A Reflection on PCA Pastor Terry Johnson’s “Our Collapsing Ecclesiology”

Terry Johnson

Terry Johnson, senior minister of Independent Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Savannah, Ga., wrote an article titled "Our Collapsing Ecclesiology" in the March issue of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church's magazine New Horizons. The article is well worth reading, because it examines the recent trends in Evangelicalism away from attendance in Sunday morning services, even away from organized institutional church altogether. It cites George Barna's announcement of the "New Church," which is "without structure, organization, clergy, officers, accountability, or discipline. It has no location, commitments, or physical presence. It is merely an informal, ad hoc, uncovenanted association of believers." According to this view "the local church ceases to exist. The requirement of Hebrews 10:25 (that believers assemble together) could be fulfilled ... "in a worship service or at Starbucks." In the mind of these Evangelicals, "I am not called to attend or join a church. I am called to be the church." For them, writes Terry, "Church ... is like the YMCA, except that one actually has to join the YMCA. It's good to go there to exercise, but sometimes one can do just as well at home—or maybe somewhere else. "Do what feels right for you," we hear said. "Go where your needs are met."

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St. Thomas Aquinas on the Unity of the Church

Today, on this eighth and last day of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, we will look at what St. Thomas Aquinas says about the unity of the Church, drawing from his commentary on the Apostles’ Creed in his catechism, his Summa Contra Gentiles and his Summa Theologica. (Continue reading)

Grace in action: Mother Teresa, an image of the Church

Six years ago today, Mother Teresa was beatified by Pope John Paul II, and became Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. At her death, the former U.N. Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar said: "She is the United Nations. She is peace in the world." In this way, in her own person she typifies the Church, which in its catholicity is the United Nations, and as Christ's Body is peace in the world. We are Christ's hands and feet. The head cannot say to the feet, "I have no need of you." (1 Cor 12:21)

Horton on being made "One Flesh with Christ"

At the West Coast Ligonier conference, Dr. Michael Horton was asked the following question:

"You said that we are not an extension of Christ’s kingdom. How does that cohere with our being the body of Christ? Our being the hands and feet of Christ, as it were?"

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Why Protestantism has no “visible catholic Church”

St. Peter (c. 1708-13)
Pierre Etienne Monnot
San Giovanni in Laterano, Rome

Part of the content of the Christian faith is the "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church," because that is one article of the Church’s Creed. Concerning the Church, the Westminster Confession of Faith reads:

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.

But, as I show below, Protestantism itself has no visible catholic Church. It has only denominations, congregations, believers and their children. Within Protestantism there is not some one additional entity to which the term “visible catholic Church” refers, consisting of these denominations, congregations, believers and their children.
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Ecclesial Deism

Assumption of St. John the Evangelist

Taddeo Gaddi (1348-1353)
Collezione Vittorio Cini, Venice

St. Irenaeus and St. Clement of Alexandria, who both lived during the second century, tell us that after the Apostle John returned from exile on Patmos, he remained at Ephesus "till Trajan’s time." Trajan became emperor in AD 98. According to the tradition, St. John was the last of the twelve Apostles to die. When the angels carried his soul into Heaven, was the Church then left to fall into heresy and apostasy? (continue reading)

Like Head, Like Body

The Supper at Emmaus
Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velázquez (1620)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him." (St. Luke 24:31)

"If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you." (St. John 15:18)

Those who claim that Christ is "our present experience of life-giving love that transcends the human condition," had they lived in Jerusalem from AD 30-33, would have looked upon the man from Nazareth and seen at most only a rabbi who teaches us about the Christ-experience and through whose illumination we can encounter the Christ-experience. They would have been utterly scandalized by His claim to be God, but more likely they would have treated it as a mere metaphor, or as an invitation to us all to join him in discovering our own inner divine identity. They would have been many things rolled into one: Ebionites, because for them the rabbi from Nazareth was a mere man. They would have been Docetists, because for them the transcendent Christ-experience is not to be identified with any particular human being, though they grant that at one time in history the transcendent Christ-experience was most seemingly present in the rabbi from Nazareth. For them the true universal and timeless Christ-experience did not actually become, and could not become, this Nazarene, but is already subconsciously within every person, to be encountered concretely through inner exploration and deepening self-consciousness. They would have been Nestorians, because for them the teacher from Nazareth came to an inner harmony of self-discovery, and thus became for us a channel, one among many, in which we may encounter within us by transcendental enlightenment the one divine Christ-experience of loving self-awareness. They would have been monophysites, because for them the transcendent Christ-experience has no animal nature or physical body, but is the universal energy of divine love which we encounter within ourselves by abstracting ourselves from matter, the senses and our animal pole. In that way they would have denied Christ's human nature. They would have been monothelitists, for whom the teaching of the rabbi from Nazareth is neither authoritative nor infallible, but through whose enlightenment we too might encounter the all-embracing volitional dynamism of the trans-personal Christ-consciousness. They would have been iconoclasts, ridiculing those who revered His image as entirely missing the point, as mistaking the man for His spiritual message, and in doing so detracting from the attention due to the divine Christ-experience.

"If they have called the head of the house 'Beelzebub,' how much more shall they call them of his household?" (St. Matthew 10:25)

"Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God." (St. John 16:2)

Those who think that the "holy catholic Church" referred to in the Apostles' Creed is "the invisible communion of all those who believe in Christ" look upon the Catholic Church, and see at most only an institution that teaches men about Christ and through whom people may experience Christ. They are utterly scandalized by the Catholic Church's claim to be the "holy catholic Church" of the Creed, or they treat it as a mere metaphor, a physical example of that creedal ideal toward which we all are striving. They are ecclesial Ebionites, because for them the Catholic Church is a merely man-made institution. They are ecclesial Docetists, because for them the "holy catholic Church" is not to be identified with any particular ecclesial body on earth, though they may grant that at one time in history the "holy catholic Church" was most seemingly present in the Catholic Church. For them the resurrected and glorified Christ did not literally become, and could not become, the Head of the Catholic Church, but is Head rather of a spiritual community to which are invisibly joined all believers by an inner movement of faith. They are ecclesial Nestorians, for whom the Catholic Church developed her own unique spirituality, and thus became for us a channel, one among many, through which we may encounter the message and life of the divine Christ. They are ecclesial monophysites, because for them the "holy catholic Church" is no unified visible hierarchy, identifiable body or particular institution, but is a universal and invisible union of all believing souls with the invisible Christ, a union we encounter not through matter or the senses, but within ourselves through an inner act of the will, a trusting prayer of faith that rests and receives. They treat the Church as having only a spiritual nature, hence an invisible communion of believers united spiritually, not necessarily visibly. By denying the visible hierarchical unity that is essential to a human society, ecclesial monophysitism drops the human nature of the Church, and retains only the divine nature of the Church. They are ecclesial monothelitists, for whom the Catholic Church's binding and loosing, teaching and disciplining are merely that of the will of men, and not also that of the will of Christ Himself, the Head of His Mystical Body. They are ecclesial iconoclasts, ridiculing those who revere the Catholic Church as the living image of Christ the Head as entirely missing the point, as mistaking a merely human thing for the spiritual message it teaches, and in doing so detracting from the attention due to the invisible Christ.

"... she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, and did not know that it was Jesus." (St. John 20:14)

"among you stands One whom you do not know." (St. John 1:26)

Where is Christ's Church? It is right in front of us. We have not recognized it, because her members have no form or majesty that we should look at them. They are in other respects quite ordinary. But there is something unique about Christ's Church, something that characterized the Man from Nazareth:

"He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not." (Isaiah 53:3)

"Now when they heard these things they were enraged, and they ground their teeth at him." (Acts 7:54)

To find the Man from Nazareth, we could have followed the hate, loathing and rage; it would have led us right to Him. Likewise, to find His Body today, follow the same. Notice the direction that the anger and hate are oriented, and follow it to its object.

And they said to him, "Where, Lord?" He said to them, "Where the body is, there also the vultures will be gathered." (St. Luke 17:37)

Cross-posted on Called to Communion

What does the visibility of the Church mean?

Thomas Brown and I recently addressed this question on Called to Communion in an article titled "Christ Founded a Visible Church."

Settling for division as though it were unity

The Handing-over the Keys (1515)
Sanzio Raffaello

One of the most common conversations I have with Protestants has to do with unity. I am asked why Protestants are not permitted to receive the Eucharist in the Catholic Church, and why the Catholic Church does not allow Catholics to receive communion in Protestant services. I explain that the Eucharist is a sign of unity, and so because from the point of view of the Catholic Church, Protestants are in schism from the Church, therefore for Protestants to receive the Eucharist in the Catholic Church, or for Catholics to receive communion with Protestants, would be a lie. In response, the Protestant usually says that Protestants do not see themselves as being in schism or divided from Catholics, but that we are all united in Christ; we all love Jesus and share belief in the essentials of Christianity.

I respond by explaining that there are two different conceptions of unity in use here, because there are two different conceptions of what it is that Christ founded. Protestants generally believe that the church that Christ founded is a spiritual, invisible entity, though some of its members (i.e. those who are still living in this present life) are visible. In the general Protestant mindset, anyone who has faith in Christ is a member of the one church that Christ founded. Protestants generally do not believe that Christ founded a visible, hierarchically organized Body, or that if He did, such a Body is still around. This Protestant conception of the church as invisible arose in the 16th century. It does away with the very possibility of schism.

The Catholic Church for two thousand years has believed and taught that Christ founded a visible, hierarchically organized Body. This notion of the Church as a visible, hierarchically organized Body has implications for what it means to be in unity. In the Protestant conception of the church as a spiritual, invisible entity, what counts as 'the essentials' is ultimately up to each person to decide. But given the Catholic conception of the Church as a visible hierarchically organized Body, what counts as 'the essentials' is determined definitively by the Church authorities. And what these authorities have determined to be essential includes much more than the lowest common denominator of Evangelicalism. Therefore, from the Catholic point of view, Protestants are not in union with the Church regarding the essentials of Christianity, not only doctrinally, but also regarding the sacraments. From the point of view of the Catholic Church, for example, Protestants do not have a valid Eucharist, because Protestantism has not preserved apostolic succession. And likewise, for this same reason, from the point of view of the Catholic Church, Protestant ministers do not have valid ordinations.

These two conceptions of the Church, one visible, and the other invisible, also have different implications for what it means to be united in one Body. If what Christ founded is invisible, but has visible members, then the only thing necessary to be fully united to this invisible entity is faith in Christ. The notion of schism is then reduced to a deficiency in love, insofar as one person having faith in Christ fails to love sufficiently another person having faith in Christ. Unity and schism are then fundamentally spiritual. So given the Protestant conception of the church as spiritual, it follows that if we love Jesus and love one another, we are in full communion, no matter to which religious organization or congregation we belong. By contrast, given the Catholic notion of the Church as a visible hierarchically organized Body, it follows that in order to be in full communion with the Church, one must not only believe the faith taught by that hierarchy, one must be under the authority of that hierarchy.

Some Protestants do claim to believe in a visible Church. But by that they mean that there are many local congregations each with its own visible hierarchy (e.g. head pastor, assistant pastor, deacons, etc.), and that every Christian should be a member of one such local congregation. According to these Protestants, these local congregations need not be part of one catholic (i.e. universal) visible hierarchy. Rather, these local congregations that are each visible hierarchically organized bodies are invisibly united to each other by sharing the same basic faith in Christ and love for Christ. One problem with this position is that its claim that visible hierarchical unity is essential at the local level, but not at any higher level, is arbitrary. If the local church needs a hierarchical organization, then so does the universal Church. But if the universal Church does not need hierarchical organization, then neither does the local congregation. Another problem is that this claim reduces either to the position that Christ founded many Churches, and thus has many Bodies and many Brides, or that the Church Christ founded is itself a spiritual, invisible entity, though some of its members, both individual persons and visible local congregations, are visible.

This is why there is no middle position between the teaching of the Catholic Church that Christ founded one universal, visible, and hierarchically organized Body to which all Christians should belong in full communion, and the Protestant notion that the Church Christ founded is fundamentally an invisible spiritual entity to which all those having faith in Christ already belong, regardless of where and with whom they worship. This is also why a Protestant conception of the Church entails apathy about the present disunity of all Christians. Most Protestants see the fact that there is a different denomination represented on every street corner as normal, or even healthy. The very idea that there should be only one Christian institution in every city and all over the world, is completely outside their imaginative horizon, let alone the intended goal of any ecumenical endeavors they might undertake. In the general Protestant mindset, since by our faith in Christ we are already in full communion with each other, there is no reason to pursue any further unity. The pursuit of unity is, according to this notion, merely the attempt to help us all acknowledge what is already true, i.e. that we all are already in full communion. From this Protestant point of view, ecumenicism is at most an exercise in provoking a corporate self-awareness and enlightenment.

In the Catholic mindset, by contrast, ecumenicism is about healing actual divisions, reconciling those separated from the Church by actual (not merely mental) schisms. How? By reconciling them with the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church that Christ founded. That notion sounds arrogant to most Protestants, precisely because for Protestants the Church is invisible; no institution has any more claim to being the true Church than does any other. That would be true if all visibly organized bodies were founded by mere men. But it isn't true if one visible hierarchically organized Body was founded by the God-man, Jesus Christ. Catholics believe that Christ founded precisely that, and gave its keys to Peter. For the Protestant, to believe in Christ is already to be reconciled to His Church. But given the Catholic conception of the Church, to be fully united to Christ, one must be fully united with and incorporated into the visible and hierarchically organized Church that Christ founded.

To our Protestant brothers and sisters we say, "Your vision of the unity Christ intended the Church to have is too small; you've settled for division as though it were unity." The problem is worse than that. The notion that the Church is invisible performatively denies Christ's incarnation, by treating the Body of Christ as though it were something invisible, as I explained here. Moreover, our visible divisions testify falsely to the world that God is divided, and thus deprive the world of what Christ wants to give it: an embodied vision of the unity and love within the Trinity. Christ's prayer in John 17 requires visible unity among His followers, because through our unity with one another the world is supposed to see the unity of the Son with the Father. The Church as the Body of Christ is to continue Christ's mission of despoiling the principalities and powers (Col 2:15) of the prisoners they held captive, as He did when He descended into Hades (Eph 4:9) after saying "It is finished." Of this mission Christ tells us that the gates of Hades will not prevail; they will not withstand the Church in her mission (Matt 16:18). This is our mission, now, and we need to be standing together in full communion to complete it.

Lord Jesus, in your divine mercy, may this schism that now separates Catholics and Protestants be healed. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Apostolicity and the Ecumenical Challenge

"The Sacrament of Ordination"
Nicolas Poussin (1636-40)
(click on the painting for a larger image)

Today is the seventh day of the week of prayer for Christian unity. It is also the feast day of St. Francis de Sales, who brought 72,000 Calvinists back into the Catholic Church. Recently I came across Michael Spencer's post titled "Spiritual Depression and the Search for the One True Church", and it prompted the following reflection.

The greatest challenge to the goal of reconciling Protestants and Catholics in full unity is not coming to an agreement regarding whether charity is merely coexistent with justifying faith (Turretin) or whether charity is that which makes faith to be living faith, and thus to be justifying faith (Trent). (See here.) I suspect that only a very small percentage of contemporary Christians has even thought about that question. Many Protestants, I suppose, if they didn't know the source, probably would be open if not sympathetic to Pope Benedict's recent talk on justification. In my opinion the greatest challenge for reuniting Protestants and Catholics has to do, rather, with reconciling two very different ecclesial paradigms that differ on the question of whether or not Christ founded His Church with a perpetual hierarchy in unbroken succession from the Apostles.

In the ecclesial paradigm of contemporary Evangelicalism, the Church Christ founded is something spiritual, and faith in Christ is a sufficient condition for full membership in Christ's Church. Of course Christians are called not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together (Hebrews 10:25), and so some local organized congregation or regional organization (i.e. denomination) is practically useful if not necessary. But these are all merely man-made organizations. That is why, in the Evangelical mind, it is fine to initiate and form entirely *autonomous* congregations of all different sorts and styles, even in the same town. The Church is the invisible spiritual entity to which true believers are invisibly joined by the Holy Spirit, regardless of any organizational or institutional affiliation. We can see this ecclesial paradigm in the consumeristic way evangelicals determine which congregation or denomination to join, and in the way they decide for themselves which doctrines are essential and which are non-essential.

We can see this paradigm implicit in the common notion that it is more important to join an imperfect denomination than to continue searching for a 'perfect church'. The notion of finding "the Church that Christ founded" is typically not even on the conceptual radar, precisely because the Evangelical ecclesial paradigm does not recognize that Christ established and endowed His Church with a perpetual hierarchy of leadership in succession from the Apostles. But, it was to this perpetual hierarchy that the Holy Spirit, speaking through the inspired author of Hebrews, commanded us to submit and obey (Heb 13:17) -- not to those whom we have accumulated to ourselves who teach according to our own interpretation of Scripture (2 Tim 4:3).

When the Apostle Matthew records Jesus saying to Peter in Matt 16:18, "upon this rock I will build My Church", and then saying, in Matt 18:17, "tell it to the Church", and "listen to the Church", the most natural way of understanding these passages is that the term 'ekklesia' ('Church') is being used in the same way in all three places. And it is clear in the Matthew 18 passages that 'ekklesia' there refers to the visible Church, not a merely spiritual entity. That implies that Matt 16:18 is also referring to the visible Church. This is the one, holy, catholic (i.e universal) and apostolic (i.e. hierarchically organized in succession from the Apostles) Church.

When we look at the transition in the early Church from Apostolic to post-Apostolic leadership in the first century, we find a very different ecclesial paradigm from that of contemporary Evangelicalism. We see apostolicity understood as an apostolic authorization to hold ecclesial authority, to speak and teach in Christ's name, and with His authorization. Ecclesial authority could not come from non-authority; it could come only from those having authority from the Apostles.

This conception of ecclesial authority carries with it a very different ecclesiology, because to be a member in full communion with the Church thus requires being in full communion with this perpetual hierarchy. To be in full communion with Christ's Church, it is not enough simply to believe in Christ and love Christ. I discussed apostolicity in more detail here and here. Only in rediscovering what apostolicity meant in the early Church as taught in the fathers can Evangelicals and Catholics come to share the same ecclesial paradigm by which we can be truly united.

The early Reformers had a more accurate understanding of the visibility of the Church than do contemporary Evangelicals. Consider the following quotation from Keith Mathison (a Protestant):

Unlike modern Evangelicalism, the classical Protestant Reformers held to a high view of the Church. When the Reformers confessed extra ecclesiam nulla salus, which means "there is no salvation outside the Church," they were not referring to the invisible Church of all the elect. Such a statement would be tantamount to saying that outside of salvation there is no salvation. It would be a truism. The Reformers were referring to the visible Church… The Church is the pillar and ground, the interpreter, teacher, and proclaimer of God’s Word… The Church has authority because Christ gave the Church authority. The Christian who rejects the authority of the Church rejects the authority of the One who sent her (Luke 10:16). (Keith A. Mathison, The Shape of Sola Scriptura, pp. 268, 269.)(H/T: David Waltz)

Or consider what Scott Clark (a Protestant professor at Westminster Seminary in California) says about connectionalism in his ecclesiology article. There he writes, "It is often assumed in the American Church that the New Testament Churches were independent of one another and autonomous, that is, subject to no one's authority but their own. In fact this is less a New Covenant picture than an amalgam of the historic Anabaptist view of the Church with traditional American self reliance." Clark's article implies that the visible catholic Church that Christ founded consists of local congregations *networked* together and subordinate to the decisions of general assemblies such as in Acts 15.

It is to that visible catholic Church that the promises of Christ to the Church refer. The gates of hell shall not prevail against the visible catholic Church (Matt 16:18). Christ will be with the visible catholic Church to the end of the age (Matt 28:20). The Holy Spirit will guide the visible catholic Church into all truth (John 16:13). Whatever the visible catholic Church binds on earth will be bound in heaven (Matt 16:19, 18:19). The visible catholic Church is the pillar and ground of truth (1 Tim 3:15). These promises would be superfluous and unhelpful if intended only for the set of all the elect.

So when asked "Which is the visible catholic Church that Christ founded?", we should at least be able to refer to the network of congregations constituting the visible catholic Church. If we're left scratching our heads, then there are only three possibilities: either Christ's promises didn't apply to the visible catholic Church (and the visible catholic Church simply faded out of existence at some point in history), or Christ didn't found a visible catholic Church, or it is *we* who have lost sight of the visible catholic Church. In Evangelicalism, there is no such thing (conceptually) as a visible catholic Church. In confessional Protestantism there is at least a familiarity with the concept of the visible catholic Church, but the question "Which is the visible catholic Church that Christ founded?" nevertheless leads to the scratching of heads. Few are willing to say that it is their own denomination.

The offense that some Protestants took to Responsa ad quaestiones in July of 2007 is due precisely to their unfamiliarity with what it means that Christ founded one, visible catholic Church. The visibility of the Church is entailed by what the Church has believed and taught from the beginning about apostolicity as ecclesial authority derived in succession from the Apostles through the laying on of hands by those having that authority. (Reducing apostolicity to formal agreement with the Apostles' doctrine therefore vitiates the grounds for ecclesial visibility.) It should be no surprise that if we want to reunite all Christians, we have to be united together in Christ's Church. And further it should be no surprise that if we are going to find and be united in Christ's Church, we have to dig deeply into her four marks as repeated in the Creed: Credo in ... unam, sanctam, catholicam et apostolicam Ecclesiam.

St. Francis de Sales, focusing on apostolicity, wrote the following to the Protestants of Geneva:

"First, then, your ministers had not the conditions required for the position which they sought to maintain, and the enterprise which they undertook. ... The office they claimed was that of ambassadors of Jesus Christ our Lord; the affair they undertook was to declare a formal divorce between Our Lord and the ancient Church his Spouse; to arrange and conclude by words of present consent, as lawful procurators, a second and new marriage with this young madam, of better grace, said they, and more seemly than the other. ... To be legates and ambassadors they should have been sent, they should have had letters of credit from him whom they boasted of being sent by. ... Tell me, what business had you to hear them and believe them without having any assurance of their commission and of the approval of Our Lord, whose legates they called themselves? In a word, you have no justification for having quitted that ancient Church in which you were baptized, on the faith of preachers who had no legitimate mission from the Master.

St. Francis de Sales, pray for us, that we would all be one in the visible catholic Church that Christ founded.

One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church

Dr. Lawrence Feingold

Dr. Lawrence Feingold, a professor of theology in the Institute for Pastoral Theology of Ave Maria University, converted to Catholicism in 1989. This Fall he has been giving weekly lectures for the Association of Hebrew Catholics, and these lectures are outstanding. You can download the mp3 files of his talks on the four marks of the Church here. I highly recommend them. In my opinion, Professor Feingold is one of the greatest living theologians in the world. He is a living exemplar of what St. Paul says in Romans 11:12,15 concerning the Jews,

Now if their transgression be riches for the world and their failure be riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fulfillment be! ... For if their rejection [of Christ] be the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance [of Christ] be but life from the dead?

Listen to his lectures, and it will be clear that I am not exaggerating.

Today is a memorable day for my family. Today would be the sixteenth birthday of our son, Joshua. Reflecting on his death makes us more eager for heaven. As of this post, I'll be taking a lengthy break from blogging, to focus on my other responsibilities. The comments are all closed. I will not, however, cease to pray daily for the full and visible unity of all Christians, that we would share all three bonds of unity. This is the heart of Jesus, as revealed in His prayer in St. John 17. I hope that you too will include this in your daily prayers.

Lord Jesus, please draw all those who love you into the fullness of the unity Your Sacred Heart desires that we have with one another, and with you. May we be truly one, in Love and Truth, as you and the Father are one, that the world may see in us the Love and Truth of the Holy Trinity. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Indefectibility of the Church

"Christ Giving the Keys to St Peter"
Lorenzo Veneziano (1369)

The indefectibility of the Church is a gift from Christ to the Church by which she is preserved to the end of the age as the "institution of salvation". She can neither perish from the world nor depart from "her teaching, her constitution and her liturgy". (Ott, 296) This gift of indefectibility is essential to Christ's purpose in establishing His Church as the means of continuing His saving work to all the nations and peoples of the world until the end of the age. Regarding this purpose, Pope Leo XIII wrote, "What did Christ the Lord achieve by the foundation of the Church; what did He wish? This: He wished to delegate to the Church the same office and the same mandate which He had Himself received from the Father in order to continue them." (Satis cognitum, 4)

The indefectibility of the Church follows from the nature of the union of Christ with the Church, His Body. Concerning this union, St. Augustine writes:

Let us rejoice then and give thanks that we have become not only Christians, but Christ himself. Do you understand and grasp, brethren, God's grace toward us? Marvel and rejoice: we have become Christ. For if he is the head, we are the members; he and we together are the whole man. . . . The fullness of Christ then is the head and the members. But what does "head and members" mean? Christ and the Church.

St. Gregory the Great (whose feast day is November 10) writes the following:

Our redeemer has shown himself to be one person with the holy Church whom he has taken to himself.

And St. Thomas Aquinas writes:

Head and members form as it were one and the same mystical person. (ST III Q.48 a.2)

It is because of this union of Christ with the Church that the Church is indefectible. St. Augustine shows this when he says:

The Church will totter when her foundation totters. But how shall Christ totter? ... as long as Christ does not totter, neither shall the Church totter in eternity." (Enarr. in Ps. 103, 2, 5)

Elsewhere, writing about Psalm 48:9 (which is Psalm 48:8 in Protestant Bibles) St. Augustine says:

Let not heretics insult, divided into parties, let them not exalt themselves who say, "Lo, here is Christ, or lo, there." (Matt 24:23) Whoso says, "Lo, here is Christ, or lo, there," invites to parties. Unity God promised. The kings are gathered together in one, not dissipated through schisms. But haply that city which has held the world, shall sometime be overthrown? Far be the thought! "God has founded it forever." If then God has founded it forever, why fearest thou lest the firmament should fall?"

And in his Sermon to Catechumens on the Creed (1:6), St. Augustine writes:

The same is the holy Church, the one Church, the true Church, the catholic Church, fighting against all heresies: fight, it can; be fought down, it cannot. As for heresies, they all went out of it, like unprofitable branches pruned from the vine: but itself abides in its root, in its Vine, in its charity.

In these quotations we see the indefectibility of the Church grounded in the Church's ontological union with Christ as His Mystical Body. Because the life of Christ is indefectible, and because the life of the Church is the life of Christ, therefore the Church is indefectible. Those who deny the indefectibility of the Church are denying that this union of Christ with His Church is anything more than extrinsic. They imply that Christ's Mystical Body can become corrupted such that He may abandon His Body and take on a different body. By their denial of the indefectibility of the Church they imply that Christ can abandon the Bride with which He is "one flesh" (Eph 5:31-32; Mt 19:6), and find a different bride. But such claims are contrary to the intimate and ontological union of Christ with His Body, which is also His Bride. In virtue of this union she can be neither defeated nor corrupted nor destroyed, since the risen Christ Himself can neither be defeated nor corrupted nor destroyed, and since His Spirit lives within her as her soul. (CCC 797, 809).

Understanding the indefectibility of the Church is essential for understanding what Christ did in establishing the Church and equipping her to fulfill His purpose. If the Church had not been given this gift, then each man would have been left to determine for himself what Christ's message was, by sifting through all the available historical evidence. The full and visible unity of all Christians would then be impossible, as each man would simply do what seemed right in his own eyes. That is why understanding indefectibility and its basis and necessity are essential for the reunion of all Christians. Only if indefectibility is true is there a means for full and visible unity. If the Church were not indefectible, every heresy would have an equal claim to orthodoxy with orthodoxy itself. But God cannot lie (Titus 1:2), and Christ has promised that the gates of hell would never prevail against His Church (Matthew 16:18), that He would be with her to the end of the age (Matt 28:20), that His Church is the pillar and ground of truth (1 Tim 3:15), and that His Holy Spirit would guide her into all truth (John 16:13). Therefore heresy has no equal claim to orthodoxy. Heresy is distinguished from orthodoxy precisely by what the indefectible Church has ruled.

The Catholic Encyclopedia article titled "The Church" has a very helpful section on the indefectibility of the Church. The following two paragraphs are excerpted from that article.

Among the prerogatives conferred on His Church by Christ is the gift of indefectibility. By this term is signified, not merely that the Church will persist to the end of time, but further, that it will preserve unimpaired its essential characteristics. The Church can never undergo any constitutional change which will make it, as a social organism, something different from what it was originally. It can never become corrupt in faith or in morals; nor can it ever lose the Apostolic hierarchy, or the sacraments through which Christ communicates grace to men. The gift of indefectibility is expressly promised to the Church by Christ, in the words in which He declares that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. It is manifest that, could the storms which the Church encounters so shake it as to alter its essential characteristics and make it other than Christ intended it to be, the gates of hell, i.e. the powers of evil, would have prevailed. It is clear, too, that could the Church suffer substantial change, it would no longer be an instrument capable of accomplishing the work for which God called it in to being. He established it that it might be to all men the school of holiness. This it would cease to be if ever it could set up a false and corrupt moral standard. He established it to proclaim His revelation to the world, and charged it to warn all men that unless they accepted that message they must perish everlastingly. Could the Church, in defining the truths of revelation err in the smallest point, such a charge would be impossible. No body could enforce under such a penalty the acceptance of what might be erroneous. By the hierarchy and the sacraments, Christ, further, made the Church the depositary of the graces of the Passion. Were it to lose either of these, it could no longer dispense to men the treasures of grace.

The gift of indefectibility plainly does not guarantee each several part of the Church against heresy or apostasy. The promise is made to the corporate body. Individual Churches may become corrupt in morals, may fall into heresy, may even apostatize. Thus at the time of the Mohammedan conquests, whole populations renounced their faith; and the Church suffered similar losses in the sixteenth century. But the defection of isolated branches does not alter the character of the main stem. The society of Jesus Christ remains endowed with all the prerogatives bestowed on it by its Founder. Only to One particular Church is indefectibility assured, viz. to the See of Rome. To Peter, and in him to all his successors in the chief pastorate, Christ committed the task of confirming his brethren in the Faith (Luke 22:32); and thus, to the Roman Church, as Cyprian says, "faithlessness cannot gain access" (Epistle 54). The various bodies that have left the Church naturally deny its indefectibility. Their plea for separation rests in each case on the supposed fact that the main body of Christians has fallen so far from primitive truth, or from the purity of Christian morals, that the formation of a separate organization is not only desirable but necessary. Those who are called on to defend this plea endeavour in various ways to reconcile it with Christ's promise. Some, as seen above (VII), have recourse to the hypothesis of an indefectible invisible Church. The Right Rev. Charles Gore of Worcester, who may be regarded as the representative of high-class Anglicanism, prefers a different solution. In his controversy with Canon Richardson, he adopted the position that while the Church will never fail to teach the whole truth as revealed, yet "errors of addition" may exist universally in its current teaching (see Richardson, Catholic Claims, Appendix). Such an explanation deprives Christ's words of all their meaning. A Church which at any period might conceivably teach, as of faith, doctrines which form no part of the deposit could never deliver her message to the world as the message of God. Men could reasonably urge in regard to any doctrine that it might be an "error of addition".

The Humanity of the Church

The recent discussion at De Regnis Duobus led me to Michael Horton's article titled "Transforming Culture with a Messiah Complex".

Michael implies that Catholics and Emergentists are guilty of an "overealized eschatology". He seems to be saying that Catholics and Emergentists believe that Christ is present here now, and are therefore in some way at least implicitly denying that Christ is in heaven. By 'overealized eschatology' he means that we are, so to speak, bringing Christ back before He has actually come back. We do this, in his view, by substituting the Church for Christ. And Catholics also do it, in Michael's view, by believing in Christ's real presence in the Eucharist. Michael's position seems to offer us the following dilemmas. We must choose between affirming that the Church is truly the Body of Christ on the one hand, and on the other hand affirming that Christ ascended into heaven and will return in glory at the end of the age. Furthermore, we must choose between affirming the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and affirming that Christ ascended into heaven and will return in glory at the end of the age.

What lies behind these false dilemmas? It seems to be a form of monocausalism, in this case a sort that allows only one mode of being. For Michael (seemingly), Christ cannot be both absent (i.e. in heaven and yet to return in glory) and present here on earth (either in His Mystical Body the Church or in the Eucharist) at the same time. But the solution to this difficulty involves a philosophical distinction between being and mode of being. Christ can be absent in one respect, and yet present in another respect, without contradiction. He Himself tells us that He will never leave us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5), and that where two or three are gathered together in His name, there He is in the midst of us. (St. Matthew 18:20)

His presence through the Church as His Mystical Body is a different mode of presence than will be His presence when He comes again in glory. We can see that in Catholic documents such as Mystici Corporis Christi. Likewise, Christ's sacramental presence in the Eucharist is a different mode of presence than will be His presence when He comes again in glory. In the Eucharist He is veiled under the accidents of bread and wine, as St. Thomas explains in Questions 75 and 76 of Summa Theologica III. But when Christ appears in glory, then we shall "see Him as He is". (1 John 3:2) So Catholics can adore Christ in the Eucharist, and we can function as His hands and feet to the world, without undermining our irrevocable belief (actually, *dogma*) that Christ truly ascended into heaven and will truly return in glory at the end of the age, a belief we affirm every week when we recite the Creed together.

Why is it that both Catholics and Emergentists fall under Michael's criticism? Emergentists emphasize action and service. Confessional Protestants tend to emphasize the Word, preaching, teaching and study. Both of these are true expressions of our human nature. St. Thomas Aquinas taught that man's life is fittingly divided into the active life and the contemplative life. (ST II-II Q.179) These two are exemplified in the sisters Mary and Martha. The Church cannot be only one or the other, because human nature is not reducible to only one or the other. Emergentism seems to be, in part, a reaction to a deficiency with respect to service on the part of confessional Protestantism. And likewise, those attracted toward confessional Protestantism tend to be responding to a deficiency with respect to doctrine on the part of mainline liberalism, fundamentalism, or broader Evangelicalism.

The Catholic Church encompasses both action and preaching, work and prayer, Sisters of Charity and hermits, Franciscans and Dominicans, service and study. She has always held together both of these aspects of human nature, without excluding one or the other. Michael criticizes the Catholic Church along with Emergentists, because both exemplify the active aspect of human nature. But recognizing this aspect of human nature fills out our understanding of the Church as the Body of Christ.

A few years ago when I told an old priest whom I have known for a number of years that I was becoming Catholic, the first thing he said to me was this: "Remember, the Church is human". I didn't fully understand what he meant. At the time, I took it to mean, Be prepared to find sinners in the Church. But now I see more clearly what he was saying. The Church, as the Mystical Body of the incarnate Christ, is truly human; all of human nature is found within her, for Christ became fully human. (That's why through my fundamentalist lenses as a young man so much of the Church had seemed "worldly"; I didn't understand then the difference between being human and being worldly.)

The catholicity of the Church flows directly from Christ's full humanity. In baptism, we are joined to Christ, incorporated into His Body. In this way we truly participate in Christ's humanity, and He in ours. In the Eucharist we are made partakers of His divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). But if in the Eucharist we are made partakers of His divine nature, then surely we are also made partakers of His human nature, for the latter is connatural to us, and Christ is not divided. Therefore, in the Eucharist we are truly and more deeply incorporated into His Body, made into His hands and feet, just as St. Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4. Christ's presence in the sacraments is in this way deeply connected to His presence in us and through us as His Mystical Body. (And this is why Emergentism is deficient; it needs the Eucharist in order to be fully and completely, the Body of Christ.)

This is also related, in my opinion, to the reason why it is difficult for some Protestants to perceive Mary as our Mother. Protestants tend to take metaphorically St. Paul's teaching about the Church as the Body of Christ, not conceiving any other mode of being than that of His physical body. But the more we see the Church as a participation not only in Christ's divinity, but also in His humanity, the more we will be able to see Mary as our Mother, for His humanity is her-humanity-given-to-Him. She is our Mother, because she is His mother, and we are joined to Him as His brothers and sisters, in His human family by adoption through baptism. If she is Theotokos (God-bearer), then she is also Mother of His Mystical Body, the Church, and thus in baptism she becomes our Mother.

Since both action and contemplation are essential aspects of our common human nature, both are expressed in the humanity of the Church. You can see both of those aspects in the following video, released by Catholics Come Home.




To Emergentists and confessional Protestants, all those traditions that ultimately trace their origin back to the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, Catholics invite you to come back as well. Let us heal what was torn, and unite what was divided. We welcome you back with open arms, as brothers and sisters in Christ. (That was Jeffrey Steenson's experience, and it was my family's experience as well.) It is time for all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ to come together, work through our differences in an open and humble manner, and be reunited as one family. The unity of His followers is the passion of the heart of Jesus (St. John 17). It is not just St. Paul, but Christ also who says to us, "Make my joy complete by being of the same mind, maintaining the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose." (Philippians 2:2) For Christ explained that His mission was "to bring together the scattered children of God and make them one." (St. John 11:52). As Christ's followers, that must be our mission as well.

Church Made-To-Order

Someone recently asked Scot McKnight why he is still an Evangelical and not Catholic or Orthodox. He posted his reply, titled "Why I am not a Catholic or Eastern Orthodox". He offers seven reasons, which I discuss below. His words are italicized.

Here is his first reason: [UPDATE:: He doesn't intend this first point as a reason not to be Catholic.]

First, I’ve never been tempted to become either Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. Never.

Whether or not one should become Catholic does not depend on whether one has been "tempted" to become Catholic, but rather on whether the Catholic Church is the Church Christ founded. Scot's first reason for not becoming Catholic seems to suggest a form of ecclesial consumerism that makes the question "Why haven't you become Catholic?" equivalent to "Why haven't you tried Häagen-Dazs ice cream?" Remaining in schism from the Church that Christ founded is not justified by pointing out that one hasn't been "tempted" to be reconciled with her. So his first reason for not becoming Catholic is not a good reason.

His second reason involves four distinct points which I consider individually.

But I think the RCC and EO render authority in the ecclesia instead of in Scripture and in Spirit to make Scripture clear.

One of the ideas implicit in Scot's statement here is that we must choose between Church as authority and Scripture as authority, and between Church as interpreter of Scripture and Spirit as interpreter of Scripture. This suggests a form of monocausalism that presents us with false dilemmas, and an ecclesial docetism that separates the Spirit from the Church. This monocausalism does not seem to conceive the possibility of Scripture and Church as both having authority, in different respects. And this ecclesial docetism does not recognize that the Spirit works *through* the Church's magisterium to make Scripture clear, as the Spirit worked through Philip the deacon to make Scripture clear to the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8). Implicit in Scot's comment here is the notion that the Spirit 'floats free' of matter, that is, operates apart from matter, and thus does not come to us principally through the Church and through her sacraments. This is the anti-sacramental implication of montanistic gnosticism.

Now here’s my point: both the RCC and the EO have captured the Spirit in the Church so that Church too often has become Authority.

I'm not sure what it means for the Church to "become Authority", since the Church is the Body of Christ, and "Authority" is a quality had by a being, not a thing in its own right. But here too, Scot treats the Catholic Church as somehow restricting the Spirit. (That's what he means, I take it, by "captured the Spirit".) The Catholic Church does not claim to have captured or restricted the Spirit. Catholics recognize that the Spirit does what He pleases, being God. But the Catholic Church believes and teaches that Christ gave His disciples the Spirit as a gift, and promised that His Spirit would work *through the Church*, particularly through her sacraments. Since the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, and since the Church is the Body of Christ, we should therefore expect to find the Spirit in the Church, expect to receive the Spirit through the Church, and expect the Spirit to work through the Church. Nor does the Catholic Church believe that she became authority; the Catholic Church believes that the incarnate Christ Himself gave authority to her when He gave authority to the Apostles (including the keys of the kingdom to Peter -- cf. Matthew 16:19), and the Apostles subsequently transmitted this authority to their episcopal successors in an unbroken sacramental succession.

So far as the church partakes in that Spirit, it has an authoritative message; so far as it doesn’t, it loses its authority.

According to Scot's position, apparently, it is up to each man, woman and child to decide when and if and to what degree the Church is 'partaking in the Spirit', such that if anyone feels that the Church is not sufficiently partaking of the Spirit, he can dismiss her teaching as non-authoritative. Again, this is montanistic gnosticism. This montanistic gnosticism makes schism seem justified, since according to this position the Spirit floats free from matter, and therefore this position presumes that the Spirit is fully available to us apart from the institution and hierarchy of the Church. Every heresy in the history of the Church could have been self-justified in this way, since the heretics could have simply said, "Well, in this case, it seems to us that the Church is not sufficiently partaking of the Spirit, and therefore her condemnation of our position is not authoritative. In fact, we have the fullness of the Spirit, and so we now declare that we are the Church." This notion separates the Spirit of Christ from the Body of Christ, and in this way falls into ecclesial docetism.

RCCs and EOs talk about Church; Protestants talk about Scripture. It is their emphasis that I like ..."

The Catholic Church claims to be the Church that Christ founded. The question "Why are you still an Evangelical and not a Catholic?" is not the sort of question to which 'like' has any place in a reply. Such a reply suggests a failure to understand what the Catholic Church claims about herself, for the same reason that "dislike Him" is not a fourth option in the Lord, Liar, Lunatic trilemma. The question is simply not about us, our likes and dislikes; it is about the identity of this 2000 year-old institution claiming to be the Church that Christ founded. Schism is not justified by likes or dislikes, let alone liking or disliking an "emphasis". Again, this seems to be more evidence of ecclesial consumerism that itself reveals no awareness of the fundamental difference between the Catholic conception of the Church as the institution Christ founded and the Evangelical conception of the Church as a religious activity or phenomenon that can be made-to-order to suit our personal likes and dislikes, itching our ears and gratifying our other senses as well. (Scot is a signer of the Evangelical Manifesto, which I reviewed here.) Scot is treating the Catholic Church as if she is just one more option-of-choice among the denominational smorgasbord our many schisms have now spread before us religious consumers. He is thus viewing the Catholic Church through Evangelical lenses, as if there is no such thing as the Catholic Church. But that's simply to fail to see the Catholic Church. In order to see the Catholic Church, one has to step out [at least mentally] from the Evangelical paradigm. So his second reason is in that respect question-begging; it assumes the truth of Evangelicalism.

His third reason is this:

for each of these communions [RC & EO] the Tradition becomes massively authoritative and, in my view, each of these communions has become un-reformable.

'Massive' in itself is not a flaw. Scot would need to show us the standard by which to measure how authoritative Tradition should be, and then show how in the Catholic Church, Tradition goes beyond that standard. He hasn't done that here; he has simply asserted that Tradition has "massive" authority, and then assumed that this is a fault. His position also implicitly assumes but does not substantiate the notion that schism is justified if the Church is "un-reformable". That the Church needs so much reform as to justify being in schism from her is also something he assumes but does not support.

They read the Bible through Tradition and I believe in reading the Bible with Tradition.

Ironically, part of the Tradition is to read the Bible *through* Tradition. Reading the Bible "with Tradition" is not part of the Tradition.

time proves that some of what we all know today to be interpretive truth can be wrong in a century. Look at the Church’s backpedaling today on Galileo.

Surely Scot knows that the Catholic Church believes and teaches that infallibility does not apply to everything the Catholic Church does, including her handling of the Galileo case. Infallibility has to do with the Church's dogmas, and these dogmas have to do with faith and morals. But again, Scot does not show how the Church's fallibility in other areas justifies being in schism from her.

His fourth reason is this:

Fourth, I believe in the guidance of the Spirit in the Church, both in theological articulation (Nicea, for example) and in revival (the Reformation, for example).

Catholics also believe that the Spirit guides the Church into all truth. But we don't separate Spirit from matter; we treat the Church herself as a sacrament, where matter and Spirit are joined together. Scot apparently does not do that; he seems to treat the Spirit as free-floating apart from matter. He follows the Council of Nicea, but apparently rejects the Council of Trent. When you separate Spirit from matter, "what the Spirit is doing" amounts to whatever the burning in your bosom tells you the Spirit is doing, and then similarly "the Church" amounts to whoever agrees (or mostly agrees) with you and your interpretation of Scripture and with what you think are the minimal essentials of the faith. That is the unavoidable implication of montanistic gnosticism.

The minute, however, one begins to think that a given moment in the Church or its articulation was timeless truth rather than truthful timeliness one falls prey to elevating Tradition too high.

Too high according to what standard? Without a standard, this charge is groundless. I can't help but wonder if he thinks his very claim here is a "timeless truth" or only a "temporary truth" [as if there could be such a thing]. If it is not a timeless truth, then perhaps it is time to put such dogmatic skepticism behind us, so that we can recover the dogmas of the faith.

I check interpretation against these; but that does not mean I don’t think fresh light emerges or that something could be improved or modified.

The Catholic Church agrees. The Catholic Church rejects two opposite errors. One error is the notion that there is no development of doctrine, no increase in understanding, and no leading into greater truth by the Spirit. The other error is the notion that nothing at all has been irrevocably established as true, and that everything is open to future rejection and falsification. Both of those errors involve an implicit rejection of the Holy Spirit's continuing activity in leading the Church into all truth. Both errors are therefore forms of ecclesial deism. Scott wants present openness to the Spirit, but in rejecting "timeless truths" he implies that the Spirit hasn't gotten us any closer to truth than we were 2,000 years ago, since we don't know anything for sure now, not even that we have gotten closer to truth. But if over the last 2,000 years the Spirit hasn't gotten us any closer to the truth, then why should we believe that the Spirit is suddenly going to start doing something now? The two errors are in this way related, because they are both a manifestation of ecclesial deism.

His fifth reason is this:

Fifth, what this means — if you are still with me — is that I believe in ongoing discernment of what the Spirit is saying to the Church, and I believe this discernment is a function of church leaders and churches in communion with one another. Discernment for the day is different than infallible teaching for all time. Therein lies a major difference.

The Catholic Church also believes in discerning what the Spirit is saying to the Church, so that's not a point of disagreement between Scot and the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church also believes that this discernment [of what the Spirit is saying to the Church] is a function of church leaders and churches in communion with one another. So that's not a point of disagreement between Scott and the Catholic Church. And Catholics can agree as well that "discernment for the day" is different than infallible teaching for all time. But Scot has not shown that the two are mutually exclusive. Does he think that "discernment for the day" is incompatible with "infallible teaching for all time"? If so, why? If, for example, we know infallibly for all time that Christ is one Person with two natures, does that prevent "discernment for the day"? If so, then how so? But if not, then Scot has presented us with a false dilemma, namely, that we must choose between "infallible teaching for all time" and "discernment for the day".

His sixth reason is this:

neither communion [Catholic and Orthodox], regardless of what it says in theology or in catechesis, preaches the new birth clearly enough nor does either institutionalize the need for personal decision enough

That may very well be true, but that in itself does not show that remaining in schism from the Church that Christ founded is justified when the Church doesn't preach the new birth clearly enough or institutionalize the need for personal decision enough.

Once a month I get a letter from someone who asks me to talk them out of converting to Rome or to Constantinople (et al), and one thing I say to each of them is this: In three generations it is quite likely that your great grandchildren will be “in” the Church but will not experience the new birth.

What is yet to be shown is that remaining in schism is justified because of what is "quite likely" to happen to one's great-grandchildren. Scot's reason here entails that not being in schism is not part of the faith, because his position treats teaching one's children (performatively at least) that being in schism from the Church Christ founded is perfectly fine, so long as you think the Church isn't sufficiently following the Spirit. Scot's reason here thus performatively removes from the faith the prohibition against schism. It denies the unam [μίαν] in that line of the Creed that reads, "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church". The unity of the Church is part of the faith. Therefore we cannot sacrifice the unity of the Church and at the same time hold on to the faith. If we sacrifice the faith by denying any part of the Creed, then we don't have to wait three generations to see our great-grandchildren deprived of faith; we ourselves have already sacrificed it.

Furthermore, how Scot calculates the likelihood that great-grandchildren of Catholics will not "experience the new birth", and determines that this likelihood is greater than the likelihood that the great-grandchildren of emergentists (a movement which Scott supports) will even know anything about Christianity, he does not say or show. He just asserts. But since Scot is an Anabaptist, I wonder whether he has already denied that line of the Creed that says "one baptism for the forgiveness of sins". If not, then he will recognize that Catholic babies "experience the new birth" when they are baptized. I don't see any reason why we should think that in three generations Catholics won't be baptizing their children, when Catholics have been doing this since the first century. The "Emergent Church" has been around for about ten years. The Catholic Church has been around for 2,000 years; somebody has been keeping the faith.

His seventh reason is this:

Seventh: I’m unapologetically an evangelical Protestant because I think this is a more faithful shaping of the doctrines of the Bible.

Scot is essentially saying here that he is a Protestant because he believes in sola scriptura, and thus that he is his own highest interpretive authority, since his interpretation of Scripture has more authority than that of the magisterium of the Catholic Church. What is missing here is a defense of sola scriptura and a refutation of the Catholic case against sola scriptura. Otherwise, Scot is merely describing his own position, not showing why his position is true and that of the Catholic Church is false.

Finally, he writes this:

Are there other reasons? Of course … like assurance of salvation, the worrisome compulsion to attend mass, women in ministry, like the significance of lay giftedness, less (not more) authority in the local pastor and more authority in the Spirit, justification by faith, hierarchical power structures that create endless red tape, too much Mary, and I could go on.

It sounds like he thinks of Christianity as a made-to-order religion where we get to order it up just exactly to our own liking. Do you want assurance? How much assurance do you want? Ok, here's a denomination that will offer you just what you want, as much assurance as you possibly want. Tired of the obligation to go to mass? Take a look at this attractive alternative. It is a no-guilt Church; you are free to come when you want, and stay home when you feel otherwise. In fact, we'll meet in the evenings in a bar if that's what you'd like. Are you a woman and feeling excluded from pastoral roles? We have just the solution for you. Here's an array of denominations that offer you the full range of ministerial opportunities to fulfill your deepest ministerial aspirations. That ecclesial consumerism, however, turns things exactly upside-down, creating Church in our image, rather than conforming ourselves to the Church that Christ founded, and in doing so conforming to the image of Christ. In that post (on ecclesial consumerism) I examined the worship advertisements in the St. Louis newspaper, and drew the following conclusion:

One thing that clearly stands out is that these religious organizations are trying to fill niches in demand. Through a kind of free market process, they are reflections of what people want. Just as we can get a personalized custom-made teddy bear at the local mall, we can get a religious experience on Sunday morning that is custom-made to fit our particular religious appetites, preferences, interpretations, expectations, beliefs, etc. We can worship in an organization that is made in our own image, and in that way we can worship a god of our own making.

Earlier this year I wrote, "Unity is achieved not when we all make 'Church' in our own image (i.e. in the image of our own interpretation), but when we all conform to her image." And elsewhere, "Unity as one of the four marks of the Church ("one, holy, catholic and apostolic") and as the most intimate expression of the desire of our Savior's sacred heart revealed in St. John 17, requires being incorporated into something greater than a structure made in our own image, or the image of our own interpretation." In order to achieve this unity, we have to break out of ecclesial consumerism, and the montanistic gnosticism and ecclesial docetism that underlie it.

Babel or Keys?

'La Construction de la Tour de Babel'
Hendrick III van Cleve (1525 - 1589)
(click on the painting to view it full-sized)

Christ promised that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church. But the very nature of the promise implies the presence of a war. The dragon "makes war" against the children of Christ's Mother, that is, those who "keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus." (Rev 12:17) So how does hell fight against Christ's Church? Of course there are external threats, such as persecution and the enticement of worldliness. But the more insidious attacks are internal; these are heresy and schism. Heresy and schism generally go together, because one without the other would be exposed for what it is. Only together can they hide each other. Satan hides himself in a certain respect, disguising himself as an angel of light. (2 Cor 11:14) That is his standard mode of operation. He once was Lucifer, the light bearer. So he portrays all his works as good and right and enlightened, as though they are the path of the truly wise, and especially suitable for making one wise. This is how he deceived Eve. This is how he deceived the people into choosing the murderer Barabbas [whose name means "son of the father"] over the innocent Son of God. And this is how he continues to deceive people into sinning against the Body of Christ, by leading them into heresy and schism.

But evil is always intrinsically self-destructive, because not only is evil a privation of good, but evil is also therefore a privation of unity and a privation of being. That is why evil is always parasitic on the good. Evil cannot exist on its own, but only in and in relation to what is good. For this very reason, the concepts of heresy and schism are not themselves sustainable within heresies and schisms. Within heresies and schisms these concepts collapse into the semantic equivalent of 'disagreement with my interpretation' and 'separation from me', respectively. All their objectivity and normativity is lost. Just as Satan succeeds when people no longer believe that he exists, so also he succeeds when the concepts of 'heresy' and 'schism' have been so evacuated that people no longer believe there really are such things.

The Church is supposed to be the voice of Christ to the world. Satan cannot defeat this voice, but through heresies and schisms he can drown it out in a sea of competing voices, each claiming to speak for Christ. In this way he creates confusion, not only in the world but even among Christians, for the effect is as if there is no authoritative voice of Christ, but merely a cacophony of opinions. Yet "God is not a God of confusion". (1 Cor 14:33) Christ did not leave His sheep without a shepherd. Nor did he intend that all who wish to determine who is the true shepherd first learn to read, let alone read and exegete Greek and Hebrew (as is testified to by the theological disunity among those who *do* read and exegete Greek and Hebrew).

The schisms that have weakened the unity and strength of our voice as Christians are in their effect like the curse of Babel that thwarted the builders of that tower. But the purpose of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is to reverse that division by means of a divine ingathering. This was the significance of the gift of tongues on the day of Pentecost, as described in Acts 2. (See the column of paintings on Neal Judisch's blog to get a better sense of the idea.) Babel was the tower of man, initiated by men and built up by men. It is the paradigmatic referent of Psalm 127:1, "Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain". Nimrod is said to have been the initiator of the tower of Babel; in this way he is a figure of the Antichrist. In contrast to Babel, the Church is the tower that God is building, joining all peoples together into one Body in which we all speak the same divine language. (To read an early second century description of the Church as the tower that God is building, see Book 1 of the Shepherd of Hermas.) This is the Body of Christ, of which He is the founder and Head.

One way to respond to the common insouciance among Christians regarding our disunity is to show the disunity for what it is, as Dickens showed child labor for what it was. That is the sort of thing I was attempting to do recently here and here, in showing that the position of those Protestants who claim to believe in a visible Church is only *semantically* distinct from the position of those Protestants who deny that there is a visible Church. This highlights the absence of a middle position between Catholicism on the one hand, and that of those who deny that Christ founded a visible Church. The denial of a visible Church leaves each man to do what is right in his own eyes, for in that case there is no divinely-established voice of authority in the visible Church, because there is no visible Church. This position has difficulty making sense of St. Matthew 16 and St. Matthew 18, as I showed in the comments here.

Moreover, the ecclesiological position of those who deny that Christ founded a visible Church is intrinsically disposed to perpetual fragmentation and disharmony and weakness, for according to that position Christ did not establish a lasting hierarchy by which to preserve and guard the first mark of the Church: unity. But while Christ assured us that the Church will endure, He also tells us that a house divided cannot stand (St. Matt 12:25; St. Mark 3:25; St. Luke 11:17). Therefore, unity is an essential mark of the Church. Christ did not tell us to make a man-made peace that He would then preserve. He gave to His Apostles His peace, a peace that is not of this world. He left His peace with them. (St. John 14:27; Philippians 4:7) This is the divine peace and unity into which we must be incorporated. It is this divine peace and unity given by Christ to the Church that makes unity the first mark of the Church.

There are many Christians who recognize the need for greater unity among Christians. The moral decline in the broader culture makes such a need more and more obvious. And the recognition of this need for greater unity should be commended and encouraged, as should the efforts to effect it. But there are two fundamentally different types of ecumenicism. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us the goal of a thing shows us what it is, and the difference in goal distinguishes these two different types of ecumenicism. I'm not speaking here of the proximate goal of fostering dialogue and improving mutual understanding and social cooperation between Christians of various denominations and traditions. I'm speaking of the final goal.

I have written here about the way in which one form of ecumenicism unwittingly continues the work of Babel, by trying to create a new tower that Christ Himself did not found. It does this by seeking to establish a new institution and trying to get all Christians to be united to it. We see this mentality in organizations like the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. (For an example, see here.)

True ecumenicism does not lay a new foundation other than that which God has already laid, the incarnate Christ being the cornerstone, followed by the "apostles and prophets" (Eph 2:20), and their successors in the Church, which is "the pillar and foundation of the truth" (1 Tim 3:15). True ecumenicism is therefore necessarily by its very nature and final goal a searching for and reuniting with the Church that Christ founded. So long as some Christians conceive of the Church that Christ founded as the mere set of all believers, or as the set of all believers and their activities, or as a mere phenomenon, they will not perceive what the Church actually is, and how the Church is the pillar and foundation of the truth. Mere sets and mere phenomena have no authority, no actual unity, and thus no actual being. What has no being cannot be a foundation, let alone a foundation of the truth.

To defeat the divisive work of Satan, we first have to come to see schisms for what they are. This is part of what it means to expose the works of darkness. (Eph 5:11) We tear away the façade of light that keeps us from perceiving evil as evil. These schisms are "ruptures that wound the unity of Christ's Body" (CCC 817). If we love our own bodies, then how much more should we care for the wounds of Christ's Body? But we can go about seeking to heal these wounds in one of two ways. We can either take the keys to ourselves, which is the way of Babel (or more precisely, an endless series of Babels, each with its own self-appointed or de facto Nimrod), or we can seek out the Church that Christ founded, where He left His peace, seeking full communion with the one to whom He gave the keys.

'Christ Handing the Keys to St. Peter'
Pietro Perugino (1481-1482)

The Church: Catholic or Invisible? Part II

This is a follow-up to "The Church: Catholic or Invisible?".

Consider the following dialogue. One of the participants is a Protestant who claims that there is such a thing as the visible Church. Call him VC-guy. The other is a Protestant who denies that there is such a thing as the visible Church. Call him VC-denier.


VC-denier: "There are Christians who get together and proclaim the Word and celebrate the Sacraments. And there are various denominations to which most Christians belong."

VC-guy: "Wait, you left out something else that is also there, i.e. the visible Church."

VC-denier: "I don't see any visible Church. I see only the things I listed."

VC-guy: "All the things you listed constitute the visible Church"

VC-denier: "What if it didn't exist?"

VC-guy: "What do you mean?"

VC-denier: "I mean, what would be different if there were no visible Church?"

VC-guy: "There wouldn't be people congregating together to proclaim the Word and celebrate the Sacraments."

VC-denier: "No, you're not following me. I mean, what if there were only people congregating together to proclaim the Word and celebrate the Sacraments, and not some additional entity called the visible Church? What would be different?"

VC-guy: "Well, nothing, but that's impossible, because wherever there are people congregating to proclaim the Word and celebrate the Sacraments, there is the visible Church."

VC-denier: "Yes, in your view, wherever people are doing those things, by definition that is the visible Church".

VC-guy: "Right"

VC-denier: "But what if there weren't actually another entity, i.e. a visible Church, but only a term [i.e. 'visible Church'] that was being used to refer to the plurality of persons doing these activities? What would be different?"

VC-guy: "I don't know. Nothing I guess."

VC-denier: "What about the principle of parsimony? You know, the principle that the simpler explanation is to be preferred, all things being equal?"

VC-guy: "Right, but how does that apply here?"

VC-denier: "Well, we can explain the same data equally well in two ways, one by positing another entity "the visible Church", and one without positing that entity."

VC-guy: "Ok, so what?"

VC-denier: "Therefore, by the principle of parsimony, the explanation that does not posit an additional entity is preferred, because positing the additional entity is entirely unnecessary."

VC-guy: "So according to your argument, there isn't actually a visible Church. Rather, what exists are visible persons who are proclaiming the Word and celebrating the Sacraments. We can give those persons a collective label (of any sort), but we shouldn't make the mistake of treating the label as referring to a single unified entity constituted by those persons."

VC-denier: "Exactly."

VC-guy: "So really, there is no visible Church; there are visible people engaged in meeting to proclaim the Word and celebrate the Sacraments, but not another entity 'the visible Church'."

VC-denier: "Well, ... yes."


The point of the dialogue is to show how VC-guy's position is subject to the principle of parsimony. The application of the principle of parsimony shows how he has committed the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness", treating a plural-referring term as if it referred to an additional singular entity that in some sense includes all the other singular entities within itself.

The Catholic position is not subject to this critique because the Catholic Church is a hierarchically organized institution. Reductionism (as applied to living organisms) is the opposite error of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, because while misplaced concreteness treats mere pluralities as if they are actual wholes and thus unnecessarily inflates the account of ontology, reductionism treats actual composite wholes as mere pluralities of smaller simples, and in this way fails to account fully for the being and activity of actual composite wholes. (See Leon Kass's "The Permanent Limitations of Biology".) Because the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church is analogous to that of an organism, it is not subject to eliminative reductionism by way of the principle of parsimony. To try to explain the activities of Catholics without referring to the institution to which they belong would necessarily leave out a significant part of the full explanation. It would be like trying to explain the daily life of a human being solely in terms of the movements of the particles of which he is composed. But a complete explanation of the activities of Protestants as such need not refer to some world-encompassing entity, "the visible Church", over and above the influence of other believers, their local congregation and/or denomination.