St Cyprian (250 ish) on the church
“He who breaks the peace and the concord of Christ, does so in opposition to Christ; he who gathereth elsewhere than in the Church, scatters the Church of Christ. The Lord says, “I and the Father are one;” and again it is written of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, “And these three are one.” And does anyone believe that this unity which thus comes from the divine strength and coheres in celestial sacraments, can be divided in the Church, and can be separated by the parting asunder of opposing wills? He who does not hold this unity does not hold God’s law, does not hold the faith of the Father and the Son, does not hold life and salvation … Who, then, is so wicked and faithless, who is so insane with the madness of discord, that either he should believe that the unity of God can be divided, or should dare to rend it – the garment of the Lord – the Church of Christ?"
an interesting article on church unity and the differences in the Catholic church and the Protestants can be found here: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/11/the-catholics-are-divided-too-objection/
here is a quote about the essentials in Catholic unity:
The Kingdom of Christ, which is the Church, therefore possesses each of these three bonds of unity.4 Because of Christ’s unity in His role as Prophet, His Church believes and teaches one faith in all places and times. Because of Christ’s unity in His role as Priest, His Church shares all the same sacraments in all places and times, offering in the Eucharist through the New Covenant priests who stand in the Person of Christ, the very same Sacrifice of Christ Himself. And because of Christ’s unity in His role as King, His Church possesses in all places and times a unity of government through the hierarchical unity of the bishops in communion with Christ’s Vicar, the episcopal successor of St. Peter, to whom Christ as King entrusted the keys of the Kingdom.5These three bonds of unity are also referred to as unity of doctrine, of cult, and of authority. Through these three supernatural bonds of unity, the unity of the Holy Spirit and charity reigns in Christ’s Church. When we do not maintain one or more of these three bonds, we do not share in the full communion of Christ and His Church.6Addressing the question of unity as a mark of the Church, the Catholic Encyclopedia article on this subject states the following:
The Catholic conception of the mark of unity, which must characterize the one Church founded by Christ, is far more exacting. Not only must the true Church be one by an internal and spiritual union, but this union must also be external and visible, consisting in and growing out of a unity of faith, worship, and government. Hence the Church which has Christ for its founder is not to be characterized by any merely accidental or internal spiritual union, but, over and above this, it must unite its members in unity of doctrine, expressed by external, public profession; in unity of worship, manifested chiefly in the reception of the same sacraments; and in unity of government, by which all its members are subject to and obey the same authority, which was instituted by Christ Himself.7
end of quote
Below from comment 164 Here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/11/how-the-church-won-an-interview-with-jason-stellman/
What could there possibly be about your own reading of scripture and the AF’s which would lead anyone to understand that reading as binding? And if not binding, it is theological opinion, and if theological opinion is the best we can do, then for practical purposes, we have lost a handle on divine revelation *as* divine revelation and subsumed the deposit of faith within a fog of subjective interpretation. However, if the authority and promises which Christ gave to Peter entail the establishment of a principle of unity which Christ preserves from error, then we have a ground for recognizing as binding, that which is in accord with the faith of the Apostolic See.Really good article here which deals with the subject: http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2012/12/three-frameworks-for-interpreting-the-church-fathers/ Here is a small quote
A second implication of our survey of Ignatius, Clement, and the Didache has to do with their connection to one another. If we view Clement’s and Ignatius’s forms of Christianity as separate and unconnected, as the Modern Critical and even the Classic Protestant Frameworks tend to do, then we will not see any relation between the latter’s exhortations to obedience to episcopal authority and the former’s doctrine of apostolic succession. In these frameworks, moral obedience has little or nothing to do with church structure. However, if we view Clement and Ignatius as geographically diverse witnesses to a common faith, as later writers like Irenaeus tend to do, then Ignatius’s call to obedience is tied to something identifiable and concrete, namely, those bishops who were ordained by the apostles or their successors. The former view with its emphasis on diversity exerts a centrifugal force on the modern mind and tends toward ecclesial diversity and dissolution. The latter view with its emphasis on an underlying unity across space, time, and authors exerts a centripetal force on the modern mind and tends toward ecclesial unity.
from comment 12 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/01/overcoming-the-scandal-of-division/ :
Surely we can agree that Christ’s prayer for unity is not a prayer for a “smokescreen to attempt to excuse blatant wrong-doing throughout and the consequent divisions over it.” The unity for which He prays in John 17, and the division He refers to in Luke 12, and the division St. Paul refers to in 1 Cor. 5:11 are not mutually exclusive, as if Christ were double-minded, or as if Christ and St. Paul were at odds with each other. The division Christ refers to in Luke 12 is the division of allegiance, between those who love Christ above themselves, and those who love something else above Christ. Each person in the human race falls into one of these two categories, and in this respect Christ comes to bring division, i.e. a divine judgment concerning the heart of each man, separating them all into sheep and goats, those on His right, and those on His left. As He says, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (Mt. 10:37) The Catholic Church affirms this truth. Denying this truth would be to affirm indifferentism, namely, either that all men are going to heaven, or that there is no such thing as mortal sin, or that it doesn’t matter what you believe and how you live, or whether or not you love Christ, you’re still going to heaven. Hence the Church condemns indifferentism. It does matter eternally whether you die in a state of grace or die in a state of mortal sin.
Similarly, St. Paul’s words in 1 Cor. 5:11 are about this very same separation Christ speaks of in Luke 12, i.e. between those living for Christ, and those living in grave sin. Here, however, St. Paul is speaking to the Church, and admonishes them to put out from them those fellow Christians who without remorse or repentance are engaged in these grave sins he lists. Such persons are not to be allowed to receive communion with them. This is called excommunication, and this too is something that the Catholic Church believes and teaches. Persons in grave sin are not to receive the Eucharist, and persons publicly known to be in grave sin and without repentance, are not to be given the Eucharist. (Here’s an example from four days ago.)
But the division of men into those who love Christ more than anything else, and those who do not, and the Church discipline that excludes unrepentant persons in grave sin from receiving the Eucharist, is fully compatible with the full visible unity for which Christ prays in John 17. In other words, we don’t have to choose between affirming Luke 12 and 1 Cor 5:11 on the one hand, and living within (and calling others to pursue) the full unity for which Christ prays in John 17. That full visible unity involves the three bonds of unity. (See the section titled “The Nature of the Unity of the Catholic Church” in “The “Catholics are Divided Too” Objection.”) Christians can enjoy all three bonds of unity while at the same time recognizing and affirming the distinction between those who love Christ and those who do not, and while withholding the Eucharist from those living in grave sin. Recognizing the difference between those who love Christ and those who don’t, and guarding the Eucharist from those in grave sin, does not require that Christians divide up into myriads of sects and schisms. On the contrary, by dividing up into sects and schisms, we make part of the purpose of guarding the Eucharist more difficult, because we make it seem that if one wants the Eucharist even while be disciplined by one ecclesial community, one can just go to the next ecclesial community down the street, or start one on one’s own. Only when the Church manifests its full visible unity, such that schisms are recognized as such, does exclusion from the Eucharist manifest fully its disciplinary force.
So the short answer to your question is that the unity to which Christ calls us is not an all encompassing unity that includes or conflates within itself evil and sin. Rather, the unity to which He calls us is a unity in the faith and worship and hierarchy He established by which defining and defending the very distinctions between orthodoxy and heresy, virtue and vice, sanctity and sinfulness, good and evil, communion and excommunication is made possible and maintained, and without which these distinctions are obscured.
from comment 15 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/01/overcoming-the-scandal-of-division/
from comment 15 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/01/overcoming-the-scandal-of-division/
Our initial response to recognizing the scandalous nature of our divisions might be to engage in dialogue about the doctrines about which we disagree. But shortly thereafter, if we’re sufficiently observant, we notice that this doesn’t work. This has not only been tried repeatedly; it has been shown to be utterly inadequate for resolving our disagreements. And if we observe these kinds of dialogues with an eye not so much to determining which side is right, but to determine precisely why the dialogue regularly reaches an impasse, and thus why the participating parties fail to overcome their disagreements through this type of dialogue, we find that the participating persons are not realizing or focusing on the role that second-order disagreements are playing in their reasoning, and which underlie their first-order disagreements. So, for example, while the participants are trying to resolve their disagreement concerning a particular doctrine, they are unaware of and overlook their paradigm-level differences and their respective theological methodologies that arise from these paradigm-level differences. Understandably, then, they grow frustrated at their failure to reach agreement at the first-order level, and eventually give up, not realizing that dialogue about first-order disagreements is futile so long as there are paradigmatic and methodological disagreements at the second-order level, and these second-order level disagreements remain unrealized and unaddressed.
Persons seeking to resolve their disagreements through dialogue must, in order to overcome this problem, be aware of the second-order differences that underlie their first-order disagreements, and must understand the paradigmatic character of their disagreement. This means that they must not merely learn each other’s doctrines; more crucially, they must also learn each other’s paradigms. Then the conversation can take place at the second-order level, comparing paradigms, comparing the coherence of the paradigms, comparing the fit of the paradigms to the data, etc. So ecumenical dialogue, in order to be successful, has to involve mutual recognition of the importance of first learning the paradigmatic nature of the disagreement, and the respective paradigms themselves, before entering into the activity of mutually comparing and evaluating their respective paradigms. And we have to be committed not to enter into first-order dialogue as though there is no underlying paradigm difference. In the proper order for resolving the disagreement, the second-order level disagreements have to come first.
from http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/10/divorce-remarriage-revisited/#comment-133914
in comment 8 :
I, for one, upon reading the history of the Church, was very aware that the unity and holiness of the Catholic Church was not predicate on a perfect history. In fact, quite the opposite. Instead, what emerges is an improbable history. We see dissension like it that has caused in a Protestant context schism too numerous to mention. We have seen entire denominations permanently led into error. For the Catholic Church, instead, the Holy Spirit has preserved her. For some, that might be less important, they might long for a pure group for which they can share their purity with and remain pure. I argue that Christ did not leave us with such a group. He left us with a very big Church, full of people as ugly as we are. The people in the Church are just as apt to err as we are. In fact, the Catholic argument against Protestantism isn’t that only Protestants err, but rather, that people unaided by the power of the Holy Spirit err – and err often. As a very large Church, we are full of sinners who err. And, yes, priests and bishops are people too.
from http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2014/10/divorce-remarriage-revisited/#comment-133914
in comment 8 :
I, for one, upon reading the history of the Church, was very aware that the unity and holiness of the Catholic Church was not predicate on a perfect history. In fact, quite the opposite. Instead, what emerges is an improbable history. We see dissension like it that has caused in a Protestant context schism too numerous to mention. We have seen entire denominations permanently led into error. For the Catholic Church, instead, the Holy Spirit has preserved her. For some, that might be less important, they might long for a pure group for which they can share their purity with and remain pure. I argue that Christ did not leave us with such a group. He left us with a very big Church, full of people as ugly as we are. The people in the Church are just as apt to err as we are. In fact, the Catholic argument against Protestantism isn’t that only Protestants err, but rather, that people unaided by the power of the Holy Spirit err – and err often. As a very large Church, we are full of sinners who err. And, yes, priests and bishops are people too.
What is miraculous is such a large Church has been preserved in her integrity, despite the murderers, fornicators, and the like running about us. Not even to mention the great saints she has produced. So, yes, I was aware of the “statistics,” and sadly I have often been a part of a statistic for which I am deeply sorry: sinner. If the Catholic Church were not having this debate, if at least some men shaped by our times were not swayed by the convincing appeals to emotion in the debate, I would be concerned that the Church were made up of robots, angels disguised as men, or had devolved into a sect. This is not a matter of being on the right side of history, it is a matter of being on the side of the Holy Spirit.
also from here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2015/12/fulton-sheens-biblical-account-of-the-catholic-church-as-christs-mystical-body/#comment-201779
comment 6:
You say,
I myself find the Catholic argument plausible, though not in-and-of-itself persuasive, that the Marian dogmas are indeed present, in seed form, in Scripture, and during the pre-canonization patristic era.
(Which is a highly relevant period, contra Casey’s questioning of it: It’s the period in which, for lack of a New Testament canon, the Church could not even in principle be operating under a Sola Scriptura epistemological paradigm. Their very “carelessness” in taking so long to standardize which books they’d read at Mass reflects that they felt their doctrinal epistemology was enriched by but in no way dependent on knowing which books held the highest levels of authority for Christians. But I am putting “carelessness” in quotes because their lack of sole dependency on the canon for knowing the content of the faith makes their late canonization effort not particularly dangerous after all.)
But that is an aside. I am mentioning that, were I to try to decide whether I thought the Marian dogmas true or false on the basis of the Catholic arguments alone, I would not be convinced either way.
But, because the evidence is so strong for the Catholic idea of church authority, and because Sola Scriptura is the kind of thing that, so far as I can tell, is so non-functional as to constitute a solid demonstration of the non-deity of whomever invented it, I felt logically obligated to give the Church the benefit of the doubt regarding Mary.
In a sense, I became Catholic because, if my only alternative was to believe that Jesus had come up with the idea of preserving Christian unity and truth through Sola Scriptura, then I would have to conclude that He was a fool, and certainly was not God. (But He is God. Ergo….)
So I disagree in a shrugging kind of way with what you’ve said about the Marian dogmas, specifically. I accept them because Christ’s church tells me they are true; not because the evidence is personally persuasive on that point. (On the point of the authority of Christ’s church, the evidence is entirely persuasive. So I conclude that the Church is doing her “pillar and ground of the truth” thing, and that the Marian dogmas is just one of the areas where I’m a bit too dim, and my upbringing too Protestant, to see the matter clearly.)
But, your first sentence (in the quote above) was what really caught my eye: “Physical continuity without doctrinal continuity is a meaningless concept.” Au contraire!
First, it hasn’t been established that there is a doctrinal discontinuity. It’s begging the question to say, “Well, the Catholic interpretation of the Scriptures and the Fathers is wrong and the Protestant one is correct; therefore the Catholic doctrines represent a discontinuity from what Scripture teaches and the Protestant doctrines represent continuity.”
Second, and more importantly, even if there had been doctrinal discontinuity, it does not follow that physical discontinuity is a meaningless concept!
On the contrary, when Israel/Judah had a bad king, the people of Israel were never authorized by God to hare off into Persia somewhere and start, on their own say-so, a brand-new Promised Land, peopled with only a like-minded remnant, and declare that to be a new People of God. When Eli’s sons dishonored the priesthood, not a single member of the People of God was therefore authorized to start a new priesthood. If (as I suspect was sometimes the case) the tribal elders and judges made bad decisions during the period of the Exodus, there was no authorization to grab whomever you could, build a new tabernacle with a new ark, et cetera. From Korah’s rebellion, right up until Jesus said, “Salvation is from the Jews,” the visible, organic, organizational continuity of the People of God mattered.
It may very well be, and in fact would be far more consistent with the intention of God as described in salvation history, that even if the Council of Trent was mistaken, no baptized person should ever start a new visible church, but should retain visible unity with the Church, while insisting she’d gotten doctrines wrong.
Finally, there is another reason why “physical” continuity; i.e., retaining unity with the existing hierarchy, can matter: It is a necessity for both evangelism and functioning church discipline
Jesus’ high-priestly prayer in John 17 explicitly links the ability of the world to perceive the divine origin of the Christian faith with Christian doctrinal unity: “I [Jesus] pray also for those who will believe in me through their word…that they may be one as we [Jesus and The Father] are one…that the world will see, and know that Thou hast sent Me….” Jesus wants us to be one, as an evangelical witness. Can the world look at our unity, and from that unity deduce that Jesus was sent by the Father?
Apparently not: There’s a lot of atheism going around these days. Lack of physical unity has its consequences, for, in order to have its correct evangelical function, the world must see Christian unity. This requires a visible unity, not an invisible one.
And so does church discipline. Let’s say that some Christian man’s wife becomes pregnant but decides she doesn’t want another kid, and opts to terminate her pregnancy by abortion. What to do? Matthew 18 lists the steps: You personally try to persuade her otherwise. Then you bring in one or two of the apostles (or, presumably, their successor office-holders) to convince her. And if that fails, you bring it to the Church.
But…how exactly, do you “bring it to the Church?” If you look up “Church” in the Yellow Pages, will there be only one entry? And how, exactly, do you know when the “Church” has made up its mind and rendered a judicial decision on the matter, and that the final appeal of this decision has been exhausted? Whom, in the Church, has authority to judge such matters?
And after the judgment is rendered, what then? If she refuses to listen even to the Church, she is supposed to be out-of-fellowship in some fashion. Right?
But at that point she’ll simply starts attending at the ECLA or PCUSA or Episcopalian church down-the-street. She simply ignores the judgment of her former church. Perhaps she goes on to be an Episcopalian priestess, or to hold some other office of public authority in her new church.
My point is: If there is not one, exactly one, visible church of Jesus Christ on the planet, containing within it offices of authority for adjudicating such cases, and one final court-of-appeals beyond which there is no further appeal, then church discipline is a non-starter.
If Jesus invented a system of discipline for His Church which was a non-starter, then He is not God.
But He is God.
Therefore, we can conclude that His system of church discipline is one which functions, worldwide, to render decisions which can be recognized as beyond further appeal. And that requires what you call “physical continuity,” because the alternative is necessarily multiple competing judicial systems, in which the believer may go “court-shopping” to find a favorable denomination with a favorable doctrine, and no decision can be made with divine authority.
also from here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2015/12/fulton-sheens-biblical-account-of-the-catholic-church-as-christs-mystical-body/#comment-201779
comment 6:
You say,
Physical continuity without doctrinal continuity is a meaningless concept. The Marian dogmas are not there in seed form or any other form during the first three hundred years. There is not one shred of evidence that they are there PERIOD. Not in Scripture. And certainly not in the Apostolic Fathers.I want to reply both about the Marian dogmas, and about your disparaging of physical continuity. I’ll hit the Marian thing, first:
I myself find the Catholic argument plausible, though not in-and-of-itself persuasive, that the Marian dogmas are indeed present, in seed form, in Scripture, and during the pre-canonization patristic era.
(Which is a highly relevant period, contra Casey’s questioning of it: It’s the period in which, for lack of a New Testament canon, the Church could not even in principle be operating under a Sola Scriptura epistemological paradigm. Their very “carelessness” in taking so long to standardize which books they’d read at Mass reflects that they felt their doctrinal epistemology was enriched by but in no way dependent on knowing which books held the highest levels of authority for Christians. But I am putting “carelessness” in quotes because their lack of sole dependency on the canon for knowing the content of the faith makes their late canonization effort not particularly dangerous after all.)
But that is an aside. I am mentioning that, were I to try to decide whether I thought the Marian dogmas true or false on the basis of the Catholic arguments alone, I would not be convinced either way.
But, because the evidence is so strong for the Catholic idea of church authority, and because Sola Scriptura is the kind of thing that, so far as I can tell, is so non-functional as to constitute a solid demonstration of the non-deity of whomever invented it, I felt logically obligated to give the Church the benefit of the doubt regarding Mary.
In a sense, I became Catholic because, if my only alternative was to believe that Jesus had come up with the idea of preserving Christian unity and truth through Sola Scriptura, then I would have to conclude that He was a fool, and certainly was not God. (But He is God. Ergo….)
So I disagree in a shrugging kind of way with what you’ve said about the Marian dogmas, specifically. I accept them because Christ’s church tells me they are true; not because the evidence is personally persuasive on that point. (On the point of the authority of Christ’s church, the evidence is entirely persuasive. So I conclude that the Church is doing her “pillar and ground of the truth” thing, and that the Marian dogmas is just one of the areas where I’m a bit too dim, and my upbringing too Protestant, to see the matter clearly.)
But, your first sentence (in the quote above) was what really caught my eye: “Physical continuity without doctrinal continuity is a meaningless concept.” Au contraire!
First, it hasn’t been established that there is a doctrinal discontinuity. It’s begging the question to say, “Well, the Catholic interpretation of the Scriptures and the Fathers is wrong and the Protestant one is correct; therefore the Catholic doctrines represent a discontinuity from what Scripture teaches and the Protestant doctrines represent continuity.”
Second, and more importantly, even if there had been doctrinal discontinuity, it does not follow that physical discontinuity is a meaningless concept!
On the contrary, when Israel/Judah had a bad king, the people of Israel were never authorized by God to hare off into Persia somewhere and start, on their own say-so, a brand-new Promised Land, peopled with only a like-minded remnant, and declare that to be a new People of God. When Eli’s sons dishonored the priesthood, not a single member of the People of God was therefore authorized to start a new priesthood. If (as I suspect was sometimes the case) the tribal elders and judges made bad decisions during the period of the Exodus, there was no authorization to grab whomever you could, build a new tabernacle with a new ark, et cetera. From Korah’s rebellion, right up until Jesus said, “Salvation is from the Jews,” the visible, organic, organizational continuity of the People of God mattered.
It may very well be, and in fact would be far more consistent with the intention of God as described in salvation history, that even if the Council of Trent was mistaken, no baptized person should ever start a new visible church, but should retain visible unity with the Church, while insisting she’d gotten doctrines wrong.
Finally, there is another reason why “physical” continuity; i.e., retaining unity with the existing hierarchy, can matter: It is a necessity for both evangelism and functioning church discipline
Jesus’ high-priestly prayer in John 17 explicitly links the ability of the world to perceive the divine origin of the Christian faith with Christian doctrinal unity: “I [Jesus] pray also for those who will believe in me through their word…that they may be one as we [Jesus and The Father] are one…that the world will see, and know that Thou hast sent Me….” Jesus wants us to be one, as an evangelical witness. Can the world look at our unity, and from that unity deduce that Jesus was sent by the Father?
Apparently not: There’s a lot of atheism going around these days. Lack of physical unity has its consequences, for, in order to have its correct evangelical function, the world must see Christian unity. This requires a visible unity, not an invisible one.
And so does church discipline. Let’s say that some Christian man’s wife becomes pregnant but decides she doesn’t want another kid, and opts to terminate her pregnancy by abortion. What to do? Matthew 18 lists the steps: You personally try to persuade her otherwise. Then you bring in one or two of the apostles (or, presumably, their successor office-holders) to convince her. And if that fails, you bring it to the Church.
But…how exactly, do you “bring it to the Church?” If you look up “Church” in the Yellow Pages, will there be only one entry? And how, exactly, do you know when the “Church” has made up its mind and rendered a judicial decision on the matter, and that the final appeal of this decision has been exhausted? Whom, in the Church, has authority to judge such matters?
And after the judgment is rendered, what then? If she refuses to listen even to the Church, she is supposed to be out-of-fellowship in some fashion. Right?
But at that point she’ll simply starts attending at the ECLA or PCUSA or Episcopalian church down-the-street. She simply ignores the judgment of her former church. Perhaps she goes on to be an Episcopalian priestess, or to hold some other office of public authority in her new church.
My point is: If there is not one, exactly one, visible church of Jesus Christ on the planet, containing within it offices of authority for adjudicating such cases, and one final court-of-appeals beyond which there is no further appeal, then church discipline is a non-starter.
If Jesus invented a system of discipline for His Church which was a non-starter, then He is not God.
But He is God.
Therefore, we can conclude that His system of church discipline is one which functions, worldwide, to render decisions which can be recognized as beyond further appeal. And that requires what you call “physical continuity,” because the alternative is necessarily multiple competing judicial systems, in which the believer may go “court-shopping” to find a favorable denomination with a favorable doctrine, and no decision can be made with divine authority.
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