preserving structural unity in one body. No denomination limited to a certain geography or certain ethnicity, and not a member of a worldwide organization can claim to be “catholic,” and therefore can claim to be the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church Christ founded.³

Denying the obligation to pursue visible unity with other Christians would require giving up the claim to believe in a visible Church, whether universal or local.⁴ That is because to deny our obligation to pursue a united ecclesial structure with other Christians is likewise to deny our obligation to belong to a local visible church.⁵ Claiming that we must belong to a local visible church but that visible churches need not belong to a universal ecclesial structure would be ad hoc and therefore self-refuting. The ad hoc nature of man-made denominations ‘disallowing’ do-it-yourself church’ is not lost on the emergent generation.⁶ All the reasons one could provide for the necessity of the visibility and structure of the local Church equally support the necessity of the visibility and structure of the universal Church. For these reasons I’ll take as a given that we agree that all Christians ought to be pursuing a unified ecclesial structure, each without ever denying what he believes to be true, or in any other way going against his conscience. The point in question, therefore, is whether the unified ecclesial structure all Christians ought to be pursuing must already exist now.

The reason why the visible ecclesial unity toward which Protestant-Catholic reunion is ordered must already be present can be found in “Pentecost, Babel, and the Ecumenical Imperative.” By his own efforts man can effect only a man-made unity ordered to earthly, temporal ends. Unity of this sort is not in itself evil, nor is the pursuit of such unity in itself evil. Natural virtues are not evil, and neither is the man-made peace that results from peace-treaties, human alliances, human compacts, man-made clubs, organizations, corporations, or other such agreements or societies. But the sort of peace and unity achieved in those cases is not a supernatural peace or a supernatural unity. They are each instances of a merely natural peace and natural unity.⁷

By contrast, the peace of God surpasses all human comprehension (Philippians 4:7). Jesus, speaking to His Apostles, said, “My peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you.” (John 14:27) Christ’s peace is not a natural peace that can be established by men. Because this peace surpasses human comprehension, it cannot be established by mere men, according to the natural power of men. Christ’s peace is a supernatural peace that comes only from Him. St. Paul teaches that we are called into one body to be ruled by this supernatural peace in Christ’s mystical Body, i.e. the Church. (1 Cor 12) He writes, “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body.” (Col 3:15) The presence of this peace in His Body is not an accident, because Christ Himself “is our peace,” (Eph. 2:14) and by His Spirit we enter into Christ’s peace through union with Him in His mystical Body.⁸ The unity of the Spirit (Eph 4:3) is a participation in the peace of Christ, through sharing in His Holy Spirit who animates His Body, the Church.

The Dilemma

For this reason, seeking to establish a visible ecclesial structure, while presuming that the visible ecclesial structure Christ established does not exist, entails a dilemma. Either Christ endowed His Church with a unified ecclesial structure that was later lost, and which mere men are seeking to reestablish, or Christ did not endow His Church with a unified ecclesial structure, and ecumenically minded men seeking to establish a visible ecclesial structure are seeking to establish something beyond what Christ intended. Let’s consider each horn separately.

Horn A: On one horn of the dilemma is the claim that Christ endowed His Church with a unified ecclesial structure that was later lost, and which mere men now seek to reestablish. If that unified ecclesial structure was essential to Christ’s Church, then adopting this horn obviously presupposes ecclesial deism, because it requires believing that Christ allowed something essential to His Church to be lost, and this entails that the Church herself was lost. Moreover, because it affirms the responsibility of all Christians to pursue the realization of a unified ecclesial structure, it either attributes to mere men the ability to establish a supernatural unity, or it treats the sort of unity Christ established in His Church as a merely natural unity that men can establish themselves. The former notion entails an ecclesial pelagianism,⁹ while the latter notion implicitly denies the unique deity of Christ, by treating the Church He founded as a merely natural society on the same level as any other human society formed by mere men, rather than as a supernatural society which is Christ’s Mystical Body of which He is the Head.

On the other hand, the notion that the unified ecclesial structure Christ established was only a kind of extraneous decoration, nice to have but not essential, is deeply problematic. It treats the unity of the Church’s governing and teaching authority as a mere adornment that is not part of the Church’s nature, but as something that can be removed without any injury to the Church’s life. However, the unity of the governing and teaching authority is essential for the very existence of a divinely established governing and teaching authority. If the Church’s governing and teaching authority could be divided into various competing factions, none having more authority than the others, there would cease to be a governing and teaching authority in the Church.¹⁰ So for this reason this position reduces to a kind of biblicism (i.e. solo scriptura), in which each individual retains ultimate magisterial authority for himself.¹¹

This notion that the unified ecclesial structure is not essential to the Church reduces the Church to something that is in essence invisible, and accidentally visible only when the Church happens to possess a unified ecclesial structure, perhaps only at the very beginning of her history. As a result, schism would never be intrinsically wrong. Whenever any Christian disagreed with any other Christians, he could legitimately separate from them and form a different sect, so long as he held no bitterness in his heart. And therefore this notion undermines the very prospect of pursuing a unified ecclesial structure, since such a structure would be entirely devoid of authority, and entirely conditional on unanimous consent among all Christians, something that both common sense and Church history indicate does not happen. Without mutual recognition of divinely established magisterial authority, there are almost as many opinions as there are persons.

Not only that, but whatever unified ecclesial structure men would establish would not be a restablishment of the Church Christ founded. Whatever new institution ecumenically minded Christians established would be a numerically different institution from the one Christ founded, i.e. it would be an altogether new institution that had never before existed. It would therefore not be a divine institution (i.e. one founded by Christ) nor would Christ be its Head, nor would the Holy Spirit be its animating principle. It would be merely a man-made institution. The future unified ecclesial structure intended by Protestants seeking visible ecclesial unity can be a divine institution only if it is the very same divine institution that the incarnate Christ Himself founded during His time on earth, and which was born on the day of Pentecost. And that means that ecumenically minded Protestants seeking a supernatural unified ecclesial structure are in fact, even if unaware of this truth, seeking the same unified ecclesial structure Christ founded and which has existed in unbroken continuity to this day.

For all these reasons, the notion that Christ endowed His Church with a unified ecclesial structure that was later lost, and which mere men can reestablish, is deeply problematic.

Horn B: On the other horn of the dilemma is the notion that Christ did not endow His Church with a unified ecclesial structure, but now all Christians ought to strive to establish a unified ecclesial structure. The primary problem with this notion is that in seeking to establish a unified ecclesial structure for the “one holy catholic Church,” ecumenically minded Christians would be seeking to establish something beyond what Christ Himself intended or instituted when He established His Church. In that case, if Christ did not found a body with a unified ecclesial structure, then to seek to bring all Christians into a body with a structural unity is a form of “outdoing Christ,” that is, it seeks to go beyond the unity that Christ Himself saw fit to establish in His Church by imposing on what He founded as a merely invisible entity a visible unity He Himself did not see fit to establish. But seeking to outdo the omniscient, omnipotent God involves no small hubris. Claiming to worship Christ as God, while seeking to outdo Him in the establishment of ecclesial unity, is likewise no small performative contradiction, and undermines the claim to be following Christ as God.¹²

Someone might claim that Christ secretly instructed His Apostles to pass along a message through the generations, instructing them to wait until the third millennium to establish a visible ecclesial structure. But the notion that Christ established His Church only as an invisible unity while secretly transmitting the instruction that His disciples should someday (in the third millennium) upgrade the unity of the Church to visible structural unity is a kind of gnosticism. It requires believing in some secret tradition that has not been recorded or developed by any Church Father. Such a claim deserves no further consideration.

This horn of the dilemma faces a further undesirable consequence. Any attempt to build a man-made catholic (i.e. universal) ‘Church,’ rather than being reconciled to the Catholic Church Christ founded, would be the religious equivalent of attempting to restart the building of the Tower of Babel. As I explained in “Pentecost, Babel, and the Ecumenical Imperative,” an attempt by man to form a universal Church is not essentially different from the mission of the Antichrist, who seeks to replace the Church Christ founded with a universal Church founded by man, and thus (despite the appearances) ordered ultimately to the worship of man.

Therefore, the notion that Christ did not endow His Church with a unified ecclesial structure but that we all ought now to establish a unified ecclesial structure, is also problematic.

So both horns of the dilemma are untenable. The only remaining possibility is that Christ endowed His Church with a unified ecclesial structure that has never been lost, and therefore that the full visible reunion of Christians now separated by schism involves a return to that same continuing Catholic Church.¹³ And that entails that the goal of ecumenical reunion is an ecumenism of return. As St. Jerome said, “We must abide in that Church, which was founded by the Apostles, and endures to this day.”¹⁴ Pope Pius XI similarly writes:

[T]he union of Christians can only be promoted by promoting the return to the one true Church of Christ of those who are separated from it, for in the past they have unhappily left it. …

Furthermore, in this one Church of Christ no man can be or remain who does not accept, recognize and obey the authority and supremacy of Peter and his legitimate successors. Did not the ancestors of those who are now entangled in the errors of Photius and the [Protestant] Reformers, obey the Bishop of Rome, the chief shepherd of souls? Alas their children left the home of their fathers, but it did not fall to the ground and perish for ever, for it was supported by God. Let them therefore return to their common Father, who, forgetting the insults previously heaped on the Apostolic See, will receive them in the most loving fashion. For if, as they continually state, they long to be united with Us and ours, why do they not hasten to enter the Church, “the Mother and mistress of all Christ’s faithful”? Let them hear Lactantius (c. 250 – c. 325) crying out: “The Catholic Church is alone in keeping the true worship. This is the fount of truth, this the house of Faith, this the temple of God: if any man enter not here, or if any man go forth from it, he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation. Let none delude himself with obstinate wrangling. For life and salvation are here concerned, which will be lost and entirely destroyed, unless their interests are carefully and assiduously kept in mind.”¹⁵

Let, therefore, the separated children draw nigh to the Apostolic See, set up in the City which Peter and Paul, the Princes of the Apostles, consecrated by their blood; to that See, We repeat, which is “the root and womb whence the Church of God springs,” not with the intention and the hope that “the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” will cast aside the integrity of the faith and tolerate their errors, but, on the contrary, that they themselves submit to its teaching and government. Would that it were Our happy lot to do that which so many of Our predecessors could not, to embrace with fatherly affection those children, whose unhappy separation from Us We now bewail. Would that God our Savior, “Who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth,” would hear us when We humbly beg that He would deign to recall all who stray to the unity of the Church!”¹⁶

To the ears of many Protestants, such words are sectarian and arrogant. Yet if ‘sectarianism’ is simply defined as the claim that the body to which one belongs is the Church Christ founded, then assuming that ‘sectarianism’ [so defined] is always wrong presupposes either that Christ never founded a visible Church or that, having done so, at some point He allowed it to fall out of existence. Either way, such an assumption is not theologically neutral; it assumes precisely what is in question between Protestants and Catholics, namely, either that Christ did not found a visible Church,¹⁷ or that if He did, some kind of ecclesial deism is true. The person making this assumption has placed himself in an epistemic position in which he cannot come to discover whether Christ did in fact found a visible Church against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. In his mind he has already ruled out the very possibility, by assuming that such a thing would be sectarian, and that sectarianism is always wrong.

Nor is it arrogant to claim to be what one actually is. Hence the notion that claiming to be the Church Christ founded is ipso facto arrogant likewise presupposes that there is no body which is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church Christ founded, just as the notion that claiming to be the Son of God is ipso facto arrogant presupposes that there is no Son of God. So the charge that claiming to be the Church Christ founded is arrogant is a question-begging charge, i.e. it assumes precisely what is in question.

I certainly welcome the call among ecumenically minded Protestants for “united hearts” and a “united ecclesial structure.” What I have done here is show why the pursuit of a “united ecclesial structure” in an ecumenism of non-return faces an intractable dilemma. The solution to that dilemma is an ecumenism of return.¹⁸

May the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, and unite our hearts in the one body to which we have been called in Christ.

1. Praeclara Gratulationis Publicae.
2. See “Michael Horton on Schism as Heresy.”
3. On ‘catholicity’ as a mark of the Church see comment #21 in the “Collapsing Ecclesiology” thread.
4. cf. Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter XXV.2.
5. See Baptist pastor Mark Dever’s comments on the importance of being part of a local church.
6. See A Reflection on PCA Pastor Terry Johnson’s “Our Collapsing Ecclesiology,”.
7. For a helpful explanation of the natural/supernatural distinction, see “Nature, Grace, and Man’s Supernatural End: Feingold, Kline, and Clark” or see Lawrence Feingold’s The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and His Interpreters.
8. See Mystici Corporis Christi.
9. Pelagianism is the notion that without grace man can attain the supernatural end which is heaven. Ecclesial pelagianism is the notion that mere men can establish a supernatural society.
10. See “Philosophy and the Papacy.”
11. Cf. “Solo Scripture, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority.”
12. I first wrote about this horn of the dilemma in 2007, as I explained in “Institutional Unity and Outdoing Christ.”
13. This is why Protestantism by its origins is oriented not to the future establishment of a new Catholic Church, but to a return to the Catholic Church; see “Reformation Sunday 2011: How Would Protestants Know When to Return?”
14. Quoted in the Catholic Encyclopedia article titled “Apostolicity.”
15. Divine Institutes IV.30.
16. Mortalium Animos, 10-12.
17. “Christ Founded a Visible Church.”
18. See, for example, “Reformation Sunday 2011: How Would Protestants Know When to Return?.”

Michael Horton is the editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation, co-host of the White Horse Inn radio program, and the J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary California. Recently on the White Horse Inn blog Michael Horton wrote about the nature of schism.

He wrote a post titled “Have Denominations Had Their Day?,” in which he responded to a post by Christianity Today contributor Ed Stetzer titled “Do Denominations Matter?.” Stetzer thinks that denominations are important for pragmatic reasons, namely, that by working together Christians can accomplish much more than by working alone. Horton agrees that denominations matter, but not merely because working together is more efficient or useful. Horton writes:

Scripture’s focus is on what God is doing rather than on what we are doing. The Triune God is saving sinners through preaching and sacrament. There is “one holy catholic and apostolic church” not because individual believers realized that they could more effectively reach the world and accomplish their goals in tandem. Rather, this church exists because of the Father’s eternal election of a people, the Son’s mediation and saving work for them, and the Spirit’s work of uniting them to Christ through the gospel. We are recipients of a kingdom; the Father is the builder, by his Son and Spirit, through the Word.

Therefore, there really is one church—catholic, spread throughout the world yet united in one Lord, one faith, one baptism—even though its visible shape right now seems to speak against it. Same thing with the holiness of the church: holy in Christ, it is nevertheless “simultaneously justified and sinful.”

Horton’s point is that there is only “one holy catholic and apostolic Church” not because Christians thought it would be more useful and effective to work together, but because “of the Father’s eternal election of a people, the Son’s mediation and saving work for them, and the Spirit’s work of uniting them to Christ through the gospel.” However, merely electing, redeeming and [covenantally] uniting persons to Christ does not entail the existence of a Church; it merely entails the existence of persons elected, redeemed and united to Christ. So Hortons’s “Therefore, there really is one church-catholic” does not follow. (See “Why Protestantism has no “visible catholic Church”.”) Christ did something in addition to offering Himself on the cross, and sending His Spirit; He founded a Church, and gave its keys to St. Peter. Cf. Mt. 16:18-19.¹ Because Horton’s conclusion does not follow, this makes Horton’s claim irrelevant to the question of denominations. If by “church-catholic” Horton simply means all the elect, this has no implications regarding whether there should be only one denomination, many denominations, or no denominations.

In his statement Horton makes use of the Lutheran/Reformed notion of simul iustus et peccator [simultaneously justified and sinful] to defend his claim that “there really is one church—catholic, spread throughout the world yet united in one Lord, one faith, one baptism—even though its visible shape right now seems to speak against it.” In other words, just as in Reformed soteriology a believer is perfectly justified by extra nos imputation even while that person remains full of wickedness and eternally damnable sins, so in Reformed ecclesiology the “church-catholic” is perfectly united spiritually and invisibly even while visibly divided into thousands of factions.

The problem with the claim of simul iustus et peccator is that it makes God capable of self-deception or schizophrenia, as I have explained elsewhere.² It also allows us to believe a falsehood, by appealing to the power of God to declare to be true what is simultaneously in fact not true. But that would not be a power on God’s part; that would be a weakness, i.e. an inability to speak only the truth. Moreover, this position devalues and dismisses the physical and material actions of men, and of sects, since the only thing that counts is the invisible and spiritual. What follows from this position is that sin in our heart and body does not matter (i.e. does not affect our salvation in any way), because in no way does it detract from God’s immutable forensic declaration proleptically revealing His declaration concerning us on the Day of Judgment. Of course this theology stipulates that good fruit should follow, just like it stipulates that visible unity should follow. But no length or severity of visible division falsifies the posited invisible union, because according to this ecclesiology visible union is not essential to the invisible [covenantal] union with Christ all believers possess, just as according to this soteriology holiness of life is not essential to the invisible forensic extra nos justification enjoyed by all believers.

For this reason, this position entails that schisms between believers are not in themselves sinful or evil, because they do not detract from the invisible unity between Christ and every believer; they only (sometimes) hurt the Christian cause in the pragmatic ways Stetzer notes. According to this notion, the truth is in the invisible realm of the divine declaration, even when the condition in the material, visible world is exactly the opposite. The same nominalism that leads to a gnostic conception of justification leads likewise to a gnostic ecclesiogy in which the visible and material is unimportant and ultimately irrelevant. Because merely electing, redeeming and [covenantally] uniting persons to Christ does not entail the existence of a Church, what Horton refers to as the “church-catholic” is impervious to any condition on earth, nor does this ecclesiology entail any condition on earth, so long as one or more persons are [covenantally] united to Christ.

But I wanted to understand how Horton conceives the “church-catholic” to be both one and united, and yet visibly divided. His statement reduced the unity of the Church to something purely invisible. So on his blog I asked him the following the question:

You say that the catholic Church is united (in certain respects) even though “its visible shape now seems to speak against it.” It seems to me that one could look at the present situation and see not a problem with the Church’s “visible shape,” (as though the problem is only a problem between branches within the Church) but rather *schisms from* the visible Church, as were the Donatists in the fourth century. So, what is it, exactly, in your opinion, that distinguishes a *branch within* the catholic Church, from a *schism from* the catholic Church? That is, how does one rightly determine whether a particular denomination is a *branch within* the Church, or a *schism from* the Church?

Michael then replied:

With our confessions, I’d say that this is determined by proclamation of the true gospel and the administration of the sacraments according to Christ’s institution. While no church exhibits these marks with complete purity, bodies that reject the gospel or anything essential to it and substitute their own dogmas, duties, and discipline for Christ’s institution have separated themselves from the visible Church.

I appreciate his reply, but I think it reveals a fundamental flaw in Reformed [and Protestant] ecclesiology. Horton’s reply defines schism from the Church as synonymous with heresy, and in this way eliminates the very possibility of schism from the Church [in the traditional sense of schism from as treated in the Church Fathers]. For the traditional sense of schism from the Church, see, for example, what the fourth century bishop St. Optatus says about schism in “St. Optatus on Schism and the Bishop of Rome.” Similarly, St. Jerome wrote:

Between heresy and schism there is this difference, that heresy perverts dogma, while schism, by rebellion against the bishop, separates from the Church. Nevertheless there is no schism which does not trump up a heresy to justify its departure from the Church. (In Ep. ad Tit., iii, 10)

In St. Augustine’s work titled “Of Faith and the Creed” which he delivered to the bishops assembled at the Council of Hippo-Regius in AD 393, which was the “general assembly of the North African Church,” he wrote the following:

Inasmuch, I repeat, as this is the case, we believe also in The Holy Church, [intending thereby] assuredly the Catholic. For both heretics and schismatics style their congregations churches. But heretics, in holding false opinions regarding God, do injury to the faith itself; while schismatics, on the other hand, in wicked separations break off from brotherly charity, although they may believe just what we believe. Wherefore neither do the heretics belong to the Church catholic, which loves God; nor do the schismatics form a part of the same, inasmuch as it loves the neighbor, and consequently readily forgives the neighbor’s sins, because it prays that forgiveness may be extended to itself by Him who has reconciled us to Himself, doing away with all past things, and calling us to a new life. And until we reach the perfection of this new life, we cannot be without sins. Nevertheless it is a matter of consequence of what sort those sins may be. (Of Faith and the Creed, 10)³

To the best of my knowledge, St. Optatus, St. Jerome, St. Augustine and all the Church Fathers who wrote about schism wrote about schism from as something conceptually distinct from heresy. Yes, any schism from the Church would invariably fall into some heresy, at least in order to justify its schism from the Church. But, nevertheless, schism from the Church referred to a particular Church’s (or smaller group’s) visible break in communion with the Catholic Church (even where that particular Church or group had not embraced any heresy), whereas ‘heresy’ always referred to a departure from the Apostolic faith, even if communion had not yet been visibly broken.

So, it seems to me that Michael has departed from the Church Fathers in this respect, by defining schism from the Church as heresy, and thus eliminating from his ecclesiology the possibility of schism from the Church [in the traditional sense of schism from]. And when schism from the Church is defined out of existence, one loses the possibility of recognizing whether one (or anyone else) is in schism from the Church; it becomes a meaningless question, a question that evokes a blank face, or an attempt to translate the question into the only definition of ‘schism’ one knows, namely, a question about heresy, which is then answered with an assurance that one is holding on to the biblical gospel and sacraments, and therefore that one is surely not in schism from the Church.

When terms in the Tradition are redefined in a way that replaces (rather than develops) the essence of their meaning, then not only does this lead to ecumenical difficulties, but it also leads communities who adopt these redefinitions to a different way of seeing, in this case, a way of seeing in which schism from is not even conceptually visible. By redefining schism from the Church as heresy, the community that adopts this redefinition essentially goes blind to schism from the Church and to the very possibility of schism from the Church.

What has happened, when a fundamental patristic concept is no longer even accessible or intelligible? This concept of schism from the Church dropped out of Protestant theology because the justification of the Protestant departure from the Catholic Church required an underlying radical change in ecclesiology, from an essentially visible catholic Church to an essentially invisible catholic Church with local visible expressions. This concept of schism from the Church is therefore no longer available (and has to be redefined as heresy to cover the semantic hole its absence would leave) in Protestant ecclesiology because the conjunction of (a) the denial of the ministerial priesthood and Holy Orders and (b) the denial of an essentially unified divinely established visible principle of unity entails that the Church is not essentially visible, and therefore that visible unity is not essential to her. But schism from the Church is impossible unless the Church has visible unity. Hence the Protestant move from a visible Church ecclesiology to an invisible Church ecclesiology (even though the language of ‘visible Church’ is retained by Reformed persons) eliminated conceptually the very possibility of schism from the Church, and thus required redefining schism from as just a synonym for heresy.

For this reason, even if Horton wanted to hold to the possibility of schism from the Church by claiming that the visible Church is, say, NAPARC (or some other association of Reformed denominations), he could not do so. That is because if some denominations which held to the same doctrines affirmed by NAPARC denominations were not in communion with NAPARC denominations, nothing would make those denomination the ones in schism from the Church, rather than the other way around. Without a divinely established visible principle of unity that serves as the defining point of reference for the location of the Church, schism from the Church must be redefined as “not holding to [my interpretation of Scripture regarding what is] the gospel and [my interpretation of Scripture regarding what are] the sacraments.” For Catholics, by contrast, that divinely established principle of unity is St. Peter to whom Christ entrusted the keys of the Kingdom, as St. Ambrose said: “Where Peter is, there is the Church.”⁴

Moreover, to justify redefining schism from as heresy, one must assume that all the early Church Fathers who addressed schism from the Church were deeply mistaken, having departed from the Apostolic faith regarding the nature of schism from the Church. In that sense, to justify departing from the Church Fathers regarding the nature of schism from the Church, one must presuppose some form of ecclesial deism. Otherwise, if in their teaching concerning schism from the Church, the Church Fathers were faithfully preserving and defending the Apostolic faith they had received, those who are now redefining schism from as heresy are departing from the Apostolic faith, and thus ironically (given their own their definition of ‘schism’) in that respect separating themselves from the visible Church.

1. See “Christ Founded a Visible Church.”
2. See comment #83 in the “Habitual Sin and the Grace of the Sacraments” post.
3. There St. Augustine implicitly distinguishes between mortal and venial sins. No believer on earth avoids all venial sin, but no one can be at the same time both in mortal sin and in a state of grace.
4. For the role of St. Peter as the Church’s principle of unity see “The Chair of St. Peter.”

Terry Johnson, senior minister of Independent Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Savannah, Ga., wrote an article titled “Our Collapsing Ecclesiology” in the March issue of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s magazine New Horizons. The article is well worth reading, because it examines the recent trends in Evangelicalism away from attendance in Sunday morning services, even away from organized institutional church altogether. It cites George Barna’s announcement of the “New Church,” which is “without structure, organization, clergy, officers, accountability, or discipline. It has no location, commitments, or physical presence. It is merely an informal, ad hoc, uncovenanted association of believers.” According to this view “the local church ceases to exist. The requirement of Hebrews 10:25 (that believers assemble together) could be fulfilled … “in a worship service or at Starbucks.” In the mind of these Evangelicals, “I am not called to attend or join a church. I am called to be the church.” For them, writes Terry, “Church … is like the YMCA, except that one actually has to join the YMCA. It’s good to go there to exercise, but sometimes one can do just as well at home—or maybe somewhere else. “Do what feels right for you,” we hear said. “Go where your needs are met.”

For Terry, this Evangelical conception of ecclesiology is deeply flawed, and he contrasts it with the ecclesiology in the Reformed tradition. He writes:

Thankfully, we have a strong ecclesiology in the Reformed tradition. Calvin endorsed Cyprian’s statement that there is no salvation outside of the church. The Westminster Confession of Faith warns that outside of the visible church “there is no ordinary possibility of salvation” (25.2). Jesus gave to the church the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the power of binding and loosing (Matt. 16:19), and the authority to forgive and retain sin (John 20:23). He appointed apostles, who appointed elders, who are responsible for calling the church to assemble on the Lord’s Day, for conducting public worship, for administering the word and sacraments, and for maintaining a disciplined membership (Matt. 18:15-20; 28:18-20).

As a Catholic, I’m very glad to see interest among Reformed Christians in ecclesiology. I say that because I believe that Terry is absolutely correct in his evaluation of Evangelical ecclesiology and the “Revolution” Barna is describing. The rejection of the local church is a mistake, and the consequence of that rejection is, I suspect, that in one or two generations the children of such Evangelicals will mostly not even identify themselves as Christian. Watching the collapse of Evangelicalism is like watching a trainwreck in slow-motion, but in this case the wreck is the rapid de-Christianizing of a significant percentage of the Christian population. So I affirm the desire of Reformed Christians to separate themselves theologically from the ecclesial desert that is Evangelicalism. And I agree with much of the above cited paragraph.

At the same time, I wish to show here that the ecclesial problem Terry is pointing out in Evangelicalism is not limited to Evangelicalism, but is intrinsic to Protestantism as such. Evangelicalism is only the further inevitable stage in the outward expression of the essence of Protestant ecclesiology. According to that essence, there is no sacramental difference between laity and clergy, the individual ultimately has highest interpretive authority,¹ and there is no visible catholic Church, even though reference is made to such a thing. Terry claims that commitment to “the visible institutional church” has become optional among Evangelicals. But there is a certain sort of irony here, because as I have shown in “Why Protestantism has no “visible catholic Church,”” there is no “visible catholic Church” into which the various Protestant denominations are fully incorporated. Given Protestant ecclesiology, if the alleged entity “the visible catholic Church” were removed and we were left only with embodied Christians, congregations, denominations, and an “invisible catholic Church,” nothing at all would change in reality. And this shows that in Protestant ecclesiology, the “visible catholic Church” is only an idea, not an actual entity; in that respect it is like the clothes in the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” The child can know that the Emperor isn’t wearing any visible clothes, because the Emperor’s appearance is in every way identical to what it would be if he were not wearing any visible clothes.

That there is no “visible catholic Church” into which the various Protestant denominations are fully incorporated is also shown by the fact that within Protestantism there is no way of distinguishing between a schism from the visible catholic Church and a branch within the visible Catholic Church. And yet the Church Fathers distinguished between heresy and schism, and they condemned schism from the Church. St. Cyprian, for example wrote against the Novatian schism from the Church, and St. Optatus and St. Augustine wrote against the Donatist schism from the Church. These saints [i.e. St. Cyprian, St. Optatus, and St. Augustine] saw Novatianism and Donatism as schisms from the Church, not as mere denominations or ‘branches within’ the Church. And the reasons to which they appealed to make this determination would entail that the various Protestant denominations are schisms from the Church, not branches within the Church. (See my post titled “Branches or Schisms?“)

Of course I agree that the Church Christ founded is visible.² But the only visible catholic Church is the Catholic Church in communion with the bishop of Rome.³ But Protestant denominations are not in full communion with the Catholic Church. At the Reformation Protestants made commitment to the “visible catholic Church” optional, by separating themselves from the only visible catholic Church there is. Hence the irony mentioned above, in Terry’s claiming that Evangelicals now are making commitment to “the visible institutional church” optional.

Reformed Ecclesiology vs. Evangelical Ecclesiology

The relation between twenty-first century Evangelicalism and traditional Protestantism in certain respects parallels the relation between sixteenth century Protestantism and the Catholic Church. Terry writes:

Church, as “traditionally” understood, was for Barna a human institution, not a biblical one. The new church, as he construes it, is without structure, organization, clergy, officers, accountability, or discipline. It has no location, commitments, or physical presence. It is merely an informal, ad hoc, uncovenanted association of believers.

Terry points out that for Barna and like-minded Evangelicals, the Church has no structure or hierarchical organization. For Barna, the “visible institutional Church” to which people like Terry refer is merely a set of man-made institutions. And regarding all the Protestant denominations, it is relatively easy to see why Barna could reach that conclusion; they were each founded by mere men, not by Christ Himself. (See “How old is your church?.”) But the “the visible, institutional church” to which Terry refers likewise has no structure or hierarchy. Reformed Christians cannot identify the boundaries of “the visible catholic Church.”⁴ To the question, “What would be different if there were no visible, catholic Church, but only embodied Christians, visible local churches, denominations and associations of denominations?” the Reformed Christian must answer, “nothing.” And this shows that the term does not refer to anything actual in reality, but that in Protestant ecclesiology, the “visible catholic Church” is only a concept in the mind, a mental category under which all Christians are mentally placed.

The collapse of ecclesial structures in Evangelicalism is the logical consequence of this Emperor-has-no-clothes version of Protestantism’s “visible, catholic Church.” If, as Reformed ecclesiology entails, the Church is fundamentally invisible at the universal level, then the Church is essentially invisible all the way down to the local level. In that case the man-made structures at the local level are just that, merely man-made and therefore not only dispensable, but rightly dispensed with, since they were not instituted by Christ. If they are merely man-made ecclesial organizations, then they are instances of the use of human power, control, and manipulation, since the persons who control them have no more divine authority than Joe Protestant. So with respect to authority, there is no reason for these Evangelicals to submit to traditional Protestant denominations or local hierarchies.

Consumerism

Terry claims that people like Barna helped create “the purpose-driven, market-driven church.” He laments the “ipodization” of Christian ministry, in which particular segments of the demographic are ‘targeted,’ leading to “cowboy churches” and “hip-hop churches,” and the endless pursuit of novelty. He adds:

The eccentricities of the highly influential Barna are matched by the commonplace practices of a growing number of unaffiliated and nonattending believers. Church, for many, is like the YMCA, except that one actually has to join the YMCA. It’s good to go there to exercise, but sometimes one can do just as well at home—or maybe somewhere else. “Do what feels right for you,” we hear said. “Go where your needs are met.”

Again, the irony is that going where they believe their needs are being met is precisely why all the members of Terry’s church attend his church. They are going where they believe their needs are being met, according to their own interpretation of Scripture. Protestantism is the “purpose-driven, market-driven church,” as I showed in Ecclesial Consumerism, where I argue that ecclesial consumerism belongs to the very nature and essence of Protestantism. What Barna is talking about as a future Revolution is just another step ‘forward’ in the very same revolution Protestants are living in from five centuries past. Barna’s is the fruit of Protestantism’s ecclesial seed. Terry, however, is making an arbitrary distinction, criticizing the ecclesial consumerism of Evangelicals, but accepting it when his own congregation does it.

There is no principled difference between the ecclesial consumerism that targets a specific demographic or makes itself attractive by following a popular trend, and an ecclesial consumerism that targets a specific “ecclesiastical culture,” or a particular interpretive framework or doctrinal system. The latter is the father of the former.

Concerning the Evangelical pursuit of novelty and trendiness, Terry writes:

Trendy, culturally driven, market-driven churches sow the seeds of their own irrelevance. As the saying goes, “He who marries the spirit of the age will soon find himself a widower.” Their claim upon their audience is temporary: personal preferences expressed, personal needs met, and personal desires fulfilled. Treat the congregation like a market where the consumer is key, where the market’s fickle whims are sovereign, and expect transitory commitments or no commitments.

Terry is right. But what he says applies just as much to ecclesial communities that exist because they preach and teach according to a novel “interpretation of Scripture,” such as the ones Luther and Calvin proposed in the sixteenth century.⁵

Terry wants to put the brakes on the movement of Protestants into the full-blown invisible-Church ecclesiology Barna describes. But this movement is the consequence of the universal acid the first Protestants unleashed in the sixteenth century, the universal acid of the supremacy of the individual’s interpretation of Scripture over against that of the Church. What Barna is describing is that universal acid eating away at Protestantism’s own confessions and denominational structures. If in the sixteenth century Luther and Calvin were justified in rejecting Catholic doctrine, Catholic tradition and the Catholic hierarchy on the basis of their own interpretation of Scripture, then it logically follows that their tradition’s descendants in the twenty-first century may do the same with the Calvinistic/Lutheran/Wesleyan etc. traditions. Protestantism can’t have it both ways. If it wants immutability of doctrine, it needs ecclesial infallibility. But because Protestantism rejected ecclesial infallibility in the sixteenth century, confessional Protestants have no authority to prevent their contemporary heirs from remaking ‘church’ in their own image, each man doing what is “right in his own eyes,” according to his own interpretation, and fashioning a religious practice that Calvin wouldn’t even recognize.

Privately defined marks of the Church

Concerning Barna, Terry writes:

He announces the emergence of the “New Church,” which in fact is no church at all.

Any Catholic bishop in the sixteenth century could have said the same about what Protestants at the time were doing. So in a way, what Terry is criticizing is a case of Protestantism applied to itself. Because the rejection of the sacrament of Holy Orders is intrinsic to Protestantism, each version of Protestantism can define ‘the Church’ according to its own interpretation. Terry, according to his definition (derived from the early Protestants) judges the new Evangelicals not to be a church. But these Evangelicals, by means of their own interpretation of Scripture have arrived at different criteria regarding what is and isn’t a church, and could just as easily judge Terry’s not to be one, or could judge his to be one along with theirs. In Protestantism, no one person or group’s ecclesial criteria (i.e. determination of what is or isn’t a church) has any more authority than anyone else’s. So any person’s “You’re not a church” charge is not only question-begging, but is also a form of theological bullying, because it seeks to impose by stipulation one’s own judgment concerning the marks of the Church over such judgments by other persons, as though one Protestant has authority over the others, when, given Protestantism, no one has the authority to bind anyone else’s conscience regarding the interpretation of Scripture and thus the marks of the Church.

According to Terry, on Sunday morning we are to:

Do what the Scriptures require and what Christians have done for two thousand years. Go to the public assembly, gathered under the discipline of Christ’s appointed officers to be ministered to by the word read, preached, sung, prayed, and administered. God’s people should consider no other alternative, nor desire any other option.

Again, I agree with Terry that God’s people should go to the public assembly on the Lord’s Day. But during the first fifteen hundred years of those “two thousand” years, to all the Christian ancestors of Protestants what was meant by “Christ’s appointed officers” were those having apostolic succession. In the sixteenth century, Protestants redefined ‘apostolicity’ as ‘the Apostles teaching,’ which in practice means, “agreement with one’s own interpretation of Scripture.” So long as Protestantism determines “Christ’s appointed officers” as those who agree with one’s own interpretation of Scripture, rather than those who received authorization from the Apostles, the ecclesial error Terry is addressing in Evangelicalism will only get worse, because the Barna-type ecclesial consumerism is only the more explicit outworking of the same ecclesial consumerism intrinsic to Protestantism itself, where each person chooses who counts as “Christ’s appointed officers” based on the agreement between what those potential officers believe, and one’s own interpretation of Scripture. (See “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority.”)

Catholicity

Terry argues that Evangelicals are abandoning ‘catholicity.’ He writes:

The Reformers and their children took catholicity seriously. John Owen, Richard Baxter, and other mainstream Puritans embraced the titles of “Reformed catholic” or even “mere catholic.” They sought continuity with the catholic tradition, which they accused the Roman Catholics of abandoning in favor of medieval novelties. They rooted their reforms in both Scripture and in catholic practice, particularly as found in the church fathers and the best medieval theologians, such as Bernard of Clairvaux. Universal practice, the established practices of all the churches, was an apostolic ideal (see 1 Cor. 1:2; 4:7; 11:16; 14:33) that the Reformers sought to honor. It matters what “the churches of God,” or “all the churches,” believe and practice. The apostles expected that individual churches would conform to universal (i.e., catholic) norms.

I agree that the early Reformers applied the term ‘catholicity’ to themselves, and wanted to be ‘catholic.’ But in doing so they emptied the word ‘catholic’ of meaning, because in their mouths what counted as ‘catholic’ in the tradition was only what agreed with their own interpretation of Scripture. And so anyone could in that way claim to be catholic. The first Protestants proposed doctrines that were novel and not held by the other local Churches throughout the Catholic Church of that time, and had never been universally held throughout the history of the Catholic Church. Concerning the early Protestants, Terry writes, “Their public ministry was historic—what the church, more or less, had always practiced.” Except without apostolic succession, Holy Orders, Confirmation, Eucharistic Adoration, exorcisms, holy water, relics, penance, absolution, bishops, religious orders, the liturgical calendar, fast days, icons, the sacrifice of the Mass, prayer to the saints, etc. The Protestant movement has been an exercise in historical eclecticism by each of the founders of each Protestant tradition.

And this has left us with an ecclesial mess — there are presently forty-four Reformed denominations just in North America. Catholicity becomes a meaningless word the way it is used in the paragraph just cited, because even the most provincial denomination or Protestant tradition could have written the same paragraph. When one picks and chooses from the Church Fathers according to one’s own interpretation of Scripture, and dismisses everything between St. Ignatius of Antioch and Martin Luther that doesn’t fit with one’s own interpretation of Scripture, the claim to historical catholicity is just empty semantics, because what took place between St. Ignatius of Antioch and Luther wouldn’t look any different if the Reformed system of doctrine is not in fact ‘catholic’ at all, but is a novelty never before believed by any Christians.

Part of Terry’s conception of catholicity is not attempting to appeal to any particular culture or demographic. And again, I agree with him. There should be only one local church in each geographical parish, and all Christians of every age, race, and ethnicity who live in that parish should worship together in that parish. It is the Protestant experiment that has left us with churches of all different denominations in a square-mile area, even across the street from each other, dividing Christians on Sundays by every conceivable doctrinal system, style of worship, and cultural tastes. Terry writes:

Churches ought not to adopt the cultural preferences of any single demographic in the church. To do so is to give an unwarranted preference to one group and unnecessarily alienate everyone else. What should the church do? What did Protestant churches do for the last four hundred years? Or two hundred years? Or one hundred years prior to 1980? Their public ministry was catholic. They ministered and worshiped in the forms of their own ecclesiastical culture, founded on Scripture and tested by time. … A resilient ecclesiology honors catholicity and the communion of all the saints. It maintains universal practice over against the latest thing

There has never been universal practice within Protestantism, since Luther thrust his knife into the table during his unresolved dispute with Zwingli over the Supper at the Marburg Colloquy in 1529. As soon as Protestants left the Catholic Church, they began to become provincial. At first the divisions were based only on differences of interpretation, but soon the differences were based on style, culture, ethnicity, language, socio-economic status, etc. All those differences became factors in determining where and how and with whom one would worship on Sundays. Terry is a member of the Presbyterian Church in America, itself a member of NAPARC, i.e. the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council, which is not itself a member of some international body of Christians encompassing all the nations and ethnicities of the world (except the invisible catholic Church). That’s not catholicity; that’s regionalism and provincialism.

But in the prospect of the collapse of Evangelicalism, Terry is advocating a qualified ecclesial uniformity among Protestants:

Do the public ministries of any two churches anywhere look alike? Absolute uniformity is not necessary, to be sure, but how about some measure of uniformity? Churches ought not to design their public ministries in isolation from the rest of the church, past, present, and future. No public ministry should be idiosyncratic. … A church that targets a specific demographic, be it the young or the old, cowboys or surfers, rockers or hip-hoppers, forfeits apostolicity. Why? Because the apostles did not target specific kinds of people. They cast their gospel nets widely, and their churches, as a consequence, were heterogeneous.

I’m reminded of what the Hebrew said to Moses prior to his divine calling: “Who made you judge over us?” Terry wants uniformity, and calls for it, but he has no more authority to effect it than any other Protestant pastor. So his voice is merely one additional opinion in the sea of competing voices, each offering church-as-he-sees-it, to all the persons seeking church-as-I-want-it. To reject the Catholic Church is to embrace ecclesial pluralism on the grandest scale, because the uniformity Terry wants requires unified authority, which is impossible when, given the “priesthood of all believers” and the rejection of Holy Orders, each man is essentially his own pope, his own conscience being his own highest authority under God.⁶ For this reason, to choose Protestantism, while calling for ecclesial uniformity, is a performative contradiction.

When the first Protestants chose to depart from the practice of the rest of the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, that idiosyncracy was perfectly acceptable, from Terry’s point of view. But when other Protestants presently do not conform to Terry’s particular form of Protestantism, then this idiosyncracy is unacceptable to him. And that’s ad hoc. Terry’s opinion about this is no more authoritative than that of those Protestants who disagree with him and seek to take Protestantism in new directions. The authority vacuum created by the rejection of apostolic succession necessarily leads to a pluralism in which promoters of Reformed ecclesiology have no more authority than do Evangelical ecclesiology, and that authority vacuum created by Protestantism’s fundamental principles is precisely what makes possible the Evangelical ecclesiology Terry is calling Evangelicals to reject.

Yes the Apostles as a whole did not limit themselves to any specific demographic. But that is not what defines apostolicity. Protestantism lost apostolicity at its inception, when it abandoned Holy Orders and apostolic succession. Though apostolicity is related to catholicity, the two are not the same. A person having Holy Orders in succession from the Apostles, who is called to evangelize only say, the Gentiles, retains apostolicity even if his ministry is to a specific group of people. He retains catholicity if he remains part of the Catholic Church. But if he forms or joins a schism, he will necessarily lose catholicity, because no schism can be catholic. The root of the problem of provincialism is schism from the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church Christ founded. Catholicity, like the other three marks of the Church, cannot be removed from the Church Christ founded, because it is part of the very essence of the Church. Just as provincialism is a sign of schism from the Church, so reconciliation to the Catholic Church is the only solution to provincialism, the only way to attain and retain catholicity.

Roots in Tradition

In his diagnosis of the Evangelicalism’s ecclesial problem, Terry advocates a recovery of tradition:

A church without roots in tradition is a church that forfeits the respect that accompanies the voice of historical consensus. It violates catholicity and, as a consequence, forfeits authority. It is perceived as arbitrary, mutable, human, and, ultimately, optional.

Terry is absolutely right. The problem is that merely having “roots in tradition” is not sufficient to give actual authority; it is only sufficient to give the appearance of authority, since any heretical sect could have roots in tradition, either by having originated many centuries ago, or by reading itself back into the Church Fathers through historical ecclecticism, and painting itself as drawing from the past. Terry is telling Evangelicals that by not drawing from the past, they lose the appearance of having authority, and are perceived as merely optional. They can present themselves as having authority (though having no actual authority) only if they sufficiently portray themselves as having roots in the tradition.

It would not be difficult for the new Evangelicals to have their cake and eat it too. So long as they can lay claim to a few phrases or captions from Church Fathers (see “Ligon Duncan’s “Did the Fathers Know the Gospel?“), they can lay claim to those same roots, and avoid this appearance-of-rootlessness problem. It is a very easy solution, since the problem of not having roots in tradition, as Terry describes it, is merely a cosmetic problem. Terry is not saying that the problem with Evangelicalism is that it is not the Church Christ founded, only that its disregard for the tradition in history makes it be perceived (by certain people) as having no authority, and thus to lose the respect of those people.

But the Evangelical rejoinder could just as well be a de-masking of confessional Protestantism as Evangelicalism with window-dressing drawn from Christianity’s past to make itself seem authoritative, but giving it no actual authority. These Evangelicals might just be seeing through the window-dressing, and no longer cowed into submission by it. If it all comes down to a relationship with Jesus, and no man has any more interpretive authority than does anyone else, then, they might say, “we don’t need the window-dressing of tradition; that’s still other men, with no authority over us, trying to control how we ‘do church.’” What is needed for actual authority is not merely “roots in tradition,” but to be, in fact, the very Church Christ founded.

Terry is objecting to what these new Evangelicals are doing, namely, stripping away the appearance of transcendence and authority in what among Protestants has been treated as “the church.” He writes:

In the process, the transcendent reality of the church as Christ’s church, to which respect is due and where authority is recognized, will be lost.

That’s just what Protestantism did in the sixteenth century, by constructing ‘church’ according to each individual’s interpretation of Scripture concerning what are the marks of the Church. Terry accepts that revolution, because he himself works in it; but he objects to the application of it to his own Protestant ecclesial practice. He does not place these new Evangelicals outside the Church. (Notice the title of his article: “Our Collapsing Ecclesiology.”) Instead, he claims that their ecclesiology hides the transcendent reality of the Church. But if respect and authority are due to every part of the Church, including the part which is the new Evangelicalism, then why think that those who wish to emphasize ecclesial transcendence and ecclesial authority have more authority than those Christians who prefer not to emphasize these things, such that the former can tell the latter how to organize and run their churches?

The new Evangelicalism is exposing the chimera of Protestant ecclesial authority. Because anyone can leave any Protestant church at any time and join or form another, while remaining a “branch within,” the ‘authority’ of these communities is only an illusion. The form and practice of the new Evangelicalism is making that explicit, unmasking the illusion of ecclesial authority in the more traditional Protestant churches.

Conclusion

Terry concludes his article with this:

Ecclesiology is collapsing all around us. Our Reformed foundations are sound. However, if we get swept up in the ecclesiastical trends, we too may find our people perceiving the church as something less than the indispensable institution that it is meant to be.

The “Reformed foundations” are Protestantism’s foundations, which are the very foundations upon which the ecclesial consumerism Terry decries are built. Terry is concerned that confessional Protestants may be swept up in the ecclesial consumerism rush. The problem is, they already are, simply by being Protestants. Barna Evangelicals and Emergents are merely taking Protestantism to its logical conclusions. They do not even pretend that there is some “indispensable institution” which Terry still thinks there is. The PCA isn’t indispensable; it only came into existence in 1973. So, what is this indispensable institution of which Terry speaks? NAPARC? No. It is this supposed visible, catholic Church, which as I have shown in Why Protestantism has no “visible catholic Church” is nothing at all.⁷

In Protestantism, if I don’t like a denomination, I can simply start my own, or start my own congregation, or my own house church. In Protestantism ordination does not require apostolic succession; it requires only congregational approval. That is what ordination is in Protestantism, the permission by a congregation (or denomination) to serve as a minister in that congregation or denomination. That’s because one of the fundamental principles of Protestantism is the priesthood of all believers and the rejection of the sacrament of Holy Orders and apostolic succession. Any group of Christians therefore can lay hands on someone, and ‘ordain’ him or her. And the Reformed denominations are the products of just this sort of thing. So the supposed distinction in authority between pastor and laity is, in Protestantism, only a useful fiction. For this reason, there is no principled difference between the Barna Evangelicals who are less formal and structured, and Reformed Protestants, who maintain the illusion of pastoral authority.

Some Evangelicals are beginning to see that the Emperor has no clothes, that “visible catholic Church” language is just that, mere semantics. Though the collapse of ecclesiology in Evangelicalism is in appearance a movement away from Catholicism, yet it is a more transparent expression of Protestantism’s essence as such. And because self-understanding is crucial for ecumenical progress, in that respect the collapsing ecclesiology to which Terry refers might perhaps make possible a more fruitful dialogue between Protestants and the Catholic Church in the pursuit of unity and reconciliation.⁸

1. See “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority.”
2. See the article I co-wrote with Tom Brown, titled “Christ Founded a Visible Church.”
3. See the Catholic Encyclopedia article on “The Church for an explanation of the reason why only the Catholic Church possess the four marks of the Church listed in the Nicene Creed.
4. See, for example, the discussion starting at comment #100 in this thread.
5. Alister McGrath writes, “[I]t will be clear that the medieval period was astonishingly faithful to the teaching of Augustine on the question of the nature of justification, where the Reformers departed from it,” and then later he writes, “The Reformation understanding of the nature of justification – as opposed to its mode – must therefore be regarded as a genuine theological novum.” (Iustitia Dei, pp. 185-187.)
6. Again, see “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority.”
7. Regarding “small-c catholic,” there is no such thing as a “small-c catholic,” because there is no such thing as the “small-c catholic” Church. The term is an abstract concept, having no actual referent. It denies the visibility of the Church, as Tom and I argued in “Christ Founded a Visible Church,” and thus reduces the Church to an invisible entity to which even those in schism from the Church (e.g. Novatians, Donatists) could claim to be in full communion. Anyone can claim to be in full communion with an invisible entity. So this ["small-c catholic"] is a useful (though deceptive) term for schismatics and heretics, to make it seem that they are in full communion and orthodox, when in fact they have departed from the Catholic Church Christ founded, and rejected the faith she believes, teaches and proclaims to be revealed by God.
8. See “Trueman and Prolegomena to How would Protestants know when to return?”

Leonardo De Chirico is a Protestant lecturer in theology at IFED (Istituto di Formazione Evangelica e Documentazione) in Padova, Italy. He edits the theological journal Studi di teologia. He also worked in Italy for twelve years as a Reformed Baptist church planter. Over the past few months Leonardo has posted a series of articles called “The Vatican Files” on the well-known Reformed website Reformation21.org, interacting with twenty-first century Catholicism. Much of the content of these articles is explanatory, and I agree with a good deal of what he says. Here I focus on only a few of his criticisms of Catholic teaching, in his most recent article in the series.

In his most recent article, “The Vatican Files N.4,” Leonardo writes about Pope Benedict’s 2010 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini. (All paragraph numbers from Verbum Domini are from this pdf document.)

Leonardo writes:

In this respect, Benedict XVI writes: “The Church lives in the certainty that her Lord, who spoke in the past, continues today to communicate his word in her living Tradition and in sacred Scripture. Indeed, the word of God given to us in sacred Scripture as an inspired testimony to revelation, together with the Church’s living Tradition, it constitutes the supreme rule of faith” (18). The Bible is upheld, but the Bible is always accompanied and surmounted by the wider, deeper, living tradition of the Church which is the present-day form of the Word. Amongst other things, this means that the Bible is not sufficient in itself to give access to the Word and is not the final norm for faith and practice. The Bible needs to be supplemented by the Catechism of the Catholic Church which is “a significant expression of the living Tradition of the Church and a sure norm for teaching the faith” (74).

Leonardo seems to think that according to the Catholic Church, the “living tradition” [rather than sacred Scripture] is “the present-day form” of the word of God. It is possible that I have misunderstood him here. But from the Catholic point of view, the present-day form of the word of God given to us through Christ is what it has been since the first century, namely, the word both preached and written, within the Church. In other words, the Catholic understanding is not that sacred Scripture was for the Church of some time past, whereas in the present-day we receive the word through “living tradition.” Rather, the Catholic understanding is that in the present day we receive the word of God as contained both in sacred Scripture and in the living tradition of the Church. The word of God revealed by Christ was first received by the early Christians as preached, and only later as preached and written. Sacred Scripture remains part of the “present-day form” of the word of God, but the full present-day form of the word of God is still contained in both Scripture and Tradition, preserved and handed down by the Church as the divinely appointed steward to which this word was entrusted.

A bit later in the article Leonardo writes:

According to VD [Verbum Domini], Scripture must never be read on one’s own. Reading must be always an “ecclesial experience”, i.e. something done in communion with the Church. The issue at stake is not only methodological, as if private readings were to be replaced by study groups at a parish level presided over by a priest, but also hermeneutical. “An authentic interpretation of the Bible must always be in harmony with the faith of the Catholic Church” (30). Reading the Bible needs to be an exercise done in accordance with the institutional church, both in its forms and outcomes. Apparently, there is much wisdom in these statements, especially considering the real risks of fancy, individualistic, awkward interpretations by isolated readers of the Bible.

Leonardo refers to the notion that “Scripture must never be read on one’s own.” There he is drawing from paragraph 30 of Verbum Domini, which reads:

Saint Jerome recalls that we can never read Scripture simply on our own. We come up against too many closed doors and we slip too easily into error. The Bible was written by the People of God for the People of God, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Only in this communion with the People of God can we truly enter as a “we” into the heart of the truth that God himself wishes to convey to us. Jerome, for whom “ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ”, states that the ecclesial dimension of biblical interpretation is not a requirement imposed from without: the Book is the very voice of the pilgrim People of God, and only within the faith of this People are we, so to speak, attuned to understand sacred Scripture. An authentic interpretation of the Bible must always be in harmony with the faith of the Catholic Church. He thus wrote to a priest: “Remain firmly attached to the traditional doctrine that you have been taught, so that you may exhort according to sound doctrine and confound those who contradict it”. (Verbum Domini, 30)

The notion that Scripture “must never be read on one’s own” is not forbidding private study or private meditation on Scripture, as though Scripture can rightly be read only in the physical or liturgical company of other Catholics. The idea is that even when we read the Bible in the privacy of our own home or in the solitude of a desert retreat, we should read it as informed by the Tradition handed down in the Church, so that we read it and meditate on it with the mind of Christ as it as been more deeply revealed in His Church by the Holy Spirit through the living Tradition. Otherwise, it would be very easy to misinterpret Scripture, and fall into heretical error.

Leonardo then writes:

Yet, there is something missing here. For a Church that has forbidden for centuries the reading of the Bible in vernacular languages, it is at least unfortunate that not a single word of repentance is offered. For a Church that has prevented the people from having access to the Bible until fifty years ago, it is at least puzzling that not a single word is spent to underline the Church’s need for self-correction and vigilance.

Leonardo expects an apology for something that did not happen. See chapter 11 of Henry Graham’s Where We Got the Bible: Our Debt to the Catholic Church.

Leonardo continues:

Moreover, if reading the Bible must always be done under the rule of the institution, what happens if the institution itself is caught in error, heresy or apostasy? How does the Spirit correct a sinful church if not by the biblical Word? In the history of the Church, the teaching of the Bible had to sometimes be played against the institutional church and against its consensus. Only a self-proclaimed indefectible Church can ask total submission to “the watchful eye of the sacred magisterium” (45) without having a final, ultimate bar. Here at stake is the question: Who has the final word? The Bible or the RC Church? Since the Church is “the home of the word” (52), VD responds: the latter!

The first thing to say is that Leonardo’s criticism of the Catholic doctrine concerning interpreting Scripture in the Church presupposes the Protestant theological paradigm. It presupposes some form of ecclesial deism according to which the Church could formally fall into false doctrine, and need correction from some prophetic person’s re-discovery of the right interpretation of Scripture. But if the Church is indefectible, then this criticism begs the question, i.e. presupposes precisely what is in question between Catholics and Protestants. If the Church could define as dogmas what are actually heresies, and it belonged to each individual interpreter to judge for himself between the orthodox dogmas and the heretical dogmas, there would be no reason to submit to the Catholic Magisterium, because in that case each individual interpreter of Scripture would have more interpretive authority than does the Magisterium. There is no point in criticizing one paradigm by way of some presupposition intrinsic to (and specific to) another paradigm. To do so is equivalent to asserting the truth of one’s own paradigm. To compare paradigms, one must use criteria common to both paradigms, viewing the available evidence from the perspectives of both paradigms.

The second thing to say is that Leonardo’s criticism here raises a dilemma for Protestantism. On the one hand, Protestants like Keith Mathison claim that Scripture should be interpreted according to the tradition which provides the rule of faith. (See “Keith Mathison’s Reply.”) But on the other hand, Protestants like Leonardo De Chirico claim that Scripture must be allowed to correct tradition and the Church. On the one hand, if the elements of tradition are to be accepted or rejected according to their agreement or disagreement with the individual’s interpretation of Scripture, then tradition cannot function as that normative interpretive context through which Scripture is to be rightly interpreted, because that would reduce ‘tradition’ to whatever conforms to the individual’s interpretation of Scripture. But on the other hand, if the elements of tradition have normative authority and provide the necessary interpretive context in which and according to which Scripture is to be interpreted rightly, then the elements of tradition are not subject to acceptance or rejection by each individual interpreter of Scripture. Either tradition and the Church are authoritative, in which case they ought to govern the individual’s determination of which interpretations of Scripture are orthodox and which are heretical, or, if individuals have the authority to judge tradition and the Church according to the standard of their own interpretation of Scripture, then tradition and the Church are not authoritative, and Protestantism’s sola scriptura reduces to solo scriptura, for reasons Neal and I explained in “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority.”

Next, Leonardo writes:

Fourthly and finally, the liturgical context of a proper approach to Scripture. Reading the Bible as an ecclesial experience means that it needs to occur in a liturgical context set forth by the RC Church. “The privileged place for the prayerful reading of sacred Scripture is the liturgy, and particularly the Eucharist, in which, as we celebrate the Body and Blood of Christ in the sacrament, the word itself is present and at work in our midst” (86). The hearing of God’s Word is fruitful when certain conditions are present: the administration of the Eucharist (54) and other sacraments (61), the Liturgy of the Hours (62), the practice of gaining indulgences (87), and recital of the Holy Rosary (88). According to VD, the Bible can never be alone, but must always be surrounded by ecclesiastical paraphernalia which inform, direct and govern Biblical reading and interpretation. In so doing, the Bible is never free to guide the Church, but always conditioned by some extra-biblical practices of the Church.

When Protestants are confronted with the problems of biblicism and “solo scriptura,” they tend to respond like Keith Mathison does by appealing to the authority of tradition and the Church. (See “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority.” See also Scot McKnight’s discussion of Christian Smith’s recent book The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism is not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture, [Brazos Press, 2011].) But at the same time, when confronted with the authority of tradition and the Church, they respond like Leonardo does here by claiming that such authority prevents the Bible from being “free” to guide the Church or correct tradition. And this shows that Protestantism is trying to stand in an impossible middle position. It wants the primacy of the authority of the individual’s interpretation of Scripture so that individuals may correct both tradition and the Church according to the standard of their own interpretation of Scripture. At the same time, it wants to avoid the individualistic and fragmentary implications of biblicism and solo scriptura, and submit to the authority of the Church and tradition. The problem, however, is that these two positions are logically incompatible, and so Protestantism cannot have it both ways. As Protestants realize this, they either move toward the individualism of emergentism and do-it-yourself-religion, or they turn toward “paleo-orthodoxy” and become Catholic or Orthodox.

In his closing paragraph, Leonardo writes:

The papal pronouncement encourages the reading of the Bible and this is good news. The fundamental question remains: Whose word is the Verbum Domini? The Bible’s and/or the Church’s?

From a Catholic point of view, there is no either/or, but a both/and. If, as Verbum Domini teaches, Scripture is rightly understood only within the divinely established community to whom it was entrusted, then the word of God is located both in Scripture and in the Church, not as two separate sources of the word of God, but as two principles that function together, along with sacred Tradition, that we may hear and rightly understand God’s word. For this reason, the Catechism teaches:

“It is clear therefore that, in the supremely wise arrangement of God, sacred Tradition, Sacred Scripture and the Magisterium of the Church are so connected and associated that one of them cannot stand without the others. Working together, each in its own way, under the action of the one Holy Spirit, they all contribute effectively to the salvation of souls. (CCC 95)

According to the Catholic paradigm, Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium are like a three-legged stool; none functions rightly without the others. By contrast, the “or” in Leonardo’s “and/or” question refers to a paradigm in which Scripture and the Church function independently, not as one. Only if Scripture functions rightly independently of the Church can the individual justifiably appeal to his own interpretation of Scripture to judge the Church and the tradition. Only if Scripture functions rightly independently of the Church does a question like “The Bible’s or the Church’s?” make sense. These two paradigms explain the two conceptions of the act of faith, as described by the late Fr. Neuhaus in an article titled “That They May Be One:”

[T]here are two kinds of Christians: those whom I would call ecclesiological Christians, and those for whom being a Christian is primarily, if not exclusively, a matter of individual decision. There are those for whom the act of faith in Christ and the act of faith in the Church is one act of faith. And those for whom the act of faith in Christ is the act of faith, and the act of faith in the Church, if there is one, is secondary, or tertiary, or somewhere down the line.

Pope Benedict XVI and Patriarch Bartholomew I, Nov. 30, 2006

What is the state of the Catholic-Orthodox ecumenical dialogue? One window into the state of that dialogue can be seen in a recent address by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware of the Diocese of Diokleia. On April 3, 2011, in Atlanta, Georgia, Metropolitan Ware gave the keynote address to an ecumenical gathering of Catholics and Orthodox. In this address he first discusses the implications of the Ravenna Statement, by the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue Between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church, held October 8-14, 2007, in Ravenna, Italy. In this statement the Orthodox representatives recognized a universal primacy of the bishop of Rome. Metropolitan Ware then discusses the Orthodox conception of the exercise of that primacy, drawing from Apostolic Canon 34 (canon 35 here). Watch the keynote address in the two-part video below:

Kallistos Ware: Orthodox & Catholic Union Part 1

Kallistos Ware: Orthodox & Catholic Union Part 2

Or watch them on Youtube: Part 1, and Part 2.

H/T: Orthocath

While other early African bishops such as St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Cyprian of Carthage, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, and St. Augustine of Hippo are better known to Christians of our day, St. Optatus is another important African bishop and theologian in the early Church. He was influenced deeply by St. Cyprian, and in turn he influenced the thought of St. Augustine, who drew substantially from St. Optatus’s writings in his own efforts to reconcile the Donatists to the Catholic Church. St. Optatus remains theologically important in our day, by providing an early testimony to the nature of Catholic ecclesiology, especially regarding the unique ecclesial authority and role of the episcopal successor of St. Peter in Rome.

Milevus (El Milia, Algeria), where St. Optatus was Bishop

Outline
I. A Brief History of the Donatist Schism
II. How We Know Which Side Went Out from the Catholic Church
III. The Donatist Claim to be the Catholic Church
IV. The Catholic Rejoinder: The Successor of St. Peter holds the Keys
A. The Donatist Bishop in Rome does not hold the Keys
B. St. Peter and his Successors in Rome hold the Keys
V. Conclusion

I. A Brief History of the Donatist Schism

On May 24 we celebrated the feast day of St. Vincent of Lérins, who wrote his Commonitory in AD 434. St. Optatus wrote his work, Against the Donatists, approximately sixty years earlier. For this reason, Protestants willing to believe that St. Vincent and St. Augustine wrote before some ‘great apostasy’ have even more reason to accept the testimony of St. Optatus concerning the apostolic faith.

St. Optatus opens Against the Donatists by explaining that Christ gave one faith to His Church.¹ Moreover, before He ascended, writes St. Optatus, Christ gave His divine peace to His Apostles, willing it to be with His Church always. (John 14:27) This peace is a peace that the world does not have; it is to be exemplified in the Church Christ founded, for all the world to see. But, claims St. Optatus, the authors of the Donatist schism disturbed this peace.²

St. Optatus is writing in reply to a person name Parmenian. Parmenian was the third in the line of succession of the Donatist bishops of Carthage. The first Donatist bishop was Marjorinus, who was succeeded by Donatus, who was succeeded by Parmenian. Parmenian had just written a book against the Catholic Church; he wrote, according to St. Optatus, to “strike an undeserved blow at the Catholic Church.”³ This book prompted St. Optatus to write Against the Donatists in reply.

Before addressing the criticisms of Parmenian, St. Optatus first presents a brief history of the Donatist schism. The Donatist schism from the Catholic Church began in the year 311. In that year, Caecilian the deacon was chosen by the people of Carthage to take the chair of the previous bishop (Mensurius), and was ordained by Felix, bishop of Aptonga. Secundus, a bishop of a nearby city, subsequently came with other bishops, and declared the ordination of Caecilian to be invalid because, according to Secundus and company, Felix was a traditor.⁴ According to St. Optatus, however, the bishops accompanying Secundus had themselves “impiously betrayed the records of the law of God.” Among these were Donatus of Macula, Victor of Rusicca, Merinus of Tibilis, Donatus of Calama, Pupurius of Limata, and Menalius.⁵ St. Optatus describes the way by which these bishops started the Donatist schism, writing:

It was not long after this, that these very persons whom I have mentioned, … proceeded to Carthage, and there, although Caecilian was already the Bishop, made the Schism by consecrating Majorinus on whose Chair, Parmenian, you sit.⁶

Secundus and the bishops with him ordained a new bishop of Carthage, a man named Majorinus, who had been a lector under Caecelian’s deaconry. At that point there were (seemingly) simultaneously two [canonical] bishops of Carthage: Caecelian, and Majorinus. As the bishops associated with Majorinus continued to ordain other bishops not in communion with Caecelian, the Donatist schism spread. The matter was then brought before nineteen bishops at a council at Rome, headed by Pope Miltiades (pope from 311-314). St. Optatus describes the events of this council as follows:

Donatus brought forth his witnesses; they admitted that they had nothing of which they could accuse Caecilian. Caecilian was pronounced innocent by the sentence of all the above named Bishops; also by the sentence of Miltiades, by which the matter was closed, and judgement pronounced in these words:

Since it is certain that those who came with Donatus have failed to accuse Caecilian in accordance with their undertaking, and since it is also certain that Donatus has not proved him guilty on any count, I judge that, according to his deserts, he be maintained in the communion of the Church, continuing to hold his position unimpaired.

It is, therefore, sufficient, that Donatus was condemned by the verdict of so many Bishops, and that Caecilian was cleared by the judgement of so great an authority [i.e. the Pope].⁷

It is not insignificant that the dispute between Caecilian and the Donatists was brought to a council of bishops assembled at Rome, and that the verdict was pronounced by Pope Miltiades. This was the authoritative decision of the Catholic Church concerning the Donatist schism. But, as St. Optatus explains, a short time later Donatus returned to Carthage and in disobedience to the decision of the Holy See, refused to relinquish his claim to the episcopal Chair at Carthage.

St. Optatus recounts the history of the Donatist schism to show that the Catholic Church did not go out from the Donatists, but rather, that the Donatists went out from the Catholic Church. He writes:

The question is about a Division. Now in Africa, as in other parts of the world, the Church was One, before it was divided by those who consecrated Majorinus whose Chair you have inherited, and now occupy. We shall have to see who has remained in the root, with the whole world; who went forth; who sits on a second chair, which had no existence before the Schism; who has raised altar against altar; who has consecrated a Bishop when another was in undisturbed possession; who it is that lies under the judgement of John, the Apostle, when he declared that many Anti-Christs should go forth without, because they were not of us, for if they had been of us they would have remained with us. Therefore, he who was unwilling to remain with his brethren in unity has followed the heretics, and gone forth without, as an Anti-Christ.⁸

St. Optatus explains that prior to the Donatist schism, the Church was visibly one. So he proposes to determine which side came to be in schism from the Church by setting up a second episcopal chair (i.e. cathedra) where there was none before, by setting up a second altar [for the Eucharistic sacrifice] where there was none before, and by consecrating a Bishop when another Bishop was already in undisturbed possession of the episcopal office in that See. In this investigation St. Optatus seeks to show likewise which side has “remained in the root, with the whole [Christian] world.”⁹ According to St. Optatus, the party in schism from the Church lies under the judgment of the Apostle John, who wrote, “They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.” (1 John 2:19) St. Optatus explains that according to the Apostle John, to separate from the Church through schism is to act as an Anti-Christ. St. Optatus knows that Parmenian cannot deny that schism is the supreme evil. St. Optatus writes:

Even you will not be by any means be able to deny that schism is the supreme evil [scisma summum malum esse].¹⁰

St. Optatus is not speaking of the sort of schism in which two Christian parties break fellowship with each other, but each party remains in communion with the rest of the Catholic Church. That sort of schism can only be short-lived, for reasons explained below. He is speaking about schism from the Church, the sort the Apostle John is referring to when he writes of persons that “went out from us.” (1 John 2:19) Concerning that sort of schism, St. Optatus writes:

But schism, after the bond of peace has been broken, is brought into existence through passion, is nourished by hatred, is strengthened by envy and dissensions, so that the Catholic Mother is abandoned, whilst her unfilial children go forth outside and separate themselves (as you have done) from the root of Mother Church — cut off by the shears of their hatred — and wickedly depart in rebellion.¹¹

In this sort of schism, the schismatic party does not remain in the Catholic Church, but abandons its Catholic Mother, separating itself from “the root of Mother Church.” Thus, this kind of schism is necessarily a form of “rebellion,” because it separates from that magisterial authority by which it was established and to which it therefore owes obedience and fealty.

II. How We Know Which Side Went Out from the Catholic Church

St. Optatus’s Against the Donatists is composed of seven books (see the table of contents). After laying out the history of the schism in Book One, he turns in Book Two to the question: “Which is the One True Catholic Church and Where is it to be Found?” In what may be the most important and revealing statement in the whole of his work, he writes:

For it was not Caecilian who went forth from Majorinus, your father’s father,¹² but it was Majorinus who deserted Caecilian; nor was it Caecilian who separated himself from the Chair of Peter, or from the Chair of Cyprian — but Majorinus, on whose Chair you sit — a Chair which had no existence before Majorinus himself.¹³

How does St. Optatus show that the Catholic Church did not go out from the Donatists, but that the Donatists went out from the Catholic Church? He does so by way of the Chair of St. Peter. The bishop that remains in communion with the Chair of St. Peter in Rome is the bishop who has remained with the Catholic Church. In this particular case, the bishop of Carthage who had remained in communion with the bishop of Rome, was Caecilian and his episcopal successors in Carthage. The bishop who has broken communion with the Chair of St. Peter is the bishop who is in schism from the Catholic Church. Therefore the bishop in Carthage who had broken fellowship with the Chair of St. Peter in Rome, was the bishop in schism from the Catholic Church. In this way St. Optatus shows that because Majorinus and his episcopal successors (and all the laypeople who followed them) had broken fellowship with the Chair of St. Peter, therefore they were the ones who had gone out from the Catholic Church, and were presently in schism from the Church.

Concerning this passage, the translator, Fr. Vassall-Phillips, writes:

The manner in which St. Optatus goes first to the See of Peter and only in the second place to the local See of Carthage in order to prove that the Donatists were in schism, is a fact of the greatest significance. It is quite clear that, in the eyes of Optatus, any bishop out of communion with the See of Rome was ipso facto schismatic. Otherwise, the reference to the Chair of Peter in this connection is utterly meaningless and unintelligble.”¹⁴

Of course, in the invisible church ecclesiology of contemporary Protestantism (where no Protestant denomination claims to be the Church Christ founded), there can be no such thing as schism from the Church, because every splitting of Christian communions is a mere ‘branching’ in which each party remains within “the small-c catholic Church.” (See “Branches or Schisms?“.) Thus from within the perspective of the invisible-church paradigm, every splitting of Christian communions, though perhaps temporarily lamentable, shortly becomes a cause of celebration, as God providentially transforms it into an increase in diversity in “the catholic Church.” In this invisible church ecclesiology of contemporary Protestantism, there is not even any conceptual space for the notion of schism from the Church Christ founded. St. Optatus’ speaking of schism from the universal Church, as an action distinct from apostasy from the Christian faith, does not even fit into the Protestant ecclesial paradigm.¹⁵

The translator notes that the Protestant ecclesiology according to which there is one [small-c] catholic Church in which many different religious bodies each holding a different set of doctrinal beliefs and not visibly unified are nevertheless assumed to be invisibly united, is an ecclesial ‘option’ of which St. Optatus is entirely unaware. The translator writes:

Evidently the idea of Comprehensiveness — that the One Church could be Catholic (Universal) in the sense of comprehending various kinds of religious bodies, varying in belief and without any external bond of union (cf . ii, 3) — never occurred to St. Optatus even as a possibility. Any branch theory in which the branches were separated from the trunk or from one another (cf. ii, 9 etc.) would have seemed to him unthinkable. He agrees with Parmenian in ruling it out ab initio.¹⁶

Both the Donatists and the Catholics would have entirely rejected an invisible-church ecclesiology. But their silence concerning that sort of ecclesiology shows that it was not even on their conceptual horizon. If “visible Catholic Church” ecclesiology had been a human innovation, as a result of ecclesial deism, it had so wiped out the ‘original’ apostolic “invisible Church” ecclesiology that by the fourth century, neither the Donatists nor the Catholics even conceived of it.¹⁷ To posit such a phenomenon by bumping up the alleged ‘great apostasy’ from the fifth century to the second century, is to take on all the implications described in “Ecclesial Deism.” And of course if “invisible Church” ecclesiology had been even a remote memory or a conceptual possibility, the Donatists would have seized on it, because in this way they could have avoided the charge of schism from the Church, by claiming to be a branch within the larger ‘small-c’ invisible catholic Church. And Sts. Optatus and Augustine would not have needed to concern themselves with the Donatist schism, laboring to bring them back into the Church, because they could have simply treated Donatism as a “branch within” the invisible, small-c catholic Church. But, invisible, “small-c catholic” ecclesiology would not be conceived for another twelve centuries, not entering the discussion until the sixteenth century.

III. The Donatist Claim to be the Catholic Church

We learn from St. Optatus that the Donatists claimed to have the keys of Peter, to be the one Church of Christ, and thus to deny that those outside of themselves could baptize or celebrate the Eucharist. Parmenian recognized that the one Church of Christ cannot be among all the heretics and schismatics, so he claimed that the Church of Christ was made up of the Donatists alone.¹⁸ St. Optatus writes to Parmenian:

Rightly hast thou closed the Garden to heretics; rightly hast thou claimed the Keys for Peter; rightly hast thou denied the right of cultivating the young trees to those who are certainly shut out from the garden and paradise of God; rightly hast thou withdrawn the Ring from those to whom it is not allowed to open the Fountain. But to you schismatics, although you are not in the Catholic Church, these things cannot be denied, since you have shared true Sacraments with us.¹⁹

Parmenian had claimed that the Keys of Peter belonged to the Donatists, and that they (i.e. the Donatists) were the Garden outside of which there were no sacraments and no means of eternal life. In order to claim that the Donatists were the Church, Parmenian had to claim that the Keys of St. Peter belonged to them. St. Optatus agrees with Parmenian that having the Keys of St. Peter is necessary in order to be the Church, but St. Optatus proceeds below to show that the Donatists do not have the Keys of St. Peter, and therefore are not the Church in which are found the sacraments of eternal life.

In order to prop up their claim to be the Catholic Church, the Donatists had an anti-pope, as it were, in the City of Rome, as a way of justifying their claim to possess the keys of St. Peter. At the time Parmenian wrote, the Catholic bishop in Rome was Pope St. Damasus (366-383), and the Donatist bishop in Rome was a man named Macrobius. St. Optatus writes, “But you allege that you too have some sort of a party in the City of Rome.”²⁰ So the task St. Optatus takes up in Book Two of Against the Donatists is showing that the Donatists are not the Catholic Church, but are in fact a schism from the Catholic Church, and that their anti-pope in Rome is in fact not the bearer of the Keys of St. Peter, but a kind of anti-pope.

IV. The Catholic Rejoinder: The Successor of St. Peter holds the Keys
A. The Donatist Bishop in Rome does not hold the Keys

St. Optatus writes to Parmenian:

But you allege that you too have some sort of a party in the City of Rome. It is a branch of your error growing out of a lie, not from the root of truth. In a word, were Macrobius to be asked where he sits in the City, will he be able to say on Peter’s Cathedra? I doubt whether he has even set eyes upon it, and schismatic that he is, he has not drawn nigh to Peter’s Shrine…. Behold, in Rome are the Shrines of the two Apostles [i.e. Sts. Peter and Paul]. Will you tell me whether he [i.e. Macrobius] has been able to approach them, or has offered Sacrifice in those places, where as is certain are these Shrines of the Saints.²¹

Though Macrobius is in Rome, he does not sit on St. Peter’s Chair, held by Pope St. Damasus. Nor, claims St. Optatus, has Macrobius ever offered the Sacrifice of the mass at the altars of the shrines of the Apostles Peter and Paul. The tombs of Sts. Peter and Paul had been Christian shrines since the first century, but Constantine had built structures over them in the early fourth century, and the Catholics of Rome celebrated mass at the altars over these tombs. St. Optatus supposes justifiably that Macrobius has never offered mass at these shrines, because they belong to the Catholics, with whom Macrobius has not been in communion. This subverts the Donatist claim to possess the Keys of Peter, since they do not even have possession or ritual access to the shrines of Sts. Peter and Paul. They cannot have the Keys of St. Peter if they are not even in communion with those who have succeeded from St. Peter in unbroken continuity.

Then St. Optatus shows that the line of Donatist bishops in Rome does not extend back to St. Peter, but began with Victor of Garba:

So it follows that your colleague Macrobius must confess that he sits where once sat Encolpius; and if Encolpius himself could be questioned, he would say that he sat where before him sat Bonifacius of Balla; and if Bonifacius could be asked, he would in his turn reply that he sat where Victor of Garba sat, whom some time ago your people sent from Africa to a few wanderers. How do you explain that your party has not been able to possess a Roman citizen as Bishop in Rome? How is it that in that City they were all Africans and strangers who are known to have succeeded one another? Is not craft here manifest? Is this not the spirit of faction the mother of schism?²²

St. Optatus explains that Victor of Garba, from whom Macrobius’ episcopal line takes its origin, was not a successor of St. Peter in Rome, but came to Rome in the fourth century, at the request of some African Christians living in Rome. Further evidence for this is found in the fact that no Roman citizens had occupied this Donatist line in Rome, but only Africans. St. Optatus then continues his explanation of the history of the Donatist party at Rome:

This Victor of Garba was sent first, I will not say as a stone into a fountain (for he could not ruffle the pure waters of the Catholic people), but because some Africans who belonged to your party, having gone to Rome, and wishing to live there, begged that someone should be sent from Africa to preside over their public worship. So Victor was sent to them. He was there as a son without a father, as a beginner without a master, as a disciple without a teacher, as a follower without a predecessor, as a lodger without a home, as a guest without a guest-house, as a shepherd without a flock, as a Bishop without a people. For neither flock nor people can that handful be termed, who amongst the forty and more Basilicas in Rome, had not one place in which to assemble.

Accordingly they closed up a cave outside the City with trellis-work, where they might have a meeting-house at once, and on account of this were called Mountaineers.

Since then, Claudian has succeeded to Lucian, Lucian to Macrobius, Macrobius to Encolpius, Encolpius to Boniface, Boniface to Victor. Victor would not have been able, had he been asked where he sat, to show that anyone had been there before him, nor could he have pointed out that he possessed any Cathedra save the Cathedra of pestilence [Ps. 1:1]; for pestilence sends down its victims, destroyed by diseases, to the regions of Hell which are known to have their gates gates against which we read that Peter received the saving Keys Peter, that is to say, the first of our line, to whom it was said by Christ :

To thee will I give the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven,

and these keys

the gates of Hell shall not overcome.

How is it, then, that you strive to usurp for yourselves the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, you who, with your arguments, and audacious sacrilege, war against the Chair of Peter? ²³

As evidence that Victor of Garba was not the bishop of Rome, St. Optatus explains that in Rome, Victor had no place to worship. Of the forty or so Basilicas available in Rome in which to offer the Eucharistic sacrifice, none of them was available to Victor of Garba, because he was not in communion with the Apostolic See. Hence he made use of a cave outside Rome.

In addition, Victor could not have shown that he had an episcopal predecessor at Rome, or that he had any genuine Cathedra. Hence, claims St. Optatus, Victor had only the Cathedra of pestilence [Ps. 1:1], which leads to hell (Ps. 1:6). But for St. Optatus, St. Peter is the “first of our line,” i.e. the first in the line of Catholic bishops. And Christ promised to St. Peter that the gates of hell would not prevail over the Keys He gave to him, and hence over the one holding the keys. So St. Optatus makes an argument here to the effect that hell would never prevail over the authentic line from St. Peter, and that by setting up a second Chair in opposition to the Chair established by Christ through St. Peter, the Donatist not only “war against the Chair of Peter,” but set themselves on the very path to hell, dooming themselves to destruction by the indefectibility of the Keys held by St. Peter in the Catholic Church. To set up a second Chair in opposition to the Chair of St. Peter is to attempt to “usurp” an authority they do not have. Just as Satan arrogated to himself an authority he did not have, and so chose for himself the way to hell, so by arrogating to themselves the authority of the Keys Christ gave to St. Peter, the Donatists align themselves with the forces of hell and the end assigned to those forces. The conflict between Christ and Satan is expressed visibly in this age in the conflict between the one to whom Christ entrusted the Keys of the Kingdom, and the forces of hell that shall not prevail against the one bearing those Keys. By setting themselves up against the true holder of the Keys, and warring against the Chair of St. Peter, the Donatists thereby align themselves with the forces of hell, which Christ has assured us can never prevail over the Church, and are thus doomed to defeat and destruction.

B. St. Peter and his Successors in Rome hold the Keys

Who then, in St. Optatus’ time, holds the Keys of the Kingdom? Repeatedly St. Optatus declares that the one holding the Keys must receive them from St. Peter. First, he points out that among all the Apostles, only St. Peter received the Keys. He writes:

When He [i.e. Christ] praises One, He condemns the others because, besides the one which is the true Catholc Church, the others amongst the heretics are thought to be churches, but are not such. Thus He declares in the Canticle of Canticles (as we have already pointed out) that His Dove is One, and that she is also the chosen Spouse, and again a garden enclosed, and a fountain sealed up. Therefore none of the heretics possess either the Keys, which Peter alone received, or the Ring, with which we read that the Fountain has been sealed.²⁴

Later in the work he shows that St. Peter, the Head of the Apostles, was the first to occupy the Episcopal Cathedra in Rome, and that the purpose of this Cathedra was to preserve unity among all Christians, including even the other Apostles. He writes:

You cannot then deny that you do know that upon Peter first in the City of Rome was bestowed the Episcopal Cathedra, on which sat Peter, the Head of all the Apostles … that, in this one Cathedra, unity should be preserved by all [in qua unica Cathedra unitas ab omnibus servaretur], lest the other Apostles might claim each for himself separate Cathedras, so that he who should set up a second Cathedra against the unique Cathedra would already be a schismatic and a sinner. Well then, on the one Cathedra, which is the first of the Endowments, Peter was the first to sit.²⁵

According to St. Optatus, anyone who sets up a second Cathedra against the unique Cathedra of St. Peter in Rome, is by that very fact “a schismatic and a sinner.” Of course in addition to the bishops ordained by the other Apostles, there were many lines of bishops extending down from St. Peter. And though all bishops receive equally the sacramental office of bishop, only one line of bishops succeeding from St. Peter receives, in addition, the charism Christ bestowed uniquely on St. Peter, namely, stewardship of the Keys of the Kingdom. Only that line of bishops occupying the unique Cathedra established in Rome by St. Peter possesses this charism. And hence to set up another Cathedra in opposition to this unique Cathedra, is ipso facto to become a schismatic, because such an act takes to oneself an authority that none except the rightful occupant of that unique Cathedra possesses.

Having established the unique authority of the Chair of St. Peter in Rome, and its divinely established role as the visible principle of unity of the Catholic Church, St. Optatus then lays out the succession from St. Peter to the present pope in Rome (Pope St. Damasus [366-383] in the first edition, but Pope St. Siricius [384-399] in the second edition). He writes:

To Peter succeeded Linus, to Linus succeeded Clement, to Clement Anacletus, to Anacletus Evaristus, to Evaristus Sixtus, to Sixtus Telesphorus, to Telesphorus Hyginus, to Hyginus Anacetus, to Anacetus Pius, to Pius Soter, to Soter Alexander, to Alexander Victor, to Victor Zephyrinus, to Zephyrinus Calixtus, to Calixtus Urban, to Urban Pontianus, to Pontianus Anterus, to Anterus Fabian, to Fabian Cornelius, to Cornelius Lucius, to Lucius Stephen, to Stephen Sixtus; to Sixtus Dionysius, to Dionysius Felix, to Felix Marcellinus, to Marcellinus Eusebius, to Eusebius Miltiades, to Miltiades Silvester, to Silvester Marcus, to Marcus Julius, to Julius Liberius, to Liberius Damasus, to Damasus Siricius, who today is our colleague, with whom the whole world, through the intercourse of letters of peace, agrees with us in one bond of communion.

Now do you show the origins of your Cathedra, you who wish to claim the Holy Church for yourselves.²⁶

What is the significance of tracing the line of bishops in Rome from the Apostle Peter to the present pope? This tracing would have no purpose or significance if all bishops held equal stewardship of the Keys, or if St. Optatus believed that stewardship of the Keys ended with the death of St. Peter. Tracing the line of bishops in Rome from the time of St. Peter to St. Optatus’ own day has significance for his argument against the Donatists only if stewardship of the Keys belongs in a unique way to that line of bishops.²⁷ St. Optatus traces the line of bishops occupying the Cathedra in Rome from St. Peter down to his own time to explain why Pope St. Damasus is the present steward of those Keys, and that by setting up a Chair in opposition to Pope St. Damasus, the Donatists had put themselves in schism from the Church Christ founded, that is, from the Catholic Church.²⁸

What St. Optatus writes concerning the role of the successors of St. Peter with regard to the Keys of the Kingdom and the nature of schism from the Church, is re-affirmed by St. Augustine about twenty-seven years later, when he writes:

You know what the Catholic Church is, and what that is cut off from the Vine; if there are any among you cautious, let them come; let them find life in the Root. Come, brethren, if you wish to be engrafted in the Vine: a grief it is when we see you lying thus cut off. Number the Bishops even from the very seat of Peter: and see every succession in that line of Fathers: that is the Rock against which the proud Gates of Hell prevail not.”²⁹

Later in Against the Donatists St. Optatus continues to make theologically significant references to St. Peter. He refers again to having shown that the Catholics possess the first Endowment of the Church, namely, the unique and authoritative Cathedra upon which St. Peter first sat, and which continues in the succession of bishops in Rome. He writes:

So, of the above-mentioned Endowments, the Cathedra is, as we have said, the first, which we have proved to be ours, through Peter, and which draws to itself the ANGEL — unless, perchance, you claim him for yourselves, and have him shut up somewhere or other.³⁰

A few pages later he states this again:

For it has been proved that we are in the Holy Catholic Church, who have too the Creed of the Trinity; and it has been shown that, through the Chair of Peter which is ours — through it — the other Endowments also belong to us.³¹

To be in communion with the bishop occupying the Chair of St. Peter is to be in the Catholic Church, and thus to possess in some sense all the gifts Christ bestowed on His Church. In both quotations he shows that the answer to the question “Where is the Holy Catholic Church?” is this: All those in communion with the Chair of St. Peter constitute the Holy Catholic Church. In this way St. Optatus provides the divinely established means by which to determine where is the Church, who is in schism from the Church, and what the Church does and does not teach.

On that same page he writes:

So — to answer you — we have shown what is heresy, and what is schism, and which is the Holy Church, and that of this Holy Church there has been constituted a Representative, and that the Catholic Church is the Church which is scattered over the whole world (of which we amongst others are members) and that her Endowments are with her everywhere.³²

According to St. Optatus, God has established a Representative of His Holy Church. What St. Optatus means by this is clear from everything that he has said up to this point. Because the Pope functions as the principle of unity by which we can know where is the Church, and which groups are in schism from the Church, he likewise functions as the Representative of the Church.³³

Toward the end of Against the Donatists, St. Optatus mentions the role of St. Peter three more times. He writes:

[F]or the sake of unity, blessed Peter (for whom it would have been enough if after his denial he had obtained pardon only) both deserved to be placed over all the Apostles, and alone received the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, which he was to communicate to the rest.³⁴

Here St. Optatus first teaches that St. Peter was given the Keys of the Kingdom for the sake of preserving unity in the Church. In giving St. Peter the Keys, he was in that respect placed “over all the Apostles,” for he “alone received the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.” But the other Apostles (and all other bishops) exercise the authority of the Keys through their communion with St. Peter and his successors. If they break communion with St. Peter and his successors, they forfeit their use of the authority of the Keys. This is why, according to St. Optatus, the Donatists do not have the keys of the Kingdom, because they have broken fellowship with the Catholic bishops, as shown by the fact that they have broken fellowship with the episcopal successor of St. Peter in Rome.

Next, St. Optatus writes:

Behold (as we have said above), when the others [i.e. the other Apostles] did not recognise he [i.e. St. Peter] alone recognised, when the others made no promises he alone promised, when the others did not deny once he alone denied and that three times, but yet, for the sake of unity, he was not to be separated from the number of the Apostles. From which we understand that all things were ordered by the Providence of the Saviour, that Peter should receive the Keys. The way of malice was stopped up, that the Apostles might not conceive in their minds that they were free to judge, and condemn with severity, him who had denied Christ. So many guiltless ones are standing upright, and the sinner receives the Keys, that the work of unity might receive its pattern. It was provided that the sinner should open for the guiltless, lest the guiltless might close [the gates] against sinners, and thus the unity which is necessary could not be.³⁵

St. Peter was uniquely chosen by God to recognize Christ as the divine Son. But St. Peter was also unique in that he denied Christ three times. Yet, for St. Optatus, this was according to God’s providence. By giving the Keys of the Kingdom to one who had denied Him three times, Christ “stopped up” the way of malice, by making it impossible for the Apostles to condemn severely a person who had denied Christ, since by divine institution they themselves were made subject to one who had denied Christ. In God’s providence, the sinner (i.e. St. Peter) “opens for the guiltless,” i.e. extends to the other Apostles who did not deny Christ the use of the Keys of the Kingdom, so that the guiltless (i.e. the Apostles who did not deny Christ) might not close the way of salvation against sinners, and thereby divide the unity of the Church.

In his final mention of St. Peter’s role, St. Optatus writes:

Now, to turn to the fact that you have thought fit to take upon yourself the character of Moses, who, as the Apostle Paul tells us, was opposed by Jamnes and
Mambres — if this be so, what is the truth, that may be found with you, which the Catholic Church opposes?

Or, what is there with us which you can prove to be a lie ? Is it that we are in one communion with the whole world ? Will you be able to prove that this is a lie? Is it that we keep and defend the true and one Creed ? Will you be able to prove that this is a lie? Will you be able to prove that the Chair of Peter is a lie and the Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, which were granted him by Christ, with which we are in communion ?³⁶

In his argument against the Donatists, St. Optatus here responds to Parmenian’s claim that to him [i.e. Parmenian] belongs the role of Moses, contending against Jamnes and Mambres [or Jambres], whom Parmenian thinks apparently represent Catholics contending against him. St. Optatus, for the sake of argument, accepts the analogy, and turns the argument back on Parmenian. His argument here to Parmenian is of the following sort:

If you really are in the character of Moses, and I am in the character of Jamnes and Mambres, then let’s see you win the contention between us. Let’s see you falsify a single Catholic doctrine, or prove that we (Catholics) are not in communion with the whole world, such that the term ‘Catholic’ does not rightly belong to us, but belongs more appropriately to you Donatists. Let’s see you convict us of not keeping and defending the one true Creed. Let’s see you prove that the Chair of St. Peter is a lie, and that the Keys of the Kingdom of heaven, with which we Catholics (but not you Donatists) are in communion, are a lie. You may claim to be in the character of Moses, but you cannot refute the Catholic Church or defend your position against the evidence I have raised against you. Since you cannot concede that Jamnes and Mambres got the best of Moses in debate, therefore, your claim to possess his role is an empty one that must be retracted, lest Moses be shamed or maligned.

V. Conclusion

In the face of such evidence, the only recourse for the Protestant who wishes to remain Protestant is to propose that on account of ecclesial deism, at some point prior to the time of St. Optatus, men had wrongfully and universally imposed a visible hierarchy on the Church, treating what Christ had established to be something invisible, as though it were something visible and essentially unified in a visible hierarchical structure. The Protestant who seeks to remain Protestant must propose that the essential unity of the hierarchy of the Church and the role of the Chair of St. Peter in that hierarchical unity, to which St. Optatus refers in his writings against the Donatists, are man-made constructs that were universally imposed on the Church at some point after the death of the Apostles and prior to the time of St. Optatus.

But as explained in the ecclesial deism article, proposing that there were universal corruptions and accretions in the early Church undermines the Protestant’s ability to appeal to the Church Fathers or to the Councils as having any authority whatsoever. And the necessary implication of that effect is solo scriptura.

That St. Optatus was a Catholic is shown not only in his understanding of the unique role of St. Peter and his episcopal successors as stewards of the Keys of the Kingdom, but in many other ways as well. The translator, Fr. Vassall-Phillips, writes:

St. Optatus affirms explicitly the truth of Baptismal Regeneration; again and again makes reference to the Sacrifice of the Altar; states the doctrine of the Real Presence in words that are incapable of any misunderstanding; insists on the sacredness of Holy Chrism; writes of the adornment of altars for the offering of the Sacrifice; refers to the ceremony of Exorcism before Baptism; appeals to deutero-canonical Books as to authentic Scripture; takes the continuance of Miracles in the Church for granted; and is quite express in his references to cloistered Virginity and the difference between the Commandments of God and Counsels of Perfection.”³⁷

The Protestant who wishes to remain Protestant, can accommodate such evidence only by resorting to ecclesial deism and advancing the date of the [posited] ‘great apostasy’ to some time before St. Optatus. But if St. Optatus is right that the successors of St. Peter in Rome hold the Keys of the Kingdom, then by Christ’s infallible promise the gates of hell shall never prevail over that line of succession. In that case, there could not be, and has never been, an apostasy in that line. And all who cleave to that line in full communion, participate in that divine promise, for there is the Holy Catholic Church Christ founded. That is the alternative paradigm to ecclesial deism.

St. Optatus, please pray for all those Christians in schism from Christ’s Church, that they may be happily restored to full visible communion. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen..

1. All pagination is from the translation by the Rev. O.R. Vassall-Phillips, (Longmans, Green, and Co.: London, 1917). That translation can be found in its entirety here.
2. Against the Donatists, p. 4.
3. Ibid. p. 9.
4. The Catholic Encyclopedia article on the Donatists explains the meaning of this term: “This word traditor became a technical expression to designate those who had given up the Sacred Books, and also those who had committed the worse crimes of delivering up the sacred vessels and even their own brethren.” St. Optatus shows later in his work that there was never any evidence that Felix was a traditor.
5. Ibid. p. 27.
6. Ibid. p. 29.
7. Ibid. pp. 47-49.
8. Ibid. pp. 30-31.
9. Ibid. p. 30.
10. Ibid. p. 39.
11. Ibid. p. 23.
12. By the phrase “your father’s father,” St. Optatus means the bishop who ordained the bishop who ordained you.
13. Ibid. pp. 20-21.
14. Ibid. p. 20.
15. That the Donatists had not committed apostasy is shown by the fact that the Catholics, including St. Optatus, continued to call them “brothers,” even though the Donatists refused to refer to the Catholics as brothers. (cf. Ibid. pp. 5-6.)
16. Ibid. p. 58.
17. And likewise, in the third century, neither the Novatians nor the Catholics thought of it during the Novatian schism.
18. cf. Ibid. p. 58.
19. Ibid. pp. 24-25.
20. Ibid. p. 70.
21. Ibid. pp. 70-71.
22. Ibid. p. 71.
23. Ibid. pp. 71-73.
24. Ibid. pp. 18-19.
25. Ibid. pp. 66-68.
26. Ibid. pp. 68-69.
27. St. Augustine likewise, in the year AD 400, traces only the bishops of Rome from St. Peter down to St. Anastasius (399-401) when he writes:

    For if the lineal succession of bishops is to be taken into account, with how much more certainty and benefit to the Church do we reckon back till we reach Peter himself, to whom, as bearing in a figure the whole Church, the Lord said: Upon this rock will I build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it! Matthew 16:18 The successor of Peter was Linus, and his successors in unbroken continuity were these:— Clement, Anacletus, Evaristus, Alexander, Sixtus, Telesphorus, Iginus, Anicetus, Pius, Soter, Eleutherius, Victor, Zephirinus, Calixtus, Urbanus, Pontianus, Antherus, Fabianus, Cornelius, Lucius, Stephanus, Xystus, Dionysius, Felix, Eutychianus, Gaius, Marcellinus, Marcellus, Eusebius, Miltiades, Sylvester, Marcus, Julius, Liberius, Damasus, and Siricius, whose successor is the present Bishop Anastasius. In this order of succession no Donatist bishop is found. But, reversing the natural course of things, the Donatists sent to Rome from Africa an ordained bishop, who, putting himself at the head of a few Africans in the great metropolis, gave some notoriety to the name of mountain men, or Cutzupits, by which they were known. (Letter 53, chapter 1)

    St. Irenaeus had done the same in the latter part of the second century, in his Against Heresies III.3.3.

28. In the last sentence of the quotation, he challenges the Donatists to show the origins of their Cathedra, if they wish to claim be the Holy Church. This is very like what St. Irenaeus says:

    But [it is also necessary] to hold in suspicion others who depart from the primitive succession, and assemble themselves together in any place whatsoever . . . . But those who cleave asunder, and separate the unity of the Church, [shall] receive from God the same punishment as Jeroboam did. (Against Heresies IV.26.2)

    It also corresponds to the same test of apostolic succession Tertullian provides:

    But if there be any (heresies) which are bold enough to plant themselves in the midst of the apostolic age, that they may thereby seem to have been handed down by the apostles, because they existed in the time of the apostles, we can say: Let them produce the original records of their churches; let them unfold the roll of their bishops, running down in due succession from the beginning in such a manner that [that first bishop of theirs] bishop shall be able to show for his ordainer and predecessor some one of the apostles or of apostolic men,– a man, moreover, who continued steadfast with the apostles. For this is the manner in which the apostolic churches transmit their registers: as the church of Smyrna, which records that Polycarp was placed therein by John; as also the church of Rome, which makes Clement to have been ordained in like manner by Peter. In exactly the same way the other churches likewise exhibit (their several worthies), whom, as having been appointed to their episcopal places by apostles, they regard as transmitters of the apostolic seed. Let the heretics contrive something of the same kind. (Prescription Against Heretics, 32)

29. St. Augustine to the schismatic Donatists, A.D. 393, Patrologia Latina 43.30.
30. Against the Donatists p. 78.
31. Ibid. p. 86.
32. Ibid. p. 86.
33. Concerning this line, the translator writes,

    There can be no doubt that St. Optatus is here referring to St. Peter, or his successors in the See of Rome, as the Representative of the Church. This is made clear by the fact that he is giving a summary of the arguments which he has already brought forward in his book. Now amongst these arguments the representative character of St. Peter and of his Cathedra has, as we have just seen, taken a leading place. Again, no alternative explanation of Persona in this passage has ever been suggested. Further, it is well known that St. Augustine adopted this traditional view, and in several passages has written of St. Peter as representing the whole Catholic Church in his own person. ( Ibid. pp. 86-87.)

34. Ibid. p. 284.
35. Ibid. pp. 288-289.
36. Ibid. p. 294.
37. Ibid. pp. xi-xii.

Because St. Vincent writes in the time period between the two councils, one cannot non-arbitrarily accept those two councils while dismissing St. Vincent’s work as a product of some great apostasy. St. Vincent is a strong advocate of the indefectibility of the Church, and of the importance of interpreting Scripture under the authority of the Church and her universal tradition. Here I present an overview of his Commonitory, and examine the fundamental truths he communicates in it, particularly with a view to their contribution toward the reconciliation of Protestants and the Catholic Church.

St. Honorat: The island of Lérins on which St. Vincent wrote his Commonitory in AD 434.

Outline
I. Purpose of his Commonitory
A. A Response to the Subtle Craftiness of the New Heretics
B. St. Vincent’s Prescription against Heresies and Schisms: Scripture and Tradition
II. An Objection: What about the Sufficiency of Scripture?
III. The Identity and Authority of the Tradition and Magisterium
A. The Tradition
B. The Magisterium
1. General Councils
2. The Apostolic See
3. The Authority of the Church
IV. The Indefectibility of the Church
V. Schisms, Heresies, and their Antidote
A. In the Event of Schism and Heresy
B. The Cause of Heresies and Schisms
1. Cause: Wicked Novelty Subverting Well-Established Antiquity
2. Why does God permit them?
C. The Antidote: Interpret Scripture within and according to the Church
VI. The Development of Doctrine
VII. The Implications for Protestant-Catholic Reconciliation

I. Purpose of his Commonitory
A. A Response to the Subtle Craftiness of the New Heretics

At the beginning of his work, St. Vincent explains his purpose for writing it. Having attained time for studying and writing after entering the monastery, and having discerned the need of the time in which he lived, he set out to record what his forefathers in the faith had handed down to him and his fellow Catholics, and committed to their keeping. (p. 1, 3)¹ “It is most necessary,” he writes, “that I should put down in writing the things which I have truthfully received from the holy Fathers.” (p. 1) Hence the title of his work is the Commonitory, or Remembrancer. (p. 3) He does not lay out all the doctrines he had been taught. Rather, he provides the rule he had received, by which the truth of the Catholic faith can be distinguished from the falsehood of heresy. (p. 4) In this way, he addresses the second-order question (“By what rule do we rightly distinguish orthodoxy from heresy?”) that underlies the first-order questions (“Which doctrines are orthodox and which are heretical?”). He does this because of the prevalence of heresies and schism in his time: “the subtle craftiness of new heretics calls for no ordinary care and attention.” (p. 2)

B. St. Vincent’s Prescription against Heresies and Schism: Scripture and Tradition

According to St. Vincent, “to detect the frauds and avoid the snares of heretics as they rise, and to continue sound and complete in the Catholic faith, we must, … fortify our own belief in two ways; first, by the authority of the Divine Law, and then, by the Tradition of the Catholic Church.” (p. 4) In other words, the rule by which we can distinguish between orthodoxy and heresy, is found in the authority of Scripture and Tradition. But this immediately raises two questions: Scripture as interpreted by whom? And which tradition? St. Vincent recognizes those questions, and the purpose of the rest of his Commonitory is to answer them. But first he considers and responds to an objection.

II. An Objection: What about the Sufficiency of Scripture?

St. Vincent anticipates an objection in the form of a question:

Since the canon of Scripture is complete, and sufficient of itself for everything, and more than sufficient, what need is there to join with it the authority of the Church’s interpretation? (p. 5)

This question is a very important question with respect to Protestant-Catholic reconciliation, because the answer to the question bears directly on whether we must submit our interpretation to that of the Magisterium, or whether we can and must hold the Magisterium to our interpretation of Scripture. If we can and must hold the Magisterium to our own interpretation of Scripture, then Protestants can be justified in separating from the Catholic Church in protest until the Magisterium conforms to their interpretation of Scripture. But if we must submit our interpretation of Scripture to that of the Magisterium, then Protestants were not justified in placing their own interpretation of Scripture above that of the Magisterium, and are obliged before God in humility and repentance to be reconciled to the Catholic Church and submit to her teaching authority.

St. Vincent then provides the answer to his question:

For this reason—because, owing to the depth of Holy Scripture, all do not accept it in one and the same sense, but one understands its words in one way, another in another; so that it seems to be capable of as many interpretations as there are interpreters. For Novatian expounds it one way, Sabellius another, Donatus another, Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, another, Photinus, Apollinaris, Priscillian, another, Iovinian, Pelagius, Celestius, another, lastly, Nestorius another. Therefore, it is very necessary, on account of so great intricacies of such various error, that the rule for the right understanding of the prophets and apostles should be framed in accordance with the standard of Ecclesiastical and Catholic interpretation. (p. 5)

His point is that because of the depth of Scripture due to its divine quality, not all persons interpret it in the same sense. In fact, there are, according to St. Vincent, almost as many interpretations as there are interpreters. When these interpretations are contrary to those decreed by general councils or taught by the consent of the Church Fathers, they are invariably heretical, and St. Vincent provides a number of examples.

A bit later in his work he provides another example. He refers to Agripinnus, bishop of Carthage, who was the first to hold the belief that baptism ought to be repeated. (p. 16) This was “contrary to the divine canon, contrary to the rule of the universal Church, contrary to the customs and institutions of our ancestors.” (p. 16) Regarding this belief that baptism ought to be repeated, St. Vincent asks whether this novelty had Scriptural support. Yes, according to St. Vincent it had “weighty support in Scripture,” but with this qualification: “only interpreted in a novel and perverse sense.” (p. 17) Of course Agripinnus and those who followed him in this belief did not think they were giving Scripture a perverse or distorted sense. They were interpreting it, presumably, according to what they believed that it truly taught. But they were deceived, claims St. Vincent, because they did not interpret it according to the tradition of the Church.

In other words, we shouldn’t expect heretics to avoid Scripture; we should expect heretics to make vigorous and copious use of Scripture. If Scripture could reasonably be read in only one sense, we would expect heretics to avoid Scripture. But because Scripture can be read in many senses, then we should expect heretics to appeal to Scripture to defend their heretical beliefs, and to presuppose (or state explicitly) that Magisterial authority is not necessary in order to interpret Scripture rightly.

St. Vincent writes:

Here, possibly, some one may ask, Do heretics also appeal to Scripture? They do indeed, and with a vengeance; for you may see them scamper through every single book of Holy Scripture—through the books of Moses, the books of Kings, the Psalms, the Epistles, the Gospels, the Prophets. Whether among their own people, or among strangers, in private or in public, in speaking or in writing, at convivial meetings, or in the streets, hardly ever do they bring forward anything of their own which they do not endeavour to shelter under words of Scripture. Read the works of Paul of Samosata, of Priscillian, of Eunomius, of Jovinian, and the rest of those pests, and you will see an infinite heap of instances, hardly a single page, which does not bristle with plausible quotations from the New Testament or the Old. (p. 64)

The plentiful use of Scripture by heretics to support their heretical claims demonstrates the need for interpretive authority in the Church. What the faithful must look for is not a mere appeal to Scripture, since any heretic can do that. The faithful must look to those whom Christ authorized to provide the authentic interpretation of Scripture for the members of His Body. St. Vincent points to Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Matthew: “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.” (Mt. 7:15) What is the sheep’s clothing that the false prophets use to disguise themselves? According to St. Vincent, the sheep’s clothing is the words of Scripture that the heretics wrap themselves in, to steal upon the unsuspecting sheep. He writes,

What is meant by sheep’s clothing? What but the words which prophets and apostles with the guilelessness of sheep wove beforehand as fleeces, for that immaculate Lamb which takes away the sin of the world? What are the ravening wolves? What but the savage and rabid glosses of heretics, who continually infest the Church’s folds, and tear in pieces the flock of Christ wherever they are able? But that they may with more successful guile steal upon the unsuspecting sheep, retaining the ferocity of the wolf, they put off his appearance, and wrap themselves, so to say, in the language of the Divine Law, as in a fleece, so that one, having felt the softness of wool, may have no dread of the wolf’s fangs. (p. 66)

St. Vincent explains that St. Paul also refers to such persons in his second letter to the Corinthians, where he writes, “For of this sort are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ.” (2 Cor. 11:12) They transform themselves into apostles of Christ [i.e. make themselves out to appear as though they are apostles of Christ, when in fact they are not] by arrogating to themselves the right to interpret Scripture as they see fit, rather than under the authority of the Church in accordance with the Tradition that has been handed down from the Apostles. (p. 67) St. Vincent writes:

Therefore, according to the authority of the Apostle Paul, as often as either false apostles or false teachers cite passages from the Divine Law, by means of which, misinterpreted, they seek to prop up their own errors, there is no doubt that they are following the cunning devices of their father, which assuredly he would never have devised, but that he knew that where he could fraudulently and by stealth introduce error, there is no easier way of effecting his impious purpose than by pretending the authority of Holy Scripture. (p. 67)

Here St. Vincent shows from Scripture that the Devil quoted Scripture, and because the sons do what their father does, so the Devil’s followers likewise will quote Scripture. Hence St. Vincent writes:

[W]e may be assured beyond doubt, when we find people alleging passages from the Apostles or Prophets against the Catholic Faith, that the Devil speaks through their mouths. For as then the Head spoke to the Head, so now also the members speak to the members, the members of the Devil to the members of Christ, misbelievers to believers, sacrilegious to religious, in one word, Heretics to Catholics. (p. 68)

Just as the head of the “sons of the evil one” (Mt. 13:38) spoke to the Head of the “sons of the Kingdom” (Mt. 13:38), so the sons of the evil one will speak in the same way to the sons of the Kingdom. Thus, just as the Devil appealed to Scripture to tempt Jesus, so the heretics appeal to Scripture in their attempt to lead Catholics away from the true faith of the Church. St. Vincent sees this implied in the very nature of the narrative of Satan’s attempt to get Jesus to cast Himself down from the Temple. This, he says, characterizes the attempt by heretics to get Catholics to cast themselves down from “the doctrine and tradition of that sublime Church, which is imagined to be nothing less than the very temple of God.” (p. 69) If we ask the heretics what grounds they have for their belief, they respond, like Satan himself, by appealing to the Scriptures, interpreted according to their own novel interpretation, not interpreted according to the doctrine and teaching of the Church.

In a rather well-known passage, he writes:

And if one should ask one of the heretics who gives this advice, How do you prove? What ground have you, for saying, that I ought to cast away the universal and ancient faith of the Catholic Church? He has the answer ready, For it is written; and immediately he produces a thousand testimonies, a thousand examples, a thousand authorities from the Law, from the Psalms, from the apostles, from the Prophets, by means of which, interpreted on a new and wrong principle, the unhappy soul may be precipitated from the height of Catholic truth to the lowest abyss of heresy. Then, with the accompanying promises, the heretics are wont marvellously to beguile the incautious. For they dare to teach and promise, that in their church, that is, in the conventicle of their communion, there is a certain great and special and altogether personal grace of God, so that whosoever pertain to their number, without any labour, without any effort, without any industry, even though they neither ask, nor seek, nor knock, have such a dispensation from God, that, borne up by angel hands, that is, preserved by the protection of angels, it is impossible they should ever dash their feet against a stone, that is, that they should ever be offended. (p. 69)

The heretics cast away the universal and ancient faith of the Catholic Church because of their preference for their own interpretation of Scripture, by which, wrongly interpreted, they fall from Catholic truth into the darkness of heresy, and shipwreck their faith. To make their sect more attractive, they use Scripture to teach that in their sect, there is some greater benefit than what is available in the Catholic Church. The greater benefit can be something such as the impossibility of sinning or losing salvation.

In his summary toward the end of his Commonitory, St. Vincent writes in more detail about the two ways in which it has always been the custom of Catholics to prove the true faith:

We said above, that it has always been the custom of Catholics, and still is, to prove the true faith in these two ways; first by the authority of the Divine Canon, and next by the tradition of the Catholic Church. Not that the Canon alone does not of itself suffice for every question, but seeing that the more part, interpreting the divine words according to their own persuasion, take up various erroneous opinions, it is therefore necessary that the interpretation of divine Scripture should be ruled according to the one standard of the Church’s belief, especially in those articles on which the foundations of all Catholic doctrine rest. (p. 76)

When he includes the tradition of the Church, he wants to make sure his reader understands that he is not saying that Scripture is not sufficient to answer such questions. However, the nature of the sufficiency he is affirming is about Scripture itself. The reason why, according to St. Vincent, we need the tradition of the Catholic Church in addition to Scripture, is because of human weakness, namely, that apart from a divinely established interpretive authority guarding and preserving a divinely given tradition, people interpret Scripture according to their own persuasion. Therefore, the rule for the interpretation of Scripture must be the tradition of the Church, by which and in which Scripture is authentically interpreted. In other words, the standard for the right interpretation of Scripture is the Church’s doctrine, not one’s own opinion. To use one’s own interpretation as the standard by which to judge the doctrine of the Church is to fall into the underlying error of the heretics, who approach Scripture apart from the teaching and tradition of the Church, and so arrive at novel interpretations by which they criticize the Church and deceive some of her sheep.

III. The Identity and Authority of the Tradition and Magisterium
A. The Tradition

According to St. Vincent, to avoid heresy and schism we should hold firmly to the following two authoritative lights: the decisions of authoritative councils, and the opinions of the holy Fathers. (p. 77) So in what sense is the “Tradition of the Catholic Church” (p. 4) authoritative, and how do we identify it? St. Vincent provides us with his famous rule, also known as the “Vincentian canon:”

Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. For that is truly and in the strictest sense Catholic, which, as the name itself and the reason of the thing declare, comprehends all universally. This rule we shall observe if we follow universality, antiquity, consent. We shall follow universality if we confess 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 manifest were notoriously held by our holy ancestors and fathers; consent, in like manner, if in antiquity itself we adhere to the consentient definitions and determinations of all, or at the least of almost all priests and doctors. (p. 6)

The Vincentian canon is summarized as quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est (that which has been believed everywhere, always, by all). This is the very nature of catholicity, and catholicity is one of the four marks of the Church (i.e. “one, holy, catholic and apostolic”). The utility of the Vincentian canon depends on the Church being visible, such that there is a clear distinction between those in the Church and those not. Otherwise, we would not know who to include in the ‘everywhere, always, and all.’ The Vincentian canon also carries with it an implicit affirmation of the indefectibility of the visible Church (and thus a denial of ecclesial deism). In order for the Tradition held everywhere in the Church, in all times of the Church’s history, and by all in the Church, to have divine authority, it must be the case not only that this Tradition is divine revelation, but also that this Tradition is divinely protected and preserved in the Church.

St. Vincent draws this from the letters of St. Paul. Speaking of Galatians 1.8, he writes, “But what he [i.e. St. Paul] means is: Even if that were to happen which cannot happen — if any one, be he who he may, attempt to alter the faith once for all delivered, let him be accursed.” (p. 22) It means that “it is unlawful for all to receive any other gospel than that which the Catholic Church preaches everywhere.” (p. 24) According to St. Vincent, Galatians 1:8 entails that we have to trace the gospel down through the generations, from the Apostles to the present. The two possible methodological errors related to this verse are: (1) assuming blindly that the [heretical] sect one is presently in is the bearer of the Apostolic tradition, and thereby following what is, in actuality, a novel interpretation that arose in a previous generation, and in which one was raised, and (2) failing to trace the Apostolic Tradition down through the generations, but instead assuming that one’s own interpretation of Scripture is what the Apostles handed down, and thereby introducing what is in fact a novel interpretation.

Toward the end of his Commonitory, St. Vincent summarizes his point concerning the authority of Tradition:

We said likewise, that in the Church itself regard must be had to the consentient voice of universality equally with that of antiquity, lest we either be torn from the integrity of unity and carried away to schism, or be precipitated from the religion of antiquity into heretical novelties. We said, further, that in this same ecclesiastical antiquity two points are very carefully and earnestly to be held in view by those who would keep clear of heresy: first, they should ascertain whether any decision has been given in ancient times as to the matter in question by the whole priesthood of the Catholic Church, with the authority of a General Council: and, secondly, if some new question should arise on which no such decision has been given, they should then have recourse to the opinions of the holy Fathers, of those at least, who, each in his own time and place, remaining in the unity of communion and of the faith, were accepted as approved masters; and whatsoever these may be found to have held, with one mind and with one consent, this ought to be accounted the true and Catholic doctrine of the Church, without any doubt or scruple. (p. 77)

We find the true and Catholic doctrine of the Church in the Church, either by what has been decided by the authority of the Church in a General Council, or, if no decision has been made in a General Council concerning the question, in what has been held universally in the Church, especially in the Church Fathers. This is how we avoid being carried away into schism or heretical novelties.

B. The Magisterium
1. General Councils

Throughout the Commonitory we see St. Vincent refer to the authority of General Councils:

But what, if in antiquity itself there be found error on the part of two or three men, or at any rate of a city or even of a province? Then it will be his care by all means, to prefer the decrees, if such there be, of an ancient General Council to the rashness and ignorance of a few. (p. 8)

A bit later he writes:

Finally, what other object have Councils ever aimed at in their decrees, than to provide that what was before believed in simplicity should in future be believed intelligently, that what was before preached coldly should in future be preached earnestly, that what was before practised negligently should thenceforward be practised with double solicitude? This, I say, is what the Catholic Church, roused by the novelties of heretics, has accomplished by the decrees of her Councils,— this, and nothing else—she has thenceforward consigned to posterity in writing what she had received from those of olden times only by tradition, comprising a great amount of matter in a few words, and often, for the better understanding, designating an old article of the faith by the characteristic of a new name. (p. 59)

Here St. Vincent shows us what a General Council does. It does not fabricate novel teaching. Rather, typically in response to challenges from heretics, it clarifies and makes explicit what had always been believed, even if previously held in a simple or inchoate fashion. In other words, a General Council serves as an instrument in the authentic development of doctrine. Moreover, a General Council puts to writing what had previously been handed down only by [oral] tradition. So, the decisions and decrees of a General Council are a way to know what is the oral Tradition that has been passed down from the Apostles.²

Toward the end of the Commonitory he repeatedly refers to the authority of General Councils:

[I]n antiquity itself in like manner, to the temerity of one or of a very few they must prefer, first of all, the general decrees, if such there be, of a Universal Council, or if there be no such, then, what is next best, they must follow the consentient belief of many and great masters. Which rule having been faithfully, soberly, and scrupulously observed, we shall with little difficulty detect the noxious errors of heretics as they arise. (p. 70)

But it is now time to bring forward the exemplification which we promised, where and how the sentences of the holy Fathers have been collected together, so that in accordance with them, by the decree and authority of a council, the rule of the Church’s faith may be settled. (p. 75)

[F]irst, they should ascertain whether any decision has been given in ancient times as to the matter in question by the whole priesthood of the Catholic Church, with the authority of a General Council. (p. 77)

According to St. Vincent, a General Council settles questions or disputes concerning what does and does not belong to the rule of the Church’s faith. If the Church has spoken on a question through a General Council, there is no need to search the Fathers; the question is no longer uncertain or up in the air, because the Church’s decision is authoritative and binding. If a heresy has already been condemned by a General Council, then we should treat such heresies “as having been already of old convicted and condemned by universal councils of the Catholic Priesthood.” (p. 71) That could be the case only if General Councils are authoritative and binding.

2. The Apostolic See

In St. Vincent’s Commonitory we see an awareness of the authoritative primacy of the Apostolic See. In the early part of his work, in seeking to provide an example of resisting heresy by holding fast to what had been received from the Apostles, St. Vincent makes use of the example of Pope St. Stephen (254 – 257) in resisting the heretical doctrine concerning the iteration of baptism (see Section II, above):

Examples there are without number: but to be brief, we will take one, and that, in preference to others, from the Apostolic See, so that it may be clearer than day to every one with how great energy, with how great zeal, with how great earnestness, the blessed successors of the blessed apostles have constantly defended the integrity of the religion which they have once received. (p. 15)

… When then all men protested against the novelty [introduced by Agripinnus], and the priesthood everywhere, each as his zeal prompted him, opposed it, Pope Stephen of blessed memory, Prelate of the Apostolic See, in conjunction indeed with his colleagues but yet himself the foremost, withstood it, thinking it right, I doubt not, that as he exceeded all others in the authority of his place, so he should also in the devotion of his faith. In fine, in an epistle sent at the time to Africa, he laid down this rule: Let there be no innovation— nothing but what has been handed down. For that holy and prudent man well knew that true piety admits no other rule than that whatsoever things have been faithfully received from our fathers the same are to be faithfully consigned to our children; and that it is our duty, not to lead religion whither we would, but rather to follow religion whither it leads; and that it is the part of Christian modesty and gravity not to hand down our own beliefs or observances to those who come after us, but to preserve and keep what we have received from those who went before us. (p. 16)

St. Vincent notes that Pope St. Stephen was himself “the foremost” of his colleagues in the priesthood (i.e. the college of bishops). He excelled all the other bishops in “the authority of his place.” St. Vincent is speaking not of political authority or charismatic authority, but of the ecclesial authority of the Apostolic See, the place where saints Peter and Paul laid down their lives and handed down their apostolic authority. This See has greater authority than any of the others, and according to St. Vincent, Pope St. Stephen was aware that he, in virtue of being the bishop of the Apostolic See and a “successor of the blessed apostles,” excelled all the other bishops in ecclesial authority.

Later in his Commonitory St. Vincent again refers to the authoritative primacy of the bishop of Rome. In speaking of the authorities gathered at the Council of Ephesus, he writes:

And lest Greece or the East should seem to stand alone, to prove that the Western and Latin world also have always held the same belief, there were read in the Council certain Epistles of St. Felix, martyr, and St. Julius, both bishops of Rome. And that not only the Head, but the other parts, of the world also might bear witness to the judgment of the council, there was added from the South the most blessed Cyprian, bishop of Carthage and martyr, and from the North St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan.” (p. 79)

Notice what St. Vincent says about Popes St. Felix (269-274) and St. Julius (337-352); they are the “the Head,” in contrast to the bishops of the East and of Africa and of northern Italy.

In the closing paragraphs of his Commonitory, St. Vincent again refers to the authority of the Apostolic See. He writes:

The foregoing would be enough and very much more than enough, to crush and annihilate every profane novelty. But yet that nothing might be wanting to such completeness of proof, we added, at the close, the twofold authority of the Apostolic See, first, that of holy Pope Sixtus, the venerable prelate who now adorns the Roman Church; and secondly that of his predecessor, Pope Celestine of blessed memory, which same we think it necessary to insert here also. (p. 84)

St. Vincent then explains that Pope St. Sixtus III (432-440) wrote a letter to the bishop of Antioch regarding the doctrine taught by Nestorius (bishop of Constantinople). In the letter Pope St. Sixtus enjoined the bishop of Antioch to “Let no license be allowed to novelty, because it is not fit that any addition should be made to antiquity. Let not the clear faith and belief of our forefathers be fouled by any muddy admixture.” (p. 84) Likewise, St. Vincent shows the authority of Pope St. Celestine (422-430) by recounting how Pope St. Celestine wrote an epistle to the priests of France “charging them with connivance with error, in that by their silence they failed in their duty to the ancient faith, and allowed profane novelties to spring up.” (p. 85) He exhorted them to rebuke those introducing such novelties. This, according to St. Vincent, was the “sentence” [i.e. authoritative decision] of Pope St. Celestine, (p. 85).

Whoever then gainsays these Apostolic and Catholic determinations, first of all necessarily insults the memory of holy Celestine, who decreed that novelty should cease to assail antiquity; and in the next place sets at naught the decision of holy Sixtus, whose sentence was, Let no license be allowed to novelty, since it is not fit that any addition be made to antiquity. (p. 86)

According to St. Vincent, popes St. Celestine and St. Sixtus did not merely give opinions; they “decreed” and provided “decisions.” To go against them is to go against “Apostolic and Catholic determinations.” In these excerpts we see in St. Vincent’s writing a clear awareness of the authoritative primacy of the Apostolic See and its bishop, having succession from the blessed apostles.

3. Authority of the Church

More generally throughout the Commonitory we find St. Vincent referring to the authority of the Church:

An important fact truly, useful to be learned, and necessary to be remembered, and to be illustrated and enforced again and again, by example upon example, in order that all true Catholics may understand that it behooves them with the Church to receive Teachers, not with Teachers to desert the faith of the Church.” (p. 42)

Which teachers should we receive? Only those teachers who are “with the Church.” We must never follow teachers to desert the faith of the Church. Such a prescription would be worthless if “the Church” were defined only by way of teachers, and without a visible principle of unity, since every teacher would, by simply redefining ‘Church,’ claim to be part of the Church. Any heresy or schism throughout the history of the Church could have claimed to be part of the universal Church, and some did. The Arians could have done so. So could the Nestorians or the Donatists or the Marcionites or the Monophysites. But, in each case, it would have been a false claim, because by their rejection of the Church’s decision concerning their specific heresy (or in the Donatist case by their visible separation from communion with the Catholic Church) they were no longer in communion with the successor of St. Peter and with all those in communion with the Apostolic See. The standard of orthodoxy and unity was not their own interpretation of Scripture, but was instead the faith of and full communion with the one holding the keys of the Kingdom.

For St. Vincent, the Church is a “placid and good mother,” (p. 50) and we are to hold “the entire doctrine of the Church.” (p. 50) Whoever gainsays the decisions of the Church and her councils:

despises as vile and worthless the whole Church of Christ, and its doctors, apostles, and prophets, and especially the blessed Apostle Paul: he despises the Church, in that she has never failed in loyalty to the duty of cherishing and preserving the faith once for all delivered to her; he despises St. Paul, who wrote, O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you, shunning profane novelties of words; (1 Timothy 6:20) and again, if any man preach unto you other than you have received, let him be accursed.” (Gal. 1:9) (p. 86)

For St. Vincent, the authority of the Church and her Magisterium is testified to in St. Paul’s words, when he urges St. Timothy to shun profane novelties, and when he exhorts the Galatian Christians not to accept or receive anything other than what they had already received. The Church keeps these Pauline admonitions, and therefore to despise the teaching of the Church is to despise even St. Paul. He writes,”Who is the Timothy of today, but either generally the Universal Church, or in particular, the whole body of The Prelacy, whom it behooves either themselves to possess or to communicate to others a complete knowledge of religion?” (p. 53) Here again, is an implicit rejection of the possibility of ecclesial deism, as I explain in the following section.

Our duty as Catholics, according to St. Vincent, is to be willing to die in the faith of the holy Fathers:

[I]t is incumbent on all Catholics who are anxious to approve themselves genuine sons of Mother Church, to adhere henceforward to the holy faith of the holy Fathers, to be wedded to it, to die in it; but as to the profane novelties of profane men— to detest them, abhor them, oppose them, give them no quarter. (p. 86)

This admonition is based not only on the promises of Christ concerning the indefectibility of the Church, but also on an understanding of the mystical union of Christ and His Church such that staying with the Church is staying with Christ, and believing what the Church teaches, because of its authority from Christ, is the way in which faith in Christ is expressed. For St. Vincent, submitting to the Church is submitting to Christ. We believe Christ through what the Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.³

IV. The Indefectibility of the Church

In explaining St. Paul’s exhortion to St. Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:20, St. Vincent writes:

Shun profane novelties, he says. He does not say shun antiquity. But he plainly points to what ought to follow by the rule of contrary. For if novelty is to be shunned, antiquity is to be held fast; if novelty is profane, antiquity is sacred. … For you may hear some of these same doctors say, Come, O silly wretches, who go by the name of Catholics, come and learn the true faith, which no one but ourselves is acquainted with, which same has lain hid these many ages, but has recently been revealed and made manifest. But learn it by stealth and in secret, for you will be delighted with it. Moreover, when you have learned it, teach it furtively, that the world may not hear, that the Church may not know. For there are but few to whom it is granted to receive the secret of so great a mystery. Are not these the words of that harlot who, in the proverbs of Solomon, calls to the passengers who go right on their ways, Whoso is simple let him turn in hither. And as for them that are void of understanding, she exhorts them saying: Drink stolen waters, for they are sweet, and eat bread in secret for it is pleasant.” (p. 52)

What does St. Paul mean in telling St. Timothy to shun profane novelties? According to St. Vincent, one implication of St. Paul’s injunction is that we must avoid the error of ecclesial deism. St. Vincent writes:

Profane novelties of words. What words are these? Such as have nothing sacred, nothing religious, words utterly remote from the inmost sanctuary of the Church which is the temple of God. Profane novelties of words, that is, of doctrines, subjects, opinions, such as are contrary to antiquity and the faith of the olden time. Which if they be received, it follows necessarily that the faith of the blessed fathers is violated either in whole, or at all events in great part; it follows necessarily that all the faithful of all ages, all the saints, the chaste, the continent, the virgins, all the clergy, Deacons and Priests, so many thousands of Confessors, so vast an army of martyrs, such multitudes of cities and of peoples, so many islands, provinces, kings, tribes, kingdoms, nations, in a word, almost the whole earth, incorporated in Christ the Head, through the Catholic faith, have been ignorant for so long a tract of time, have been mistaken, have blasphemed, have not known what to believe, what to confess. (p. 61)

St. Vincent argues that what follows from St. Paul’s injunction that we shun profane novelties is that we hold fast to antiquity as sacred. But for St. Vincent this does not mean that only the writings of the Apostles are sacred or authoritative, and that we can contravene the writings of the Church Fathers. He describes a situation in which a heretic urges a Catholic to “come and learn the true faith” which no one has known for many ages, but which he and his heretical sect have rediscovered. The very notion that the truth could have departed from the visible Church is a rejection not only of the Church, but of the teaching that the Church herself has received and diligently preserved. For St. Vincent, the problem underlying the embrace of profane novelties is an embrace of ecclesial deism, which leads to abandoning the ancient faith. St. Vincent is not opposed to novelty-by-way-of-development, since he explicitly affirms that as I argue in section VI below. That would be what we might call ‘sacred novelty,’ the result of genuine organic growth in the understanding of the deposit of faith, and thus a making explicit now of what had always been present implicitly. Profane novelty, by contrast, does not have its origin in the sacred deposit, but somewhere else, words “utterly removed from the inmost sanctuary of the Church,” and contrary to the ancient faith. To embrace a profane novelty is to accuse the whole of all the saints and doctors who have proceeded oneself of ignorance at best, or of blasphemous rejection of the truth. Such a notion is preposterous for St. Vincent in its arrogance and unbelief. He writes:

Lest any one perchance should rashly think the holy and Catholic consent of these blessed fathers to be despised, the Apostle says, in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, God has placed some in the Church, first Apostles, (1 Cor. 12:27-28) of whom himself was one; secondly Prophets, such as Agabus, of whom we read in the Acts of the Apostles; (Acts 11:28) then doctors, who are now called Homilists, Expositors, whom the same apostle sometimes calls also Prophets, because by them the mysteries of the Prophets are opened to the people. Whosoever, therefore, shall despise these, who had their appointment of God in His Church in their several times and places, when they are unanimous in Christ, in the interpretation of some one point of Catholic doctrine, despises not man, but God, from whose unity in the truth, lest any one should vary, the same Apostle earnestly protests, I beseech you, brethren, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. 1 Corinthians 1:10 But if any one dissent from their unanimous decision, let him listen to the words of the same apostle, God is not the God of dissension but of peace; 1 Corinthians 14:33 that is, not of him who departs from the unity of consent, but of those who remain steadfast in the peace of consent: as, he continues, I teach in all Churches of the saints, that is, of Catholics, which churches are therefore churches of the saints, because they continue steadfast in the communion of the faith. (p.73)

St. Vincent claims from 1 Cor. 12:27-28 that whoever rejects the ecclesial authority of those persons in the Church whom God has placed in their office, whether Apostles, prophets, or doctors, despises not man, but God. To despise those who were appointed by God as teachers and preachers in His Church, when they are unanimous in Christ in the interpretation of some one point of Catholic doctrine, despises God because unity in the truth comes from God through the persons God has established in the various offices of His Church. To go against that unity and the divinely authorized persons by which it is preserved, is to go against God. That was true not only in the first generation of the Church, but in every succeeding generation, even to his own day. It is on the basis of the unity found through the divinely established Magisterium that St. Paul can exhort believers that there be no divisions among them. Such an exhortation would make no sense if the Magisterium itself could be divided, for there would be no principled way to resolve such divisions. The God who is a God of peace and order (1 Cor 14:33) has established a means by which peace and order is maintained perpetually in His Church, and divisions avoided (1 Cor. 1:10), until He returns. The means He has established, as we saw above, is not Scripture alone. Rather, God has established teaching and ruling offices in His Church, and an abiding Tradition, by which Scripture is to be understood, and questions and disputes are to be answered and resolved. Those who separate themselves from the unity, peace, and order that binds together the [particular] Churches of the saints (i.e. “of Catholics”) through the divinely appointed Magisterium of the Church, separate themselves from the God who has established this supernatural peace in His Church.

St. Vincent also quotes from the second epistle of St. John, in support of the indefectibility of the Church:

If anyone, says St. John, come to you and bring not this doctrine. What doctrine? What but the Catholic and universal doctrine, which has continued one and the same through the several successions of ages by the uncorrupt tradition of the truth and so will continue for ever – “Receive him not into your house, neither bid him Godspeed, for he that bids him Godspeed communicates with him in his evil deeds.” (2 John 10) (p. 60)

According to St. Vincent, apostolicity is not determined by checking the teaching in question with one’s own interpretation of Scripture. In order to apply 2 John 10, we determine what is and is not the Apostles’ doctrine by comparing the teaching in question to what the Church has believed and taught through the successions of ages “and will continue forever.” St. Vincent’s belief that the apostolic doctrine will “continue forever” to be handed down uncorrupt in the Catholic Church indicates his belief that Christ had endowed His Church with indefectibility.

Writing just three years after the Ecumenical Council that condemned Nestorius, St. Vincent uses this incident as an example, pointing to Nestorius’ denial of ecclesial indefectibility in his belief that he [i.e. Nestorius] was the first and only one who rightly understood holy Scripture in this matter:

We inveighed also against the wicked presumption of Nestorius in boasting that he was the first and the only one who understood holy Scripture, and that all those teachers were ignorant, who before him had expounded the sacred oracles, forsooth, the whole body of priests, the whole body of Confessors and martyrs, of whom some had published commentaries upon the Law of God, others had agreed with them in their comments, or had acquiesced in them. In a word, he confidently asserted that the whole Church was even now in error, and always had been in error, in that, as it seemed to him, it had followed, and was following, ignorant and misguided teachers. (p. 83. cf. p. 86.)

Those present-day exegetes who approach Scripture without any recourse to the Church Fathers, or who think of the Church Fathers as benighted infants in comparison to themselves, have fallen into the sin of wicked presumption. Catholicity is the contrary of arrogance; the two cannot go together. We see the same stance in Martin Luther, who, like Nestorius, confidently asserted that the whole Church was even now in error, and had long been in error, in that, as it seemed to him, it had followed, and was following, ignorant and misguided teachers. To be Catholic is take the stance of St. John the Baptist, who says, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (St. John 3:30) It is to take the stance of St. Mary, who said, “Be it done unto me according to Thy word,” (St. Luke 1:38) and “do whatever He tells you.” (St. John 2:5)

V. Schisms, Heresies, and their Antidote
A. In the Event of Schism and Heresy

St. Vincent’s purpose is to put to writing the rule by which we may know how to find and retain the truth in the face of schisms and heresies. He thus raises the following question: What ought we to do in the case of schism?

What then will a Catholic Christian do, if a small portion of the Church have cut itself off from the communion of the universal faith? What, surely, but prefer the soundness of the whole body to the unsoundness of a pestilent and corrupt member? What, if some novel contagion seek to infect not merely an insignificant portion of the Church, but the whole? (p. 7)

As an example, he describes the account of the Donatist schism, which had only recently been resolve in AD 411:

In the time of Donatus, from whom his followers were called Donatists, when great numbers in Africa were rushing headlong into their own mad error, and unmindful of their name, their religion, their profession, were preferring the sacrilegious temerity of one man before the Church of Christ, then they alone throughout Africa were safe within the sacred precincts of the Catholic faith, who, detesting the profane schism, continued in communion with the universal Church, leaving to posterity an illustrious example, how, and how well in future the soundness of the whole body should be preferred before the madness of one, or at most of a few. (p. 9)

St. Vincent’s general answer to the question, “What ought we do to in the event of schism?” is that we must detest schism, preferring the soundness of the whole body to the madness of one or of a few. (p. 9)

In case heresy has made its way into some few in the Church, we must prefer the decrees of an ancient General Council to the “rashness and ignorance of a few.” But if there has been no relevant decrees from a General Council, then we must consult the Tradition:

Then he must collate and consult and interrogate the opinions of the ancients, of those, namely, who, though living in various times and places, yet continuing in the communion and faith of the one Catholic Church, stand forth acknowledged and approved authorities: and whatsoever he shall ascertain to have been held, written, taught, not by one or two of these only, but by all, equally, with one consent, openly, frequently, persistently, that he must understand that he himself also is to believe without any doubt or hesitation. (p. 8)

If, however, some “novel contagion” seeks to infect not merely an insignificant portion of the Church, but the whole (as in the case of the Arians, cf. p. 10),”then we must “cleave to antiquity, which at this day cannot possibly be seduced by any fraud of novelty.” (p. 7)

B. The Cause of Heresies and Schisms
1. Cause: Wicked Novelty Subverting Well-Established Antiquity

The general cause of heresy and schism, according to St. Vincent is “wicked novelty subverting well established antiquity.” (p. 11) Again, St. Vincent’s diagnosis is an indictment of ecclesial deism, because the nature of heresy is to “burst forth at a particular time, at a particular place, from a particular person.” (p. 62) That would not be the case if the whole of the Church, save for an elect few, could universally and simultaneously, even if gradually, sink into heresy. He writes:

Who ever originated a heresy that did not first dissever himself from the consentient agreement of the universality and antiquity of the Catholic Church? That this is so is demonstrated in the clearest way by examples. For who ever before that profane Pelagius attributed so much antecedent strength to Free-will, as to deny the necessity of God’s grace to aid it towards good in every single act? Who ever before his monstrous disciple Cœlestius denied that the whole human race is involved in the guilt of Adam’s sin? Who ever before sacrilegious Arius dared to rend asunder the unity of the Trinity? Who before impious Sabellius was so audacious as to confound the Trinity of the Unity? Who before cruellest Novatian represented God as cruel in that He had rather the wicked should die than that he should be converted and live? Who before Simon Magus, who was smitten by the apostle’s rebuke, and from whom that ancient sink of every thing vile has flowed by a secret continuous succession even to Priscillian of our own time, — who, I say, before this Simon Magus, dared to say that God, the Creator, is the author of evil, that is, of our wickednesses, impieties, flagitiousnesses, inasmuch as he asserts that He created with His own hands a human nature of such a description, that of its own motion, and by the impulse of its necessity-constrained will, it can do nothing else, can will nothing else, but sin, seeing that tossed to and fro, and set on fire by the furies of all sorts of vices, it is hurried away by unquenchable lust into the utmost extremes of baseness? (p. 62)

Through many illustrations, St. Vincent argues that heresy always has its source in novelty against the universal doctrine of the Church. Each heretic introduces something new, something previously unknown. Thus in principle, heresy can be distinguished from orthodoxy by the ‘profane novelty’ of the former. St. Vincent repeats this in the subsequent paragraph:

[I]t is an established law, in the case of almost all heresies, that they evermore delight in profane novelties, scorn the decisions of antiquity, and, through oppositions of science falsely so called, make shipwreck of the faith. On the other hand, it is the sure characteristic of Catholics to keep that which has been committed to their trust by the holy Fathers, to condemn profane novelties, and, in the apostle’s words, once and again repeated, to anathematize every one who preaches any other doctrine than that which has been received. (p. 63)

According to St. Vincent, heretics know that the novelty of heresy refutes it, and so they dress up their heresy under a name other than its own, and appeal to ancient writers to make it seem that they are not the first to hold this position:

[They] get hold often of the works of some ancient writer, not very clearly expressed, which, owing to the very obscurity of their own doctrine, have the appearance of agreeing with it, so that they get the credit of being neither the first nor the only persons who have held it. (p. 19)

He walks through the examples of Nestorius (p. 29), Photinus (p. 30), Apollinaris (p. 31), Origen (p. 43), and Tertullian (p. 46), to show in each case how their error was the result of advancing a profane novelty against the universal tradition of the Church.

2. Why does God permit them?

Why then does God permit some eminent men to become the authors of [heretical] novelty in the Church? (p. 27) St. Vincent’s answer: To try us.

That the Lord your God may try you; he says. And assuredly it is a great trial when one whom you believe to be a prophet, a disciple of prophets, a doctor and defender of the truth, whom you have folded to your breast with the utmost veneration and love, when such a one of a sudden secretly and furtively brings in noxious errors, which you can neither quickly detect, being held by the prestige of former authority, nor lightly think it right to condemn, being prevented by affection for your old master. (p. 28)

When a heretical teacher arises, then those under his influence are faced with a choice, “the Church’s authority drawing them one way, their Master’s influence the opposite.” (p. 31) This is a test allowed by God, to see whether we will in faith cling to the Church, or whether we are lovers of self, and so prefer our own reasoning to the faith offered to us by holy Mother Church. The true Catholic loves the Church above the authority of every man:

This being the case, he is the true and genuine Catholic who loves the truth of God, who loves the Church, who loves the Body of Christ, who esteems divine religion and the Catholic Faith above every thing, above the authority, above the regard, above the genius, above the eloquence, above the philosophy, of every man whatsoever; who sets light by all of these, and continuing steadfast and established in the faith, resolves that he will believe that, and that only, which he is sure the Catholic Church has held universally and from ancient time; but that whatsoever new and unheard-of doctrine he shall find to have been furtively introduced by some one or another, besides that of all, or contrary to that of all the saints, this, he will understand, does not pertain to religion, but is permitted as a trial, being instructed especially by the words of the blessed Apostle Paul, who writes thus in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, There must needs be heresies, that they who are approved may be made manifest among you: 1 Corinthians 2:9 as though he should say, This is the reason why the authors of Heresies are not immediately rooted up by God, namely, that they who are approved may be made manifest; that is, that it may be apparent of each individual, how tenacious and faithful and steadfast he is in his love of the Catholic faith. (p. 48)

According to St. Vincent, when St. Paul said that there must be heresies among us, that those who are approved may be made manifest among us, he was providing the reason why God allows such heresies to arise, so that our faith may be tested.

C. The Antidote: Interpret Scripture within and according to the Church

So, what is the antidote to heresies and schisms? St. Vincent points to the martyrs and confessors who suffered and died not for the sake of doctrines advanced by a small portion of the Body, but for the sake of the faith of the whole Body.

But in this divine virtue, as we may call it, exhibited by these Confessors, we must note especially that the defence which they then undertook in appealing to the Ancient Church, was the defence, not of a part, but of the whole body. For it was not right that men of such eminence should uphold with so huge an effort the vague and conflicting notions of one or two men, or should exert themselves in the defence of some ill-advised combination of some petty province; but adhering to the decrees and definitions of the universal priesthood of Holy Church, the heirs of Apostolic and Catholic truth, they chose rather to deliver up themselves than to betray the faith of universality and antiquity. (p. 14)

Why were they willing to die for the faith of the whole Body? Because the faith of universality and antiquity is necessarily the faith taught by the Apostles and thus by Christ. That is the faith of which we can have the certainty that comes from God, a faith for which we must be willing to lay down our lives.

How then, are Catholics to interpret Scripture, so as to avoid the errors and misinterpretations of the heretics? St. Vincent gives the following rule:

[T]hey must interpret the sacred Canon according to the traditions of the Universal Church and in keeping with the rules of Catholic doctrine, in which Catholic and Universal Church, moreover, they must follow universality, antiquity, consent. And if at any time a part opposes itself to the whole, novelty to antiquity, the dissent of one or a few who are in error to the consent of all or at all events of the great majority of Catholics, then they must prefer the soundness of the whole to the corruption of a part; in which same whole they must prefer the religion of antiquity to the profaneness of novelty; and in antiquity itself in like manner, to the temerity of one or of a very few they must prefer, first of all, the general decrees, if such there be, of a Universal Council, or if there be no such, then, what is next best, they must follow the consentient belief of many and great masters. Which rule having been faithfully, soberly, and scrupulously observed, we shall with little difficulty detect the noxious errors of heretics as they arise. (p. 70)

We must interpret Scripture according to the traditions of the Universal Church, and the rules of Catholic doctrine, preferring the soundness of the whole to the corruption of the part. Where the Church’s Magisterium in the Universal Councils has answered questions or defined doctrines, we must interpret Scripture in subordination to those Magisterial decisions. Where the Church has not offered Magisterial decisions, we must follow universality, antiquity, and consent, preferring the soundness of the whole to the corruption of a part. Again, this rule indicates St. Vincent’s belief in the indefectibility of the Church; otherwise, it would be possible for the part to be what is sound, and the whole to be corrupt.

Regarding older heresies, St. Vincent writes:

But heresies already widely diffused and of old standing are by no means to be thus dealt with, seeing that through lapse of time they have long had opportunity of corrupting the truth. And therefore, as to the more ancient schisms or heresies, we ought either to confute them, if need be, by the sole authority of the Scriptures, or at any rate, to shun them as having been already of old convicted and condemned by universal councils of the Catholic Priesthood. (p. 71)

Regarding new heresies, which have not yet been treated by a Magisterial decision, he urges that we examine the Church Fathers:

Therefore, as soon as the corruption of each mischievous error begins to break forth, and to defend itself by filching certain passages of Scripture, and expounding them fraudulently and deceitfully, immediately, the opinions of the ancients in the interpretation of the Canon are to be collected, whereby the novelty, and consequently the profaneness, whatever it may be, that arises, may both without any doubt be exposed, and without any tergiversation be condemned. But the opinions of those Fathers only are to be used for comparison, who living and teaching, holily, wisely, and with constancy, in the Catholic faith and communion, were counted worthy either to die in the faith of Christ, or to suffer death happily for Christ. Whom yet we are to believe in this condition, that that only is to be accounted indubitable, certain, established, which either all, or the more part, have supported and confirmed manifestly, frequently, persistently, in one and the same sense, forming, as it were, a consentient council of doctors, all receiving, holding, handing on the same doctrine. But whatsoever a teacher holds, other than all, or contrary to all, be he holy and learned, be he a bishop, be he a Confessor, be he a martyr, let that be regarded as a private fancy of his own, and be separated from the authority of common, public, general persuasion, lest, after the sacrilegious custom of heretics and schismatics, rejecting the ancient truth of the universal Creed, we follow, at the utmost peril of our eternal salvation, the newly devised error of one man. (p. 72)

When an allegedly novel teaching arises, and the Church has not yet offered a decision, we should examine the Church Fathers to see whether the teaching is in agreement with what they believed and taught, or whether it is contrary to it. What was believed and taught by all or most of the Fathers carries far greater weight than what was taught by only a few. And if a teacher holds a unique belief, then we should treat that as his own fancy, not as part of the authoritative Apostolic Tradition.

VI. The Development of Doctrine

What St. Vincent has said in his general rule might seem to preclude the possibility of the development of doctrine. But, that would be to misunderstand his rule, as forbidding every sort of novelty, when in fact his rule forbids only profane novelty, not developmental novelty. He devotes seven paragraphs to the nature of the development of doctrine. First, in his exposition of St. Paul’s injunction to St. Timothy, whom St. Vincent takes to represent the Magisterium of the Church, he writes:

Let that which formerly was believed, though imperfectly apprehended, as expounded by you be clearly understood. Let posterity welcome, understood through your exposition, what antiquity venerated without understanding. Yet teach still the same truths which you have learned, so that though you speak after a new fashion, what you speak may not be new. (p. 53)

Then, anticipating the objection that if we follow the Vincentian canon there will be no doctrinal progress, he writes:

But some one will say, perhaps, Shall there, then, be no progress in Christ’s Church? Certainly; all possible progress. For what being is there, so envious of men, so full of hatred to God, who would seek to forbid it? Yet on condition that it be real progress, not alteration of the faith. For progress requires that the subject be enlarged in itself, alteration, that it be transformed into something else. The intelligence, then, the knowledge, the wisdom, as well of individuals as of all, as well of one man as of the whole Church, ought, in the course of ages and centuries, to increase and make much and vigorous progress; but yet only in its own kind; that is to say, in the same doctrine, in the same sense, and in the same meaning. (p. 54)

Of course the Vincentian canon disallows “alteration of the faith.” But genuine doctrinal development, according to St. Vincent, differs from “alteration of the faith.” Progress “enlarges” the subject, drawing out what is implicitly present, whereas “alteration” transforms it into something altogether different in “kind” (i.e. essence). This development is organic, like that of a growing physical body:

The growth of religion in the soul must be analogous to the growth of the body, which, though in process of years it is developed and attains its full size, yet remains still the same. There is a wide difference between the flower of youth and the maturity of age; yet they who were once young are still the same now that they have become old, insomuch that though the stature and outward form of the individual are changed, yet his nature is one and the same, his person is one and the same. An infant’s limbs are small, a young man’s large, yet the infant and the young man are the same. Men when full grown have the same number of joints that they had when children; and if there be any to which maturer age has given birth these were already present in embryo, so that nothing new is produced in them when old which was not already latent in them when children. This, then, is undoubtedly the true and legitimate rule of progress, this the established and most beautiful order of growth, that mature age ever develops in the man those parts and forms which the wisdom of the Creator had already framed beforehand in the infant. Whereas, if the human form were changed into some shape belonging to another kind, or at any rate, if the number of its limbs were increased or diminished, the result would be that the whole body would become either a wreck or a monster, or, at the least, would be impaired and enfeebled. (p. 55)

In like manner, it behooves Christian doctrine to follow the same laws of progress, so as to be consolidated by years, enlarged by time, refined by age, and yet, withal, to continue uncorrupt and unadulterate, complete and perfect in all the measurement of its parts, and, so to speak, in all its proper members and senses, admitting no change, no waste of its distinctive property, no variation in its limits. (p. 56)

Just as a living body grows and develops, though it remains the same in kind, so the faith of the Church follows “the same laws of progress,” as the Church grows in her understanding and explication of it, realizing more fully what is latent within it, but never changing it in its essence, either by loss or addition. For St. Vincent, the faith is living, and so is the Body of Christ, the Church. Even the works of the saints are like seeds which are planted and grow in time, until later generations reap their harvest. He writes:

For example: Our forefathers in the old time sowed wheat in the Church’s field. It would be most unmeet and iniquitous if we, their descendants, instead of the genuine truth of grain, should reap the counterfeit error of tares. This rather should be the result — there should be no discrepancy between the first and the last. From doctrine which was sown as wheat, we should reap, in the increase, doctrine of the same kind — wheat also; so that when in process of time any of the original seed is developed, and now flourishes under cultivation, no change may ensue in the character of the plant. There may supervene shape, form, variation in outward appearance, but the nature of each kind must remain the same. God forbid that those rose-beds of Catholic interpretation should be converted into thorns and thistles. God forbid that in that spiritual paradise from plants of cinnamon and balsam, darnel and wolfsbane should of a sudden shoot forth.

Therefore, whatever has been sown by the fidelity of the Fathers in this husbandry of God’s Church, the same ought to be cultivated and taken care of by the industry of their children, the same ought to flourish and ripen, the same ought to advance and go forward to perfection. For it is right that those ancient doctrines of heavenly philosophy should, as time goes on, be cared for, smoothed, polished; but not that they should be changed, not that they should be maimed, not that they should be mutilated. They may receive proof, illustration, definiteness; but they must retain withal their completeness, their integrity, their characteristic properties. (p. 57)

There will be change in the shape, configuration, and outward appearance over the course of genuine development, but there will be no change in the nature of the kind. What the Apostles and Fathers sowed, that is what we also should reap, in its developed form, smoothed and polished, but not changed (i.e. in essence), not maimed, and not mutilated. As the Church addresses heresies and gives further definiteness to the faith, the faith retains its completeness, its integrity, and its characteristic properties. The whole of the Catholic faith is dependent on all its parts, such that removing one element of the faith would destroy the whole; likewise, introducing novelty into the faith would corrupt the whole (p. 58)

But the Church of Christ preserves the faith, and develops the doctrine it has received:

But the Church of Christ, the careful and watchful guardian of the doctrines deposited in her charge, never changes anything in them, never diminishes, never adds, does not cut off what is necessary, does not add what is superfluous, does not lose her own, does not appropriate what is another’s, but while dealing faithfully and judiciously with ancient doctrine, keeps this one object carefully in view—if there be anything which antiquity has left shapeless and rudimentary, to fashion and polish it, if anything already reduced to shape and developed, to consolidate and strengthen it, if any already ratified and defined, to keep and guard it. Finally, what other object have Councils ever aimed at in their decrees, than to provide that what was before believed in simplicity should in future be believed intelligently, that what was before preached coldly should in future be preached earnestly, that what was before practised negligently should thenceforward be practised with double solicitude? This, I say, is what the Catholic Church, roused by the novelties of heretics, has accomplished by the decrees of her Councils,– this, and nothing else — she has thenceforward consigned to posterity in writing what she had received from those of olden times only by tradition, comprising a great amount of matter in a few words, and often, for the better understanding, designating an old article of the faith by the characteristic of a new name. (p. 59)

St. Vincent teaches that the Church is a “careful and watchful guardian” of the apostolic deposit, never changing anything in it, but only developing whatever has been left undeveloped, or polishing it further if it has already been developed. This developing of doctrine is what the Councils do as they respond to heresies and resolve doctrinal disputes, and this activity involves putting into writing for the sake of posterity what had been passed down from those of ancient times only by [oral] tradition.

VII. The Implications for Protestant-Catholic Reconciliation

St. Vincent’s Commonitory reveals the ecclesial and Catholic character of fifth century Christianity, between the third and fourth Ecumenical Councils. He shows why Scripture cannot be interpreted authentically apart from the authority of the Magisterium (Prelacy) of the Church and apart form the Tradition found in the Church Fathers. He indicates an implicit belief in the indefectibility of the Church, and a rejection of ecclesial deism. And that rejection of ecclesial deism corresponds to his explication of the doctrine of development, because the living and active Spirit of God always remains in the Body, the Church. Because St. Vincent provides a rule by which heresy and orthodoxy can be distinguished, his work is very important for providing the second-order means by which Christians divided from each other can seek reconcilation. His rule requires that we virtually return to the point of separation, and consider together which of our positions is the profane novelty and which is the authentic and authorized preservation or development of what had always and everywhere been believed by all. The authority of the Church and her Councils and the Apostolic See is part of that Tradition, as is the notion of the development of doctrine, which St. Vincent hands down in this work from those who handed it down to him. His rule turns us to the Tradition handed down by the Church Fathers, and to the decisions of the Magisterium, or even prior, to the pursuit of the identity of that Magisterial authority of which St. Vincent speaks.

St. Vincent, pray for us, that Christians divided from each other may be reconciled and united in the true and ancient faith Christ entrusted to His Church.

1. All the references to St. Vincent’s Commonitory are to the paragraph numbers; see here for the full text. I will not be discussing here the secondary texts that treat St. Vincent’s work. My intention here is much less ambitious: to present and examine the fundamental points he is making, the lines of reasoning he uses, the principles he is assuming and the paradigm in which thinks.
2. That can be seen most clearly, in St. Vincent’s use of the example of the Council of Ephesus, concerning which he presents all the patristic witnesses brought to bear at that Council in defense of the Catholic position against Nestorius. See paragraphs 78-80.
3. See “St. Thomas Aquinas on the Relation of Faith to the Church.”

The Ascension

Protestant dogma insists that Sola Scriptura is an article of faith.¹ By its own criteria, articles of faith must be established by divine revelation. In the words of Zacharius Ursinus (d. 1583), author of the Heidelberg Catechism, “The doctrine of the church has God for its author . . . whilst the various religious systems of sectarists have been invented by men.”² It is strange, then, that the Protestant apology for this article of faith rests almost entirely on an alleged logical inference, and not from the direct witness of divine revelation. The syllogism runs as follows:

1) We need a final authority,

2) Scripture, because of its unique attributes, is the best candidate,

3) Therefore, Scripture is the final authority.

This syllogism is found again and again, in various forms, throughout the history of Reformed dogmatics. The Dutch theologian Leonard van Rijssen, for example, argued simply, “From these attributes of Scripture it follows that it is a canon and norm of the things to be believed.” According to Richard Muller, Rijssen understood Scripture’s canonical authority “as a deduction, not directly from divinity or divine authority but from several attributes of Scripture.”³ Rijssen’s argument was not unique. Luther and Calvin both suggest it. Others, like Musculus, Polanus, Turrentin, Hyperius, and Vermigli, teach it more explicitly.⁴

We can and should debate these premises of this syllogism, since they are not self-evident, but even if we grant them for the sake of argument, does this syllogism meet the Ursinus test? Can it demonstrate that sola scriptura is an article of faith, revealed by God?

The Catholic position has always been that Christ did give explicit instructions concerning the transmission of the Christian faith. We are not left to inferences, deductions, and “funny, internal feelings.” He gave us the Church. What follows below is a brief survey of some of the Biblical and historical evidence for this claim.

The Final Authority Established by Christ: the Teaching Church

All Christians agree that Jesus Christ is the ultimate authority. During his earthly ministry, He was the Final Authority. His authority superseded the Old Testament, human reason, Jewish Tradition, and the power of the state. But after His ascension, He did not leave us without direction. Before He ascended, He made provisions for a continuing doctrinal authority.

Jesus commissioned his apostles to teach with authority:

Jesus told his disciples, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations . . . teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” (Matt. 28:18-20)

Jesus sent his apostles to teach, and promised to remain with them. Many passages of Scripture show that Christ’s authority accompanied their teaching:

• “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” (John 20:21)
• “Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” (Luke 10:16)
• “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” (Matt. 16:18; Matt. 18:18)

These texts answer our question. Christ did give us a rule of faith before His ascension. He gave us the teaching of the apostles. It is important to note that Christ never mentions the writings of the apostles. He gave them no command to write, and never restricted their authority to the written word. His authority attached to their persons and their teaching.

The Apostles Appointed Successors to Teach with Authority

Protestants usually admit that the apostles taught with authority. They deny that the apostles transmitted this authority to their successors. However, Scripture and history refute them.

Scripture:

• “They appointed presbyters for them in each church.” (Acts 14:23)
• [Paul to Titus] “For this reason I left you in Crete so that you might . . . appoint presbyters in every town, as I directed you.” (Titus 1:5)
• [Paul to Timothy] “And what you heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will have the ability to teach others as well.” (2 Timothy 2:2)
• “For a bishop as God’s steward must . . . be able both to exhort with sound doctrine and to refute opponents.” (Titus 1:7-9)

These texts show clearly that the apostles appointed the bishops and priests (presbyters) who took over the leadership of the infant church. They also show that leaders were 1) stewards of the Gospel, 2) given authority to teach and refute false doctrine, 3) ordered to entrust this charge to others.

History:

The earliest sources outside the New Testament attest the belief that the apostles appointed successors who continued to teach with authority.

• The First Epistle of Clement, c. 42 (written sometime between A.D. 70-96): “Christ therefore was sent forth by God and the apostles by Christ . . . [T]hey [the apostles] appointed the first fruits [of their labours], having first proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons of those who should afterwards believe.”
• St. Ignatius to the Ephesians, (between A.D. 98-117): “For we ought to receive every one whom the Master of the house sends to be over His household, as we would do Him that sent him. It is manifest, therefore, that we should look upon the bishop even as we would upon the Lord Himself.”

The Earliest Christians Confirm the Authority Established by Christ

Doctrinal controversy struck Christianity in the second-century church. The Gnostics taught esoteric doctrines, and claimed to be the inheritors of secret wisdom passed down from the apostles. They also appealed to the Scriptures. The Church Father Tertullian (ca. 160-ca.220) responded to their claims and offered one of the earliest and clearest statements of authority established by Christ.

From this, therefore, do we draw up our rule. Since the Lord Jesus Christ sent the apostles to preach, (our rule is) that no others ought to be received as preachers than those whom Christ appointed . . . Now, what that was which they preached — in other words, what it was which Christ revealed to them — can, as I must here likewise prescribe, properly be proved in no other way than by those very churches which the apostles founded in person. (Prescription against Heretics, 21).

Conclusion

The heart of the Protestant apologetic for sola scriptura is not the teaching of Christ, but the alleged failure of the Church’s magisterial authority. Consider Luther’s famous argument at Leipzig: Councils can err; therefore Scripture is the final authority. The Protestant position infers canonical authority from inspiration. But this is not a valid inference. God can inspire a text without intending that text to serve as a final authority for all matters doctrinal.

I am well aware that Protestants will dispute the Catholic understanding of the texts I have cited. This is not threatening, and we should have a lively discussion about what they mean. What Protestants must concede, however, is that Catholics attempt to ground their doctrine of authority on the teaching of Christ and the apostles. They do not resort to tenuous logical inferences. Can Protestant apologists do the same?⁵

1. Cf. Westminster Confession, I.1-10.
2. The Commentary of Dr. Zacharius Ursinus on the Heidelberg Catechism, trans. G.W. Williard, 2^nd edition (Columbus: Scott & Bascom, 1852), 3.
3. Rijssen, Summ. Theol., II.xv. Cited in Richard Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 2: Holy Scripture: The Cognitive Foundation of Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 409.
4. See Muller, Post-Reformation, 357-409. I also find it suggested by Keith Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2001), .262-265.
5. My special thanks to Fr. Lambert Greenan, O.P., the inspiration for this article.