This blog page was originally a series of blog posts made during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in 2009.
When Did Christ’s Church Lose The Authority He Gave Her?
The assumption in this question and the starting point for this article is that Christ gave His Authority to the Church in the first place. I have not heard any Christian reject this belief, perhaps because it seems quite clear from Scripture that Christ gave his apostles authority, and they were the leaders (under Him of course) of the Church.
I want to explore the different answers that Mormons, Protestants, and Catholics give to this question.
Protestants Beliefs on This Question
Most Protestants believe, some implicitly and some explicitly, that the Church lost this authority at some point in time; another way of saying it is that Christ revoked this authority, and then corruption entered (quickly or slowly) into the Church’s teachings of faith and morals. Some Protestants believe that this authority was reestablished in some form or fashion, but many do not think so. More on this later. Also, I am going to differentiate between fundamentalist Protestants and other Protestants in my timelines of their beliefs. Yes, this post has clever little timelines that I created using a basic paint program!
The first timeline is what many self-describing Fundamentalist Protestants believe, and the second is what Protestants in general believe (the greenish bar denotes time periods when the Church still had Christ’s authority):
Fundamentalist Protestant Authority Timeline
Protestant Authority Timeline
Mormon Beliefs on This Question
Mormons explicitly believe that the Church lost the authority Christ gave her sometime around 70 or 100 AD. I have heard from one Mormon that it was at the death of St. Peter (which would correspond to the earlier date) and from another that it was at the death of the last apostle, which would be St. John (corresponding to the later date). Then they believe that the Great Apostasy began and lasted for around 1700 years before Christ reestablished His authority to the (Mormon) Church in 1829 through Joseph Smith.
Mormon Authority Timeline
Catholics Belief on This Question
Catholics believe that Christ gave authority to his Church and that He has preserved it by grace up to the present time. One of the concrete fruits of this authority is the Catholic belief that the Church cannot err in her teachings on matters of faith and of morals.
Catholic Authority Timeline
So what, you might ask, is the big deal? What is the problem if Christ revoked His authority from the Church and did so at such and such a date?
The Canon of Scripture and Sola Scriptura
The central problem in the belief that the Church lost Christ’s authority and corruption entered her teachings is the canon of Scripture. Protestants believe in sola scriptura–the Bible alone is the final authority–but before we can think about sola scriptura we have to know what, exactly, comprises the scriptura part. What writings are inspired by God and thus must be included in the Bible? Which ones are not inspired by God and thus must NOT be included in the Bible? These decisions were made in the latter half of 300s by the Church when she determined the canon of Scripture.
But if the Church lost authority before she discerned and declared the canon of Scripture, that means that her decision cannot be trusted! Corruption had entered into her teachings as she had lost Christ’s authority; if this is the case, how do we know that the books she said were inspired by God actually were and the many, many more that she said were not indeed were not?
The canon of scripture was not given as a bolt out of the sky by God, which perhaps would have simplified things (or perhaps not, knowing us humans), but rather it was something the bishops of the Church prayerfully discussed and deliberated about for decades and decades. The Catholic encyclopedia has a comprehensive entry on the New Testament canon’s history; in particular look at the Period of Fixation from 367 – 405; this was the time that the most important synods and Church councils decided on the canon. Nonetheless, it was after Protestants and Mormons believe that the Church’s teachings had become corrupted.
Determining What Is the Truth and What Is Heresy
A related problem that must be faced is the fact that the Church, throughout her entire history, has had to judge the truth or falsehood of many theological and moral teachings; in short, to determine if a belief is heretical or not, and if not, what the actual truth is. If the Church lost Christ’s authority and corruption entered at X point in her history, then how do we know what beliefs she determined to be heresies are really heresies and those she determined to be true are actually true?
Heresies and Schisms
Protestant Christians take as a given (most of) the Nicene Creed and all that it asserts as true about God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Many other truths that the Church’s bishops and faithful tirelessly fought for against heretical attacks are taken as givens as well: Is it obvious that Christ is one Person who subsists in two natures: divine and human (the hypostatic union, definitively determined in 451 at the Council of Chalcedon, refuting the Monophysites‘ heresy)?
The Burden of Proof
Upon whom does the burden of proof fall to demonstrate that the Church Christ established lost His authority, and if so, exactly when and why? Since the evidence from Scripture and from the writings of the early Christians recognize that the Church did have this authority, the burden of proof must fall to those who claim that she lost it.
At least three different dates or periods of time are given (see above) for when Christ revoked the Church’s authority, but where is the supporting evidence for it?
The Mormon Belief in the Great Apostasy
When I was an Evangelical Protestant going to a Southern Baptist Convention church, I spoke at length with Mormon missionaries who came to our door. They told me how the priesthood had left the Church at the death of the apostles and then the Great Apostasy began, which the Scriptures spoke about. Only in the 1800s did Christ reinstitute the priesthood with Joseph Smith. “So what about all the Christians who lived and were martyred and followed our Lord from 100 to 1829?” They answered, “Those people had ‘faith in Christ’” but it was not the true faith; it was deficient.
The missionaries presented no historical nor theological evidence to support the claim that the Church lost her authority; it was an assertion.
But let’s assume it is true for a moment. Does it make sense? The Word became flesh, and Christ lived on earth for 33 years, giving his life for all of us. Then, He did not leave us alone but gave us the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of power, of love, and of self-mastery, who He promised would lead the apostles (who led the Church) into all truth, and the gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church.
But the Mormons assertion means that the Holy Spirit utterly failed to lead the Church into all truth–indeed, as soon as the last apostle died, the Church went belly-up for over 1700 years! The gates of Hell prevailed against the Church and overcame her. It means also that Christ failed to keep His Church together and pure from adultered teachings for even one generation beyond his life on earth.
What we actually see in history is that the apostles transmitted the faith to their followers, passing on by word of mouth and by letter all that Christ had taught them. They also consecrated men, by the authority Christ gave to them, as deacons, as priests, and as bishops, and the Church, rather than becoming corrupted in her teachings and losing her authority, instead shone before men with the light of Christ, and thousands upon thousands joined her to follow Christ, many giving their lives amidst hundreds of years of persecution at the hands of the Romans, pagans, and barbarians–all by the power and action of the Holy Spirit.
Certainly individual persons sometimes apostasized, that is, renounced their faith, especially when confronted with mutilation, torture, and execution, but the Church as a whole could not and will never apostasize.
Interestingly, as a Baptist, I rejected these Mormon claims of the Church losing her authority at the death of the apostles, but as I pondered and prayed, I realized that my beliefs were not so very different in fact. After all, when did I, a Baptist, think that corruption entered into the Church’s teachings? Because I certainly did. The truth was that I, like most Protestants, had never given it that much thought and didn’t know when I believed the Church lost authority. And so I believe that God used the Mormon missionaries in a way that neither I nor they ever would have imagined: To lead me to ask questions of my own Evangelical Protestant beliefs.
For a deeper treatment of the problem Protestants have when countering Mormon claims, see this post on Called to Communion that demonstrates there is no principled difference between Mormonism’s claims of the corruption of Christ’s Church after the death of the last Apostle and Protestantism’s claims of the corruption of the Church sometime within the first 4 centuries.
Martin Luther: By What Authority?
Martin Luther lived only about 500 years ago. That is, in time and in history he is closer to us than he was to Christ and the apostles. One of his boldest actions was to pass personal judgment on whether certain accepted books of the Biblical canon were truly inspired or not.
Not all of his assertions in this regard were ultimately accepted by Protestants, but his influence was and is tremendous. I want to examine one point in particular here: By what authority did Martin Luther, 1500 years after Christ, make a determination over the Church’s decision about which writings were and which were not inspired by God?
By what authority? Imagine if someone today made such an outrageous claim? What if I stood up and said: “The book of James is an epistle of straw–I can see nothing from the Gospel in it”? Or what if I recommended throwing out 10 books of the Bible based on my own opinions? I would be run out of town on a rail and well should be! What hubris to declare that I know what books should be in the Bible over the Church’s decision, yet that was what Martin Luther did.
Martin Luther
Protestants and Mormons are forced to maintain two curious positions with regard to the canon of Scripture:
1. The Church mostly got stuff right in the 300s, even though she had lost Christ’s authority and corruption had entered her teachings
2. Martin Luther and the reformers, building off what the corrupted Church mostly got right, figured out what they didn’t get right, removing the non-inspired books in the canon of Scripture in the 1500s (after 1200 years of Christians believing uninspired books to be inspired).
Mormons have additional beliefs in regard to writings inspired by God which are specific to them and which significantly differentiate them from Protestants, so I am not here saying that there is no difference between the two groups–there are stark and important differences, but for the purposes of the Church losing authority in the early centuries, they are quite similar.
The Fruit of the Reformation
What if Martin Luther was somehow right. Let’s assume that and look at the fruits of his actions. Are Protestants unified under one truth, in one church? No, quite the opposite is the case. From the very beginning of the Reformation and ever since, what we have instead seen is the consequence of many, many other Christians doing what Martin Luther did: They declare their own authority and break off to form their own new church, with its own particular set of beliefs, and then this process repeats anytime someone thinks that their interpretation of Scripture is correct and another person’s is in error. This first schism has led to countless more schisms.
No one knows how many different fractures there have been since that time; various people have attempted to make timelines with branches to show the major divisions of the largest Protestant ecclesial communities, but even just covering the big ones quickly becomes an exponential explosion.
An anecdote: Just down the street from our house there is a 1 mile stretch of road (Duval) that drives this point home to me: First comes the Covenant United Methodist Church, then right next door (literally) is Bethel Baptist Church, then a short way past that is Northwest Church of Christ; a few hundred yards later is the Imani Community Church, followed by the Austin Taiwanese Presbyterian Church; you then have only to cross the street to get to the First Church of God. All of these Christian communities exist along a single mile of road, and this is not a unique example but is duplicated with variations in every city and most towns in the United States.
Northwest Church of Christ's Statement
Do the Christians going to these communities know the origins of them? Do they know why they aren’t unified with one another? In my experience, probably not, for most of these things have been long forgotten or never known in the first place. Few Christians see a problem with it, even though it flies in the face of Christ and his commandment that we should be one as He and the Father are one.
An Analogy with the United States
“So what?” you may ask. Does it really help us to know all of this history–does it actually matter for how I live my faith here and now? Is there really a problem with the view of history that says: “There were the first century Christians and then later on at some point in time other Christians gave us the (mostly accurate) Bible and then a lot of stuff happened in between then and now but it doesn’t matter that much because here we are today with the Bible and our minds and the Holy Spirit”?
This attitude is akin to a United States citizen today saying that he doesn’t need to know his nation’s history in order to be a good American. He knows the Constitution exists, was written by people 200 years or so ago, and has even read part of it. What difference does it make to his life? After all, life is good in America and what’s the big deal about learning the foundations of my country?
The first problem with this idea is that we have no way of truly understanding who we are now as a citizen of our particular country if we don’t know how our country was founded and subsequently developed. Such a person has heard of George Washington and knows he did some good things, and he knows about George Bush and Barack Obama, but he doesn’t know how we got from one to the other. He doesn’t know about Teddy Roosevelt or FDR, the Great Depression or Truman, World War II, and the nuclear bomb. He doesn’t know about Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War and Dred Scott and Brown vs. Board of Education and Plessy vs. Ferguson and “separate but equal” nor about women’s suffrage and the Oklahoma Sooners (not the football team) and Prohibition and the 14th amendment, just to name a few highlights from our nation’s relatively short history. All of these persons and events have greatly contributed to the life every American person is now living, including all of the many great things about our country that make it a beautiful place to call patria. The freedoms enjoyed by the American today were fought tooth and nail for by our American forefathers and foremothers, and it is at best ungrateful to disdain to even learn about what they went through for us.
The third problem is that the barbarians are always at the gate of civilization. If you don’t know who you are, you do not know that you need to defend your gates against them (or even perhaps know how to recognize the barbarians–you may just let them in!), and so your civilization will fall before them. From John Courtney Murray, a Jesuit priest and philospher:
On both of these titles, as a heritage and as a public philosophy, the American consensus needs to be constantly argued. If the public argument dies from disinterest, or subsides into the angry mutterings of polemic, or rises to the shrillness of hysteria, or trails off into positivistic triviality, or gets lost in a morass of semantics, you may be sure that the barbarian is at the gates of the City. The barbarian need not appear in bearskins with a club in hand. He may wear a Brooks Brothers suit and carry a ball-point pen with which to write his advertising copy. In fact, even beneath the academic gown there may lurk a child of the wilderness, untutored in the high tradition of civility, who goes busily and happily about his work, a domesticated and law-abiding man, engaged in the construction of a philosophy to put an end to all philosophy, and thus put an end to the possibility of a vital consensus and to civility itself.
Can you imagine then forgetting or ignoring 1500 – 1700 years of the Church’s history? We remember Christ and Peter and John and Stephen and Paul but we say who? to Augustine, Aquinas, Francis, Dominic, Catherine of Siena, Pope St. Leo the Great, Ignatius Martyr, Justin Martyr, Polycarp, Helen (not of Troy), and Theresa of Avila (and Lisieux, and Calcutta) and we say what? to the Arian heresy, Gnosticism, Rome and Constantinople, the Te Deum, the Rosary, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Church Councils, just to name a few from Christian history that is also the history that Christ entered into and redeemed.
We forget or ignore this history at our great peril, yet I maintain that is what most Christians do when they make the claim that the Church lost Christ’s authority–that it came to them more or less as-is from the first century and that they don’t need to know about anything in between. The history of the Church and of the Christian faith tell a different tale. Writings from Christians in the first centuries reveal a Church that involves the Eucharist, the Mass, the Sacraments, and the successors of the apostles, the Bishops, who had authority and were to be followed. Does this sound like the church or denomination you belong to?
Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, need to learn the origins and development of the Faith they believe in through reading and study, and then prayerfully discern the implications on where and how they worship.
Conclusion
The Scriptures say that the Church is the pillar and bulwark of the truth. Christ founded a Church, gave the keys of the kingdom of Heaven to Peter, and declared that the gates of Hell would not prevail against her.
Perugino: The Giving of the Keys to St. Peter
If the Church has ever lost Christ’s authority, then there is no way of knowing what we believe is right and what is wrong for her teachings would have been corrupted. Only if the Holy Spirit has guided the Church into all truth throughout the centuries–for in every one of them she has been attacked–only then do we know the canon of Scripture, only then do we know what is heresy and what is not, and only then do we know moral from immoral behavior.
Christ wants us to know the truth in all of these things, and only He could guide a Church full of imperfect people into all truth, such that her teachings could be trustworthy! It is miraculous and beautiful. Thank you for exploring these ideas with me; I hope that you will seek the truth and find it in its fullness, by God’s grace.
For further reading about authority and Christ’s Church as it relates to Protestant and Catholic Christians today, read my posts on apologetics and ecumenism.
Recommend reading:
By What Authority, by Mark Shea, presents the most concise and logical explanation that I have found of how an Evangelical Protestant discovered and came to believe in Sacred Tradition.
Crossing the Tiber, by Steve Ray, covers a lot, but I find it most useful for its references to the writings of early Christians concerning doctrines that Catholics and Protestants differ on (e.g. Baptism, Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, etc.).
Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic, by David Currie, explains his conversion to Catholicism from being a devout fundamentalist Protestant, and also covers how he came to believe in the Catholic Church’s teaching on many specific doctrines that Catholics and Protestants differ on.
Evangelical Is Not Enough, by Thomas Howard, is a unique book in that he contrasts his understanding and practice of the Faith as an Evangelical Protestant vs. a liturgical (Anglican) Christian with respect to prayer, worship, the Eucharist, the liturgical calendar year, etc. Howard entered full communion with the Catholic Church shortly after writing this book. I think it is a great book to help an Evangelical understand how a liturgical Christians understands and practices the Faith and vice versa to help a liturgical Christian understand how an Evangelical Protestant understands and practices the Faith.
I think most people would classify me as a Protestant, and I do not intend to speak for the whole of Protestantism, but I do not believe that the Church has ever lost the authority or objectives issued by Christ (e.g., Matthew 16:16-19, 28:16-20, Acts 1:7-8). I think the Church has ignored His authority by splintering into a bunch of denominations, and I think that over the course of history the Church generally has not exercised His/Her authority, but I do not agree that She ever lost that authority. (Perhaps I am an exception within Protestantism.)
However, I do join you in praying for the unification of the Church under the Lordship of Christ. May the Bride be wholly captivated with the Groom and none with Herself!
Hello,
I just had to respond to this comment. There is a problem with the definition of “the Church”. The writer of the web site is stating that the authority was given to Peter by Jesus and this Church has remained the Catholic Church with Peter’s successors ordained without breaking the succession and passing this authority through the sacrament of holy orders. If one is a protestant, one believes by definition that the Catholic Church’s statement that it has not lost its authority is incorrect. So the statement by the poster that he or she agrees that the Church has not lost her authority would make him or her a Catholic. I think the poster does not understand Catholic doctrine enough, no disrespect intended, so this comment, with due respect, is not logical.
Excellent analysis- it agrees with my understanding of the situation as well. I would respond to a portion of your post with a Mormon perspective (it’s the only one I’m competent to speak on.
). My intent is not to be argumentative but to demonstrate how my beliefs are consistent.
You wrote:
“But if the Church lost authority before she discerned and declared the canon of Scripture, that means that her decision cannot be trusted!”
I have the utmost respect for the faithful clergy of the Catholic church who compiled the writings into what we call the Bible. The fact that they conscientiously sought direction from the Lord is evidenced by the wise methodology they used in their selection process. The compilation that they produced has been incalculably valuable to the world. I do not, however, believe those clergy to be infallible. They used the best information they had to determine which of the manuscripts in circulation were authentic and inspired.
Regardless of my belief on the state of the authority of the church at that time, I do not need to simply trust their compilation. I am capable of receiving confirmation directly from the Lord through His spirit that those books contain truth. It is from this source that I gain my faith in the truthfullness of the bible- not from any implicit faith in its compilers.
There are so many troubling things, but…
Has God obviously and clearly worked in and been present in and born fruit in the lives of specific men and women who were not Catholic? I would submit He has. My family has read many books on such men and women.
Has God obviously and clearly worked in and been present in and born fruit in the lives of specific men and women who were Catholic? I would submit He has.
Devin has apparently read many books on such men and women.
I have no problem with this contradictory data. God can be found alive in some people who profess to be members of the Catholic Church and God can be found alive in some people who profess to be members of a non-Catholic Christian church.
In many senses, you could say, “We are the church – many who attend Catholic Churches and many who align with non-Catholic Christian churches.” You could say that each of us is too stubborn or apathetic or prideful or argumentative or anal to give an inch of doctrinal ground and dissolve our church to become part of another group of the church.
Personally, I am on a journey. That journey is to become more Christ-like everyday. To die to myself more every day. To follow God’s plan for me every single day as he reveals it. If the Catholic church is the one keeper of the ‘Way’, then I expect I will arrive there willingly as I become more Christ-like. Devin – you and I both ‘came alive’ from our journeys through darkness while in the Protestant church. What truth does the Protestant church have? Why did this happen? Is your trust and faith in the Catholic Church or in the Jesus who paid for our sins on the cross?
It would be irresponsible of me not to comment on this post. At the same time I don’t feel it is appropriate to exhaustively address all of the issues that you raised considering that 1) This is your website and 2) I’m not eloquent enough to do it justice. Therefore, I will attempt to address the subjects that I think are the most important.
I will begin at the end:
“And so I believe that God used the Mormon missionaries in a way that neither I nor they ever would have imagined”
This is probably often going to be true- regardless of your beliefs. The Lord cares about our well being. If those missionaries succeeded in improving your life by causing you to think about God in ways you may not have before, then they were, in part, successful in their goals.
“the Holy Spirit utterly failed to lead the Church into all truth–indeed”
I don’t think that it would be appropriate to describe Mormon beliefs using this language. Any failure does not, of course, lie with the Holy Spirit but with men. The Holy Spirit was available to them after the day of Pentecost. The Lord will not force men to follow Him. The apostasy occurred because the church of Christ was rejected by men not because of any deficiency of the Holy Spirit.
““So what about all the Christians who lived and were martyred and followed our Lord from 100 to 1829?” They answered, “Those people had ‘faith in Christ’” but it was not the true faith; it was deficient.”
Again, I would start by saying that I don’t think it would be an accurate description of our beliefs to phrase it this way. The faith of those followers of Christ was pure. It was not deficient. What was deficient was the authority to receive revelation and perform ordinances. This deficiency does not, however, mean that those people were any less worthy or that their faith was somehow inadequate. We believe that people who would have accepted in mortality everything that Christ offered but did not have the opportunity will be given the opportunity to do so after they die. This would apply to people who lived during the apostasy or even people today who are not presented with the opportunity to learn or to choose.
And finally- the most important, or at least most relevant to our discussion here. It also may be the most difficult to properly communicate. I hope you will be gracious enough to overlook my personal deficiencies in language.
“The missionaries presented no historical nor theological evidence to support the claim that the Church lost her authority; it was an assertion.”
Consistent with our beliefs as Mormons, the authority of Christ was restored in modern times. Consequently we have a responsibility to proclaim that to others- to do otherwise would be incredibly hypocritical. Incident to that, with that same divine authority, those missionaries have been called to proclaim and to teach with the authority of the Spirit. Theirs is not a mission to convince or persuade people to belief. Missionaries who are effective at their work do not engage in any arguments and rely on testimony and the power of that same Spirit to bear witness that it is true to the hearts of the listeners.
It is only by the personal witness of the Holy Spirit that a person can know that this doctrine is true. There are hosts of evidences both historical and theological that support this position, however, it would have been irrelevant when those missionaries were speaking just as it would be irrelevant (or even harmful) in this forum. All the evidence in the world isn’t proof. Proof comes from the Spirit and so that is what you have to have first.
I have truly appreciated these blog posts and the spirit in which they have been written. They have given me valuable insight into the differences between our beliefs and that increases our ability to set them aside to be friends.
Nathan: “I have truly appreciated these blog posts and the spirit in which they have been written. They have given me valuable insight into the differences between our beliefs and that increases our ability to set them aside to be friends.”
Jeff:
Mormonism and non-Mormon Christianity are fundamentally different. 1 or more of the 3 camps (Protestant, Catholic, Mormon) are incorrect. All 3 believe the consequences to be catastrophic, fatal, terrible, and awful.
Of course, we can all choose to be friends. I would choose that. We can be cordial. We can be kind. We can be patient. We can accept that someone else has asked us to shut up.
I can not set aside my beliefs on the topic of why we’re here, what we should do, and what happens when we die. I believe them to be too important. Setting them aside would be a disservice to a friend.
I imagine this to be part of Devin’s goals – to push the issues.
I do believe that only the Holy Spirit changes hearts and calls men to a saving knowledge of Jesus. I believe the Bible speaks plainly of that. The Bible is also clear that there are 3 sources of voices – our minds, the enemy (Satan and his demons), and the God/Jesus/the Holy Spirit. I am on a journey to learn the difference. I frankly am getting pretty good. It really isn’t that hard. If it leads me away from God’s truth in the Bible, it is not God. If it leads me to glorify myself, it is not God. If it makes me feel guilty, shameful, lustful, anxious, prideful, rude, bitter, malicioius, lazy, etc. it is not God. If it makes me doubt God’s existence or character, if it makes me believe in something that contradicts God’s truth, if it makes me want to give up my faith, then it is not God.
If it is humbling, it is often God. If it makes me kill part of my flesh, it is often God. If it loosens my desire on the things of the world, it is often God. If I have no desire to give glory to myself, it is often God. If it makes me repentent, it is often God. If it is consistent with God’s word, it is often God. You get the idea.
The enemy counterfeits what God does. This is clear in the Bible. The enemy twists the scriptures – even to the face of Jesus, God himself in flesh. From my understanding, it is clear that the Book of Mormon is contradictory of the Bible with itself, and has been changed significantly over time. Mormons believe in the Holy Spirit confirming to them the truth. I have never heard of a first hand account of this – I would be interested to hear one – but from what I know of our enemy and his wickedness (quite a bit of experience) and of the Bible, it seems clear to me that the sensation Mormons feel is not the Holy Spirit, but an imposter and deceptive being – Satan. If it is genuine, everything I know and believe is a lie. If it is not genuine, everything Mormons know and believe is a lie – and everything I know and believe may or may not be a lie and must be evaluated separately.
This disagreement is foundational and cannot be glossed over and set aside except at great peril. Life is too short and the stakes are too high. Jesus calls us to go and make disciples of all nations – this is a life long calling. We’re all in it now.
We can choose to stop debating with each deciding that the other is too hardhearted and deceived to accept the ‘obvious’ truth, but it is almost criminal to pretend fundamental, worldview differences do not exist.
First, it is interesting that the quest for the spirit of Christian unity seems to imply: learn your history and become unified as Catholics.
Second, it is easy to attack any man who stands up, such as Luther.
Were any of Luther’s claims correct? That must be established independent of Luther himself. Luther was not a perfect man – none but Jesus can claim that. Luther gets no free pass – nor, in my opinion does anyone else – not even the head of a church. Any church.
Concerning his claims, what about:
relics?
indulgences?
purgatory?
Was there any merit to any of his complaints?
Attacks on a man are irrelevant.
e=mc^2 independent of Einstein’s shoe size or moral character.
Mozart produced beautiful music, yet Mozart appears to have been a vile character.
Fundamentally, what did Luther say and how do we determine whether he is correct or not? This is where things get interesting. What makes Luther different than a Pope?
Regarding determining if claims are correct, this also means Joseph Smith’s claims must be established as true or false, independent of his character – except to the extent that the claims require us to put our trust in Joseph Smith’s honesty, authenticity, etc., at which point we must examine Joseph Smith’s character, life, and subsequent teachings.
I do not think Martin Luther’s claims depend on Martin Luther’s credibility. Without a doubt, Joseph Smith’s claims depend on Joseph Smith’s credibility.
Any person who claims infallability (a Pope) does need to have their credibility checked. Anyone who claims personal revelation that contradicts what the Bible has to say (Smith) falls under this standard as well.
regarding there being multiple protestant churches:
1. I would submit that many catholics are ignorant of or disagree with their church’s teaching on their own combination of doctrines. For example, abortion. If there was a pro-abortion, catholic church, I wonder how many catholics would choose to attend there.
2. I think having many churches is more a result of human nature and our enemy. Some people like to make rules. Some people like to make things very black and white. People tend to focus on differences, get offended at others, and divide over pointless things. This is lamentable. As a protestant, I share so much with protestant brothers and sisters. I would feel at home in most protestant churches (though protestant is a big umbrella). I consider us unified enough. There are people that draw lines and defend castle walls. There are those that tend to move freely between castles, ignoring the differences. There is one entity that desires, encourages, and emphasizes this ‘disunity’ – Satan.
There are many mysteries of the teachings of Jesus. Great men with great brains and motives and prejudices all over the map have argued over these topics for 2000 years or more. It is puzzling to me whenever someone comes down on one side and says, ‘This is what we will believe for all time. This is truth.’ There are some things in scripture that are clear and of primary and utmost importance. There are others that are less important.
I believe Mormans and Christians diverge fundamentally on things that are of primary and utmost importance – divinity and nature of Jesus and innerency and supremecy of the Bible, for example. There can be no unity with such fundamental differences.
I believe Catholics and Protestants diverge on things that approach primary and utmost importance, but can at least be generally reconciled.
I believe Protestant churches generally diverge on things which are secondary in nature, though some are clearly heretical, IMHO.
Where Devman sees many protestant churches, I see many dead Catholic churches. Where does each faith end up? With people who must choose if they will follow Jesus’ command to love God and love others.
In rereading this the following morning, I’m not sure the last part of this was the most constructive thing I could’ve said. I wish to be more careful with the phrase ‘dead Catholic churches.’
This probably was not the best idea to communicate, though I wouldn’t be honest if I denied that my (biased and subjective and ignorant) observations were along these lines. I did not mean it defensively or even judgementally, though I’m sure it sounds like that.
I don’t know to what extent you are specifically trying to establish differences here between Catholics and Protestants, but when you say “The majority of Protestants have not read any Christian writings between the book of Revelation in the first century and Luther in the 16th,” I would argue that the majority of Catholics have not read any Christian writings between the book of Revelation, if they’ve even read that, and… well, nothing since then.
I’ve never gotten the impression of the Catholic church really encouraging its members to spend time reading the bible, much less anything else. The feeling I get is more of a “don’t worry about reading up on things, we’ll do that for you and tell you about it.” Perhaps part of the whole authority thing.
Anyway, that sentence struck me as a bit holier-than-thou, which didn’t feel right in a series about Christian Unity. It may not be intended that way, but I just wanted to let you know that’s how it felt when read.
This has been my perception of the Catholic church as well – that the church doesn’t encourage you to read the Bible.
Perhaps my perception or understanding are wrong. I would appreciate hearing Devman’s perspective on this.
I was in a Catholic Church downtown by UT in December. In the backs of the seats were not Bibles, but some type of church readings and perhaps songs. The kind lady in front of me informed me that the Bibles were kept elsewhere.
It seems odd to me that one might not be expected to desire a Bible during a service at a church.
Please try to watch a program or two on EWTN television. You will find that the Church DOES encourage reading the Bible. Just because many Catholics have been badly catechized and do not fully understand their religion does not mean the religion reflects their beliefs. The Church had many badly taught people, especially in the 1970s and since, but a new generation is better investigating and trying to correct these errors.
With regard to the poster who mentions pro-abortion “Catholics”, I think this is just another issue of not understanding how the Church works. By definition, a Catholic accepts the teachings of the Church, i.e., Rome. This does not mean the Catholic is perfect and can fulfill all of them. But he/she must accept them as correct. If that person disagrees with a materially significant teaching, that person is free to leave the Church, but is not free to continue to identify as “Catholic” and I’m not sure why he or she would want to, since he or she obviously does not agree with the teachings of the Church. I am continually mystified as to why these people who believe for example that abortion is OK, continue to want to be Catholics, since it is very clear the Church is against abortion and there are so many other churches that more closely reflect their beliefs. Yet they perversely continue to try to change the Church. Sounds like some kind of complex. Why be so obsessed with changing those that disagree with you? Why not go elsewhere?
Hi, Just a comment on Bibles at mass. Please if you are interested, try to do a little research on how the mass differs from a protestant service. There are many excellent books available and I cannot explain all the details here. The mass is rooted in the practices of the early Church and even in practices inherited from Judaism and is significantly different from a protestant service. By the way, I was raised Lutheran so I understand the difference now but before I started to study the Catholic Church I did not understand the difference. Once you do, you will see that we don’t need to have Bibles in the the pews,but that doesn’t mean Catholics must not read the Bible. As St. Jerome stated, “Ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ”. I think you might like some programs on EWTN or check out their web site for some books that explain what the mass is. As Archbishop Fulton Sheen stated, “There are millions of people who hate what they believe to be the Catholic Church, but very few who hate the Church once they have studied her” (this is not an exact quote, but you get the jist. God bless,
@ FCatholic: I apologize for the polemical way I came across in that passage. I have removed the paragraph and rewritten it to hopefully communicate what I intended in a more charitable way. Thank you for calling me on it.
@ Jeff W: Thank you for your comment! I have a few thoughts about this topic: A Catholic friend of ours brought one of her Protestant friends to Mass a week or so ago, and her friend was able to follow along and even make several responses at various points in the liturgy because, she explained, almost every part of the Mass was straight out of Scripture! I experienced this same familiarity when I was considering becoming Catholic; I recognized so much of the spoken content of the Mass because I was well-versed in Scripture.
Additionally, at every Mass there are two to three Bible readings, sometimes very lengthy, which was quite a bit more than the amount of Scripture read during my Baptist services. Oftentimes my Baptist pastor would spend 30 minutes on just one verse of Scripture! Of course he was applying it, interpreting it, etc., so it was very good, but the expectation was that you didn’t go to church expecting to hear much quantity of Scripture, if you will, but instead were expected to be reading it on your own.
That being said, I think that there is a significant lack of personal Scripture reading amongst Catholics. This has been changing for the better in the recent past, but it is a long way to go before we match our Protestant brothers in personal study of the Bible.
I have a baby who wants to help me type more right now, but in spite of his best efforts, his banging on the mouse buttons is not helping, so I will have to leave off any longer response until perhaps later.
Peace in Christ!
@ Jeff W: Just to clarify for onlookers, the “song books” that you might have noticed in a Catholic church contain weekly readings as well (maybe an effort to save money- I don’t know). Most Catholic churches use the same book.
One really cool thing that I like about the Catholic Church is that our weekly readings are consistent across the world. That is, a schedule is adhered to containing each Sunday’s readings (regardless of what country/language/etc that you’re in). We have A, B, C rotations on readings such that within 3 years, you will have at least heard the entire Bible (as long as you’re paying attention). Not that this should serve as an excuse for not reading the Bible regularly outside of Mass, but it definitely helps those with 2 babies.
From my understanding, Mormons do something similar with the Bible and the book of Mormon being consistent across churches.
This kind of thing helps out on vacations. It’s like you don’t need a DVR for Mass; the same show is on wherever you’re at.
@ DevMan (now “Devin Rose”?): Thanks for clarifying something that I’ve been curious about. I could not get a straight answer from my Protestant friends how it’s possible to have faith in the Bible itself and not on the authority that compiled it. The idea that the Church’s authority was withdrawn gradually from ~400 AD at least seems more rationale than “I don’t know”.
@ Jeff W: On Martin Luther, I have to say at least one positive thing about the revolution. There WAS a lot of corruption in the Church at that time. While I believe that God’s true inspiration was revealed through the ordinary and Sacred Magisterium nonetheless, I think it has a positive influence that the corruption was explicitly called out.
That being said, the idea that he knew better than the original councils that compiled that Bible based on his personal philosophies is a bit troubling to me. How can you accept part of what the council authoritatively decided (as a collective catholic church), but not the whole thing? How do you know that your 66 (right?) books are the right ones? At some point, it has to be faith – perhaps faith in God that He would not let his church be led astray. Luther’s denial of this authority was like removing a foundation on a building.
As some comments have reflected, many Catholics still try to do the same thing where they deny the authority of the Church in the interest of their own personal opinions. In my mind, these people are not really Catholic. I used to be a cafeteria Catholic, but it was through this questioning about the historic authority of the Catholic church that I realized it’s kind of an all or nothing thing. While not everything that a bishop or priest says is authoritative, when everybody gets together (the Magisterium), they are. “Where 2 are gathered…” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infallibility_of_the_Church
@ Shane: Thanks for your comment! I apologize for taking forever to make any reply, but I am going to respond to the comments beginning from the first, which yours was.
I guess one question I would ask you is, if the Church never lost Christ’s authority but didn’t always exercise it, how do we know when the Church did and did not exercise it over the course of history? Specifically, how do we know if the Church exercised it in choosing the canon of Scripture in the 300s?
Secondly, now that there are many denominations with conflicting teachings on God, Christ, the canon of Scripture, etc., which of these still has the authority, if the Church never lost it? Some of them cannot have it if they teach false things about Christ.
@ Nathan 1st comment: Thanks for giving us a Mormon’s perspective on this; you wrote:
“I have the utmost respect for the faithful clergy of the Catholic church who compiled the writings into what we call the Bible. The fact that they conscientiously sought direction from the Lord is evidenced by the wise methodology they used in their selection process. The compilation that they produced has been incalculably valuable to the world. I do not, however, believe those clergy to be infallible. They used the best information they had to determine which of the manuscripts in circulation were authentic and inspired.”
My questions are: if you do not believe that the Christians who discerned which books were inspired by God and which were not did so with God’s divine guidance (or authority) such that they did so without erring, why do you believe that they got all of the books right, or even half of them?
I understand that the Mormon Bible is the 73 books discerned and chosen by the early Church bishops in the 300s minus the 7 deuterocanonical books removed by the reformers in the 16th century. The Great Apostasy was going on throughout this entire span, so on what basis do Mormons believe that, first, the fallible bishops who did not have the authority from God (or “priesthood”) got things mostly right and second that the Protestant reformers 1200 years later, still without the priesthood, got the rest of it right?
Thank you for your consideration.
@ Jeff W. 1st comment: Hi Jeff! We have privately corresponded about several of the points you bring up in this first comment, but very briefly for the sake of our blog readers who are not privy to our correspondence:
You wrote: “What truth does the Protestant church have? Why did this happen? Is your trust and faith in the Catholic Church or in the Jesus who paid for our sins on the cross?”
The Catholic Church believes that the Holy Spirit is alive in hundreds of millions of Protestant Christians throughout the world, in accordance with their valid baptisms, and He certainly works powerfully in their lives and even in the lives of those persons who have not yet heard the Gospel. This is in agreement with what you believe as far as God working in Catholic and Protestant believers lives, so we are not in disagreement here.
Is my faith and trust in Jesus Christ or in His spotless Bride, the Church, which is also His Mystical Body? It is in both because Christ has married His Church and cannot be divided from her. As we talked about, it is a “both-and” not “either-or”. Protestants and Catholics have different understandings of what the “Church” is, which I think leads to your comment about believing in Christ and not in the Church whereas I assert that it is both-and based on my understanding of what the Church is.
@ Nathan, 2nd comment: You wrote (first quoting me): ““the Holy Spirit utterly failed to lead the Church into all truth–indeed”
I don’t think that it would be appropriate to describe Mormon beliefs using this language. Any failure does not, of course, lie with the Holy Spirit but with men. The Holy Spirit was available to them after the day of Pentecost. The Lord will not force men to follow Him. The apostasy occurred because the church of Christ was rejected by men not because of any deficiency of the Holy Spirit.”
What is the evidence that the immediate successors of the apostles, whom we have recorded writings of, apostasized and that these second-generation Christians rejected the Church of Christ? I would be interested in hearing and reading the historical and theological basis for this assertion.
You wrote later: “Consistent with our beliefs as Mormons, the authority of Christ was restored in modern times. Consequently we have a responsibility to proclaim that to others- to do otherwise would be incredibly hypocritical. Incident to that, with that same divine authority, those missionaries have been called to proclaim and to teach with the authority of the Spirit. Theirs is not a mission to convince or persuade people to belief. Missionaries who are effective at their work do not engage in any arguments and rely on testimony and the power of that same Spirit to bear witness that it is true to the hearts of the listeners.
It is only by the personal witness of the Holy Spirit that a person can know that this doctrine is true. There are hosts of evidences both historical and theological that support this position, however, it would have been irrelevant when those missionaries were speaking just as it would be irrelevant (or even harmful) in this forum. All the evidence in the world isn’t proof. Proof comes from the Spirit and so that is what you have to have first.”
Whether Christ restored authority in modern times and gave it to the Mormon church is based on whether you believe that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God and also the prerequisite that the Church lost Christ’s authority in the first place at some point in history, which is the question that this blog page is hoping to explore. I agree that you as a Mormon must follow your conscience and beliefs in seeking to evangelize others; however, you also must endeavor to ensure your beliefs are true using faith and reason.
I would be interested in hearing the historical and theological evidences of the Mormon claims (as I mentioned in the above comment), which you alluded to but did not detail. It is vitally important to our discussion here, which is engaging both faith and reason, to learn what those are. Claiming that the way to come to believe that Mormonism is true is solely by the Holy Spirit personally witnessing it to you in your heart is a claim that can equally be made by Protestants and even by Catholics. But the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, and our beliefs cannot all be true, for we believe in mutually exclusive things in crucial matters of faith, like the nature of God Himself. That is why we must also engage in our reason to examine the claims made by Mormons, Protestants, and Catholics. Through faith and reason we can find the truth; using only faith, we risk falling into error through fideism.
The fact that so many religions and ecclesial communities make reference to the “inner witness of the Spirit” is what makes the employment of our God-given reason not only valuable but essential to discerning which religion or community in their teachings, if any, is actually following the Holy Spirit without error. Otherwise we deadlock, each asserting the Holy Spirit told “me” the truth.
@ Jeff W., 2nd comment:
You wrote in response to Nathan: “1 or more of the 3 camps (Protestant, Catholic, Mormon) are incorrect. All 3 believe the consequences to be catastrophic, fatal, terrible, and awful.
I can not set aside my beliefs on the topic of why we’re here, what we should do, and what happens when we die. I believe them to be too important. Setting them aside would be a disservice to a friend.
I imagine this to be part of Devin’s goals – to push the issues.”
Yes it is! I want us to recognize the fact that, though we all say we are following the Holy Spirit (and I do believe all of us are trying to, according to our faith and understanding), we all believe different things–to varying degrees–about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the Church, what books are in the Bible, and so on.
Usually we don’t consider these differences in depth and seek to get to the heart of them because it is hard. It causes disagreements amongst people who are friends, and that can be uncomfortable. But God does not call us to be comfortable but to seek Him and live by the truth, and so I think it is imperative that we explore these matters.
Jeff, you referenced the content of the Bible as the standard by which you judge what is right and wrong, and I understand why this is so; the Bible is the word of God. However, as I mentioned above, my Bible, what I claim to be the inspired words of God Himself, has 73 books in it, and your Bible, which you also claim to be the inspired words of God, has 66 books in it. Something went wrong at some point in the past for us to both be Christians striving to follow God’s truth in the Bible and yet we don’t agree on what exactly makes up the Bible!
You mentioned Satan in your post, Jeff, and how much he hates us and wants us to be deceived. I would submit that Satan would love it if he could get a significant portion of Christians to either reject 7 of God’s inspired books or to accept 7 books not inspired by God. Clearly, God inspired certain books and did not inspire others, and He clearly would only go to the trouble of inspiring books if He wanted us, His children, to read them, take them to heart, and live by them. So the fact that we do not agree on which of the books make up the Bible means that someone against God is at work–the Evil One; I think you would agree.
The other thing I would mention is that, when you say “the Bible”, you actually mean “your interpretation of the Bible”. We think that the Bible is clear on many things, yet we differ on important matters of the faith like whether God washes away sin in baptism, whether there is a sacrament called confirmation, whether God instituted the sacrament of holy orders (the ministerial priesthood) and whether He gave authority to his apostles and their successors to forgive sins (cf. John 20, “Receive the Holy Spirit: whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained”).
It is true that your and my interpretations of the Bible are quite similar in many important areas, but what about President Barack Obama’s interpretation? He claims to be a Christian and has quoted the Bible in speeches; he goes to a Protestant church and takes his family. I bet he would say he strives to live by the Bible, too. But we know that it is his own interpretation of the Bible, which differs from ours on most important moral issues; by what authority do we say that his interpretation is wrong? Or that Jeremiah Wright, the Protestant pastor who was his spiritual director, is wrong?
My point is that the premise: “God ordained it so that the Holy Spirit inspires a person to be able to pick up the Bible and accurately interpret it to discern the truth on matters of the faith and of morals” is false. God could have ordained it that way, but He did not, and the proof is in the myriad schisms we have in the world today, each claiming that “they” have most accurately interpreted God’s truth in the Bible.
Instead, He must have done it differently. I propose that God gave us His Church to be the pillar and bulwark of the truth and that He ordained the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth, as Christ promised, through and in union with His Church. It was this way in the beginning, when Christ gave His apostles authority, and then those apostles, very simply, transmitted their God-given authority to their successors, by God’s grace and power.
One thing that occurred to me the other day is that the Catholic Church is the only Christian denomination that acts with confidence and authority. It names new saints every year (and by so doing declares “These people are in heaven and we are sure of it”). It performs exorcisms in which it orders demons around. It takes on powerful governments. It issues new teachings. It declares some things good and other things bad. It chooses new supreme leaders (Popes) when needed. In short, it still speaks and behaves like an authoritative institution. It leads, boldly.
No other church does these things. All the other churches say weak things like “Your relationship with God is between you and God.” The weak, splinter churches can’t get out of a position of authority fast enough. They have deferred on all the most important issues of the day. They don’t *want* to be in authority.
Now, go read where the part of the Gospels where Jesus says he is going to create a Church and the gates of Hell will not withstand it. Does that sound like a wimpy institution to you?
Good insight Freddy–I totally agree.
Oh my goodness… there sure are a lot of words imputed to different groups without attributing the speaker. To lump all protestants together and say “they believe this or that” is a bit broad, don’t you think?
First of all, on the church as an institution… blindly following any human or human institution without reference to Scripture is dangerous… and the church is a human institution… ordained by God, yes… but operated by sinful humans. There were egregious flaws with the Church at that time, but I will site a reasonably benign example: At the time of the reformation, both the teaching of The Church and the written Scripture were in latin… a language that no one except the priest could understand. I’m just guessing, but I don’t think that’s what Jesus had in mind for spreading the gospel message. I don’t remember a passage telling peter to go spread the gospel in Latin. However, Paul does encourage us to be prepared to give a defense for our faith… which is kinda hard to do if you can’t read the Bible and the priest is teaching in a foreign language.
Second… on the issue of “Christ’s Church” losing authority. That statement alone implies that the Roman Catholic Church is the sum total of “Christ’s Church”. One could argue that the orthodox churches have as much right to claim sole source as the RC church. And the authority question reminds me of the Pharisees asking Jesus by what authority He did the things He did. I’m not comparing the reformers to Jesus. My point is that the Pharisees had clearly lost touch with God’s purposes, yet they were the pre-Christ equivalent of The Church, and Jesus didn’t have much time for them. The reality (swallow deeply) is that Christ’s Church is the body of ALL people who believe that they are forgiven because Christ died for their sins. Of course that’s the principle that the word catholic implies. The beauty is that God is big enough to handle our diversity… and let’s be honest, there’s plenty of room for theological discussion… we don’t know everything yet. What we do know is that God gave us the Scripture for a guide… on that I think we can all agree.
Here’s an analogy… When a couple gets married in the church, we say, “What God has ordainded, let no man put asunder.” Yet people get divorced (or annulled, if you want to take that path). The question is this… did the ordination not stick? Did God make a mistake? Did God withdraw His ordination? Of course not. Divorce exists because humans are fallible. The marriage vows are a sacred thing ordained by God, yet humans are given the freedom to mess things up. The reformation happened because humans were fallible. The leaders of the Roman Church were fallible… the reformers were fallible. My own Presbyterian denomination is taking a theological (I use the term loosely here) path that I find hard to abide. For many years, we have chosen to stay in the denomination to be “salt and light”, but there may come a time when we have to part company. The reality is that man can screw up just about anything, and you don’t have to be particularly astitute to see that in church history from Adam to now… in every church, without exception.
You stated: The premise: “God ordained it so that the Holy Spirit inspires a person to be able to pick up the Bible and accurately interpret it to discern the truth on matters of the faith and of morals” is false. God could have ordained it that way, but He did not, and the proof is in the myriad schisms we have in the world today, each claiming that “they” have most accurately interpreted God’s truth in the Bible.
You further state: Instead, He must have done it differently. I propose that God gave us His Church to be the pillar and bulwark of the truth and that He ordained the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth, as Christ promised, through and in union with His Church. It was this way in the beginning, when Christ gave His apostles authority, and then those apostles, very simply, transmitted their God-given authority to their successors, by God’s grace and power.
I would counter that the reformation happened precisely BECAUSE His Church that was SUPPOSED to be the pillar and bulwark of the truth was corrupted by humans. Recognizing that this would always be a danger, Peter himself (a pretty important guy in the RC Church, right) said to the people in the pew: “you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light; for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” Peter the apostle calls the people in the pew a “royal priesthood”.
I’d like to end with thoughts on the apostolic succession. Was it not Peter, the rock, who denied Christ three times before the cock crowed? That’s awful darn close to the unforgivable sin, blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. Jesus picked twelve sinners to be His starting point, but they were just work-a-day dudes like the rest of us… called of God for a specific purpose, namely, to spread the gospel… just like the rest of us. He wasn’t trying to establish a hierarchical authoritative kingdom… His kingdom is not of this world. And if He were establishing a theological Kingdom, He certainly would not have picked Peter to lead it. Paul was the theologian. Peter was the socially awkward guy who could always be counted on to ask odd questions or say the wrong thing. In fact, Jesus said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.” Ouch! I’m not trying to dis Peter… he’s one of my favorite Biblical characters, and he was a character indeed. I’m just saying that I believe Jesus chose these guys to be an example of His view of the church… regular folks spreading the gospel. To the Pharisees, Jesus said all of the law of the prophets can be boiled down to two things: Love the Lord your God with all you heart, soul, mind and spirit; and love your neighbor as yourself. We don’t need a dMin to understand that… we just need the heart of Christ to DO it.
By the way, I apologize for the occasional capital letters. Unfortunately the text window doesn’t do bold or italics for emphasis.
Oh, just one other question… where would you go to church if Jeremiah Wright were chosen to be the next Pope? Its a rhetorical question, but he could be no worse than Leo X, Alex VI, Benedict IX and a number of others. Is there a theological version of the blind leading the blind?
Cheers
Curt
Curt,
1. Protestantism holds to certain fundamental doctrines across the board: sola scriptura, sola fide, corruption entered the Church at some point, denial of most of the sacraments, etc. It is possible to talk about Protestantism in a common way in regard to the commonly held beliefs.
2. Latin was the lingua franca of the Western world for centuries. When Jerome translated the Bible into the common Latin tongue, it wasn’t to obscure it but rather to promote it since that was the language most widely used (kind of like English today). As a matter of fact, in the 800s something called the Trilingual heresy was condemned by the Catholic Church, where some people tried to say the Bible and liturgy could only be in Hebrew, Greek, or Latin. The Church said No, and allowed vernacular translations (for instance at that time, the ones done by Sts. Cyril and Methodius).
3. The Church losing authority means “that Church which Christ founded, led by the Apostles and then their successors, which is easily discoverable reading any history by any person, from the 1st century onward.” It doesn’t mean the Roman Catholic Church necessarily. It means the Church that everyone knew was _the_ Church, led by _the_ bishops who were ordained by the Apostles and then their successors.
4. Under your view, everyone and every group is fallible. So tell me then how you know that the canon of scripture consists of the sixty-six particular books in your Bible. The men who discerned that those are the books that are inspired were fallible and likely erred.
5. Yup, Christ chose regular dummies like you and me to be his disciples and then lead His Church (Paul, Peter, Timothy, Titus, Clement….). And of themselves they are nothing, but with God’s power they could do everything, and they have.
6. If Jeremiah Wright became Pope, God would prevent him from teaching error as truth from the chair of Peter, as he has many popes who believed in heretical teachings.
My response…
1. You said, “Most Protestants believe, some implicitly and some explicitly, that the Church lost this authority at some point in time”, but you site no examples. I am a Protestant and would like you to support that statement with a variety of quotes from Protestant teaching. If most Protestants believe it, quotes from doctrinal statements should be readily available. I challenge this because I don’t think most Protestants believe your premise. I think most Protestants believe that Jesus appointed apostles, but that He did not create some royal lineage other than the “priesthood of all believers” described by the Peter (the apostle) in I Peter 2:9.
2. Latin at the time of the Reformation was a foreign language to most Europeans. This is why Luther translated the Bible into German. It certainly was foreign to my Catholic friends when I was a child. While I was learning Scripture in English at my Presbyterian church, they were hearing babel speak. From the Reformation to the 1960s was about 300 years of babel to the common man. This is a clear example of valuing man-made tradition above the great commandment of Christ… to make disciples of all men.
3. Point partially accepted. I say partially because I don’t accept your premise of a singular apostolic lineage… “and their successors”… according to whom? Following your concept that we should reunite all believers into one organized church, why not the Greek Orthodox Church? They could claim the same apostolic lineage and authority as the RC Church.
4. I’ll take this one piece by piece. Yes, everyone is fallible… that’s not just my view… that’s what the Bible teaches us (advantage, sermons in English!). Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. It does not say “some have sinned and some are perfect”… it does not say “everyone except the apostles has sinned”… in fact the apostles are the first to point out that they themselves are sinners saved by the grace of God. Therefore, of course, every group is fallible because you can’t make something perfect out of something that is fallible. That is not to say that fallibility leads to inevitable failure, only that fallibility is part of the equation. Why then would fallibility imply that those who chose the canon “likely erred”? Is there some probability equation for making that assertion? I have studied the criteria by which the canon of Scripture evolved in the early church and was eventually formalized, as well as the arguments made by later theologians and I have accepted the results of their work.
5. And I would add that the same is true for all of us. Christ chose us, and of ourselves we are nothing, but with God’s power we can do anything. Matthew 19:26 ‘And looking at them Jesus said to them, ” With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”‘ Mark 9:23 ‘Jesus said to him, “All things are possible to him who believes”‘. etc… We are all a part of the priesthood of all believers, called of Christ just as the apostles were… all sinners… all saved by grace.
6. Really? Are you saying that those in the apostolic line of the Church cannot be corrupted? Would you defend the sale of indulgences as Biblical doctrine? Selling forgiveness is not heretical teaching? Come on man. The Church itself does not believe that… At the Council of Trent, the Church outlawed the sale of indulgences. If the Church cannot be corrupted, how do you explain guys like Sergius III (904-11)? Known by his cardinals as “the slave of every vice,” he came to power after murdering his predecessor. He had a son with his teenage mistress — the prostitute Marozia, 30 years his junior — and their illegitimate son grew up to become the next pope. Or how about Benedict IX, (1032-48) who shocked even his most hardened cardinals by debauching young boys in the Lateran Palace. Repenting of his sins, he abdicated to a monastery, only to change his mind and seize office again. He was “a wretch who feasted on immorality,” wrote Saint Peter Damian, “a demon from hell in the disguise of a priest.” Was St Peter Damian wrong? Are we saying that these people did not teach error as truth? Would Jesus or any of the early apostles sanction these guys as the Vicar of Christ? I don’t think so… but maybe you disagree? There are many more examples, and I’m sorry to be so direct, but this is part of the history of the “Apostolic Succession”. The truth is that any man can be corrupted, whether its the Pope or Jimmy Swaggart. And all Christians are given sufficient discernment through Scripture and the Holy Spirit to know the difference between the spirit of Christ and that of corruptable man. “You will know them by their fruit.”
Blessings,
Curt
Curt
Hi Curt,
Thanks for your response.
1. I’ve heard lots of Protestants say that the (visible) Church lost divine authority during the (2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, take your pick) century when corruption entered her teachings. At that point, they argue, the real (invisible) Church continued but the visible Church became what is now known as the Catholic Church. I did a post sometime back on a Baptist pastor (who passed away last year) named Michael Spencer who mentioned it. Other Protestant apologists have too (James White for example). You are right that most Protestants don’t believe in apostolic succession, but I never claimed that they did.
2. Realize here you are jumping from 400 AD to 1500 AD. What was the dominant language amongst the learned in the West during that millennium? Even in the 1500s, Latin was still the language that learned and faithful men used to converse about the Scriptures. Still, Luther’s German translation was not the first into German (though it was the most influential). There is a value in preserving ancient ways of doing things rather than tossing them out and adopting the latest fads. In any event, the liturgy now is in Latin or the vernacular.
3. The Catholic Church recognizes that the Orthodox Churches (Greek, Syriac, Oriental) all have valid apostolic succession.
4. You say you have studied the criteria by which the canon of Scripture evolved in the early church and was eventually formalized as well as the arguments made by later theologians and I have accepted the results of their work.
Which criteria? By which members of the early Church? And which canon are you talking about (the sixty-six book Protestant one, the seventy-three book Catholic one, the seventy-five book Russian Orthodox one, or the seventy-eight book Ethiopian Orthodox one)? Which later theologians (Protestant, Catholic)? Which results have you accepted (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox)?
Learned and faithful men and women in all of these Christian groups have studied the various historical evidence for this or that canon and come up with different results. The fact is that you do not believe that God protected the Church from error, so the “early Church’s” discernment of the canon that “evolved” and crystallized in the 4th century was not protected from error, and in fact that same Church in these same centuries was already teaching doctrines you think are false (the Mass, prayers to the saints, baptismal regeneration, etc. etc.). So you have no principled reason for believing that (any) canon was protected from error while other doctrines discerned by the Church were not.
5. Yes, this applies to all of us, but there is also a ministerial priesthood and rightful authority which Christ ordained to govern His Church (Peter, Paul, Titus, Timothy, Clement, Ignatius, Irenaeus, etc.).
6. God has protected His Church from error in her teachings. That being said, certainly many leaders of the Church have abused their authority and also condoned abusive or bad practices (like selling indulgences). The theology behind indulgences has not changed. I have received many indulgences–they do not forgive sin–but rather take away the temporal punishment due to sin. Plenty of men and women in the Church have done evil things. So what? It doesn’t prove that the Church’s teachings are wrong, only that man is fallen.
God bless,
Devin
Curt, here’s a link to various Protestants talking about the canon, corruption of other teachings in the early Church, etc.
http://www.devinrose.heroicvirtuecreations.com/blog/2010/02/13/the-protestant-dilemma-on-the-canon-of-scripture/
1. You equate the authority of the church with the apostolic succession by basing the argument for that authority on the apostolic succession. Thus when you say, “Most Protestants believe, some implicitly and some explicitly, that the Church lost this authority at some point in time”, you are implying that most Protestants accept that the authority existed and thus the apostolic succession must have existed as well. Otherwise, there would logically have to be two versions of authority… The Protestant one and the Catholic one… and perhaps that is the crux of the issue.
2. Is your point that the Gospel is only for the learned, which at that time was a tiny percentage of the population? Is speaking in a language that people understand a fad? If “there is a value in preserving ancient ways of doing things”, why did the church change to Latin? Why not keep the Scripture in the original Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic or whatever? We can dance around these issues all day, or just admit the truth… the church leaders at the time were corrupt and did not want the common man to know that grace was a free gift… That would wreck the Papal retirement plan.
3. And yet they are separate… not united. How can this be in an infallible church?
4. And… if you believe that the Church was “protected from error” then why did the Church decide to include new books in the Scripture at the Council of Trent? Were they wrong before or wrong afterward? And… if they could make that change, what is to say that others couldn’t also debate the subject? The basis of your argument always comes back to the “apostolic succession”… they were right because they were in the alleged lineage… others are wrong because they are not.
5. Can you show me Scriptural references to support the concept of a “ministerial priesthood”? And also please provide the Scriptural reference where Christ ordains Peter, Paul, Titus, Timothy, Clement, Ignatius, Irenaeus, etc to govern the church.
6. But the teachings of the Church WERE wrong … the Church taught that sins could be forgiven through the patronage of indulgences… that was wrong. They admitted this in the Council of Trent, and abolished the practice. If God had protected the Church from the ills of sinful man, there would have been no Reformation. I agree that God protects His flock, and the church of believers, wherever they are. But when leaders of the church break from God and go their own way, there are consequences that splatter all over, just as ther are with any sin. The was true in the Roman Church… and the rest. The schism that occured at the reformation was caused by corruption in the Church, thus the “protection” arguement just doesn’t hold water… unless you take the Reformed Church to be God’s “protection” or exit plan for the body of believers.
Hi Curt,
1. Most Protestants that I have talked to do accept that the early Church leaders had rightful authority, but maybe you are different, so let me ask you to find out:
a. Do you believe that the twelve Apostles had authority from Christ to lead His Church? If not, you will need to explain many biblical passages that seem to indicate that they did.
b. Do you believe that the disciples of the Apostles (focus, for instance, on Timothy) had rightful authority to lead their churches (which were in union with one another, but that is a side-issue at this point)? Why or why not?
2. You have to realize that commoners, even though they could not read and write Latin, could still understand it when spoken. Also, vernacular languages were used frequently in the first 1500 years of Christianity, both for Bible translation and for the celebration of the liturgy. I pointed out Sts. Cyril and Methodius as just one example in the middle of this time period. The whole point of the Church was to teach the savings truths of Christ to the people, most of whom were illiterate (but not dumb), and that is what the deacons, priests, and bishops did: they spoke to the people in language they could understand (in homilies, sermons, proclamations, etc.). If you doubt this, just go look up the sermons of the Church Fathers which they delivered to the people.
When you say “the church leaders at the time were corrupt”–what time are you talking about? Are you talking about all church leaders from 300 to 1500 AD? Or just the 1500s? Were some leaders throughout all of Church history evil, twisted, corrupt, etc. to one degree or another? Sure, I don’t dispute that.
3. The unity of Christ’s Church remains regardless of whether some one or some group goes into schism from her. Apostolic Succession by itself is not a guarantee that one will not go into schism. The Orthodox Churches are in schism from the Catholic Church, but they have valid succession, sacraments (including ordination), etc. Infallibility relates to the bishops of the Church in full communion with the bishop of Rome, the Pope, when speaking on matters of faith and morals. Schismatic bishops are not in full communion with the Pope, so they do not affect infallibility in any way.
4. Did the Church add “new books” at the Council of Trent? I don’t think so. As just one point of evidence, all the Orthodox Churches (even the ones that schismed in the early first millennium) accept the seven deuterocanonical books which you claim were added in the 1500s. How do you answer that? Various councils in the Church in the fourth and fifth centuries included them, as did the canonical list in the Council of Florence 100 years before the Reformation.
5. It is clear from the Bible that certain men were given authority by God to preach, teach, administer sacraments, etc. The Bible uses words like elder, bishop, deacon, presbyter, etc. to differentiate them from lay Christians.
So, you don’t believe that Christ ordained/commissioned/sent the Apostles to govern the Church? Choose what word you want–it doesn’t matter much–the point is that Christ gave them authority. Do you reject that belief?
6. The sale of indulgences was stopped. Indulgences with the true doctrines behind them remained. Sure, there were times when local errors in teaching occurred (Luther’s area of Germany was one of these), but these were not the Church’s teachings but perversions of it. Which “Reformed” Church exhibited God’s protection?
God bless, and thanks for your email–will try to respond when I can.
Devin
1. I DO believe that Jesus chose 12 apostles to plant His church. I think where we are getting hung up is in the definition of “the church”. I see the church as the body of all believers in Christ. You see the church as a particular organizational structure. I think of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. She commented that Jews were to worship in Jerusalem (ie at the Temple). Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers.” I take this to mean that the church is not a building or a particular sect. The temple now resides within the heart of the believer. So to answer your question, yes, I believe that Jesus called the apostles to plant the church and the disciples of the apostles to continue the church. That does not mean, however, that I believe this created a specific lineage. Again, God calls whom He will to suit His purposes. When the Church went awry, He called Luther to speak up… a role which Luther would not have likely chosen for himself.
2. The debate over Latin is probably not worth pursuing much more. Suffice it to say that Luther seemed to think it was important enough to sit down and translate the whole Bible into German, no small task. Taking a few examples and imputing that these were true for the whole church does not jive with Luther’s willingness to take on this two-year project, which I doubt anyone would do if not really necessary.
3. OK… we agree that some church leaders, including Popes, were corrupt and even evil, by any Biblical standard… that was my only point. From that point, I deduce that these leaders were not chosen by God to be apostles of Christ… thus more evidence that there is not an indelible apostolic succession. For how can an evil Pope be the infallible voice of Christ on matters of faith? This is an obvious non-sequitur.
4. There was obvious debate within the Church as to which books were canonized and which were not. The books in question were in, they were out and they were moved around by the Roman Church, and others subsequently. I can give you specific books and dates, but I suspect you already know this. My point is that, if its ok for the Roman church to debate the question, then its ok for Luther and others to have the same debate. The argument comes back to the authority question… You see the Roman Catholic church as the only authority, I don’t. Further, I’m quite content with either the RC version of the Bible or the Protestant versions… I don’t see the deuterocanonical books making much difference in my faith, my view of God or my relationship with Him.
5. Yes, Christ called the apostles and ordained them… Just as He calls and ordains elders, deacons, pastors and presbyters in my Presbyterian church. People are called of God to fulfill His purposes. The primary difference is that in the Presby church there is some level of accountability, the Catholic church does not have that… the Pope cannot be questioned on matters of faith. That does not mean the Presbyterian church is incorruptible… it certainly is. Flying up to 10,000 feet… My observation of church history is this: From the time of Adam until now, God has established His church body through different organizational means, and man has corrupted it in every case. This was true for the Jews before Christ, the Catholic church after Christ and the Reformed churches through the current time. I would further observe that, in spite of man’s corruption, God continues to advance the Kingdom by raising up new people to serve His purposes, and is not bound by one group or the other. This too can be seen throughout the history of the church. I also beleive that He sent the Holy Spirit along with the Scripture to give each of us the discernment to recognize false teaching… and in this regard, I would agree that God is protecting His church (the entire body of believers, not just the RC church per se).
6. a. I am very confused by your use of the word “church” as it is a moving target… an ethereal entity immune from specific people when there are problems and then a very real entity with specific people when things are good. The payment of indulgences was not a “local error” it was the teaching of the “church” (the specific entity with real people, bishops, popes, etc.) from the top down. This, in my book, nullifies those real people from any precept that they are annointed of God succession, thus nullifying the succession concept altogether. If Sergius III is the Vicar of Christ then I am the anti-Christ. Unfortunately, God has to make course corrections on our behalf because we are sinful human beings. Just look at the Old Testament… lots of examples where God annoints leaders, they screw up and they are out. Martin Luther and other Reformers were God’s course correction for the errs of the RC church leadership at that time. Were they perfect? No, but at least they were trying to follow Scripture.
b. I do not believe that there is a “true doctrine” of indulgences. When Jesus was hanging on the cross, He told the thief next to Him, “Today you shall be with me in paradise”. Did Jesus drop ten bucks in the plate for him to speed up his ascent? No. Was there a temporal punishment for his sin? No. Was Jesus wrong? NO. Again, my sole source for authority is the Scripture… See Hebrews 7:23-28 Jesus is the high priest… “For it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens; who does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the sins of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.” Jesus’ death on the cross was sufficient payment for all sin. 2Cor 12:9 “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness”… Gal 5:4 “You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace.” So grace plus works equals no grace. Eph 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Grace and grace alone… nothing we can add. I could go on. And yes I’m aware of James 2… that works are an outward sign of inner faith. Salvation and the price for sin are free gifts from God by His grace alone. “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace.” So says Paul in Rom 11:6.
c. The Reformed church (ie body of believers, not a building) provided believers a way to hear God’s Word preached and worship God in spirit and truth away from the errant teachings of the Catholic church of the time. In that regard, it was God’s protection for the church (body of believers).
I’m still waiting for the Scripture references that lead you to believe that there is a defined apostolic succession ordained by God that required believers to blindly follow leaders who, in some cases, were clearly evil (ie separated from God).
Blessings
Curt
Hi Curt,
1. Yes, we differ about the nature of the Church and her visibility. I would recommend reading Called to Communion’s article that “Christ Founded a Visible Church”: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/06/christ-founded-a-visible-church/
Nonetheless, the difference we have in our understanding of the Church is not directly relevant to the questions I posed to you, because the Church in the first two centuries was led by the Apostles (evidence which we have in the New Testament) and then by their successors (evidence we have from the early Fathers–think Clement, Ignatius, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr) and other sources). Just take a look at 3 John where the Apostle excoriates Diotrephes for pitting his authority against that of the Apostle. Similarly, Clement (of Rome) writes to the Greek church of Corinth as if he has authority to do so. So merely saying that the Apostles “planted” the church in a modern-day Evangelical style doesn’t square with the Bible or with early Christian writings. The question you must consider is whether the Apostles and their successors had authority “to bind and loose,” and that “he who listened to them listened to Christ” or whether they were just guys with opinions (who potentially even mixed errors with truth).
2. We can table the Latin thing.
3. Ah, corrupt bishops and priests. What your statements imply is that a lack of holiness (or not attaining some degree of holiness) automatically bars one from being considered one of God’s leaders or His chosen. This position is similar to the rigorist heresies of the early Church. Look up the Donatists of the 300s (and early 400s) or even Tertullian. The predicated the efficacy of sacraments like baptism on the holiness of the minister, a dangerous precedent that was condemned by the Church. Similarly, if one committed certain sins they argued that the person could never return to full communion with the Church. This was also condemned. God calls men. Sometimes they fail in small or big ways. Sometimes they fall away and come back, and sometimes they never come back. But if one’s standing as a leader depends upon one’s faithfulness, woe to most Christian leaders!
4. Regarding the canon, sure the canon was not dogmatically settled during Luther’s time–it had not needed to be–so it was still a teaching that could be discussed within the Church. Trent dogmatically defined the canon, ending discussion on it. Realize that in Luther’s first German NT translation, which you have admired, he relegated four NT books to the appendix as non-inspired (James, Jude, Hebrews, and Revelation) noting that these books were not universally attested to in the early Church, that there was considerable dispute over them, and that he detected none of the gospel or the Holy Spirit in them.
So why I understand your (practical) point of “so what if there were seven more books in the Bible, it wouldn’t make that much a deal,” realize that doctrine follows revelation, so we must know what is and is not divine revelation to know what is true. You might believe in prayers for the dead if you accepted the deuterocanonicals. And what if you removed four NT books like Luther did? You would lose truth from them as well (including on important issues like justification).
The doctrine of Sola Scriptura requires that we know with conscience-binding certainty what books, exactly, make up the Scriptures. There is no way around that, but Protestantism doesn’t have a principled reason for believing God protected the teaching on their canon of Scripture but no other teachings.
5. Bishops and priests and laity get disciplined and are accountable. In rare cases they are excommunicated (in line with what the Bible says). The Pope is more bound than anyone–he cannot make up what we wants to willy-nilly. Those popes who did evil faced God and were accountable to him. Don’t think that the millstones they tied around people’s necks did not go unpunished by God. For to whom much has been given, much will be required, so woe to those popes. Read Dante’s Inferno if you want some accounts of what he thinks happened to those popes (of his day). Sure, the local congregation or presbytery cannot “vote” the pope out of office as they can a Presbyterian pastor, but that is a small matter. The Church is not an egalitarian democracy and never has been, but rather a supernatural society ordered by God with Christ as the Head.
6. There were internal reform efforts already building in the Church during the 1500s. Don’t take my word for it. Take Protestant historian Alister McGrath’s word in “Christianity’s Dangerous Idea” (a book that in general praises the Protestant experiment). You have to separate the Church’s doctrines from practices–I know this can be confusing. Sometimes popes disciplined people wrongly, and many think that means infallibility is proven false. Not so. Some popes even personally believed in heresy, but they never taught it as official Church teaching. Sometimes there were widespread evils of simony (buying ecclesiastical offices), concubines and flouting of celibacy–really widespread so much so that you would say the doctrines of the Church were in error–but they were bad practices, misapplied of denials of teachings.
Regarding grace, faith, and works, we can go into all that, but I have before with Reformed Protestants, and while it is useful and the Catholic case can be made for justification by grace through faith working in love (as well as the distinction between initial justification and ongoing justification), I don’t think it is worthwhile here as we are tackling so many issues.
Regarding the Reformed churches in c.) were the Lutheran, Anglican, and Anabaptist churches (the other three movements of the Reformation) preaching God in spirit and in truth? Then why do all these Protestant movements differ so widely in their teachings? So much so that they fought each other and battled over control of countries?
Never blindly follow someone. Always use your God-given reason. I was getting to support of Apostolic Succession with my question to you on whether Timothy had rightful authority in the Church. But I don’t think you answered. We have to start with the Apostles and their direct successors and see whether you think they had authority or not. Do you think they did or did they just “plant” churches?
God bless,
Devin
Ok… I’m going to break the tradition of point by point discussion we have established thus far and start over with a basic question: What purpose does the Holy Spirit serve in our life and our understanding of Scripture?
Great debate guys, very informative…please keep it up. Thank you!
Thanks Troy! I hope we can have a beneficial discussion that will lead us deeper into Christ’s truth.
Curt, we can start over if you want to, but I think we will be leaving the most promising line. You said you don’t believe in a “lineage” (rightful authority through succession from the apostles), but you didn’t answer about whether Paul’s disciples (like Timothy and Titus) had rightful authority. Paul thinks they did. And I think you would admit that it is not “lineage” at all but rather Paul discipling Timothy and Timothy following Paul in leadership of the early Church. Catholics would further add that Paul “laid hands on Timothy” which conferred the gift (sacrament) of ordination, which Paul enjoins Timothy to not forget. This is apostolic succession, and most Protestants are uncomfortable confronting the question of whether Timothy, Titus, and Clement had authority. Would you have followed Timothy’s leadership in the early Church, or would you have rejected it and followed a person who did not obey the apostles? Why would you have followed it since you reject apostolic succession and only follow if they interpret the Bible accurately (that is, in line with your interpretation)?
To your question, I don’t think we will get anywhere talking about how the Holy Spirit operates in our lives as individuals and through the Church as the Body of Christ if we don’t agree on these other matters. For what it’s worth, I think the Holy Spirit leads the Church “into all truth” (John 16:13) as well as leads us individually into conviction of sin and into the truth of the Church.
I’ll let you punt… for now… but the Holy Spirit question would, I think, answer some of the others.
To answer you question, I do think they had rightful authority to teach. Just as we ordain pastors, elders and deacons in our church, based on their example. I do not think this conferred a definitive unerrant lineage of hiearchy.
And to follow the logic of your question, why would you follow the teachings of a Pope who murdered the last Pope to gain the Papacy (Sergius III)? What gift was conveyed to him through the Holy lineage? And even scarier, what gifts did he convey to the next generation? Corruption can occur anywhere and we are given the Holy Spirit to keep us from being blown around by “every wind of doctrine”.
Curt,
Sorry for the delay. Glad you are getting good discussion at Called to Communion.
So you do think that the successors of the apostles (at least the first generation, Titus, Timothy, etc.) had rightful authority in the Church. I agree with you, and many passages from the New Testament support the belief that Christ commissioned the Apostles who commissioned others after them (see the verses cited in this article: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/03/sola-scriptura-vs-the-magisterium-what-did-jesus-teach/).
But then you believe that this divinely established authority, at some point in time, disappeared or was revoked by God. I infer from your statements that it was when (enough? the majority?) of the bishops became morally (and perhaps doctrinally?) “corrupt.” Perhaps you can put a date (or at least a century) on when that happened.
So the idea is that God established a rightful authority, which you believe existed for some number of decades/centuries from apostle to disciple to disciple but then corruption entered this visible Church and the true gospel was only to be found in the canonized books of the Bible, the truths of which were rediscovered in the 1500s with the Protestant Reformers. Does that sound accurate?
This is the exact premise of my blog article that we are commenting on. The divinely ordered authority of Christ to the apostles to their successors at some point was revoked, or vanished, or was lost due to corrupt men, and some other authority was put into place instead. Of course, the Bible makes no mention that such a change would occur or would be ordered by God, so it is just a conjecture without biblical basis.
First, I have not ceded the point that God intended a divinely estblished immutable authority for all of history. I ceded that the first apostles were chosen for a particular purpose. I would further observe that God also chose the Levites to be the keepers of the Word for the Jews and they ended up being the Pharisees, whom Jesus called a brood of vipers. Their call from God is clearly documented in Scripture (Num 1:50) as is their spiritual bankruptcy (Matt 12:34). If you can tell me on what date the Levites fell away, I’ll see if I can come up with one on the apostolic succession.
So, no I’m not saying that God established the kind of endless top down authority structure you suggest. I’m saying that God worked with apostles and others to accomplish His purposes, and when sin got in the way, He moved by other means.
Here is what the Apostle Paul says about following bad authorities:
Ephesians 4
14 As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming;
15 but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ,
16 from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
So we are to function as a body with Christ as the head. As to your last statement, I would observe that the Bible makes no mention of an endless authoritative apostlic succession. He simply tells Peter that he would be he cornerstone of the new church, which he certainly was.
Good to be back!
Cheers,
Curt
I know that you don’t think that God established apostolic succession for all of history, but you said that you accept that the Apostles had rightful authority and that their first successors did (and probably you would say the successors of those successors and so on through the 2nd and maybe 3rd century) but then “enough” corruption infected the bishops of the Church that that means of rightful authority went bye-bye. Correct?
That’s a fine theory, and the Mormons hold to it as well, as I pointed out in the article. They then posit that God reestablished that rightful authority with Joseph Smith et. al. You posit (I infer) that anyone who interprets the Bible accurately enough on the “essential” issues has authority to teach others. Correct?
Regarding the Levites/Pharisees/scribes, Matthew 23:2 doesn’t say that they had lost the authority God had given them (Moses’ seat and all that) but rather that they had been abusing it. Have various Catholic bishops over the centuries abused their authority. Absolutely. Would God call some of them a brood of vipers and white-washed tombs? I bet He would. So the point is that one can have rightful authority but then abuse it.
Now then, Christ whole-sale replaced the Old Covenant with the New, including the leaders and their structure. So up until Christ, the Old Covenant leaders had rightful authority over the (old) People of God, the Israelites. Did they sometimes or often abuse that authority? Yes. But then of course Christ’s arrival changed that system altogether. And He established a new one, greater than the Old, whereby divine revelation could be, by His power, accurately transmitted to all generations to come through His Church.
As you said, “sin got in the way” and God changed the way He had been operating for X hundreds of years. Mormons say the same. Corruption entered the Church and her people, many fell away, Great Apostasy, God then chose to use new means to work (voila! Mormon Church).
I follow your logic… the problem with the Mormon church is twofold: First, they do not believe in the diety of Christ. That’s kind of a big problem. Second, they added to Scripture with the Book of Mormon, which clearly violates Rev 22:18-19. Of course, you could make the same pitch with Islam, Christian Science, etc.
Following on your logic, one could make the argument that Paul should have been in the apostolic leader seat… after all, Christ converted him from being a very educated Pharisee to leading the Jewish new church. Thus, he would be in the authority succession all the way from beginning to end. Peter was an uneducated fisherman (Acts 4:13).
I understand you have reservations about the Mormons. Other sects throughout history have rejected the deity of Christ as well, and the (corrupted) Church condemned their beliefs as heretical. Regarding adding to Scripture, there are two problems with your claim:
1. That passage from Revelation is referring to the book of Revelation only. It would be anachronistic to think that when it says “add to this book” it meant the book (codex) of the (eventually) canonized letters and books that we now have nicely bound up in our Bible. Sure, we put Revelation at the end of our Bibles today and perhaps it was the last letter written, but we don’t know for sure. It may not have been the last one. I think most Protestant exegetes would agree with this interpretation.
2. To believe that the canon was closed and public revelation ended, you have to accept something outside of Scripture, a tradition. This is fine if you are Catholic because sacred Tradition does teach us that the canon was closed around the end of the first century, but if you are Protestant you have no principled reason to accept this part of sacred Tradition while rejecting other parts of it.
Paul was an Apostle and so, with his fellow Apostles, commissioned by Christ to be one of the rightful leaders of the Church. In Acts 15 the Apostles didn’t take a vote of all the Christians to decide what was true. Rather, they decided themselves and rebuked those who went out without their authority. They also said “it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” to demonstrate that their authority came from God.
The leadership of the Old and New Covenants were different. No succession was needed or possible given Christ totally changing it.
Hi Devin
Gods plan for the “seat of Moses” outlined in Exodus 18:13-27, particularly verse 21, “Furthermore, you shall select out of all the people able men who fear God, men of truth, those who hate dishonest gain; and you shall place these over them as leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens.”…
sounds a lot God’s plan for the new church outlined in I Tim 3:1-3, “It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do. An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money.
In terms of the Protestant understanding of revealed Scripture… in Mark 7, Jesus teaches us that tradition is the path to destruction. Thus Protestants reject tradition as “revealed teaching”, relying solely on the teaching of Jesus as revealed by the early apostles. The further you get from this, the less likely to be revealed teaching. Yes, we could debate the deuterocanonical books, but beyond that, not much.
To pull from the Catholic tradition, Cyprian warns that tradition that goes beyond the teaching of the original apostles is heresy. He indicates that the spirit of truth and the spirit of error can only be discerned by comparison with the teachings of the original apostles. (Cyprian Epistle 74) Thus, one might argue, even within the tradition of Catholic Church, that any tradition of teaching that goes beyond the original apostolic teaching is heresy, just as Cyprian argued in this epistle about the teaching of Stephen and others.
Keeping in mind that there were no Protestants before the 1500′s, and that the Protestants did not reject all doctrines of the Catholic church… only those that were found to be (granted in their opinion) deviant from the teaching of Christ and the 12 apostles, one can easily have a “principled” belief that the 66 books of the “Protestant Bible” were sufficiently vetted by early church theologians, and that the deuterocanonical books did not meet their standard for agreement, purpose and divine inspiration when compared with the other books. The Catholic church apparently had the same difficulty, given the inclusion and exclusion of these books along the way, but ultimately decided to include them permanently at the Council of Trent. So the Catholic debate over the deuterocanonical books continued for 1500 years. To be fair therefore, the Protestants still have about a thousand years to change their mind before you can official say they are wrong.
Cheers
Curt
Hi Curt,
Thanks for your response. Thus Protestants reject tradition as “revealed teaching”, relying solely on the teaching of Jesus as revealed by the early apostles.
But that is the rub. You only know what that revealed teaching is by what you accept as divine revelation, which for you means sixty-six particular books. But you do not have solid ground to trust any consensus of the early Christians/Church Fathers on which books are inspired and which are not, or on the belief that God closed the canon at some point in time. These are the same men who taught doctrines you think are false.
Thus you do not have a way of knowing whether some tradition “goes beyond” what the original apostles taught.
Hi Devin
Its not a rub for me because I’m not saddled with the “all or none” view of teaching that you have. I see people as fallible, and as such, capable of being right and wrong. It is possible for them to be right about some things and wrong about others. Your view of theology is that there HAS to be one person who is always right, and anything short of that is vulnerable to heresy. My view is that God gave us the teachings of Jesus and the apostles along with the Holy Spirit and He expects us to be responsible for our own understanding… ie not to be “blown about by every wind of doctrine” and as Paul says, to be able to “give an account” for our faith.
In Hebrews 5, the people are rebuked for not becoming mature Christians:
“For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.”
The mature Christian is apparently given the tools to discern good from evil, thus we do have a way of knowing whether certain traditions are of God. If we choose not to use these tools, and rather choose to believe that one person or institution is “right by default” we are vulnerable to the errors of sin that are inherent in all humans and human institutions.
I will admit that that both scenarios are squishy. Whether we follow the Holy Spirit personally or through the proclamations of another, faith is required. Pehaps that’s why it is called faith. However, Jesus said, “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.” Good news for us both!
Cheers
Curt
Hi Curt,
Its not a rub for me because I’m not saddled with the “all or none” view of teaching that you have. I see people as fallible, and as such, capable of being right and wrong. It is possible for them to be right about some things and wrong about others…My view is that God gave us the teachings of Jesus and the apostles along with the Holy Spirit and He expects us to be responsible for our own understanding…
Do you believe in sola scriptura? If you do, that means you believe that the (sixty-six-book) Bible is the sole infallible rule of faith. Which means that you believe that God communicated divine revelation infallibly through the fallible human beings who wrote those particular books.
Therefore, though you believe people are fallible and “capable of being right and wrong” you believe that those fallible people who wrote the books in your Bible were in fact not capable of being wrong because God protected them from error, guiding them infallibly through the Holy Spirit.
So you are still saddled with the problem of needing to give a principled reason for believing that those particular books in your Bible (which you quote from as though they are infallibly-inspired divine revelation) were protected from error by God and that the act of collecting those books into the canon was also protected from error by God.
But the agent who collected those books was the Church in (primarily) the first four centuries, but you do not have confidence that that Church discerned God’s truth correctly on many issues–in fact you think they erred grievously on many important ones–so you cannot have higher confidence in the canon that that same Church discerned.
A Mormon can quote verses from his Bible or Book of Mormon and tell me that the Holy Spirit confirmed those books to him, and that is enough, but for us it is not enough. We need more than bosom-burning to know what divine revelation is, if we are to present a principled reason for being Catholic (Protestant) rather than Mormon.
The Catholic Faith provides this principled reason: God miraculously and wonderfully guided His Church into all truth, protecting her from error in her dogmas, so that all people throughout all time could know God and His truth. This protection includes the teaching on the canon of Scripture and the inerrancy of the books in that canon.
God bless,
Devin
Curt,
I realized I never answered one of your questions: And to follow the logic of your question, why would you follow the teachings of a Pope who murdered the last Pope to gain the Papacy (Sergius III)? What gift was conveyed to him through the Holy lineage? And even scarier, what gifts did he convey to the next generation? Corruption can occur anywhere and we are given the Holy Spirit to keep us from being blown around by “every wind of doctrine”.
I agree that someone acting scandalously and doing evil things makes it difficult to follow them (hence Jesus’s words in Matthew 23:2 to exhort the Israelites to follow the teachings (which were good) of the leaders but not to do as they did (since they did evil)).
Sergius III received the charism of infallibility and so was protected from teaching error in the Church’s doctrines. If you have a particular teaching that he officially proclaimed as truth, we can talk about it.
Following Peter, who denied Christ three times and whom Christ told to “get behind me Satan” might be difficult too. Or Paul who had murdered your faithful brothers before his conversion. Or a bishop who recanted under torture by the Romans.
So just as a Baptist pastor can teach gospel truth but be doing evil things in secret (examples abound), a pope can do scandalous things but teach truth.
God bless,
Devin
Hi Devin
Thusly, using your exact argument, Jesus called out Peter for being wrong on numerous occasions, including at one point calling him Satan. Yet you are willing to base your theology on his teachings and the teachings of his followers. Thus, the principle by which you can do this is the same principle by which I claim to be able to do likewise. We are given discernment. The Mormon argument falls apart when they depart from the original teachings of Christ, paticularly His diety, which is ordinal to any concept of the Christian faith.
Cheers
Curt
Hi Devin
So just as a Baptist pastor can teach gospel truth but be doing evil things in secret (examples abound), a pope can do scandalous things but teach truth.
Yes, but the Baptist pastor can be thrown out, not so the Pope. The mission youare setting up for me is to “prove” that Church teaching was in error.
Before I jump into that quagmire, I need to know exactly what is your view of the Magisterium? Does it protect all teaching of the Church, or only part?
Thanks
Curt
Curt,
Thusly, using your exact argument, Jesus called out Peter for being wrong on numerous occasions, including at one point calling him Satan. Yet you are willing to base your theology on his teachings and the teachings of his followers. Thus, the principle by which you can do this is the same principle by which I claim to be able to do likewise.
But the difference is that I believe the teachings of the Church (led by the bishops in union with the bishop of Rome) are protected from error, whereas you do not. So any one person’s possible errors in morals or theology are not able to corrupt the teachings of the Church. You do not believe that the Church has this protection from God, so you cannot claim the same principle in accepting some of the Church’s teachings (e.g. the canon) but rejecting others (baptismal regeneration for example).
Though of course, even you think Peter was infallible at least in two instances (when he wrote the books 1 and 2 Peter).
We are given discernment. The Mormon argument falls apart when they depart from the original teachings of Christ, paticularly His diety, which is ordinal to any concept of the Christian faith.
But how do we discern? With the Bible and the Holy Spirit? They also claim to use the Bible and the Holy Spirit. And they claim that the original teachings of Christ, including His Deity, were corrupted by the Church which had fallen into error by the 2nd or 3rd century. You also believe the very visible Church of the first centuries fell into error. The Mormons are being consistent in saying that they cannot trust, for example, the decisions of the Council of Nicaea in the year 325 which dogmatically defined the deity of Christ and His consubstantial union with the Father. The corrupted Church declared that to be true, so why believe them?
To answer the question in your second comment, the Church is protected from error under certain conditions: when she makes binding decree on all the faithful on an issue of faith or morals.
Hi Devin
So, again, what you are setting up is the challenge to show that there were errors in the teaching of the Church, which you claim is not possible due to God’s protection. In order to grapple with this, I first need to know your view on the Magisterium… does God protect all teaching of the Church or only part of it?
Regarding Peter, yes I would agree that God divinely inspired his writing which is wholely consistent with my position.
“And they claim that the original teachings of Christ, including His Deity, were corrupted by the Church which had fallen into error by the 2nd or 3rd century.”
But we know that this is not true from early manuscripts. Mormonism is easy to shred if you want to go there… its not high enough on my radar to bother.
“The corrupted Church declared that to be true, so why believe them?”
Again, you use this “all or none” argument, which isn’t working for me. If the church declares something that is consistent with the gospel accounts and the Pauline epistles, we’re good. If it flies in the face of those accounts, we have a problem. You view my logic as inconsistent with the “all or none” position of the Catholic dogma. I view your position as inconsistent with Scripture. Your retort is, “I can fall back on the inerrancy of the Church”. My retort is, “I can fall back on the inerrancy of Scripture.” There is a logic problem with both arguments. The inerrancy of the Church as you see it is defined by Scripture. The inerrancy of Scripture as I see it is defined by the Church. So logically, neither the Church nor Scripture can claim inerrancy without relying on the Holy Spirit working through men as the arbitor. It then comes down to which men you believe.
Regarding the Magisterium: Just so I am clear, if the church, at any level, is teaching issues of faith or morals, that teaching is protected from error by the magisterium?
Cheers
Curt
Curt,
I have not intended to set up a challenge for you to prove errors in the Church’s dogmatic teachings. I have instead wanted to know how you answer “the canon question.” How can you know your canon is accurate with conscience-binding certainty. This is not idle question, for sola Scriptura relies on it, as I demonstrated. Further, R.C. Sproul conceded that the Bible is a “fallible collection (of infallible books).” This has nothing to do with whether I personally think in some “all or nothing” kind of way. It focuses entirely on your beliefs, your framework, which includes sola Scriptura, that the contents of the books of the Bible (whichever those are) is the sole infallible rule of faith.
In any event, regarding infallibility of the Church, it is not “at any level,”.
“Although the individual bishops do not enjoy the prerogative of infallibility, they can nevertheless proclaim Christ’s doctrine infallibly. This is so, even when they are dispersed around the world, provided that while maintaining the bond of unity among themselves and with Peter’s successor, and while teaching authentically on a matter of faith or morals, they concur in a single viewpoint as the one which must be held conclusively. This authority is even more clearly verified when, gathered together in an ecumenical council, they are teachers and judges of faith and morals for the universal Church. Their definitions must then be adhered to with the submission of faith” (Lumen Gentium 25).
Devin
And you did not answer my conundrum question. If the infallible lineage comes from Scripture and the infallibility of Scripture is determined by the infallible lineage, is there not a circular logic problem, short of saying that the Holy Spirit leads me to believe X?
Further, the payment of indulgences for the forgiveness of sins was an error in the teaching of the Church. Therefore, the magisterium is only partial, not all inclusive. How, then, can a member of the Church know that the teaching he/she receives is from God or man in the local church?
Curt
Curt
Curt,
Second part first:
Regarding indulgences, one of the Called to Communion guys pointed you to a link about them; have you got to read it yet? You’ve continued to say that indulgences are “for the forgiveness of sins” but that is not what they are for. Also, paying money for indulgences was a practice (and not a dogma or even a teaching), a practice that was (as you have pointed out) stopped by the Council of Trent, which both reformed practices in the Church and which proclaimed dogmatic teachings (e.g. on the canon, justification, etc.).
The Magisterium is the teaching authority of the Church and so in that sense isn’t “partial.” But the gift of infallibility has conditions to it, meaning that, for example, every word that every pope, bishop, priest, deacon, or member of the Catholic laity have ever said is not infallible. That’s not the definition. You could make up that definition on your own, but it would not be the true definition.
First part second:
Using the phrase “infallible lineage” is not particularly helpful because since the Catholic Church doesn’t use that terminology (nor anyone else that I know of), it is hard to understand what you mean. Apostolic succession? The Pope? The Magisterium?
To set up this “conundrum,” you said previously that “the inerrancy of the Church is defined by Scripture.” This is not quite accurate. Can the Scriptures, if interpreted correctly, provide evidence that the Church is infallible in her teachings? Yes. But they do not prove it.
The Church predates the New Testament. The New Testament books were written within the bosom of the Church by members of the Church. Even non-Christian history testifies to this Church’s existence (and the existence of Christ, the Apostles, early Christianity, martyrs, etc.). My point is that we can look to the evidence that Christ did establish a Church with known leaders and then trace that Church forward through history. We can also then learn about what that Church taught, how she was governed, and how she sifted the New Testament books from noncanonical writings.
So there is no circle. The Father gave authority to Christ, who gave authority to the Apostles as leaders of the Church He founded. These Apostles ordained other men to succeed them (the Scriptures testify to this but so do works from the 1st century like 1 Clement). The inspired books written within the Church and discerned by the Church became the New Testament. So we have a line, not a circle.
Only God can grant infallibility. You reject the infallibility of the Church but accept that a particular collection of books were infallibly inspired. Yet you cannot say why you believe that that process of collection was infallibly guided by God, since you don’t trust the agent that discerned that collection, the Church.
Hi Devin
Ok, let me try a different approach. Regarding the Council of Trent, the Catholic Encyclopedia ends with:
“Although unfortunately the council, through no fault of the fathers assembled, was not able to heal the religious differences of western Europe, yet the infallible Divine truth was clearly proclaimed in opposition to the false doctrines of the day, and in this way a firm foundation was laid for the overthrow of heresy and the carrying out of genuine internal reform in the Church.”
If the church is protected by the magisterium, why was “genuine internal reform” needed? They had ejected the reformers, so it wasn’t like they were trying to find peace regarding them. If the the teaching of faith and morals was protected, the suggestion that reform was needed would seem to be heresy.
I also went to the discussion on indulgences in the Catholic Encyclopedia. If you want to know what I mean by mental gymnastics, this is a good example.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07783a.htm
I did, however, find a glimmer of hope on that page when they spoke about the historic abuses of indulgences. They said, “In this respect of course indulgences are not exceptional: no institution, however holy, has entirely escaped abuse through the malice or unworthiness of man.” Finally. I know, I know… they weren’t errors of the Church, they were errors church… but not the Church, just the church.
Cheers
Curt
Hi Curt,
If the church is protected by the magisterium, why was “genuine internal reform” needed? They had ejected the reformers, so it wasn’t like they were trying to find peace regarding them. If the the teaching of faith and morals was protected, the suggestion that reform was needed would seem to be heresy.
The Church is always in need of internal reform, for her members here on earth are all sinners in need to continual conversion. The teachings are all true, but we don’t always follow them! Sometimes we do the opposite, so while I know that Jesus said to not hate someone, often I still want to because that person wronged me, and so on.
So the practice of the faith in the Church often needs to be internally reformed, abuses disciplined and firmly corrected. Further, the teachings of the Church, while all true, can be deepened and clarified as new ideas and challenges are presented. For instance, Luther had several ideas about justification that had to be addressed, and Trent addressed them, clarifying what was okay to believe and what was not okay (the bounds of orthodoxy).
The New Advent article on indulgences is the same thing. Catholics freely admit that there were abuses to them. In the past there were abuses to people buying ecclesiastical offices. That is terrible! But it happened and needed correction.