Tag: the church

Can we say “The Church did evil”?

An Anglican priest’s recent sermon said, “We must listen while secular people talk about how we’ve been the aggressor, while we were in power. We were the people who enslaved people in the south. The Church did that.”

Is it right to speak thus of the Church doing such evils?

I take comfort in the fact that the Catholic church never did endorse slavery, even while the American Protestant churches did. However, I want to take a different tack, to argue why it is wrong for any church with an incarnational ecclesiology to speak like that.

A man may sin in two ways: (1) because his body is not in complete obedience to his spirit; part of him who rebels against his essence. “I did not do as I am.” Such people are deserving of mercy. They struggle. (2) because his spirit wills what is bad. In this sense, a disobedience of the body against the spirit is the only saving grace, for obedience to it is the perfection of sin. Such people, inasmuch as they are not blessed with incontinence, are deserving of wrath, for they do not struggle against evil, but actively will it, and are thus agents of the devil.

Now the spirit of the world is the spirit of Satan, and the grace of the world is that it as yet does not fully obey this spirit with its body, for it yet bears the residual graces of its maker, and the memory of good still lingers.

But the spirit of the Church is the spirit of Christ, and its struggle is to bring its body into conformity with its willing spirit, to act as it aspires to. “For the Spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

Therefore, it is perfectly right to accuse the Church of incontinence, because that is to accuse the sinful men that are its Body. But to accuse the Church, as such, of bad intention—of a bad heart, a bad spirit, and wrong aims and purposes, is wrong, because that is to accuse Christ, who is its Mind. Christ’s Bride fails often to act according to His intention, but Christ never intends for the Church to do evil.

Therefore it is wrong to speak of the Church as committing sins of intention, of believing wrong and affirming what is false, because these sins are proper to the Mind, not the Body.

Now, when we speak of someone doing an act which is by nature an intentional act, it implies the cooperation of both mind and body, unless we specify otherwise. Thus when we say, “He ran away from home,” it implies that he intended to do so, unless we clarify that he was delirious or insane or disoriented, or any other way which the body may run away from home without the mind intending to.

Therefore it is not right to speak of the Church doing evil, unless we clarify that it was only the Body of the Church, not the Whole Church, body and soul, who did evil. Otherwise, how can we avoid accusing Christ of doing evil by means of the Church?

Catholic or Orthodox?

As for the question of whether to join the Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox church, both have valid sacraments and priesthood. Both are, in that wonderful sense, true. But, despite the superior beauty of the Orthodox liturgy, and its exemption from the political and theological strife that plagues Catholics today, my heart and conscience can do nothing but desire to choose Catholicism. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the Orthodox can answer the liberal deconstructivist with equal strength, showing that there was an uninterrupted through-line of doctrine between Christ and the early patriarchs on which he anchors his faith. Even then, what would this argument be based on? Would it not be based on man’s knowledge and judgment? Would it not be examining the teachings of Christ, and the teachings of the patriarchs, and then saying, “Look, they are the same”? But the very act of doing so betrays a different epistemological basis: reason! The reason, mind you, not of the patriarchs themselves, but of the later theologians who contend for the connection, and, ultimately, to our own reason. Contemplate it honestly: at the root, is it not revealed to be the same way of arguing for validity than Luther or Calvin used?

But the answer of the Catholic Church against the modern who seeks to sever the line is not one of reason, though it is reasonable: it is one of faith in the promise of God: Jesus prayed for Peter, that his faith would not fail, and gave him the duty of strengthening his brothers, when he had returned from that place of humility and humiliation that would make him, in the inverted ways of God, most fit to be the exalted leader of the church. It is the prayer of Jesus that the Catholic clings to. It is the claim that Jesus promised never to let us go astray.

You asked me why I was convinced about the primacy of Peter, and I talked about the scriptures, yes. I wouldn’t have gotten there without them. (The irony is comforting, by the way, for, one who begins to perceive God’s patterns of irony ought to expect that the Baptist, in rejecting the church for the sake of the Bible, would end up both less like the church and less biblical, while the those who cling to the Church rightly would also turn out to be more biblical. But I digress.) But my reason is not merely one of reasoned argument from the scriptures. It is also one that appeals to my heart with a self-evidential power that I hope you see too: Jesus was to be taken back up into heaven, and he was to leave his people behind, subject to the constant attacks of the Devil, who would want nothing more, from the moment of Pentecost, than to literally and ecclesiologically tear them to pieces. He is our Good Shepherd. No Good Shepherd would leave his sheep defenseless. He would not leave them to their own devices. They are sheep, dumb and easily beguiled. Easy prey for wolves. No, if the Shepherd had to go way, he would leave a proxy to defend them all. He must, or he is no Good Shepherd!

Perhaps, a long time ago, I would have said, “Yes, yes, the Holy Spirit.” And that is true. But you and I both have come to a place where we find it insufficient that that Shepherd be merely spiritual. He must be of the flesh, because God’s people are of the flesh, and they need a leader who they can, literally, look to. They need a leader who carries a real staff and can smite real, physical wolves on the head. They need a leader who can speak audible words. We need a bodily leader because we are bodily people and we can only know God through bodies.

Now, if the Good Shepherd put a proxy in his place to guard is people from the Evil One, but that proxy denied that responsibility, and said, “I am only the first among the sheep,” or “I have only been put here as an example that the sheep should follow, but they ought to protect themselves,” or “I have only been given charge of these sheep, not those,” then he has shown himself to be a bad proxy, and the Good Shepherd, who knows all things, would not put such a proxy of himself in place, for he knows that he, in appointing such a vicar of himself, has responsibility to ensure that he will be faithful.

And the thing is, that only the See of Peter claims such leadership. Therefore it is not the claims of Peter that convince me, so much as the fact that neither Constantinople, nor Canterbury, nor any other See claims it along side him! They would claim authority, yes, but they soften it; they shrink back; they do not claim primacy to rival Peter, but say that there is no such primacy anywhere. The authority which makes the deviations of Francis so terrifying is also that which is necessary. (It must be theoretically possible for the Shepherd to stray; that is why it was necessary for Jesus to pray for him, that he would not. And that is why we must cling to that prayer in fear, but hope and confidence that through the cross, Christ won perfect efficacy in his prayer, and that, come hell or high waters, come many political scandals and near-collapses, the Church will come out all right, purified, and saved from vital error, safely home). So, you see, it is precisely the fact that the Orthodox and Anglicans and all the rest are safe, that they do not claim primacy, that invalidates them. For it removes the need for Christ’s prayer, and it means that Christ is not with us, in a vicar of his appointing, bearing the promise and power and responsibility of Christ himself to guard us with Christ’s own power while he is gone. It is because I need the protection of Christ himself, because I need him to be with me, bodily, to shepherd my poor and weary soul in a world filled with heresy and doubt and undermining philosophy, and where I sense the weakness and fickleness of my own intellect and reason. That is why I fall, with desperation, at the feet of Christ, and the one whom he charged to feed me. “To whom shall we go, Lord?”

But if this does not yet convince you, I will share another thought that goes alongside it: I see a heavenly vision of the time when all things will be restored, and Christ’s high-priestly prayer will at last come to fruition. It is like the vision in Flannery O’Connor’s story “Revelation” about the woman who realizes she is like the pigs, and in the end sees the train of people going up to heaven, in which the last are first, and the first last. As in that vision, all the schisms that have pained Christ’s church will be healed, beginning with the most egregious–the pentecostal micro-denominations, and then the baptists, then the presbyterians and methodists and lutherans, then the Anglicans, and last of all, the Orthodox will be restored to the full unity of the church. The Orthodox have been least in need of restoration. They are nearest to the fullness. Thus they too will be restored, though as with a lesser urgency. So do not worry, brother: even if you choose wrongly, and choose Orthodoxy (ha!), Christ will have mercy on your good reasons, and we will be drawn together at last.

But let us take care to guard our reasons for doing things, for if we convert to this or that church for the reason that it is “doing Christianity better,” does this not spring from pride? But if we convert, let it be in order to cast ourselves in need at the feet of Jesus our Shepherd, whose grace will prevail.

The Church must have authority

The One True Church is anointed by God and speaks with authority. It is the solemn duty of The Church to overrule false teachers and scholars who twist the scriptures, and to preserve the deposit of faith entrusted to her once for all. However, false teachers cannot be overruled except by a higher authority. This authority cannot be man’s opinion or scholarship, which is of merely equal authority to that of the liars. There is no final authority in mere scholarship, for books cannot speak for themselves, and the minds of scholars are the minds of men. Mere men, I say, unless they are anointed by the Spirit of Christ. For the Church asserts, and must assert, an ultimate authority to interpret the Scripture and Tradition given to her by God. The Church must be able to answer a false teacher wearing the robes of her apostolic anointing, to pronounce a judgment that bears weight, so that the faithful will not be led astray.

Who is this Church? Protestants say it is all the true Christians in all the denominations of the world. But the voice of the ethereal “global church” is silent; the voice of “all baptized Christians” cannot speak, for they have no body. There is no courtroom in Protestantism, for no man submits to the judgment of another. There is no judge who can do more than ridicule the Joel Osteens and the Rob Bells, so they shout at one another like an unruly parliament, each with his piece of the truth.

The voice of the Church comes from a body incarnate, for it is the voice of the Incarnate Christ. She speaks as one with authority, saying, “Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” She asserts the exclusive authority to proclaim doctrine, not because her exegesis is based on good reasons, but because the Spirit of the Lord is upon her. She speaks “not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that her faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”

Where is the Church who speaks with such a voice? Where is she who proclaims with the prophetic zeal, “I will not share my glory”? She stands in tattered robes of bloody history, but it is a history that leads all the way back to the Cross, and the Fire of Jesus is still in her eyes.

 

Culpability and authority

It was suggested to me today by a colleague that the Church is hardly a reliable authority upon which to base our faith in the Bible or Christianity, because of the many atrocities committed throughout the history of the Church (Inquisition, Crusades, and the like). It is quite impossible to argue that the Church has been lily white in its history–indeed it has been marred repeatedly by corruption and scandal, from popes to parish priests (Just read up on Pope Alexander VI as a starting point). No sort of defense of the Church can stand that starts with the assumption that its authority depends on its blamelessness. The only defense that comes, and it is the only one needed, is that the Church has never pretended to be blameless; in fact, her mantra, the very essence of her message, has always been the acknowledgement of her (and everyone else’s) blame. The Church claims more blood on her hands than her opponents could ever catch her with.

The remarkable claim of the church is that she is authoritative not on the basis of her own merit but on the basis of Jesus’ anointing. She claims that Jesus promised that she would never fundamentally stray or err in doctrine; in other words, that she would preserve the true faith. It is no more necessary for her to be blameless in order to do this than it is necessary to be bald in order to be a barber, or to be a billionaire in order to be a banker. In fact I am the most suspicious of barbers who are bald, and of bankers who are billionaires, and of priests who are perfect.

The real question in examining the Church’s authority is whether Jesus really gave her this charge and whether she has ever fundamentally shifted in her teaching. We will find that, emerging from first century Palestine like an unflinching stallion, the Church has always defended the same message, God’s grace through the blood of Jesus, prevailing over sin and granting those who believe in his name the right to be called the sons and daughters of God, imbued with all the divine authority befitting such a bloodline.

ex opere operato Christi

The Bible’s sure foundation: A response to John Piper’s ‘A Peculiar Glory’

Dr. John Piper’s new book A Peculiar Glory (available for free PDF download) sets out to provide a basis for a sure knowledgefull_a-peculiar-glory that the Bible is true, one that can be known without scholarship. He says that while he has spent much of his life dealing with the historical and textual/linguistic evidences for establishing the truth and trustworthiness of the Bible, he has realized that these evidences do not provide certainty to the lay person who cannot understand them, nor devote his life to the study of Greek and Hebrew and the history of eastern antiquity, etc. He feels that such certainty should and must be available to the common Christian, and indeed it must.

As the means of getting this certainty about the Bible, Piper points to the evidence of Christ’s glory within it. He quotes heavily from Jonathan Edwards, who explains it this way:

“The mind ascends to the truth of the gospel but by one step, and that is its divine glory…. Unless men may come to a reasonable solid persuasion and conviction of the truth of the gospel, by the internal evidences of it, in the way that has been spoken, viz. by a sight of its glory; ’tis impossible that those who are illiterate, and unacquainted with history, should have any thorough and effectual conviction of it at all. (qtd. p. 138)

It is my aim in this essay to demonstrate that the peculiar glory of the gospel of Christ in the Bible is not in itself a sufficient means of knowing the trueness of the Bible, but to propose another means that can provide assurance without scholarship.

To begin, I address an assertion that Piper seems to make about ascertaining the truth of scripture through the glory of the gospel, namely that it is objective. He says, “It is crucial to emphasize here that this glory of Christ in the gospel is an objective reality. The glory is in Christ and in the gospel. It is not in us. It is not subjective, but objective” (p. 141). I respectfully point out that Piper has confused the glory of Christ in the gospel (which entails no knowledge on our part) with the perception of the glory of Christ in the gospel, which is the means by which we can know the glory of God. It is vital to see that the epistemological instrument Piper is seeking is in fact a mental or spiritual illumination, as evinced by Edwards’, John Calvin’s, and his own descriptions of the nature of this proof-by-glory. According to Piper, “Well-grounded faith is not only reasonable faith (based on real evidence and good grounds), but also spiritual faith, that is, it is enabled by the Holy Spirit and mediated through spiritual perception of divine glory in the truth of the gospel” (emphasis mine). In Edwards’ words above, it is not God’s glory per se but “a sight of [the gospel’s] glory” that convinces the believer. Calvin speaks in a crucial quote from Chapter 11:

“How can we be assured that this has sprung from God unless we have recourse to the decree of the church? It is as if someone asked: Whence will we learn to distinguish light from darkness, white from black, sweet from bitter? Indeed, Scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth as white and black things do of their color, or sweet and bitter things do of their taste.” (Institutes, I, vvii, 2)6

Thus, according to Calvin, the assurance of the truth of the Bible is a sensation, like taste or sight. Now, the word “objective” means belonging to the object of thought rather than the thinking subject, and “subjective” means belonging to the thinking subject rather than the object of thought. The glory of God may be objective, but the “spiritual perception of divine glory”, the great dawning of this glory in the mind of the believer, the sight of the glory which confirms the truth of the Bible to us, the taste of its sweetness, is what we are talking about. And the apprehension of beauty or glory is an inherently subjective phenomenon. Calling a believer’s comprehension of the peculiar glory of God objective is like calling the beauty of my one-month-old daughter objective, as if anyone who holds my daughter experiences the glory that I experience when I do. The subjectivity of a religious appeal to something like beauty is easier for us to see when it is put forward by Islam instead of Christianity. One of the most prominent lines of reasoning in Islamic apologetics is that the Qur’an can be known to be true because it is a work of literary beauty and moral sublimity that is unparalleled and impossible to imitate. The Qur’an says in one place (among others), “Oh people, if you doubt the heavenly origin of this Book which We have sent down to Our servant, the Prophet, produce one surah like it” (2:23). Can any writing be put forth that will satisfy this challenge in the eyes of Muslims? I suggest that it is impossible, because the claim is subjective. Muslims adore the Qur’an as holy. How could they see something unholy as equally beautiful? Therefore, it is clear as Piper advances his point about the glory of Christ in the gospel as the evidence for the truth of the Bible, that he is talking about a subjective evidence.

In addition to saying that the glory of Christ in the Bible is “objective,” Piper says that it is “self-authenticating.” (In Calvin’s words above: “Scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth”.) In fact this is one of the main claims Piper makes in the book, using the term in the book’s introduction webpage on desiringgod.com, and throughout the text. Now, a truth that is “self-evident” or “self-authenticating” is something that is authenticated by no outside authority, but subjectively, that is, having the proper source of its evidence or authentication in the mind itself. For example, the Founding Fathers held it to be self-evident that all men are created equal, on the basis that any man contemplating the statement has a subjective perception of its truth, based on reason; in other words, it has no other proof but needs no other, since every man’s reason confirms it to him in his mind. By calling the glory of Christ in the scriptures self-authenticating, Piper is saying that one’s mind is the source of the authentication of the Bible. It is important to notice the possible implications of this. If we say that the truth of the Bible is evident to the natural human mind, we make it out to be something ascertainable by the natural mind, in other words, by reason. Now, this reliance on reason is troubling when it comes to the gospel. The comprehension of the divine beauty of the gospel is anything but “natural” in a fallen state of nature, and the glorious paradoxes of the gospel are not “reasonable,” but a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. Dr. Piper would be the first to admit that reason alone cannot bring one this saving vision of the divine glory. To give him the benefit of the doubt, I think that he uses the term “self-authenticating” with unintentional ambiguity, and doesn’t really mean that the way we are certain of the supernatural truth of the Bible is by natural reason. Instead, he means that the Holy Spirit within our minds confirms the truth of the Bible to our minds, and it is in that sense subjective: it is within our minds. However, although it is a subjective truth, it is not a self-authenticating truth, but a truth authenticated by a divine witness. This is in fact where Piper ends up, especially in Chapter 11: he explains the Spirit as the agent of illumination.

Filtering out the misleading implications that the glory of God is itself a means by which men may ascertain its truth, or that it is evident by man’s natural faculties, we see Piper’s strongest claim, that our certainty comes from the Holy Spirit’s supernatural guidance and illumination of the mind. Piper first introduces this idea of the Holy Spirit’s role via Jonathan Edwards: The “internal evidences” that Edwards mentions are authenticated “by the special influence and enlightenings of the Spirit of God” (qtd. p. 142), which Edwards says accounts for why some otherwise rational men do not seem to notice them in their study of the Bible. The idea is really expounded in Chapter 11, where Piper stakes the heart of his argument on a crucial phrase by Calvin: “We can know the Bible is the word of God by ‘the internal testimony of the Spirit’” (p. 182). Perhaps Calvin recognized the danger of ascribing the illumination that affirms the Bible merely to the human mind. Perhaps he heard the thundering hooves of the Enlightenment coming on the heels of the Reformation. In any case, he ascribes it to the Holy Spirit:

The testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than all reason. For as God alone is a fit witness of himself in his word, the Word will not find acceptance in men’s hearts before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit therefore who has spoken through the mouths of the prophets must penetrate into our hearts to persuade us that they faithfully proclaimed what had been divinely commanded . . . because until he illumines their minds, they ever waver among many doubts! (qtd. p. 184)

According to Calvin, it is by the Spirit’s illumination that we transcend our own rational powers to know beyond a shadow of a doubt the trueness of scripture.

Therefore illumined by [the Spirit’s] power, we believe neither by our own nor by anyone else’s judgment that Scripture is from God; but above human judgment we affirm with utter certainty (just as if we were gazing upon the majesty of God himself) that it has flowed to us from the very mouth of God by the ministry of men. (qtd. p. 187)

Or, as Piper explains, “beneath a spiritually vital judgment…is a Spirit-given illumination of the majesty of God himself. The sight of God’s glory precedes and grounds the formation of rational judgments about its truth.” Piper is saying that the proof of the Bible by the beauty of Christ is in our minds, yet not merely by the human mind, but by the Holy Spirit who sanctifies our minds through his divine and authoritative light.

Although I too believe that the inward witness of the Holy Spirit affirms to us all that we read in the Bible, this fact, no matter how true, does not provide any more epistemological certainty; rather it merely shifts the question over a bit. Imagine that a man comes to you and says, “I found these scrolls, and they were sent from heaven!” and you ask him, “How do you know they were sent from heaven?” Suppose he were to reply, “Because an angel appeared to me and told me.” Now you are a person who believes that angels and heaven exist. However, even given that, what would your response be? Would it be to say, “Well, since you say that an angel told you they are from God, I suppose they must be”? Isn’t it more likely that you will be inclined to ask, “Well, then how do I know that an angel appeared to you?” And that is the question we must ask of ourselves, suspending for the sake of truth our assumption that we know the truth: How do we know that the Holy Spirit has truly illumined us, and not some lesser power or principality?

Within the greater realm of those who claim Christianity there are some who, in answer to this question, leap off the precipice of absolute subjectivity, saying, “We know it because we know it. There is no explanation, you just know.” But their tautology brings the argument swiftly to an end, and as swiftly their faith, for they have no room for a Christ outside the one in their mind. John Piper–thanks be to God–is not willing to be among them, and so, when he is tacitly faced with this question, he deliberately avoids the precipice, clarifying that the Holy Spirit does not speak to us in just any way, but by and through the words of the Bible.

“The internal testimony of the Spirit is not an added revelation to what we see in Scripture. It is not the voice of the Spirit saying to our mind, ‘What you are now looking at in the Bible is the majesty of God; so start seeing it’” (p. 187).

The Spirit is not an added revelation outside Scripture. Nor does it work apart from Scripture.

God does not hang a lantern on the house of Scripture so that we will know it is his house. He does not certify his masterpiece with a distinguishing, Rembrandt-like signature. He does not give a voice from heaven: “This is my book, listen to it.” That is not what the word  “testimony” or “witness” means in the phrase “testimony [or witness] of the Holy Spirit.” Rather, the testimony of the Spirit is the work of the Spirit to give us new life and, with this life, eyes to see what is really there in the self-attesting divine glories of Scripture—the meaning of Scripture. (p. 190)

We do not know the Spirit’s work by some supernatural sign, but by the fact that he illumines our eyes to the true meaning of Scripture. In other words, Piper’s answer to the question “How do we know the Holy Spirit has truly illumined us?” is “Because it shows us the divine glory in the meaning of scripture.” The means of confirming the work of the Spirit is the Bible.

It is at this point we realize that Piper’s argument utterly fails, that it is an infinite loop. He commits the logical fallacy of begging the question. For if we ask him, “How do we know the scriptures are true?” the answer comes, “By the revelation of the Holy Spirit,” and if we ask him, “How do we know that a revelation is from the Holy Spirit?” the answer comes, “By the scriptures.”

Piper’s main purpose in the book is to establish a means of knowing for certain that the Bible is true–a means that is available to every man without historical-critical scholarship. We see now that the Bible is not its own authentication, and, although the Spirit of God confirms to us the glorious and holy truth contained in the Bible, the Holy Spirit and the Holy Book share the need for an anchor of well-grounded proof, a defense for the hope that is in them. On what reasonable grounds can we base our belief that the Bible is true, or for that matter, that the Holy Spirit speaks to us? I believe there is such a solid ground.

To find this firm foundation, we have to trace Piper’s argument back to Chapter 7, as Piper is laying the groundwork for his argument in Chapters 8-11. In Chapter 7 he makes some assumptions that doom the following chapters to failure: he claims that the authority that the Twelve Apostles and Paul had as spokesmen for Jesus was not transferable.

Once the Twelve were established for their foundational ministry, there was no plan or provision to be replaced. Paul referred to the new and growing church as “the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone” (Eph. 2:19–20); and John described the church in Revelation as a city coming down from heaven whose wall had “twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb” (Rev. 21:14). The point of Paul and John is that foundations that Christ puts in place are unshakeable and once for all. They are not replaced in every generation. The apostles were once for all. Alfred Plummer clarifies this point on the basis of the intrinsic purpose of the apostolate as Jesus created it: “The absence from Christ’s teaching of any statement respecting the priesthood of the Twelve, or respecting the transmission of the powers of the Twelve to others, is remarkable. As the primary function of the Twelve was to be witnesses of what Christ had taught and done, especially in rising from the dead, no transmission of so exceptional an office was possible.” (p. 122)

Piper says that because the apostles were “foundations,” they could not be “replaced,” which we understand through the quote by Plummer to mean that the transmission of their office was not possible. The implication is that their role as “authorized spokesmen who would teach with [Christ’s] authority” (p. 118)–the authority by which Piper claims the New Testament came into being–ended with The Apostles. But this reasoning is absolutely false. No one lays the foundation of a building and then stops and says, “Well, these bricks are the foundation, therefore I should not put any bricks on top of them.” Indeed, if they are a foundation, then by definition they must be built upon. And God is no foolish builder who leaves his foundations unfinished, but is building on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. As it says in Ephesians 2:19-21, which Piper quotes from, “In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” Nor does the transmission of an office imply supplantation, but rather succession. No one at the Continental Congress, upon having elected George Washington as the first president of the United States, said, “Well, since we have recognized him as the greatest man in America, we surely must never elect a man to replace him as president.” It is certainly true that the Twelve Apostles have always been accorded unequalled honor above the saints, but it is all the more fitting that there should be successors to their office. The only argument offered by Piper or Plummer that there could not possibly be successors to their office is essentially that Jesus would surely have said something about it, which is a fallacious argumentum ex silentio, an argument from silence.

And here we begin to see our hope, for if the office of “authorized spokesmen who would teach with [Christ’s] authority” is not ended, but alive and well, then we can base our faith in the Bible on their testimony, a testimony that is not entirely in heaven (as the testimony of the Holy Spirit) nor entirely on earth (as the testimony of human reason), but straddling both, like Jacob’s Ladder, like Christ Himself, fully divine and fully human. Behold, here indeed is such a witness, the “holy temple” of which we are bricks and “in which God lives by his Spirit,” the Church, whose head speaks with divine authority handed down from those first authorized spokesmen by unbroken apostolic succession by the laying on of hands.

How can we know that the Bible is true? We can believe on the testimony of the witness who wrote it, who preserved it, who canonized it, and treasured the gospel of God in her bosom from the earliest days of Christianity until today. The Church is with us as a living and authoritative witness so that we do not have to become scholars to have a grounded basis for our faith. Indeed, Piper admits that even if we were to become masters of historical criticism, “the results of such study would not provide a sure foundation for faith that you could stake your life on” (p. 130). By trusting the authority of the Church, which is led by the Holy Spirit and given a spiritual enlightenment, we do not have to subject our trust to the arguments of mere human critics and rationalist skeptics. Yet the Church is also an earthly institution, standing as a physical and historical tether to the objective truths of Christianity, fiercely insistent and perennially consistent in its dogma, keeping us from the pitfalls to which blind subjectivism would leave us vulnerable. The Holy Catholic Church, the Body of the Spirit of Christ, The Protector of the Bible, is the Bible’s one sure foundation, as Christ is hers. All who love the Bible will be drawn to her.

Must the Church be an organization?

In my last post, I concluded that the authority to interpret Christian doctrine rests on the One True Church; however, I have not defined this One True Church. Before we may venture further, we must establish what we mean by this word “Church” (including its capitalized and lower-case forms).

When we refer to a “church” [uncapitalized], we usually refer to a particular congregation of Christians and/or the building they gather in. When we refer to “The Church” [capitalized] we may mean one of two things:

(1) An organization of these churches sharing common doctrinal beliefs affirmed by a central and terminal authority, such as a council, convention, or pontiff (for example, “The Roman Catholic Church” or “The Southern Baptist Church”), in other words, a denomination

(2) The entire global body of Christians, the Body of Christ

When we give the power over interpretation of doctrine to the True Church, we certainly mean the Church in this second, global sense. The question that emerges, though, is whether we must also mean a particular organizational Church (sense 1).

I think we must. My reasons for thinking so are connected to my reason for arguing for the True Church as the defender of orthodoxy in the first place; or put another way, I think this institutional concept of the church is entailed by the role that I have suggested it has.

If we define the True Church as simply the global body of Christ, the question must be asked, do we mean that all Church denominations are included in this? We would then be in the position of affirming the Fire Baptized Church of God of Holiness of the Americas, the Central Yearly Meeting of Friends, the Branch Davidians, the Indian Shakers, not to mention both the Catholics and the Protestants, as all authoritative for interpreting Christian doctrine and practice. Certainly this is not tenable! It is more likely that we mean that the Church transcends the denominations, not fitting perfectly into any one of them. Some people from any denomination might be part of the True Church, and some people from any denomination may not be part of it. In other words, the Church is a spiritual entity known to God and not fully to man.

However, thus abstracting the True Church away from any earthly form leaves us in danger of being unable to recognize it. It cannot be that we are left without any means of ascertaining the Church, because we must be a part of it! Christ wills for us to participate in his Church. Accepting an agnostic position in which we are not concerned about the authenticity of our own church and denomination leaves us powerless to affirm truth or reject falsehood. We may be part of a false or deficient church, and thus develop falsities and deficiencies in our soul, and those around us. We might imbibe false prophecy and erroneous teaching without even knowing it. This is certainly not a possibility that the Good Shepherd leaves open to his precious flock. There must be some way of knowing for sure whether our church or denomination is part of the True Church.

Is there any way that we can affirm the truth of our church or our denomination without equating it to The Church? There is a way, the way taken by congregationalists and quakers and those who see their churches as democratic gatherings of autonomous believers. It is an appeal to a power outside the church or denomination itself: to Reason. The congregationalist believes in his church because he believes that his pastor or his elders or he himself has enough reason and insight, and that their Reason has the authority to interpret Christian doctrine and practice, using the Bible as a basis.

However, I have argued previously that the authority to interpret Christian truth cannot be trusted to the reason of men, for we are flawed and sinful and incapable of reliably interpreting the divine mysteries. The True Church, for whose preservation Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, could never surrender her members to such a treacherous guide, but would protect them from error by her own authority. Since The Church is herself the true authority (as I said in my last post), she would never abdicate to an impostor.

If we affirm more than one denomination, we fall to contradiction, and if we affirm none of them, we fall to an agnosticism that renders us powerless against error, which itself can only be remedied by giving Reason the scepter of interpretation, which The Church would never do. We must therefore regard a single Church, a denomination, as The Church.

We have now come to the point when we can and must ask, “Which Church (sense 1) is the Church (sense 2)?” or put another way, “Which denomination is the True Church?” I will consider this immense and crucial question later, but the significance of the point we have just come to cannot be overstated, namely, that the question can be framed in those terms at all.

The authority to interpret scripture

In the previous essay I concluded that the Bible is reliable on the basis of the authority of the institutional Church to establish Christian practice and doctrine. But, although Protestants accept from the hand of Tradition both the Bible and its companions, the Creeds, they reject the authority of the Tradition of the Church today (as the battle cry “sola scriptura” proclaims). Such authority must have been removed from the Church sometime (perhaps gradually) between the 4th Century and the 16th Century, at which point the Reformation occurred. I have heard it explained in roughly these words: “God gave the institutional Church authority through the apostolic age and through the age of the councils, so that the Bible would be reliably formed, but since the closure of the Canon, the authority to interpret doctrine no longer resides with the leaders of the Church, but with all believers, since the meaning of the Bible is evident and apparent within its completed pages and stands on its own.” Authority to interpret has been removed from the Church, and given to all who can read the Bible for themselves. It is a good thing to read the Bible for oneself, but to place the power to interpret the Bible into the hands of everyone is to destroy all certainty of truth.

The Zionist First Church of God of Holiness

We become aware of this if we consider the hundreds of different protestant denominations, many of which we can agree are dubiously orthodox. Take, for example, Reverend Michael at the Zionist First Church of God of Holiness down the street, who claims to be an apostle, slays people with the spirit, and drives a Rolls Royce because the Holy Spirit told him to tell his congregation to contribute to the work of the Lord. We can’t accept his authority, can we? But on what basis do we reject it? We will answer, “His teaching and lifestyle doesn’t line up with the Bible.” But Apostle Michael quotes heavily from the Bible all the time. So, on what basis do we claim that his teachings don’t line up? “He misinterprets scripture.” And how do we know that he is misinterpreting scripture? Because we know how to correctly interpret the meaning of scripture. On what grounds are we certain of our interpretations?

The first and most common line of reasoning that comes to the Protestant mind is, I believe, based on an incorrect assumption.

Intrinsic meaning?

The Protestant will probably answer that we can be certain of our interpretations because, by careful study of Greek, Hebrew, and biblical history, we can know the original intention of the author to his audience, situated in the historical, linguistic, and textual context, and discovering this intention is to know the meaning of the text. This is based on a key assumption about the nature of meaning shared by most evangelicals and expressed by John Piper:

“The grammatical-historical method…aims to get at something intrinsic to the text, namely its meaning.”

Piper defines the meaning of a text as the author’s intention (as discernible from the historical, linguistic, cultural context, etc.) and claims authority to know it based on the fact that the intention is intrinsic to the words of the text. However, it is decidedly not the case that an author’s intention is intrinsic to his words.

Permit me to get technical for a moment. All meaning is conveyed between interlocutors using a process of coding, transferring, and decoding messages. Words, whether “well formulated in writing” or in spoken utterance, are the signs of meaning, the material used in transfer. In a precise semiology, words are not identical to the author’s intention. The intention or meaning is conveyed by the words in conjunction with the encoding and decoding apparatuses of both interlocutors. My ability to understand someone’s intention is dependent on how well they interpret the message into a form I can understand and how well I interpret the form of their message back into an intention. Therefore, the author’s intention is not simply intrinsic to his words, but passes between him and the reader by the instrument of his words within a communicative act that includes interpretation on both their parts.

Such a denial of the role of interpretation in meaning causes us to (unintentionally) neglect God’s role in interpreting scripture to us, and overemphasize our role. This brings us to the real grounds on which Protestants are sure of their interpretations of scripture.

Faith in Reason

What asserting the intrinsic meaning of the texts of scripture is really doing is placing the full power and responsibility to interpret scripture in the hands of Reason, the faculty of the human mind.

At first, we depend on reason only under the guise of scholarship–“Enough rigorous study and education eventually grant the authority to interpret scripture reliably.” However, the subjection of the scriptures to rational scholarship has, in the past four centuries, produced an enormous amount of scholarship doubting nearly everything that can be believed about the Bible, not to mention thousands of fractures of communion based on contradictions of interpretation. Must we accept the positions of any liberal pastor, any linguist, any historical-critical professor of theology who puts forward a new interpretation of scripture based on scholarly study? If we do, then all we will have left of our Christianity will be an emasculated, ham-strung collection of historical happy thoughts. If we say no, then we must again answer, “On what basis?” It is tempting to pretend that there is a consensus among scholars that we might give authority to, by presenting a list of opinions that excludes scholars we deem to be unorthodox, but as with the Canon we will find ourselves begging the question again.

In the end, the only thing we have left to put forward as the sure authority for the interpretation of scripture is our own reason and intellect. But here we have come to something as indefensible as Reverend Michael’s sermon at the Zionist First Church of God of Holiness, for no man who says that the Holy Spirit spoke to him can be proved wrong, and neither can a man who gives ultimate authority to his own reason. But no reasonable person absolutely relies upon his reason. The sane person never absolutely trusts his sanity. As G.K. Chesterton says, “The sane man knows that he has a touch of the beast, a touch of the devil, a touch of the saint, a touch of the citizen. Nay, the really sane man knows that he has a touch of the madman.” In contrast, it is a mark of the insane man that he fixates on his own reasonings. “The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.” The rational man must admit that he is not exempt from the weaknesses of the mind that cause other men to err with the utmost sincerity, and he will look for something greater than himself in which to anchor his understanding of the divine mysteries.

The Church, the interpreter

What shall we say, then? Here lies the Bible before us, but how can we interpret its meaning into our lives with confidence? Surely God has provided a reliable interpreter. We need an interpreter whose authority is neither merely human (as the scholar’s reason) nor merely divine (as the charismatic’s spirit), but has a foot in both, possessing the same dual nature as our Lord Jesus Himself, who is fully God and fully Man. Where can we find such an interpreter? She stands before us in the One True Church, whose Body is on earth and whose Head is in heaven. It was she that gave us the scriptures by the power vested in her, and it is she who continues to give them to this very day. If she does not interpret for us, there can be no sure interpretation.

The authority to interpret the Bible lies today in the same hands as it did in the 4th century, those of the Church. We need to repent of our trust in our own minds, which does not bring glory to God, and instead gladly submit to the safety of the authority of the Living Body of Christ which preserves truth. We must accept the holy and catholic Church as the agency through which God has promised to guide our interpretations of scripture and proclaim its truth in power throughout the earth.

 

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 4th 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 4th century.

Priestesses in the Church? Yes, Mr. Lewis, and bishops too!

This essay entitled “Priestesses in the Church?” by C.S. Lewis really floored me when I first read it a few years ago, so much that, of the essays in God in the Docks, perhaps it was the most memorable. It is particularly relevant today. Libby Lane was ordained today as the first female bishop of the Church of England. I imagine that Lewis would be quite disappointed, although perhaps not surprised, that the ordination of priestesses which he called in his day “unlikely to be seriously considered by the authorities” has not only been considered, but effected, and not only for priestesses, but now for bishops. This trend toward the ordination of women is pervasive in may denominations including the United Methodist, Episcopal, and (even prior to this date) greater Anglican traditions. In fact it is even encouraged among the Brethren in Christ, a brethren or holiness denomination based in Pennsylvania of which my wife’s family are committed members.

Googling the essay produces a very sad assortment of blog rebuttals of the essay which do not understand Lewis’ points and really make fools of themselves blabbering on at straw men. Therefore, although you should really just read the essay itself, I will try to do him some brief justice here. Lewis’ argument could be syllogized this way:

  • Major Premise: A key role of a priest is to represent God to man.
  • Minor Premise: God has revealed himself to mankind as masculine.
  • Conclusion: Therefore, a priest must represent God masculinely.
  • Second Major Premise: a person’s gender is part of their spirituality, it is a “living and semitive figure which God has painted on the canvas of our nature”.
  • Second Minor Premise: Men are masculine.
  • Conclusion: Therefore, a man  must represent God to mankind.

I find that the only point that one can bail on this train of logic is at the very beginning–one must deny the mystical, representative nature of the sacerdotal office. Protestant denominations that do so, incidentally may have more of an excuse to allow women as “pastors” but this represents a deficiency in their whole Christian system. The fact that they may allow women to fulfill their version of the priestly office reveals that they have no priestly office at all. And I would submit that churches whose leaders merely educate and administrate and visit the sick are missing something of what Christianity truly is. But that is another issue. For churches who acknowledge the mystical role of the priest in the sacramental economy, and who hold the view that the Bible’s consistently masculine imagery for God was not an oversight on his part (R.I.P., TNIV translators), the ordination of female priests and bishops is a perversion of Christianity in the name of that great insidious god of our times, common sense.

Ecumenism and mystery

Embracing the true mysteries of Christianity is the only way to fulfill Jesus’ prayer that we would be one as he is one with the father, for that union is itself one of paradox.

Ecumenism does not call us to water down doctrinal truth but rather to co-participate in mysteries that are truer than any doctrine that attempts to encapsulate them.

In this way ecumenism can correct the ways that western enlightenment-influenced theology overcorrected when it focused the essence of Christianity into right statements and precise doctrinal systems.

An honest consideration of the Word reveals that it is not the scriptures, but He about whom they testify. Language itself is a sign pointing to Him, and the more true our doctrine, the more we will understand that it does not exist of or for itself, but rather we will look along its arrow at the Living Truth.

We will know that there is more to truth than doctrine, and in this light we will be free to engage with others inside the fold with more generosity, and indeed we will also be able to relate to God more rightly, with a sense of his grandeur. Does it not glorify a father when he has a special relationship with each of many children, so that each knows some different things about him, but all know him truly and intimately?

Consider a child who believes he is the sole possessor of true knowledge about his father and cannot accept that his sibling knows something that he does not. This child knows less about his father that he pretends, for he has equated his father with his knowledge of his father, thereby reducing him to a concept under his control. He will be like Cain. By his disdain for his brother he reveals that he does not know their father and does not truly respect him as a greater, deeper, and realer person.

Far better is the child who remains in childlike awe and dependence upon the father, walking in a way of simple obedience, by all means judging between truth and seditious error and decrying an intruder into the house, but yet humble towards the brothers in all the other rooms in the house, those younger and older, having at the same time a confidence about his own personal knowledge of the father, and a right estimation of his importance, perspective, and intellect in the great household.

The answer rising up in some hearts at that statement is, “Yes, but we cannot compromise on the essentials of the faith! Things like soli scriptura are not simply parts of truth, they are bottom-line non-negotiables, and to put them on the table for discussion is to flirt with apostasy.”

There are certainly essentials. However, do we believe that “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy”? As All Sons and Daughters say in their lyric, “To know you is to love you, and to know so little else.” Are we willing to approach our faith with the humility that comes from a reverent embrace of mystery? Are we willing to admit that our doctrine does not comprise all truth, knowing that this does not invalidate our doctrine, but rather exalts truth beyond the realm of human logic. Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!