The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the Gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. (WCF XXV.2)Bryan Cross discusses why the Protestant concept has problems here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/09/why-protestantism-has-no-visible-catholic-church/
and in a comment (97) in some of the discussions also says:
My argument aims to show that given the WCF definition of “visible catholic Church,” there is no entity [given Protestant ecclesiology] to which that term refers, because [given Protestant ecclesiology] (1) there is no unity of composition among all Christians, such that all Christians compose a whole, and (2) sets are not actual [extra-mental] entities, nor are they visible entities. The notion that sets are actual [extra-mental] entities, would be a form of Platonism. (And we all know that we should see to it that no one takes us captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men – Col 2:8.)
The mind is capable of abstracting forms from particulars, by abstracting away [in the mind] the matter of each particular, and then noting that this same form type can be found in many different particulars, and in that sense that they have something in common. The type or form, as abstracted from matter, is immaterial, but the abstraction of matter is a mental act, and hence the abstracted form exists as such only in the mind, not extra-mentally in Platonic ‘heaven.’ (Of course it exists first in God’s mind.) For that reason, even if one concedes that the visible catholic Church is not a composed whole, but tries to claim that the visible catholic Church is a set [i.e. the set of all professing believers and their children], the problem is that the set exists only in the mind, not in extra-mental reality, even though the members of that set exist in extra-mental reality. In other words, claiming to believe in a visible catholic Church would be either claiming to believe only in an idea or concept, or it would be claiming to believe that all professing Christians and their children have something in common, namely, the property of either professing Christianity or being the child of one who does. The latter is a tautology, and is in that sense entirely uninformative. But the former doesn’t work either, because it wouldn’t be possible for a mere idea [i.e. the *set* of all those who profess the true religion, and their children] to be “given the ministry, oracles, and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints” (WCF XXV.3) A set cannot do anything; it cannot discipline or teach or gather or perfect the saint, because it is a mere concept/idea. That’s why the referent of Jesus’ words in Matthew 18 cannot be a set (whether of the elect, or of all professing Christians and their children). And that’s why the referent of St. Paul’s statement in 1 Tim 3:15 that the Church is “the pillar and ground of the truth” cannot be a set (whether of the elect, or of all professing Christians and their children). It needs to be a hierarchical unity, as Tom Brown and I explained in “Christ Founded a Visible Church.”
from comment 117:
When Jesus said in Matthew 16 “Upon this rock I will build My Church,” He wasn’t saying, “Upon this rock I will build My set.” Hence in Matt. 18 he gives disciplinary instructions in which people are to “tell it to the Church.” But it makes no sense to bring disciplinary concerns before a set. It makes sense to bring disciplinary issues before persons in an authorized hierarchy.from comment 330 : http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/09/i-fought-the-church-and-the-church-won/#comment-38720
c. I try to obey Jesus with all my heart, trusting that his righteousness covers all my sins. I try to obey his apostles (the ones he personally chose) because he authorized them. They are the foundation of the church. I obey my leaders when I am a member of a church, and I make myself accountable when I am one of those leaders in a church. I don’t absolutely trust my leaders (I don’t think the NT requires that), nor do I expect such trust from others. I only give absolute trust to Jesus and the writings of the apostles.
Here’s the problem. You picked those persons to be your ‘leaders’ because they most closely conform to your interpretation of Scripture. Any heretical group could (and does) the same. That’s not how Christ set up His Church. The Apostles appointed bishops as successors. They didn’t instruct people to choose and follow leaders who conformed to their [i.e. laypersons'] own interpretation of Scripture. To pick as one’s leader a person who agrees with one’s own interpretation, and ignore or disregard the bishop whom the Apostles established, is to reject the ecclesial authority Christ established. It is one more form of accumulating to oneself teachers to who each one’s ears, who speak and teach in conformity with one’s own interpretation. ( 2 Tim 4:3) That’s why the ‘leaders’ you follow now are not legitimate leaders, and have no actual ecclesial authority. This is revealed even in your stance toward them: you submit to them only when you agree with their interpretation. Otherwise, you don’t submit to them. And that’s no authority at all, but you call it ‘authority,’ because otherwise the nakedness of your “solo scriptura” position would be too self-evident, and you would have no way of hiding from your inability to “obey your leaders and submit to them” (Heb 13:17), as you have no way of distinguishing schism from heresy. (Notice how St. Athanasius and his fellow 90+ bishops at the Council of Sardica distinguish between schism and heresy. What does it say about your ecclesiology when they can distinguish between schism and heresy, but you cannot?)....................................
All the false prophets claim to be following Christ when they rebel against the leaders Christ has appointed. They never claim not to be following Christ; otherwise they wouldn’t deceive the sheep. Of course we should beware of false prophets – those who climb in by another way, rather than entering the sheepfold by the door, which is ordination by the rightful authorities. St. Francis de Sales, the bishop of Geneva in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, in his book The Catholic Controversies, shows this very clearly. That’s how he brought 70,000 Catholics who had become Calvinists, back into the Catholic Church, by showing them that Calvin and the other Protestant leaders who had come in and persuaded them to separate themselves from the local bishop, were never divinely authorized, but usurped authority and presumed to teach in Christ’s name, but without His authorization............................
Even the Westminster Confession of Faith has a less gnostic account of the Church than that, in its definition of the visible Church. If you are Reformed, then since in the Reformed system only the elect have “personal faith” in Christ, therefore, given your definition of the Church, the Church is only the set of the elect. Here’s one problem with your definition: it contradicts what you say about discipline. You are strongly in support of Church discipline, but if the Church is the set of the elect, there is no such thing as discipline, because no one who is elect can be put “out” of the Church, i.e. can be put out of the set of the elect. Moreover, the term “personal faith” is too vague and ambiguous to be of any use in determining where is the Church, and distinguishing what is the Church from what is not the Church. People holding all kinds of beliefs claim to have personal faith in Christ, people that you would deny are part of the Church. So, you have a criterion, and it is much more than merely holding “personal faith.”
concerning the fact that the church is not just an institution--from comment 48 here:http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/11/how-the-church-won-an-interview-with-jason-stellman/#comment-39984
Christ’s mystical Body is not a mere institution, it is Christ himself (just like your right arm isn’t some dispensable thing that’s not part of you). It’s Gnostics who pit Jesus against his Body, not Christians.
a quote from the end of an article found here : http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/12/three-frameworks-for-interpreting-the-church-fathers/http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/12/three-frameworks-for-interpreting-the-church-fathers/
The historian of early Christianity who wishes to argue for the relevance of the earliest writings to our contemporary conception of Christianity is on the horns of a dilemma. He is forced either to accept these doctrines and practices as a natural development of the NT faith or to dismiss them as a devolution and/or aberration from the purity of the NT faith. Accepting these authors and writings as legitimate expressions of Christian belief entails acknowledging the hierarchical nature of church structure, the centrality of the Eucharist in Christian worship, and a number of other catholic notions. Rejecting these early manifestations of catholicity entails the belief that the church was involved in unfortunate (tragic?) departure from the NT faith immediately after the apostolic era. Locating these departures from the purity of the apostolic faith in a later century, be it the fifth or the fifteenth, is not historically or logically possible. The developments that emerged in the subsequent centuries stand in direct continuity with these earliest expressions of the Christian faith. Some may attempt to remain neutral, giving only historical descriptions and generalizations but in that case these students of early Christianity have nothing of relevance to say to the contemporary church.
from a discussion with a Lutheran who sees his church as the church is this reply from comment 451 here-http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/02/mathisons-reply-to-cross-and-judisch-a-largely-philosophical-critique/#comment-45662
The documents of Vatican II make quite clear that the Catholic Church sees anybody who’s validly baptized as belonging to her by “imperfect communion.” If you’re not willing to extend the same consideration to us, then you’re making an even stronger claim on your church’s behalf than the Catholic Church makes for herself–but at the same time, without being willing to say just who in your church is infallible under what conditions, by virtue of their office. Frankly, I find that whole stance so profoundly question-begging as to be unworthy of further refutation.
In a White Horse Inn article titled “A Reformed Farewell to Benedict XVI,” posted today, Michael Horton discusses some of the history of the conciliar movement in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and then concludes with a final paragraph which I have responded to below in smaller sections. He writes:
But this tale does clear our eyes from the foggy mists of sentimentalism. Is the Roman Catholic Church united by an unbroken succession from St. Peter? Roman Catholic theologians—and especially historians—know that an uncomplicated “yes” will not do.
If the question is simply whether the succession is “unbroken,” then an uncomplicated “yes” will do, because the question (as worded) is a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question. Tracing the authentic succession through periods such as the Western Schism can be complicated. But the existence of an unbroken succession from St. Peter to the present pope is not nullified, falsified, or refuted by the difficulty of tracing that lineage through periods of schism and antipopes. Here Horton implicitly conflates the unbroken succession with the tracing of that succession.
He then asks:
Are the church’s decisions irreformable?
Only those decisions meeting all the conditions of infallibility are irrevocable.
Then what about the Council of Constance? Even the Council of Basel was a duly constituted synod. Whose conclusions are binding?
The conclusions of a council are not ipso facto binding as dogma, but require ratification by the pope, and popes can (and sometimes do) ratify only some of the conclusions of a council. That is the case both with Constance and Basel.
At the very least, Rome has compromised its claim of an unbroken unity—not only between councils and popes, but within the papal line itself.
Horton asserts this, but has provided no argument or evidence demonstrating this to be case. Merely asking questions such as “Are the church’s decisions irreformable?” and “Whose conclusions are binding?” in no way shows that the line of succession from St. Peter to the present pope has been broken, or “compromises” the Catholic teaching concerning the line of succession.
It can invent theories of “anti-popes” to preserve its claim to valid succession. But even if one were to accept the idea in principle, history has already provided too much contrary evidence. Romantic glances across the Tiber are thwarted by the reality.
Horton is obviously aware of the Catholic position regarding antipopes, because he refers to it here. But instead of refuting it, he uses the word ‘invent,’ implicitly suggesting that the notion of antipopes was merely made up by the Catholic Church. But that begs the question, i.e. presupposes precisely what is in question. If the papacy is what the Catholic Church teaches, then any “false claimant of the Holy See in opposition to a pontiff canonically elected” is an antipope. Horton gives no evidence or argumentation showing that the notion that there can be (and has been) antipopes is false.
At the end of the day, this story provides one more reminder that the church that is created by the Word and stands under that Word, with all of its besetting sins and errors, is still the safest place to be in a fallen world and imperfect church.
Of course as a Catholic, I agree that we should be in the Church Christ (the Logos) founded. But here Horton equivocates by conflating the uncreated Word (i.e. the Logos), with the created words of Scripture and the spoken words of humans preaching from Scripture. The inscripturated words inspired by the Holy Spirit and preserved in Sacred Scripture are not the Uncreated Word, because the former’s existence is contingent upon God’s having chosen to create the world, whereas the Logos is not contingent at all. What Horton means by his statement is that we should be a member of the set of persons who sufficiently conform to [Horton's interpretation of] Scripture, a set that is brought into existence and increases in numbers when that interpretation is preached. The safest place to be, according to Horton, is belonging to the community constituted by the members of that set.
Here’s the problem. In 2007, in a blog post he has not retained in his archives, Horton’s colleague R. Scott Clark wrote:
Remember, since the 16th century, revisionists and errorists have always said, “We’re just following the Bible.” That was the loudest refrain of the Socinians, who ended up denying the Trinity. They denied the deity of Jesus, the substitutionary atonement and justification by works all on the ground that, they were just following the Bible. All heretics quote Scripture. The question in this controversy is not the normativity of the Bible but who gets to interpret it. (emphasis mine)
Just two weeks ago Clark tweeted, a similar claim:
All heretics quote Scripture. The gnostics did it… The Anabaptists quoted Scripture and the Socinians quoted Scripture.
On this point, Clark is exactly right. Anyone can claim that the set of persons sharing his own particular interpretation is the one “created by” Scripture and which “stands under” Scripture. The Anabaptists do the same thing, and the Socinians did the same thing, and so has every heretical group in Church history, as Scott rightly notes. The problem, however, is that Horton is in this very same position. He defines ‘Church’ as that which his created by and stands under Scripture, but in actuality he is defining ‘Church’ as that which sufficiently conforms to his own interpretation of Scripture, and is thus treating his own interpretation of Scripture (and that of those who share his interpretation) as if it is Scripture itself. According to Horton, the Catholic Church with all its difficult Church history involving power struggles and antipopes and schisms and councils, is unsafe. In contrast to all that, the safe place to be, Horton is arguing, is in the bosom of Horton’s own interpretation of Scripture, because [by implication] that does not involve any power struggle or usurpation at all. However, from a Catholic point of view, the Protestant movement as a whole involve arrogating interpretive authority from the Church’s Magisterium to the individual. So Horton’s solution ‘avoids’ the messiness of history and power struggles and the question of interpretive authority by having the reader step over the Protestant-Catholic question and simply conform to Horton’s interpretation of Scripture treated as Scripture itself.
But as Clark’s statement shows, the question is “who gets to interpret it”? That is, whose interpretation is authoritative, and why? And the notion that “my interpretation is authoritative because I’m right” just begs the question. The idea that following Horton’s interpretation of Scripture puts us in a safe place, away from power struggles, is, to use Horton’s phrase, “thwarted by the reality.” The last few weeks has seen a flurry of online posts between Reformed pastors regarding whether or not to observe Lent. Even the debate over who gets to define ‘Reformed’ hasn’t been settled. Just four days ago Clarktweeted, “Why is James White, a Baptist, considered a spokesman for the Reformed faith, at least w/o an asterisk?” Of course there are theological debates among Catholics as well, but the existence of Catholic Magisterial authority makes those debates soluble in principle, whereas the Protestant debates involve what Richard Beck calls “meta-biblical choices” and therefore leave no non-arbitrary, non-violent means of resolving them.
It is “safe” to follow Horton and his interpretation of Scripture only if he truly has divine interpretive authority, and his interpretive authority is greater than that of the Catholic Magisterium, something Horton has not yet established.
end of quote.
also here from comment 162 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/09/hermeneutics-and-the-authority-of-scripture/#
We don’t say the Catholic Church is the catholic Church because she says she is; that would be circular. We say she is the Catholic Church because there is sufficient external evidence to prove it. The argument needed to disprove this is not philosophical (i.e. to show that we have circular reasoning) but historical. You would need to show that the Church that Christ founded either A) was not visible and authoritative in the way we believe it is or B) is something different than what we now call the Catholic Church.
If you want a thorough refutation of the argument you are making, it can be found here by Dr. Mike Liccione in Part 1 and Part 2 of “Bad Arguments Against the Magisterium.”
from comment 70 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/03/habemus-papam/
and here comment 178 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/09/hermeneutics-and-the-authority-of-scripture/#
But we also have good reason to believe that the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church cannot fail, cannot lose the deposit of faith or fall into heresy or apostasy. Here’s why. If the Church is the Body of Christ, then the Church cannot fail, because Christ cannot fail. See my post titled, “The Indefectibility of the Church“.) God did not shed His blood on the cross only to abandon His Church such that she would fall into heresy or apostasy. The union of God with man that took place at the incarnation, and continues in His Body, the Church, entails that the Church is not like King Saul, in that respect, and not like the Israelites in that respect. The promises and benefits of the New Covenant are better than those under the Old. Regarding the Church at Ephesus in Revelation, we need to remember the distinction between the universal Church, and a particular Church. Particular Churches (e.g. Ephesus, Smyrna, etc.) can fail. But the universal Church cannot fail — the gates of hell cannot prevail against her. She is the pillar and bulwark of truth, as St. Paul says (1 Tim 3:15). And the stone on which the universal Church is built is Petros, the fisherman, to whom Christ gave the keys, and in whose linethese keys are retained. The Church where Peter’s chair remains, where he spilled his blood and handed on those keys, is the Church with which all Christians (and all other particular Churches) are to be in full communion, as St. Irenaeus points out:
Since, however, it would be very tedious, in such a volume as this, to reckon up the successions of all the Churches, we do put to confusion all those who, in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vainglory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say,] by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops.For it is a matter of necessity that every [particular] Church should agree with this [particular] Church [i.e. the Church at Rome], on account of its preeminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the tradition has been preserved continuously by those [faithful men] who exist everywhere. (Against Heresies, III.3)
also here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/09/what-therefore-god-has-joined-together-divorce-and-the-sacrament-of-marriage/#comment-48820
Why has the Catholic Church always taught that marriage is indissoluble, and thus that divorce is impossible? It is no accident that there is a correlation between believing in the possibility of divorce and remarriage, and believing some form of ecclesial deism. If the bond between Christ and His Church can be broken, then how much more can the sign of that bond be broken.50 Where we find ecclesial deism, there, undoubtedly, we should expect to find acceptance of divorce with remarriage. But where the indissolubility of Christian marriage is preserved, there we should expect to find a belief in the indefectibility of the Church. And so it is. The indissolubility of Christian marriage is a testimony to the world of Christ’s unfailing love for His Church, and therefore to the sure promise of eternal life in the world to come, for all those who believe and are baptized.51The indissoluble union of Christ and His Church is a consequence of the indissoluble union of Christ and His human nature. Hence ecclesial deism’s rejection of the indissoluble union of Christ and His Church is an implicit denial of Christ’s resolve never to give up His humanity.52
Also here
comment 148 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/11/sola-scriptura-redux-matthew-barrett-tradition-and-authority/#comment-110457
Being Reformed, he defines ‘Church’ as wherever the gospel is found, because the early Protestants defined the marks of the Church as including “the gospel,” where the gospel was determined by their own private interpretation of Scripture. So he claims that it is in the Church that the gospel is found, but he defines the Church in terms of the gospel. This is what we call a tautology. It is a form of circular reasoning that allows anyone to claim to be the Church and have the gospel. One can read the Bible and formulate one’s own understanding of the gospel, then make this “gospel” a necessary mark of the Church, and then say that it is in the Church that the gospel is found. Because one has defined the Church in terms of the gospel [as arrived at by one's own interpretation of Scripture], telling us that the gospel is found “in the Church” tells us nothing other than “people who share my own interpretation of Scripture about what is the gospel are referred to by me as ‘the Church.’” This kind of circular reasoning allows falsehood to remain hidden.
Another good article here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/07/ecclesial-deism/ Helps to explain why God has preserved the Church. Here is a quote:
it follows from the very nature of Protestantism, because Protestantism, like Mormonism, presupposes ecclesial deism. Deism refers to a belief that God made the world, and then left it to run on its own. It is sometimes compared to “a clockmaker” winding up a clock and then “letting it run.” Deism is distinct from theism in that theism affirms not only that God created the world, but also that God continually sustains and governs all of creation. Ecclesial deism is the notion that Christ founded His Church, but then withdrew, not protecting His Church’s Magisterium (i.e., the Apostles and/or their successors) from falling into heresy or apostasy. Ecclesial deism is not the belief that individual members of the Magisterium could fall into heresy or apostasy. It is the belief that the Magisterium of the Church could lose or corrupt some essential of the deposit of faith, or add something to the deposit of faith.
Why is ecclesial deism intrinsic to Protestantism and Mormonism? Because any person who chooses to leave the Catholic Church or remain separated from her, while intending to remain a Christian, has to claim that the Catholic Church has fallen into heresy or apostasy, so that separating from her is justified. We can find this idea throughout the history of the Catholic Church. The Gnostics of the second century justified being separated from the Catholic Church by claiming that even the Apostles had perverted Christ’s teachings. St. Irenaeus (d. AD 200) writes:
But, again, when we refer [the heretics] to that tradition which originates from the apostles, [and] which is preserved by means of the succession of presbyters in the Churches, they object to tradition, saying that they themselves are wiser not merely than the presbyters, but even than the apostles, because they have discovered the unadulterated truth. For [they maintain] that the apostles intermingled the things of the law with the words of the Saviour; . . . It comes to this, therefore, that these men do now consent neither to Scripture nor to tradition.11
and
How did I come to recognize my ecclesial deism for what it was? I first began to see it when taking a graduate seminar on St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas continually appeals to the tradition of the Church, and to the Fathers. I found myself frustrated by his theological method. I wanted him to be doing exegesis from Scripture when making theological arguments, not appealing to the Church Fathers. The professor teaching the seminar responded to my objections by explaining that Aquinas believed that divine providence guided the Church Fathers and the development of the Church. This professor pointed out that Aquinas was not a deist about the Church. That short answer provoked me to do a great deal of reflecting, because I realized then that I did not share Aquinas’s non-deistic way of conceiving of the development of the Church.
Of course I firmly believed in divine providence, but I distrusted all the Fathers to which Aquinas appealed. That is why, in my mind, appeals to the Fathers did not establish anything at all, because if the Church were being corrupted and falling away from the purity of the Gospel, then appealing to the Fathers was like appealing to heretics. But for Aquinas, if the Church Fathers taught something, especially if they were Doctors of the Church or if the claim in question was held and taught widely by the Fathers, that showed it to be authoritative for us as a kind of patrimony, precisely because the Holy Spirit was unfailingly guiding the development of the Church into all truth. On this point I discovered a very deep difference between myself and Aquinas. The more I studied his writings, the more the difference was noticeable to me. Aquinas believed that faith in Christ necessarily involves trusting the Church, because Christ cannot fail to guide and protect the development of His Church.
I came to see that I did not fully trust Christ, not because I thought Him untrustworthy, but because I had not understood that Christ founded a visible hierarchically organized Body of which He is the Head, and which He has promised to protect and preserve until He returns. I had not apprehended the ecclesial organ Christ established through which the members of His Body are to trust Him. I came to see that faith in Christ is not something to be exercised invisibly, from my heart directly to Christ’s throne, as though Christ had not appointed an enduring line of shepherds. Inward faith was to be exercised outwardly, by trusting Christ throughthose shepherds Christ sent and established. Jesus had said, “The one who listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me; and he who rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me.”29 This is the sacramental conception of faith, not simply belief that, but belief through. This is the sacramental conception of the Church, the basis for the priest speaking in persona Christi.
As I began to grasp that, I began to grasp that my Church-less faith was too small. Apart from the Church, I had conceived of faith in Christ as something entirely inward. But upon coming to understand that Christ founded a visible hierarchically organized Body of which He is the Head and which He promised to preserve, I came to see that the way to trust Christ is to trust His Church of which He is the Head, just as the early Christians trusted Christ precisely by trusting the teaching of the Apostles. Trusting the Apostles did not subtract from (or compete with) their trust in Christ. On the contrary, when Jesus tells the Apostle Thomas, “Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed,”30 He implies that greater faith is required and shown in those who trust in Christ not by seeing Him, but by believing the testimony of the Apostles. Jesus refers to this way of believing when He prays, “I do not ask in behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word.”31
.................
The distinction between these two kinds of faith follows from the distinction between the Gnostic conception of the Church and the biblical conception of the Church as a living and hierarchically unified Body. When we come to see “the act of faith in Christ and the act of faith in the Church [as] one act of faith,” then we have to let go of ecclesial deism. In that respect ecclesial deism is a ‘hermeneutic of suspicion,’ a form of unbelief, a stance of doubt, and hence a defect in faith. But that does not mean that everyone holding some form of ecclesial deism is doing so because he or she consciously or culpably distrusts Christ. It may simply be because this person does not recognize or grasp what it is that Christ founded when He founded His Church. In the history of the Church, we can find this stance of doubt in the early heresies, including the Montanists, Novatians, and Donatists. Their distrust expressed itself as distrusting the legitimate shepherds whom Christ had appointed to feed and govern His flock. But the Catholic exercises faith in Christ by trusting and serving those shepherds whom Christ has appointed and authorized to govern in His name. In doing so, the Catholic is not replacingfaith in Christ with faith in the Church, but trusting in Christ precisely by and through trusting Christ’s Church.
and
Christ our Light has come into the world to bring Light to the whole world57, for He is not a God of confusion.58For this purpose He established His universal Church on a man He named ‘Rock,’59 and promised that the gates of Hades would never prevail against it. This Catholic Church is the household of faith, the family of God, the pillar and bulwark of truth. He did not abandon it or let it see decay, as ecclesial deism suggests.60 Rather, His sure and unbreakable promise finds its fulfillment in His Church to whom He says “I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you.”61
also here at comment 62 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/03/jason-stellman-tells-his-conversion-story/
From a Protestant standpoint, one can define “the Church” as the people who, across space and time, concur about the “correct” interpretation of Scripture on matters they deem “essential” and who aim to live accordingly. In fact, that’s what conservative Protestants typically do. And prima facie, it all sounds pretty normative. On such a picture, when people within “the Church” obstinately dissent from the “correct” interpretation of Scripture on matters deemed essential by “the Church,” they are sometimes excommunicated, thus maintaining the doctrinal purity of “the Church.” But whether they are excommunicated or not, the dissenters typically hive off to join or start another church. Having done so, they proceed to define their new church as at least part of “the Church” in the way I described above, often to the detriment of the church they left, which of course continues to claim that it, not the church joined or started by the dissenters, is orthodox. Does such a process “settle” anything, even by the criterion you suggest? Of course not. Accordingly, what counts as “orthodox” doctrine, and with it as “the Church,” becomes purely a matter of opinion, which cannot claim divine authority and thus cannot command the assent of faith. For few Protestant churches claim, and none can plausibly claim, to be divinely protected from error under certain specifiable and concrete conditions. So, what’s considered “orthodox” from a purely empirical standpoint can, does, and must vary considerably among churches, given their objective lack of divine teaching authority.
Now if the Catholic Church conceived of her own identity and authority as conservative-Protestant churches typically conceive of their own, then she would indeed be just one more denomination, with no more divine authority to define and impose orthodoxy in a deontically normative way than any other denomination. But in point of fact, she does claim to be divinely protected from error under certain specifiable and concrete conditions, so that whatever she teaches with her full authority is inerrant and irreformable. If such a claim is correct, then no matter how many nominal Catholics dissent from such teaching or hive off to join or start another church, the divine authority, and thus the deontic normativity, of Catholic teaching remains intact, and thus with it, the epistemic utility of Catholic teaching for distinguishing between orthodoxy and heresy. Thus Catholic orthodoxy would be normative in a sense in which no Protestant “orthodoxy” can ever be.
from comment 111 here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/05/apostolic-succession-and-historical-inquiry-some-preliminary-remarks/#comment-51311 :
you write:
Fundamentally, it seems as though the difference (maybe not whollistically) between the PIP and the CIP, which you are espousing to be the first stage of observation prior to engaging in discussion on whether one accepts Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism, is that the PIP always examines what is being “SAID” whereas the CIP does not launch from this preliminary search but is more concerned with “WHO” is saying what is “SAID”.
I think that this is a false dichotomy, i.e. that when it comes to interpretive paradigms, that somehow the Protestants are more interested in WHAT is being said in the scriptures, whereas Catholics are primarily interested in WHO is doing the interpretation of scriptures. Here is why I say that. Suppose, at the first stages of his inquiry, the seeker of the truth has been given the grace of God to believe by the gift of divine faith that the scriptures are the divinely inspired, (God-breathed), inerrant, word of God. At this stage of his inquiry, the seeker would be operating from an article of faith that is shared by those who hold the Conservative Protestant Interpretive Paradigm, the Catholic Interpretive Paradigm, and the Orthodox Interpretive Paradigm.
The seeker of truth, in examining WHAT the word of God says, soon discovers that Jesus Christ founded his own personal church (Matthew 16:18), and that Christ has demanded of those who would be his disciples that them must listen to the church that he personally founded or suffer the pain of excommunication (Matthew 18:17). The inquirer, from his reading of the inerrant scriptures, is confronted with the fact that WHAT is written in the word of God demands of him that he listen to WHO is speaking with authority in the church that Jesus Christ personally founded. For this scriptural reason, the inquirer would know that he cannot listen to any man or woman in a Protestant denomination as a final interpretive authority, since all Protestant denominations are merely ecclesial organizations founded by protesting men and women in schism with the church personally founded by Jesus Christ. Matthew 18:17 also excludes the solo scriptura principle (which implicitly asserts that I am the final interpretive authority), or as Andrew Preslar puts it, the scriptures exclude this belief:
“My own interpretation of whatever writings I deem to be canonical is the measure of the universal Church that Christ founded.”
In short, WHAT is being said in scriptures demands that the inquirer be concerned with “WHO is saying what is SAID”. All of which should lead the inquirer into an examination of the doctrines concerning Apostolic Succession. Andrew Preslar speaks to this point in his article:
Given that Christ only founded one Church (the universal Church)–as attested by the singular ecclesia used in Matthew 16:18–such that the three-fold charism of teaching, governing, and sanctifying, while most obviously operative in the local churches, presupposes, depends upon, and is ordered to the life of this one, universal Church, the inquirer is justified in asking further “Where should I look for the true interpretation of divine revelation in the event that not all sacramentally ordained bishops are in communion with one another, teaching the same doctrine?”
Since the scriptures rule out all of Protestantism as a final interpretive authority, the inquirer then needs to ask himself which of the ancient churches that have maintained Apostolic Succession is the church that Christ commands him to listen to. This leaves the inquirer with essentially the choice between the Catholic Church, or one of the local particular churches in the Eastern or Oriental Orthodox communions.
The inquirer is left to wrestle with this historical fact: all of the ancient churches that have maintained Apostolic Succession confess as an article of faith that they believe that valid Ecumenical Councils also teach infallibly when the Ecumenical Council solemnly defines dogma. To accept an Apostolic Church as having final interpretive authority, the seeker of truth must accept by faith that the dogmas formally defined at Ecumenical Councils are inerrant, for that is what it means to “listen to the church” that has maintained Apostolic Succession.
All of these ancient churches also teach that there have been Councils that were called as Ecumenical Councils, and that some of these Councils were not valid (e.g. the Robber Council of Ephesus). No disciple of Christ is bound by pain of excommunication to believe in the formally defined dogmas ofinvalid Ecumenical Councils. Which means that the inquirer now needs an answer to this question: “What are the objective criteria that determines the validity of an Ecumenical Council?”
My take away point is this, that when speaking of “interpretive paradigms”, the scriptures exclude the Protestant interpretive paradigm, (i.e. paradigm that asserts that I don’t have to listen to the church founded by Jesus Christ if I personally disagree with what Christ’s church teaches). The scriptures demand a different interpretive paradigm altogether (the paradigm that insists that I do have to listen to the church personally founded by Jesus Christ).
Erick Ybarra, it seems to me that you are interpreting wrongly the “binding and loosing statements” in Matthew chapters 16 and 18 when you write this:
The promise of Christ on binding and loosing had to do with this kind of local “moral” situation. Christ gives a promise that “whatever” is bound on earth is bound in heaven, specifically to the small communities issues that are of a “moral” nature (much different than worldwide doctrine proclamatory).
Explicitly, Christ teaches that the brother that is sinning that refuses to “listen to even the church” is to be excommunicated. In your interpretation of Matthew 18:15, it seems to me, that you are limiting “sinning” to the sins of the flesh (“issues of a ‘moral’ nature”), and you are also limiting “the church” of Matthew 18:17 to mean the “small community” of a local particular church. But I have a big problem with your interpretation about both these points. I cannot accept your interpretation about what constitutes sinning, since it does not include sins about preaching heresy or advocating schism. Nor can I accept your interpretation about what constitutes “the church”, since the scriptures give us an explicit account of Christ’s teaching found in Matthew 18:17 being implemented by his church, and in this example, “the church”, is something more than just the local particular church governed by a bishop.
The scriptures I have in mind are found in Acts Chapter 15. There we read about brothers from Jerusalem that go to Antioch and start division within the local church of Antioch by preaching a false doctrine about what is necessary for salvation – i.e. that the gentile converts to The Way need to be circumcised to be saved. These brothers are sinning by preaching false doctrine, and their sinning is leading to division within the local particular church. The Apostle Paul rejects the heresy being espoused by the brethren from Jerusalem, and he happens to be in Antioch where he confronts these outsiders from Jerusalem. Note that the local church in Antioch does NOT resolve this dispute by appealing to the bishop of Antioch as the final arbiter that can bind the brethren in Antioch to an article of faith. Nor does the local church in Antioch look to the Apostle Paul as the final arbiter about what constitutes orthodox doctrine. The church in Antioch seeks resolution of this doctrinal dispute by following the teaching of Christ found in Matthew 18:17. The brethren in Antioch send Paul and Barnabas to the Apostles and the elders in Jerusalem to get a definitive teaching on this matter of doctrine.
My take away points here are two. One, the “sinning” mentioned in Matthew 18:15 is not limited to only sins of a moral nature, and two, that the scriptures show us in Acts chapter 15 that doctrinal disputes at the local level are ultimately settled by men with authority that live outside of the local community.
Erick, you may very well disagree with my interpretation of scriptures. But then, how should we resolve our interpretive dispute since we both believe that the scriptures are the inerrant God-breathed word of God? I say we should settle our dispute by bringing our dispute the church that Jesus Christ personally founded. What scriptural argument can you raise to tell my that we should not do this?
and comment 112:
According to Canon Law in the Catholic Church:
Can. 381 §1. A diocesan bishop in the diocese entrusted to him has all ordinary, proper, and immediate power which is required for the exercise of his pastoral function except for cases which the law or a decree of the Supreme Pontiff reserves to the supreme authority or to another ecclesiastical authority.
This power, as stated in the first part of the paragraph, corresponds to the judgment of the local church as described by Our Lord in Matthew 18:17-18 (assuming that this passages applies to the local as well as the universal church, which I think it does). But this passage, in theory and as to practical application, presupposes that the local church is in full communion with the universal Church. If we assume that local churches can lawfully, in a binding way, exercise the power of the keys apart from mutual communion with and in the universal Church, then we would have situations in which local churches were exercising the power of the keys in mutually incompatible ways on essential matters. In that case, the Church would be divided against itself, and we know that “a kingdom divided against itself will not be able to stand” (Mark 3:24). But this paralyzing and ultimately destructive problem cannot obtain in the Catholic Church, precisely because there is a single, visible and authoritative court of appeal at the universal level, as implied by Our Lord’s words to Peter in particular in Matthew 16:16-18, and as specified in the second part of Canon 381, above.
from comment 124:
I wrote “The seeker of truth, in examining WHAT the word of God says, soon discovers that Jesus Christ founded his own personal church (Matthew 16:18), and that Christ has demanded of those who would be his disciples that them must listen to the church that he personally founded or suffer the pain of excommunication (Matthew 18:17).”
You responded:
That interpretation is based on the Catholic interpretation of Matthew. If you do not hold to that interpretation, you cannot therefore proceed to your next comment…
What other interpretation is possible? Please explain that to me! In Matthew’s Gospel, Christ commands that those who would be his disciples must listen to the church or suffer the pain of excommunication (Matt18:17). The referent to the church can only be the church that Matthew mentioned previously in his Gospel, the church personally founded by Jesus Christ (Matt 16:18). The referent to “the church” in Matthew cannot possibly be some Protestant sect, since the earliest these sects appear on planet earth is one thousand five hundred years after Christ had given the commandment to his disciples to listen to “the church”.
Again, to reach this conclusion, one must believe that “the church personally founded by Christ” is only the Roman Catholic church… an assumption that is only held by the Roman Catholic church.
No, the inquirer that has been given the grace of God to believe that the scriptures are inerrant does not have to make this assumption. The inquirer that reads Matthew’s Gospel understands (if he has normal reading comprehension skills) that Christ is commanding his disciples to listen to the church that he personally founded. This commandment of Christ forbids the inquirer from choosing just any old church to listen to. The inquirer cannot identify the church that he will listen to as being the church that teaches what the inquirer wants a church to teach. The inquirer that is choosing a church by that criterion is listening to himself, and not listening to the church personally founded by Jesus Christ. Church shopping, or ecclesial consumerism, is forbidden by Christ.
So how does the inquirer find the church personally founded by Christ? The inquirer knows from Matt. 18:17 that he must listen to a visible church, since it is not possible to bring a brother that is sinning to an invisible church for judgment. Especially when one believes that the brother’s sin involves the sin of preaching heresy. Maybe the brother is teaching heresy, and maybe he isn’t – Christ is saying that ultimately his church can make that judgment, and that is one reason why he founded his own church and sent the Holy Spirit to guide her into all truth. Protestant “invisible church” ecclesiology is ruled out by Matt. 18:17. Furthermore, the church that the inquirer needs to listen to must be identifiable by some objective criteria that does not require the inquirer to exercise the charismatic gift of infallibility in order to know that he has made the right judgment. For if the inquirer must exercise the charismatic gift of infallibility to know which church is the church that he must listen to, then he doesn’t need a church to listen to – he needs the charismatic gift of infallibility. Unbroken Apostolic Succession is one the objective criterion necessary for the inquirer to identify the church personally founded by Christ, the church that he must listen to upon pain of excommunication.
The inquirer can know from reading Matthew’s Gospel that Christ has promised that the powers of death cannot prevail against the visible church that Christ personally founded (Matt. 16:18). And that means the church personally founded by Jesus Christ cannot die. Therefore, “the church” must still exist on planet earth, and she must have an unbroken history that stretches back two-thousand years. This fact alone means that the inquirer can dismiss any Protestant sect’s claim to be the church that he must listen to. That is so because no Protestant sect has a history that stretches back two thousand years, and every single Protestant sect was personally founded by some man or woman, and was not personally founded by Jesus Christ. Might a Protestant sect have something worth listening to? Sure, but such a sect can never be the final temporal arbiter of about what constitutes orthodoxy, since no Protestant sect can possibly be the visible church that was personally founded by Jesus Christ two thousand years ago.
Curt, you argue that I am saying that the inquirer has to assume that the Catholic Church is “the church” – the church mentioned in Matthew’s Gospel. I disagree with that. The inquirer doesn’t have to assume that the church that he must listen to is the Catholic Church. I am saying that the inquirer needs to do his homework and seek out the churches that meet two criteria: one, the church under consideration claims to be personally founded by Jesus Christ; and two, the church has an unbroken history of two-thousand years. The inquirer that does his homework will learn that there are only a few possible choices that meet these two criteria, either the Catholic Church, or one of the local particular churches in the Eastern Orthodox or Oriental Orthodox communions.
Again, to reach this conclusion, one must believe that “the church personally founded by Christ” is only the Roman Catholic church… an assumption that is only held by the Roman Catholic church.
Again, I disagree. Does the Catholic Church dispute that the local particular churches in the Eastern or Oriental Orthodox communions meet the two criteria that I have mentioned? She does not. As far as my Matthew’s Gospel argument goes, the local particular churches in the Eastern or Oriental Orthodox communions are real possibilities for the inquirer in a way that no Protestant sect ever can be. Other criteria are needed to narrow the choice down to only the Catholic Church as opposed to the EO or OO.
My take away point is that the inerrant scriptures rule out all Protestant sects from being “the church” that Christ has commanded his disciples to listen to. The scriptural argument that I have advanced, so far, is not sufficient for the inquirer to rule out the local particular churches in the Eastern Orthodox or Oriental Orthodox communions. The inquirer that needs to choose between the Catholic Church and the EO or OO is going to run head on into the issues that Michael Liccone speaks about in the last paragraph of his post # 117.
In the Presbyterian church, only validly ordained elders (or presbyters) can enforce church discipline.
In the Elks Club and Moose Club validly elected officials can enforce club rules too. Why should the inquirer care about what Presbyterians do to enforce the “club rules” of a particular sect of Presbyterianism? John Calvin was a layman that rejected all the men who claimed to have legitimate ecclesial authority over him. So Presbyterians have “ordained” elders that are “ordained” by other elders. What of it? I can take you to “churches” in the South where grandpa founded his own personal bible church just like John Calvin did. Grandpa then “ordained” his grandson by laying hands upon junior and “making him preacher”. I can’t see any difference between grandpa founding his own personal bible church and ordaining his grand kids then I can see with Presbyterian elders “ordaining” other Presbyterian elders.
Presbyterian elders have no more authority than what a member of the Presbyterian sect gives to them. The governing principle of the Protestant Reformation is that if my conscience tells me that the elders in my Presbyterian church are preaching false doctrine, I don’t have to act against my conscience. If I don’t agree with the “ordained elders” of my Presbyterian sect that abortion is not sinful under every circumstance, I can go to another Presbyterian church that agrees with me. It is the Presbyterians that assert that I have this “freedom of conscience”. And if I can’t find a Presbyterian sect that completely agrees with me on what constitutes the orthodox doctrines of faith and morals, I can follow the footsteps of John Calvin. I can reject all men that claim to have church authority over me, and found my own personal “bible church” – a church that teaches, quite naturally, the doctrines of faith and morals that I personally believe to be true.
The inquirer that reads Matthew’s Gospel should be horrified at this Protestant “primacy of conscience” doctrine, since the Protestant principle of the Reformation ultimately rests on a false doctrine that I only have to listen to a church that doesn’t upset me.
“When I submit only when I agree, the one to whom I submit is me.”
When you give examples of Protestant errors from the pulpit, I would remind you that there was a time in Catholic history when communicants had to purchase their forgiveness through financial payment.
Just to be clear for those who might be reading this thread, there has never been a dogma of the Catholic Church that states that the forgiveness of sins can be purchased. The Catholic church has always condemned the sin of Simony. Curt, it would take us way off topic to discuss this, so we should pick up this point of disagreement on a different thread.
see also http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/06/christ-founded-a-visible-church/#comment-53161 actually not the comment but the article
from comment 51 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/05/pope-francis-atheists-and-the-evangelical-spirit/
The Protestant agrees with his ecclesial authority because he picked them on the basis of their agreement with his interpretation of Scripture. By contrast, the Catholic agrees with the Magisterium’s interpretation of Scripture because he has submitted to their interpretive authority, having chosen to submit to them not on the basis of their their agreement with his interpretation of Scripture, but on the basis of their being the successors of the Apostles in the Church Christ founded. See “Tu Quoque, Catholic Convert” and “The Tu Quoque.”from comment 40
But how does he [i.e. Mathison] determine what is the Church? Being Reformed, he defines ‘Church’ as wherever the gospel is found, because the early Protestants defined the marks of the Church as including “the gospel,” where the gospel was determined by their own private interpretation of Scripture. So he claims that it is in the Church that the gospel is found, but he defines the Church in terms of the gospel. This is what we call a tautology. It is a form of circular reasoning that allows anyone to claim to be the Church and have the gospel. One can read the Bible and formulate one’s own understanding of the gospel, then make this “gospel” a necessary mark of the Church, and then say that it is in the Church that the gospel is found. Because one has defined the Church in terms of the gospel [as arrived at by one's own interpretation of Scripture], telling us that the gospel is found “in the Church” tells us nothing other than “people who share my own interpretation of Scripture about what is the gospel are referred to by me as ‘the Church.’” This kind of circular reasoning allows falsehood to remain hidden.
from 55 . Of course I agree that “God’s word trumps officers.” But let’s not conflate “Darryl’s interpretation of God’s Word” with God’s Word. See the WG Shedd quotation here.
another reference
how choose a church?
That Church that Christ founded did not cease to exist between the first century and the sixteenth. Nowhere, in those sixteen centuries, did the Church ever say anything equivalent to or entailing that the Church is the group of persons “that best conforms to Scripture.” Every heretical group on the planet, during those sixteen centuries, would have been delighted if the Church had ever made such a claim, because they could have then justified their own existence by claiming that they were the ones who best conformed to Scripture, and thus that they were the Church. The ‘apostolicity’ of the Church was always understood by that Church of the first sixteen centuries as requiring a succession of authority from the Apostles, not merely a claim to have the doctrine of the Apostles (since any heretical group could make such a claim).
The Church Christ founded, and which existed continually during those sixteen centuries, never said anything like the Church is the group of persons that “that best conforms to Scripture” or that ‘apostolicity’ reduces to agreement with the Apostles’ doctrine. That fourth mark of the Church (i.e. apostolicity) was always understood as essentially successional, that the doctrine of the Apostles was always to be found with those having the succession from the Apostles. She always said what Tertullian said at the end of the second century:
“Our appeal [in debating with the heretics], therefore, must not be made to the Scriptures; nor must controversy be admitted on points in which victory will either be impossible, or uncertain, or not certain enough. For a resort to the Scriptures would but result in placing both parties on equal footing, whereas the natural order of procedure requires one question to be asked first, which is the only one now that should be discussed: “With whom lies that very faith to which the Scriptures belong? From what and through whom, and when, and to whom, has been handed down that rule by which men become Christians? (Liber de praescriptione haereticorum, 19)
Who has the right and authority to say what Scripture means? Those from whom it was handed down, i.e. the Apostles, and the successors of the Apostles, and the particular Churches governed by the successors of the Apostles. The Scriptures belong to the Church, and are rightly known in and through the Church, not through the private interpretation of every Joe Blow who thinks he knows better than the Church what the Scriptures mean.
from comment 93 here
But which is more difficult to believe, and which is a better answer: that the authority of the Church was non-existent for 1500 years (and that the whole Church got it wrong about its authority), or as the early Church believed and universally practiced throughout the whole world wherever Christianity went, that the Apostles handed down their authority to successors as testified to repeatedly by the early Church Fathers?”
| — | bryan cross here at comment 93 |
also here comment 465 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/03/jason-stellman-tells-his-conversion-story/#comment-58556 BRYAN
It is good, all other things being equal, for persons to be told about Christ and His love for us, and that He died for our salvation. It is not good for persons to be in schism, to be deprived of the Eucharist, to “assemble in unauthorized meetings” (St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, III.3.2), to be taught false doctrine (e.g. to be taught that they can never lose their salvation), not to know who is their rightful bishop, to be deprived of the sacrament of reconciliation, to be deprived of the *fulness* of the truth handed down by the Apostles and developed by the Holy Spirit over two millennia, the communion of the saints, and all the other aids to our salvation available within the Church. So far as I know, people like Billy Graham are doing the best they can with what they know, and bringing a message of Christ to many people. And in that way, they are ‘good guys.” At at the same time, from a Catholic perspective, there is much more to the message of Christ. We’re not saved by words alone (that would be a kind of gnosticism). We’re saved in and through the Church and the sacraments Christ has placed within her.
comment 466
Thus the Church, as the “Body of Christ” which shares his authority as her Head, is the primary (though not the only) sphere in which I encounter God’s authority as Revealer, so that I can trust him accordingly. I’m sorry if that picture seems backwards to you. But that, of course, only points up the paradigm difference.
from comment 127 where AS means apostolic succession http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/08/why-evangelicals-are-getting-high-a-response-to-rebecca-vandoodewaard/#comment-58590
comment 466
Thus the Church, as the “Body of Christ” which shares his authority as her Head, is the primary (though not the only) sphere in which I encounter God’s authority as Revealer, so that I can trust him accordingly. I’m sorry if that picture seems backwards to you. But that, of course, only points up the paradigm difference.
from comment 127 where AS means apostolic succession http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/08/why-evangelicals-are-getting-high-a-response-to-rebecca-vandoodewaard/#comment-58590
The claim is not that revelation is wholly unknowable apart from AS. AS itself is known through revelation. And there are revelations that are not de fide (private revelations, for example). And Israel, of course, enjoyed centuries of revelation prior to the institution of the Church and the apostolic office.
However, if we want to have certainty in our act of faith in divine revelation, it is necessary that our rule of faith possess divine authority. Would you deny this? The teaching office of the Church (expressed in Scripture, oral tradition, and magisterial authority) happens to be the rule of faith that possesses that divine authority such that we can assent to supernatural divine revelation with certainty.
The problem (one problem) with SS is that Scripture does not have divine authority precisely AS THE RULE OF FAITH. (Its authority is of a different nature. Inspired, yes, but not the Rule of faith.) No divine authority has authorized us to use Scripture in this way.
FROM 595 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/03/jason-stellman-tells-his-conversion-story/#comment-59737
The point of the Church is not to satiate our desire to know everything. That was Satan’s temptation in the garden. The point of the Church is to authoritatively teach, like Christ, what we need to know. Christ did not clear up a lot of things while He was here, that does not mean he somehow taught imperfectly. Does it? Of course it does not. However, he did not leave us a book to do that either. He left us His Church (which gave us an amazing, inerrant and inspired text, I might add!)
from comment 181 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/11/sola-scriptura-redux-matthew-barrett-tradition-and-authority/#comment-162120
The problem can be seen as soon as one reflects carefully on the following question: who counts as “the church”? Any heretic can define ‘the church’ according to his own beliefs and interpretations, and in this way affirm everything in the excerpted paragraph above as applying to his own [heretical] community, or to the set of communities he counts as sufficiently with the bounds of ‘orthodoxy’ as defined according to his false position. So all this locating of the Spirit in “the church” is worthless if“the church” is defined in an ad hoc way, because the position then reduces to ‘the Spirit speaks through the community of persons picked out by their sufficient agreement with my interpretation of Scripture.’ And that is even more nefarious than simply stating “the Spirit speaks ultimately through me” because it hides from itself its egoism, masking it under the semantics of community, as Neal Judisch and I have explained elsewhere.
FROM 595 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/03/jason-stellman-tells-his-conversion-story/#comment-59737
The point of the Church is not to satiate our desire to know everything. That was Satan’s temptation in the garden. The point of the Church is to authoritatively teach, like Christ, what we need to know. Christ did not clear up a lot of things while He was here, that does not mean he somehow taught imperfectly. Does it? Of course it does not. However, he did not leave us a book to do that either. He left us His Church (which gave us an amazing, inerrant and inspired text, I might add!)
from comment 181 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2013/11/sola-scriptura-redux-matthew-barrett-tradition-and-authority/#comment-162120
The problem can be seen as soon as one reflects carefully on the following question: who counts as “the church”? Any heretic can define ‘the church’ according to his own beliefs and interpretations, and in this way affirm everything in the excerpted paragraph above as applying to his own [heretical] community, or to the set of communities he counts as sufficiently with the bounds of ‘orthodoxy’ as defined according to his false position. So all this locating of the Spirit in “the church” is worthless if“the church” is defined in an ad hoc way, because the position then reduces to ‘the Spirit speaks through the community of persons picked out by their sufficient agreement with my interpretation of Scripture.’ And that is even more nefarious than simply stating “the Spirit speaks ultimately through me” because it hides from itself its egoism, masking it under the semantics of community, as Neal Judisch and I have explained elsewhere.
Only the existence of a divinely authorized magisterium allows both ‘heresy’ and ‘schism from the Church’ to be defined in a non ad hoc way. But Allen and Swain do not acknowledge a divinely authorized magisterial authority, and for this reason their position regarding what is “the church” remains ad hoc. (I’ve pointed out this problem before in my reply to Mark Galli and in the last paragraph of comment #89 in the Brad Gregory thread.)
Moreover, fatal to the Protestant attempt to embrace tradition as in any sense authoritative is theecclesial deism inherent in Protestantism, according to which necessarily, as shown by the very need for Protestantism in the sixteenth century to the present day, tradition cannot be trusted, and must therefore be subject to one’s own interpretation of Scripture to test its authenticity. But when I submit only when I agree, the one to whom I submit is me. Hence, as I’ve shown in the post at the top of this page, when what gets to count as tradition is only that which conforms to one’s own interpretation of Scripture, one is giving only lip-service to the authority of tradition, while hiding from oneself one’s denial of the authority of tradition. In this way Protestant’s justification for its own existence presupposes that tradition is unreliable, and not authoritative.
Further evidence for this can be found in the confessionalists vs. biblicists debate within the Reformed community, a debate I’ve discussed here. The arguments raised by the Reformed biblicists against the confessionalists apply no less to the ‘catholic’ tradition, given a Protestant ecclesiology. Without a magisterium, there is no principled difference between choosing which Protestant confessions to which to ‘submit’ on the basis of one’s interpretation of Scripture, and choosing which catholic traditions count as ‘catholic tradition’ on the basis of one’s interpretation of Scripture. And if ‘catholic’ tradition is supposed to be more authoritative than the Reformed confessions because the former is not “Reformed,” then this only shows that Reformed theology is not ‘catholic.’
A second reason lies behind the inherent incompatibility of Protestantism and catholic tradition. The formation of a schism from the Church, in the name of standing with the tradition in the Church Fathers, is not itself part of the tradition of the Fathers, but is itself contrary to the tradition. For the Fathers it was better to die than to form or enter a schism from the Church (i.e. the living community). The tradition does not provide a justification for or affirmation of choosing to be excommunicated from the Catholic Church rather than submit to her authentic Magisterium; the tradition is exactly the opposite. So a belief in the acceptability of forming or entering a schism from the Church for the sake of presumed faithfulness to the tradition is itself a departure from the tradition, as is the embrace of excommunication from the Catholic Church, and of remaining in such a state of excommunication without appeal for reconciliation.
Protestants attempt to justify this position in two ways. They either claim that Protestantism is the continuation of the Church, and that the [Roman] Catholic Church departed from her through various errors, or they claim that Protestantism formed a branch within the “church catholic,” and was only cut off from a branch (i.e. the Roman Catholic Church), and is thus not in schism from the “church catholic.” The problem with the latter claim is that Protestantism’s ‘branch ecclesiology’ is itself a departure from the tradition. While “schism from” the Church is actually possible according to the tradition, yet because Protestantism’s invisible church ecclesiology makes “schism from” the Church conceptually impossible (see here), it thus does not allow for a non ad hoc distinction between a “branch within” the Church and a “schism from” the Church.
Likewise, the problem with the former claim is that the ecclesial deism inherent in the claim that the Church Catholic had departed from the faith is itself contrary to the tradition, because according to the tradition, the Church is indefectible. Any heretical group that separates from the Catholic Church can claim to be the continuation of the Church, and can claim that the Catholic Church separated from her. But any such claim can be justified only by way of ad hoc definitions of ‘heresy’ and ‘schism,’ definitions that depart from the respective definitions handed down within the tradition. So both attempted Protestant justifications for separating from the Catholic Church and remaining separated from the Catholic Church run afoul of tradition. And thus again, for these reasons, Protestantism and catholic tradition are inherently incompatible.
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