How can we trust the Canon?

The assaults of modern skepticism on the foundations of Christianity often levy a question that it is crucial to answer: “How can you be sure that the collection of books now accepted by the Church and no others are holy and divinely inspired, bearing testimony to Jesus’ true original message?” Upon being asked how we can know that the Canon of Scripture is trustworthy, the Catholic will answer, “Tradition,” that is, the scriptures are affirmed as canonical because of their reception by the Church, especially over the first 300 years of Christianity, as ratified by the councils of the 4^th century. The key assumption is that the Church had the authority to sanctify the scriptures they accepted, and the sacredness of the Canon is fully dependent on the Church. However, the Protestant, being wont to bestow such power on Tradition, will admit its function but qualify it by pointing to other factors that can be objectively used to define Canonicity, which they claim were the very factors used by the early church, to the effect that Canonicity has always been primarily attributable to them, and only vicariously to the Church. These alternative bases are most commonly (1) their apostolic origin and (2) their own content, that is, the presence of the Gospel in their text. There may be other bases offered by Protestant scholars, but these options are the only ones I can recall being put forward in my 20 years of Protestant education, and besides, together with Tradition they seem to nearly exhaust the possibilities. Now, I am about to argue that the authority that established the Canon of the Bible cannot be ultimately attributable to either of those things, and must therefore be ultimately attributed to the Tradition of the Church.

Apostolic Origin

Common Protestant reasoning is that the Church accepted the Canon based on the apostolic authority of the authors, whose immediacy to Christ ensured their testimony was the true one he came to bring, and whose authority is manifest in the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, in which they are seen to receive anointing from Jesus and the Holy Spirit to perpetuate the church. Apostolicity does in fact bear a striking correlation with the acceptance of the books in the Canon (almost all of the Canon can be traced to an apostle or an apostle’s associate). However, we cannot accept that a book that merely asserted apostolic authority was authentic, and neither did the early church. There were gospels allegedly written by apostles and asserting the authority of apostolic authorship—the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Peter, among others—which were deemed to be uncanonical. And furthermore, the apostolic origin of some canonical books was disputed at the time of the Canonization of scripture (and is not certain to this day), including at least Hebrews, 2 Peter, and Jude. It is clear that “apostleship” is not a category that can singlehandedly explain to us the difference between canonical and non-canonical books, and it was not sufficient for the early church either. The question is, therefore, on what basis were some books ruled out, and others ruled in?

The Content of the Writings

The reply to this is that the books were judged to be canonical on the basis of the orthodoxy of their content. One of the bases on which their content may have been judged is sometimes referred to as their “Consistent Message,” that is, whether a book contained a “theological outlook similar to or complementary to other accepted Christian writings” . Certainly a degree of consistency is evident in the canonical books, but it cannot be the standard. For one thing, there are some striking inconsistencies in the messages of the books. For example, Martin Luther railed against the book of James and wanted it cast out of the Canon, calling it an “epistle of straw” because its message was so seemingly incompatible with the drift of the Pauline epistles. No, the Canon is not plainly consistent, but full of “dialectical tension,” the precarious balance of paradoxes and antinomies that must be held together by some other cause. By what means could the early church have placed James alongside Galatians, despite the inconsistencies? To what authority would they appeal? Even if we find a core theme throughout all the books (which we do believe is there, deep down), the argument will not hold up, for all that the skeptic need do is choose a book and ask, “What other books was this book judged to be consistent with?” and trace it back to the first epistles and gospels, which could have been consistent with no others, since none existed. (For emphasis, we can recall that in the early era, the books of the New Testament were circulated and possessed by particular churches quite unevenly and incompletely, so that doctrinal decisions based on textual comparisons would have been extremely difficult.) In the end, saying that the Canon was consistent with itself is like being asked “What is a republican?” and replying, “A republican is someone who believes what other republicans believe.” We need to provide some other basis.

Having stripped away mere “self-consistency” as a valid basis, the claim will be revised to state that the canonical books were not consistent with each other, per se, as much as they were consistent with the central message of Christianity, the Gospel. “The early church recognized the sacredness of certain of the circulated writings because it contained the living spark of the Gospel message that they had received. The gospels of Thomas and Peter, for example, were ultimately ruled out because they promoted Gnosticism and lacked an orthodox Gospel core.” Again, this is undoubtedly true, but let us push it further and ask, “How did the early Church know the Gospel? How were they certain of their central message in the midst of many budding heresies?” The Protestant is tempted to say, “They knew it by the standard of the early apostolic writings,” in other words, by the Canon (Greek kanon, meaning rule or measure) of scripture. But here we have committed the logical fallacy of begging the question: The Church knew the Canon because it was consistent with the Gospel, and they knew the Gospel because it was consistent with the Canon! It’s a loop, which reveals that we have inserted some assumption about what the Gospel is. So, on what basis did the early Church know the Gospel?

The Tradition of the Church

At this point we realize it is necessary to believe that the Church has always known the Gospel, inherently—that she possesses the seed that Christ planted and that nothing has ever removed it. This can be attested by much historical evidence—the unbroken apostolic succession of the Apostolic Fathers and their witness through writing—so that we can assert that there was never an opportunity for heresies to have infiltrated the entire heart of the Church, though many were resisted bitterly and several nearly won. However, this belief is ultimately an article of faith, for if we have any confidence in our faith, we must affirm as a fact that God preserved his Church, protecting her from heresy while she presided over the very pugilistic and divisive process of establishing the Bible and doctrines we now hold. Such a belief is warranted in terms of the Bible as well—Jesus prays for such preservation to his Father, and he promises it to Peter and the disciples. Indeed, there is no certain basis for orthodoxy in the first three centuries of Christianity, except that it was kept alive unceasingly in the bosom of the Church, the living body of believers, who passed the Gospel and the Holy Spirit from one to another. The Canon, which gradually materialized throughout this time, owes its birth to her faith. Therefore, all Christians who affirm the inspiration of scripture as we now possess it today must affirm that the institution of the Church was the faithful and authoritative judge and interpreter of the Gospel, at least through the 4^th century.

Two colliding narratives, and the only true story

Recently I have encountered two colliding narratives of the Christian life.

One is the War Zone narrative, that we are people who are fighting the lethargy, wealth-padded complacency, and provincial pettiness fueled by the American dream. God is fighting to free hearts from the tangles of empty, misguided “typical” life, which is really no life at all, and release them into an adventure of serving him with reckless abandon. In cutting of the ties that so easily entangle, we can life life to the fullest and seize the day like the Dead Poets’ Society, Bob Goff (Donald Miller’s friend), and The Jeskes. This harmonizes with stories like The Lord of the Rings, where small-town hobbits are forever changed by induction into the bigger world at war. The greater world of God suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. At the heart of the War Zone reality is the truth that we know God through sacrifice.

The other is the Green Pasture narrative, that we are people fighting the futile ambition, self-industrialization, and hubris fueled by the American dream. God is fighting to debunk the illusion that one can improve himself by effort, which in the church looks like striving for “personal growth” and “doing ministry”. He wants us to focus on him, not what we can do for him or what can be done for the Church (he will tell us if he wants us to do something, and he will handle the propagation of his church). We are, fundamentally, children, and our Christian life is to be in awe at his immense mystery and beauty. Cease striving and know that I am God. We must embrace the beauty and mystery of God in the everyday things, and through this, embrace God. Like in About Time, and Jayber Crow and The Incredibles and It’s a Wonderful Life, God calls us to be like Mary, not Martha. We are to abide in him, the well-spring of living water that quenches every thirst, the shepherd who makes us lie down in green pastures. At the heart of the Green Pasture reality is the truth that we know God through pleasure.

The troubling thing about these two narratives is that they are both quite true and yet apparently in opposition. If it’s war time you shouldn’t sit on your laurels. But if it’s green pasture you shouldn’t go running about taking matters into your own hands. The warriors accuse the sheep of laziness and ridicule them for their half-heartedness in their sermons. The sheep think the warriors are nuts and yet perhaps they do not take hold of certain deeper realities of Christianity because they can in fact only be won by suffering and relinquishing. The only way out is to conclude that either can be true, or both true to different degrees, in any person’s life at any given time. God deals with us individually, knowing the thoughts and motivations of our hearts. Luke is called beyond Tatooine, but the lost pets in Homeward Bound just want to get back to normal. It seems that in life, leaving home and returning home are constantly swinging back and forth as the active elements of the plot God is weaving for us. The two will always be in balance, in tension, in flux.

As a consequence, all voices of culture that are broadcasting one narrative or the other are suspect, and it becomes very difficult for anyone to say anything about the Christian life. All personal narratives about “what God did in my life” are stripped of their prescriptive authority. It becomes very difficult for me to tell someone based on my story whether they need to be more ambitious and get off the couch, or that they are working too hard and need to just trust. How do I know whether their rest or effort is motivated by faith, though mine was not? Motivational speakers, missionaries, authors, pastors, and spiritual pundits ought to beware of saying what everyone needs more of or less of in our culture today, or even publicly relating “testimonies” about how God did amazing things when I threw away my CDs and started helping at the soup kitchen (so you can too, and don’t forget we’re commanded to). In a sense, the post-modern mantra shows some truth: “What’s true for me is true for me, and what’s true for you is true for you.”

How can universal prophecy and truth survive if everything is individualized, if metanarratives are demoted to mere narratives? What image of the Christian life binds us together in one reality, and by what authority does it do so? What is left when all the clamoring talkers of Christianity have been cleared out? There is a metanarrative that speaks with divine power and mystery beyond words. Through the scriptures and sacraments of the holy Church, Christ’s Body and Voice preserved through the ages, we experience the true narrative, the historical Gospel, narrated by the patriarchs. When all other narratives have lost the power of metanarrative, one Voice remains imbued with universal authority by God and speaks with all the force of divine mystery, enacting spiritual realities that transcend words, and creating in the Christian the balance between War and Pasture, like the balance between cold Yin and hot Yang, which is tended in the soul by none but the Spirit of the Living God. It behooves us, therefore, to inquire of the Church as to the narrative she received from the apostles and gave also to us. Amidst many who claim to speak for God, we must go back to scripture, to the teachings of the early church, and to the sacraments of the church. There we will partake (not merely hear, for it is more like bread than sound) and will know the only true story.

Visible signs: A Protestant defends controversial Catholic doctrines

The Catholic Church has been accused of corrupting the essentials of the Christian faith. Catholics maintain the importance of a priesthood to steward the faith, claim that Baptism and Holy Communion are necessary for salvation, and that Christ is fully and really present in the elements of Holy Communion. Protestants decry these as denial of the priesthood of the believer, salvation by ritualistic good works, and hocus-pocus cannibalism. Although I believe that the Catholic Church has exaggerated some of its doctrines beyond what the Bible teaches, and is encumbered in some areas by centuries of gradual accumulation of pharisaical over-complication, recent inquiries lead me to believe that these accusations do not fully understand Catholic doctrine. Moreover, I believe it is possible to reconcile some of the more controversial Catholic doctrines with what the Bible teaches. Many of the supposed errors of Catholicism can be explained if we make a crucial assumption: that the language whereby God communicates with man is through visible signs. I will explain this idea and show how it works to account for the controversial Catholic doctrines of the Church, Priesthood, Baptism and Transubstantiation, while showing that these doctrines are not, if properly understood and practiced, a betrayal of Biblical Christianity. The goal for all of this is to show that it is possible for Protestants and Catholics to strive for unity through a deeper understanding of these doctrines. Such unity would be of great value to the church.

Understanding the Sacramental Paradigm

The Catholic Catechism describes the basis for the belief in a visible symbolic language of interaction between God and man: God conveys his grace to man, and man renders his worship to God, by way of rituals that signify spiritual realities and form a bridge of meaning between the temporal and eternal. These signs and symbols are called the sacraments. “A sacramental celebration is a meeting of God’s children with their Father, in Christ and the Holy Spirit; this meeting takes the form of a dialogue, through actions and words” (Catechism, 1146). The core of this philosophy is rooted in human nature.

In human life, signs and symbols occupy an important place. As a being at once body and spirit, man expresses and perceives spiritual realities through physical signs and symbols. As a social being, man needs signs and symbols to communicate with others, through language, gestures, and actions. The same holds true for his relationship with God. (Catechism, 1146)

Do visible signs usher in heavenly realities? Scriptures can be offered that support and defend the sacraments, and scholars have debated for centuries. Let me offer to broad ideas that verify that we communicate with God through visible signs.

First, the unique miracle of Christianity is that God has communicated redemption to us visibly and entered the physical realm. In Jesus Christ, God came from that which we could not experience to become like us, tangible and understandable to us. That is the heart of the wondrous Gospel—Immanuel, God With Us, the God-Man, the Word and Revelation of the Unseen God! Catholic.org makes the analogy of Jesus and the sacraments:

The great mystery of the union in Christ of a human nature with the second Person of the Godhead is that the human actions and sufferings of Christ are divine actions and sufferings. The sacraments are a living continuation of this mystery. There are earthly, external signs here which, of themselves, could never acquire any supernatural significance, but the signs of the sacraments have been made by Christ into vehicles of his grace. They effect in men the grace for which Christ made them the sign.

In no other major religion does God Himself so enter the physical. Furthermore, we will have resurrected bodies—again, a redemption of the physical, which is not the same as simply enlightening us to a spiritual plane. Therefore, the very Incarnation of Jesus set the precedent for a sign economy.

Second, we express faith back to God visibly. True faith is not intellectual assent, but a response with “heart, soul, mind and strength.” The New Testament cautions us countless times to express the sincerity of our belief through actions. As James says, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected” (James 2:21-22).

There is a fullness, a reality, a consummation that only comes to faith when it is acted upon. Like the old example says, one might believe that the tight-rope walker can carry him across the canyon, but he does not truly have faith until he climbs into the walker’s arms.

If man has both divine and earthly natures, and God came to earth to partake of both, and if man offers back faith through both, then it makes sense that our communication with God would be in a language of holy signs which, by God’s power, themselves bridge the sacred and mundane, to bring our human hearts into God’s heavenly presence.

Controversial Doctrines Understood through the Sacramental Paradigm

The presupposition that visible rites are the vessels of heavenly realities has given rise to many of the doctrines that Protestants take issue with. However, if we think through this sacramental lens, the doctrines seem less than heretical.

The Church

In Catholicism, the Church, the Body of Christ, is the great sacrament by which God communicates the gospel to the world. The Latin phrase extra Ecclesiam nulla salus means: “outside the church there is no salvation” (Wikipedia). The Catechism interprets this to mean that “all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body.” Is this adding to salvation by requiring “church membership” as a distinct or separate requirement? I don’t think so. Why? All Christians affirm that there is no salvation without being united with Christ, being “in Him,” and all believe that one is united to the Body of Christ on the basis of faith, and that receiving the life of Christ by grace through faith unites one to the Body of Christ. Furthermore, it is impossible to be a member of Christ’s Body and yet at the same time, not a member. The difference is that Catholics connect the Body Christ in the mystical sense with the Body of Christ that exists in the world—the church is the visible sign of the mystical reality. The Church is the representation of that entity to which every true believer belongs. So, because Catholics believe that membership in the earthly Body of Christ is sacramentally united with membership in the mystical or heavenly Body of Christ, they do not hold to a separate source of salvation. They simply define the expression of the heavenly reality in more concrete terms.

The Priesthood

In Catholicism, priests, bishops, and above all the Pope are said to represent the office of Christ. For example, priests proclaim salvation during confession, and the Pope speaks with divine authority when he makes proclamations ex cathedra. Is this elevating others to the level of Christ, or granting authority to men that belongs to God?

Not under a “visible sign” worldview. All Christians believe that Jesus is our shepherd and high priest, and that he is continually performing priestly intercession for us before the father, and conveying to us the blessings of priesthood by his spirit. Catholics believe that human priests are sacramental representations of Jesus, not additional mediators between God and man. Catholic doctrine states that the services of the priest are effective regardless of the worthiness of the priest; rather, they are effective ex opere operato, i.e., by virtue of their being done. This shows that priests do not represent an intermediate gateway to Christ, per se. If they were a gateway, then, like a kink in a hose, a breach in their holiness would damage the services of sacraments administered through them. On the contrary, the priests are representational in their service—meaning that they represent Jesus to the Church, and the Church to Jesus. Just as the Church is the visible sign of the Body of Christ, the priests represent Christ the Head. They bear Christ’s authority and conduct his ministries as the signs of the invisible Christ who presides spiritually over the worship of the church. Thus it can be properly said that it is not the priest himself, but Christ, who conducts the worship of the Mass, and when the priest offers the Eucharist, it is Christ himself who offers Himself as the sacrifice and the feast, even as he did on the Cross. If priests are seen to truly signify Christ, then their role in the Mass, rather than creating unnecessary intermediate channels of grace, increases the immediacy and power with which Christ’s presence and ministry is experienced.

The Necessity of Baptism

Just as the priests visibly signify and communicate to the visible world the spiritual presence of Christ, and just as the visible gathering of the Church signifies the Body of Christ, his Spiritual Community of Worshippers, the sacraments signify the holy exchanges by which God communicates his grace through faith to man, and man offers back faith and worship. Catholics say that partaking of Baptism and Holy Communion is necessary for salvation. “The Church affirms that for believers the sacraments of the New Covenant are necessary for salvation” (1129). In particular, the Catechism affirms that Baptism and Holy Communion are necessary for initiation into the redeemed community of the church.

Is this tantamount to works-based salvation? Is the requirement of participation in ceremonial rites not the same as “works of the flesh,” while the Bible says that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone? Not under a sacramental paradigm. Take Baptism for instance. Is the sprinkling or immersion in water by the priest, an act that is done in order to earn salvation? No, they are acts of faith. The Catechism states:

The purpose of the sacraments is to sanctify men, to build up the Body of Christ and, finally, to give worship to God. Because they are signs they also instruct. They not only presuppose faith, but by words and objects they also nourish, strengthen, and express it. That is why they are called ‘sacraments of faith.” (1123).

Just as before, the Catholic Church simply presupposes that the spiritual reality of faith must be fully realized in a visible expression that “expresses” it. Since the sacraments “presuppose faith,” they consummate it, rather than replace it or add to it. The Catholic Church denies that a sacrament is effective if administered to someone without the right disposition of faith. And yet, Catholics believe that baptism is essential in the formation of full faith in the person. If one refuses baptism (knowing of its existence) he rejects the sign of the reality, through which the reality is consummated. How can one possess the reality if he rejects its manifestation? Consider a man who says that he loves a woman and will never leave her, but refuses to marry her. His commitment could properly be denied. It is the same sort of situation here.

Transubstantiation

The Catholic Church affirms the doctrine of transubstantiation, that in the bread and wine of Holy Communion “the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained” (1374). The difference between transubstantiation (the Catholic doctrine) and consubstantiation (the Lutheran doctrine) is simply one of semantics: most Catholics will not agree that this means that they are participating in a cannibalistic act of eating the body of Christ on a molecular, cellular level. Catholics rely on the Aristotilian notion of “substance”, in which a substance transcends the sum of its properties or physical descriptors (as wax may change form, but still be wax). Thus the doctrine inevitably abstracts itself beyond crude physicality. Nevertheless, the Catechism states, “the signs of bread and wine become, in a way surpassing understanding, the Body and Blood of Christ” (1333). The elements of bread and wine are the body of Christ, rather than being simply symbols or memorials of Him; though perhaps not “physically” present, Christ can be said to be literally, truly, really, or actually present in the elements.

Why must Christ be so present in the Eucharist? Because it is the visible sign by which we experience the spiritual reality. Again, according to the visible sign paradigm, to participate in the atoning death of Christ in the fullest sense requires that we experience it both mentally/spiritually AND physically, since God’s graces and our worshipful responses are communicated most truly when they are communicated concurrently in both dimensions, not in one or the other separately. Christ’s atonement, eternally true in the spiritual realm, is communicated to our bipartite natures by a means at once both spiritual and, yes, physical, through the elements. Thus properly understood, transubstantiation is a miracle in which the elements of communion undergo a sort of “hypostatic union” that perpetuates the mystery of the hypostatic union of His human and divine natures, and allows us to perpetually experience the fullness of his sacrifice on the Cross.

Dangers and Benefits of the Sacramental Paradigm

The dangers of excess on the side of the sacramental paradigm are obvious from history. Men can easily forget the signified spiritual truths, and attach slavish obligation to the performance of the physical signs. The signs can easily become “of this world.” Saussure’s semiotics tell us that, if the signs are not properly understood, they cease to exist as transporters of meaning. Without proper teaching and instruction from the word, the holiness of the sacraments will disintegrate and leave only ritualistic shells. This is what drove the Protestant denominations back to the rudiments of the Bible, and that to this day leaves many nominal Catholics without a true saving faith.

However, the sacraments, if taught correctly, have great power to awaken the spiritual life. The frequent problem of the Protestant denominations is that they are plain and uninspiring. They sometimes do not capture the heart with the beauty and sacred majesty of the gospel, because they are so concerned with preserving the intellectual/spiritual side of faith. By bringing the faith into a more tangible, immediate experience, the Catholic can experience God’s presence with the senses and worship with great awe. A visible-sign theology does not necessarily reduce faith—it can increase it. Instead of merely affirming abstract truths, one’s faith is confronted with an array of miracles spread out before him, full of sacred power. So there is much good that can come from the sacramental paradigm.

The Take-away: Seeking Unity

I have attempted to show how some of the Catholic doctrines that Protestants disdain may in fact be reconciled with Biblical faith. My approach has been to highlight the pervasive theme of sacramental economy in Catholic doctrine. I don’t claim that this concept is better than a more straightforward “sola fide” approach to the communication of God and man, but I believe it at least expresses a valid point of view through which we may perceive the Christian faith. Actually I believe that the perfect perspective lies at some mysterious place near the intersection of the many sects of Christianity. That’s why I am eager for Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, Coptics, and all Christians to examine our faith anew and determine exactly which hills we are willing to die on. What will be worth fighting over when we look back 100 years from now? Or from heaven? There are certainly some things that should be contended for, but there are also many unnecessary divisions in the church. I am eager for the day when the church will reach new levels of unity. Am I going to convert to Catholicism? That hasn’t been the point of this essay. The point has been to expand my and my readers’ idea of what Catholicism teaches in relation to the Bible and in relation to our own denominations, so that we might be more likely to extend a hand of fellowship or sit down to engage in a discussion with Catholics in the future. I hope that you will join me in pursuing this in the future.

Soli Deo gloria.