Pillar & Foundation
The difficulty, I think, in admitting that some (or all) Christian doctrinal frameworks─be they Calvinist, Catholic, Lutheran, Wesleyan, Zwinglian, or whatever─must be wrong on any number of issues is not that any one Christian or group of Christians fails to believe that the Truths of the faith which they hold to are in fact universally True and universally vital for eternity, but rather that each individual Christian innately fears that, if God truly wants us to believe in one specific and complete set of Doctrines, then each one of us must therefore devote ourselves, to the exclusion of all else, to finding that Singular Deposit of Faith's position on each individual issue. Like any sufficiently complex research project, this process is, to put it mildly, daunting. We are finite; God is infinite. To discern every conceivable Truth with absolute certainty would not merely take a lifetime of concerted study, but rather an eon of it... or more probably all of eternity. We know that every human (save Jesus) is fallible (that is, capable of error), and not only fallible, but likely to err... a lot! So how could any one of us ever hope to find the Fullness of Truth on our own without the slightest hint of error? This is the herculean task that the cry of the so-called "Reformers" of the 15th century, "Sola Scriptura," lays before us, because it tells us that, because humans are involved in all interpretive traditions, no tradition can be trusted, so we only have our own minds, the Holy Spirit, and the Bible to draw from. (Granted, some versions of sola Scritura claim that their interpretive traditions can be trusted, but since that claim springs from the fact that that tradition stems from the rejection of another previous tradition, this conviction is devoid of intellectual integrity.1 But, this is a topic for a different time.) Thus sola Scriptura sets the individual Christian adrift in the tempestuous sea of competing theologies, lost and alone. How, then, are we to respond? We must seek Truth, or all else is lost! but where? how??First, we need to have faith; we need to trust that, when we're ready to really seek the Truth, we will find it. But not by our own effort or intelligence; only by the Providence of God and the guiding graces of His all-loving Spirit. Indeed, we must remember that faith upon which we rest our hope is not something we create in ourselves; it rather can only be a gift given to us by God. Like all other gifts, we can either accept it or not; we can either use it or not, but the source of faith is ultimately God, not us.
As I said in the introduction, I think the foundation of the culture of relativism─and make no mistake, the problem of the multiplicity of Christian theologies is firmly grounded in that culture─is doubt. Doubt about whether Truth matters, but also doubt about whether Truth is even knowable. Perhaps it is even more fundamental than that: perhaps it is fear in the face of that most profound unknowableness. However, this is exactly the wrong attitude. To quote Pascal, "the supreme act of reason lies in recognizing that there is an infinity of things that surpass it" (Pensees §267). The unknowableness of God need not scare us, but rather excite us, thrill us! Still, before we try to find the Truth, we need to bolster our faith by remembering what God's attitude toward our pursuit of Truth is. God is first and foremost not a god of confusion (cf. I Cor. 14:33), but the God of Truth, Unity, and Love. It is Satan who wants us to despair and admit defeat.
As a Protestant, I used to believe that all Truth was extracted from Scripture. I still believe that Sacred Scripture is an inerrant, infallible, and inexhaustible source of inspired Divine Truth. The problem is not the inspired nature of Scripture, but the private interpretation of it apart from the authority of the Church that Christ instituted to infallibly explain and defend it. As they say, and have been saying for some 500 years, sola Scriptura is the rallying cry of Protestantism, but to be honest, it isn't much of a rally. Because, once you've declared that Scripture is the only sure source of Truth, you must of necessity ask, "what Truth, exactly, has It declared?" And since Scripture is thus placed alone, without the pedestal of Truth (i.e. the Church) next to which It was meant to sit, each and every Christian must answer that question him- or herself; "Aye," in the words of Hamlet, "there's the rub." Because every one of us has experienced the reality of the disparity that thus instantly develops. The first Protestant leaders experienced this when they came together in a council, hoping to find unity and end the bickering between them so that they could once and for all sit down and begin rebuilding what they believed the Catholic Church had obscured: authentic Christianity. But, they left that council completely unable to find consensus because without an authentic, infallible interpreter of Truth, there is no way to find the Truth. Consensus in Truth was lost, and then even consensus on the meaning of sola Scriptura was lost.
Certainly, we can, and naturally often do, surround ourselves primarily with those who interpret Scripture mostly the same way we do (not to mention the fact that St. Paul warns against that particular practice in II Timothy 4:3), but every one of us also encounters at least one other person who sees things differently. Especially in this global culture, where we have virtual "social networks" that connect people from far, far away, we can easily come "face to face" (or rather, screen to screen) with people who assert things that are not only fundamentally different than what we believe and understand, but things that cause us to ask, "how in the world can they think like that?!?"
The solution though, is not to look at the disarray, shrug our shoulders, and return to our like-minded, itchy-ear cliques in a vain attempt at sticking our heads in the sand. It is to turn to God and say, with sincerity and faith, "Lord, I am lost in a sea of confusion, but You are a God of Truth, Unity, and Love. Lead me to Your Truth, that I might worship You in spirit and in Truth. Amen."
"Tell It to the Church..."
The problem with the ambiguously pluripotent concept of sola Scriptura (besides the fact that any term that is never defined the same way twice is thus inherently useless in any discussion or debate), is that nothing like it ever appears in the Bible. Sacred Scripture never, ever instructs anyone to use or interpret Itself apart from Its Author or the community through which He inspired It to be written. The Bible instead points us directly to that community, promising that the Author who inspired the Word would inspire the leaders of that community.2
Indeed, Jesus Himself told the Apostles (not all his followers, mind you; just the Twelve) in the Upper Room on the night that He was betrayed, "When the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you into all the Truth; for He will not speak on His Own Authority, but whatever He hears He will speak, and He will declare to you the things that are to come" (John 16:13). Speaking of St. Paul's letters, St. Peter says, "There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures" (II Peter 3:16). In the Acts of the Apostles, the Ethiopian eunuch reads Scripture and when asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" the eunuch replies, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" (Acts 8:30-31). All this is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak, when it comes to the interpretive authority of the Church to infallibly declare God's Truth, but it can be condensed to the following quote from St. Paul's first letter to Timothy:
"I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these instructions to you so that, if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the Household of God, which is the Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Bulwark of the Truth."It is Paul's description of the Church that is most telling, but its context is also significant. He says that his letter is written, not so that Timothy might read it and built a system of theology solely from it and from his writings, but rather that Timothy might use it to guide his behaviour. But it is not merely a guide to behaviour alone. It is a guide to Timothy's behaviour within the Household of God. Too often today, especially in the United States, Christianity is so focused on one's personal relationship with Jesus Christ, that we almost forget that the only way we can know Him is by being in relationship with His entire Body, which is the Church. In order to behave rightly, we must allow His Body to be the organism within which we strive to serve Him, in cooperation with one another, not in individualistic autonomy. This is the context of Paul's letter, and the reason which compels him to expound briefly on the nature of that mystical Body of Christ.
-I Timothy 3:14-15 (emphasis added)
He thus calls the Body, the entire Church, "the Household of God, which is the Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Bulwark of the Truth." The general sense of sola Scriptura, no matter how it is defined, is that there is only one thing that has the absolute surety of being True in an eternal and universal sense: the Bible alone.3 But Paul's praise of the Church says that the Truth is grounded and held up, as with the strength of the Living God, not by "the Bible alone," but by "the Household of God." Now, I implore you, contemplate this deeply: the Truth here mentioned is the very Truth of God; it is not the empty or vain "personal truth" of the modern age, which the Relativist claims for himself but for no one else, as fickle and fleeting as an insect floating on the surface of a stream, one moment falling from above to alight on the river of life, the next getting caught on a protruding log to be smothered and subsumed into the gathering grime of fluvial decay. No, this Truth is immutable, incomparable, illocutible, and invincible as God Himself, yet Paul says that it is not maintained by the Written Word of God, but by His Living Church, His Divine Household! What eternal fortitude he grants to the Church! It's almost shocking! ... Except that we should have expected such eternal fortitude, knowing that Christ Himself said of the Church, "the gates of Hades shall not prevail against It" (Matt. 16:18b).
In these two verses we find the clearest─though by no means the only─indication that the very same Church that Christ our Lord founded so many centuries ago in the Holy Land must still exist and be so unshakeable as to be always and everywhere identifiable on the Earth as His Church teaching His Truth to His People, with Teaching that, like Christ Himself, who is the Truth (cf. John 14:6), "is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). As the Truth is eternal and unshakeable, so too must that by which It is exalted and grounded be. It is because of the clarity of these facts that I dare proclaim that the Pillar and Bulwark of the Truth is the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. It is this Church within which St. Paul calls us to behave. This is the Church to which Jesus directed us when He said,
"If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the Church; and if he refuses to listen even to the Church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector."There are many myths about the Catholic Church. Some say she was founded not by Christ in the first century, but by Constantine in the fourth. Others say that she fell into utter apostasy sometime between the beginning and the 15th century, and so the "dead husk" of the Catholic Church had to be utterly cast off in order to "reform" Christ's Church using "the Bible alone" as the blueprint. In between these are a million other theories, all with one common thread: the idea that the Church that Jesus Christ truly founded and intended, at some point failed, sinking in the marshes of history never to be seen again... until someone took it upon themselves to remake it. This is the heart of every single myth of every single self-proclaimed reformer, no matter what they call themselves or when they decide to reforge the Church.
-Matthew 18:15-17 (emphasis added)
There is only one problem: it contradicts the promise of Christ. A Church that needs to be rebuilt from scratch is a Church against which the gates of Hades have most certainly prevailed. A Church that fell into complete and total apostasy is a Church incapable of being called "the Pillar and Bulwark of the Truth." Thus, in order to buy into this theory and start Christianity over from the private interpretations of one man or one group of men, one must first accept the founding principle that God is powerless to keep His promises. The Bible clearly promises that the thing that will uphold the Truth for all eternity is the Church, yet the a priori assumption of the Reformation is that the Truth was lost somewhere in the first 15 centuries of Christendom and must be reconstructed by questioning everything that came before then! Jesus Christ Himself clearly promises that the gates of Hades will never overcome the Church that He founded, yet the a priori assumption of the Reformation is that they did! Someone must be lying, and we know that it cannot be God Incarnate...
From this basis, Jesus' command that every disagreement be finally and decisively settled by the Church is utterly defunct. When the very reason for the existence of any self-proclaimed Christian "church" is that the original Church became, one way or another, (to borrow a phrase from Jean Calvin) "totally depraved," we have utterly no reason whatsoever to believe that the "church" to which we belong isn't also completely devoid of authority. After all, if even God cannot keep His promises, why should we trust men to keep theirs? Thus, we have no reason to trust the decisions of that "church" when a dispute is settled by it, and we have no reason to accept its pronouncement that either we or the other party are actually wrong. This is precisely why, every time a congregation finds itself in disagreement on "the non-essentials," no one is successfully treated "as a Gentile and a tax collector." Instead, the one becomes two. The single congregation splits into two congregations, both believing its own theology to be "True" and the other's to be "the doctrines of demons" (I Tim. 4:1).
But this is not what God intended, and this does not in the slightest reflect the infinite power, authority, and majesty of God Almighty, the God of Hosts. Jesus said, "What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder" (Mark 10:9), yet we have thus taken the "one Body" (Eph. 4:4) that God has joined, not only to itself but to Himself, and let absolutely any man "put [it] asunder" for any reason. The only solution to this dilemma is to reject the founding principle, that the Church is lost to history or remained but completely lost sight of the Truth. We must instead seek out the one Church which has never ceased to exist and which has never ceased to "stand firm and hold to the traditions which [She was] taught by [the Apostles], either by word of mouth or by letter" (II Thess. 2:15). Unless we find and freely submit ourselves to this Church─the One and Only Church which Jesus Christ, the Word Made Flesh, founded─we will never be able to follow His command to "tell it to the Church..."
1. e.g. John Calvin's ecclesiology which, while claiming sola Scriptura as its basis for rejecting the authority of the Catholic Church, still clings to the idea that somehow the schismatic "church" thus formed out of a rejection of Church authority is touted as having complete authority over individual Christians. While the initial foundation of his doctrine of Church authority, as outlined by Calvin in his Institutio Christianae Religionis (Book IV), is essentially scriptural, the fact that the book he wrote it in was itself written in direct rejection of the authority of the very Church by whom he knew which books belonged to Sacred Scripture belies the hypocrisy of his ecclesiology. The utmost irony of his entire ecclesiological discourse, of course, is found in the fact that he repeatedly and forcefully argues for the utter necessity of remaining within the visible Catholic Church, because to do otherwise is to jeopardize one's immortal soul, while he himself has already cut himself off from the visible Catholic Church (or to use his words, "produce[d] revolt from the Church") and done everything that he warns his readers against: "Still, however, even the good are sometimes affected by this inconsiderate zeal for righteousness, though we shall find that this excessive moroseness is more the result of pride and a false idea of sanctity, than genuine sanctity itself, and true zeal for it. Accordingly, those who are the most forward, and, as it were, leaders in producing revolt from the Church, have, for the most part, no other motive than to display their own superiority by despising all other men. Well and wisely, therefore, does Augustine say,
2.Indeed, before the Bible even existed, it was Moses and his successors who had the authority to hear and interpret the Word of God for the People of God (cf. Exodus 18:13). This authority remained even until the time of Jesus, who said, "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice" (Matthew 23:2-3, emphasis mine). The continuity of authority was instituted by God and thus could only be affected by God. And so it was, when Jesus, in Matthew 16:19, alluding to the imagery of Isaiah 22:22 (where the King's Chief Steward was defrocked by God Himself and his authority over the Kingdom of Israel was transferred to another), to transfer the chair of divine authority from Moses' successors to Peter and Peter's successors. We'll get into the meat of these passages and their contexts later, but the gist is that in the Old Testament, for the sake of guaranteeing that His People would know the Truth, God ordained that His authority on earth should rest on Moses and his successors via the protection of the Holy Spirit, and in the New Testament God did the same thing for the same reason, merely transferring the office from the scribes and Pharisees to Peter and the Apostles.
As can clearly be seen in the Gospels, though the Pharisees could clearly sin, and did often, Jesus nonetheless ratifies their teaching (Matthew 23:2ff), the authority resting specifically with the High Priest (cf. John 11:49-52 & Acts 23:3-5). (A helpful summary explanation of the Chair of Moses, with citations both Scriptural and historical, can be found here.) Similarly, Peter clearly sins many times throughout the New Testament, but he never teaches error (cf. Acts 15:7-11 where he teaches that Christians need not obey all aspects of the Law of Moses, despite the way he later acted as though he were ashamed of this pronouncement, cf. Gal. 2:12). In the same way, the Catholic Church is founded, by Christ, on the infallible authority of the Chair of Peter (i.e. that the Holy Spirit protects Peter and his successors from teaching any error, exclusively when speaking ex cathedra ("from the chair [of Peter]") on matters regarding faith and morals), as we'll discuss in later sections, but we do not teach nor believe that Peter and his successors are impeccable (i.e. are incapable of sinning).
3. I am not here trying to refute sola Scriptura, for no single, authoritative definition of it exists, therefore it can neither be proven nor refuted─which ironically is precisely the same problem with the lived practice of it─rather I offer the common essence of it in order to contrast it with the essence of I Timothy.
"Seeing that pious reason and the mode of ecclesiastical discipline ought specially to regard the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, which the Apostle enjoins us to keep, by bearing with one another (for if we keep it not, the application of medicine is not only superfluous, but pernicious, and therefore proves to be no medicine); those bad sons who, not from hatred of other men's iniquities, but zeal for their own contentions, attempt altogether to draw away, or at least to divide, weak brethren ensnared by the glare of their name, while swollen with pride, stuffed with petulance, insidiously calumnious, and turbulently seditious, use the cloak of a rigorous severity, that they may not seem devoid of the light of truth, and pervert to sacrilegious schism, and purposes of excision, those things which are enjoined in the Holy Scriptures (due regard being had to sincere love, and the unity of peace), to correct a brother's faults by the appliance of a moderate cure" (St. Augustine of Hippo, Contra Epistolam Parmeniani, chapter 1). To the pious and placid his advice is, mercifully to correct what they can, and to bear patiently with what they cannot correct, in love lamenting and mourning until God either reform or correct, or at the harvest root up the tares, and scatter the chaff (Ibid., chapter 2). Let all the godly study to provide themselves with these weapons, lest, while they deem themselves strenuous and ardent defenders of righteousness, they revolt from the kingdom of heaven, which is the only kingdom of righteousness. For as God has been pleased that the communion of his Church shall be maintained in this external society, any one who, from hatred of the ungodly, violates the bond of this society, enters on a downward course, in which he incurs great danger of cutting himself off from the communion of saints. Let them reflect, that in a numerous body there are several who may escape their notice, and yet are truly righteous and innocent in the eyes of the Lord. Let them reflect, that of those who seem diseased, there are many who are far from taking pleasure or flattering themselves in their faults, and who, ever and anon aroused by a serious fear of the Lord, aspire to greater integrity. Let them reflect, that they have no right to pass judgment on a man for one act, since the holiest sometimes make the most grievous fall. Let them reflect, that in the ministry of the word and participation of the sacraments, the power to collect the Church is too great to be deprived of all its efficacy, by the fault of some ungodly men. Lastly, let them reflect, that in estimating the Church, divine is of more force than human judgement" (Inst. Christ. Relig., Book IV, chapter I, §16).
2.Indeed, before the Bible even existed, it was Moses and his successors who had the authority to hear and interpret the Word of God for the People of God (cf. Exodus 18:13). This authority remained even until the time of Jesus, who said, "The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice" (Matthew 23:2-3, emphasis mine). The continuity of authority was instituted by God and thus could only be affected by God. And so it was, when Jesus, in Matthew 16:19, alluding to the imagery of Isaiah 22:22 (where the King's Chief Steward was defrocked by God Himself and his authority over the Kingdom of Israel was transferred to another), to transfer the chair of divine authority from Moses' successors to Peter and Peter's successors. We'll get into the meat of these passages and their contexts later, but the gist is that in the Old Testament, for the sake of guaranteeing that His People would know the Truth, God ordained that His authority on earth should rest on Moses and his successors via the protection of the Holy Spirit, and in the New Testament God did the same thing for the same reason, merely transferring the office from the scribes and Pharisees to Peter and the Apostles.
As can clearly be seen in the Gospels, though the Pharisees could clearly sin, and did often, Jesus nonetheless ratifies their teaching (Matthew 23:2ff), the authority resting specifically with the High Priest (cf. John 11:49-52 & Acts 23:3-5). (A helpful summary explanation of the Chair of Moses, with citations both Scriptural and historical, can be found here.) Similarly, Peter clearly sins many times throughout the New Testament, but he never teaches error (cf. Acts 15:7-11 where he teaches that Christians need not obey all aspects of the Law of Moses, despite the way he later acted as though he were ashamed of this pronouncement, cf. Gal. 2:12). In the same way, the Catholic Church is founded, by Christ, on the infallible authority of the Chair of Peter (i.e. that the Holy Spirit protects Peter and his successors from teaching any error, exclusively when speaking ex cathedra ("from the chair [of Peter]") on matters regarding faith and morals), as we'll discuss in later sections, but we do not teach nor believe that Peter and his successors are impeccable (i.e. are incapable of sinning).
3. I am not here trying to refute sola Scriptura, for no single, authoritative definition of it exists, therefore it can neither be proven nor refuted─which ironically is precisely the same problem with the lived practice of it─rather I offer the common essence of it in order to contrast it with the essence of I Timothy.
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