Ecclesial Deism or Catholicism?

David Cloud provides an example of ecclesial deism when in "The Church Fathers, A Door To Rome," he writes:

"The fact is that the "early Fathers" were mostly heretics!"

At what point does one's own disagreement with the early Church Fathers become evidence against one's own position, rather than an indication that the early Church Fathers were "mostly heretics"? St. Justin Martyr, born around the time that the Apostle John died, describes a Catholic mass in the video below, explaining in his Apology that they had received their belief and practice from the Apostles. St. Justin's testimony counts far more than does the testimony of a contemporary twenty-first century figure, precisely because of St. Justin's closer proximity to the Apostles. So claiming that the early Fathers were "mostly heretics" is in that respect self-refuting. But it is forthright and correct in its recognition of the distinctively Catholic nature of the early Church Fathers.

Ecclesial Deism: Interview Podcast

Assumption of St. John the Evangelist

Taddeo Gaddi (1348-1353)
Collezione Vittorio Cini, Venice

Tom Riello recently interviewed me regarding my Ecclesial Deism article. Listen to the podcast here on Called to Communion.

Ecclesial Deism

Assumption of St. John the Evangelist

Taddeo Gaddi (1348-1353)
Collezione Vittorio Cini, Venice

St. Irenaeus and St. Clement of Alexandria, who both lived during the second century, tell us that after the Apostle John returned from exile on Patmos, he remained at Ephesus "till Trajan’s time." Trajan became emperor in AD 98. According to the tradition, St. John was the last of the twelve Apostles to die. When the angels carried his soul into Heaven, was the Church then left to fall into heresy and apostasy? (continue reading)

So much for sola over solo

(For an explanation of the sola vs. solo distinction, see here.)

In May of this year I wrote a post titled "Denominational Renewal", about the conference by that name that had taken place here in St. Louis in February, and which I attended. Presently, there is an ongoing five-week discussion about that conference over at "Common Grounds Online". What got my attention, however, were Bob Mattes's recent comments on Jeremy Jones's talk given at the conference. Bob described Jeremy's proposal in this way:

He [Jeremy] proposes to replace sectarianism with Reformed Catholicism theology. He says that we are part of the universal Catholic Church, that the enemy isn't the church down the street but the world, flesh, and the devil. ... But then he says that we need to recovery of the ecclesial identity of the original Reformed fathers, who saw themselves as a branch of Roman Catholic Church. ... Jeremy offers the illustration of a house. The foundation of the house is the Word, the 1st floor is Catholic tradition in the Roman sense. The 2nd floor has the subdivided apartments of Protestantism. TE Jones says that if you’re Protestant, you rest on top of the Roman Catholic tradition - that they mediated the Catholic faith to us. Hence, it is all one building. He claims that a Reformed Catholic identity illumens a broader historic belief, that the creeds come from RCC and the Reformers tried to reform the Roman Catholic Church, not pitch it. He says that they did not alter the core doctrines ... but reformed those they found in error within the bounds of the RCC tradition which remained substantially unaltered. ... He says that this provides a different scale of importance in our theology, so that Catholic creedal orthodoxy becomes more basic than Reformed theology. (emphasis his)

Bob disagrees with Jeremy's position. Bob responds a few paragraphs later with this critical, noteworthy paragraph. He writes:

No, the Reformers bypassed the Roman doctrines to study the Bible itself from the original languages. They pitched the sacrifice of the mass, transubstantiation, purgatory, Mariology, leadership structure, etc. They did not attempt to reform the Roman church itself in the long run, but strove to recapture the truths of, and build upon, the foundation of Christ and His Word directly. They also used the early creeds which were developed before the corruption of Rome trampled the early church into oblivion. In response to the Reformation, the Roman church anathematized the gospel at the Council of Trent. The doctrines canonized at Trent weren’t new. Rome’s long-time doctrines were simply codified there. How can one build upon such a foundation? Surely this is a foundation of sand which our Lord contrasted to the Rock of our salvation. (emphasis his)

When I have pointed out that the Protestant position reduces in principle to biblicism (see, for example, here and here), the reply I typically receive is that I have failed to appreciate fully the distinction between sola scriptura and solo scriptura. Sola scriptura, Keith Mathison tells us, embraces the creeds and the teachings of the Church fathers. But then when people (like Jeremy) start referring to that catholic tradition that would be included in sola scriptura but not in solo scriptura, they're told that the Reformers built on Scripture alone, because the Church that Christ founded had long been trampled into oblivion.

Of course the gates of hell cannot prevail against the Church. Therefore confessional Protestants must posit the existence during that long period of apostasy of at least one person in every generation who believed in justification by faith alone. But since in Protestantism the Church Christ founded is really just the set of all the elect, there is no compelling reason even to posit that anyone from the time of the death of the last Apostle to Luther heard the gospel and was saved, because the only way for hell to prevail over the Church would be to prevent the set of all the elect from attaining the number of members God intends it to have. And that's impossible. So a long period of time without any elect persons on earth is fully compatible with Christ's promise not to allow the gates of hell to prevail against the Church, if the Church is merely the set of all the elect. But just to be safe (perhaps because of vestiges of the notion of a visible Church), Protestants still want to posit a priori that some proto-Lutherans were alive during the long apostasy, even if they have no evidence that such persons existed.

At the time Luther came along, how long had the apostasy been going on? Alister McGrath has pointed out that the notion of justification by "faith alone" was unknown from the time of St. Paul to the Reformation, calling it a "genuine theological novum". According to McGrath, the Council of Trent "maintained the medieval tradition, stretching back to Augustine, which saw justification as comprising both an event and a process -- the event of being declared to be righteous through the work of Christ and the process of being made righteous through the internal work of the Holy Spirit." (Reformation Thought, 1993, p. 115) McGrath is very clear that Luther's notion of justification by faith alone is not that of St. Augustine. Trent's position followed that of St. Augustine, not Luther. B.B. Warfield likewise, condemns the Council of Orange (529 AD) as "semi-semi-Pelagianism", as I pointed out here. So for these Protestants the great apostasy was at least a thousand years in length.

The Protestant argument goes like this.

(1) Clearly Luther was right about justification.

Therefore,

(2) Everyone who preceeded Luther and held a view of justification contrary to that of Luther was wrong.

(3) But everyone [so far as we can tell from history] at least from Augustine on (and perhaps even back to the first century) held a view of justification contrary to that of Luther.

(4) Justification [as imputation alone] by faith alone is the heart of the gospel, the doctrine on which the Church stands or falls.

Therefore

(5) The Church was apostate from the time of Augustine (or even all the way back to the first century) until Luther.

But one man's modus ponens is another's modus tollens. In other words, how much ecclesial deism and ecclesial docetism does it take to call into question the perspicuity assumption underlying premise (1)? At what point does one say, "Wait a second; maybe Luther's interpretation isn't right"? This is the heart of the paradigm shift I have spoken of here.

I talked to a Reformed Protestant recently who said that returning to the Catholic Church would require giving up all the "theological development" (his terms) within Protestantism from the time of Luther and Calvin to the present. Whether that is true or not, Protestants like Mattes seem to have no problem giving up the first 1000 - 1500 years of theological development. If that is the case, then it is not just 'development' per se that such Protestants are adhering to, but rather 'the development I approve of'. And that seems to be the individualism of biblicism, precisely why there is no principled difference with respect to individualism between sola scriptura and solo scriptura.

Sean Michael Lucas, in commenting on Jeremy's talk writes the following:

... it strikes me that [Jeremy's] proposal for renewing theology holds out great hope for "creative theological thinking." And yet, if we pay attention to those witnesses of the past, like Irenaeus and Tertullian, they stressed not their creativity, but their unoriginality. For example, when Irenaeus sought true missional impact, he stressed "this kerygma and this faith the Church, although scattered over the whole world, diligently observes, as if it occupied but one house, and believes as if it had but one mind, and preaches and teaches as if it had but one mouth." Perhaps the agenda for renewing theology should not be to look for "creatively faithful, constructive theology," but for a continuing witness to "the faith once delivered to the saints" (Jude 3). (my emphasis)

This is the same Irenaeus who around 180 AD wrote:

"We do put to confusion all those who ... assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say,] by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church [of Rome], on account of its preeminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the apostolical tradition has been preserved continuously by those [faithful men] who exist everywhere." (Against Heresies 3.3.2)

This is the same Tertullian who around 200 AD wrote:

"Was anything withheld from the knowledge of Peter, who is called the rock on which the church should be built,' who also obtained the keys of the kingdom of heaven, with the power of loosing and binding in heaven and on earth? Moreover, if Peter was reproached [by Paul] because, after having lived with the gentiles, he later separated himself from their company out of respect for persons, the fault certainly was one of procedure and not of doctrine." (Prescription Against the Heretics, 22)

Sean wants unoriginality. But, according to McGrath, originality is precisely what Luther offers. Luther's originality doesn't count as originality, however, because it matches (sufficiently) Sean's interpretation of Scripture. Whatever the fathers say that doesn't match the Protestant's interpretation of Scripture (e.g. claims about Peter being the rock, Rome having the primacy, bishops, apostolic succession, Mary as "Mother of God", prayers for the dead, prayers to saints, Eucharist as sacrifice, etc.) is ipso facto an originality and can thus be dismissed. Originality, therefore, means by definition, any claim or teaching by any post-Apostolic writer over the last 2000 years whose claim goes beyond what is allowed by the Protestant's own interpretation of Scripture. Unoriginality, likewise, means by definition, any claim or teaching by any post-Apostolic writer over the last 2000 years whose claim fits with one's own interpretation of Scripture (and/or the particular confessions one has adopted as representing what one believes to be the best interpretation of Scripture).

We find here that in sola scriptura as a practice, the content of the authoritative extra-biblical tradition that stands along with (but subordinate to) Scripture is by definition whatever can be found in the last twenty (but especially the first few) centuries of Church history that agrees with the particular Protestant interpretation in question. Solo scriptura is doing all the work to determine what gets included in or excluded from what is presented as the sola scriptura package. Sola is the advertisement photo; solo is what's inside the package. The method being used is not that of reading-Church-history-forward to see how the Church grows organically, but rather, starting from Scripture as read through Protestant lenses, and then reading back into Church history, to try to find whatever is there that agrees with one's own interpretation of Scripture. Any heretics throughout history could use the same method, and call their doctrine the 'apostolic' doctrine because by study and interpretation they 'derived' it from the writings of the Apostles. That methodological parallel should give any Protestant serious pause, to ask these questions: "What makes our activity of study and interpretation so much better that we're immune from heresy? And why is our ecclesial deism any better than theirs?"

Angels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, on this feast of Michaelmas, do battle against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places, so that the full visible unity of all Christians may be restored, according to the heart of Jesus revealed in His prayer in St. John 17. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

What Is The True Church? Part 2

"Disputation of the Holy Sacrament"
Raphael (1483-1520)

Ecumenically minded folks tend to talk a lot about common ground. I, on the other hand, though no less intent on effecting ecclesial unity and reconciliation, tend to focus mostly on what still divides us. That is because I believe that we cannot be truly one simply by plastering over our differences or sweeping them under the rug. That is false ecumenicism, in my view. Of course recognizing and declaring our common ground has been an important necessary step in even getting us to the ecumenical dialogue table during the past century. But a genuine ecumenical spirit is one that not only affirms our common ground both in truth and charity, but at the same time tenaciously and in tandem seeks out the most fundamental root causes and reasons for our disagreements and divisions.

It is easy to talk 'above' the root causes. For example, if you listen to Douglas Kelly's talk (now requires sign-in, which is free), notice how many times he quotes John Calvin. But the relevant meta-level questions behind the practice of quoting Calvin are these: What authority has Calvin? Who sent him, commissioned him, ordained him, or otherwise authorized him to speak on behalf of the Church? Or, why should we believe and receive the teaching of someone whom the Church has not authorized to teach or preach? (To understand better the Catholic paradigm about those questions, see St. Francis de Sales' The Catholic Controversy.) Unless and until we recognize and answer these meta-level questions, ecumenical dialogue will be an exercise in talking past each other. Genuine ecumenical dialogue cannot be only a presentation of our own particular tradition; it must zero-in on the meta-level questions, and seek out ways to reach agreement about the answers to those questions.

Last year I asked a Protestant the following question: "If Protestantism were a schism from the Catholic Church, and not the continuation of the Church, how would we know?" He replied, "Protestantism would be teaching a different gospel than the one it teaches." The problem with that reply is that any heretic from any heresy throughout history could have said the same thing about his own heretical sect. In short, that reply is obviously question-begging. In order to come to an agreement about "What is the true Church?", we have to find a non-question-begging way of distinguishing the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church" from heresies and schisms. And that means that we have to look at the metal-level differences between the various paradigms.

So what are the meta-level differences that divide Protestants and Catholics? When we examine the differences between the Protestant and Catholic conceptions of the marks of the Church, as I did in Part 1, we find a methodological difference between Catholics and Protestants in the respective ways in which they seek out the natures of the marks of the Church. Protestants approach questions of theology and ecclesiology as though Scripture alone is the only authoritative determination of orthodoxy and heresy. Catholics, on the other hand, approach such questions under the inseparable authorities of Scripture, Tradition and the living Magisterium.

The "Scripture alone" way of thinking could also be characterized as "No living Magisterium". It is manifested in its essence at the birth of Protestantism, in Martin Luther's statement at the Diet of Worms:

"Unless I am convicted by Scripture and plain reason -- I do not accept the authority of popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other -- my conscience is captive to the Word of God."

Luther had made his conscience ultimately subject to his own interpretation of Scripture, not ultimately subject to the Church's decisions. This "No living Magisterium" way of approaching Scripture entails a practice wherein each person believes and does what is right in his own eyes, according to his own interpretation of Scripture. And the result is a manifold plurality of beliefs and practices.

Protestants and Catholics cannot ultimately resolve their disagreements by simply appealing to Scripture as if there is no Tradition and Magisterium, or by appealing to the Catholic Tradition and Magisterium. That would beg the question either way. Their disagreements all seem to depend on this more fundamental difference of Protestants not having, and Catholics having, Catholic Tradition and a living Magisterium. So that should be the point of focus for ecumenical dialogue. But this is tricky, because both sides can be tempted at this point to beg the question by seeking to resolve the difference according to their own paradigm: Catholics by appealing to Scripture as interpreted and understood within the Tradition and under the living Magisterium, and Protestants by appealing to Scripture apart from that Tradition and Magisterium.

Let me suggest that we step back and look at the origin of both positions from both paradigms. How was it, that the Catholic Church came to believe in, and Protestants came to deny, the authority of Tradition and a living Magisterium? According to the Catholic Church, the Gospel was handed on in two ways by the Apostles: orally, and in writing. (CCC 76, 78) In the writings of the early Church fathers we (from the viewpoint of the third millennium) find witness to this Tradition. Likewise, according to the Catholic Church, the living Magisterium has been with the Church since the day of Pentecost, first in the Apostles themselves, and then subsequently in the bishops whom they appointed. (CCC 77) So according to the Catholic Church, the Tradition and the living Magisterium have their origin in the Apostles.

How then did Protestants come to deny the authority of Tradition and a living Magisterium? That is a more complicated story, but the short of it is that Luther and other early Reformers saw certain abuses and corruption (e.g. the selling of indulgences) in the Church, and appeared to discover a different gospel in the New Testament Scriptures than the one taught by the Catholic Church. This led them to call into question both the Tradition and the living Magisterium, and call for a return to Scripture as the norm for faith and practice. From the Protestant point of view, the Catholic Church had fallen into apostasy, and the Protestants were the true Christians, the continuing Church, the ones carrying on the Apostles' doctrine. The Protestant justification for departing in various respects from the doctrines, practices, and communion of the Catholic Church of the early 16th century was that Protestantism was recovering things that had been lost in the first century, and abandoning things that had been unjustifiably added since the first century. From the Catholic point of view, the [early] Protestants were both heretics and schismatics, having departed from the Catholic Church and from the apostolic doctrine which she had guarded and preserved for one and half millennia.

How do we determine whether (1) the Catholic Church was apostate and the Protestants were the true Christians carrying on the Apostolic doctrine, or (2) the Catholic Church was not apostate and the Protestants were heretics and schismatics? How do we even begin to answer that question? One possible way to answer it is by searching the Scriptures. But, as I have pointed out above, this approach simply begs the question against Catholics, just as appealing to Pope Leo X's papal bull excommunicating Luther would beg the question against Protestants. It implicitly assumes the truth of the Protestant paradigm, that there is no Magisterium under which Scripture should be interpreted.

Another way of looking at this disagreement is to examine together the history of the Church from its infancy to the 16th century, and see if that helps us determine whether the Protestants were the continuation of the Catholic Church or a schism from the Catholic Church. Obviously such an historical survey is beyond the scope of a blog post! But perhaps we can note a few things. There is no real dispute, I think, concerning whether the Apostles appointed bishops, and whether these bishops appointed successors, etc., and whether this was essential to the Nicene understanding of apostolicity. Nor is there any real dispute, in my opinion, concerning whether the Apostles spoke and practiced no more than what was written in the New Testament. So there is no real dispute, in my view, about the *origin* of the Magisterium and Tradition. The dispute between Protestants and Catholics had to do with the manner in which these changed over the next 1500 years. The Catholic Church viewed itself as preserving the apostolic deposit, developing it, and not corrupting it. The Protestants viewed that 'development' more suspiciously as, in various respects, a corruption of and departure from the original Apostolic deposit. This is how Protestants justified proposing novelties such as sola scriptura and sola fide, as a way of countering what they saw as unjustified additions to and corruptions of the gospel. (To see that these two Protestant principles were novel, see Dave Armstrong's excellent work here and here. He quotes Protestant theologian Alister McGrath as pointing out that sola fide was unknown from the time of St. Paul to the Reformation.)

Catholics believe that the Catholic Church is indefectible; she can neither perish from the world nor depart from "her teaching, her constitution and her liturgy". (Ott, p. 296) See, for example, what St. Irenaeus says at the end of the second century about the Church's indefectibility here. Likewise, St. Augustine says, "The Church will totter when her foundation totters. But how shall Christ totter? ... as long as Christ does not totter, neither shall the Church totter in eternity." (Enarr. in Ps. 103, 2, 5) Elsewhere, writing about Psalm 48:9 (which is Psalm 48:8 in Protestant Bibles) St. Augustine says:

Let not heretics insult, divided into parties, let them not exalt themselves who say, "Lo, here is Christ, or lo, there." (Matt 24:23) Whoso says, "Lo, here is Christ, or lo, there," invites to parties. Unity God promised. The kings are gathered together in one, not dissipated through schisms. But haply that city which has held the world, shall sometime be overthrown? Far be the thought! "God has founded it forever." If then God has founded it forever, why fearest thou lest the firmament should fall?"

And in his Sermon to Catechumens on the Creed (1:6), St. Augustine writes:

The same is the holy Church, the one Church, the true Church, the catholic Church, fighting against all heresies: fight, it can; be fought down, it cannot. As for heresies, they all went out of it, like unprofitable branches pruned from the vine: but itself abides in its root, in its Vine, in its charity.

In contrast to the Catholic notion of indefectibility, Protestants affirm ecclesial indefectibility by applying it to an "invisible Church" or some hidden remnant perduring invisibly through the middle ages of the Church. But the notion of an "invisible Church" is itself a 16th century novelty, as Reformed theologian Louis Berkhof points out. Either way, there seems to be no practical or visible difference between an "invisible Church" being indefectible and the [visible] Church being defectible.

Ultimately then, it seems to me, the fundamental underlying difference between Protestants and Catholics is not doctrinal or even methodological; the doctrinal and methological differences are results of a more fundamental difference. The fundamental difference, I think, is dispositional. We might more properly call it an attitude or stance of the will toward Christ's relation to His Church. Catholics trust that Christ is providentially guiding and protecting His Church through all time, until He returns, even when we see sinfulness and error in her leaders. In that trusting, open stance, the development of the Church, particularly with respect to doctrine and practice, is viewed as an organic and Spirit-guided blossoming of the deposit of faith entrusted to the Church by Christ through the Apostles. The does not mean that the Church never needs reforming. But under this stance or disposition, reforming the Church never involves a rejection of what has been laid down as dogma, and never involves leaving the Church or forming a schism.

The opposing attitude or disposition is one of suspicion and distrust; I have called it "ecclesial deism". It can be seen in the Montanists, the Novatians, the Donatists, Joachim of Fiore, the Cathars, the Reformers, the Jansenists, and the Mormons. Conceiving of the Church in a gnostic, de-materialized way as something invisible is, I think, a result of an underlying ecclesial deism. Such a person adopts a gnostic de-materialized notion of the Church in opposition to what the Church believes and teaches about herself, because of some kind of ecclesial deism that is at least implicitly held.

Is there any relation between faith in Christ, and believing the Church? Traditionally, these were seen as inseparable. In the faith itself, spelled out in the Creed, is the line: "Credo ... et unam, sanctum, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam". "I believe ... one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church". We believe "in God the Father", and "in Jesus Christ His only Son", and "in the Holy Spirit". But we don't merely believe in the Church -- we believe the Church. Clearly it does not make sense to believe an invisible Church. St. Augustine treated recognition and acceptance of the authority of the Church as the ground on which to believe the Gospel. Hence he could say:

"For my part, I should not believe the Gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church."

Trusting Christ was inseparably bound up with trusting the Church, for one had to trust that Christ was guiding and protecting His Church and operating through her, in order to know anything about Christ through the testimony of the Church. (See my post "Church and Jesus are Inseparable".)

When we take up a hermeneutic of suspicion toward the Church, there is virtually no possibility of growing in our faith in Christ. We become cynical and disengaged. We are left with no option but trying to find and grow closer to Jesus on long walks in the forest or in the mountains or under the stars. We are reduced to the individualist/gnostic that we know can't be right, and even despise. (If it sounds like I've been there, that's because I have.)

If the Church cannot be trusted, then of what use is a verse like the following:

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)

If the Church cannot be trusted then we would not be able to distinguish those who "went out" from those who "remained with us". (The corollary of this verse is that those who return to us were really "of us", in some sense.) Douglas Kelly says that Calvin makes it clear that he and the other Reformers "didn't purposely leave the organized Church in schismatic fashion, but they felt they had been forced out." (That is at 1:02:00 in the audio recording of his talk.) I have heard that same kind of claim many times, i.e. that the Reformers did not intend to form a schism or start a new Church, but were forced out by the Catholic Church. What is relevant is not the words 'intend' or 'force', but rather the word 'out'. I have never heard or read any Catholic say that Catholics were forced out of the Church by Protestants excommunicating them. Protestants justify their claim that they (and not the Catholics) are the continuation of the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church" by treating the Church as essentially invisible.

When I was a Protestant, I thought that Protestants had only been forced out of a mere institution (an institution made only by mere men), not the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church", which in my mind was essentially invisible. But couldn't any heretical sect of the previous 1500 years have claimed the same thing about itself? How does redefining the Church as essentially invisible not entirely nullify the penalty of excommunication? (Matt 18:17-18) These are challenging and even painful questions, I understand, but I see no other way of reconciling Protestants and the Catholic Church than by facing head-on what exactly happened in this 16th century separation. If we do not have a principled distinction between the sort of division that occurred between Protestants and the Catholic Church, and the sort of division that occurred between all the heresies and schisms of the first 1500 years and the Catholic Church, then how can we non-arbitrarily affirm the former and reject the latter? They too were following Scripture, according to their own interpretations (see here and here).

Let us continue to focus on the *fundamental* points of disagreement, the ones that stand under and behind all the others, the ones that ultimately distinguish the Protestant and Catholic paradigms.

Lord Jesus, we pray for the reunion of all Christians in full visible unity, that the world may know that the Father sent You and loves us. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Whence Goeth the Catholic Church?

Here's a snapshot of recent news stories regarding the Catholic Church over just the last two weeks:

Egan blasts Rudy for receiving communion: criticizes ex-mayor's abortion stance (April 28, 2008)

Is Liberal Catholicism Dead? (Time Magazine, May 3, 2008)

Archbishop Burke Named to Two Vatican Posts (May 6, 2008)

Directive from Archbishop Flynn ends lay preaching at Mass (May 7, 2008)

N.Y. bishop ends practice of Communion at celebration of the word (May 9, 2008)

Archbishop Naumann to Governor: Stop receiving Holy Communion (May 10, 2008)

Notice anything?

"That they may be one"

"Adoration of the Trinity"
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528)

Today's Gospel reading includes some of the verses that serve as the Scriptural reason for this blog:

Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed saying:
"I pray not only for these,
but also for those who will believe in me through their word,
so that they may all be one,
as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
that they also may be in us,
that the world may believe that you sent me.
And I have given them the glory you gave me,
so that they may be one, as we are one,
I in them and you in me,
that they may be brought to perfection as one,
that the world may know that you sent me,
and that you loved them even as you loved me.
Father, they are your gift to me.
I wish that where I am they also may be with me,
that they may see my glory that you gave me,
because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
Righteous Father, the world also does not know you,
but I know you, and they know that you sent me.
I made known to them your name and I will make it known,
that the love with which you loved me
may be in them and I in them." (John 17: 20-26)

Last year I had a conversation with a Protestant concerning the interpretation of one word in this passage. But to explain this conversation, I'll need to give some background.

The early Church knew that Christ is divine, that Christ is not God the Father, that the Holy Spirit is divine, that the Holy Spirit is neither God the Father nor Christ, and that there are not many Gods but only one God. But the early Church did not initially have the philosophical tools to explain how these various truths are compatible. Faced with the challenges from skeptics and philosophers, and especially from Greek philosophy, the Church fathers acquired philosophical tools to explain that Christ and the Father [and the Holy Spirit] are homoousious [the same in substance or being], not the same in hypostasis [Person]. We see this language already in the first Ecumenical Council of Nicea in 325, from which (with some additions from the Second Ecumenical Council) we get the Nicene Creed. In this way, the Church took these philosophical tools and used them in the making of Catholic dogma, through the Ecumenical Councils. The notions of substance and person in explication of the Christian teaching about the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit have since been part of the infallible dogma of the Church.

Now, fast forward fifteen hundred years. Bound up with the [Protestant] notion of sola scriptura is a denial of the infallibility of any Church council or papal decree. Sola scriptura thus entails that any line of any creed or conciliar or papal decree could be false. Hence the Protestant conception of sola scriptura calls into question the Church's dogmatic conclusions resulting from her appropriation of philosophical concepts to explain the coherence of her theological claims about the relation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The result is that beliefs such as Sabellianism or even tritheism are 'heresies' only if the individual Protestant interlocutor concludes that these beliefs are contrary to his interpretation of Scripture.

The term 'heresy', which in Catholic theology is defined in relation to the authoritative determinations of the Church, in a sola scriptura context can only ultimately be defined in relation to the individual's interpretation of Scripture; see here. To see that, one need only ask the Protestant who denies being a biblicist the grounds on which he determines which councils and creeds are authoritative. It soon becomes clear that he determines whether or not they or any part of them are 'authoritative' by seeing whether or not they agree with his own interpretation of Scripture. He is therefore actually a biblicist, though he typically acts and treats himself as though he is not [see here, for example]. The self-described biblicist/fundamentalist is thus more self-aware than the Protestant who denies being a biblicist.

The particular conversation I mentioned above concerned the meaning of the word 'one' in the verses of today's Gospel reading, wherein Christ says that He and the Father are one. My interlocutor, coming from a sola scriptura point of view, did not recognize the authority of the Creed and thus the truth of homoouious. He was suspicious of any philosophy used in theology, and especially suspicious of Greek philosophy. His position regarding the Trinity was a form of "social trinitarianism" in which the three Persons are one not in substance or being, but in love. (This is a form of tritheism, although my interlocutor would not have described his position with that term.)

When Jesus prays (in John 17) that all who believe in Him would be one just as He and the Father are one, a tritheist interprets these verses very differently than the Catholic Church understands them. A tritheist interprets these verses to mean that Jesus simply wants us all to love each other; our unity is to be an interpersonal unity. The tritheist does not interpret these verses to mean that Christ wants us all to be in any sense ontologically one (i.e. one in being), because of course Christ would not ask that we be more unified with each other than He is with the Father. The Catholic Church believes, of course, that Christ wants all believers to love one another. But because the Catholic Church understands the unity of the divine Persons of the Trinity as not only interpersonal but also ontological (e.g. homoouious), the Church understands that Christ is praying in John 17 that all believers also be incorporated into one Body, the Church, whose Head is Christ. So the difficulty here in talking with a biblicist about the ecclesial implications of this passage in John 17 is that the Church's appeal to these verses as a support for Christ's desire for institutional unity among all believers depends upon a Catholic understanding of the Trinity, which itself is grounded in a Catholic understanding of the authority of Ecumenical Councils. This seems to put the defender of Catholicism in a position of circularity viz-a-viz the biblicist.

How then do we (Catholics) reason with the biblicist with the aim of coming to theological agreement and ecumenical unity? It seems to me that we cannot do so within the framework of his biblicism. (See Tertullian's statement regarding ecclesial authority and interpretation.) We have to turn our attention to his biblicism itself, such that he comes to see that his denial of Church authority is the error underlying his disagreement concerning what sort of unity Christ is praying for in John 17. But the movement from biblicism to an acceptance of Church authority is not simply a matter of following the movement from the premises to the conclusion of a deductive argument; it is rather a kind of paradigm shift. (See my post titled "Two Paradigms".) So the conversation with a biblicist about such a matter requires the patience and humility of learning to look at all the available evidence (including the evidence from the early Church and the fathers) from within these two different paradigms, and thus helping our biblicist interlocutors come to see this evidence from within the Catholic paradigm.

Underlying biblicism is a form of doubt, a distrust. It is in fact a distrust of Christ, though it is typically expressed and consciously experienced and understood as only a form of distrust in men and the Church as institution. (Even though it is a distrust of Christ, it is not culpable insofar as it is the result of invincible ignorance.) This distrust/doubt is itself made possible by a kind of gnosticism that separates matter from form, Body from Spirit, and the Church from Christ her invisible Head. (See my post titled "Sex, Dualism and Ecclesial Unity"; see also my paper on the gnostic roots of heresy.) This gnostic separation of matter from form allows its holder to presume to trust the spiritual while rejecting the material. It thus allows the biblicist to claim to trust the invisible Christ while rejecting His visible Body, to claim to be a member of the "invisible Church" while eschewing the visible institution Christ founded. It claims to want the spiritual Jesus, not the incarnate Jesus, to want the living Spirit, not a "dead institution". (Sound familiar?) The reality and permanence of Christ's incarnation means that Christ and His Body can never be separated, that to trust in Christ is to trust in His Body the Church, to love Christ is to love His Body. (See here and here.) The gnostic division of matter and form (embracing form while rejecting matter) is what sets up the ecclesial deism that underlies both Mormonism and Protestantism, as I have argued here.

In my next post, I'm going to write about love and ecclesial unity. But here I have tried to show that in order to talk with the biblicist about the ecumenical implications of John 17, we have to step back and help our interlocutor come to see outside the biblicist paradigm, helping him to see all the evidence from the Catholic paradigm. When one looks at all the evidence from both paradigms, the experience of moving from the biblicist to the Catholic paradigm is like the experience of peering into a dim room when someone turns on the light. The Catholic paradigm includes and incorporates all that is true in the biblicist paradigm, but explains so much more, including why the biblicist paradigm is so incomplete. But the same is not true when moving from the Catholic paradigm to the biblicist paradigm. So the ecumenical dialogue should be something like a kitchen table conversation in which we are seeking to help each other see the evidence from our respective paradigms. The standard mistake in ecumenical dialogue is to start debating a text or doctrine without taking into account our paradigm [meta-level] differences. We end up simply talking past each other, and misunderstanding each other and sometimes getting frustrated, because we are not focused on the fundamental *perspectival* and *methodological* differences that stand under and behind our more proximate and apparent differences in Scripture interpretation and doctrine.

In accord with the intention of Christ's sacred heart exposed in this high priestly prayer, may the Holy Spirit work through us to make us all one, as Christ and the Father are one, by incorporating us all fully into Christ's Body, the Church.

Two Stumbling Blocks to Unity

There are many stumbling blocks to unity. Here I will mention two. One is a deep distrust of the early church fathers. I have discussed it before under the description "ecclesial deism". I encountered this distrust of the fathers again recently in this comment, and in the comments in this thread. This distrust is a kind of negative or skeptical stance or attitude toward the fathers. Instead of reading and interpreting Scripture through the eyes of the fathers (i.e. through the perspective that they provide us -- see Pontificator's third law), a person who takes this distrusting attitude toward the fathers does something quite different; he subjects the teachings of the fathers to his own twenty-first century interpretation of Scripture, believing his own interpretation of Scripture to be neutral and objective. This distrustful attitude leads one who holds it to treat teachings of the fathers that he does not find in Scripture to be either corruptions of the gospel or additions to the gospel. He does not view them as developments of the gospel. That they are corruptions, and not developments, is assumed, not argued for. That is the paradigm in which he operates.

Implicit in this distrustful attitude toward the fathers are theological assumptions such as that Christ did not promise to protect the Church from doctrinal error, or did not keep this promise, or that if Christ did keep this promise, it applied to some unknown group (scattered or hidden) of Christians of which history has kept no record. All this too, comes out of a distrustful, skeptical attitude. In that attitude is an implicit theological separation between Christ and the Church, treating distrust of the Church as entirely distinct from distrust of Christ Himself. (I recently discussed here the error of theologically separating Christ and His Church.) It is for this reason that this distrusting stance is not fundamentally a doctrinal disagreement, although it has that as an implication. It is fundamentally a deficiency of faith. The heretics faced by the Church fathers attacked the Church in the very same way, by calling into question the reliability of the Church in preserving the deposit of faith entrusted once and for all to the Apostles. These heretics drew followers to themselves by planting doubt in the minds of others regarding the trustworthiness of the rightful successors of the Apostles. In actuality, the Church grows organically, like a tree. As I wrote here:

"When we think about the way a plant or animal grows, every movement is an unfolding of what was implicit in the previous stage. The organism cannot reject or throw out the fundamental moves it made in its earlier stages; it builds on them. It takes as a given what was laid down in all the previous stages, and continues the process of unfolding the full telos of the organism. That is the nature of organic development."

Because the Church is the Body of Christ, it develops as an organism. The organic conception of development provides an entirely different paradigm for viewing the fathers. In this (the Catholic paradigm) we understand our earliest stages through our intermediate stages. We do not try to reflect on our earliest stages from an abstract view from nowhere, or as if the intermediate stages were not organic developments of the earliest stages. We do not try to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch. Implicit in that is the ecclesial deism resulting from a deficiency in faith. Each successive stage helps us better understand what was implicit in the previous stages. Development further unveils the organism and unfurls the blossom, and allows us retrospectively then to see it more clearly and accurately in its earlier stages when its fullness is still in potentia. This is an implication of the head of the household bringing out of his treasure "things new and old". (Matthew 13:52). They are new, in that they are now explicit; they are old, in that they have been there implicitly from the beginning.

A difficulty for the distrusting stance toward the fathers is that even the New Testament canon is then subject to skepticism, for if the Church was corrupted at such an early period, then there is no ground for trusting that the NT canon is reliable. Some persons taking this distrustful stance attempt to get around this problem either by stipulating the canon or by claiming that the canon is self-attesting or by claiming that the canon is attested by the inward work of the Holy Spirit. All three options, however, are intrinsically individualistic; they make the contemporary individual the authority, not the Church fathers. When a person rejects the notion that Christ promised to protect the Church, guide her into all truth, not to let the gates of hell prevail against her, and to be with her until the end of the age, i.e. when a person rejects the notion that the Church grows organically like a tree, then anything goes. Ironically, even absolute novelties then become acceptable, as with James Jordan's notion that apostolic succession is reduced to baptism. The fathers clearly taught that apostolic succession concerns ordination, as I have showed here. The fathers do not teach anywhere that baptism gives us the charism that is given in ordination. By approaching the fathers as our fathers in the faith, to whom we owe filial piety and respect (a moral principle so fundamental that it is explicit in the Ten Commandments), we are able to see the Church as an organic development through time. And the notion of the organic development of the Church allows us to distinguish development from novelty. (One criterion for heresy is novelty: "a heretic is one who either devises or follows false and new opinions" -- St. Augustine.)

A second stumbling block for unity is the Marian doctrines. I recently discussed Mary as the "Queen of Peace" with respect to Church unity. I'm coming to believe more and more that typically underlying the stumbling block of the Marian doctrines is Christological confusion if not Christological error. It is not an accident that Mary's title as Theotokos was authoritatively defined in a General Council (Ephesus 431) that focused on Christology, and particularly on the heresy of Nestorianism. Mary's uniqueness rests on an orthodox understanding of the incarnation, as I discussed recently here. The more we understand why Nestorianism is false, the greater will be our capacity to recognize the truth of the Marian doctrines. This requires that our dispositional stance toward the Councils is one of openness, humility, and receptivity. It is generally those who distrust the Councils and the fathers (or who are unaware of them) who stumble over the Marian doctrines, and that is no accident. The attitude of faith is rewarded: "For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened." (Matthew 7:8) "For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him." (Matthew 13:12; 25:29) Those who approach the fathers and the Councils with distrust and skepticism, even what they have shall be taken away, for "As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. (John 15:4) We need the stem and the roots of this vine which is the Body of Christ, and which extends through time to the incarnate Christ Himself. We have to come to Christ (and to the Church) like a child, with a childlike faith. If we come to the Church with a list of demands, or with a critical, skeptical, distrustful stance, we lack faith. "Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18:3-4)

Lord Jesus, please remove those stumbling blocks that stand in the way of the reunion of all Christians in full visible unity. Please give to us a childlike faith that is humble and receptive to You and your Church. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Ecclesial Deism and Sacramental Magisterial Authority

Beliefnet recently published this debate between Albert Mohler (President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) and Orson Scott Card (a Mormon writer). [HT Mark Shea] The question being debated is: Are Mormons Christian?

Card goes right to the heart of the problem for Mohler: authority. Card asks: "Who gets to define 'Christian'?" Mohler knows that sola scriptura is not enough here, so he appeals to "traditional Christian orthodoxy". He mentions the historic creeds. He writes:

"The orthodox consensus of the Christian church is defined in terms of its historic creeds and doctrinal affirmations."

I agree with Card that Mohler simply begs the question. He has to. He has rejected Apostolic succession, so he has no recourse to sacramental magisterial authority, including the authority of the General Councils and Creeds. Presumably he rejects the fifth General Council's teaching that Mary remained ever-virgin. (Cf. capitula 2) But if he rejects the authority of the fifth, then why not the first, second, third and fourth as well? If he held even to the first seven, his position would be much more like that of the Orthodox Churches, and much less like that of the Southern Baptists.

Drawing from St. Vincent of Lerins, Mohler claims that the true faith is that which was "recognized and affirmed everywhere, always, and by all". But presumably he rejects the distinction between bishop and priest, something already clearly visible in the writings of St. Ignatius bishop of Antioch, writing as an old man in 107 AD. The same General Councils to which Mohler appeals regarding the Trinity and the nature of Christ, were decided by bishops who all recognized and affirmed the distinction between bishops and priests. Presumably Mohler rejects the transformation of the bread and wine, baptismal regeneration, veneration of relics, the sacrament of confirmation, the sacrament of penance/reconciliation, fasting on Fridays and during Lent, and the communion of saints, all things that the Church held and believed everywhere. If he thinks Novatianism and Donatism are heresies, how does he think he avoids them? But if he denies that they were heresies, then he has no grounds for criticizing Card for picking and choosing differently from "traditional Christian orthodoxy" than he does himself.

Card could reply by also affirming the Vincentian canon, and claiming that Mormonism is what was initially recognized and affirmed everywhere, always, and by all, and that the purity of the gospel had already been distorted and corrupted by the end of the first century. Mohler's only rejoinder would be: My ecclesial deism isn't as extreme as yours. Card could reply: True, but it is more eclectic and no less ad hoc. Picking 500 AD as the cutoff for "traditional Christian orthodoxy" is no less ad hoc than picking 80 AD. If any ecclesial deism is allowed, then there is no more principled reason to think the 'apostasy of the Church' didn't begin for 500 years than there is to think it began in the first century. And if the creeds have authority for Mohler only insofar as they agree with his interpretation of Scripture, then Card can simply reply that he [Card] does not interpret the Scriptures that way, and therefore the creeds have no such 'authority' for him.

At some point while studying the first four hundred years of the Church, I realized that the term 'Christian' isn't as important as the word 'Catholic'. All the heretics claimed to be Christians. St. Augustine writes:

There are many other things that most justly keep me in her [i.e. the Catholic Church's] bosom. ... The succession of priests keeps me, beginning from the very seat of the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after His resurrection, gave it in charge to feed His sheep, down to the present episcopate. And so, lastly, does the name itself of Catholic, which, not without reason, amid so many heresies, the Church has thus retained; so that, though all heretics wish to be called Catholics, yet when a stranger asks where the Catholic Church meets, no heretic will venture to point to his own chapel or house. (Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental)

My discussions with Mormons were a significant factor in helping me realize my own ecclesial deism. I pray that Mohler will likewise be benefitted from this exchange. We cannot have unity until we recognize sacramental magisterial authority, and reject ecclesial deism.