Pope Greets Ecumenical Patriarch on the Feast of Saint Andrew

The photograph at right (and the one at left) were taken three years ago today, on the Feast of St. Andrew. Pope Benedict's line of succession goes back to the Apostle Peter. The Patriarchs of Constantinople trace their succession back to the Apostle Andrew, Peter's brother. One source in the tradition tells us that St. Andrew preached in "Cappadocia, Galatia, and Bithynia," and "afterwards in Byzantium where he appointed St. Stachys as its first bishop."

Today Pope Benedict XVI sent the following letter to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I.

To His Holiness Bartholomaios I
Archbishop of Constantinople
Ecumenical Patriarch

Your Holiness,

It is with great joy that I address Your Holiness on the occasion of the visit of the delegation guided by my Venerable Brother Cardinal Walter Kasper, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, to whom I have entrusted the task of conveying to you my warmest fraternal greetings on the Feast of Saint Andrew, the brother of Saint Peter and the protector of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

On this joyful occasion commemorating the birth into eternal life of the Apostle Andrew, whose witness of faith in the Lord culminated in his martyrdom, I express also my respectful remembrance to the Holy Synod, the clergy and all the faithful, who under your pastoral care and guidance continue even in difficult circumstances to witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The memory of the holy martyrs compels all Christians to bear witness to their faith before the world. There is an urgency in this call especially in our own day, in which Christianity is faced with increasingly complex challenges. The witness of Christians will surely be all the more credible if all believers in Christ are "of one heart and soul" (Acts 4:32).

Our Churches have committed themselves sincerely over the last decades to pursuing the path towards the re-establishment of full communion, and although we have not yet reached our goal, many steps have been taken that have enabled us to deepen the bonds between us. Our growing friendship and mutual respect, and our willingness to encounter one another and to recognize one another as brothers in Christ, should not be hindered by those who remain bound to the remembrance of historical differences, which impedes their openness to the Holy Spirit who guides the Church and is able to transform all human failings into opportunities for good.

This openness has guided the work of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue, which held its eleventh plenary session in Cyprus last month. The meeting was marked by a spirit of solemn purpose and a warm sentiment of closeness. I extend once again my heartfelt gratitude to the Church of Cyprus for its most generous welcome and hospitality. It is a source of great encouragement that despite some difficulties and misunderstandings all the Churches involved in the International Commission have expressed their intention to continue the dialogue.

The theme of the plenary session, The Role of the Bishop of Rome in the Communion of the Church in the First Millennium, is certainly complex, and will require extensive study and patient dialogue if we are to aspire to a shared integration of the traditions of East and West. The Catholic Church understands the Petrine ministry as a gift of the Lord to His Church. This ministry should not be interpreted in the perspective of power, but within an ecclesiology of communion, as a service to unity in truth and charity. The Bishop of the Church of Rome, which presides in charity (Saint Ignatius of Antioch), is understood to be the Servus Servorum Dei (Saint Gregory the Great). Thus, as my venerable predecessor the Servant of God Pope John Paul II wrote and I reiterated on the occasion of my visit to the Phanar in November 2006, it is a question of seeking together, inspired by the model of the first millennium, the forms in which the ministry of the Bishop of Rome may accomplish a service of love recognized by one and all (cf. Ut Unum Sint, 95). Let us therefore ask God to bless us and may the Holy Spirit guide us along this difficult yet promising path.

(Continue reading)

H/T: ByzTex

The Internet Monk Interview

I mentioned a few days ago that Michael Spencer (aka Internet Monk) had asked me to do an interview for his site. He is going to post the interview in five parts. He has already posted Part 1.

Especially over the last year or so Michael has been doing things that no other prominent Evangelicals (that I know of) are doing.  It might be called an honest and transparent self-examination of Evangelicalism, seeking to determine its strengths and its weaknesses, its identity and its future. He's not doing it to be critical, but to save it. The fascinating part of this endeavor, from my point of view, is that in seeking to understand and preserve Evangelicalism, Michael, in a sense, has flung open the doors to receive insight from other Christian traditions. And that has begun an ecumenical conversation. Such conversations can easily devolve into ugliness, especially on the internet. But Michael runs a tight ship, and so has fostered a safe context in which these discussions can take place. The result is often that Baptists and Lutherans and Calvinists and Catholics and Pentecostals and Orthodox and Anglicans are all talking to each other in a friendly, respectful way, about their theology and practice. In this respect, what Michael is doing ecumenically is pioneering. So I'm grateful for his invitation to contribute to the discussion.

UPDATE: Part 2 is posted.

UPDATE: Part 3 is posted.

UPDATE: Part 4 is posted.

UPDATE: Part 5 is posted.

UPDATE: Michael's response.

Beckwith and George: Can You Be Catholic and Evangelical?

On September 3, Wheaton College hosted a friendly discussion between professors Timothy George and Francis Beckwith focused primarily on the following question: Can you be Catholic and Evangelical? Timothy George is a Southern Baptist and dean of Beeson Divinity School, and a co-signer of The Gift of Salvation. Francis Beckwith was the president of the Evangelical Theological Society when he reverted to the Catholic Church in 2006; he is now Professor of Philosophy & Church-State Studies at Baylor University. The video of the discussion and the following Q&A can be found here.

Such a discussion, and the way it was conducted, are very encouraging signs with respect to the goal of seeking the reunion of all Christians, especially Protestants and Catholics. In my opinion this event is exactly the sort of conversation Protestants and Catholics should be having. The discussion often just touched on various points of disagreement, without going into significant depth. But the purpose of the discussion was not to go into depth on these issues, only to sketch out the overall picture and develop a better mutual understanding of the common ground and the differences between Evangelicals and Catholics in relation to the question that titled the event.

My comments below focus only on Professor George’s statements. My purpose is to advance the discussion of our disagreements, by pointing to the deeper reasons underlying our disagreements.

(continue reading at Called To Communion)

Paradigm Inversion and Ecumenical Humility

The Conversion of St. Paul
Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)

Today is the eighth and final day of the week of prayer for Christian unity. Today is also the feast day of the Conversion of St. Paul. This event is more significant this year because this is "the Pauline Year", during which the Church marks St. Paul's 2,000th birthday. The conversion of St. Paul provides an example for us as we seek the full visible reunion of all Christians.

Paul, then known as Saul, was a learned rabbi, educated under the renowned Gamaliel, and unparalleled in his devotion and zeal for God. He had been "breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord". (Acts 9:1) He persecuted the Christians, entering house after house, binding men and women, beating them (Acts 22:19), putting them in prisons, and casting his vote against them when they were being put to death, including the stoning of St. Stephen. (Acts 7:58, 8:3) He also tried to force Christians to blaspheme, "being furiously enraged at them". (Acts 26:11) He describes his pre-conversion self as "a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor". (1 Tim 1:13)

As a result of this persecution led by Saul, many Christians fled to other cities, including Damascus. Saul determined to hunt them down and stamp them out. While on the road to Damascus, he was met suddenly by Jesus Christ, who confronted him quite literally like a bolt of lightning. Saul fell to the ground, and a voice from heaven said to him, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?" Saul recognized, of course, that the speaker was divine. But the situation was not entirely unlike Nathan's "You are the man" (2 Samuel 12:7), and Queen Esther's similar fingering of Haman in the presence of King Ahasuerus (Esther 7:1-6). The expectations were completely reversed. What Christ was saying about Saul persecuting Him did not fit Saul's paradigm, in the least. Saul persecuting God? That's impossible. Saul was a "Hebrew of Hebrews" (Phil 3:5), advancing in Judaism beyond many of his contemporaries, (Gal 1:14), his zeal for God indicated by the very thing he was doing (Phil 3:6), traveling to Damascus to stamp out these followers of Jesus.

That is why Saul replied, in confusion, "Who are you, Lord?" Jesus then replied, "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting." (Acts 9:4-5) Saul discovered to his horror that he had been terribly wrong. Not only had he been persecuting the followers of the true Messiah, he had been persecuting the divine Messiah Himself, by persecuting the Messiah's Body, the Church, as he says in Galatians 1:13, "I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it." Saul had completely failed to discern the identity of the Church. Yet, he was shown mercy "because he acted ignorantly in unbelief." (1 Tim 1:13)

Saul had been blind. Now Jesus reveals Himself to Saul, and blinds his physical eyes. Jesus shows Saul physically what his theological condition had been like: "though his eyes were open, he could see nothing". (Acts 9:8) Saul had been leading a group of men to persecute Christ's Church; now these men lead the blind Saul like a child. Five minutes before this encounter, the notion that he was theologically blind, and fighting against God, would have been unimaginable to Saul, preposterous!

Christ tells Saul, His persecutor, that He is sending him to the Gentiles to open their eyes "so that they may turn from darkness to light". (Acts 26:18) A paradigm shift of this magnitude does not take place instantly. Saul was in intellectual, spiritual and emotional shock. He had to absorb what had happened, come to terms with the evil that he had done to Christ and His Church, and accept the astounding mercy God had shown to him in revealing Himself to him and healing his spiritual blindness. Saul couldn't eat or drink for three days. (Acts 9:9) During those three days, he prayed, seeking direction. (Acts 9:11) When Ananias came and laid hands on him, and the scales fell from his eyes, he regained His sight, and got up and was baptized. He too was now a Christian, a follower of Christ.

St. Paul's conversion, more than any other in Scripture, teaches us intellectual humility, because he shows that it is possible to be entirely convinced that others are wrong about divine matters, and then come to realize that you yourself have been wrong, even fighting against God. He also shows us an example of a divinely provoked paradigm inversion. The very thing he had thought was heresy turned out to be the truth. He had been trying to get people to deny or curse this 'heresy'; it turned out that he had unknowingly been trying to make them blaspheme God. He had been found to be, as Gamaliel his old teacher had warned, vainly "fighting against God". (Acts 5:39) A paradigm inversion is not just an addition or adjustment to an existing paradigm; it is an entirely different way of seeing. What was previously seen as blasphemous, heretical or cause for division, for example, is now perceived as a beautiful and mysterious blessing.

I was recently in two separate conversations involving Catholics and Protestants. In one, the Protestant said, "my approach to ecumenism with Rome is to call all Roman Catholics to faith and repentance". In the other, a self-styled Catholic apologist jumped into a long-running conversation and almost immediately accused the participating Protestants of "rebelling against God" and "concocting another Gospel". Neither of these seem like intellectual humility to me. I'm not suggesting that we should not hold our beliefs passionately, or that certainty is always unjustified. On the contrary, we may be called to face death for our beliefs; many have. But the example of St. Paul's conversion reminds us all that we are not beyond error. And in the face of actual theological disagreement, the law of non-contradiction entails that at least one of us is *wrong*. That too ought to keep us humble in any ecumenical dialogue.

Tonight, Pope Benedict gave a homily at the celebration of vespers for the feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. This ceremony was held at the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, which is built over the tomb of St. Paul. Pope Benedict said the following:

St. Paul's conversion offers us a model that shows us the way to full unity. Unity in fact requires a conversion: from division to communion, from broken unity to healed and full unity. This conversion is the gift of the Risen Christ, as it was for St. Paul. We heard this from the Apostle himself in the reading proclaimed just a moment ago: "By the grace of God I am what I am" (1 Corinthians 15:10).

The same Lord, who called Saul on the road to Damascus, addresses Himself to the members of the Church -- which is one and holy -- and calling each by name asks: Why have you divided Me? Why have you wounded the unity of My Body?

Conversion implies two dimensions. In the first step we recognize our faults in the light of Christ, and this recognition becomes sorrow and repentance, desire for a new beginning. In the second step we recognize that this new road cannot come from us. It consists in letting ourselves be conquered by Christ. As St. Paul says: "I continue my pursuit in hope that I may possess it, since I have indeed been conquered by Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:12).

Are we closer to being united since the close of last year's week of prayer for Christian unity? The answer is not easy to determine. It is easier to see the ecumenical progress when we look back over the past 101 years, since the initiation of this annual week of prayer for Christian unity. Think about what you can do to help bring us all closer to unity by this day next year. Pray daily for the reconstitution of the full and visible unity of all Christ's followers. Talk with other Christians about what still divides us, always in a spirit of charity and sincerity. Don't conduct your ecumenical discussions in a question-begging way; try to seek out together the root causes historically behind the divergences. If you discover a truth that helps resolve a disagreement or dissolve a misunderstanding that perpetuates division, share this truth with everyone you can. Taking into your heart the passion for unity revealed in the heart of Christ Jesus in John 17 is a form of devotion, a participation in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Since love pursues unity, a devotion to the unity He loves nurtures the love that effects such unity. Apathy and hatred toward others cannot coexist with a continually nurtured desire for genuine and complete unity with them in the Body of Christ. Let us keep pursuing this unity, as brothers and sisters in Christ, for the sake of our Lord's Sacred Heart.

On Starting Points and Reconciliation

We cannot but start where we are. And that is also true for each participant in an ecumenical dialogue aimed at effecting true unity. So we first have to know where we ourselves are, and then we have to learn where our interlocutors are. That requires an openness, a willingness to listen patiently and sincerely, and learn each other's positions. If we find our interlocutor saying "No, that's a straw man of my position; my position is this", we know we have to listen and understand more carefully. But once we understand each other's positions, where do go from there? The next step, it seems, is to find and agree about what we have in common, and what are our points of disagreement. We seek to understand each other's stories about how we came to be separated, again noting the points of agreement and disagreement regarding how the separation came about.

It seems to me that so much (perhaps most) of the ecumenical task in reconciling and reuniting Protestants and Catholics involves what I have just summarized in the paragraph above. In order to move forward toward the unity of full communion, we have to look backward in time and determine together what happened in the past that caused us to be presently divided from each other.

In the Protestant mind, the Catholic Church at some point during the Middle Ages (or earlier) abandoned the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Reformers recovered this gospel, and thus the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church continues with the Protestants who hold and teach this gospel. From the point of view of the Catholic Church, on the other hand, the Catholic Church never abandoned the gospel of Jesus Christ. According to the Catholic Church, the Protestant versions of the gospel are novelties arising 1500 years after the Apostles, and are falsely read back into the writings of the Apostles by Protestants.

Did the Catholic Church abandon the gospel? (I'm not referring to abuses and corruptions of the sixteenth century, but to the doctrines of the Church.) Or did the early Protestants misinterpret the Scripture and thereby redefine the gospel as something that it never was (e.g. "imputed righteousness")? Instead of jumping right into that debate, I would like to take a step back and ask the second-order question: How should we determine who is right here? How do we go about answering these first-order questions about whether the Catholic Church abandoned the gospel and whether Protestants misinterpreted the Bible to come up with a novel gospel?

If the Catholic Church did not abandon the gospel, then the Protestant ecclesial authorities (i.e. denominational hierarchies, pastors, and uniquely Protestant creeds) are not authoritative, and we should not be following them in order to resolve the Catholic-Protestant schism. Likewise, if the Catholic Church did abandon the gospel (and for the sake of simplicity we set aside the Orthodox), and if the Protestants preserved the gospel, then Catholics should not be submitting to the Pope and Catholic bishops in order to answer these first-order questions.

Instead of turning to the pope or local Catholic bishops, or turning to Protestant authorities or our own interpretation of Scripture, we need a means of answering the first-order questions that does not beg the question, that is, does not assume already at the outset which position is correct. We could each simply stand right where we are, appeal to our present [unique credal and/or ecclesial] authority and present methodology, respectively, and answer the first-order questions. But that would only beg the question (i.e. assume precisely what it is we are trying to determine) on both sides, and thus perpetuate the division between us. That is because it is precisely our present credal and/or ecclesial authorities and present unique epistemic methodologies that are called into question by a sincere consideration of our first-order questions. Although we must start where we are, when resolving disagreements we must recognize that we have to go back, so to speak, to how we got to the point where we are. Taking up our history is in this way part of coming to know and understand where we are now.

That brings me to what I want to say here about ecumenical starting points. How do we get to a non-question-begging starting point? It seems to me that we must turn to history, to that time before the separation, when we (well, actually our ecclesial ancestors) were still united. Only if we go back (so to speak) in history to the point where we were united can we then proceed forward discursively and evaluate together, from a shared conceptual point of view according to shared (and thus non-question-begging) criteria, the actions of our ancestors in our respective ecclesial traditions. But we need to agree on where we can start in history as one united people. And in the Catholic-Protestant discourse, that is not as easy as it may initially appear.

Let me explain. In January, on the feast day of St. Francis de Sales, I discussed here the need for Catholics and Protestants to trace together our history, from Jesus through the Apostles all the way to the sixteenth century. There I talked about the difference between "tracing matter" and "comparing form" in determining in a principled manner, in the case of a schism, which party is the schism and which is the continuation of the Church that Christ founded. In the comments there I wrote:

The Catholic-Protestant discussion is, in a certain sense more difficult, because Protestants (generally) don't "trace matter", but rather "compare form". Anglicans are something of an exception here. But often Protestants, when talking with Catholics about these issues, will bring up the 1054 split, as though that shows that the Catholic Church is just one branch of the Church. So, already, they are thinking of the Church as an invisible Church with visible members. And that implies that they are not thinking in a "trace matter" manner, since there is an historical line that can be drawn from *any* schism back to the Apostles. "Trace matter" therefore doesn't just mean showing historical continuity. It means showing in a principled manner why the Church continues one way, and not the other, through all the schisms she has endured. In order to "trace matter" with Protestants through the 16th century split [i.e. in order to determine which way the Church went], Protestants would actually need to get up to the 1500s with us [in this exercise of tracing the historical path of the Church]. But generally they don't make it that far. See, for example, my discussion of ecclesial deism, in which Al Mohler bails out around 500 AD. While the Catholic-Protestant split takes place in the 16th century, many Protestants retroactively reject the prior 1000 years. So, I think with Protestants, we have to go back to the first five hundred years, i.e. to the Church fathers. When we study the fathers, we see an organic growth and continuity, nothing to justify bailing out at 500 AD and then restarting (supposedly) in 1520 where the Church left off in 500 AD.

So one reason why it is difficult to start with Protestants from a shared and united point in history, and then work forward, is that in principle, for Protestants, everything in Church history is called into question except the writings of the Apostles. So in practice that means that we have to begin our ecumenical exercise in the first century, and trace the path forward together from the time of the Apostles.

When I am talking with Mormons (who claim that the Church was already apostate by the end of the first century), I ask them how they know that St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. Clement of Rome, the Didache, and St. Polycarp were apostate. Other than a subjective appeal to the Holy Spirit (which they describe experientially as a "burning in the bosom"), the answer I generally receive is one of "comparing form". The Mormons claim that the early Church fathers teach a different gospel from the one found in the New Testament. I then ask them how they know that the gospel taught by the early Church fathers is not the same gospel taught by the Apostles, and that the Mormon interpretation of the New Testament is not an erroneous interpretation of the New Testament. The point of my question is to show that there are two paradigms here: one is that of [what I call] ecclesial deism, and the other is that of providential development. These correspond to two fundamental possible stances: We can either read the New Testament through the eyes of the fathers, learning from them how better to understand what the Apostles taught, or we can judge and critique the teachings of the fathers by means of our own personal interpretation of Scripture or our contemporary tradition's interpretation of Scripture. (I came to that same conclusion about these two fundamental stances in Part 2 of What is the True Church?.)

There are obviously many important differences between Mormonism and the various other forms of Protestantism, but they do tend to have something in common, and that is a distrust of the early Church fathers, and a belief that something fundamental was lost for at least a millennium and a half, and was recovered in either the sixteenth century or the nineteenth century. (Think of Alister McGrath's claim that "imputed righteousness" [forensic justification] was unknown from the time of St. Paul to the Reformation, that it fell out of view for 1500 years.) I discussed this shared distrust of the fathers in my post on ecclesial deism. At present, I do not know how to persuade those who take a skeptical stance toward the early Church fathers to trust that the Holy Spirit was working through them providentially to guide the Church into all truth. A stance (or attitude, or disposition of the will) is not the same sort of thing as a proposition. A proposition can be refuted or at least shown to be without justification, or it can be substantiated and confirmed. But a stance or attitude is just not that sort of thing; it is something closer to the level of the heart, not the intellect.

Perhaps the best I can do is to ask my Prostestant brothers and sisters to engage in an exercise in charity, for the sake of trying to achieve unity, by allowing themselves to listen to the fathers as if the Holy Spirit were providentially guiding the Church through the fathers. I'm not talking about cherry-picking from the fathers to support any present ideology. I mean listening to the fathers in an organic way inspired by faith, that is, as if the Church is a Body growing organically and guided providentially by the Holy Spirit from the time of the Apostles onward. (The 'faith' part comes from trusting that the Holy Spirit is continually guiding the Church and protecting her from error.)

How then do the fathers understand the marks of the Church? Do they do so by "comparing form" or "tracing matter"? Do they understand 'apostolicity' primarily in the "trace matter" sense or the "comparing form" sense? I leave the inquirer to answer that question through his own reading of the fathers. But consider the implications of each alternative. If "comparing form" were primary, then every heresy in history could treat its novel interpretation of Scripture as the true gospel that had been lost when the Apostles died, and thus we could not trace the Church through history in a non-question-begging way. Protestants are not unwilling to concede that point. But they respond in two ways. First, they assert the perspicuity of Scripture so as to avoid the implication of an ecclesiology instituted by Christ that obviously leaves the sheep in a situation of massive confusion and endless sectarianism. Second, they object that the "trace matter" approach leaves the believer open to falling into heresy, if the line of bishops being traced has fallen into heresy or apostasy.

But the perspicuity claim seems to be falsified by history itself, for Bible-believing Christians have multiplied sects in vast number, and simply pointing to the various passages in Scripture has failed repeatedly to achieve reconciliation and reunion. Similarly, the worry about the "trace matter" approach carries with it the same distrust we see in Mormonism and the general ecclesial deism of Protestantism. That's not to say that from the Catholic perspective, bishops cannot become heretics; history shows us that they have! But heresy is possible as something objective only if "trace matter" is primary. Otherwise your heresy is my orthodoxy, and vice versa. Heresy in an objective, non-question-begging sense is possible only because ecclesial authority in the "trace matter" sense (and not in the question-begging "those who teach what I believe" sense) has already laid down what is orthodox and what is heresy.

One thing that helped me move from Anglicanism to Catholicism was witnessing an Anglican bishop pick and choose from the first seven ecumenical councils, as if he could take and leave whatever he wanted among them and within them. Either these councils are authoritative, in which case we cannot pick and choose from them, or they are not authoritative. If "comparing form" is the right approach (and not "tracing matter"), then no creed is authoritative, because no council is authoritative. But if "tracing matter" is the right approach, then the creeds and councils are authoritative, not because they happen to agree with our own interpretation of Scripture but because of the sacramental authority in succession from the Apostles of those who constituted these councils. In that case we cannot pick and choose from among these councils according to our own interpretation of Scripture; our own interpretation of Scripture is subordinate in authority to that of the councils. How would we know if an ecumenical council were heretical? It would contradict a dogma that had always been held by the Church and/or had been explicitly taught by the Church's magisterium.

What I am trying to do here in this post is to take us (Protestants and Catholics) to a common starting point, one that does not beg the question either way. And then walk forward together with the Church fathers, using the criteria they use to determine where is the Church in the first centuries. As we walk forward together through the early history of the Church, we can observe what the fathers's conception of apostolic succession is, and what role apostolic succession is playing in determining the identity through time of the Church that Christ founded. That will help us when we come to evaluating the events of the 16th century, by providing shared common ground by which we may mutually evaluate those events and sort them in such a way as to be able to say sincerely to each other, with full agreement: "Ok, you were right about this, but wrong about that. We were right about this but wrong about that. In order to be reconciled and reunited, here's what we need to do." We can't stand nowhere in evaluating these things. We have to stand somewhere. And we should not remain in a starting point in which we assume a priori some theological position that arose in the sixteenth century, even if that is the starting point in which we find ourselves upon entering the ecumenical dialogue. In order for our ecumenical dialogue to be fruitful, we have to find a shared starting point. And that shared starting point, I am arguing, should be that of the early Church, from which point we trace together her organic development and unfolding by the Holy Spirit.

Lord Jesus, please help Protestants and Catholics sense the pain of the wound of our present separation. And by your Holy Spirit, help us make peace and be reunited to each other, in truth and charity and trust. 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.

What Is the True Church? Part 1

Francis A. Schaeffer

In the Fall of 1997, the Francis Schaeffer Institute at Covenant Theological Seminary sponsored a lecture series titled "What Is the True Church?". The Anglican position was presented by J.I. Packer. The Reformed view was presented by Douglas Kelly. The Orthodox position was presented by Nicholas Triantafilou. The Lutheran position was presented by Roger Pitellko. And the Catholic position was presented by Richard John Neuhaus. The audio of these talks can be downloaded for free here (requires sign in, which is free).

I was present at these talks; I was in my fourth year of seminary at the time. I remember coming away from this lecture series wondering what was the most fundamental reason that these men disagreed with each other. At that time, I did not understand what the *fundamental* underlying reason for the disagreement was, though I think I have a better understanding of it now, and I have been trying to write about it here on Principium Unitatis over the past year. In particular, I remember listening to Fr. Neuhaus' talk and thinking the following: Here is a man who obviously loves Christ, a man learned in Scripture, theology and Church history. How could he possibly not understand that Scripture teaches what we [Presbyterians] believe? He is not the sort of person (in his character) to distort Scripture deliberately. Nor is he an anti-intellectual who is unaware of all that our great Reformed scholars have written in defense of Reformed theology. Why did he become Catholic, instead of becoming Presbyterian? How could he possibly know all that he knows, and be a genuine truth-loving person, and still leave Protestantism, for the Catholic Church, of all things!? Why couldn't the highly-skilled exegetes on our faculty at Covenant (and at Concordia) simply take him aside and show him from the Hebrew and Greek that his interpretations of Scripture were clearly wrong?

It was only later that I read Fr. Neuhaus' article "How I Became the Catholic I Was". But at that time (i.e. 1997), I could not see or even conceive of the Catholic paradigm, about which I wrote last year (see here). I did not even know there was such a thing. I could see theology only from a Protestant point of view, and from that point of view, Fr. Neuhaus' Catholic position was obviously and seriously flawed. For that reason, Fr. Neuhaus' move to Catholicism was a mystery to me; I simply couldn't make sense of it. So I did what I did with all those other things that didn't make sense to me theologically -- I put it in a mental closet and closed the door. But the door wouldn't stay closed, and the closet kept accumulating more and more "does-not-compute"s.

What I did not understand then, but understand much better now, is that what divides Christians are meta-level disagreements. (See my recent comment on meta-level questions here.) So often, when we try to resolve that which divides us, we fail to recognize and address the meta-level points of disagreement. But given Tertullian's admonition, it does not seem appropriate to enter into a debate about first-order questions without first considering the meta-level questions. When a person is operating within a paradigm, and trying to resolve a disagreement with another person who is operating within a different paradigm, the discussion will make no headway toward agreement until they first recognize that they are each operating in a distinct paradigm, and then learn each other's paradigms, and then compare each other's paradigms on the basis of common ground, not question-begging claims.

Here I want to compare the Reformed answer to "What is the True Church?" with the Catholic answer to that question, and then point out the meta-level differences, that is, the underlying differences that account for the differences between the Reformed and Catholic answers to this question. I will do this in two parts. Part 1 will focus on the difference between the Reformed and Catholic conceptions of the marks of the Church. Part 2 will focus on the meta-level differences that lie behind these conceptual differences.

I was taking notes on Douglas Kelly's comments on the four marks of the Church as given in the Creed: Unam, Sanctum, Catholicam, et Apostolicam Ecclesiam, i.e. the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. As I was doing so, I noticed that Kelly's conceptions of "one" and "apostolic" were formalized, that is, de-materialized. When I say "de-materialized" I am referring to matter in the sense of "form and matter". A de-materialized conception of the gospel, for example, reduces it to a message (see here). A de-materialized conception of the Church is a kind of gnosticism, as I argued here. When I noticed that Kelly's conceptions of "one" and "apostolic" were de-materialized, I wondered if the same was true of his conceptions of "holy" and "catholic". Those turned out to be de-materialized as well. Then I looked at paragraph 881 in the Catholic Catechism, which reads:

"This is the sole Church of Christ, which in the Creed we profess to be one, holy, catholic and apostolic." These four characteristics, inseparably linked with each other, indicate essential features of the Church and her mission. The Church does not possess them of herself; it is Christ who, through the Holy Spirit, makes his Church one, holy, catholic, and apostolic, and it is he who calls her to realize each of these qualities." (my emphasis)

If these four marks are "inseparably linked to each other", then it is no coincidence that all four of Kelly's conceptions of the marks of the Church are de-materialized in comparison to the Catholic conceptions of the marks of the Church. To de-materialize one of the marks is necessarily, it seems, to de-materialize them all. And de-materializing our conceptions of the marks of the Church means that we lose sight of the Church as a "visible sacrament" of the unity that come to mankind through Christ. (Lumen Gentium 9)

Unam:
The Catholic understanding of the unity of the Church is that the Church is visibly one, because the Church is the *Body* of Christ. Notice that this is not merely a formal (i.e. doctrinal unity), or an abstract unity, or an immaterial unity. The Church is one hierarchically organized body, one institution. It is not a mere collection or plurality of individuals or groups. That would still be, in actuality, a plurality only treated conceptually as if it were a unity. Nor is the Church merely one in belief and practice. The Church is one in being; it is one visible body or institution.

The Reformed conception of the unity of the Church, on the other hand, is de-materialized in that the Church's unity is thought to be fundamentally spiritual, immaterial, and invisible. In the Reformed conception, unity is an invisible mark of the invisible Church. According to this conception, it would be good if we visibly manifested that invisible unity we all already have in Christ, but visible unity is not an essential mark of the Church. I have said much about this recently here, here, here, and here.

Sanctum:
The Catholic understanding of the holiness of the Church is that the Church is actually holy. This does not mean that her members on earth have perfect holiness, or that they all have the same degree of holiness, or even that the majority are exceptionally holy; in fact we are all still sinners. Nor does it mean that in their good deeds pagans and heretics can never outshine Catholics. But it does mean that the Church stands apart from the world in her godly practice and sanctification; she testifies by the manner of her life and witness to the righteousness of God, the dignity of human life, the goodness of creation, the future judgment and the life of the world to come. Her members on earth have a "real though imperfect" holiness (CCC 825), especially insofar as they receive the life of Christ through the means of grace in the sacraments. Moreover, the canonized saints are examples to us of the sanctifying transformative power of the Holy Spirit working in and through the Church. Through the continuous use of the sacraments and prayer, we are truly and actually transformed into virtuous people.

The common Reformed conception of holiness by contrast, is formalized and de-materialized. According to this conception, our holiness is essentially something imputed to us, a legal declaration in which Christ's righteousness is credited to our account, covering us from God's wrath, but not transforming us into persons to whom God could honestly say, "Well done good and faithful servant." All our deeds are as filthy rags. So the Church and the believer are treated by God *as if* holy, as if as holy as Christ, but not transformed so as to be actually holy. (I have explained all this in more detail here. To qualify, I'm speaking of the common contemporary Reformed conception of the gospel, not Calvin's own position.)

Catholicam:
The term means "universal", and as a mark of the Church it means "what is according to the totality", or "in keeping with the whole". (CCC 830) The Catholic conception of the term "Catholicam" is organic and narrative. The Church extends to wherever Christ is, wherever Christ offers Himself in preaching and sacrament, to every nation in the world. But this extends back in time, as an organic narrative, to the very birth of the Church on Pentecost. In that way, the Church is catholic insofar as she encompasses all that has been believed and practiced by the whole Church from the beginning of her history, through her organic development, to the present.

The Reformed conception of "catholic" is de-materialized in two ways. First, it tends to lay aside the time period from the fifth century to the 16th century as a great apostasy. I have called this notion "ecclesial deism", and explained it in more detail here. Second, Reformed denominations are provincial and regional by their very nature. They take names like "Presbyterian Church United States of America", or "Reformed Church of America" or "Presbyterian Church in America". How can anything with the name USA in it be the "catholic" Church? When PCUSA missionaries go to other countries in Africa and Asia, their converts become members of the PCUSA. There is no universal Presbyterian or Reformed Church whose members gather from all over the world for general assembly. The upcoming merger of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches with the Reformed Ecumenical Council to form the World Communion of Reformed Churches shows an awareness of the need for catholicity. But I have argued here that to attempt to achieve catholicity by forming a new institution is to try to do the impossible, i.e. to re-found the Church. The only way to achieve true catholicity is to return to the one institution that Christ Himself founded on the Apostles.

As for the objection that the "Roman Catholic Church" has the word 'Roman' in it, and is therefore provincial, the word 'Roman' is not in the name of the Catholic Church -- see the title of the Catechism at right. The name "Roman Catholic Church" was a term coined by Protestants.

Apostolicam:
The Catholic conception of apostolicity as a mark of the Church is sacramental in nature. The Church is apostolic in that it was built on the foundation of the Apostles, often literally on their bones. (See here.) That Church is apostolic whose ministers were formally authorized and sent by those who were authorized and sent [in a line of unbroken succession] by the Apostles, preserving full communion with the episcopal successor of the Apostle Peter. Those whom the Apostles authorized and sent preserve the Apostles 'teaching and doctrine.

The Reformed conception of apostolicity, by contrast, is de-materialized in that it does not include sacramental succession from the Apostles, i.e. a succession of authorizations by the laying on of hands, extending all the way to the present day from the Apostles themselves. Rather, the Reformed conception of apostolicity is entirely formal (in the form and matter sense of 'form'), for it is defined as the Apostles' doctrine. This is why the Reformed communities posited two (or three) marks of the Church: (1) the right preaching of the Word, the proper administration of the sacraments, and (3) ecclesiastical discipline. But this only begs the question: Who has the authoritative determination of what is "right preaching of the Word" and "proper administration of the sacraments"? The common Reformed answer is: "The Holy Spirit speaking through the Scriptures." But if we ask, "And who has the authoritative determination of what the Holy Spirit is speaking through the Scriptures?", we get some answer like "the people of God". And if we ask, "And who are the 'people of God'?", we generally get some answer like, those who have right preaching of the Word and proper administration of the sacraments. At that point we have simply moved around in a circle. That is why removing the matter from the conception of apostolicity entails both individualism and its necessary byproduct, ecclesial fragmentation, as I argued here and here. For more on apostolicity see my response to Sean Lucas here, my comments on apostolicity and Montanistic Gnosticism here, and my comments on the implications for apostolicity from Acts 15 and Romans 10 here.)

"Denominational Renewal": Part 2

The title of Matt Brown's talk on ecclesiology was "On Being 'Truly 'Reformed': An Examination of the Reformed Catholic Tradition". He divided his talk into four sections: Apostolic, Catholic, Holy, and One, treating in reverse the four marks of the Church stated in that line in the Nicene Creed: "We believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church". I'm passing over Matt's section on holiness because I agreed with everything he said in that section. I'll put my summaries of various parts of Matt's talk in black, and my comments in blue.

In his section on apostolicity, Matt pointed out that none of the Reformed confessions describes the Church as 'Apostolic'. He explained that the reason for this was that at the time of the Reformation, the term was generally used in a way that had to do with a line of succession extending back to the Apostles, and the Reformers were trying to focus on being Apostolic in a doctrinal sense. But he claimed that to be 'Apostolic' not only means to teach the Apostles' doctrine; it also means to be sent.

Because the Reformed tradition excluded the conception of 'Apostolic' from the Reformed confessions, as a result, claimed Matt, there tends to be a loss of a sense of mission in the Reformed tradition. Those in the Reformed tradition thus tend to have two destructive habits: "ecclesial nostalgia" and "ecclesial nihilism". By way of "ecclesial nostalgia" Reformed Christians act as though there was some golden age of the Church, and are always trying to get back to it, or hold on to it. And this tends to lead to something like a denominational police state. By way of "ecclesial nihilism" Reformed Christians conceive of denominational divisions as a fact of life, and then embrace these divisions, which then leads to further nihilism. Matt pointed out that there are 21 Reformed denominations in Switzerland. There are 14 Reformed denominations in the UK. And there are 44 Reformed denominations in the US. Matt said:

"God promises to give His Church all the gifts that are necessary for communicating the Gospel to the world ... but He never made this promise to any particular denomination." .... "To leave one denomination for another is to sacrifice one set of gifts for another. "Jesus didn't promise that His Spirit would guide every denomination into all truth; He would guide the entire Church."

Catholics agree with these last three statements only because Catholics do not refer (and never have referred) to the Catholic Church as a "denomination". That is a relatively recent term. Catholics believe that the Holy Spirit guides the Church by means of her legitimate leaders. Presumably Matt would agree that the Spirit is not guiding the Church through the leaders of schismatic and heretical sects. So we would need to distinguish "the entire Church" from schismatic and heretical sects, otherwise it wouldn't do us any good to know that the Spirit is guiding the entire Church if we cannot distinguish who are the rightful leaders of the Church from those who are not the rightful leaders of the Church.

Implicit in Matt's statements, as with Jeremy's, is a conception of the Church as something per se invisible and non-institutional; this conception implicitly assumes that Christ did not found a visible, institutional Church. For a discussion of the problem with that position, see Part 1.) The claim that "No institution is the one Christ founded" is not itself in Scripture, and therefore on Matt and Jeremy's own terms, shouldn't be raised to the level of dogma.

Matt's apparent proposed solution to denominationalism (or at least a first step within that proposed solution) is to work with others outside one's own denomination. He went on to say:

"Because we live in a divided Church, we cannot produce new creeds. We can't produce universal creeds." .... "We must refuse the urge to just jump ship [from our denomination].... We must not continue to divide ourselves into smaller and smaller groups that cut us off from what the Holy Spirit is doing even in other denominations."

This would imply that we should be seeking institutional unity. If it is wrong to divide further, then this implies that the present divisions are wrong. And if the present divisions are wrong, then we need to be institutionally one. But if Matt proposes that all Christians form one *new* 'institution', then see my post titled "Institutional Unity and Outdoing Christ". The only remaining option then, is to find and be incorporated into the original institution founded by Christ.


In his section on catholicity, Matt talked about contextualization. To be "catholic", in his view, is to recognize that the Gospel is universal; it must go to all places and peoples. And so it must be contextualized to those places and peoples. Because of catholicity and contextualization, "therefore our theological formulations must change over time", according to the changing context. In Matt's opinion, the Nicene Creed is a contextual document. So is the Westminster Confession of Faith. They differ from each other because they are responding to different needs, at different times. He said that the Westminster divines would probably find it "weird" that Reformed Christians are still using the WCF. He went on to say:

"Part and parcel of the Reformed tradition is that we are always reforming; we are semper reformanda."

Recently, in a different post I wrote:

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.

This creates a serious problem for semper reformanda, of the sort that accompanies the philosophy of Heraclitus. Heraclitus was the pre-Socratic philosopher who said that everything is changing. But, if everything is changing then we know nothing; knowledge requires that there be something staying the same. If everything were changing, we could not even know that we know nothing, so the everything-is-changing position is self-refuting in that respect. Similarly, if nothing creedal is infallibly true, then what distinguishes development of doctrine from change in doctrine? (See, for example my comment here, and the follow-up comments.) When every doctrine is possibly false, then there is no way to distinguish development from change. Whether he knows it or not, what Matt is looking for as the antidote to "ecclesial nostalgia" on the one hand and "ecclesial nihilism" on the other hand, is the Catholic notion of development of doctrine. (cf. Newman's An Essay on the Development of Catholic Doctrine)

Organic development is the tertium quid between absolute stasis and unqualified change. But development is possible only in an ecclesial context in which truths can be established infallibly, and Protestantism denies that there is such an ecclesial context; only the writing of Scripture meets that criterion, according to Protestantism. Therefore, Protestantism does not have the ecclesial context for development of doctrine. There can be within it only combinations of change and stasis. That is not to say that Protestant theologians cannot deepen our understanding of Scripture. But Protestant ecclesiology cannot provide a context for development, for because all theological claims are fallible, at any moment they may be called into question. And therefore they are not a sure foundation upon which further doctrine may develop.

In his section on unity, Matt said the following:

"After the divisions of the Reformation, a lot of Protestants were tempted to say [that] the oneness of the Church, the unity of the Church, was only something invisible. And the Westminster Confession of Faith was the first confession in the history of the Church to ever describe the Church as invisible."

"When the bishops in Constantinople and when Paul [in Ephesians 4] were talking about the oneness of the Church, they were not only describing a theological understanding, they were describing a physical reality that had existed since the day of Pentecost. Paul is talking about a physical and visible unity. And this is not just his hope. He doesn't say 'let there be one body' he says 'there is one body'."


"And Jesus also talks about the visible unity, John 17, He says, I pray ..... When Jesus talks about their unity He is talking about a visible unity."


"We've got to begin by cultivating sorrow in our hearts for the divided state of the Church."


"Every new denomination further divides the Church of Jesus Christ."


"Jesus says that we cannot possibly be missional as long as we are divided."


"The Church was united. It will again be united. And it should be a present reality even now toward which we are striving."

In this conception of the Church, the Church was [visibly] united, but is now [visibly] divided, though still [invisibly] united. But if unity is a mark of the Church, then does Matt think the Church lost this mark? Has Christ been divided? If his answer is "no", then that can be only because the Church (i.e. the Body of Christ) is (in his view) invisible. But that goes against precisely what Matt is (rightfully) pointing out, i.e. that the Church per se is visible. Unity as a mark of an invisible Church is worthless. So if the Church per se is visible, and if unity is a mark of the Church, then the Church must have retained visible unity, even in the event of schism. The question for Matt is this: where is that visible unity that remains as a mark of the Church?

In the Catholic paradigm, that visible unity remains, in the institutional unity of the Catholic Church. In the Catholic paradigm there can be schism from the Church, without that schism destroying the visible unity of the institution which is the Catholic Church, while it is truly the case that Christians are thereby (through that schism) divided from each other. Matt's paradigm either makes visible unity a merely contingent mark of a no-longer existing visible Church, or an essential (but worthless) mark of an invisible Church. If he replies, "No, I think the visible Church still exists, only in a divided state", the difficulty for his position is that it is indistinguishable from the notion that the Church per se is invisible, though having some embodied 'members' who are visible.

In sum, Catholics agree that Apostolicity has both formal and material aspects (i.e. doctrine and sacramental succession). Catholics agree that the Church is Catholic, but for Catholics, the term 'catholic' does not include what heretics and schismatics taught (insofar as it differed from orthodoxy). So we need a means of clearly distinguishing between orthodoxy and heresy in order to determine whose beliefs/practices count as belonging to the extension of the term 'catholic'. If we are going exclude the Council of Trent from the extension of 'catholic', for example, then why include Nicea? Otherwise the term 'catholic' just becomes a catch-all, containing everything, and thus containing nothing, or containing only what 'our' particular tradition thinks it should contain. And then we would have many different versions of 'catholic', making the term worthless. Catholics also agree that the Church is One. We believe that the visible Church is one, even while Christians of various traditions are separated from her in various respects. If the visible Church were not one, there would be no visible Church; there would only be visible [particular] Churches (see Pope Benedict's comment here about the Catholic Church not being a "federation of Churches"). But Christ founded only one Church (Matt. 16:18), because Christ has only one Bride. So the visible Church must be one. Matt's position thus faces the challenge of distinguishing itself from the notion that the Church per se is invisible, but having some embodied 'members' who are visible.

I hope my comments here may stimulate some discussion for the sake of bringing reconciliation and unity between Presbyterians and Catholics, after almost 500 years of being divided. May the Lord Jesus make us one. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

"Denominational Renewal": Part 1

In February I attended three sessions of the "Conversation on Denominational Renewal" conference here in St. Louis. The bios of the speakers, along with downloadable MP3s of their talks, are listed here. I went to seminary with three of the speakers: Bill Boyd, Jeremy Jones, and Greg Thompson, and with Kevin Twit, who led the music for worship. Not only that, but the conference was held at Memorial Presbyterian Church, where my family and I worshiped for about six years; I actually preached there a few times during my internship. (This was just before it reshaped its image and worship style to be more attractive to college students and young people.)

Being back there was surreal, just for those reasons. But in addition, here I was, now a Catholic (probably the only Catholic there) surrounded by familiar faces and friends from my Presbyterian seminary, and immersed again (for the first time in about seven years) in the very palpable PCA culture (in the manner of speech, the manner of prayer, and the manner of worship). That too made the experience surreal. How strange to feel [at least initially] somewhat like an outsider, among a community of which I had been a part only a relatively short time ago.

But then I began to listen to the talks. In all I heard Jeremy Jones' theological reflection, Bill Boyd's talk on worship, and Matt Brown's talk on ecclesiology. Overall, I was very pleased with and pleasantly surprised by the talks, and impressed by the kind of conversation that was taking place. Not only do these men obviously and deeply love God from the heart, and not only are they diligently pursuing the truth even in Christian traditions outside the Reformed tradition, they are also laying down their lives daily to serve God in the positions and places where they are. I genuinely admire them for all those reasons, and I'm proud that they are my brothers in Christ, very proud. [Sidenote: Anthony Bradley was there as well (we graduated together from CTS), and when I saw recently that Fr. Zuhlsdorf linked Anthony's article on black liberation theology, I was delighted.] During Bill Boyd's talk, I was sitting about two pews ahead of Bryan Chappell, the President of Covenant Theological Seminary, and I heard him lean over to somebody next to him and say, "This is not your father's PCA". I concur. For me, it was a kind of PCA 'aggiornamento', a call to think more broadly than the limits of a particular ecclesial 'ghetto'.

I have divided my comments on this conference into two parts. In this first part, I will write about Jeremy Jones' talk titled "On Renewing Theology". In the second part, I will write about Matt Brown's talk on ecclesiology. As for Bill Boyd's talk, I think it was excellent, and I recommend listening to it. In it he lays out the biblical account of the place of food and eating in community and worship. But I'm not going to say anything more here about Bill's talk.

There is so much I can agree with in Jeremy's talk, but I'm going to say little about that, and focus only on a point of disagreement. This creates a misleading impression, as though I primarily disagree with Jeremy, or as though I think Jeremy is mostly wrong. That's not true. There is a great deal of common ground. And I'm very grateful for all of these men, and for the gifts and talents and passion they are bringing to this discussion, both within the PCA and to the broader ecumenical discussion. My reason for focusing on the point of disagreement is precisely to help bring us to unity, by attempting to cast light on that which divides us. So I write this with charity in my heart for my brothers in the PCA, and affection as well.

Jeremy Jones began his talk by criticizing sectarianism. He defined 'sectarianism' as "the practical or theoretical identification of your tradition or some subset of it as the true Church." Sectarianism, he said, is the notion that

"We are the Church and others aren't". "At its root sectarianism is a sin." "It is the ecclesial form of the sin of pride." "Sectarianism is the sin of legalism: we functionally elevate human theological opinion to the level of Scripture. Sectarianism is the sin of idolatry: we worship our past, our tradition, its men, and movements, our theology, Confessions."

Later in his talk he talked about the importance of understanding the incarnation for contextualizing the Gospel, saying, "Our ultimate model for contextualization is the incarnation". As I see it, there is a tension between Jeremy's incarnational conception of spreading the Gospel and his non-incarnational conception of the Church. I say "non-incarnational conception of the Church" because he seems to hold a non-institutional conception of the Church. This non-incarnational conception of the Church treats the Church as per se invisible, being visible only in that her embodied 'members' are visible. For a more detailed explanation, see my post titled "Christ founded a visible Church" as well as (at least) the last four pages of my "The Gnostic Roots of Heresy" paper.

Jeremy's notion that sectarianism is a sin assumes that no existing institution is the institution that Christ founded. Of course the notion that, say, the PCA is the Church Christ founded is obviously false, since it was founded in 1973. The conception of the Church as invisible per se, and thus non-institutional per se, is intrinsic to denominationalism, for denominationalism by its very nature sees no need for any institution, including one's own denomination, to have been founded by the incarnate Christ. In this way, denominationalism is constantly in tension with itself, for either a denomination conceives of itself in the sectarian manner Jeremy describes above, in which case it runs into the problem that it was founded at least 1500 years after Christ ascended into heaven, or it conceives of itself as a part of a whole that is not itself an institution. But if the whole need not be institutionally organized, then neither does the part, hence the tension (to put it mildly). This seems to me to be an inescapable dilemma for denominationalism.

In the classroom, I not infrequently encounter student comments of the following sort: "Nobody has the whole truth; everybody just has a little part." Typically the conversation is about religion or ethics. Implicit in the student's comment is a kind of skepticism masked as egalitarianism and/or pluralism. It just wouldn't be right, goes this line of thought, to think that one group has the whole truth about x, and another group doesn't have the truth about x. They all must equally have the truth, or they all must have an equal share of the truth. I agree that in many if not most cases one person or group doesn't have the whole truth about a matter, but some students falsely tend to move from that premise to the conclusion that therefore all persons or groups have an equal share of the truth about that matter, or that everyone's opinion on a particular subject is of equal worth. Implicit in Jeremy's anti-sectarianism is a similar notion applied to religious institutions. It just can't be that one institution is the right one, the original one, the orthodox one -- that's elitist and neither egalitarian nor "catholic". This mentality serves almost as an a priori presupposition in his ecclesial methodology. Now, I myself believe that the various Protestant traditions have certain gifts and strengths that Catholics lack. So I agree that the Catholic Church doesn't have everything that Protestant traditions and persons have to offer. But I cannot rationally justify moving from that premise to the conclusion that the Catholic Church is therefore not the institution Christ founded. Moreover, loaded into the use of the word "catholic" [small 'c'] as supporting anti-sectarianism is a 'mere Christianity' glossing over of the distinction between orthodoxy and heresy, and all that is necessary to make that distinction.

If Jeremy's objection to sectarianism is an objection to the treatment of institutions that were not founded by Christ as though any particular one of them is the institution founded by Christ, then I agree with him. But it did not seem to me that he intended his condemnation of sectarianism to be qualified in that way. He seemed to present his critique of sectarianism in an intentionally unqualified way. In that case, his condemnation of sectarianism would carry with it one of two assumptions: (A) Christ founded an institution but then it fell to pieces and no longer exists, or (B) Christ did not found an institution. But (A) is a kind of ecclesial deism, which I have previously discussed. If unity is a mark of the Church, then the Church cannot lose visible unity, even in the event of schism. (See "Has Christ Been Divided?".) On the other hand, (B) calls into question the formation of denominations (including the PCA) as organizationally outdoing even what Christ Himself saw fit to do in organizing and establishing His Church. If Christ did not found an institution, then the very justification for the existence of any denomination or ecclesial institution is undermined, as is the justification for forming a single overarching ecclesial institution. (See here.)

This internal self-contradiction is the reason that denominationalism must necessarily collapse in the long run into an anti-sacramental Evangelicalism in which institutionalism is eschewed (for sacramentality is directly tied to an hierarchical and institutional conception of the Church), and the conception of the Church as per se invisible is explicitly embraced. Denominationalism is an untenable middle position between Catholicism on the one hand and the ecclesial individualism and anti-sacramentalism of Evangelicalism, fundamentalism, and biblicism on the other hand. Jeremy is most definitely right to see that there is a treasure-trove of theological riches in traditions outside that of the PCA. So, his effort to encourage Reformed Christians to allow themselves to be enriched by these treasures is most definitely a step in the right direction. But at that point (i.e. the point of having rejected sectarianism), how are Reformed Christians any different from Evangelicals and their invisible "Christian Church"? At that point one must either embrace Evangelicalism as one's ecclesiological destiny, or begin to seek out the institution that Christ founded.