In my previous post I addressed the criticism that the Church cannot be infallible because the Christians who are the Church are themselves fallible. I showed how this criticism committed the fallacy of composition (that the whole has the same essential characteristic or characteristics as its parts). I also addressed how this criticism was both inconsistent (e.g., that the individual Christian, being fallible, then has no authority to promote or assert his own fallible interpretations of Scripture) and incoherent (e.g., that somehow fallible Christians could in someway be judged by other fallible Christians to have attained a level of holiness or maturity such that they could promote their Scriptural interpretations). And I finally noted that some of the concrete evidences on which is based the claim that the Church is fallible (such as the Crusades and the Inquisition) are drawn from historical realities that are far too complex (including the actual nature of the Roman Catholic Church's pronouncements on the Crusades and Inquisition, whether acts of individuals could be attributed to the group and the addressing of the question as to whether any Christian group whose members commit sinful acts is, in fact, the Church). As intuitive as the criticism that the Church cannot be infallible if its members are fallible might seem, clearly it is illogical, inconsistently held, incoherent, and far far too simplistic of historical realities.
2. The Standard of Proof and the Strength of the Argument
But disproving a criticism is not the same as proving one's own thesis. If the Church is to be proven infallible, it will have to be on the terms of its argument and not on the basis of the elimination of criticisms, important as is the latter. But if fallible Christians lack the authority to pronounce on the fallibility of the Church, how could fallible Christians make any substantive claims as to the Church's infallibility? Clearly we would have to have a source recognized as infallible, other than the Church, which could substantiate the claims that the Church is likewise infallible. The Scriptures are that infallible source, and they do lay out the foundation for the claim that the Church is infallible.
Setting the Standard of Proof
First, let us acknowledge that the infallibility of the Scriptures is not itself something that is claimed by the Scriptures. We have the text from 2 Timothy 3:16 which claims that every Scripture is God “out-breathed” (or inspired), but no specific claims that Scripture is infallible. Nonetheless, we take the Scriptures to be infallible precisely because of texts such as 2 Timothy 3:16 which claim the inspiration of God for every Scripture. (I will not here detail the argument that 2 Timothy 3:16 applies specifically to the Old Testament and only by extension to the New Testament.)
I point this out because critics of the infallibility of the Church do take the Scriptures to be inspired. They propose then a burden that Scripture directly and explicitly claim infallibility for the Church. And yet the infallibility for the Scriptures that they uphold is not itself directly and explicitly claimed for the Scriptures. So, if the infallibility of the Church can be evidenced on the same level and standard of proof that the infallibility of the Scriptures is evidenced, then we can confidently claim infallibility for both the Scriptures and the Church.
This evidence is easily had.
The Argument for the Infallibility of the Church
Let us first note the unity that Christ himself claims for the Church and the Holy Trinity.
"And I do not make request for these only, but also for those who shall believe on Me through their word; in order that all may be one, even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us, that the world might believe that Thou didst send me forth. And the glory which Thou has given Me I have given them, in order that they may be one, even as We are one: I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into one, and that the world may know that Thou didst send Me forth, and didst love them even as Thou dist love Me. Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am, in order that they may behold the glory, that which is Mine, which Thou gavest Me; for Thou didst love Me before the foundation of the world." (John 17:20-24)
Let us note the different sorts of unity that obtain, according to Christ: that between the Father and the Son (and we may extrapolate, among the Holy Trinity), that between Christ and his Church (all “those who shall believe in Me through [the Apostles'] word”), and that between the Apostles and those who shall believe in Christ through the apostolic message. In other words, there is the unity of the Holy Trinity, the unity of Christ and his Church, and the unity of his Church itself. And all such unity is predicated upon that between the Father and the Son.
Let us go on to note further implications of this unity.
There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, Who is over all, and through all, and in you all. But to each of us was given grace according to the measure of the gift of the Christ. Wherefore, He saith, "Having ascended on high, He led captivity captive," and "gave gifts to men." Now that He ascended, what it is except that He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? The One Who descended is the same also Who ascended above all of the heavens, in order that He might fill all things. And He gave some to be apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some shepherds and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, to the work of ministering, to the building up of the body of the Christ, until we all might come to the unity of the faith, and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ; in order that we may no longer be infants, tossed to and fro by waves, and carried about with every wind of teaching, by the sleight of men, in craftiness toward the systematizing of error; but speaking the truth in love, we might grow up into Him in all things who is the head-- the Christ; from Whom all the body, being joined and knit together by what every juncture supplieth, according to the energy of every single part in measure, maketh for itself the increase of the body, to the building up of itself in love. (Ephesians 4:4-16)
Note once again that the one Body is not divided and is in unity with the Head, or Christ. Note that the charismatic grace given each member results in an increase and growth in the Body into the Head, such that the Church attains the “measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ” which entails no longer being tossed to and fro on the winds of doctrine. If one is not subject to being tossed to and fro on the winds of doctrine, then one is not subject to error and one is infallible.
“And He put in subjection all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him Who filleth all things in all” (Ephesians 1:22-23).
The Ephesians reference is explicit. His body is “the fullness of Him Who filleth all things in all.” This is important, for of that fullness of the Godhead is surely the quality of infallibility. And if the fullness of the Godhead indwells (by grace) the Church, the Church (by grace) shares or participates in that infallibility.
“And He is the head of the body, the Church, Who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He might come to hold first place. For all the fullness was pleased to dwell in Him . . . . For I wish you to know how great a struggle I have for you, and for those in Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh, that their hearts might be comforted, having been knit together in love and unto all wealth of the full assurance of understanding, to a full knowledge of the mystery of God the Father, and of the Christ, in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. . . . For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the divinity bodily, and ye are made full in Him, Who is the head of all principality and authority . . .” (Colossians 1:18-19a; 2:1-3, 9-10; emphasis added).
Note that the fullness of God, which we experience in Christ, is found in the Church. In the Colossians reference above, the “ye” indicates the second person plural in the Greek. Paul is speaking of the Church at Colossae as being made full in Him (Christ), in Whom Himself the fullness of the divinity dwelt bodily.
Note also that these have already been knit together “unto all the wealth of the full assurance of understanding, to a full knowledge of the mystery of God the Father and of the Christ.” And note that this fullness of Christ which indwells the Church is also the locus of “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”
And since Christ's full divinity fills His Body, the Church, it is the case that God dwells in the Church, the Body is His dwelling place.
“So then ye are no longer strangers and sojourners but fellow citizens of the saints and of the household of God, who were built up on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the cornerstone, in Whom every building, being joined together, increaseth to a holy temple in the Lord, in Whom ye also are being built up together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:19-22).
The foundation of this house is the apostles and prophets. On this foundation, God is building his home in which he dwells. God's home is the Church. God's life and immortality is imparted in Christ to the Church, since He dwells there. And since the Church has the fullness of God, since the Church is essentially one in and with God (though is not herself God), since the Church is God's home, it is not surprising that the Church has God's wisdom and declares it:
“. . . in order that the much-variegated wisdom of God might be made known to the principalities and to the authorities in the heavenlies through the Church, according to the purpose of the ages which He made in Christ Jesus our Lord . . .” (Ephesians 3:10-11; emphasis added).
If the Church were fallible, God could not reliably declare His “much-variegated wisdom” through it. In fact, in a claim that is nowhere in the Scriptures made of those Scriptures, the divinely inspired written revelation of God declares a relationship between God's house (the Church, the Body of Christ) and the truth:
“. . . the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, pillar and stay of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).
It is the Church that is the pillar and stay of the Truth. The same Church that wrote and preserved the Holy Scriptures and infallibly declares their meaning.
So, we have seen that God's fullness indwells the Church in Christ. That the Church is no longer tossed to and fro on the winds of doctrine. That the Church has and declares God's “much-variegated wisdom,” because she has the fullness of Christ in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. That the Church has attained to the full knowledge of the mystery of God the Father and of the Christ. That the Church is the pillar and stay of the Truth. These are the explicit statements of Scripture about the Church. The only reliable conclusion, the only reasonable implication is that the Church must share, in Christ, the quality of infallibility.
The Only Other Alternative: The “Infallible” Interpreter
Critics of the infallibility of the Church necessarily must commit a logical fallacy in asserting their claim: that the fallible characteristic of the individual members of the Church necessarily inheres as an essential quality of the whole of the Church. We have seen that this cannot be the case. Yet, it is also the case, that individual fallible Christians want to abrogate to themselves an authority they deny to the Church: the authority to gainsay that with which they disagree and to declare that their interpretations of Scripture and their pronouncements about Christian belief are authoritative. I ask: Whence the foundation for such an authority? How does a fallible interpreter infallibly interpret the Scriptures? And if there are innumerable contradictions between fallible interpreters, how are other fallible interpreters to discern and to determine which is the true interpretation and which the false? There is one and only one standard in such a case: that which seems right in their own eyes. And on such a basis have resulted the tens of thousands of schisms among Christians to this day. And let it be noted that there is no Scriptural warrant, absolutely none, for an individual Christian to abrogate to themselves such an authority.
On the other hand, Scripture is clear where such an authority does lie: the Body of Christ.
Now, it will likely be argued that mine is just one more interpretation among innumerable others. Don't I violate the very standard I set by offering my interpretation? My answer, as hubristic as it may seem is an unequivocal “No.” I think a reasonable and as unbiased as possible a reader in examining the texts I have set forth for the argument will conclude that the “interpretive activity” in relation to these texts has been minimal. I have, I maintain, done next to no interpretive work. I have set forth the various Scriptures, noted their explicit prima facie readings, and drawn that evidence together to what I think is a fairly inescapable conclusion. It is a simple tactic I have chosen. To deny my argument, critics will have to deny the explicit prima facie readings of the texts. And their own criticisms will be the worse for it. It is far less convincing and persuasive to say “This may be what the text says, but it is not what it means.”
I submit that what the text says is in fact what it means. And that it means the Church is infallible. The burden of proof otherwise is now on the critics of the Church's infallibility.
There is a discussion thread over at the message boards I frequent on the question of how and whether one can know if one's reading of the Scripture is correct, or whether a change in historic Christian practice can be predicated upon that notion that the Holy Spirit demands this change. The discussion is centering on the question of authority and whether the Church can claim the authority to correctly interpret the Bible vis a vis the individual Christian reader.
Many of the criticisms of the Church's authority center upon the notion that individual Christians are sinful, and that entities like the Roman Catholic Church have sanctioned the Crusades or the Inquisition, and therefore, the Church lacks any credible authority because, after all, Christians are the Church. In fact, among Protestants in particular, though non-Christians as well, this is one of the primary criticisms against the so-called “institutional Church” having any sort of authority over and above that of the individual, or of authority being vested in any visible earthly body of Christians.
But this criticism fails in two general ways: by virtue that the criticism itself is false and wrongly argued, as well as by virtue of what the Scripture actually says about the Church and the consequences of those claims. In this post I will address the failures of the criticism itself.
1. The Failure of the Criticism
This resort to the sinfulness of the members of the Church (the so-called “hypocrite defense”) presumes that no body of Christians can truthfully and really claim, let alone exercise, authority (in any this-worldly sense) over the beliefs and practices of individuals because the same Church or Christian group that would so exercise that authority is itself made up of fallible sinners and such an authority would be compromised by those fallible sinners.
This criticism fails in a number of ways, a few of which I wish to highlight.
a. It Commits the Fallacy of Composition
First, and most tellingly, it commits the logical fallacy of composition, which states that because individual parts (or members) of a whole have a certain characteristic or characteristics then the whole must have that characteristic or characteristics as well. An example of this fallacy can be illustrated as follows: Since the seats of our Toyota 4Runner are covered with cloth, the entire vehicle is covered with cloth. Thus, it is not the case that simply because individual Christians are sinful, or commit sinful acts, that therefore the Church as a whole is sinful or can commit sinful acts.
This is abundantly clear, even if we still have a sense that the Church as a whole has moral culpability for the sins of her members.
But let us examine that intuition by away of analogical illustration. Let us assume two parents, Fred and Mary, both of whom are devout Christians and who have raised a son, Robert, in the most Christian way possible, being consistently and healthily loving as well as fair and consistent in discipline. Robert has been provided with the absolutely best possible parenting we could imagine, his developmental needs (physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, social, etc.) having been met in all possible ways while growing up. We should not suppose Fred and Mary to have been perfect parents, nor that they never committed any sins. Simply that they have done the best that anyone could possibly have done to raise and nurture Robert. Robert, on his 22nd birthday, decides freely to commit the act of murder and stabs his girlfriend to death.
The question: Is there any moral justification for holding Fred and Mary responsible for Robert's acts? Are those acts in any way justifiably morally attributed to Fred and Mary?
We may find ourselves hesitant to answer that question. After all, no one is perfect, and surely Fred and Mary made some mistakes along the way, so that while Robert is, indeed, responsible for his own actions, nonetheless, some culpability is to be laid at his parents' doorstep.
But is it?
Let's further stipulate that Fred and Mary have other children, that Robert was the second born, and that all his other siblings live exemplary Christian lives, and that those of Fred and Mary's children who are married and themselves have children are making the very same sort of parents that Fred and Mary have been, and that prior to leaving home to live, study and work on his own Robert exhibited no obvious tendencies to the horrific act he has committed. In light of this, don't we now have a sense that Robert's actions really are his own and are not to be attributed to his parents? Isn't that former lingering suspicion that somehow, in some way Fred and Mary are to be blamed for Robert's actions now much less strong?
I suggest that if we do indeed have a weakening intuition with regard to the culpability of Robert's parents for his own actions, it is the proper moral intuition we should have. It is right to recognize all the social and familial factors that go into a person's development and character, but it is right as well to recognize that morally speaking we own our own actions. And if this is so, how much more is it the case for the “family” of the Church vis a vis the sinful acts of her individual members?
So I suggest that to attribute to the Church the moral actions of her individual members, while it is not an illegitimate moral intuition in itself, is predicated upon a logical falsehood, and when confronted with similar existential analogies, we ourselves recognize the fallacy of such a criticism.
b. It is Inconsistently Held and Incoherent
Having noted the logical fallacy of such a criticism, let me also reiterate that there is a legitimate moral intuition we have that human sinfulness is, in fact, a proper basis for questioning the spiritual authority of a group claiming such authority. If a group is, indeed, responsible for the furtherance of the sinful acts of its members either by command, approval, or failure to condemn, then we have a proper sense, morally speaking, that the authority of the groups is compromised.
But if this intuition is, in fact, legitimate, it is not to be extended only to groups but also to individuals, unless a justification can be made that it applies only to groups and not to individuals. That is to say, if it applies to groups, it also applies to individuals.
But if it applies to individuals, doesn't that mean that no individual Christian could ever exercise any authority (to teach or to preach, say, or to declare his or her interpretation of Scripture) since all Christians are sinful?
One reaction would be that we ought not apply such a blanket prohibition, but recognize that authority is by degree and that the more a person's life conforms to Christ's (or, alternatively, to the Scriptures), the more authority they have to teach, to preach and to declare their interpretation of Scripture. But this, too, immediately raises problems: 1) Who, among sinful individual Christians, is competent to make a determination as to those matters, 2) Where is such a line between competing relative authorities, who declare two or more contradictory things, to be drawn (and again, who could make that determination), and 3) Why wouldn't such a standard of authority-by-degree not also apply to any particular group of Christians? If we can trust Pastor Bob who lives an exemplary life over Preacher Joe who is a known womanizer, would it not also make sense that we could trust, say, the Orthodox Church, over the collective consensus of the Restoration Movement churches (or vice versa)?
No, this criticism fails—whatever we may say as to the legitimacy of the moral intuition on which it is based—not only because it is an illogical fallacy, but because it is inconsistently held, and in fact is itself incoherent.
c. The Objective Bases on Which the Criticism is Based Are Much Too Complex and Thus the Criticism Does Not Follow
The objective bases on which such a criticism is based is usually directed at the groups who make the claim. Thus, when Roman Catholics claim that theirs is the only true Church, Protestant and certain other critics bring up the Crusades and the Inquisition.
The difficulty with such a charge is that it does not examine, nor does it acknowledge both the extremely complex historical circumstances that gave rise to various Crusades, it does not even acknowledge any of the motivations attendant upon Rome's encouragement of or directive for engaging in the various Crusades. Nor does it adequately address the nature of the Crusades and whether individual actions of Crusaders necessarily reflect the Crusade itself (the compositional fallacy again) and so on. (And these same comments could be said of the Inquisition.)
For example, when the Pope issues a directive, is he always and essentially acting as/for the Roman Catholic Church? Can a Pope ever be in error and would such error, if it could happen, obviate the claims of the Roman Catholic Church to be, in fact, the one true Church?
Furthermore, the Crusades/Inquisition criticism fails to also address the question as to whether Rome's claim to be the one true Church is, in fact, true. To a Protestant, the claim is false from the get-go, and the Crusades/Inquisition criticism is self-evident. But it isn't, really. Certainly not on its face, and Orthodox have much to say as to Rome's claims. So if, in fact, Rome is not the one true Church, wouldn't this make such criticisms irrelevant? Some would say, well, if Rome is not the one, true Church, surely she is part of it in some way, and wouldn't her actions reflect on the rest of the Church? But of course this goes back to the compositional fallacy and it also further evidences the complexity of the matter at hand.
So, the supposedly historical and objective bases on which the criticism of a church (such as Rome or Orthodoxy) having authority over the beliefs and practices of an individual believer are so complex that until such realities are carefully attended to, the claim that the Crusades or the Inquisition obviates the claims of Rome (and any other body) to authority over the individual Christian's beliefs and practices is a non sequitor.
This is not to say that this particular problem necessarily invalidates the criticism. It only manifests that the criticism has not been well founded and cannot stand on its own.
One could add to this particular set of objections to the criticism against any one Christian body claiming authority over an individual Christian's beliefs and practices other objections as well. One could argue that the assertion of the primacy of the individual Christian over his own beliefs and practices is just the same thing against which he objects only reversed. After all, if a group cannot be trusted with authority because its members are sinful, how much more can an individual not be trusted, or trust himself, because he, too, is sinful?
Clearly, then, this criticism cannot obviate the claims that the Church has, by divine grace, authority to declare God's will and Gospel teaching, even over that of an individual's own beliefs and practices. In an upcoming post, I will provide biblical evidence and argument as to why this has been given to the Church and not to individual Christians.
ECUSAn Canon theologian (Dio. Ft. Worth), Rev. Dr. John Heidt, a member of Forward in Faith, North America (a group opposed to women's ordination and other recent innovations in ECUSA) in a recent post, thinks he's Dispensing with the Branch Theory. By his own admission, Fr. John has five earned degrees from Yale, Nashotah and Oxford. I . . . um, well, let's just say I won't be pulling out my sheepskins for comparison. So, taking on the good Reverend Doctor should be accompanied by much bowing and scraping.
But I nonetheless find his ecclesiology problematic.
Fr. John begins:
Back in the heyday of Anglo-Catholic triumphalism most everyone accepted and taught the “branch” theory of the church. First invented by William Palmer in the 1830s, the Catholic Church was pictured as a great river flowing out from Our Lord, going along quite smoothly until it hits a rock in 1054 and divides in half between East and West. Then within the West it hits a small snag and an English tributary goes off on its own in a parallel direction. Still one church, but now divided into three branches. In the West new rivers also spring up, rivers bearing similarities to the main stream but no longer part of it; separated brethren like Methodists and Presbyterians, Christian Scientists and, dare I say it, even Lutherans. The Anglican stream however, remains part of that original Catholic river and not a new creation come up from a Protestant spring because it has the apostolic succession and proclaims the common teaching of the undivided church.
Fr. John notes that this theory
was a model of the church that seemed great for evangelizing frustrated Protestants and disillusioned Roman Catholics, but in the end it could not withstand the critical assault of scholars or the new wave of liberal sentiment. In 1976 the Episcopalian ark of salvation, floating serenely down the Anglican branch of the Catholic river, was torpedoed by simple majority vote.
That vote was the vote to ordain women to the priesthood.
If Episcopalians were dispensing with valid sacramental apostolic succession and with the common teaching of the undivided Church, then the conclusion becomes rather obvious.
The image of the church as a river with its various branches is too pat, too simple to fit the facts. Neither the Eastern Orthodox nor Roman Catholics have ever accepted it, each claiming that they alone are the fullness of the Catholic Church. The theory takes no account of schismatics who still have the succession, or of heretical teaching on the part of medieval popes or recent bishops. It fails to take our divisions seriously; and it is most unkind towards many of our ecumenical partners.
So . . .
Without the branch theory to support us, we were left without any ecclesiology at all, . . . .We now need a model of the church which preserves all the essential Catholic doctrines and practices we once defended through the branch theory and which can restore our self-confidence as a legitimate province of the whole Catholic Church. We do not need to invent a new model but resurrect an old one, a truly biblical model which has always been a part of our Anglican tradition but which, I think, has never been allowed to transform our thinking sufficiently to meet the demands of the present moment. We need to rediscover the church as the Mystical Body of Christ.
This doesn't mean "spiritual" or "invisible" but sacramental. As in baptism.
So where then are we to find this visible and mystical Sacrament of Christ? Where is the true Church? If, as we have always acknowledged in our baptismal rites, all baptized people are members of Christ’s Mystical Body then the true church is where ever the baptized are gathered together claiming the name of Jesus: in solemn high mass and local study group, in village church and gothic cathedral, on street corners and TV platforms - wherever two or three are gathered together in His name.
Now let us recognize that the good Reverend Doctor is not far of the mark. Both the Orthodox the Roman Catholic Churches (and as I understand it--always check with your local priest or bishop) recognize Trinitarian baptism done outside the known eccelsial boundaries of the Church (while also admitting that these decisions in the particular are ever under the mystical grace of the bishops who hold the keys). It is acknowledged in this that these baptisms do, in some ineffable way, establish a connection between the person so baptized and Christ.
That connection, however, is ineffable precisely because it is not happening in the normal way. It is rather like--if I may so speak--one whose birth takes place under a confusion as to the child's patriarchy. One may take the word of the mother--whom one would rightly assume would know--but if those visible markers of the norm (a marriage publicaly sanctified, a marital license, the father himself) are absent, one errs on the side of grace, knowing that the Spirit moves we know not where. But even so erring, we also shore up the lack of norms by sort of public or otherwise formal adoption.
But (again as I understand it--always check with your local priest or bishop) to complete this spiritual birth and seal the new Christian's patriarchy demands a completing act: the anointing with holy oil in the chrismation. But this oil, because it is a sacrament, comes from the life of the Church. So the completion unites the baptized to the Church's Life, who is Christ, by the tangible application of that which partakes of that Life, the Holy Chrism. A person outside the known ecclesial boundaries of the Church who has been baptized, may very well be saved on that last great day, because he has been united somehow to Christ and thus to Christ's Church. But this is not the same thing as saying that by virtue of his extra-ecclesial baptism that he is united to the Church and thus to Christ.
And given the plurality of schisms and divisions, what, actually, may we say of the Church? Here Fr. John turns away from catholicity toward Protestantism. But not first before both affirming an orthodox understanding of schism, then all but eradicating the distinctions.
The Body of Christ is not divided; rather, individual people, though baptized, are separated in various degrees from the church and from one another. All are members of the church but not all to the same degree or in the same way; some are limbs lopped off and others fail to function through disease or spiritual ignorance. No one member has the whole truth; we are all implicit heretics. It’s only when we take our individual or denominational heresies as orthodoxies that we get into trouble.
In the end, Fr. John succumbs to the amorphous invisible church of Protestantism: "we are all implicit heretics." This begs the question that all are part of the Church to begin with. And if we are, then whither the Branch theory? But rather than reject the Branch Theory, he has only intensified it, making each individual Christian a tiny tributary off the "main branch" of the Church, which is constituted by these individual believers.
Needless to say, two important groups cannot go along fully with Fr. John's closing comments:
When baptized folk gather together to study the bible that is good. When they gather together for prayer and praise, not leaving the bible behind, that is better. When they celebrate the Holy Eucharist that is good. When they celebrate the Holy Eucharist ministered by priests in apostolic succession that is better still. When they stand to proclaim the creeds then too they are acting as the visible Body of Christ on earth, and, when they believe in their hearts what they proclaim, this Body of Christ becomes visible to the world. . . .Though we dare not become Roman Catholic if it means denying our present catholicity, perhaps the day will come when we can remain Anglican and also be Roman Catholic and perhaps Eastern Orthodox and even Methodist, not by seeking our lowest common denominator but by embracing the highest. And when that day comes the world shall know that we are one even as the Father and the Son are one.
Those two groups are the Orthodox, and the Roman Catholic Church, whose Pope he claims as his own. They cannot embrace this ecclesiology precisely because it is not the ecclesiology believed always, everywhere and by all. They cannot embrace this ecclesiology precisely because they claim to be that Church from which Fr. John and his co-religionists have separated themselves in their refusal to give up their avowedly schismatic Anglicanism.
At least this much, however, we affirm with the good Reverend Doctor: let us dispense with the Branch Theory.
Seraphim, as usual, reminds me to play nice. And if anyone has the street cred to ask this (not that he should need it), it's Seraphim.
I suppose my dilemma is twofold: [A] If we cannot be critical (and I'm not saying Seraphim is saying we can't) of the em church, then there can be no open dialogue between those of us in Orthodoxy (or the Roman Catholic Church) and the em church. Furthermore, they are certainly critical, if not of us, at least of those things that are integral to our beliefs; such as the absolute and nonnegotiable belief in the full humanity and full deity of Jesus, the Sacraments, the perpetual virginity of our Most Holy Lady, and so on. But mostly, if all we can do is lob niceties each other's way, then both of us are being fake and hypocritical. True relationship demands truth, and truth obligates us to be critical where that is warranted. But . . .
If one is critical, then one is perceived to be and often called judgmental, or thought to not be playing nice, or elevating truth over love, or what have you.
So, the first horn of the dilemma is that if one cannot be critical there's no real anything going on: no relating, no truth, no love.
Other horn:
[B] But if one is going to be critical, one ought be accurate and truthful. So when we read or otherwise conversate with em churchers and we see instance after example of near-denial of the central tenets of the faith AND yet we are supposed to give acknowledgement that this is what the Holy Spirit is doing--and we are critical of that . . . then we are told that this is not characteristic of the entire em church movement, that the em church movement is much more diverse than that, and so on. It's rather like nailing Jell-O to the wall.
So, in sum: We can't be critical because that's not nice. But we also can't be critical because our criticisms don't apply to the entire em church movement.
Nice gig if you can get it, I suppose.
I just find this sort of thing unworkable. For em churchers to (as it appears to me) hide behind a "that's not true of the whole movement" disclaimer is, I think, disingenuous. For what we see of the movement is precisely the things we criticize. If the em church is truthfully not generally like that, then a vocal minority is stealing the press and creating false images, and there ought be some vocalizations out there to the extent, "This is only a minority of the em church phenomenon." On the other hand, if the the things we criticize the em church for are, in fact, generally true, then our criticisms ought be acknowledged to hold true for the em church in general. It remains then for those who are the exceptions to say, "We're not like that," in which case one wonders whether they ought label themselves as "emergent."
Don't get me wrong. I'm not against the search, for pity's sake. I know about the search. I've lived the search. By all means, genuinely, really, wholeheartedly strike out going you know not wither and search. But don't institutionalize the search . . . for Christ's sake. Get rid of the conferences, the books, the marketings, the media and tech budget, the labels, the jargon, the no-caps. Just search. Search the hell out of it. And if you're reaching out to those who are searching, then don't sell them into a slavery of labels, marketing and external identities, built on copycatting the secular pop culture. Let them leave postmodernism, progressivism, activism and all other isms that are standing in for the only true and worthy object of their search.
For Christ's sake.
Well, it's happened. I've been pulled in (not involuntarily, mind you) to a conversation about the em church. I'm not sure if em churchers would consider my previous posts as a "conversation" in the sense they like to speak of (though having gotten autobiographical in yesterday's post, I think I'm getting close). But I am at least engaging in a series of comments and responses. Perhaps it will soon approximate a conversation.
You can see some reaction to my first post at the Open Source Theology blog, in yesterday's The Emergent Response. Andrew, an em church respondent to that first post of mine, and to whom I more fully responded in this post, faults persons like myself who are critical of the em church for not being more open and for being too judgmental. Perhaps. Or perhaps its just that, as I pointed out yesterday, some of us have "been there, done that" and are warning others away from the very real and present dangers.
Let me say that this post will unfold in two parts, the first of which will be a strong, perhaps even felt to be harsh, response to some of the reaction to my first post. I respond in this way to demonstrate how this reaction only serves to further justify the criticisms folks like myself level against em church believers.
But after this first response, I want to get constructive. So, if my readers wish to skip the first part, they can scroll down.
I think it safe to say that my first post didn't seem to engender any concomitant open self-reflection on the part of em churchers. "PastorPete" in the aforelinked post highlighting the emergent response to the Pontificator's and my critiques, writes:
As the emerging church continues it’s upheaval, which I’m sure we all feel is a good thing, it will be important for us to remember that we’re shaking people’s foundations. That’s a scary thing. Condemnation and/or demeaning are rather common defense mechanisms.
This, of course, presumes that our response is merely a psychological one. This is simply laughable. Without having done any legitimate psychoanalysis on any of us, this reduces--and thus dismisses--our criticisms as psychological defense mechanisms and thus inherently irrational. And if it is irrational, then it need not be seriously entertained. Therapeutically healed, perhaps, but discountable.
It is also insufferably self-important. The author takes on the self-righteous role of prophetic reformer--which assumes that Orthodoxy, for example, needs any reform. He thinks that the em church--which is wholly a late modern, Western, white and mostly affluent, Protestant phenomenon--is somehow unsettling the Roman Catholic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Churches. Forgive me, but I do not think His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI or any of the Orthodox Patriarchs have gotten the memo.
That specific Roman Catholics like Al Kimel, or specific wannabe Orthodox like myself--both of whom come from late modern, American, white and mostly affluent Protesantism--know about the em church and reflect critically on the phenomenon does not mean the em church is more widely known or feared.
With regard to the Orthodox and Catholic (and Reformed, Methodist, Baptist, if they got wind of this) it seems to me, they feel that we aren’t taking seriously all the work and thought that has been done by Christians up to this point. They seem to feel that we’re starting over rather than reading differently what’s been written. It’s very judgmental to label the emergent church so quickly. And I, for one, resent the assumption that I would neglect two thousand years of Christian soul-searching. At the same time, they are right to point out that a lot of thought has, indeed, been put into these matters. Perhaps the emergent church is being too flippant with the tradition. Especially when it comes to issues so central as Jesus’ divinity/humanity.
Perhaps folks like myself get the impression that the em church is discounting 2000 years of tradition because it writes things like the following (all from the Open Source Theology blog's main page):
The marks of a renewed theology
The "Non-Canon-Based" Canon
Jesus vs. Christ - what do/should emergents call him?
Jesus is God... yes & no!
If theology must be renewed, doesn't that entail the old stuff is wrong? If we must look for a non-canon based canon, doesn't that reject the Church's tradition of the canon? If we quibble over whether it is more authentic to call Jesus Christ or Jesus, doesn't that discount the 2000 year worship life of the Church in which Christ is used ubiquitously? If we must reanswer the question of whether or not Jesus is God, what does that do to the Council of Chalcedon, and indeed the Councils of the first millennium of the Church?
If those of us who are criticizing the em church as generally dismissive of the 2000 year biography of the Church are wrong in our criticism, where is the counterevidence disproving our contentions?
"PastorPete" concludes his post:
I wonder, what do you all hear as the real issues behind the Catholic and Orthodox responses? How would you respond to clarify the emergent position? And, what is at stake for them and others that they resist these emerging ideas?
Notice the em church "resistance" to taking our criticisms at face value. Instead of simply acknowledging and dealing with what it is we actually say, we are subject to condescending psychologizing bracketing that obviates any need to actually listen to what we say. Unfortunately, the further comments to "PastorPete's" post run along the same lines to the original post.
Is this a conversation?
I do not mean to strike so harsh a tone here. And I suppose it can be partially explained as a reaction to my first post and to some of the comments on Al's blog and mine. But considering the gripe against us is the alleged unfairness of our criticisms, I can only say that the response to those criticisms justify them even further.
But let's move on to something constructive.
Em churchers, like my respondent Andrew, have proffered that they seek to take the best out of all the traditions of the Church to forge a new way forward. I know that in the case of Orthodoxy--and I suspect the Roman Catholic Church as well--one cannot approach the Tradition as a buffet line, taking a little here, a little there, and topping it off with one's favorite dessert. If one takes one thing, in Orthodoxy, and attempts to really engage it in a deep and meaningful way--and not just faddishly or superficially--one will be forced to engage the whole of the Orthodox faith.
Take for example the fairly widespread (as I understand it) practice of the use of icons in em church spirituality and worship. It is one thing to see icons as "religious art," or as "devotional aids" and to bring these in to one's own particular practices and disciplines. This is a very superficial, and ultimately false, way of taking icons as one aspect of the Tradition.
No, icons are ancient, stretching back to the first days of the Church. Icons are part and parcel of the historical life of the Church, not something optional and superfluous. Icons have been a part of the life of the Church always and everywhere the Church is. There is, of course, no command to use icons. But just as we need no command to breathe or to eat, neither do we need such commands regarding icons. They simply are part of what it means to live as a Christian. But icons are also part and parcel of the conciliar life of the Church of the first millennium. That is to say, as evidenced by III Nicea (the Seventh Ecumenical Council), icons are inextricably woven together with the essential and nonnegotiable docrtine of the Incarnation. And all seven of the Councils of the first millennium dealt with the Incarnation, and Christology more generally, in some way, making the Incarnation the central doctrine of the Gospel. And thus also making icons a central practice of the life of a Christian.
But if one takes on the use of an icon, and with it the dogmatic and conciliar life of the Church, one cannot but inescapably come face to face with the Sacraments, the Theotokos, the Divine Liturgy, and on and on. In Orthodoxy you cannot take out one thread without unravelling the whole tapestry. It is all one cloth.
To "use" an icon, then, is not to incorporate a piece of religious art or to utilize a devotional aid, though in very partial and incomplete ways, icons can be seen as religious art and devotional aids. No, icons and the reality that they are are much thicker than that. If one takes up an icon, one takes up the whole of it--the Incarnation, the conciliar Church, the dogma of the Incarnation, indeed, the whole of the life of the Church. And if one takes up these things in taking up an icon, one will find nearly everything the em church takes as foundational being utterly swept away.
If the em church truly seeks to be what it claims it is seeking to be, then it will either forego any use of icons that does not take on its full contextual use and understanding, or it will fully embrace icons, and with it the Church that gave them to us.
This article by Reader Timothy Copple addresses the question: Does Orthodoxy Really Think It Is the True Church. Copple writes:
When Peter Guilquest gave a talk at our church around the beginning of 1997, he commented that the question he was most often asked was how the Orthodox Church could consider itself "The Church". Indeed, this is not only a common question among inquirers to Orthodoxy, but a critical question to understand Orthodoxy itself. If there is one subject that Protestants have the hardest time coming to grips with, it is this claim of Orthodoxy to be The Church.Within Protestant denominations, there is a wide cross section of ideas when it comes to what the Church is. It can be summarized in two general basic views.
First, the most common understanding is that the Church in its essence is spiritual, is primarily built by adding to its numbers people who believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God as their personal savior and who have their names written in the Lamb's book of Life spoken of in Revelations. This Church is one, connected by their devotion to Jesus Christ, and will only be fully manifested as such in the last days when Jesus Christ will return for His Church. Until then, the visible manifestation of the Church on Earth is divided by differing theologies on various points, various governing bodies and groups which in and of themselves are known to not be the fullness of the Church. They are only partially the Church in as much as there are true Christians in them, in as much as their theology reflects true Biblical theology, and to the degree that God can be seen to work in and through a particular group bearing the name "Christian".
Secondly, there are some groups who bear the name "Christian", while in the minority, consider themselves to be the Church and the sole people who will be "saved" in the end. To be part of the Church and to be saved one must join their group or participate in their rituals. This is the basic antithesis to the other view that no one group can claim to be "The Church".
Within these broad categories, various groups will "draw the line" at different points, excluding some groups that others might include. It is a mixed bag and there are no hard and fast rules as to where one might find the "Church" on earth. Part of this comes from a very personalized relationship with Christ in many quarters of Protestantism, so much so that a corporate Body is a secondary, and in some cases, an unnecessary issue.
It should be evident to most Orthodox, if they readily understand this divergence, why it so goes against most Protestants to say that the Orthodox Church is the fullness of The Church. On the one hand, to say that goes against the Protestant foundation of what it means to be the Church and is usually interpreted as "you are on the outside and will not be saved unless you join our group." For the others who believe they are the Church, it is like two children saying "I'm the Church," "No, I'm the Church!"
These reactions, while understandable for one coming from a Protestant background, are reacting to Protestant understandings superimposed upon Orthodoxy, and not upon Orthodoxy's understanding of itself. So it is critical that we look at what the Orthodox understanding is.
Copple elucidates that view later in the article:
The Church, at its essence, rest upon the reestablishing of our relationship with God the Father via what God the Son has done and its application to our lives via God the Holy Spirit. To use the vine and branches allegory in John 15, we become connected or in communion with the Vine as a branch. The whole concept of what "Church" means rest upon this communion, this fellowship that we have with God in Trinity. . . .t naturally follows that if I am in communion with God in this fashion, and others are also in communion with Him, that I am thus in communion with each person who is connected to Christ in this fashion. As a branch on the Vine, I also am one with every other branch on the Vine. Notice, however, that the emphasis is on the communion with individual persons. There is a unity, denoted here by the words "fellow citizens" and "members of the household of God." St. Paul in many places makes a point of speaking of the "one" body of Christ. We cannot get away from the fact that for those who are connected to Christ, there necessitates a unity to be evident among them. If not, then the reality of one body does not exist spiritually either.
It is this point specifically that must be kept in mind. We have a tendency to separate the spiritual from its physical manifestation. Whether this is a product of secularization or personal disconnect; we need to come to the point of realizing that the spiritual and physical are deeply connected. A lack of unity outwardly reflects a lack of unity inwardly. If there is unity on the spiritual level, then it will manifest itself on the outward level. Those united to God and thus each other would not allow worldly values and influences to keep us divided and separate. It is Satan's design that we stay at odds because He knows that this pulls people away from this oneness in God. It must become clear that the more we see outward disunity, we know this reflects the inner image of our condition and our internal separation from Christ and His Body.
But it must be kept in mind that this is not a one-to-one correspondence. We are not saying here that this one group is 50% the Church because there is 50% unity. Rather, those individuals who are connected with Christ will reflect that unity. The less of that we see, the less we see of the Church as a visible reflection. . . .
It must become clear, if we are to remain true to Biblical theology, that the visible Church is to be an image, an icon of the reality as it is in heaven. We know that there are tares among the wheat. We know that in the last day there will be a more fuller manifestation of the Church which will be pure, without spot or wrinkle. There is also a valid sense in which the inner spiritual reality of the Church within each person is not defined by the specific instances of disunity that might be experienced on the outside. An image is not an image if it is totally incongruous with its reality even if we realize it will not be an exact replication of the image. Therefore, it is only Biblical that the body of people who reflect that unity will be the Church in its fullness. They will know we are Christians by our love, which is the highest form of unity as one body, indeed, the very real manifestation of it. . . .
Jesus Christ, who is the cornerstone, holds the whole thing together, provides its support. In another place St. Paul likens Christ as the foundation itself. Here, however, we see him placing the Apostles as the foundation along with the prophets. It is upon these specific people in the history of our race which God has placed all the other members and saints down through history. Yes, there have been those who have laid other foundations, who have built new buildings. There is only one foundation, one building, one household which are a continuous group of people who are in full communion with each other, from St. Peter to the present. The simple fact is that if we are not in communion with this same group of people, we are not in communion with Christ. To state it more plainly, if my faith and communion is not linked to that of St. Peter's, then neither am I in the same church as St. Peter and one of us is in trouble. I am sure it isn't St. Peter.
This concept of "being built upon" is reflective of the fact that we are dealing with a continual linage, a visible discipleship. This is at the root of apostolic succession. For it was not too long before groups sprang up who taught different things and the only way to verify who was teaching the correct doctrine and life were those who derived their teaching from the apostolic fountain. While this is no guarantee that any particular person will teach the right thing, one can have much more confidence that they were teaching the same things as the Apostles did than the guy who had not been trained in that teaching, but had come up with something from somewhere that seemed to resemble it in some ways. While one can say that such a lineage is no guarantee against false teaching, accurate and faithful teaching requires that it be in that lineage. Not only that, but having the Apostolic teaching widely known among many people prevented deviations from it even when someone within the apostolic succession taught something wrong.
This is not to say that those outside the body don't have any truth. Yet, we know from experience when people attempt to recreate something that is complex by instructions that are incomplete or not clear (i.e. subject to interpretation), that it often gets warped from the original, even with the best of intentions. The primary reason for the rise of heretical teachings is pride, a pride that refuses to submit to the teaching of all those who have preceded them. Satan uses our pride to bend the truth a little, just enough that we miss the true target and meaning.
This unity within the community, which constitutes the Church, is also a unity in teaching. As St. Paul said, we have "one faith." (Eph. 4:5) It is a unity of love in communion. If one begins to place themselves in any other "household", they are also no longer being placed where Jesus is the cornerstone. It will be on a different foundation than the one already laid. Yes, there may be some good stones in such a building. Yes, it may perform many wonderful functions. But the fact of the matter will be it is separate from the building that Jesus Christ Himself started. Without connection to Jesus Christ, no matter how much truth such a building may contain, it is not "The Church." . . .
Jesus Christ began not by writing a book, nor by giving lectures on theological doctrines to the masses. Rather, He gathered around Him a few people and "taught" them by transmitting to them not just some things to believe, but His heart and life. He created "disciples" who not only were taught what He believed, but took on His life, His methods, and His inner spiritual peace. Constantly throughout the New Testament the Gospel is reflected as not just something to believe in an intellectual sense, but a life to be lived, a method of healing the soul, a transformation of our character and who we are.
This must be kept in mind, for when we begin talking about the Church, those gathered to exist as the Body of Christ, we must realize that first and foremost this is not an organization bound by laws and bylaws or by a "cause" or by some political system. It is a group of people bound together by Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit into a manner of life that is "not of this world." Therefore, it is imperative that the Church be concrete and real even in this fallen world, else what one ends up with is abstract ideas, doctrines and absolutes which fail to incarnate themselves into our lives as Jesus Christ envisioned.
It is in this understanding that we come to see the essence of what Orthodoxy means when it says it is "The Church". It simply means that it is the continuation of that manner of life, that method of healing the soul, that unbroken communion which began with Jesus Christ and the Apostles. It is this that the Orthodox Church claims it is when it says it is the Church. Not a boundary built with membership roles, but with the Book of Life. Not a group defined by a set of doctrines, but a life to which our doctrines reflect the truth therein. It is not defined by an organizational structure, but by a common communion in the unity of the Spirit reflected in a unity around the bishop. It is the joining of Heaven with Earth in individual persons within a community, who make up the one Body of Christ.
There is much more. Go read it all.
Back in the day, I was (at the tender age of 27) the "senior" (which is to say, the only) pastor of a small rural Illinois Restoration Movement congregation. It was Christmas Day 1994, and we were open for business. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, we had a baptism that afternoon.
It seemed to me, even then, absolutely contradictory to cancel worship services because of Christmas. Yet, that is what some prominent members had suggested to me and the elders and deacons. (I won't comment whether those members were part of the leadership.) I held out for keeping the services on Christmas morning. After all, we wouldn't have even thought about doing it for Easter. But Christmas . . . well, it apparently was far more important to some to celebrate opening gifts that totaled several hundred dollars per household, than to take an hour (an hour! mind you) out of the day to come together as Christians and worship the King whose birth we celebrate on Christmas Day. That'll teach the kids some important lessons. The gifts you can buy with money are more important than the priceless gift of God's grace. I'm not sure if our parish children got the message but we sent it anyway. Jesus is Lord. We worship him on Sundays as the gathered body of Christ. That is what Christmas is about.
Well, it's another one of those years on which Christmas falls on a Sunday, and what are prominent churches doing around the nation? Yep. They're closing up shop.
Here are a couple of links noting the phenomenon:
Megachurches in Lexington, other cities decide to cancel services on Christmas
Evangelical churches such as suburban Willow Creek will close on Christmas so members can focus on family
Some Megachurches to close on Christmas
I suppose in one way, it shouldn't be too surprising. These churches wouldn't likely have Christmas day worship services if Christmas fell on a weekday, anyway. So not having worship services this Christmas day would be par for the course.
The difference, however, is that for Christian churches Sunday is always to be a day of worship. Been that way for oh, say, 2000 years. To cancel worship--and to do so precisely because of a holiday set aside to celebrate one of the central tenets of the Christians faith--well, that's not just counterintuitive, it's downright secular, even pagan.
Yep. I've said it.
May the leaders of these churches who made this decision get large lumps of coal on Christmas day.
Former Anglican priest, now Roman Catholic, and always (small-c) catholic, Al Kimel has helpfully listed the Pontificator's Laws. They are as follows:
George Barna has a new book out, Revolutionary, and gives an interview: A Faith Revolution Is Redefining “Church,” According to New Study. In it he describes new developments in individual Christian spirituality and personal relationship to a local church. There are very, very disturbing trends, to be sure. But there is at least one incredibly significant positive.
“These are people who are less interested in attending church than in being the church,” [George Barna] explained. “We found that there is a significant distinction in the minds of many people between the local church – with a small ‘c’ – and the universal Church – with a capital ‘C’. Revolutionaries tend to be more focused on being the Church, capital C, whether they participate in a congregational church or not.”
It's no secret that an external emphasis on doing certain practices and faithful attendance is endemic among all Christian groups, east and west. There's no need for Orthodox to bash on Protestants and Catholics for a "juridical" mindset that focuses on external compliance. Orthodox can fall as easily into that trap as anyone else. After all Galatians and Ephesians were written to Orthodox Christians. (You get the point.) And insofar as these so-called "revolutionaries" are moving toward an emphasis on the internal aspects of the faith, this is a good thing. The fact that they are looking beyond denominational borders and looking for more catholicity is a good thing.
But these goods are not unmixed. The internal can become a quest for ever-greater emotional highs and "spiritual feelings." And this exodus from the local church for an amorphous "catholicity" not only misunderstands biblical and apostolic catholicity, but betrays a Gnostic conception of the Church.
“A common misconception about revolutionaries,” he continued, “is that they are disengaging from God when they leave a local church. We found that while some people leave the local church and fall away from God altogether, there is a much larger segment of Americans who are currently leaving churches precisely because they want more of God in their life but cannot get what they need from a local church. They have decided to get serious about their faith by piecing together a more robust faith experience. Instead of going to church, they have chosen to be the Church, in a way that harkens back to the Church detailed in the Book of Acts.”
Unfortunately, one cannot be the Church apart from the local body. That is the fatal misunderstanding to this new quest. This disembodied, need-meeting "church" is hardly the Church detailed in the book of Acts.
Using survey data and other cultural indicators he has been measuring for more than two decades, Barna estimates that the local church is presently the primary form of faith experience and expression for about two-thirds of the nation’s adults. He projects that by 2025 the local church will lose roughly half of its current “market share” and that alternative forms of faith experience and expression will pick up the slack. Importantly, Barna’s studies do not suggest that most people will drop out of a local church to simply ignore spirituality or be freed up from the demands of church life. Although there will be millions of people who abandon the entire faith community for the usual reasons – hurtful experiences in churches, lack of interest in spiritual matters, prioritizing other dimensions of their life – a growing percentage of church dropouts will be those who leave a local church in order to intentionally increase their focus on faith and to relate to God through different means.That growth is fueling alternative forms of organized spirituality, as well as individualized faith experience and expression. Examples of these new approaches include involvement in a house church, participation in marketplace ministries, use of the Internet to satisfy various faith-related needs or interests, and the development of unique and intense connections with other people who are deeply committed to their pursuit of God.
Most of which is disincarnate ecclesiology, or the Gnostic version of Church, a church without a body, that's focused on me and my needs and what I want to be doing.
[Barna] suggested that most Revolutionaries go through predictable phases in their spiritual journey in which they initially become dissatisfied with their local church experience, then attempt to change things so their faith walk can be more fruitful. The result is that they undergo heightened frustration over the inability to introduce positive change, which leads them to drop out of the local church altogether, often in anger. But because this entire adventure was instigated by their love for God and their desire to honor Him more fully, they finally transcend their frustration and anger by creating a series of connections that allow them to stay close to God and other believers without involvement in a local church.
Schisms have always been generated by the schismatic's "love for God and other believers"--but it is a love that is not fueled by the Spirit but by agendas and self-interest. The Donatists loved God and his Church so much they were willing to split it in half. Be wary of those so passionate for God and others that they abandon the place where God and others congregate.
“It would be wrong to assume that all Revolutionaries have completely turned their back on the local church,” [Barna] stated. “Millions of Revolutionaries are active in a local church, although most of them supplement that relationship with participation in a variety of faith-related efforts that have nothing to do with their local church. The defining attribute of a Revolutionary is not whether they attend church, but whether they place God first in their lives and are willing to do whatever it takes to facilitate a deeper and growing relationship with Him and other believers. Our studies persuasively indicate that the vast majority of American churches are populated by people who are lukewarm spiritually. Emerging from those churches are people dedicated to becoming Christ-like through the guidance of a congregational form of the church, but who will leave that faith center if it does not further such a commitment to God. They then find or create alternatives that allow that commitment to flourish.”
The "revolutionaries'" demand: Make me Christ like or I'm leaving. Where is the stability? Where is the patience to work and to toil at the life of faith?
How do most Revolutionaries justify calling themselves devoted disciples of Christ while distancing themselves from a local church? “Many of them realize that someday they will stand before a holy God who will examine their devotion to Him. They could take the safe and easy route of staying in a local church and doing the expected programs and practices, but they also recognize that they will not be able to use a lackluster church experience as an excuse for a mediocre or unfulfilled spiritual life. Their spiritual depth is not the responsibility of a local church; it is their own responsibility. As a result, they decide to either get into a local church that enhances their zeal for God or else they create alternatives that ignite such a life of obedience and service. In essence, these are people who have stopped going to church so they can be the Church.”
These folks will have to learn that we will not be judged on the quality of our spiritual life, whether we are mediocre or have been unfulfilled. We will be called to answer whether or not we've built one another up in love. One doesn't build up his fellow believers by abandonig them on the selfish quixotic quest of self-actualization.
Of course, I could add the Orthodox dig that they should leave their Protestant churches to find the fullness of the faith in the Orthodox Church. But if they don't learn patience and stability in their own congregations, they are not likely to become Orthodox for any of the right reasons.
I was asked today, about the authority of the Church in relation to the authority of the Scriptures.
I replied, "I am saying that the authority of the Scriptures derives from the authority of the Church via her union by grace with God in Christ. It is not a greater or lesser authority, but the same authority."
One respondent asked, "[W]hat is the 'church' that has this equal authority. Me? Dad? the elders? the Pope? Based on what?"
I replied, "That Church which was founded by Christ on his Apostles through the Holy Spirit, and which continues in direct descent to this day. These things are traceable through objective historical evidence."
The same respondent replied, "How is it recognized (specifically)? Where will I find that equal authoritative church this sunday (or saturday?)? When I get there, how do I determine that the equal authority to the bible is 1) speaking from the pulpit? 2) on the church board of elders? 3) all the people sitting in the pews? 4) someone in Rome provides the rules? Are we all equally authoritative then? (since we are the Church?)"
And here is my fuller answer to him:
If you're truly serious, let me suggest the following:
1. Start with the New Testament communities (such as Thessaloniki, Antioch, Ephesus and so forth). As best as you can determine who the New Testament describes as leaders there, apostles and/or their representatives.
2. Next, look at the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament (e. g., 1 Clement, St. Ignatios' epistles, and so forth) and note two things: a) who were the leaders, and b) what did they teach?
3. Next, look at church historians (Eusebius, Sozomen, etc.) and continue asking these two questions about the various New Testament communities.
4. Work your way forward to today.
You could, of course, work your way backwards, but this would demand trying to figure out where to start. The advantage of my suggestion is that there is no bias, no presuppositions--you simply determine through historical research where is the living continuity in leadership and doctrine from the New Testament to today.
You will, of course, very soon run into the Church councils, and this will aid your research greatly for it will list those leaders and focus on the doctrines the entire Church has taught from the New Testament. You, of course, will be able to verify this fact from your own reading.
Now you may very well respond that this is a lot of work, would take too much time and so on. All of this is true.
But if you want to look into this yourself and not depend on someone else's biases and prejudices, this is the way to go.
Having completed this exercise, you will very easily and clearly be able to determine which group today is the Church and worthy of your trust.
In our discussion on the now-silent thread Let Us Build Our Faith On Christ, Bobby Valentine inserted Eric Jay's article, “From Presbyter-Bishops to Bishops and Presbyters” into the discussion (right about here, scroll down about half-way). A resume of my points of contention at that point in the thread would be helpful.
I had argued that
1. The first century Church looked the way St. Ignatios and St. Clement describe. It's not a matter of interpretation of any NT passages. It is simply the case based on sheer historical record.2. If the first century Church looked the way St. Ignatios and St. Clement describe it, then the RM interpretation of what the first century Church looked like is just flat wrong.
3. Given 1 and 2, it's not the case that the NT and St. Ignatios and St. Clement contradict, but that the RM interpretation of the NT conflicts with St. Ignatios and St. Clement.
4. If the RM interpretation of the NT conflicts with the established facts of history, then the RM interpretation cannot be true, and if the RM interpretation of the NT is false, then it is a good idea to try to understand the NT in light of first century history.
To which Bobby responded:
The church structure reflected in Ignatius does not seem to be known in other second century writers. Eric G. Jay (Emeritus Professor of Theology @ McGill University in Toronto) has published a masterpiece of historical research on Christian ministry in the second century.[. . . snipped. . .]
Jay is from an episcopal background, as I recall. He surveys in considerable depth the Didache, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, Hermas, Justin, Hegesippus, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Hippolytus . . . it is a model of fairness and objectivity. Throughout Jay is in conversation with Gregory Dix and his classic work on early christian ministry and concludes that in a number of places Dix is simply wrong.
In spite of the fact that Jay's conclusions are contrary to his own church structure he offers these fine words at the conclusion of his study,
"[i]This survey shows, I maintain, that for about a century and a half the church's ministry was basically prebyteral. There would, perhaps, be speedier progress in ecumenical conversations between episcopal and presbyterian churches if, on the one hand, this were frankly recognized, and if, on the other hand, the cogency of the needs which prom[p]ted the eventual emergence of the monepiscopate were acknowledged"[/i] (p. 162).
Bobby gave several more replies to my points, most of them oriented around Jay's article. Others in the thread also made criticisms. I responded with a rather broad series of connections between New Testament and Ignatian ecclesiology, which also received further comments/criticism. I resummarized my argument for the thread in this way:
In any case, the point of my post was not necessarily to provide a locked and tight case from the New Testament that an Ignatian model of Church polity is clearly stated in the New Testament.Rather, the point of my post was twofold: to underline verses almost no one ever talks about in RM interpretations of NT Church polity and to show that when one looks at all the evidence from the New Testament--instead of just merely combing verses for the terms bishop or elder--and all the evidence from the first century Christians (though of course I presented only two sources), then it becomes clear that there is continuity between the New Testament and St. Ignatios and that minimally what St. Ignatios describes as first century Church polity has at least an incipient foundation in the NT.
This is my problem with most scholarship I've read on these matters. They look for the obvious--always a good thing, of course--but they also miss the forest for the trees. There's a whole lot more there than the simple presence or absence of the terms bishop and elder and the explicit description of Church structure.
I wanted to describe the background at some length so as to get a feel for what had been stated and argued, and how Jay's article fit into that context. With this context in mind, I wish now to review and respond to Jay's article.
Bobby's citation of Jay above does not quite capture the full argument that Jay is making. But this is not to imply any distortion on Bobby's part, for Jay's concluding statement belies the carefully crafted conclusion to his survey that he had already constructed and which I here quote in full:
My contention has been that in the second century a development of the structure of the Christian ministry which had originated in the first century was brought to its conclusion. The single order of presbyters who were also called bishops becomes two distinct orders: monarchical bishop with ordaining power and presbyters. The stages were:1. The election by the local college of presbyters of a chairman or president. This must have occurred in many churches during the latter part of the first century. It was a natural step, arising from the need for a responsible leader for any group which existed for a serious purpose. There were analogies in the archisunagogos who directed the worship in the synagogues of Jewish communities and in the presiding officers of the gerousiai, senates, and multitudinous clubs and societies of the Graeco-Roman world. The functions alloted to the president of the Christian presbytery varied according to the need of the community. In Syria and Asia Minor conditions (schismatic tendencies and incipient heresy) led to the recognition of the president as the focus of the church's unity and the overseer of baptisms and eucharistic worship. As such he became known as “the bishop” (ho episkopos) prior to the writing of Ignatius' letters (c. 110-115).
In Rome at the end of the first century the president had not acquired the title of “bishop.” Apart from the responsibility of implementing pastoral and disciplinary decisions of the presbytery he appears to have had the important duty of communicating and maintaining good relations with other churches.
2. Gnosticism reached the height of its influence and popularity in the west. c. 150-180. The Gnostic claim to possess a corpus of truth derived secretly from the apostles through a succession of teachers was met by the assertion that the true doctrine of the apostles has been preserved in the church by a series of authoritative teachers in an unbroken line from from the apostles (Hegesippus, Irenaeus, Tertullian). These are the presidents of the presbyterates who have, in turn, received the apostolic “canon of truth” or “rule of faith” from their immediate predecessors in office. They are now styled “bishops.”
3. The final stage is indicated in the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus and must have been reached in Rome late in the second century. The bishop is now the sole ordainer, and he himself is consecrated, after election, by another bishop or other bishops. To allot to the church officer who was already acknowledged to be the guardian of the church's integrity of doctrine and worship the chief role in the continuance of that tradition by the consecration of those who were to succeed to this guardianship in the churches was but a small step and a seemingly logical one. It was eventually to lead to a different conception of apostolic succession from that taught by Irenaeus: namely, the tracing of a bishop's succession through his consecrators rather than through the predecessors in his see (kathedra). The bishop, as Hippolytus presents him, is the summa sacerdos, whose order is superior to that of all other ministers of the church by virtue of his consecration.(161-162; emphases added)
Immediately following this conclusion is the final paragraph originally cited by Bobby in the thread above.
With due allowance for lack of clarity regarding what is meant by the term monepiscopate, and quibbling over whether presbyteral or episcopal more correctly designates pre-late second century polity, I cannot but see that Jay supports the basic line of the argument I gave: which is, when one looks at the function of (what Jay designates as) the president of the presbyters, even as early as the late first century, the president was performing episcopal functions. Namely:
* the focus of the church's unity (Ignatios)
* the overseer of baptisms and eucharistic worship (Ignatios)
* the responsibility of implementing pastoral and disciplinary decisions of the presbytery (Clement)
* the important duty of communicating and maintaining good relations with other churches (Clement)
Indeed, Jay says quite clearly about the Ignatian churches:
It is likely that, a presbytery having been chosen, the advantages of having a single spokesman and arbiter in liturgical and disciplinary matters were soon realized. But monepiscopacy cannot have been achieved much before the year 90. (141; emphasis added)
This, however, seems to contradict his conclusion. He follows this immediately with:
The ministerial structure described in the Ignatian epistles is usually termed “monepiscopacy.” But it does not seem to have been the monepiscopacy of bishops whose authority is claimed by reason of succession from the apostles. (141)
And here is where the confusion focuses: what do we mean by monepiscopus? For though he has taken some care to reject any notion that a bishop functioned in Rome in the late first century, later, when he discusses Justin Martyr's writings, he notes:
There can be no doubt that in Rome, as elsewhere, the need for what Streeter calls a “president of the presbytery” became apparent at a very early stage. . . .. . . the practical advantages of choosing a president must have been clear to the presbyters of Rome. . . . The president would be expected to have a special care for the welfare, protection, and expansion of the Christian community; and as his responsibilities increased, so he would begin to be thought of as having a special status.
The president of the presbytery was probably the principal celebrant of the eucharist. But it is not likely that other presbyters were precluded from this sacramental function. From the beginning presbyters had celebrated the eucharist. (148, 149; emphasis added)
In fact, it was at “non-episcopal” Rome (pun intended) that the names of the presidents of the presbytery had been kept in local memory (and which Hegesippus compiled) (cf. 149)--very much in continuity with the later understanding of apostolic succession in the episcopate.
Jay later remarks:
The need for a president of the college of presbyters had been recognized before Irenaeus' day, certainly at Antioch and in Asia minor, and doubtless in Rome. Ignatius saw him as the center of the church's unity and guardian of the purity of its worship. In Rome, probably as early as Clement, he was seen as the local church's representative in relations with other churches. (153-154; emphasis added)
Jay wants to contend that presbyteral, and not episopcal is the proper term to mark pre-late second century Church polity. He does this by making the assumption that the terms presbyter and bishop are synonymous. But here is where such a focus on terms falters, and this has been my point from the beginning.
Even Jay is forced to admit that historically speaking many of the fundamental functions of that later ministry that he terms monepiscopus already existed before the end of the first century. Indeed, according to Jay's survey, the only later developments to the previously named functions are all simply developments of those functions: ordination and co-consecration (discipline and worship) and apostolic succession (doctrine and ecclesial representation).
In fact, in functional terms, one is on just as solid ground to refer to the “president of the presbytery” as a bishop as one is to call him the president, for the practice of such oversight is continuous with the first century/New Testament Church, which frequently uses the term bishop in the context of such oversight (Acts 20; 1 Timothy 3, 5; Titus 1).
So while on technically precise definitional grounds, I gladly concede that the monepiscopus was not exactly what the first century office was called, functionally speaking, the leadership of the Church by a bishop/president of the presbyters in the first century/New Testament Church is, even on Jay's account, unquestionable. Thus, my claims that the first century/New Testament Church polity was episcopal continue to be supported by the evidence.
A summation of my argument(s) thus far.
1. In this post, I laid out the Scriptural evidence and my argument for my assertion that the Church is united to God's divine nature in Christ, through the union of the humanity and divinity in the Person of Christ.
2. As a further argument from 1, I have argued that since the Church participates in the divine nature of God, by grace, through union with Christ, the Church has divine authority to declare God's will and her knowledge about God is authoritative due to her participation in God's divinity through Christ (for example, this authority was manifested through the ministry of the apostles and prophets on whom the Church was built, and who were themselves members of Christ's Body, the Church).
3. I have also made two counter arguments against sola scriptura: namely that the Scriptures themselves enjoin upon us the necessity of adhering to the oral apostolic tradition, and that the Scriptures do not claim to be all-sufficient.
4. Given 1-3 above, then, the Church, as "pillar and bulwark of the Truth" (1 Timothy 3:15), has the authority to speak God's will about Scripture (for example, as to what books are Scripture and as to Scripture's proper meaning), and to speak about those things Scripture does not address (for example, as to gathering every Sunday for worship and the celebration of the Lord's Supper).
5. Given 1-4, then, what the Church says about Scripture and about what Scripture does not address, the Church in her declarations will not contradict Scripture, nor will Scripture contradict the Church, for their source is the same, for the Church is being built up into the full man and the head which is Christ (Ephesians 4:11-16), and she cannot contradict herself without becoming something other than herself (given 1 above).
[Note: Lengthy post. Updated (4:00pm CDT) with links to the message board discussion I refer to.]
I come from a church tradition which very strongly believed that for a church or group to claim that they were (a part of) the Church of Christ, they had to look, act, and believe like the New Testament Church. Thus, with respect to Church polity (it's organization and structure), in the Restoration Movement churches in which I grew up, trained for ministry, and whom I served for a time as a minister, we believed that there ought be no church organization higher than the local congregation, and that the leaders of the church were men who served as elders and deacons. We rejected any notion of the ministry of a bishop, or the very ancient practice of the Church being led by bishops, priests and deacons.
Recently, I engaged some members of the Restoration Movement on one of their message boards about this very thing. (The thread is about something else--as always happens on message boards--but the discussion I'm referring to turns to the topic under consideration in this blog post right about here. My comment precipitating the ensuing discussion is the second one from the bottom.) I was challenged to present a case that the first century, New Testament Church was indeed governed by bishops, priests and deacons. So I did. And I want to share this with you all today.
My argument is essentially this: In the New Testament there is a clear association of the ministry of apostle and bishop, and further that these roles were associated with the Lord's Supper. Further, in the New Testament the Lord's Supper is presented not only sacramentally, but sacrificially. Church leadership grows out of this association with the Lord's Supper.
As I understand it, the contention has been that St. Ignatios' ecclesiology is alien and an imposition on the NT. I claim that this assertion is false. I think it is based on a fundamental error, which is the fairly singular (not necessarily exclusive) reliance on the appearance/use of the terms for bishop/presbyter/deacon and on explicit delineation of Church structure.
I think this is mistaken for the following reasons:
1. The NT strongly suggests (as I will show) a much different account of local Church polity than that of presbyters and deacons, and that the beginning of the distinction between bishops and presbyters had already begun within the lifetime of the Apostles, and, indeed, that in the first century, the predominant term for one group of leaders in the local Church was that of bishop.
2. One element--often overlooked in these discussion--of Church leadership in the NT revolved around the sacrifice of the Lord's Supper, which is tied to Jesus' heavenly service.
3. Further, the continuity between these ideas revealed in the NT and then in the Didache, and then in St. Clement and then in St. Ignatios reveals a fairly clear historical pattern in which what began in the NT developed fully by the end of the first century (minimally at least in Asia Minor).
I am not arguing that St. Ignatios' monoepiscopal structure is explicitly mentioned in the NT. But there is, I maintain, a very clear line tracing right back to the NT which serves as the foundation for what St. Ignatios talks about.
In other words, it is the will of God, as revealed in his written word, that the sacrificial sacrament of the Lord's Supper be the foundation for the organization of his Church around bishops, priests and deacons.
What follows then, expanded and slightly revised, is the evidence for my case.
The New Testament
Consider the following brief points.
1 Peter 2:25: Jesus is called our bishop
Acts 1:20: The office of the bishop is tied to the Apostles.
Acts 13:2: When the prophets and teachers in Antioch were ministering (lit. “liturgizing”) the Holy Spirit indicated that Paul and Barnabas should be set apart for the work God had for them.
Hebrews 8:7: Jesus is our minister (lit. “liturgist”) in the heavenly tabernacle (cf. Romans 15:16 below)
Hebrews 10:11: speaks of Old Testament “liturgizing”; i. e., offering the sacrifices.
Romans 15:16: St. Paul refers to himself as a minister (lit., “liturgist”) who ministers the Gospel as a priest (lit. “priest-working”) (cf. Hebrews 8:7 above).
Acts 20:7: St. Paul meets with the Church at Troas specifically to observe the Lord's Supper.
1 Corinthians 11:34: St. Paul says, in specific reference to the Lord's Supper and its proper observance, that he will come and set things in order (or appoint, ordain, etc.).
1 Corinthians 10:16-21: The Lord's Supper is explicitly tied to sacrificial offerings, both Old Testament and pagan, and the “table” of the Lord's Supper is clearly depicted, in context, as an altar.
1 Corinthians 11:17ff: In conjunction with 1 Corinthians 10:16-21 above, the elements of the Lord's Supper are united with the Body and Blood of Jesus
Hebrews 9:12-15; 10:10: Through the sacrifice of Christ's Body and Blood we have a new and better covenant; which in conjunction with the 1 Corinthians passages above indicates a sacrificial understanding of the Lord's Supper.
Acts 20:28: Some or all of the elders at Ephesus are said to have been made bishops by the Holy Spirit
1 Timothy 3: the office of bishop is described
1 Timothy 5:17: certain elders are said to have ruled well, and as such are said to be worthy of “double reward”; which may indicate remuneration
1 Corinthians 9:1ff: the Apostles were known at times to have received remuneration for their work
1 Peter 5:1-2: presbyters were told to exercise oversight (be a bishop) over their flocks.
In the New Testament it already is seen that we have the Lord's Supper observed as a sacrifice of the altar, that the office of the Apostle is seen in a priestly typology with Christ, that bishops were tied to the office of the Apostles, and that a single Apostle (and thus bishop?) presided over the Lord's Supper when it was observed. This is amazingly aligned with what St. Ignatios and St. Clement, and, surprise, the Didache say.
1 Clement, the Didache, and St. Ignatios
(Even though access to the early Church Fathers has been made much easier due to the internet, still these rich letters from our older Church family are very unfamiliar to us. So I will cite these documents with some fullness. If you don't have access to these documents, you can read the Didache here, and St. Clement's and St. Ignatios' letters here.)
1. The Lord's Supper is a sacrificial offering
And on the Lord's own day gather yourselves together and break bread and give thanks, first confessing your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure. And let no man, having his dispute with his fellow, join your assembly until they have been reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be defiled; for this sacrifice it is that was spoken of by the Lord; {In every place and at every time offer Me a pure sacrifice; for I am a great king, saith the Lord and My name is wonderful among the nations.}(Didache 14)
2. Prophets and teachers are the chief-priests
But every true prophet desiring to settle among you {is worthy of his food.} In like manner a true teacher {is} also {worthy,} like {the workman, of his food.} Every firstfruit then of the produce of the wine-vat and of the threshing-floor, of thy oxen and of thy sheep, thou shalt take and give as the firstfruit to the prophets; for they are your chief-priests. (Didache 13.1-4)
3. Bishops and deacons are to be appointed in the Church, who perform the service of the prophets and teachers (making them chief-priests).
Appoint for yourselves therefore bishops and deacons worthy of the Lord, men who are meek and not lovers of money, and true and approved; for unto you they also perform the service of the prophets and teachers. (Didache 15)
4. Clement unfolds a four-fold ministry as a type of the Old Testament order of high priest, priests, Levites and laymen. Christian worship is presented in sacrificial terms.
He has enjoined offerings [to be presented] and service to be performed [to Him], and that not thoughtlessly or irregularly, but at the appointed times and hours. Where and by whom He desires these things to be done, He Himself has fixed by His own supreme will, in order that all things being piously done according to His good pleasure, may be acceptable unto Him.Those, therefore, who present their offerings at the appointed times, are accepted and blessed; for inasmuch as they follow the laws of the Lord, they sin not. For his own peculiar services are assigned to the high priest, and their own proper place is prescribed to the priests, and their own special ministrations devolve on the Levites. The layman is bound by the laws that pertain to laymen. (1 Clement 40)
4. The previous mentioned OT typological ministry is explicitly applied to the Church at Corinth, a strict clerical order is enjoined. There is to be only one place for the sacrifice of the altar; that is, only one celebration of the Eucharistic sacrifice.
Let every one of you, brethren, give thanks to God in his own order, living in all good conscience, with becoming gravity, and not going beyond the rule of the ministry prescribed to him. Not in every place, brethren, are the daily sacrifices offered, or the peace-offerings, or the sin-offerings and the trespass-offerings, but in Jerusalem only. And even there they are not offered in any place, but only at the altar before the temple, that which is offered being first carefully examined by the high priest and the ministers already mentioned. Those, therefore, who do anything beyond that which is agreeable to His will, are punished with death. Ye see, brethren, that the greater the knowledge that has been vouchsafed to us, the greater also is the danger to which we are exposed. (1 Clement 41)
5. The Apostles appointed bishops and deacons in the various cities.
The apostles have preached the Gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ [has done so] from God. Christ therefore was sent forth by God, and the apostles by Christ. Both these appointments, then, were made in an orderly way, according to the will of God. Having therefore received their orders, and being fully assured by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and established in the word of God, with full assurance of the Holy Ghost, they went forth proclaiming that the kingdom of God was at hand. And thus preaching through countries and cities, they appointed the first-fruits [of their labours], having first proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons of those who should afterwards believe. Nor was this any new thing, since indeed many ages before it was written concerning bishops and deacons. For thus saith the Scripture in a certain place, "I will appoint their bishops in righteousness, and their deacons in faith." (1 Clement 42)
6. The Apostles set up a means for the orderly succession of the episcopate, and those duly appointed who have served well should not be ejected from the episcopate.
Our apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, and there would be strife on account of the office of the episcopate. For this reason, therefore, inasmuch as they had obtained a perfect fore-knowledge of this, they appointed those [ministers] already mentioned, and afterwards gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry. We are of opinion, therefore, that those appointed by them, or afterwards by other eminent men, with the consent of the whole Church, and who have blamelessly served the flock of Christ in a humble, peaceable, and disinterested spirit, and have for a long time possessed the good opinion of all, cannot be justly dismissed from the ministry. For our sin will not be small, if we eject from the episcopate those who have blamelessly and holily fulfilled its duties. Blessed are those presbyters who, having finished their course before now, have obtained a fruitful and perfect departure [from this world]; for they have no fear lest any one deprive them of the place now appointed them. But we see that ye have removed some men of excellent behaviour from the ministry, which they fulfilled blamelessly and with honour.(1 Clement 44)
And then there are these citations from St. Ignatios. I've saved them till last not only for chronological reasons (they are the latest historically of the ones we're considering), but also so that it can be seen that there is an unbroken continuity between St. Ignatios and the New Testament.
1. Bishops are God's will and are installed throughout the Church. The unity of the Church is manifested through the bishop and presbyters.
For even Jesus Christ, our inseparable life, is the [manifested] will of the Father; as also bishops, settled everywhere to the utmost bounds [of the earth], are so by the will of Jesus Christ. Wherefore it is fitting that ye should run together in accordance with the will of your bishop, which thing also ye do. For your justly renowned presbytery, worthy of God, is fitted as exactly to the bishop as the strings are to the harp. Therefore in your concord and harmonious love, Jesus Christ is sung. And do ye, man by man, become a choir, that being harmonious in love, and taking up the song of God in unison, ye may with one voice sing to the Father through Jesus Christ, so that He may both hear you, and perceive by your works that ye are indeed the members of His Son. It is profitable, therefore, that you should live in an unblameable unity, that thus ye may always enjoy communion with God.(Ephesians 3-4)
2. The bishop unites through his service at the altar of the Eucharist.
For if I in this brief space of time, have enjoyed such fellowship with your bishop — I mean not of a mere human, but of a spiritual nature — how much more do I reckon you happy who are so joined to him as the Church is to Jesus Christ, and as Jesus Christ is to the Father, that so all things may agree in unity! Let no man deceive himself: if any one be not within the altar, he is deprived of the bread of God. For if the prayer of one or two possesses such power, how much more that of the bishop and the whole Church! He, therefore, that does not assemble with the Church, has even by this manifested his pride, and condemned himself. For it is written, “God resisteth the proud.” Let us be careful, then, not to set ourselves in opposition to the bishop, in order that we may be subject to God.(Ephesians 5)
3. As St. Clement above, St. Ignatios unrolls a fourfold ministry: bishop (presiding in God's place), presbyters (apostles), deacons, and, in St. Clement's terms, the laity who are being addressed. The clergy preside over the laity via the altar.
I exhort you to study to do all things with a divine harmony, while your bishop presides in the place of God, and your presbyters in the place of the assembly of the apostles, along with your deacons, who are most dear to me, and are entrusted with the ministry of Jesus Christ, who was with the Father before the beginning of time, and in the end was revealed. Do ye all then, imitating the same divine conduct, pay respect to one another, and let no one look upon his neighbour after the flesh, but do ye continually love each other in Jesus Christ. Let nothing exist among you that may divide you; but be ye united with your bishop, and those that preside over you, as a type and evidence of your immortality. As therefore the Lord did nothing without the Father, being united to Him, neither by Himself nor by the apostles, so neither do ye anything without the bishop and presbyters. Neither endeavour that anything appear reasonable and proper to yourselves apart; but being come together into the same place, let there be one prayer, one supplication, one mind, one hope, in love and in joy undefiled. There is one Jesus Christ, than whom nothing is more excellent. Do ye therefore all run together as into one temple of God, as to one altar, as to one Jesus Christ, who came forth from one Father, and is with and has gone to one.(Magnesians 6-7)
4. Being established in the doctrines of the Lord and the apostles means being subject to the bishop, presbyters, and deacons and to one another.
Study, therefore, to be established in the doctrines of the Lord and the apostles, that so all things, whatsoever ye do, may prosper both in the flesh and spirit; in faith and love; in the Son, and in the Father, and in the Spirit; in the beginning and in the end; with your most admirable bishop, and the well-compacted spiritual crown of your presbytery, and the deacons who are according to God. Be ye subject to the bishop, and to one another, as Jesus Christ to the Father, according to the flesh, and the apostles to Christ, and to the Father, and to the Spirit; that so there may be a union both fleshly and spiritual.(Magnesians 13)
5. Same as above. Apart from the bishop, the presbyters, and the deacons there is no Church--because there is no Eucharist.
For, since ye are subject to the bishop as to Jesus Christ, ye appear to me to live not after the manner of men, but according to Jesus Christ, who died for us, in order, by believing in His death, ye may escape from death. It is therefore necessary that, as ye indeed do, so without the bishop ye should do nothing, but should also be subject to the presbytery, as to the apostle of Jesus Christ, who is our hope, in whom, if we live, we shall [at last] be found. It is fitting also that the deacons, as being [the ministers] of the mysteries of Jesus Christ, should in every respect be pleasing to all. For they are not ministers of meat and drink, but servants of the Church of God. They are bound, therefore, to avoid all grounds of accusation [against them], as they would do fire. In like manner, let all reverence the deacons as an appointment of Jesus Christ, and the bishop as Jesus Christ, who is the Son of the Father, and the presbyters as the Sanhedrin of God, and assembly of the apostles. Apart from these, there is no Church. Concerning all this, I am persuaded that ye are of the same opinion. For I have received the manifestation of your love, and still have it with me, in your bishop, whose very appearance is highly instructive, and his meekness of itself a power; whom I imagine even the ungodly must reverence, seeing they are also pleased that I do not spare myself. But shall I, when permitted to write on this point, reach such a height of self-esteem, that though being a condemned man, I should issue commands to you as if I were an apostle? (Trallians 2-3)
He that is within the altar is pure, but he that is without is not pure; that is, he who does anything apart from the bishop, and presbytery, and deacons, such a man is not pure in his conscience. (Trallians 7)
6. Separation from the bishop is schism from the Church because it is schism from the altar of the Eucharist.
For as many as are of God and of Jesus Christ are also with the bishop. And as many as shall, in the exercise of repentance, return into the unity of the Church, these, too, shall belong to God, that they may live according to Jesus Christ. Do not err, my brethren. If any man follows him that makes a schism in the Church, he shall not inherit the kingdom of God. If any one walks according to a strange opinion, he agrees not with the passion [of Christ.]. (Philadelphians 3)
Take ye heed, then, to have but one Eucharist. For there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup to [show forth] the unity of His blood; one altar; as there is one bishop, along with the presbytery and deacons, my fellow-servants: that so, whatsoever ye do, ye may do it according to [the will of] God. (Philadelphians 4)
They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes. But it were better for them to treat it with respect, that they also might rise again. It is fitting, therefore, that ye should keep aloof from such persons, and not to speak of them either in private or in public, but to give heed to the prophets, and above all, to the Gospel, in which the passion [of Christ] has been revealed to us, and the resurrection has been fully proved. But avoid all divisions, as the beginning of evils. (Smyrnaeans 7)
See that ye all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as ye would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid. (Smyrnaeans 8)
The purpose of this exercise has been to demonstrate that the clear Eucharistic episcopal polity of St. Ignatios was not an aberration from New Testament Christianity, and, indeed, was also reflective of first century Christianity.
It is so abundantly clear that there is a single mind running from the New Testament through the Didache through St. Clement to St. Ignatios. Now it remains to discern what each of us should do in light of it.
[Please note: The following are personal musings and not to be construed as *the* Orthodox understanding. If anything here contradicts the received teaching and way of life of the (Orthodox) Church, please correct me. As always: check with your priest or spiritual father.]
I've said this before, but I thought this might be a nice way to sum up my previous posts on ecumenism.
I would say that the first most important question a person can ask is "Who is the Christ?"
The second most important question is "Where is His Church?"
For there is no such thing as a Church-less Christian (which Ephesians 4, among other texts, nicely affirms).
But it is also manifestly true that not every church or group claiming to be, or be part of, the Church are telling the truth. This is not to say that they are intentionally lying; just that their claims are not consonant with ecclesial reality. For churches and groups fundamentally contradict one another on central issues such as baptism and the Lord's Supper, the ordination of women, and human sexuality. And the Holy Spirit would not have led all these groups into these contradictions.
So we are left with two options:
1. Either we must deny that Christ left behind and indwells His Church on earth; or,
2. We must deny that knowing God's will on important matters such as baptism and the Lord's Supper really matters.
Neither option is true to Scripture. (Note by the way that option 2 does not necessarily mean we have to have exhaustive knowledge of God's will. But surely we should be able to work out the major stuff.)
This leaves us with the following facts: Christ did, in fact, leave behind and indwells his Church on earth AND that knowing God's will on important matters such as baptism and the Lord's Supper really does matter.
Which leaves us with the second most important question: Where is His Church?
[This is another in a handful of reflections I want to make on the matter of Church unity.
Previous posts:
Ecumenism I
Ecumenism II
Ecumenism III]
Ecumenism IV
Ecumenism V
Ecumenism VI]
St. John the Wonderworker, "The Church as the Body of Christ":
Fully abiding in the Church is already victory over sin and complete purification therefrom. To some degree everything sinful estranges us from the Church and keeps us out of the Church; this is why in the prayer read at confession over every penitent we have the phrase: "reconcile, and unite unto Thy Holy Church. " Through repentance a Christian is cleansed and united closely to Christ in partaking of the Holy Mysteries, but later the grime of sin again settles upon him and estranges him from Christ and the Church, and therefore repentance and communion are again necessary. As long as the earthly life of a man endures, up to the very departure of the soul from the body, the struggle between sin and righteousness goes on within him. However high a spiritual and moral state one might achieve, a gradual, or even headlong and deep fall into the abyss of sin is always possible. Therefore, communion of the holy Body and Blood of Christ, which strengthens our contact with Him and refreshes us with the living streams of the grace of the Holy Spirit flowing through the Body of the Church, is necessary for everyone. How very important communion of the Holy Mysteries is we see from the life of St. Onuphrius the Great to whom, as well as to other hermits dwelling in the same desert, angels brought Holy Communion; and in the life of St. Mary of Egypt we read that her final wish after many years of desert life was the reception of the Holy Mysteries. The lives of St. Sabbatius of Solovki and a multitude of others tell us similar things. Not in vain did the Lord speak and say: "Amen, amen, I say unto you, except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His Blood, ye have no life in you" [John] 6:23).To partake of the Body and Blood of Christ is to receive in oneself the Risen Christ, the victor over death, granting to those with Him victory over sin and death.
Preserving in ourselves the grace-filled gift of Communion, we have a guarantee and foretaste of the blessed, eternal life of the soul and body.
Up to the very "Day of Christ, " His Second Coming and the Judgment of the whole world, the struggle of sin with righteousness will continue, individually in each person and collectively in all mankind.
[Please note: The following are personal musings and not to be construed as *the* Orthodox understanding. If anything here contradicts the received teaching and way of life of the (Orthodox) Church, please correct me. As always: check with your priest or spiritual father.]
The Church Is Holy
In the Creed we confess our belief in the “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church,” in the same way that we confess our belief “in one God the Father Almighty,” “in one Lord Jesus Christ,” and “in the Holy Spirit the Lord, and Giver of life.” But my good friend Tripp has asked me several times, how is it that the Church does not sin when those who are members of the Church do, indeed, sin?
While it is tempting to respond by saying: We believe the Church is holy, that She does not sin. What else is there to say?--I rather suppose I owe my friend a bit more than that.
It must first be remembered that the Church is a theandric institution, at once both human and divine. The Church is Christ's Body, and just as the communication of the divine and human in the Person of Christ was, as Chalcedon affirms, “without change, separation, confusion or division,” so, too, the union of the human and the divine in the Church is not some hybrid different in kind than either the divine or the human, yet is not separable in that either can be considered (as the Church) apart from one another or delineable into a human part here or a divine part there, nor does not the union alter either the divine or human natures. And if this be true, then if Christ the head be holy and sinless, so, too, must His Body be holy and sinless.
Yet, Christians sin. And if being Christian is only possible insofar as one is a member of the Church, then how is it that the Church is not in sin when the members are?
If I may say so, first of all, the question betrays the failure of perspective. When viewed from the vantage point of human sinfulness it is almost axiomatic to suppose that we would bring our sins into the Church, infecting it from within. But this is a view of the Church that fails, significantly, to take into account the divine nature of the Church. The Church was not adopted by God. He did not wait for the right human society to flower and then take that group under his wing. This is the adoptionist Christological heresy applied to the Church. No, God himself built the Church on those whom He himself called (prophets and apostles), with His Son being the Head that gives the Church its very life. The Church is holy, therefore, not because humans do holy things more or less consistently, but because Christ Himself is Holy.
This failure of perspective must be corrected by viewing the Church from its source in Christ. Indeed, the Church participates in the holiness of the Trinity in that God calls the Church into being, through the life and work of His Son, by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Church is wholly indwelt by the Trinity--it is the house of God (1 Timothy 3:15), where God lives--and therefore is holy, for otherwise God could not indwell the Church (cf. Hebrews 12:14). In Christ the fullness of God dwelt bodily, says St. Paul, and the Church is complete in Him (Colossians 2:9-10). God is greater than human sin, and his holiness drives out our corruption.
That is to say, salvation according to the Christian faith is that union with God which divinizes human nature. But that deification happens only in and through the Church. Like Christ, the Church's humanity is deified through the communication with the divine that God accomplishes in uniting human nature with Himself in Christ. Just as Christ's human nature was deified from the moment of conception, so, too, is the human nature of the Church deified and made holy from its inception. Just as in Christ there was no sin to be found, nor did he ever sin, so, too, in the Church there is no sin to be found, nor does she sin. Like Christ, the human nature of the Church is deified by communion with the divine, which is Christ Himself, Her Head.
However, we must make an important and fundamental distinction between human nature and our own personal mode of existence. That is to say, human nature is not replaced but restored by way of our incorporation into the Church. Our personal mode of existence, however, has been in bondage to sin, through a human nature that has been corrupted in the Fall. When human nature is brought into union with God, and therefore deified, we are made free from our bondage to sin and our personal mode of existence--where we exercise our will, or one might say, what use we make of our human nature--must be brought into conformity with God's transfiguration of human nature. And it is precisely our union with the Church that brings about our sanctification. We are saved not as individuals and then incorporated into Christ's Body, rather we are saved through the divine energies manifested in Christ's Body. Because the Church is completely holy, Her individual members, who are brought into union with Christ and therefore with the Trinity by way of incorporation into the Church, are made holy by being the Church. What must happen on the personal level, then, is for the personal mode of existence to be united with deified humanity. This is done by way of repentance and the Mysteries of the Church.
So, when members sin, they are not, as it were, legal representatives of the Church, whose sin and guilt are then reckoned to the Church. Rather, they are engaging in actions which are wholly their own moral responsibility by way of their personal mode of existence. These sinful acts, which are not of the Church, orient them away from the Life of Christ in the Church. Since deification is an organic process, however, and not a fundamentally juridical one, each sin act does not necessarily completely sever members from the Church, with a requisite and proportionate act of repentance necessary to restore them to the Church (though of course such a sin is possible; cf. 1 John 5:16-17). One does not, as it were, jump in and out of salvation. But sin acts left unrepented do lead toward a disposition in one's personal mode of existence that can, ultimately, sever one from the Church, and therefore from salvation.
So it is that the Church can be completely holy and without stain, and yet Her members commit personal sin.
[This is another in a handful of reflections I want to make on the matter of Church unity.
Previous posts:
Ecumenism I
Ecumenism II
Ecumenism III]
Ecumenism IV
Ecumenism V]
In the spirit of my posts on ecumenism, I wanted to pass on this link by poet, philosopher and lay theologian Alexei S. Khomiakov: "The Church is One."
Some excerpts:
1.
The Church is one. Her unity follows of necessity from the unity of God; for the Church is not a multitude of persons in their separate individuality, but a unity of the grace of God, living in a multitude of rational creatures, submitting themselves willingly to grace. Grace, indeed, is also given to those who resist it, and to those who do not make use of it (who hide their talent in the earth), but these are not in the Church. In fact, the unity of the Church is not imaginary or allegorical, but a true and substantial unity, such as is the unity of many members in a living body.The Church is one, notwithstanding her division as it appears to a man who is still alive on earth. It is only in relation to man that it is possible to recognize a division of the Church into visible and invisible; her unity is, in reality, true and absolute. Those who are alive on earth, those who have finished their earthly course, those who, like the angels, were not created for a life on earth, those in future generations who have not yet begun their earthly course, are all united together in one Church, in one and the same grace of God; for the creation of God which has not yet been manifested is manifest to Him; and God hears the prayers and knows the faith of those whom He has not yet called out of non-existence into existence. Indeed the Church, the Body of Christ, is manifesting forth and fulfilling herself in time, without changing her essential unity or inward life of grace. And therefore, when we speak of "the Church visible and invisible," we so speak only in relation to man.
2.
The man who takes Scripture only, and founds the Church on it alone, is in reality rejecting the Church, and is hoping to found her afresh by his own powers: the man who takes tradition and works only, and depreciates the importance of Scripture, is likewise in reality rejecting the Church, and constituting himself a judge of the Spirit of God, who spoke by the Scripture. For Christian knowledge is a matter, not of intellectual investigation, but of a living faith, which is a gift of grace. Scripture is external, an outward thing, and tradition is external, and works are external: that which is inward in them is the one Spirit of God. From tradition taken alone, or from scripture or from works, a man can but derive an external and incomplete knowledge, which may indeed in itself contain truth, for it starts from truth, but at the same time must of necessity be erroneous, inasmuch as it is incomplete. A believer knows the Truth, but an unbeliever does not know it, or at least only knows it with an external and imperfect knowledge. The Church does not prove herself either as Scripture or as tradition or as works, but bears witness to herself, just as the Spirit of God, dwelling in her, bears witness to Himself in the Scriptures. The Church does not ask: Which Scripture is true, which tradition is true, which Council is true, or what works are pleasing to God: for Christ knows His own inheritance, and the Church in which He lives knows by inward knowledge, and cannot help knowing, her own manifestations.
3.
The Church, even upon earth, lives, not an earthly human life, but a life of grace which is divine. Wherefore not only each of her members, but she herself as a whole, solemnly calls herself Holy. Her visible manifestation is contained in the Sacraments, but her inward life in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, in faith, hope, and love. Oppressed and persecuted by enemies without, at times agitated and lacerated within by the evil passions of her children, she has been and ever will be preserved without wavering or change wherever the Sacraments and spiritual holiness are preserved. Never is she either disfigured or in need of reformation. She lives not under a law of bondage, but under a law of liberty. She neither acknowledges any authority over her, except her own, nor any tribunal, but the tribunal of faith (for reason does not comprehend her), and she expresses her love, her faith, and her hope in her prayers and rites, suggested to her by the Spirit of truth and by the grace of Christ.
[Please note: The following are personal musings and not to be construed as *the* Orthodox understanding. If anything here contradicts the received teaching and way of life of the (Orthodox) Church, please correct me. As always: check with your priest or spiritual father.]
It should by now be clear how it is that the modern ecumenical movement has failed, and, indeed, can only fail. Here, however, I want to come at the point again from another angle.
I hope that it can be seen that Church unity is accomplished by the Holy Trinity through the Eucharist presided over by the bishop. Certainly there is doctrinal or dogmatic unity, and institutional unity is important as well. But these are founded on the Eucharist which embodies the fullness of the Gospel: the reality of the Holy Trinity, the proclamation of the Incarnation, the unity of the Holy Trinity and of the Church with and in the Trinity.
Modern ecumenism fails by way of two fallacies (Roman Catholics and Orthodox would call these fallacies heresies): 1) reductionism and 2) the denial of the Church.
Let's start with the latter. Protestants simply cannot get around the reality that Rome and the Orthodox each claim to be the one true Church--which means Protestants (and Rome or the Orthodox) are not. Protestants can only continue in ecumenical efforts by denying this claim, either actively and intentionally or passively by simply ignoring the claim. Concomitantly, Protestants claim to be a part of the one true Church (which, in Protestantism is an invisible, spiritual entity). But simple denial is no argument. It's a fallacy. Further, Protestant ecclesiology fails to follow through on the logic of the Incarnation. That is to say, given the Incarnation, the Church must itself be incarnate. This entails an historic institution whose life is instantiated in quite specific ways. There is an objective standard against which Protestant ecclesiologies can be measured. Not only that, Protestants beg the question of the true Church by simply assuming they are (a part of) it.
(Aside: Protestants could claim the same sort of question begging of Rome or the Orthodox. However both Rome and Orthodox have objective, rational arguments supporting these claims. Not to mention the simple fact that the Roman Catholic Church, or, as I would contend, the Orthodox Church, is. That is to say, the claim to exclusivity is based on the reality of that which is itself what it claims to be. Clearly, between Rome and Orthodox, I stand on the side of the Orthodox and these reflections have been written from that perspective. But I will not here argue for Orthodoxy over Rome. That has been done by abler minds and more Christ-like spirits than mine.)
But Protestants commit another fallacy as well: reductionism. How can it not be otherwise when not only do Protestants differ from Roman Catholics and Orthodox in their fundamental doctrinal beliefs, but, as importantly, differ among themselves as well. Given that, in contradistinction to Rome and the Orthodox, Protestants start from contradictory beliefs, ecumenism cannot even get off the ground without beginning to pare away those things that are “not essential” to the Gospel. Despite my great esteem and admiration for C. S. Lewis, there is no such thing as “mere Christianity” which can be boiled down to an essence. (And in fact, those who argue for a “mere Christianity” would not even all agree with C. S. Lewis on what “mere Christianity” actually is.) What is essential to the Gospel? All of it. It is as essential to the Gospel that we affirm Jesus of Nazareth to be God in the flesh as it is that we affirm divorce is a sin as it is that we fast, pray and give alms, as it is that we affirm the wine and the bread are the Blood and Body of Christ, and so it goes.
In other words, true Christianity is maximalist not minimalist, and the only Christian unity that can obtain in reality is the unity that affirms all of the Gospel. This is not to say that all Gospel things are important in the same ways (one would rightly prioritize the importance of the truth about the Eucharist over the specific ways one fasts or prays or gives alms and the sanctity of marriage over these). But all Gospel things are important and cannot be relegated to adiaphora. Because quite frankly, once one wields the knife to cut, the cutting will and must take on a life of its own. One simply need trace the life of the Christian churches in America over the last two hundred years. Both evangelical and mainline congregations have abandoned the sanctity of marriage by not only allowing for multiple divorces but also for divorced clergy to continue to serve at the altar. Not coincidentally, American Christians are increasingly affirming that Jesus is not the only pathway to God, and even questioning his divinity. After all, if marriage is not at the core of the Gospel, then why need one continue to adhere to Jesus' exclusivity or even his divinity? Reductionism is a fallacy precisely because it assumes what it must first prove: that some Gospel things are unnecessary.
The Church has always held--as was briefly noted in the previous post--that unity in Christ is maximalist. That means bishops, sacramental Eucharists, and one true visible Church. Protestants will not bring about Church unity via these two fallacies/heresies. But they may become one with the Church if they reject these fallacies/heresies and embrace the fullness of the Church which has remained whole, one and complete for two millennia.
[This is another in a handful of reflections I want to make on the matter of Church unity.
Previous posts:
Ecumenism I
Ecumenism II
Ecumenism III]
Ecumenism IV]
[Please note: The following are personal musings and not to be construed as *the* Orthodox understanding. If anything here contradicts the received teaching and way of life of the (Orthodox) Church, please correct me. As always: check with your priest or spiritual father.]
Why "Toleration, Mutual Respect and Cooperation" Do Not Make Christian Unity
In the first post, one of the definitions of unity within ecumenism shied away from organic unity and spoke instead of a “unity” promoting “toleration, mutual respect and cooperation.” This “unity” is fostered “between Christian churches and denominations, or between Christianity and other faiths.” This, itself, should provide a clue as to why tolerance, mutual respect and cooperation is no basis for unity, nor is it, itself, the sort of unity Christ prayed for (cf. John 17).
First of all, Scripture is clear. It is not “toleration, mutual respect and cooperation” which create, or, frankly, even foster unity. Rather, Scripture is clear:
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? Because we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake from the one bread. (1Co 10:16-17)
That is to say, the Holy Eucharist effects our unity in Christ. It is utterly a Trinitarian act: the Father is invoked, the Spirit comes upon “us and these gifts,” and communicants participate in the Body and Blood of the Son.
This unity in the Eucharist is reiterated by St. Ignatios of Antioch.
Take ye heed, then, to have but one Eucharist. For there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup to [show forth] the unity of His blood; one altar; as there is one bishop, along with the presbytery and deacons, my fellow-servants: that so, whatsoever ye do, ye may do it according to [the will of] God. (To the Philadelphians 4 [emphasis added])
Note, importantly, the intimate connection between bishop and Eucharist.
If Jesus Christ shall graciously permit me through your prayers, and if it be His will, I shall, in a second little work which I will write to you, make further manifest to you [the nature of] the dispensation of which I have begun [to treat], with respect to the new man, Jesus Christ, in His faith and in His love, in His suffering and in His resurrection. Especially [will I do this] if the Lord make known to me that ye come together man by man in common through grace, individually, in one faith, and in Jesus Christ, who was of the seed of David according to the flesh, being both the Son of man and the Son of God, so that ye obey the bishop and the presbytery with an undivided mind, breaking one and the same bread, which is the medicine of immortality, and the antidote to prevent us from dying, but [which causes] that we should live for ever in Jesus Christ. (To the Ephesians 20 [emphasis added])
In fact, schism over the Eucharist is Church schism.
They [who deny the Incarnation] abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. Those, therefore, who speak against this gift of God, incur death in the midst of their disputes. But it were better for them to treat it with respect, that they also might rise again. It is fitting, therefore, that ye should keep aloof from such persons, and not to speak of them either in private or in public, but to give heed to the prophets, and above all, to the Gospel, in which the passion [of Christ] has been revealed to us, and the resurrection has been fully proved. But avoid all divisions, as the beginning of evils.See that ye all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as ye would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is [administered] either by the bishop, or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize or to celebrate a love-feast; but whatsoever he shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid. (To the Smyrnaeans 7-8 [emphasis added])
In other words, all the “toleration, mutual respect and cooperation” in the world will not be able to accomplish what the Holy Trinity accomplishes in the Eucharist. It is the Eucharist, presided over by the bishop, that is the center of our unity. Where there is schism over the Eucharist, no amount of agreed statements, handshakes, or declarations can bring about that unity that is sought.
If the schisms of the Church are to be healed, they will be healed in the Holy Eucharist. There is only one Eucharist that is truly the Lord's Eucharist. And it is there that we all must be reconciled and united.
[This is another in a handful of reflections I want to make on the matter of Church unity.
[This is another in a handful of reflections I want to make on the matter of Church unity.
Previous posts:
Ecumenism I
Ecumenism II
Ecumenism III]
PBS has a two-part story on the emergent church. You can read the story and/or watch the video at the following links.
[Please note: The following are personal musings and not to be construed as *the* Orthodox understanding. If anything here contradicts the received teaching and way of life of the (Orthodox) Church, please correct me. As always: check with your priest or spiritual father.]
Why Protestants--and Not Orthodox--Must Change Their Ecclesiology for Union to Obtain
In the two previous posts, I reflected on the difficulty of ecumenism precisely on the difference of understanding on what unity actually is, and on the impossibility to adjudicate the differences in dogma between Christian groups from within ecumenism. I also noted in the previous post that there can only be one criterion of truth and of unity: that of Christ himself, and that ecclesiologies that depart from this criterion are not only Church heresies, but ultimately Christological heresies as well.
Among Protestants generally, the dominant ecclesiologies seem to be: Nestorian (the Church is human and divine, both divided off from one another--humans do not partake of the divine nature but are in juridical relationship with the Godhead, and sanctified as morally pure humans--but called by the common name of “Church”), adoptionist (the Church is only a human institution, but has been adopted by God as his people, but is not otherwise divine), Arian (the Church is the highest human organization created by God, but not divine and always forever separated from union with God), or even perhaps a variant of gnosticism (the Church is neither human nor divine, but something like a bridge of those with “spiritual knowledge” for uninitiated humanity to the unite with the divine). This is not to deny that some Protestants have what seem on their face to be formally orthodox ecclesiologies, but in that they do not seem to sense the implications of their not becoming Catholic or Orthodox one wonders if the point is being missed.
So, if Protestant ecclesiologies are themselves deficient, then it stands to reason that their ecclesiologies must change if there is to be the sort of union Christ speaks of and embodies in Himself. For if Mary gave birth only to Christ's humanity, but did not birth Him who is fully God and fully Man, then neither does the Church give birth, by the Spirit, to deified humanity. The great divide between God and man is never overcome, and we remain separated from Him forever. This is the Nestorian ecclesiology, if you will. We become perfect and even sinless humans, but remain forever separated from God. All the rest of the Protestant heretical ecclesiologies also suffer from this ultimate conclusion: there is no union of the Church with God, but an eternal separation. Christians are perfect and sinless, but nothing more than “superhumanity.” Christ died only to make persons morally perfect, not to unite them to God.
Now clearly most Protestants don't intend this conclusion. They speak of union with God. But what sort of union is it? It's just like human fellowship. God is our Father. Jesus is our “bigger” brother. The Holy Spirit--well here is where the analogy falls apart (which itself should be a huge flashing warning sign). But there is no actual, real participation in God. The union is filial. But it is not the taking on of God's energies. It is red-orange painted on iron. It is not iron turning red-orange from taking on the fire's energy.
Further, for those Protestants who seem to formally have an ecclesiology that matches up with that of historic Christianity, there is a huge disconnect from the implications of such formal orthodoxy. For if it is the case that the Church is a divine-human institution, if the Church really is the Body of Christ, then it cannot be the case that any Protestant Church can, as a church, be that Body. But if that Protestant Church is not the Body of Christ, then intentional membership within that body is intentional schism. And the spiritual consequences and dangers of schism ought be obvious.
Please note two important things. I am not arguing for the failure of Protestant churches to be, in any real sense, the Body of Christ on the basis of the fact that either the Orthodox or Roman Catholic Churches claim to be that Body. Rather, I am arguing for that failure on the basis of the tenor of Protestant ecclesiologies themselves. In that these ecclesiologies instantiate Christiological heresies, they fail to instantiate the Church. And if that is the case, then no Protestant church can, of itself, be the Church. In fact, even those Protestants who espouse a formal ecclesiological orthodoxy, only end up intentionally perpetuating schism.
Now, it may well be that Protestants would deny that their respective ecclesiologies are tantamount to Christological heresies. I'm willing to predict that they will deny either that these Christological heresies apply to ecclesiology (or that their ecclesiology is no heresy) or deny that they adhere to these heresies. But they will have to argue for the former denial(s), and they still fall to the schism charge in light of the latter.
Since it is the case that the modern ecumenical movement arose from within Protestantism, then it is the Protestant ecclesiologies what will have to change for the reasons above. For even if all the Protestants of the globe are able to achieve an organic union, they will still remain Protestant. It may be an advance for ecumenism, but it will still be a failure for the unity of the Church.
Secondly, I am not arguing that anyone outside of Orthodoxy (or, to argue on principle, of Roman Catholicism) are not Christian in any sense. That may or may not be the case. But it is not part of my argument here. On a personal level, my opinion is that the Spirit of God blows where He wills, and although there is fact of the Body of Christ I have no basis to judge those outside the Church (which, sacramentally speaking, I, myself, still am outside the Church). In any case, salvation is not a given until, well, it's a given. There are many Orthodox (and Roman Catholic) who will fail to be saved and will be in hell. “Membership” is no guarantee.
[This is another in a handful of reflections I want to make on the matter of Church unity.
Previous posts:
Ecumenism I
Ecumenism II]
[Please note: The following are personal musings and not to be construed as *the* Orthodox understanding. If anything here contradicts the received teaching and way of life of the (Orthodox) Church, please correct me. As always: check with your priest or spiritual father.]
Criterion of Truth
One of the first and most important problems within ecumenism is by what means truth claims will be judged. For the simple fact of the matter is that irreconcilable contradictions in dogma among Christian groups are rife. Is baptism a sacrament and necessary for salvation, or is it merely a symbol without any salvific effect? Are the elements of the Lord's Supper really the Body and Blood of our Lord, or are they merely elements that have been assigned by Christians a certain metaphorical meaning? Is the Orthodox Church the one true visible Church Christ founded, or is the Roman Catholic Church that Church? Is Church unity necessarily visible, or is Church unity really only an invisible spiritual reality?
I've painted these in starker terms than is perhaps necessary, but not, I think, illegitimately. For while it is true that one can hold both that the bread and wine are the Body and Blood of the Lord and that the Church, through Christ's command, has, indeed, assigned metaphorical meaning to these elements, still one cannot hold that the elements have only metaphorical meaning and yet somehow are also metaphysically and really identified as Christ's Body and Blood. And while one may certainly affirm both that the Orthodox (or Catholic) Church is the one, true, visible Body of Christ and the invisible and spiritual reality of Church unity, still one cannot hold that Church unity is only or even primarily invisible and that any one particular Christian group is Christ's true Church. And so it goes.
But how does one otherwise adjudicate these fundamental and irresoluble contradictions? It can be done only by agreement on a single criterion or a definitive set of criteria. And it is just here that ecumenism fails, for of itself it cannot offer any such criterion.
What, after all, could it offer? Little else but either confusion or coercion. Either the Holy Spirit contradicts himself, or agreement must be enforced by political means. For it cannot be that the Holy Spirit has led one group of believers to one dogma and another group to another dogma which utterly contradicts the first. And if Church unity is invisible and spiritual, then the visible, fleshly unity among believers can be little more than politics and contractual arrangements. Either dogma matters or institutional conformity matters. But if dogma does not matter, what use institutional conformity? And how does one discriminate among dogma so as to know which is more important than another? What fellowship does one really have if groups cannot even agree on the place of baptism and the realities of the Lord's Supper? If we can't agree on how one becomes a Christian, nor on whether or not the Lord's Supper is the central act of God among his worshipping Body, then what, really, do we have? In the end, if all we have is respect and tolerance, what sort of unity is that? And what does it say about that sort of unity that we can have the exact same unity with non-Christian religions?
No, either we have an agreement on a single criterion, or we merely enforce political cohesion.
However, let us be clear here what is meant by “agreement on a single criterion.” It does not mean the making of a case for what seems best suited for such an endeavor. Rather, what is meant is the mutual coming to terms of the criterion that already exists. That is to say, the criterion is not something we produce or formulate ourselves. Rather it is something that is an objective fact whether or not we ourselves ever know it to be so. Ecumenism then has nothing of itself to offer. For it cannot agree on a criterion.
What I mean is this: For the Christian, the criterion of truth is Christ himself, who is “the way, the true, and the life” (John 14:6) and “in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). If Christ is the criterion, then what we say about Church unity must be the sort of unity he describes in John 17; i.e., that it is the same sort of unity shared between the Father and the Son, and between the Holy Trinity and us. So it is not a stretch to say that, what one says about the Church is what one says about Christ. If one has a deficient view of the Church, one will likely have a deficient view of Christ. Church heresies are tantamount to Christological heresies.
It is of the utmost importance, then, that what we say of Church unity conforms to what Christ has said and who He is. That is to say, while the union Jesus shares with the Father is ineffable, it is total. There are no gradations. Furthermore, if the unity shared among the disciples is a participation in that unity shared among the Holy Trinity, there is no division. Indeed, there is union of minds and wills. Furthermore, if Jesus is the Theandros, his Church is theanthropic. It is not some mere adoptionist or Eutychian institution. Like Christ, the Church is human and divine, no less one than the other. Like Christ, the union of the Church with her Lord is incarnate, and therefore, like Christ, whose divine and human natures are united without change, separation, division or confusion, the Church's unity is at once visible and invisible, at once one and plural. And if this union is living and dynamic, that is to say, if it is more than political, it cannot but have a dynamic connection through time and geography with the living Church in history and in heaven.
Clearly, then, what we have seen of ecumenism since its modern inception about a century ago is utterly deficient. It cannot instantiate, manifest, or even argue for the sort of unity Christ both prays for and makes possible. It does not have one mind, one way of life, or even the living connection with the past. The Church starts with both unity and plurality. Not one or the other. Just like the Holy Trinity.
[This is another in a handful of reflections I want to make on the matter of Church unity.
Previous post:
Ecumenism I]
[Please note: The following are personal musings and not to be construed as *the* Orthodox understanding. If anything here contradicts the received teaching and way of life of the (Orthodox) Church, please correct me. As always: check with your priest or spiritual father.]
Wikipedia has a helpful article on Christian ecumenism.
Because the meanings of "Christianity" are diverse, the description of what is meant by "Christian ecumenism" can take any of several directions.On the one hand, ecumenism is "interfaith dialogue" between representatives of diverse faiths, not necessarily with the intention of reconciling the professors of other faiths into full, organic unity with one another but simply to promote better relations. With some Christian perspectives on ecumenism, there is no other principle of ecumenism than this. They aim only toward the promotion of toleration, mutual respect and cooperation, whether between Christian churches and denominations, or between Christianity and other faiths. Thus, the World Council of Churches is an instrument in both, the Ecumenical Movement and the Interfaith Movement. However, this is not the case for all Christian ecumenical initiatives; and it would be difficult if not impossible to discuss them together, when much of the Christian world makes a definite difference between the two ideas. Therefore, readers are referred to the thorough discussion of ecumenism in the sense of the promotion of mutual appreciation and improvement between diverse religions, under the entry on religious pluralism.
On the other hand, ecumenism means the aim to reconcile all who profess Christian faith, into a single, visible organization, for example, through union with the Roman Catholic Church, or the Orthodox Church. Ecumenism in this sense focuses on the special problem of the relationship between Christian denominations, where Christianity is dogmatically defined.
This distinction between the two primary understandings of ecumenism (Protestant and Orthodox/Roman Catholic) is extremely important. Protestants find the Orthodox insistence on being the one, true, visible Church tiresome. But that is because Protestants come at the issue of ecumenism from a completely different ecclesiology from Orthodoxy.
Although I readily concede the following to be somewhat superficial, generally, I think it correct to describe Roman Catholic ecclesiology as “one over many” where unity obtains (in part) administratively in the see of Rome; Protestant ecclesiology as “many over one” where unity obtains pluralistically; and Orthodox ecclesiology as “both one and many” where unity is the catholicity of the local Church at the same time that it is the plurality of all the local Churches. With regard to Protestant ecclesiology, then, from the Orthodox perspective, the error is a mirror image of the Roman Catholic error. Whereas the Pope is the locus of the instantiation of the infallibility of the Church, in Protestantism, infallibility is instantiated in the individual. Whereas the Roman Catholic Church's unity is a visible adminstration linked to Rome, in Protestantism, the unity is necessarily invisible, and secured through the individual's adherence to his interpretation (and as many people of like mind with whom he can associate) of what constitutes the apostle's teaching. Whereas the Roman Catholic Church's apostolicity is historically tangible in episcopal succession and fidelity to conciliar dogma, in Protestantism, apostolicity is necessarily and exclusively doctrinal. So, for Orthodox, the Protestant ecclesiological error is bound up with that of the Catholic.
For Orthodox, Church unity is visible, incarnational, historical. For Protestants, Church unity is invisible, spiritual, and ahistorical. Protestant church unity is based on doctrinal agreement and the willingness to endure contradiction. That is to say, one will find the common denominator to which all can say “Amen,” and allow the differences, however substantive, to not matter. (One can see how easily portable this methodology is from the context of intra-Protestant dialogues to that between different faiths entirely.) But is this even Christian? (Cf. 1 Timothy 3:15)
Note here the substance of my complaint: It is not that Protestants aren't Orthodox. It's that Protestants have an ecclesiology that cannot be reconciled to Orthodox ecclesiology, and therefore ecumenical efforts cannot be aimed first at union. If two parties cannot even agree on what the endpoint should be, in what way can their efforts be fruitful? That is to say, for Orthodox, ecclesiology is not merely a doctrinal point, but a way of living. And one can only assume this is true of Protestants as well. This being the case, then, until Protestants change their ecclesiology, there can be no union. (More on that point later.) Protestants may be satisfied with toleration, respect and an invisible “unity.” But Orthodox cannot be so satisfied.
[This is a first in a handful of reflections I want to make on the matter of Church unity.]
I've not commented on the media coverage of the election of the Pope for a couple of reasons. First, I just felt that joining in on the prognostication was little better than reducing this whole thing to the political arena, and that would nearly be blasphemy. For all that I am not Roman Catholic, nor ever intend to be, I am firmly convinced that God had a hand in the election of His Holiness Benedict XVI. I'm not judging others that speculated on the possible successors to John Paul the Great, but that was how I felt about it.
Secondly, and this may be more a matter of confession than anything else, I so wanted to enjoy the apoplexy of the media (witness Cokie Roberts' bitterness on Nightline last night) when then Cardinal Ratzinger would be elected to the see of St. Peter that to pre-gloat would only take the joy and force out of the post-election smirk I am currently wearing. What must the media think when their presidential candidate didn't get elected and their worst papal nightmare did? Are any of them questioning their own existence? Do they feel a sense of the utter vapidity of their status as cultural and moral arbiters?
What is clear about many in the media, as well as many Americans, is their cluelessness on two obvious fundamental facts:
1. The Pope is Catholic
The Pope is not conservative, progressive, liberal, or whatever other political label one wants to put on him. The Holy Father is Catholic. And whatever sort of legitimate reforms may need to happen in the Catholic Church, there can be no reform of Catholic dogma. This is not a matter of being conservative. It's a matter of being Catholic. No pope, however much a media darling he may be, can change Catholic dogma. Not even papal infallibility grants the charism to the holder of the see of St. Peter the power to change the Church's teaching. So there will be no change on the ordination of women to the priesthood or episcopacy. There will be no change on the teaching that same sex behavior is sin. There will be no change on the prohibition of lay celebration of the Mass. There will be no change on abortion and embryonic stem cell research, no change on euthanasia. These involve fundamental Catholic dogmas, not conservative ones, and are thus not subject to change.
2. The Church is not a political institution
But the media, utterly secular, doesn't get it. For these pundits and many Americans, all of life is political and therefore subject to the manipulation of power and influence. In their minds, the Church should be, too. But then it would cease to be the Church. Surely there is a sense in which politics happens in the Church. After all, politics, in its essence, is just the practical working together of people to be a community. Thus, I will be the first to say that, in this sense, the papal conclave involved politics.
Politics, however, is not the substance of the Church. The Church is not merely "andric" but "theandric." She is the Body of Christ, subject to the illumination and guidance of the Holy Spirit. As such she is conservative, liberal, progressive, traditional and none of these things as well. So to act as though the demonstrations, protests, and advocacies of various groups of Catholics--most in America you may well note--will somehow bring change to the Church is just simply a secularized understanding of the Church, and not a Christian one. The only lobbyists the Church has are the penitent and prayerful.
So, all this talk in America and post-Christian Europe about alienation and the Church and how the pope has to somehow bridge the gap between those who reject the Church's teachings and the Church itself, is empty blather. Catholics are not religious consumers, or swing voters, they are Catholics. If there is alienation, it is not on the part of the Church. The Catholic Church has stayed the same, her teachings have remained constant. Thus, for those who feel alienated, the only truly pastoral and loving remedy is for those who have rejected the Church's consistent and constant life and teachings to repent, confess, and return in loving submission to Christ Himself in His Body the Church.
Thankfully, the Catholic Church has a Pope who understands this.
Recapitulation
In the first part of this series of posts, I noted that all ecclesiologies essentially reduce to two opposing options: the Branch Model, in which the Church is comprised of all the various churches and groups, in a spiritual union; and the Exclusive Model in which a church or group claims to be the Church, visible and incarnate, as well as spiritual, in contradistinction to all the rest. I argued in that first part that of the two models, the Branch Model was fundamentally flawed and failed to substantiate its own claims. I contended that the Branch Model does not take seriously the incarnate nature of the Church, which the Church must have if it is Christ’s Body, but necessarily spiritualizes such union in a way that ultimately negates an incarnate and visible union. The Exclusive Model, on the other hand, fundamentally integrates both the spiritual and the incarnate realities of the unity of the Church, and thus is the proper model for ecclesiology. However, that does not mean that any exclusive claim to be the Church can be taken on its face. There must be standard, essential characteristics that distinguish the true Church from all others making the claim to be the Church.
In the next four parts in this series of posts (Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V), I one by one examined the four cardinal characteristics of the Church: unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity. These essential qualities are enumerated in the Nicene Creed, but lest I be thought to be question-begging, I turned to St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, with support from other New Testament Scriptures, to show that these qualities are, indeed, essential qualities of the Church, and, more importantly, how the New Testament defines those qualities. On some of those qualities, especially that of catholicity, I also drew in support from among the earliest Christian writings to show that my interpretation of these New Testament texts was in line with what the earliest Christians understood about these concepts.
If I have done my task well, I have argued for an understanding of the Church that necessitates a claim to exclusivity (there is only one visible body among all Christian churches and groups that can lay claim to the reality of being the Church) and confirmed from the New Testament what criteria one may have for discerning between competing claims. Furthermore, I have also further supported my contention that the Branch Model is a heresy, and we should look for a church or group that claims to be the visible, incarnate Body of Christ exclusive to all others.
So, taking these four characteristics in hand, let’s return to the two models and see how it is that the Branch Model is a heresy and the Exclusive Model fundamentally correct. We will then draw near to an answer to the question with which these posts have been concerned: Where is the Church?
Back to the Models
In addition to the failure to substantiate its own claims, the Branch Model fails to live up to the New Testament criteria for being the Church. As we have seen, the unity of the Church is both divine and human, spiritual and earthly, visible/incarnate and invisible. It encompasses all of the Church in the heavenlies, as well as the Church on earth. The Branch Model cannot offer this full unity, for the visible/incarnate reality of the Branch Model is that all the churches and groups it attempts to draw into its schema are divided from one another, and the divisions are not merely superficial but significant. The Branch Model fails on holiness, for we know this holiness must be an incarnate one, which necessitates a sacramental understanding of faith and salvation. And yet many churches and groups reject sacraments. The Branch Model fails on catholicity, because it cannot locate the fullness of the Church in any one local body, particularly if that local body rejects the Eucharistic Mystery. The Branch Model necessitates a view that individual congregations are only parts of a greater whole, and this is not the New Testament understanding of the local Church. Finally, the Branch Model fails on apostolicity not only because it is not possible to assign apostolicity to the full body of contrary and contradictory teachings that are claimed to be “apostolic,” but also because it cannot substantiate a tangible and lived connection between its members today and the historical men and women who were the first Pentecostal members of the Church; the embodied ways of life are impossible of all reconciling with the way of life handed down by the apostles.
The Exclusive Model, on the other hand, gives room for all these New Testament characteristics to be realized. The Exclusive Model more fully manifests unity in that it gives credence not just to the spiritual unity, but also recognizes that the spiritual unity must be incarnated in a particular body. The Exclusive Model also more fully manifests holiness in that it incarnates that holiness of the Church among a particular people, especially in the Eucharist. The Exclusive Model best manifest catholicity as it reveals the whole Church in the local Church as well as manifests its connection to the worldwide Churches. And the Exclusive Model more fully manifests apostolicity not only because it can claim apostolic doctrine, but because it can demonstrate an incarnate connection to the apostolic Church.
Discernment
But there are many churches that claim to be the Church, or the New Testament Church. My heritage churches, especially the a capella churches of Christ, claimed to have restored the New Testament Church in our day. The Roman Catholic Church claims to be the Church. The Orthodox Churches claim to be the Church Christ founded. Southern Baptists make their claim as to being the Church, and preaching an apostolic gospel of salvation by faith alone. How does one decide?
I submit that the only criteria that can be of any help are the ones we have examined in these posts.
If the Church is the Body of Christ, it must be one. If the Church is one, then there is only one real Church. Making this claim does not limit the grace and workings of God to the embodied Church. God sends the sunshine on the good and the wicked. The Spirit moves where he will. But it is to say that one may and must say, "Here is the Church." In our present schismatic reality, this point must be strongly pressed, though it be as strongly disbelieved. If the Church is the Body of Christ, it cannot be divided, since Christ is one, and the Trinity is one. The schisms we have witnessed in history and presently are not divisions within the one, indivisible Body of Christ, but divisions away from it. And that means that any church today claiming to be the Church must never have divided from the historic Church, the Church which can be traced historically, ontologically, if you will, back to the day of Pentecost.
If the Church which Christ founded is holy, this holiness will not merely be a juridical declaration, but will have incarnate reality. Christ, in assuming a body, sanctified the human body. Christ, in being baptized in the Jordan, sanctified all the waters of the world. Christ, in ascending bodily into heaven left a visible, incarnate Church in which bread is sanctified, wine is sanctified, water and oil is sanctified. That is to say, the Church has sacraments. Bread and wine become through the invocation of the Holy Spirit, the Body and Blood of Christ, just as through the Holy Spirit, the womb of a virgin in Nazareth became God's throne. Many Christians today reject this. They do so naively, to be sure, but in so doing they unwittingly but truly reject the Church Christ has given us.
If the Church is truly catholic, then it will not be a sum of all its parts, but will, in each local Church, contain the whole of Christ in the Eucharist and thus the whole of the Church as well. Thus, each bishop, who pastors each local Church, will be among brothers, and though some brothers may be graced with special dignity and honor, no one brother will rule over all, for all are shepherds who serve as undershepherds to our Chief Pastor and Bishop, Christ.
If the Church is the Body of Christ and apostolic, then it must be and proclaim the truth of Christ. That is to say, the genuineness of any group's claim to be the Church (or a part of the Church) rests significantly on whether or not it proclaims the truth of Christ, for Christ himself is the Truth, and departure from truth is a departure from Christ. Christ promised to lead the apostles, and the Church, into all truth. Part of that revelation, by Paul's own account, is both recorded in the documents that the Church has discerned to be the Scriptures and kept by way of the so-called "oral teachings" of the Apostles. It also, in concert with Christ's promises, includes those dogmatic decisions of the one, visible Church on matters of faith (for example, the ecumenical Councils). Thus, any group which teaches that which is contrary to Scripture or the ecumenical teachings of the Church, or denies those Scriptures and teachings, may rightly be doubted as to the veracity of its claim to be the Church, or part of the Church. Thus, for example, anyone who or any group which would deny the biblical and conciliar understandings of the person and work of Christ may invalidate, by their own mouths, their claims to be part of the Church. This would include, in part, the denial of Jesus' divinity and humanity, the Trinitarian understanding of God's being, the Virgin Birth, the bodily Resurrection, the unending rule of Christ, etc.
I well recognize that certain of my readers will reject these conclusions, but in so doing, they must reject what has been previously discussed, either that these are indeed the characteristics of the Church of Christ, or that the New Testament defines them in this way. And they are welcome to advance their own arguments as to what those characteristics should be and mean. I am doubtful, however, that a better case can be made. Not because I have argued it, but because it is, I believe, the ancient case and has stood the test of time.
A Personal Conclusion
You will note that throughout this argument I have refrained from making any definitive statement as to which church or group is the Church. I have made some comments exemplifying some of my points that may be seen to be critical of specific churches, but have not, for all that, definitively said, “These are not the Church,” or “These are the Church.” My intent has been to let the argument speak for itself, in particular my argument derived from the New Testament texts.
Those who've read my blog for more than a day, however, will know exactly my thoughts on the matter. They will know that I believe and am firmly convinced that the Orthodox Church is truly what She claims to be, the Church Christ founded in the New Testament which continues, as He promised, to this day. I hope it will now be seen that I do not make this claim, or rather, I do not affirm this claim lightly, or as a matter of mere personal preference. It is as a result of much study and prayer.
I recognize that this will likely offend my Roman Catholic brothers and sisters. I do wish such a claim would not create the offense, but for that to happen, Rome and the Orthodox would have to reunite.
But I do, I feel, owe my Roman Catholic readers an explanation as to why I think Orthodoxy is the Church. Regrettably, due to the nature of this series of posts, as well as my blog in general, such an explanation must be brief. In short, I do not believe that the ancient Church ever taught the rule of one bishop over the entire Church. I can see no theological, biblical, historical or liturgical evidence that would support such a teaching. I recognize that abler men and women than me have defended this teaching, and I have read those arguments. But I am not convinced. Furthermore, I do not believe the ancient Church ever taught the doctrine of original sin as the Roman Catholic Church teaches it, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, based on that doctrine of original sin, or the infallibility of the Pope (I believe the infallibility belongs to the Church, not to a single bishop). These doctrines, particularly papal supremacy and infallibility, however, are not just theologoumena, but are absolutely required of every Catholic. This, I believe, is a distortion of the apostolic deposit, and a departure from the ancient faith of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. Finally, I cannot accept the filioque. Though I know the filioque has been explained in such a way so as to make it consonant with ancient Trinitarian theology, I believe that some of the Trinitarian errors that have arisen, even if they have later been rejected, have arisen in part because of this unjustified addition to the Creed.
For these reasons, and in comparing what the Orthodox teach today with the ancient epitomes and creeds of the faith and the Scriptures, I believe that only Orthodox can legitimately claim to have kept the faith without addition or subtraction, whole and entire that was first given to the Apostles.
And that is why I am an “Orthodox wannabe,” patiently waiting and praying and working to enter the Orthodox Church with all my family.
Apostolic
The apostolicity of the Church is fairly uncontroversial. Few Christians would deny that for the Church, however they conceive it, apostolicity is essential. The difficulty arises, however, in coming to terms with what that characteristic actually signifies. Is it primarily about doctrine? Is it primarily about historical episcopal continuity (i. e., apostolic succession)?
That a Church's apostolicity is predicated on unity with apostolic teaching is largely uncontroversial. From the very first entrance of the Church into history, we know that believers conscientiously aligned themselves with apostolic doctrine.
And they were persevering in the teaching of the apostles and in the communion, and in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers. (Acts 2:42, The Orthodox New Testament, © 2004 Holy Apostles Convent)
Nor was this devotion to the apostles' teaching merely a matter of conveying the “spirit” of apostolic teaching. As though the apostolic teaching could be reduced to an essence which allowed for adherence to contradictory specific instantiations of that essence. As St. Paul warns the Corinthians:
Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all be speaking the same thing, and that schisms may not be among you, but that ye be perfected together in the same mind and in the same sentiment. (1 Corinthians 1:10)
Not speaking the same thing or not having the same mind was tantamount to schism, schism itself being a result of not having the same mind. Their public witness, their professed teaching, needed to be consistent and in agreement with one another. And that teaching needed to be “speaking the same thing” as the apostles, and having the same mind as the apostles.
Note also the exhortation of St. Peter:
This second epistle, beloved, I now write to you, in which I stir up your sincere mind to be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandments of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior . . .” (2 Peter 3:1-2)
As St. Peter writes, we are to be mindful of the commands of the Apostles. After all, wasn't this the last charge Jesus left to his apostles?
And Jesus approached and spoke to them, saying, “All authority is given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you; and behold, I am with you all the days until the completion of the age.” Amen. (Matthew 28:18-20)
But while being apostolic in teaching is fundamentally important, it is not the only thing which apostolicity conveys. Let us return to our fundamental texts in Ephesians.
So then ye are no longer strangers and sojourners, but fellow citizens of the saints and of the household of God, who were built up on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the cornerstone, in Whom every building, being joined together, increaseth to a holy temple in the Lord, in Whom ye are also being built up together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)
This is echoed in the Revelation given to St. John:
And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. (Revelation 21:14)
What does it mean for the Church to be built on the Apostles? It means, in part, imitation of their way of life. As St. Paul exhorted the Corinthians:
For if ye have myriads of tutors in Christ, yet ye have not many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I begot you through the Gospel. Therefore, I beseech you, keep on becoming imitators of me. On this account I sent to you Timothy, who is my child, beloved and faithful in the Lord, who shall remind you of my ways which are in Christ, even as I teach everywhere in every church. (1 Corinthians 4:15-17)
And to emphasize it again, he writes in the eleventh chapter, “Keep on becoming imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). Note, too, that it wasn't just the imitation of one's spiritual father, or of the one who brought you to Christ, but also to imitate those deputed by him. Not only were the Corinthians to imitate Paul, the apostle, but St. Timothy, his personal representative and disciple (and bishop of Ephesus).
This, however, was not a unique dynamic between the Apostle and the Corinthians. St. Paul also has the same commendation for the Thessalonians:
For our Gospel did not come to be to you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and in much fullness of assurance, even as ye know of what sort we were among you for your sake; and ye became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much afflictions with joy in the Holy Spirit, so that ye became examples to all those who believe in Macedonia and Achaia. (1 Thessalonians 1:5-7)
This imitation was one encompassing the words and way of life of St. Paul and his companions, “So then, brethren, be standing firm and holding fast the traditions which ye were taught, whether by word or by our epistle” (2 Thessalonians 2:15). That is to say, the things the Thessalonians imitated was the tradition which St. Paul handed down to them:
Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to withdraw yourselves from every brother who walketh disorderly, and not according to the tradition which they received from us. For ye yourselves know how it is needful to imitate us for we led not a disorderly life among you. . . (2 Thessalonians 3:6-7)
So, we see that the apostolic quality of the Church is denoted not merely by the content of the apostolic teaching--which seems uncontroversial--but also by the way of life lived by the apostles. We must not only imitate what they taught, but how they lived. This brings us inescapably to the fact and reality of the Tradition, which itself embodies the way of life of the Apostles, as St. Paul himself indicates.
This way of life speaks not only to the content of our doctrine, it shapes the entire contours of our lives. As holiness and catholicity arise from the union of and with God, so, too, does apostolicity. As Christ prayed for the unity of his disciples with Himself and His Father, he prayed also for the unity of His Apostles and those who would believe on Him through their word (cf. John 17:20). Apostolicity, then, is another manifestation of the life of the Holy Trinity, and the love of God. If the early believers devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, they devoted themselves also to their way of life, because that teaching and that way of life came from Him Who is our Life.
Since, like holiness and catholicity, this apostolic quality of the nature of the Church, in terms of our question, “Where is the Church?”, derives from the quality of unity, we can also see how it is that apostolicity must come from the life of the Church and the Holy Eucharist in which the wholeness of the Church's Life is contained. But if this apostolicity is Eucharistic, it is necessarily episcopally connected. And if this apostolicity is Eucharistic and episcopal, it will be historical. That is to say, an apostolic Church is not just a Church which has a connection of doctrinal teaching, but it is a Church that receives the way of life laid down by Christ in His Apostles through the historic connections she keeps to the Church that has come before her in the teaching and the way of life that is handed down Apostle to bishop, bishop to bishop, saint and martyr to their fellow believers. It is a tangible connection, not so much of canonical or juridical tactile ordinations (though that is certainly true of it), but a tangible connection in which the faith is taught personally and lived personally and handed down personally. One cannot make an apostolic Church from scratch. One cannot merely distill the New Testament essence and bottle it for oneself. One must receive the apostolic Church from those who themselves received it from others, on down the ages until Pentecost.
Apostolicity, then, is little more than another aspect of the earthly and heavenly reality of the Incarnation as given to, held by, and received from the historic Church.
Catholic
It is true that the term "catholic" is not used in the New Testament, in contrast to our other three terms. The Church is explicitly called "one," and "holy," and is said to be founded on the apostles and devoted to their teachings. But we do not see a verse with the term "catholic" in it. That is not to say, however, that the concept of the Church's catholicity is not in Scripture. It is most definitely a New Testament quality of the Church as we will see.
Furthermore, catholicity is demanded from the fact of the Church's unity. As I traced in part III the characteristic of holiness from the Church's unity with the Godhead, so, too, will we trace the catholicity of the Church from that Trinitarian unity, and the wholeness obtaining in the particular. Catholicity has come to mean, for many, universality or the worldwide scope of the Church. As we trace the concept from the New Testament and one of its earliest expressions in St. Ignatios of Antioch, however, we will see that the original impetus of the word was not so much worldwide universality as completeness and wholeness.
First, let us start with the verses from the first chapter of Ephesians that will ground us in our understanding of this essential aspect of the Church.
And He put in subjection all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him Who filleth all things in all. (Ephesians 1:22-23, The Orthodox New Testament, © 2004 Holy Apostles Convent)
The Church is the fullness of Christ, who Himself fills all things. Thus, wherever the Church is, the wholeness that is Chirst is there. If a particular Church is said to contain the fullness of Christ, it can by extension be said that a particular Church contains the wholeness of the Church, since Christ, Himself, fills the Church.
Now some may object that St. Paul is merely here referring to the universality of the the Church; i. e., that the fullness of Christ applies to the whole of the Church. We could point out that the Ephesian epistle is addressed to the Ephesian Church, but there is some textual question as to whether the ascription is original to the document, and some speculation as to whether Ephesians itself functioned as a circular letter. So let us turn our attention to the Colossian letter:
For in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the divinity bodily, and ye are made full in Him, Who is the head of all principality and authority . . . (Colossians 2:9-10)
Once again we have the stress that in Jesus is the fullness of the Godhead. And here, the Apostle asserts that the Church in Colossae is "made full in Him." In other words, all of Christ dwells in the Church in Colossae, and if the Church contains the fullness of Christ, then the wholeness of the Church dwells in Colossae.
Compare also the following salutations to the Corinthians: "[T]o the Church of God which is in Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints, with all those calling upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place, both theirs and ours" (1 Corinthians 1:2). "Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the Church of God which is in Corinth, with all the saints who are in all Achaia" (2 Corinthians 1:1). In other greetings, he refers to the saints in a particular locale (Romans, Philippians, Colossians), or the Churches in a particular region (Galatia). He refers to the Church of the Thessalonians; as opposed to the Church of Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Thessalonians 1:1).
But there is also the greetings of our Lord to the seven Churches of Asia Minor in the Revelation given to John:
The point being that just as in Christ is the fullness of the Godhead, just as the Father is the font of the Godhead, just as the Spirit is one in substance with the Godhead--that is to say, just as each Person of the Trinity is fully and completely God, so, too, each local Church, participating in this Trinitarian unity, is fully and completely the Church. Jesus is no less God than the Father or the Spirit; the Holy Spirit no less God than Jesus or the Father. Nor is it the case that adding the Three Persons together creates a sum greater than the particular Person. The fullness of the Godhead is manifest in the Trinity and in each Person of the Trinity.
So, too, is this the case of the Church and its characteristic of catholicity. This is not to deny the universal aspects of catholicity, for the whole Church does, of course, include all Churches of the world and the Church in the heavenlies. But understanding catholicity from the standpoint of universality can lead to an erroneous conclusion: that the universal Church is made up of parts, local congregations or dioceses, each in itself incomplete apart from the whole. This is not the New Testament teaching. Each local Church is the whole of the Church and at the same time is a part of the entire Body of Christ on earth and in heaven.
But lest one think this is an aberrant interpretation, it was also the earliest interpretation of the first century Christians. Take St. Ignatios of Antioch, for example, who died right at the beginning of the second century, so lived most of his life during the lifetimes of the Apostles. (Church tradition describes him as the child Jesus took up in his arms in Mark 9:35, and with St. Polycarp, was a disciple of the Apostle John. If Peter is counted as the first bishop of Antioch, St. Ignatios is the third, serving after Evodius.) Like St. Paul and our Lord, Ignatios greets the Church in a particular locale:
And as we've seen in Ephesians and Colossians, St. Ignatios also understands the fullness of the Church to dwell in a particular Church:
Take ye heed, then, to have but one Eucharist. For there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup to [show forth] the unity of His blood; one altar; as there is one bishop, along with the presbytery and deacons, my fellow-servants: that so, whatsoever ye do, ye may do it according to [the will of] God. (St. Ignatios of Antioch, Epistle to the Ephesians, chapter 4)
and
Take ye heed, then, to have but one Eucharist. For there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ, and one cup to [show forth] the unity of His blood; one altar; as there is one bishop, along with the presbytery and deacons, my fellow-servants: that so, whatsoever ye do, ye may do it according to [the will of] God. (St. Ignatios of Antioch, Epistle to the Philadelphians, chapter 4)
Again, we know that the saint understands there to be one bishop in one locale, and therefore one Eucharist. This Eucharistic unity and the episcopal ministry founded on it is understood to be in the "one flesh of our Lord." Each Eucharist contains the fullness of Christ's divinity. It is not as though one could add up all the Eucharists around the world and get a full Christ. Each Eucharist is fully Christ, and nothing less. And again, where the fullness of Christ is, there is the whole Church.
The first epistle of Clement is a communication between two Churches: "The Church of God which sojourns at Rome, to the Church of God sojourning at Corinth," (1 Clement 1:1). The occasion of the writing is the sedition against the leaders of the Church in Corinth. St. Clement writes of the orderly transition from the Apostles to the bishops after them, and notes that,
We are of opinion, therefore, that those appointed by them, or afterwards by other eminent men, with the consent of the whole Church, and who have blamelessly served the flock of Christ in a humble, peaceable, and disinterested spirit, and have for a long time possessed the good opinion of all, cannot be justly dismissed from the ministry. (1 Clement 44)
Note here that the consent of the whole Church is predicated. But St. Clement does not mean the entire Church around the world, but rather the local Church which comprises the whole Church. And lest one think this is a tendentious reading taking "whole Church" in a way St. Clement did not intend, note his talk on the offering of the altar (using the offerings of the Old Covenant as a type and the Eucharist as the anti-type):
Not in every place, brethren, are the daily sacrifices offered, or the peace-offerings, or the sin-offerings and the trespass-offerings, but in Jerusalem only. And even there they are not offered in any place, but only at the altar before the temple, that which is offered being first carefully examined by the high priest and the ministers already mentioned. Those, therefore, who do anything beyond that which is agreeable to His will, are punished with death. Ye see, brethren, that the greater the knowledge that has been vouchsafed to us, the greater also is the danger to which we are exposed. (1 Clement 41)
Like St. Ignatios, there is one sacrifice and one altar for the whole Church. And yet, St. Clement well recognizes that there are many Christian altars on which the Eucharist is offered throughout the world. How can he compare the many altars of the New Covenant with the one altar in Jerusalem? Because the one altar of a local Church is the one altar of the whole Church.
Throughout all this discussion on catholicity, I have been stressing the wholeness of the Church in the local Church over against the worldwide extent of the Church. The Church has not denied this universal aspect, though it did develop later (some of the beginnings of which development can be seen in St. Cyprian of Carthage's The Unity of the Catholic Church, where, for St. Cyprian, "catholic" is used in the sense described above, and yet there are intimations of universality as well). My point is not to deny the notion of universality, but to combat the notion of the Church as the sum of its parts. It is manifestly not that.
After all, if the Church is one with the Godhead, then wherever the Church is, it is all there by way of the hypostatic union in Christ.
In the previous post (part II), I noted that, at least in terms of the question under consideration, “Where is the Church?” the essential characteristic of the Church is the manifestation of Her love in unity. From that unity, I argued (again in terms of this question), flowed the other cardinal characteristics of what it means to be the Church: holiness, catholicity and apostolicity.
Holy
I have been locating these characteristics in the book of Ephesians, lest anyone think the Nicene qualities are simply tendentiously asserted by myself. With that in mind, let us look at a seminal text in Ephesians denoting the holiness of the Church.
Husbands, be loving your own wives, even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself up for her, in order that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her in the laver of the water with the word, that He might present her to Himself the glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any of such things; but that she might be holy and unblemished. (Ephesians 5:25-27, The Orthodox New Testament, © 2004 Holy Apostles Convent)
This text is, of course, much debated in our modernist egalitarian society, but not for the characteristic it notes about the Church: that she is holy and unblemished. That is not to say, however, that the holiness of the Church itself is not questioned. Indeed, it is flatly rejected and denied by secular society, and, sadly, Christians as well. The New Testament, however, is adamant about this. Holiness is an essential quality if one would see the Lord. Writes the author of the Hebrews epistle, "Be pursuing peace with all, and sanctification [i. e., holiness], without which no one shall see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14). No one can see God unless they are holy. The Church, then can have no part of God if She is not holy. Indeed, if She is one with Jesus as Jesus and the Father are one, if the unity of the Holy Trinity obtains in the Church, then She must be holy. And not just holy “one day,” or “when Jesus comes again,” but now, presently. Otherwise the Church Herself is not one with God now and presently, and thus, in effect does not exist. But that She exists is clearly asserted by Scripture and history, and the rest must necessarily follow. That the Church is presently, now, holy is attested to by St. Paul in Colossians:
And you, being once alienated and enemies in your mind, in wicked works, yet now did He reconcile in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and blameless and without reproach before Him-- . . . (Colossians 1:21-22)
And also in St. Peter's first epistle:
[Y]e also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. . . . But ye are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for a possession,” that ye might “tell forth the virtues” of the One Who called you out of darkness into His wondrous light . . . (1 Peter 2:5, 9)
Note the present tenses of these declarations: “yet now did He reconcile,” “ye are a holy priesthood,” and so forth. Of course, many will ask, how does one reconcile the fact that the Church is holy, but her members commit sins? For many, this proposition is an either/or concept: either the Church is holy now, and Her members do not sin, or She isn't, and Her members do sin. But it will help our thinking to consider the words of the Apostle John:
And this is the message which we have heard from Him and we announce to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we should say we have communion with Him, and walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have communion with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sins. If we should say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we be confessing our sins, faithful is He and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanses us from all unrighteousness. If we should say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. (1 John 1:5-10)
That is to say, the reality is a both/and. Individual Church members do commit sins, and those sins are routinely confessed and remitted via the Blood of our Lord. But the Church Herself is blameless and holy. It is only a heretical reductionism that must insist on a split between the holiness of the Church and the repentant lives of Her members. Salvation is a process, theosis, and in God's mercy and wisdom not accomplished in an instant. Says St. Paul elsewhere, “[B]e working out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is the One Who energizeth in you both to will and to energize for the sake of His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13). St. Irenaeus of Lyons may help us think about this:
But our opinion [doxa, also “teaching”] is in accordance with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn establishes our opinion. For we offer to Him His own, announcing consistently the fellowship and union of the flesh and Spirit. For as the bread, which is produced from the earth, when it receives the invocation of God, is no longer common bread, but the Eucharist, consisting of two realities, earthly and heavenly; so also our bodies, when they receive the Eucharist, are no longer corruptible, having the hope of the resurrection to eternity. (St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 4.18.5)
Note St. Irenaeus' contention: we have two realities, the earthly and the heavenly. If the bread and wine can contain both an earthly reality and a heavenly one, so, too, our bodies, though corruptible and subject to death, on the basis of the Eucharist are no longer corruptible. This was asserted by St. Ignatios of Antioch in the previous post: the Eucharist is the medicine of divine immortality. (Epistle to the Ephesians, chapter 20). We live in the time of the “now and not yet.” We are a holy priesthood, and we also must confess our sins and receive cleansing.
In my former post, I reflected on the nature of ecclesiological models, and argued that there are only two such possible models, and that one of them, the Branch Model, is fundamentally flawed, incapable of providing a model that is in line with the reality of what the Church really is. In short, the Branch Model is a heresy. The only legitimate model of ecclesiology is the Exclusive Model; that is to say, an incarnate, visible church or group lays claim to being the Church. The mere claim, of course, does not authenticate itself. Rather, the claim itself must be based on what the essential characteristics of the Church actually are.
This is not the first time I've reflected on the question of what constitutes the Church of Christ. Most of my reflections on this topic took place in December 2002, and found expression in the following: Five Theses in Advent, The Church Is One and Visible, and another essay with the same title as this post, Where Is the Church?. What I will be saying here will not be essentially different from my previous reflections, though I do intend here to clarify and expand upon them.
The Essential Nature of the Church: Unity
A good a place to begin, as to the essential conditions necessary for a church or group to be the Church, is the Nicene Creed and its declaration of the Church as one, holy, catholic and apostolic. But this may seem to beg the question, so let us start with Ephesians (and some related New Testament passages) where all these qualities are manifest.
One
The classic text in Ephesians on the unity of the Church comes from chapter four.
There is one body, and one Spirit, even as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, Who is over all, and through all, and in you all. But to each of us was given grace according to the measure of the gift of the Christ. Wherefore, He saith, "Having ascended on high, He led captivity captive," and "gave gifts to men." Now that He ascended, what it is except that He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? The One Who descended is the same also Who ascended above all of the heavens, in order that He might fill all things. And He gave some to be apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some shepherds and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, to the work of ministering, to the building up of the body of the Christ, until we all might come to the unity of the faith, and of the full knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of the Christ; in order that we may no longer be infants, tossed to and fro by waves, and carried about with every wind of teaching, by the sleight of men, in craftiness toward the systematizing of error; but speaking the truth in love, we might grow up into Him in all things who is the head-- the Christ; from Whom all the body, being joined and knit together by what every juncture supplieth, according to the energy of every single part in measure, maketh for itself the increase of the body, to the building up of itself in love. (Ephesians 4:4-16, The Orthodox New Testament, © 2004 Holy Apostles Convent)
I have quoted this passage at length precisely because the discussion of the gifts of various ministries in the Church is bookended by the assertion of unity. These gifts both come from the nature of the Church as one Body and serve that one Body by uniting it in their ministries. But of course, the classical text for the unity of the Church is found in Jesus' own prayer.
"And I do not make request for these only, but also for those who shall believe on Me through their word; in order that all may be one, even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us, that the world might believe that Thou didst send me forth. And the glory which Thou has given Me I have given them, in order that they may be one, even as We are one: I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into one, and that the world may know that Thou didst send Me forth, and didst love them even as Thou dist love Me. Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am, in order that they may behold the glory, that which is Mine, which Thou gavest Me; for Thou didst love Me before the foundation of the world." (John 17:20-24)
Here we see that the unity predicated of the Church is the unity of the Godhead Himself. It is the Trinitarian unity in which can be no division, no schism. It is a perfect unity, complete, without flaw. And I must stress this: It is the unity which inheres in the Church, by the Church's very participation hypostatically in Christ. Insofar as the Church is in Christ, she is graced with the unity that obtains in the Holy Trinity.
So this unity is not one of mere organization, administration or institution. It is, indeed, a charismatic, a pneumatic, unity. Since it is a unity that obtains by way of participation in the Life of the Holy Trinity, it is fundamentally real. It is actual, not potential. It does not need to be realized. It is.
Indeed, this unity is a Eucharistic unity.
The cup of blessing which we bless, it it not communion of the blood of the Christ? The bread which we break, is it not communion of the body of the Christ. For we who are many, are one bread, one body; for we all partake of the one bread. (1 Corinthians 10:16-17)
The Church's unity is founded in Christ in the Holy Trinity, but if flows from the Mystery of the Holy Eucharist. This is entirely appropriate, for just as the God-given creaturely gifts of bread and wine are made by God's grace to partake of the very nature of divinity, so, too, are those who partake of the bread and wine brought into real and vital participation with that divinity, and are thus made one body in this Eucharistic act and promise.
It is from this Eucharistic Mystery enacted in and for and by the Church, that the Church realizes her unity and is realized in unity. It is from this Eucharistic unity that any sort of institutional or organizational unity obtains. "Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is administered either by the bishop, or by one to whom he entrusted it" St. Ignatios of Antioch wrote (Epistle to the Smyrnaeans, chapter 8), because the episcopacy is itself founded on the Eucharist. The Eucharistic Mystery is also the foundation of the Church's unity of mind. As St. Ignatios writes in his Epistle to the Ephesians, chapter 20, that "ye obey the bishop and the presbytery with an undivided mind, breaking one and the same bread, which is the medicine of immortality, and the antidote to prevent us from dying, but which causes that we should live for ever in Jesus Christ." But this exhortation to unity of mind is not just a second century innovation, it is the very part of the apostolic deposit itself.
Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all be speaking the same thing, and that schisms may not be among you, but that ye be perfected together in the same mind and in the same sentiment. (1 Corinthians 1:10)
The Church's unity is not only incarnated as a visible body united around the bishop, but that unity is also incarnated in oneness of mind, teaching the same doctrine, having the same belief.
There are perhaps a myriad of ways the Church lives the unity that is fully and completely hers. The love the members of the Body show for one another is, by all accounts, paramount. Indeed, I might rather have titled this section "The Essential Nature of the Church: Love" as Love is another name for Unity. In fact, Jesus' prayer for the unity of the Church, cited above, intertwines the divine love and divine unity which inheres in the Church and between the Church and the Godhead. But the stress on the unitive aspect of this divine love is what is in focus here, precisely because this manifestation of love as unity is a particular and essential aspect of the nature of the Church.
One could, of course, argue well and rightly that all of these four cardinal points (oneness, holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity) are simply particular incarnations of the divine love that creates and sustains the Church. And one could also well and rightly argue that each of these cardinal points give rise to the rest: unity to holiness, apostolicity to catholicity, and so forth; all of these being bound essentially in love.
But in terms of the question this series of posts sets out to answer, the matter of unity is not only primary, and therefore from this standpoint, generative, but fundamentally essential. For in answering the question, "Where is the Church?" it is precisely the unity of the Church that substantiates the answer. All other answers that predicate holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity can be defended as giving rise to unity. This would not be wrong, but it would leave such answers more easily manipulable to claims that have no foundation in reality. For example, Protestants claim their particular churches or groups are apostolic because they are one with the apostles in doctrine. Leaving the authenticity of this claim aside, unity becomes the product of dogma, rather than its origin. And without this original and generative unity, one has no way to determine between competing claims of apostolicity.
Thus, at least in the terms of this question, unity is essential and fundamental.
The implications of this unity, however, will have to wait for a moment. We will return to what it means for this unity to be originated in the Holy Trinity, realized in the Eucharist, and expressed in the same mind, and what that means in terms of answering our question. But before we do that, we must turn to the remaining three characteristics of the Church as delineated from the Scriptures. And it is to holiness, catholicity, and apostolicity to which we now turn our attention.
Introduction
The first and primary life question that one must ask is "Who is the Christ?" But inescapably attendant upon that question is a second one, "Where is the Church?" For if one answers correctly the question of who Christ is, one will be led necessarily and directly to ask, "Where is His Church?" The two questions are inseparable. One cannot ask the first without asking the second. And one cannot be mistaken about the answer to the second without also being mistaken about the answer to the first. Which is to say, if we properly understand who Christ is, we are free to properly understand where the Church is. But if we are mistaken in where the Church is, we will also be mistaken in who Christ is. Ecclesiology is Christology.
In light of that, then, the question as to where the Church is is not an idle one. It is fundamentally important. So important, in fact, that our answer will either confirm a proper Christology or deform it. We might have Christ and keep Him, if we rightly understand His Church. But if we have Christ and do not rightly understand His Church, we are in very real danger of losing Him Whom we have once held.
Two Models
There are many ecclesiologies, many answers to the question, "Where is the Church?" But these ecclesiologies all contain one or another of two fundamental models. Either one has a "Branch Model" of ecclesiology, or one has an "Exclusive Model" of ecclesiology. The Branch Model essentially states that no one church or group is exclusively the Body of Christ, but that the Body of Christ is made up of the many branches or groups that all trace their lineage back to a common trunk. That trunk is variously thought of as the historic Church founded on Pentecost in Jerusalem, or the Apostolic Deposit given in the first century, or the common confession of Christ as Lord, or any number of variations on similar themes. The point however is that in the Branch Model all churches or groups share some common essence with all the others, so that despite the visible divisions and differences between groups, there is an invisible or supernatural reality that they all share in, which allows them to claim to be part of the Church of Christ.
The Exclusive Model essentially states that a particular church or group is, actually, the Body of Christ, and all other churches or groups are departures from it. The point of the Exclusive Model of ecclesiology is that the essence of the Church, even if invisible and supernatural, must have a visible body in which the Church is incarnate. If the Branch Model depends for its unity on an invisible and supernatural quality shared across and among all the various churches, the Exclusive Model locates that unity in a particular quality or set of qualities in this particular incarnate church or group. Other churches or groups may approximate this one, but only if they have that essential marker or all of those essential markers, that distinguishes this particular body from the rest, can they actually be said to be in unity with this body, and thus are, actually, the Body of Christ. What is that essential marker, or those essential qualities, varies depending upon the claims to exclusivity of the particular group under consideration. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, distinguishes its claims from other groups, at least in part, on the basis of what it says about the office of the bishop of Rome. Other groups, such as the Restoration Movement churches, distinguish their claims on the basis of a pure and simple body of New Testament doctrines and practices they distill from the Scriptures: if a church or group believes and practices these particular things, and neither takes away from them or adds to them, that church or group is the New Testament Church, the Body of Christ.
Now, let it be said that variations on these two models do exist. Indeed, in a sense, the Exclusive Model acknowledges the truth of the Branch Model that there is an invisible and supernatural reality to what it means for the Church to be what it is. And some churches and groups who fundamentally posit the Branch Model do seem to say things that sound awfully exclusive. But when one examines the fundamental tenets of various ecclesiologies, these really are the two and only two models by which ecclesiologies are shaped. That some groups do not hold purely to one or another model does not eliminate the fundamental shape of their particular ecclesiology, even if such impurities may result in radically misformed products. Moreover, some churches or groups dynamically migrate from one model to the other, and in the process of such migration hold confused and confusing variations and mutations of these two models. But again, these are the two templates from which all ecclesiologies are drawn.
The Theandric Principle
That being said, one should not suppose that each of these models are parallel to one another. That is to say, the failure of one model does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that the other model is correct. It may be the case that both models are incorrect, but for different reasons.
For example, if the Exclusive Model does not, in fact, substantiate the claim of a particular church or group to be the true Church, the failure or error is not necessarily because this particular church or group does not exhibit the Branch Model. The Exclusive Model may actually be the fundamentally correct model (and I will actually be arguing that it is), but the essential quality or qualities that a particular church or group claims grants it its status as the Church is, in fact, the wrong quality or qualities. For example, if the Roman Catholic Church claims that what makes it the Church is that it is in communion with, and submission to, the see of Peter (assuming that is, indeed, what Roman Catholicism claims) and that claim, in fact, is not really what makes a church or group the Church, then though Rome has claimed the right model, she has argued the wrong reason. On the other hand, if the Branch Model does not, in fact, substantiate the claim of a particular church or group to be the true Church, the failure or error will not necessarily be because this particular church or group claims an improper essence for all churches or groups, but rather, the Branch Model is, itself, fundamentally flawed, and no common essence could substantiate such an ecclesiology from this model. (And, indeed, this, too is what I will be arguing.)
Ultimately, if we are going to determine which of these two models is the model to at least be preferred, or is fundamentally the only proper model, we are going to have to establish this by virtue of a criterion or set of criteria. Here is where ecclesiology must conform to Christology. For if a church or group (or a plurality of them) is to claim status as the Body of Christ, they must share in the nature of who Christ is. As St. Peter says in his epistle:
Inasmuch as His divine power hath freely given to us all things for life and piety, through the full knowledge of Him Who called us by glory and virtue, by which He hath freely given to us the very great and precious promises, that through these ye might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption which is in the world by desire. (2 Peter 1:3-4, The Orthodox New Testament, © 2004 Holy Apostles Convent; emphasis added)
And as Jesus, Himself, prayed:
"And I do not make request for these only, but also for those who shall believe on Me through their word; in order that all may be one, even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us, that the world might believe that Thou didst send me forth. And the glory which Thou has given Me I have given them, in order that they may be one, even as We are one: I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into one, and that the world may know that Thou didst send Me forth, and didst love them even as Thou dist love Me. Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am, in order that they may behold the glory, that which is Mine, which Thou gavest Me; for Thou didst love Me before the foundation of the world." (John 17:20-24; emphasis added)
Thus, the nature of the Church must take that nature from the paradigm of Christ. Christ is the incarnate God, the God-man, the Theandros, the perfect union--without confusion, change, separation or division--of the human and divine. Thus, if the Church is to partake of Christ's nature, she must exhibit this union of humanity and divinity. And the exhibition of this humanity and divinity must be demonstrated in a unity that is not just divine, but is also manifested humanly.
With this fundamental principle in mind, we can now turn to our models.
Examining the Models
If the Branch Model fails, it does not fail because of its good intentions or in its charity. That adherents to the Branch Model want to take seriously the unity of the Church is clear. That they also take seriously the dominical injunction to love one another as oneself, to not judge one another, is also clear. So if the Branch Model fails, it fails despite these noble and laudable intentions.
But fail it must, for the Branch Model does not ultimately allow for the full implications of the humanity of the Church. In an incipient Gnosticism, it says the visible divisions between churches and groups are neither substantial or real, what is real is the supernatural and invisible divine reality. Humanity is negated by virtue of the divine reality. But this is not the theandric union of Christ.
Furthermore, the Branch Model ends up in an infinite regress of reductionism and a final relativization of all truth claims. For the Branch Model necessarily includes groups whose beliefs fundamentally oppose one another: baptism is for the remission of sins and thus necessary for salvation versus baptism is merely a symbol and in no way necessary for salvation; or the Eucharist is merely a remembrance of Christ's Passion versus the Eucharist is mystically the Body and Blood of the Lord. By necessitating the inclusion of these contradictions, the Branch Model ultimately becomes an exercise in finding the lowest common denominator necessary to be able to extend to cover all those who claim the name of Christ. But this process ultimately relativizes truth claims by saying of these competing claims, "They don't matter. What matters is the divine reality which makes us one." But where does this relativization end? The Branch Model can give no answer without ultimately becoming exclusive in its claims. But once it has done that, it has shifted from its paradigm.
By its very nature, then, the Branch Model is a false ecclesiology. It cannot be remedied without destruction to its fundamental premise.
The Exclusive Model, on the other hand, can, and indeed, does, fulfill the requirements of the theandric union necessitated by Who Christ is. First, in locating the Church in a specific group it takes seriously the necessity for the Church to manifest the union of the human and divine. The Church must be incarnate, and that incarnation must obtain in a visible group. The Church is, as the Branch Model stresses, a divine and hidden reality, but it is also, and must also be, a human and visible one. The Exclusive Model takes seriously the divine unity, but it also takes seriously the concomitant human unity. Groups with competing claims cannot be unified. As St. Paul says:
Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all be speaking the same thing, and that schisms may not be among you, but that ye be perfected together in the same mind and in the same sentiment. (1 Corinthians 1:10)
So, although the human unity is created by the divine unity, it is the manifestation of that divine unity: having one mind, doing the same things, sharing the same identity.
Now, the Exclusive Model of ecclesiology is the necessary condition for a church or group to actually be the Church of Christ, but it is not a sufficient condition. That is to say, a church or group may claim to be the Church, but offer as the foundation of its claim something that is actually not the essential foundation for being the Church of Christ. Simply because the Exclusive Model is the proper model for the ecclesiology which reflects the exclusivity of Jesus and the scandal of His particularity, it does not also follow that any predication of the essential content of that model will do. No, for a church or group to be the Church, it must not just conform itself to the form of exclusivity, but must also fill its claims with the necessary and essential matter that gives reality to such claims.
Not all who claim to be the Church of Christ are.
It is to those essential conditions that we will turn next.
[Note: A member of my heritage churches and I have struck up an email conversation in the last few days. In the most recent exchange I was asked, "Briefly, how do you 'see' the New Testament church in Orthodoxy?" My reply follows.]
I'm not sure that the way I understand the Church in Orthodoxy is any different than what the New Testament itself says of the Church. In fact, it has been my consideration of several verses I either innocently ignored or whose implications I never fully traced when I was formally a member of the Restoration Movement churches, that has led me to the following, very brief, very incomplete set of essential characteristics of the Church.
First, in the Church is the fullness of Christ, which means, in the Church is the fullness of the divinity. The Church, then, is not merely a human institution, it is a divine one. Consider the following verses:
“For in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the divinity bodily, and ye are made full in Him, Who is the head of all principality and authority . . .” (Colossians 2:9-10).*“And He put in subjection all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him Who filleth all things in all” (Ephesians 1:22-23).
Note that the fullness of God, which we experience in Christ, is found in the Church. In the Colossians reference above, the “ye” indicates the second person plural in the Greek. Paul is speaking of the Church at Colossae as being made full in Him (Christ), in Whom Himself the fullness of the divinity dwelt bodily. The Ephesians reference is even more explicit.
Christ cannot be separated from his Body, nor His Body from him. They are one. Thus:
“There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye also were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, Who is over all, and through all, and in you all” (Ephesians 4:4-6).
This oneness of the Church, the Church's unity, is necessarily indivisible. It is inconceivable that the Body in which the fullness of God dwells could be divided, that the unity which obtains eternally in the Head could fail to obtain in the Body which is eternally connected to the Head. If there were ever to be a separation of Head from Body, the Church would cease to exist. And Christ's words would come to naught:
“And I say also to thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hades shall not prevail against her” (Matthew 16:18).
Consider also Jesus' own prayer:
“And I do not make request for these only, but also for those who shall believe in Me through their word: in order that all may be one, even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us, that the world might believe that Thou didst send Me forth” (John 17:20-21).
This is a radical unity that is rooted fully and essentially in the unity of the Holy Trinity. It is a unity not of dogma (though dogma is fundamentally necessary), but is rather a unity of Person, a unity accomplished first and foremost in Christ. If the Holy Trinity can be divided, then I suppose the Church can be divided. But since the former could never be true, the latter cannot be true as well. (So, of the divisions that exist, they are fallings away from the Body, and thus are not divisions in the Body. I'm admittedly utilizing here a terminology that is not so clearly defined in the New Testament; cf. St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 11.)
Thus, the Church of the New Testament cannot be divided, nor can it ever cease to exist. The Church after all, is “God's house”:
“So then ye are no longer strangers and sojourners but fellow citizens of the saints and of the household of God, who were built up on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the cornerstone, in Whom every building, being joined together, increaseth to a holy temple in the Lord, in Whom ye also are being built up together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:19-22).
The foundation of this house is the apostles and prophets (perhaps the OT prophets and the apostles, or at least the apostles and prophets of the New Testament). On this foundation, God is building his home in which he dwells. God's home is the Church. God's life and immortality is imparted in Christ to the Church, since He dwells there. If you want to seek and find God, look for Him in the Church, which is in Christ.
And since the Church has the fullness of God, since the Church is essentially one in and with God (though is not herself God), since the Church is God's home, it is not surprising that the Church has God's wisdom and declares it:
“. . . the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, pillar and stay of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15).
and:
“. . . in order that the much-variegated wisdom of God might be made known to the principalities and to the authorities in the heavenlies through the Church, according to the purpose of the ages which He made in Christ Jesus our Lord . . .” (Ephesians 3:10-11).
In other words, the entity that “holds down the fort” on truth is the Church. If you want the truth, seek the Church, in whom is the Truth. It is in and through the Church that God declares his surprising and “much-variegated” wisdom. If you want wisdom, seek the Church which is in Christ.
You can well understand that I was not exactly taught these things as a Restoration Movement Christian, or, perhaps more accurately, these things were not put together in their full implications for me. It was in the process of study and reflection in which I was engaged through the summer and autumn of 2002 that these considerations came more fully to light. So having “discovered” these things, as it were, in my own studies, when I read and heard in Orthodoxy these same things, and when Orthodoxy spoke of the Church and of itself, I had a strong inkling that the New Testament Church I had been trained all my life to seek and to labor for was right there.
Of course, the whole connection between the Church of the New Testament and Orthodoxy is easily traced from the New Testament and the much-neglected-by-the-Restoration-brotherhood history of the Church.
*All New Testament citations are from The Orthodox New Testament, © 2004 Holy Apostles Convent.
Fr. Florovsky's essay, "The Limits of Church," was mentioned in the comments to my earlier post, and discussion of it was encouraged. So I thought I would get the ball rolling. (You should read the essay, as my summary may inadvertently miss important points and/or misconstrue Florovsky's argument.)
Fr. Florovsky is delineating two different, though not contradictory or irreconcilable, approaches to the limits of the Church, the first, more clear and defined is St. Cyprian of Carthage, the second, less clear, perhaps, is St. Augustine of Hippo. From these, then, develop two perspectives regarding the canonicity of the sacraments of schismatics and heretics, and thus of the reality of the grace which may inhere in those sacraments. (These matters have fundamental importance on how the Church is to receive schismatics and heretics.)
The first perspective, which Fr. George derives from St. Cyprian, is that from within the Church and which takes the Church's objective boundaries (sacraments performed by bishops and clergy in valid apostolic succession, the canon of the Scriptures, the dogmas of the Church, etc.) as the recognized limits of the Church. The point, for the saint, is that the sacraments of the schismatics and heretics are graceless. Fr. George writes:
The whole meaning and the whole logical stress of his reasoning lay in the conviction that the sacraments are established in the Church. That is to say, they are effected and can be effected only in the Church, in communion and in communality. Therefore every violation of communality and unity in itself leads immediately beyond the last barrier into some decisive 'outside'. To St Cyprian every schism was a departure out of the Church, out of that sanctified and holy land where alone there rises the baptismal spring, the waters of salvation, quia una est aqua in ecclesia sancta (Epist. lxxi, 2).
It needs to be noted that for St. Cyprian, the locus of the dynamic energies of the sacraments was in the union (synodality, sobornost) of the Church. Schismatics and heretics violated that unity and love, and therefore their sacraments were invalid.
For St. Augustine, however, the perspective is not from the Church looking out but from the (purportedly) sacramental act looking into the Church. That is to say, insofar as the act itself is valid, it is valid despite the fact that it is done by schismatics and heretics. The saint also bases his thought on the unity of the Church, as does St. Cyprian, but the schismatics and heretics, though they violate the bond of peace (via their divisions), do not necessarily violate the bond of the Holy Spirit. So in their sacramental acts, He who validates the act is the Holy Spirit through Church herself, via the bond of the Spirit, if not via the bond of unity and peace.
The distinction, though it is not a deeper difference, is that between validity (canon) and the reality (sacrament). The externality of the act may itself be invalid, an act that takes place outside the objective limits of the Church, but the reality of it is made grace-full by the Church who extends her life-giving reality given her in the Spirit by acceptance of the sacramental act. And it is precisely because of this that the sacraments cannot be seen as "magical" per se. As Fr. Florovsky writes, how these schismatic and heretical sacraments operate outside the Church's objective boundaries are a mystery:
One thing remains obscure. How does the activity of the Spirit continue beyond the canonical borders of the Church? What is the validity of sacraments without communion, of stolen garments, sacraments in the hands of usurpers? Recent Roman theology answers that question by the doctrine of the validity of the sacraments ex opere operato. In St Augustine this distinction does not exist, but he understood the validity of sacraments performed outside canonical unity in the same sense. In fact ex opere operato points to the independence of the sacrament from the personal action of the minister. The Church performs the sacrament and, in her, Christ the high priest. The sacraments are performed by the prayer and activity of the Church, ex opere orantis et operantis ecclesiae. It is in this sense that the doctrine of validity ex opere operato, must be accepted. For Augustine it was not so important that the sacraments of the schismatics are 'unlawful' or 'illicit' (illicita); much more important is the fact that schism is a dissipation of love. But the love of God can overcome the failure of love in man. In the sects themselves - and even among the heretics - the Church continues to perform her saving and sanctifying work. It may not follow, perhaps, that we should say that schismatics are still in the Church. In any case this would not be precise and sounds equivocal. It would be truer to say that the Church continues to work in the schisms in expectation of that mysterious hour when the stubborn heart will be melted in the warmth of God's prevenient grace, when the will and thirst for communality and unity will finally burst into flame. The 'validity' of sacraments among schismatics is the mysterious guarantee of their return to Catholic plenitude and unity.
But one ought not take from this that Fr. George, nor Augustine, were arguing some sort of "Branch theory" of ecclesiology, that even though grace can operate among the schismatics and heretics, then it's all the same anyhow; one need not join oneself to the one Church, since one can "get by" in the schisms. Instead, Fr Florovsky concludes:
It is necessary to hold firmly in mind that in asserting the 'validity' of the sacraments and of the hierarchy itself in the sects, St Augustine in no way relaxed or removed the boundary dividing sect and communality. This is not so much a canonical as a spiritual boundary: communal love in the Church and separatism and alienation in the schism. For Augustine this was the boundary of salvation, since grace operates outside communality but does not save. (It is appropriate to note that here, too, Augustine closely follows Cyprian, who asserted that except in the Church even martyrdom for Christ does not avail.) For this reason, despite all the 'reality' and 'validity' of a schismatic hierarchy, it is impossible to speak in a strict sense of the retention of the 'apostolic succession' beyond the limits of canonical communality. . . .From this it follows without a doubt that the so-called 'branch' theory is unacceptable. This theory depicts the cleavages of the Christian world in too complacent and comfortable a manner. The onlooker may not be able immediately to discern the schismatic 'branches' from the Catholic trunk. In its essence, moreover, a schism is not just a branch. It is also the will for schism. It is the mysterious and even enigmatic sphere beyond the canonical limits of the Church, where the sacraments are still celebrated and where hearts often still burn in faith, in love and in works. We must admit this, but we must remember that the limit is real, that unity does not exist.
Although I was not familiar with this essay prior to my previous series of posts on the Tradition, it seems that my posts unconsciously followed in line with the general tenor of Fr. George's essay, though not, perhaps, in all its particulars.
Two quick but essential points before I get into the heart of my thoughts here. First, it is not my intent to "assign blame" in the matter of division. I am raising questions. I am not establishing conclusions. My questions, of course, will reveal my biases, but these biases should not be taken as conclusions, only as the impetus of my questions. Second, I will be bringing up two of the most contentious issues among Christians today: the ordination of women and the blessing of same sex behavior. I realize that the mere mention of these matters will likely inflame the prejudices and passions of my readers. I highlight this fact not because I deliberately wish to convect alienation and disagreeableness, but rather so that I can point out that this post is not about women's ordination or same sex behavior, but rather about a rather different phenomenon: schism.
Those two all-important qualifications having been set out, if you wish to read further, please do so.
I knew when I posted it that my friends here in Chicago, nearly all of them, would be in strong disagreement with my commendation of Kreeft's lecture opposing the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate. I also knew that this matter is one of deep feeling to my friends who favor women in Eucharistic ministry or otherwise ally themselves to varying degrees with feminist principles. However, since my friends know where I stand, and I where they stand, and since Kreeft's lecture I knew to be well-reasoned (which is not to say perfectly-reasoned), free of ad hominem, and otherwise forcefully stated, I considered it to be a resource worthy of thoughtful commendation to all my readers. I expected disagreement, and hoped for a lively dialogue.
I was, to my great sorrow, mistaken.
For those who don't know us (my Chicago brothers and sisters in Christ and myself), they might not quite realize how distinctly the odd-man out I am among them. My friends are all nearly perfectly aligned in theology, social mores, ethical paradigms, and political commitments--which is not to say there is no differences among them, but rather that those differences are ones of degree rather than of kind. I, on the other hand, find myself markedly different from them in almost every important way. My theology differs, I orient around different social concerns, my ethical paradigms are founded differently, and my political commitments are much more right than theirs. Yet, in God's inscrutable Providence, they include me as their friend and brother (and I must stress that I often feel this dynamic in precisely this direction). Still in a way which never ceases to both amaze and humble me, I know that if I found myself in dire straits, these brothers and sisters would not hesitate to come to my aid, and I suspect they pray for me often. I trust that they know the same is true of me: they may certainly count me as both friend and intercessor and one who would not hesitate to do all I could to aid them in whatever way their needs called for.
Which now brings me to my point. By my posting the link to Kreeft's lecture, division has come among us. One dear friend, indeed, one for whom I expressed a deep respect in my reply to a comment on the Kreeft post, wrote me personally to express this sense of division she felt. Another also expressed in a public comment he later withdrew his own sense of anger.
But here is where I am brought up against a seeming wall around or over or through which I cannot seem to go. My friends know me well, and know that I am no misogynist. If they think differently, they hide it well. We know each other's convictions. My good friend, Tripp, and I are rather known among our blogofriends for the role of foil we often play to one another on various matters.
So why is it that my upholding of the dogma and canon of the Church, which has held for two thousand years and counting is the cause and occasion of this schism?
This question is more than personal, please understand. For all that I might just be a flat-out jerk which may the more be blamed for this division, in point of fact, if we look around at the ecclesial world, where do present-day schisms take place? Precisely where the tradition is resisted. I am more conversant with the goings on of the Anglican churches than any other non-Orthodox body, and everywhere that departures from the tradition have been enacted there have been schisms. The ordination of women in the 70s. The validation of homosexual behavior and the blessing of same-sex unions in the 90s and currently. Why?
Let's have done with the assertion of ulterior motives of power-mongering and territorial preservation--these accusations prove nothing and fit everyone. Rather, let's assume the best of intentions on the parts of all. Why is it then, that those who wish to fully embrace the history and life of the Church and to live such in all its fullness today are most often the ones assigned as causes of these schisms?
Let me return to the personal. My friends know, and I am on record as affirming, my love, respect and esteem for them. They also know of my convictions. So why is it now, in the current set of circumstances, that this division runs between them and me?
Let me reiterate: I am not whining for my own sake, despite how I may feel about all these matters. Rather I am using my personal experience to elucidate and ask a most serious question. Why does the affirmation of Tradition get assigned the blame for schism among (American at least) Christians?
Perhaps I may benefit from someone's insight.
I commend to you: Peter Kreeft: Women and the Priesthood.
Some great "soundbyte" quotes:
"The Church did not invent the priesthood. She received it."
"If we don't understand the reason for some ancient tradition or rule or institution, that should be a good reason for not abolishing it until we do understand it. . . . So the only people who might have a right to change the old rule are precisely the people who don't want to change it. And the people who don't have a right to change it because they don't understand it are precisely the people who do want to change it."
"Ideology does not judge the Church, the Church judges ideologies. To be a Catholic is to believe that the Church and her traditions are more than human, that she is the body of Jesus Christ, graced with his real presence and power and promise of guidance. I have not yet once heard one advocate of priestesses face and affirm this fact, or manifest the loyal submission that all the saints had to our holy Mother. When feminists become saints, we will become their pupils."
"What more does anybody want? 'Rome has spoken; the case is closed.' That formula used to evoke love and loyalty. The issue today is not whether the Church will have priestesses. She won't. The only open issue today is whether the would-be priestess will have the Church."
"To say 'Yes' to Christ, but 'No' to his Church is to will a spiritual decapitation."
"God, who deliberately designed sexuality, also deliberately designed to incarnate himself as a male. Jesus Christ is still a male today. He still has his human body in heaven and it is a male body."
"Priests of Christ, who are Christ's mouths, through whom he speaks the words, 'This is my Body,' must be male because Christ is male."
"Christ, the perfect human image of the Father is male because God the Father is masculine; 'he' not 'she.'"
"Male and female are biological genders. Masculine and feminine . . . are cosmic universal principles extending to all reality."
"I think it is incredibly provincial and even arrogant for us to assume without a shred of proof that this nearly universal human instinct is mere projection, mere illusion, mere fantasy, rather than an insight into a cosmic principle that is really there. There is abundant, ubiquitous and obvious evidence for it from the bottom of the cosmic hierarchy to the top: from the electromagnetic attraction between electrons and protons, to the circumincession of divine Persons in the Trinity. Male and female are only the biological version of cosmic masculine and feminine. God is masculine to everything from angels to prime matter. That is the ultimate reason why priests who represent God to us must be male."
"If you can subtract the divine masculinity from Scripture when it offends you, why can't you subtract the divine compassion when that offends you? If you read your Marxism into Scripture today, why can't you read your Nazism into Scripture tomorrow? If you can change God's masculinity, why not change his morality, why not his very being? If you can twist the pronoun, why not twist the noun?"
"The Church tells us that the priesthood is not a right and not a privilege. No one can claim a right to be a priest."
"The most egregious error of all is the demand to be priestesses for empowerment. I can think of no term that more perfectly proves the speaker's utter incomprehension of what she says than that. . . . Priests are not power brokers or managers."
In an article, The Church Why Bother? (hat tip: Touchstone's Mere Comments), Tim Stafford analyzes a recent Barna report:
The Barna Research Group reports that in the United States about 10 million self-proclaimed, born-again Christians have not been to church in the last six months, apart from Christmas or Easter. (Barna defines "born-again" as those who say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important today, and believe they will "go to heaven because I have confessed my sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior.")Nearly all born-agains say their spiritual life is very important, but for 10 million of them, spiritual life has nothing to do with church.
About a third of Americans are unchurched, according to Barna's national data. Approximately 23 million of those—35 percent of the unchurched—claim they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their lives today.
This split--thoroughly modern, thoroughly Cartesian--between what one believes or thinks and what one does with one's body, is, in my view, endemic in modern-day Protestantism. I know. This was pretty much the scenario in my heritage churches, except it was easier twenty and thirty years ago to stress the need for church. Not that my family went all the time. By the time I was in grade school, except for a couple of brief periods, our family went very irregularly to church.
Stafford is right: "I would call it Gnostic faith. For them the spirit is completely separated from the body. They think your spirit can be with Jesus Christ while your body goes its own way."
But, when you think about it, really, what do "born-again believers" miss by opting out of Protestant/evangelical/fundamentalist church?
They need not lack the Word of God. The Bible is available through Barnes & Noble, and will undoubtedly continue to be published at a profit even if all the Christians get raptured away. Radio and TV offer excellent Bible teaching. So do books and magazines.Fellowship? The internet offers chat rooms and Bible study groups. Friends have told me their internet prayer support group reaches more depth and is more dependable than anything they encounter in the flesh.
Worship? Some people find that music CDs provide what they need. Others find great inspiration watching Robert Schuller's Hour of Power. Anyway, if you need a worship fix you can slip into any big church and leave without bothering a soul.
Granted, you need a church to get baptized and to receive Communion. Let's admit, though, that in many churches the sacraments are a devalued commodity. The same for church discipline, only more so. If you expect church to provide the bracing rule that purifies souls, forget it in most places.
Few modern churches really emphasize either baptism or Communion. In my own churches, anyone could baptize you, and you could always buy grape juice and unsalted crackers at the store and "remember" Christ's sacrifice on your own. I know. I did it myself a few times.
But this is a Gnostic, which is to say, heretical, Christianity. If you deny the bodily aspects of the Faith, you soon deny the Church. And if you deny the Church, it's not too far a step to deny the Incarnation. And then Christ becomes just another moral exemplar and teacher: just like Muhammed, Buddha, and Ghandi. It's not inevitable, but there is a progression: deny the Sacraments, deny the Church, deny Christ.
Introduction:
As most Christians know, the traditional marks of the Church, taken from the Nicene Creed, are that the Church is “one, holy, catholic and apostolic.” Each of these can be traced directly to New Testament precedents (Ephesians 4 is a good place to begin, where all of them are manifest). Indeed, most, if not all, Christians can agree with them, though their implications may create some controversy.
But rather than talk of the “Nicene” marks of the Church, I want to highlight three other New Testament markers. As will be seen, I am sensitive to these marks particularly and specifically because of my background in Protestant churches. They are as follows: The Church is the pillar and ground of the truth, is the dwelling place of the Living God, and is one Body.
The Pillar and Ground of the Truth:
I begin with two important verses:
I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. John 16:12-14 (ESV)
I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of truth. 1 Tim. 3:14-15 (ESV)
This is often overlooked by Protestants. Protestants necessarily must make the Scriptures the foundation of our Faith. If they make the Church their foundation, one automatically must inquire, “Which one?” We cannot appeal to the “invisible Church” because our very notion of the “invisible Church” carries with it irreconcilable contradictions. Does the invisible Church believe, for example, that baptism by immersion is essential to being saved or not? One cannot claim that the invisible Church is indifferent to this matter, because after all, sincere and pious believers who presumably are part of the invisible Church believe that this matter is important. And what could be more important than a proper understanding of how one gets to be part of the invisible Church?
So, Protestants are forced back to the Scriptures. But nowhere are the Scriptures called “the pillar and ground of the Truth.” Indeed, if the Scriptures were absolutely important to the founding of the Church, then one is left with the problem of how to found the Church prior to the writing of the New Testament Scriptures? Presumably the Church was founded some twenty or more years before the writing of the first of the New Testament Scriptures, but if so, it was founded apart from the Scriptures. And of course, no New Testament congregation had all the New Testament, let alone any of the books of the New Testament for many decades.
More telling, Protestants cannot agree on the proper interpretation of key biblical passages. Are works part of saving faith or not? Can one lose one's salvation after having been (really) saved? There are as many interpretations as there are Protestants.
Clearly, then, the Scriptures cannot be the foundation of the Christian faith. Scriptures support the Christian faith. They are indispensable to the Christian faith, but if the Scriptures were to ever be completely lost to us, we would not suffer. The Church has kept alive all which we need to embrace the Christ of the Gospel. Christians need not worry overmuch about attacks on the faith that take on the Christian Scriptures, alleging contradictions, fiction and so forth. The Church existed before the completion of the Christian Scriptures, and quite plausibly would continue to exist without them.
Indeed, the Church is the one who confirmed and verified exactly which Christian writings were to be included in the canon of Scripture. The Church kept and preserved the manuscripts of the Scriptures, to the point of execution. And the Church has laid down the standard of proper interpretation of the Scripture.
What Protestants often fail to realize is that if you take away the Church, and leave the ancient disciples with nothing more than the Scriptures, the Church would not have been founded until after the death of the Apostle John. In short, we would not be talking about the “New Testament Church” but the “Second Century Church” as the original. We would also have no clear teaching on: the Trinity, the life of Jesus, the role and place of the Old Testament, on whether Jesus was God-incarnate or not, on whether the body was important to salvation or not, and so forth. We take all these things as pretty much given, and point to the New Testament for evidence of these dogmas. But in point of fact, opponents to the Trinity, to Jesus as God-incarnate, and so forth, also utilized the Scriptures. What solved these controversies was not a particular hermeneutic, the voting power of the majority, or the speaking in tongues. Rather, it was the self-evident fact that Christians have believed these things from the beginning—and evidence pointing back through the Fathers to the apostles was mounted effectively.
In other words, it was the Church, as pillar and ground of the Truth, that verified and confirmed what Christians believed and are to believe. The Scriptures are part of that verification and confirmation, make no mistake. The Scriptures are an essential and non-negotiable aspect of the life of the Church. We need them. But we need them because we need the Church who gave them to us and interprets them for us.
The Dwelling Place of the Living God:
Another important verse:
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Ephesians 2:19-22 (ESV)
Protestants have consistently taken most of the “you” passages—such as the one above—in individual terms. That is to say, what Paul is saying here is that “you, Clifton Healy” are a dwelling place of the living God. This is true, of course, by virtue of the gift and seal of the Holy Spirit. But it is only a part of the truth. And if left by itself, it is a distorting, and potentially heresy-making, part of the truth.
The fact of the matter is, almost all of the “you” passages which Protestants apply individualistically are plural “you's.” That is to say, Paul is addressing the group of Christians at, say, Ephesus, collectively: “you all.” Modern English lost the second person plural form (“ye”) more than a century ago. So, when we read “you” in the English translations of the New Testament, we hear “me.” Or, to put it more bluntly: Most of the time Paul is not speaking to you, the individual Christian, but the Church. And if Paul is speaking to you, he is doing so on the presupposition that you are part of the Church.
This distinction, then, is important. The living God dwells, not in individual Christians, as such, but only in his Body, the Church. In fact, this Church that God dwells in is the one founded on the apostles and prophets, with Christ as the cornerstone. As Paul says earlier in the chapter of the verse above, there is one Church (about which more in a moment), and it is in that one Church that God dwells.
God does not dwell in just any gathering of two or more Christians. Indeed, the verse (Matthew 18:20) which many Protestants claim for home Bible studies, or low attendance Sunday evenings, is not a promise that Christ will bless just any gathering of two or more believers. Rather, it is a promise that when the Church prays and exercises discipline upon an impenitent member, it is Christ himself acting in the Church administering the discipline. In other words, it's not about individual Christians coming together but about the Church acting in Christ's behalf.
So, where does God dwell? In the Church that is apostolic. And, as we will see shortly, apostolic means not only in doctrine—and many claiming apostolicity of doctrine do so incorrectly—but also apostolic in historical, which is to say, incarnate, descent. To say it another way, there is only one Church where God dwells.
The Lord’s Body is One Body:
What is that one Body?
I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. John 17:20-23 (ESV)
There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call— one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. Ephesians 4:4-6 (ESV)
First of all, the one Church is the one Christ formed with his disciples, and which is a mystical unity with the Trinity. The one Church is not merely an institutional unity. In fact, apart from the mystical union with Christ and the apostles, no amount of institutional unity will make the Church.
But this one Church is also not merely a mystical unity. The one Church has a bodily life, which is to say, a history. The institutionality of the Church, therefore, is as essential as the mystical unity of the Church.
Indeed, neither the visible, institutional unity of the Church nor the mystical unity, are actually anything different from one another. They are both the unity that makes the Church. Or, rather, the unity of the Church is necessarily manifest in its fullness as a visible institution and a mystical spiritual union.
Therefore, it is rationally and ontologically impossible for all of the institutional divisions among Christians (Roman, Orthodox and Protestant) to be the visible and manifest mystical unity which necessarily constitutes Christ's Church. One cannot both be one and be many.
This leads inescapably to the following conclusion: the one Church, which is both a mystical and a bodily unity, cannot be all the churches of Christendom, nor all the (true) Christians among them. The former denies the mystical union (by including division and schism), and the latter denies the institutional union (by excluding the organized visible manifestation of the Church). From this follows the conclusion: there is one Church in which the mystical and visible unity that is necessary to the life of that Church obtains.
We have no other recourse than to ask: Where is that Church?
Conclusion:
There are many other important marks of the Church in the New Testament. One can speak of love, faith and hope, especially love. One can speak of the martyrs of the Apocalypse. One can speak of the episcopacy, of evangelism, of service to the poor.
But coming from my background, when these three essential aspects made their mark on me, I could only come to one conclusion. My answer to the question “Where is that Church?” is crystal clear and unequivocal. And such conviction grows more each day.
[Note: The following is bound to offend most. Read with caution. Pray with discernment. But most of all pray for me, a sinner.]
It is taken as a given that the divisions among Christian churches is a scandal and a blasphemy. This is unquestionably true. It is also taken as a given that the reunion of all Christians in one visible body is a good explicitly tied to which is a more effective evangelism. This, too, is unquestionably true.
On the basis of these fundamental truths, then, is raised the ecumenical edifice. The rationale is something like this: We must work to eliminate division between our various bodies and to foster unity at every opportunity. So ecumenical groups such as the World Council of Churches, and the U.S. National Council of Churches work hard to remove the barriers circumscribing fellowship. Other groups, such as pro-life Catholic and Evangelical organizations, work hard to join together in common causes based on clear Gospel and Church teaching. But primarily, ecumenical work is seen as the coming together on matters of belief and worship, discipline and polity, such that denominations otherwise formally divided from one another can come more closely to share in ministerial, liturgical, and, ultimately, Eucharistic fellowship. To accomplish this, of course, the primary and non-negotiables of belief must be staked out and common ground achieved.
This last is not only misguided, but a mistake. Contrary to common present-day mores, unity is not about feeling close, or doing and saying the same things at the same times with one another. Rather, unity has to do with dying to self and thorough-going obedience to Christ. Indeed, the Gospel necessarily creates division. The Gospel necessarily destroys any peace that is not built on the exclusive claims of Christ on us.
Matthew puts it primarily in filial terms:
"Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword." (Matthew 10:34 (NKJV))
Luke gives even more violent imagery:
"Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division." (Luke 12:51 (NKJV))
The Gospel necessarily creates divisions. Thus, due to the very nature of the Gospel itself, ecumenical work among Christians is bound to fail. Not because the Lord wishes division, nor because God is not powerful enough to save, but because the ecclesial principles of the various Christian bodies are diametrically and hopelessly opposed to each other, and to the biblical and patristic dogma of the Church.
Modern ecumenism seeks to take foundational doctrinal positions and boil them down to a common level of accommodation. What is it, in the final analysis, that everyone can say “Yes” to? But not only do we do not have the right to so alter Gospel teaching, the basis of Church unity is not doctrinal and canonical agreement. Church unity is predicated upon the reality of what the Church is: Christ's Body. If we are members of that Body, we are one with another. If we are members of that Body, we gather with Christ. Christ did not come to bring accommodation. Unity within Christ's Body is already a reality. The question is: Are we part of that reality?
Modern ecumenism must fail because it misunderstands both the Gospel and the Church. It misunderstands the Gospel because it thinks both that we humans have the capacity to say what are the boundaries of that Gospel and that we humans have the capacity to assign various weights to certain Gospel doctrines, emphasizing one over the other. It misunderstands the Church because it thinks that Church unity is predicated upon human effort, both to preserve it and to reinstitute it when it fails.
But in point of fact, we have no say over the Gospel boundaries. We can only receive the Gospel that has been given us, whole and entire, without revision. Nor do we have it within ourselves to judge which Gospel doctrines are more important than others. It is not to us latter-day Christians that the promise of the Spirit leading us into all truth was given, but to the Church built on the Apostles. For us to alter the foundation is in effect to build another Church. If the Gospel says the bread and wine become the very Body and Blood of Christ, who are we to alter this for the sake of institutional unity?
Furthermore, the Church is not subject to our ministrations. The Church is a reality with which we have to do. It does not answer to us. We answer to it. We no more have the right to set the boundaries of the Church than we do those of the Gospel. It is not we latter-day Christians who are called the pillar and ground of the Truth, but the Church. If the Church so delimits the ministry of the Eucharist so as to exclude the ministration of women, who are we to set that aside so as to achieve some institutional unity?
Modern ecumenical work does not think much of the Orthodox Church who refuses to join their ranks. Many Christians bristle at the thought that God would have only one Church among all the churches, and that they, themselves, not being in that Church, are outside it. But Orthodox are only doing that which they must do: preserve the Gospel entire, and maintain the Apostolic foundations upon which the Church rests. In a Christian world rife with the promise of denominational utopia with calls for feel-good peace and unity, the Orthodox, for all their other failings, at least have the humility to know that they have no authority to change or alter what they have received from their forebears, who themselves received it from theirs, and so on back the long ages.
From Touchstone 's 31 August Mere Comments:
Bishop Hilarion of Vienna and Austria
Intervention at the meeting of the Plenary Commission on "Faith and Order", Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), 30 July 2004
The "Faith and Order" paper No 181, "The Nature and Mission of the Church", includes a section on "communion real but not fully realised". This section contains the following statement:One blessing of the ecumenical movement has been the gradual and increasing discovery of the many aspects of life in Christ, which our still divided churches share; we already enjoy a real, if imperfect communion.
I would like to challenge the very notion of "a real if imperfect communion", which appears also in other "Faith and Order" documents in various modifications. This notion seems to me to be questionable, misleading and deceitful. The only "real" communion that could exist between Christians is Eucharistic communion, and if we do not have a common Eucharist, it means that there is no "real" communion among us. We may--and indeed should--lament about this fact, but we should not deny it and pretend that we have already reached, or almost reached, the koinonia which is to be the crown of our ecumenical endeavour. [Emphasis added]
Our inability to share the Eucharist, in turn, reflects the most profound division in dogma, spirituality, ethics, in the very experience of faith that exist among various bodies calling themselves "Christian churches". Metropolitan Gennadios of Sassima in his response to the paper in question has rightly pointed out that "there is little ontological unity and little agreement among those. who confess Christ as God and Saviour". And let us be honest to one another and not pretend that the question is about a "unity in diversity": we are deeply disunited, in spite of almost a century of the ecumenical movement. [Emphasis added]
The tragedy of contemporary Christianity, I believe, consists in the fact that, while we are all engaged in a laudable struggle for unity, processes are underway within some Christian communities which alienate us from one another ever more profoundly. And I think it is no longer the divisions between the Catholics and the Protestants, or the Orthodox and the Reformed, or one confessional family and another that should be an object of our primary attention. We must address very seriously the fundamental discrepancy between the traditional and the liberal versions of Christianity.
I believe that the recent liberalization of "faith and order", of dogma and morality within a number of Western churches of the Reformation has alienated them from the traditional churches--notably from the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches--more than several preceding centuries of Protestant history. As a result of this liberalization and in spite of many decades of ecumenical quest for unity, we are now more profoundly divided among ourselves than ever before.
I would like to conclude my intervention by a plea to take more seriously the tragedy of division existing among Christians of different confessions, and to look more honestly at the sources of our disunity instead of pretending that the "real"--even if "imperfect"-- communion which we are all seeking is already achieved. [Emphasis added]
Leave it to an Orthodox bishop to say it straight. It's strong medicine, but it's medicine we so desparately need.
I post here for your perusal several links to articles critically examining the arguments surrounding women's ordination. (Props to David Mills & Co. at Touchstone)
Rev. Dr Rodney A. Whitacre, The Biblical Vision Regarding Women's Ordination
Stephen B. Clark, Man and Woman in Christ
E. L. Mascall, Women priests
And the Episcopal priest at Pontifications has written, Catholicity or female priests? Must the choice be made?
(I also commend to you, because God language is so often brought into these discussions, another of the Pontificator's writings: I love my Mom, but I don't want her to be my God)
Here, in succinct form, is the understanding of Church history I grew up with.
The church of Christ (that is Christ's church, not a name for the church) technically began at the death of Jesus in about 29-31 AD. The commonly given date for the beginning of the church is the Shavuot (Pentecost) of the same year, when the apostles preached the first gospel sermon and about 3,000 souls were added to the church (Acts 2). This church spread from Jerusalem throughout the area, and after about 15 years the members of the church were given the designation "Christians" (Acts 11:26). Each congregation of the church was independent of all others although they shared a common belief, assembled on the first day of the week (and often on other days), regularly participated in "the Lord's Supper" (possibly weekly), and sometimes shared preachers. They were most notable for a missionary spirit and a willingness to die for their beliefs.
This is all well and good . . . except for this: "Each congregation of the church was independent of all others . . ." This is only half-true. Each congregation, though it clearly handled matters unique to itself, was connected to all the others through the Apostles and their representatives. Paul sent Timothy, Titus, Epaphroditus, and others to various congregations to straighten out matters. In fact, Paul had never been to Rome, but exercised authority over them, as he did over the churches he, himself, had founded.
During the reign of Constantine as Roman Emperor Christianity was officially recognized and shortly thereafter was made the "official" religion of the empire. By this time the governmental plan of the empire had crept into the church, with some bishops (elders) claiming authority over several congregations. There soon developed three, and later five, "sees" (governmental areas) centered around the largest cities of the empire (Rome, Antioch, Byzantium, Alexandria) and Jerusalem. None had authority over the others. The development of this hierarchical system and the ecumenical councils to make decisions for all the church can fairly be said to be the beginning of the Roman and Orthodox Catholic churches.
The problem here? "By this time the governmental plan of the empire had crept into the church, with some bishops (elders) claiming authority over several congregations." This state of affairs did not arise from Rome, but was part of the Church from the beginning. Read the pastoral epistles, the epistles of St. Ignatios of Antioch, St. Clement of Rome. (I engage this idea in an essay I wrote.) In other words, an episcopal hierarchy in the Church goes back to the Apostles and does not originate in the Roman Empire.
Also, the author misunderstands history: Rome and Orthodoxy as separate entities became a reality much later, nearer the eleventh century.
Over a period of years the Bishop of Rome claimed supreme authority over the other bishops. Other doctrinal issues were involved as well, but in 1054 the Bishop of Rome "excommunicated" the Bishop of Constantinople (Byzantium). Most people give this date as the start of the Eastern Orthodox Church, although it is really a date for the beginning of the Roman Catholic Church being separate from the scriptural government, and therefore the true body, of the church. The Eastern Orthodox faith has remained essentially independent of the western church from that time.
Except for the statement "Most people give this date as the start of the Eastern Orthodox Church, although it is really a date for the beginning of the Roman Catholic Church being separate from the scriptural government, and therefore the true body, of the church" everything here seems upfront. As is typical in the Restoration Movement, as a Protestant body, it trains its guns on Rome, and pretty much ignores Orthodoxy, since it doesn't know much about it.
The Catholic Church maintained its supremacy in western Europe for several centuries. Then came what is commonly called the "Protestant Reformation." The commonly given date for the beginning of the Reformation is 1517, when Martin Luther sought to debate certain errors he saw in Catholic doctrine. The historical, philosophical, and cultural setting was ripe for a number of groups to splinter off the Catholic church. The next 300 years found the beginnings of a number of denominations of the Protestant movement. This would include the Anglicans (as a result of Henry VIII's disputes with the Popes in Rome), the Calvinists (including Presbyterians, Baptists, and others), the Methodists (in a reaction to the Anglicans much like Luther's reaction to Roman abuses), the Quakers, the Deists, and many smaller, sometimes short-lived groups.
The next major developments in Christian denominations came in America in the 1800's. Due, in part, to America's "freedom of religion" and the rise of philosophers like Emerson and Thoreau, several diverse groups appeared in upstate New York and neighboring New England. These were the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons), the Church of Jesus Christ Scientist (Christian Science), the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Seventh Day Adventists. Since that time America has spawned numerous other denominations. The most recent would include the Church of Scientology (based on the science fiction writings of L. Ron Hubbard), the New Age movement, and the "non-denominational" movement (many of whom espouse a variation of Baptist doctrine without the Calvinism).
Also in America in the early 1800's a group of men, primarily in "the West" (Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee) independently developed what has been called the "Restoration Movement." Men like Thomas and Alexander Campbell, "Raccoon" John Smith, and Barton W. Stone questioned certain doctrines and wondered why men should "reform" the Catholic Church instead of just "restore" New Testament Christianity. They proposed to "speak where the Bible speaks, and remain silent where the Bible is silent." Men in different areas independently chose to study the Bible and decided that it taught such things as baptism (immersion) to take away sin, that infants were not subjects for such baptism, the possibility of falling away after one had been saved, and congregational autonomy. Thus they sought to go back not to the original Catholic Church but to the original, first-century church.
The rest, aside from the editorial comments, is pretty unremarkable. The last paragraph refers to an internal dispute in the RM as to whether the RM is another reform movement or a complete restoration. Once again, Orthodoxy is ignored. And note the quintessential Protestant characteristic: "Men in different areas independently chose to study the Bible and decided that it taught such things as baptism (immersion) to take away sin, that infants were not subjects for such baptism, the possibility of falling away after one had been saved, and congregational autonomy" (emphasis mine). In the mercies of God, they got half of the items right.
That question is sure to offend, but so suggests Donald Miller, executive director for the Center for Religion and Civic Culture at USC, in the first part of a four part series of audio reports from NPR on new trends in religion. (The comments are made about mark 7:32.)
Donald Miller: "A lot of the innovation that is occurring on the margins finds its way back into the mainstream."
Reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty: "For example, he [Donald Miller] says, paganism, with its reverence for the goddess, has affected the way people think about women's role in religion. And even how some feminist Christians think about God."
(Props to JamesOTN)
Jennifer, et. al., are wondering about the feminization factor in mainline Christianity and what churches generally need to do to attract men.
Here's one man's reflections.
I've had it up to here with "getting in touch with my feelings." I'm not advocating being a self-unaware automaton, but Jesus didn't say, "Look into your navel everyday, then come follow me." He said, "Take up your cross daily." If I understand that correctly, it sure don't mean focusing on myself. It means dying to myself.
I've had it up to here with trying to find explanations for sinful behavior that have to do with everything else but our own sinful choices. Decades of focusing on systemic injustice hasn't obliterated injustice. If anything, it's simply allowed the proliferation of irresponsibility for our own actions.
I've had it up to here with the unreflective belief in progressivism; that somehow just because we come later in time than the Christians that have gone before us that we know better than they did on a whole host of issues: sexuality, the family, the ordained ministry, the sacraments, Scripture, and so on. Ours is the world that has given us the reality of more than 40 million infants killed in the womb. Ours is the world that has given us the reality of billions and billions of dollars of consumer debt. Ours is the world that has given us the reality of more than half of marriages ending in divorce. Need I go on?
In other words, I'm sick to death of churches who think they have it so together they need to tell St. Paul where he's wrong. Really.
I want a church who knows it's full of sinners, doesn't excuse it, and knows with that that the only way to relate to God and each other . . . and to those who've gone before us . . . is with humility.
I want a church who is less sure about what is and isn't the cause of our sins, and more sure about what is and isn't the Christian Faith.
I want a church who knows that "being all things to all men" does not mean abandoning its own unique and distinctive identity.
I want a church who is less worried about what the world thinks of us (that is to say, less worried about being "relevant"), and has the, ahem, gonads to stand up to the world and say, "You're wrong." Abortion? Wrong. Sex outside of marriage? Wrong. Consumerist Christianity? Wrong.
I want a church who knows the enemy isn't the gay man, the conservative politician, big business, big government, or that guy over there, but is the Enemy, himself, Satan. (Oh, and I want a church who believes in the reality of Satan, sin and evil.)
I want a church who is less worried about attracting anything with a body temperature of 98.6 but is serious enough about what it believes that it is willing to tell me the truth to my face and risk having me walk out never to return.
I want a church that is less worried about making me fit in and serious enough about me that it will demand things of me: things I would never demand of myself, like praying everyday, confessing my sins, serving the poor, loving my wife, that raising my daughter is more important than my career (or leisure time).
I don't want a repackaging of current fads in music, diet and health, psychology, sexuality, relationships, and so forth. If I wanted what the world had to offer, I'd take it. The marketing is much more persuasive, and it comes without any of the guilt. I want something which will warn me of the death that comes behind the label.
I want a church that will give me life.
But then again, that's just me.
My task here is not to comment on the present situation within ECUSA as to the formation of a new confessing network, and whether faithful should stay within the denomination or leave for other ecclesial groups.
Nor is it my task to comment on the issues which have been the most recent catalyst for these developments, as to whether or not committed monogamous homosexual relationshps are permitted by Scripture and Tradition, nor whether one or another partner in such relationships are valid candidates for ordination or consecration.
Rather, I want to focus most specifically on the comments made by Episcopal Bishop J Neil Alexander on schism and heresy:
Schism breeds schism. It always has. I hold in mind the great wisdom of the ancient church: if you have to choose between heresy and schism, choose heresy. For heresy is, in the end, just an opinion, and opinions come and go. Schism tears the fabric of the Body of Christ and it is irreparable. For those deeply committed to the Body of Christ, breaking fellowship is never a faithful option.
First of all, I note that Alexander does not provide any references to the Fathers to back his claim. Presumably, then, this "wisdom of the ancient church" is so uncontroversial as to need no support. And if it is, indeed, so uncontroversial, then presumably such references are innumerable. We'll see about that.
Secondly, I want to give a tip of the hat to Athanasius for steering me in the right direction by giving me a good starting point for researching the Fathers on this. I freely use the citations he supplies in his post, as well as others I've come across.
So, what do the Fathers say about schism and heresy? Here's a not very exhaustive list:
St. Jerome
Heretics bring sentence upon themselves since they by their own choice withdraw from the Church, a withdrawal which, since they are aware of it, constitutes damnation. Between heresy and schism there is this difference: that heresy involves perverse doctrine, while schism separates one from the Church on account of disagreement with the bishop. Nevertheless, there is no schism which does not trump up a heresy to justify its departure from the Church. (Commentary on Titus 3:10–11).
St. Lactantius
It is, therefore, the Catholic Church alone which retains true worship. This is the fountain of truth; this, the domicile of faith; this, the temple of God. Whoever does not enter there or whoever does not go out from there, he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation. . . . Because, however, all the various groups of heretics are confident that they are the Christians and think that theirs is the Catholic Church, let it be known that this is the true Church, in which there is confession and penance and which takes a health-promoting care of the sins and wounds to which the weak flesh is subject. (Divine Institutes 4:30:11–13).
St. Augustine
We believe also in the holy Church, that is, the Catholic Church. For heretics violate the faith itself by a false opinion about God; schismatics, however, withdraw from fraternal love by hostile separations, although they believe the same things we do. Consequently, neither heretics nor schismatics belong to the Catholic Church; not heretics, because the Church loves God; and not schismatics, because the Church loves neighbor. (Faith and the Creed 10:21).
The apostle Paul said, "As for a man that is a heretic, after admonishing him once or twice, have nothing more to do with him" [Titus 3:10]. But those who maintain their own opinion, however false and perverted, without obstinate ill will, especially those who have not originated the error of bold presumption, but have received it from parents who had been led astray and had lapsed...those who seek the truth with careful industry and are ready to be corrected when they have found it, are not to be rated among heretics. (Letters 43:1).
St. Ignatios of Antioch
Keep yourselves from those evil plants which Jesus Christ does not tend, because they are not the planting of the Father. Not that I have found any division among you, but exceeding purity. For as many as are of God and of Jesus Christ are also with the bishop. And as many as shall, in the exercise of repentance, return into the unity of the Church, these, too, shall belong to God, that they may live according to Jesus Christ. Do not err, my brethren. If any man follows him that makes a schism in the Church, he shall not inherit the kingdom of God. If any one walks according to a strange opinion, he agrees not with the passion [of Christ.].(Philadelphians 3)
St. Irenaeus of Lyons
He shall also judge those who give rise to schisms, who are destitute of the love of God, and who look to their own special advantage rather than to the unity of the Church; and who for trifling reasons, or any kind of reason which occurs to them, cut in pieces and divide the great and glorious body of Christ, and so far as in them lies, [positively] destroy it,--men who prate of peace while they give rise to war, and do in truth strain out a gnat, but swallow a camel. For no reformation of so great importance can be effected by them, as will compensate for the mischief arising from their schism. He shall also judge all those who are beyond the pale of the truth, that is, who are outside the Church; but he himself shall be judged by no one. For to him all things are consistent: he has a full faith in one God Almighty, of whom are all things; and in the Son of God, Jesus Christ our Lord, by whom are all things, and in the dispensations connected with Him, by means of which the Son of God became man; and a firm belief in the Spirit of God, who furnishes us with a knowledge of the truth, and has set forth the dispensations of the Father and the Son, in virtue of which He dwells with every generation of men, according to the will of the Father. (Against Heresies Bk 4 Ch 33.7)
St. Ambrose of Milan
The Lord then replies to the blasphemy of the Pharisees, and refuses to them the grace of His power, which consists in the remission of sins, because they asserted that His heavenly power rested on the help of the devil. And He affirms that they act with satanic spirit who divide the Church of God, so that He includes the heretics and schismatics of all times, to whom He denies forgiveness, for every other sin is concerned with single persons, this is a sin against all. For they alone wish to destroy the grace of Christ who rend asunder the members of the Church for which the Lord Jesus suffered, and the Holy Spirit was given us. (Concerning Repentance Bk 2 Ch 4.24)
Seeing, therefore, that men who agree not amongst themselves have all alike conspired against the Church of God, I shall call those whom I have to answer by the common name of heretics. For heresy, like some hydra of fable, hath waxed great from its wounds, and, being ofttimes lopped short, hath grown afresh, being appointed to find meet destruction in flames of fire. Or, like some dread and monstrous Scylla, divided into many shapes of unbelief, she displays, as a mask to her guile, the pretence of being a Christian sect, but those wretched men whom she finds tossed to and fro in the waves of her unhallowed strait, amid the wreckage of their faith, she, girt with beastly monsters, rends with the cruel fang of her blasphemous doctrine.
This monster's cavern, your sacred Majesty, thick laid, as seafaring men do say it is, with hidden lairs, and all the neighbourhood thereof, where the rocks of unbelief echo to the howling of her black dogs, we must pass by with ears in a manner stopped. For it is written: "Hedge thine ears about with thorns ;" and again: "Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers;" and yet again: "A man that is an heretic, avoid after the first reproof, knowing that such an one is fallen, and is in sin, being condemned of his own judgment." So then, like prudent pilots, let us set the sails of our faith for the course wherein we may pass by most safely, and again follow the coasts of the Scriptures. (Exposition of the Christian Faith Bk 1 Ch 6.46-47)
The Apostolic Constitutions
If therefore God inflicted punishment immediately on those that made a schism on account of their ambition, how much rather will He do it upon those who are the leaders of impious heresies! Will not He inflict severer punishment on those that blaspheme His providence or His creation? But do you, brethren, who are instructed out of the Scripture, take care not to make divisions in opinion, nor divisions in unity. For those who set up unlawful opinions are marks of perdition to the people. In like manner, do not you of the laity come near to such as advance doctrines contrary to the mind of God; nor be you partakers of their impiety. For says God: "Separate yourselves from (he midst of these men, lest you perish together with them." And again: "Depart from the midst of them, and separate yourselves, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you." (Bk VI Sec II.4)
Be ye likewise contented with one baptism alone, that which is into the death of the Lord; not that which is conferred by wicked heretics, but that which is conferred by unblameable priests, "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:" and let not that which comes from the ungodly be received by you, nor let that which is done by the godly be disannulled by a second. For as there is one God, one Christ, and one Comforter, and one death of the Lord in the body, so let that baptism which is unto Him be but one. . . .
Receive ye the penitent, for this is the will of God in Christ. Instruct the catechumens in the elements of religion, and then baptize them. Eschew the atheistical heretics, who are past repentance, and separate them from the faithful, and excommunicate them from the Church of God, and charge the faithful to abstain entirely from them, and not to partake with them either in sermons or prayers: for these are those that are enemies to the Church, and lay snares for it; who corrupt the flock, and defile the heritage of Christ, pretenders only to wisdom, and the vilest of men; concerning whom Solomon the wise said: "The wicked doers pretend to act piously." For, says he, "there is a way which seemeth right to some, but the ends thereof look to the bottom of hell." These are they concerning whom the Lord declared His mind with bitterness and severity, saying that "they are false Christs and false teachers;" who have blasphemed the Spirit of grace, and done despite to the gift they had from Him after the grace of baptism, "to whom forgiveness shall not be granted, neither in this world nor in that which is to come;" who are both more wicked than the Jews and more atheistical than the Gentiles; who blaspheme the God over all, and tread under foot His Son, and do despite to the doctrine of the Spirit; who deny the words of God, or pretend hypocritically to receive them, to the affronting of God, and the deceiving of those that come among them; who abuse the Holy Scriptures, and as for righteousness, they do not so much as know what it is; who spoil the Church of God, as the "little foxes do the vineyard;" whom we exhort you to avoid, lest you lay traps for your own souls. (Bk VI Sec III.15, 18)
Do you therefore, O bishops, and ye of the laity, avoid all heretics who abuse the law and the prophets. For they are enemies to God Almighty, and disobey Him, and do not confess Christ to be the Son of God. For they also deny His generation according to the flesh; they are ashamed of the cross; they abuse His passion and His death; they know not His resurrection; they take away His generation before all ages. Nay, some of them are impious after another manner, imagining the Lord to be a mere man, supposing Him to consist of a soul and body. But others of them suppose that Jesus Himself is the God over all, and glorify Him as His own Father, and suppose Him to be both the Son and the Comforter; than which doctrines what can be more detestable? (Bk VI Sec. V.26)
Let a bishop, or presbyter, or deacon who only prays with heretics, be suspended; but if he also permit them to perform any part of the office of a clergyman, let him be deprived.
We command that a bishop, or presbyter, or deacon who receives the baptism, or the sacrifice of heretics, be deprived: "For what agreement is there between Christ and Belial? or what part hath a believer with an infidel?" . . .
If any one, either of the clergy or laity, enters into a synagogue of the Jews or heretics to pray, let him be deprived and suspended. . . .
If any bishop, or presbyter, or deacon, receives a second ordination from any one, let him be deprived, and the person who ordained him, unless he can show that his former ordination was from the heretics; for those that are either baptized or ordained by such as these, can be neither Christians nor clergymen. (Bk VIII Sec. V.45-46, 65, 68)
St. Basil the Great
. . . . The old authorities decided to accept that baptism which in nowise errs from the faith. Thus they used the names of heresies, of schisms, and of unlawful congregations. By heresies they meant men who were altogether broken off and alienated in matters relating to the actual faith; by schisms men who had separated for some ecclesiastical reasons and questions capable of mutual solution; by unlawful congregations gatherings held by disorderly presbyters or bishops or by uninstructed laymen. As, for instance, if a man be convicted of crime, and prohibited from discharging ministerial functions, and then refuses to submit to the canons, but arrogates to himself episcopal and ministerial rights, and persons leave the Catholic Church and join him, this is unlawful assembly. To disagree with members of the Church about repentance, is schism. Instances of heresy are those of the Manichaeans, of the Valentinians, of the Marcionites, and of these Pepuzenes; for with them there comes in at once their disagreement concerning the actual faith in God. So it seemed good to the ancient authorities to reject the baptism of heretics altogether, but to admit that of schismatics, on the ground that they still belonged to the Church. (Letter CLXXXVIII.1)
St. Cyprian of Carthage
But, beloved brethren, not only must we beware of what is open and manifest, but also of what deceives by the craft of subtle fraud. And what can be more crafty, or what more subtle, than for this enemy, detected and cast down by the advent of Christ, after light has come to the nations, and saving rays have shone for the preservation of men, that the deaf might receive the hearing of spiritual grace, the blind might open their eyes to God, the weak might grow strong again with eternal health, the lame might run to the church, the dumb might pray with clear voices and prayers--seeing his idols forsaken, and his lanes and his temples deserted by the numerous concourse of believers--to devise a new fraud, and under the very title of the Christian name to deceive the incautious? He has invented heresies and schisms, whereby he might subvert the faith, might corrupt the truth, might divide the unity. Those whom he cannot keep in the darkness of the old way, he circumvents and deceives by the error of a new way. He snatches men from the Church itself; and while they seem to themselves to have already approached to the light, and to have escaped the night of the world, he pours over them again, in their unconsciousness, new darkness; so that, although they do not stand firm with the Gospel of Christ, and with the observation and law of Christ, they still call themselves Christians, and, walking in darkness, they think that they have the light, while the adversary is flattering and deceiving, who, according to the apostle's word, transforms himself into an angel of light, and equips his ministers as if they were the ministers of righteousness, who maintain night instead of day, death for salvation, despair under the offer of hope, perfidy under the pretext of faith, antichrist under the name of Christ; so that, while they feign things like the truth, they make void the truth by their subtlety. This happens, beloved brethren, so long as we do not return to the source of truth, as we do not seek the head nor keep the teaching of the heavenly Master. (On the Unity of the Church 3)
St. Cyril of Jerusalem
For the godless system of the heresies is a road with many branches, and whenever a man has strayed from the one straight way, then he falls down precipices again and again. (Catechetical Lectures VI.13)
Episcopal Bishop Alexander says schism is a bad thing. Well and good. But heresy is not some benign opinion. The Church Fathers thought heresy a dangerous, damning thing. It may have been merely an opinion, but unrepentant heresy kept one out of the Church, away from the Sacraments, and cut off from the Life Christ gives. As another Episcopal Bishop has noted, heresy is cruel, because it promises that which it cannot give.
In short, when it comes to schism and heresy, there is no choice. Christians are to avoid both. Because both bring death and destruction.
These remarks of Fr. Samuel Edwards are worthy of some reflection:
The stage is now set for the consideration of the other major Pauline passage which relates to our topic, which begins at 2 Corinthians 10:11. Paul proceeds to ask a series of rhetorical questions which, taken together, give a fairly complete picture of what being in communion signified in the early Church: "Do not be mismated (heterozygountes) with unbelievers. For what partnership (metoche) have righteousness and iniquity? Or what communion (koinonia) has light with darkness? What concord (symphonesis) has Christ with Belial? Or what allotment (meris) has a believer with an unbeliever? What common ground (synkatathesis) has the temple of God with idols?" He then goes on, "For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, 'I will live in them and move among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.'"
The meaning of the six Greek words used here (heterozygountes, metoche, koinonia, symphonesis, meris, and synkatathesis) enable us to form a comprehensive definition of the meaning of communion. It is evident from a close examination of them what is the nature of the koinonia to which Paul refers. . . . It is a marital yoking, a partnership, which enables the participants to share in the life of God communicated through holy things and which stands on the common ground of doctrinal agreement and moral concord. The idea of a community not characterized by this shared standard of faith and moral order would rightly have been regarded as self-contradictory. A group of people who live together but have no common agreement on the nature of reality is not a community, but a voluntary aggregation of individuals formed for the pursuit of essentially individual purposes and ultimately held together only by self-interest or sentiment.
The participation or communion to which koinonia refers before all else is participation in Christ, particularly sacramental participation, communio in sacris, communion in holy things. Only in a secondary, derivative, and dependant sense does it refer to the fellowship or community between those who participate in holy things. Its primary reference is to participation in the life of Christ; participation in one another's lives in a positive sense is possible only to the degree that we first participate in the life of Christ himself. Thus, the contemporary use of the notion of "community" to render this term, involves an inversion of the original priority of meaning.
In the New Testament, the sharing of communion always presupposes common faith. To demonstrate that this is not just a Pauline idea, we need only to turn to the first letter of John. Here he states that, "if we say we have communion (koinonia) with him and walk in the darkness, we lie and are not doing the truth; but if we walk in the light as he is in the light, then we have communion with one another and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin." (1:5-7)
Fr. Edwards expertly criticizes the present Protestant notion of communion (and notes its sources in nineteenth century German theology). It seems to me that Fr. Edwards is rightly debunking "lowest common denominator" ecumenism for the more meaty (and truthful) koinonia in the Person of Christ. And about that Person there are beliefs one must hold (and live) if one would be truly a follower of the Christ.
It seems my previous reflection on the "postmodern" embrace of the Em Churchers has gotten some attention I don't normally receive (and probably don't deserve). Reverend Mike offers up some gracious agreement on some points. BeChurch has two entries, here and here. And organic church also offers up some comments.
The comments touch nerves, so I wanted to be clear to the Em Churchers: I did not mean my comments in any way to be taken as mere rhetoric to score some Orthodox points. I meant them quite seriously, and sincerely await responses.
There is a part of my questioning that is also--assuming that I have the right understanding on the matter--meant to serve as a warning to my brothers and sisters who are, like me, in search of the genuine life of Christ in the Church.
When one looks at the history of the relationship between the Church and the surrounding culture, cautionary tales abound.
Though the Constantinian legitimization of the public presence of the Church did much to end the shedding of innocent blood and the ruthless oppression of Christians, the development of monasticism in response gives some credence to the understanding that public legitimization was not without its downside. St. John Chrysostom had much to say to his congregation about allowing the godlessness of the culture to infiltrate the purity of the Body of Christ.
The Pope's seeking after political hegemony during the reign of Charlemagne led, perhaps inevitably, to the abuses and sinful acts of the late medieval papal see and its schism. And, as well, to the Cistercian and Carthusian reforms in Benedictine (that is to say, western) monasticism.
Calvin's Geneva, though a major and important seat of the Reformation, was among the most oppressive states in its enforcement of Reformation doctrine.
In our own day, capitalist consumerism has so infiltrated the churches, that marketing often takes the place of substance. Witness the addition of TM to so many of the present day conferences and their jargon.
From the philosophical standpoint, the amalgamation that calls itself "posmodern" (to the extent that it can be spoken of generally) presumes a certain relativity and skepticism that cannot be used uncritically by any of us.
This is not to say that "postmodernist" thought is without benefit. It's focus on the particular, in opposition to the modernist universalizing paradigm, is quite welcome, and can be used to allow Christians a chance in the marketplace of ideas. But "postmodernism" is not, ultimately, fully commensurate with Christian conviction and so to the degree that we fail to utilize it with watchful attentiveness, so much more do we put ourselves and our churches in harm's way. The Episcopal Church, in its search for relevancy to our culture, is perhaps the most explicit example of what happens if we do not critically examine, from the standpoint of faith, the culture in which we live and move.
So, all I'm trying to say to my Em Church brothers and sisters is: be careful, and don't fail to turn the "postmodernist" critique back upon itself.
I've been rummaging among some of the Emerging Church, Liquid Church (or other prevailing trademark), websites. I came away sympathetic but unmoved.
Not because I don't think the Em Churchers are sincere, or that they aren't deeply reflecting on mission and ecclesiology, nor that they've succumbed to uber-relevancy. I do believe they are sincere. It is evident that they are reflecting deeply on church and witness. And though I might question their enthusiastic embrace of the mislabeled "postmodern" milieu, they nonetheless appear to be endorsing it in something of a critical way.
I am sympathetic. There is a bunch of silliness in modern Protestantism. Witness the commercialization of the so-called contemporary Christian music scene. There are a bunch of serious abuses. The priestly sexual abuse of young adolescent boys in the Roman Catholic Church and its coverup. The supression of and attempts to obliterate historic Christian doctrines and practices in some mainline churches. There is doubtless the tendency toward, if not full, institutionalization of ecclesiology in all expressions of the Christian faith. One cannot be blamed for looking for a legitimate remedy.
But I am unpersuaded that the rejection of much of historic Christianity by the Em Churchers is as reflective as their embrace of "postmodernity" and of its tenets.
First, though it has become accepted to refer to our era as postmodernity, I am hardpressed to understand how postmodernity is so far removed from modernity as to be able to see that it (postmodernism), indeed, has succeeded modernity. That is to say, the label "post" assumes a vantage point by which to judge that modernity has ended, and something else has taken its place. This isn't just semantics. One of the essential tenets of postmodernity is the locatedness of perceiving and understanding. But if postmodernity is so located, how can it summon the resources from within its own metanarrative to measure its distance from that which it assumes it has replaced?
I don't have a viable alternative, for my own preference in culture labeling (late modernity) assumes a similar ability to discern that modernity's progress and tenure is nearing an end. But this does not eliminate the difficulty of assuming that modernity is over or in its death throes.
Secondly, one of the tenets of postmodernity bought into by the Em Churchers is the primary nature of reality being "liquidity" (or, relativity). Or, more crassly, the only constant is change. A corollary of this tenet is the very same progressivism that modernity asserted. Em Churchers assume that the past is passe, that the past is mostly one of failure and mistake, that the present knows so much more than the past. So an ancient-future church can sift through the Tradition and pick and choose that which it judges to be timeless . . . but it judges this on what grounds? Icons? Yes. The theology of the icon? No. Parts of the liturgy? Absolutely. The whole liturgy? No, because it stifles individual expression. Community? Yes. But the ecclesiology which asserts that there is no salvation outside the Church? No.
But on what grounds does the Em Church make these judgments? How can the Em Church escape the same criticisms it makes of the "modern," "solid" churches? Aren't such judgments as arbitrary and self-justifying as the ones the Em Churchers criticize? If not, why? And if they have a solid and unvarying standard of judgment, doesn't this undercut their claim to fluid morphing?
Nor can the Em Churchers claim that their standard is the Gospel. Not because this claim isn't true on its face. I do assume that they mean to utilize the Gospel as an unvarying standard. But so did/does the historic Church. The question the Em Churchers can't answer is why their judgments should supersede those of the historic Church, because to make such a claim is to undercut their own raison d'etre, to cut off their own legs from underneath them.
I also think, and this is perhaps not as substantive a critique as the ones I've given, though it's no less pertinent, that the Em Churchers' evaluation of the historic Church as institutionalized, non-missionally oriented, culturally irrelevant, and so forth, is far too superficial and doesn't deal adequately with the historical record.
For example, take the criticism of the Divine Liturgy as too rigid, too blind to the meeting of needs, and so forth. This criticism fails to take into account the extremely participatory nature of Orthodox worship, and assumes that established form cannot meet the needs of the present because it cannot change its external appearance to meet the worshipper where he or she is at. But it is precisely the established form that is best able to meet the needs of an ever-changing congregation by its very stability and time-testedness. Though the Em Churchers' promotion of an ever-changing worship form seems self-evidently to meet the needs of an ever-changing congregation, I have yet to see any self-reflection that perhaps a moving target combined with a moving "projectile" makes for doubly improbable contact.
Also, the Em Churchers, coming largely from a Protestant background, fail to take into account the sacramentality of the Divine Liturgy. The Divine Liturgy is not merely a human creation, and this is why it can continue to meet the needs of worshippers throughout the centuries.
But more importantly the Em Churchers make an assumption about worship that they do not seem to have derived from Scripture: that the purpose of worship is to meet needs. Rather, if the purpose of worship is to worship and adore the Trinity, then it seems that the Divine Liturgy follows, especially the attendant sacramental theology. The historical record shows that this, indeed, is what happened. Since the purpose of worship was God-focused, the Liturgy inevitably took a stabilized form, and developed ever more "fancy" expression. Why use gold and costly materials to make the worship accoutrements? Because it was God we are worshipping, and not engaging in a pragmatic spiritual therapy. Why construct special buildings for worship? I concur that on one level it's pragmatic--more converts needed more space. But I rather suppose, given what the historical record says, that it was deemed appropriate to give God his own special place of worship and adoration. A place where his praise and glorification could receive the best of human efforts and gifts.
My hope and prayer is that the Em Churchers' flirting with the historic Church will lead, as it did in my own journey, to an embrace of the historic Church which is alive and well--and meeting needs--today.
One of the "hot trends" in the church growth movement is that of the "emerging church" phenomenon. I have to confess that I'm only just becoming acquainted with this phenomenon, and most of my acquaintance has been via the internet. There are a plethora of books and conferences out there, but I've not read any of the books or been to any of the conferences. (Though the way some of these bloggers write about their conference experiences, it feels almost like being there.) All this is basically a disclaimer saying mine is not an in-depth analysis of the em church, but rather some initial questions and suspicions.
As I understand it, the em church has a few foci: a non- (sometimes anti-) institutional premise which focuses on relationships among smaller gathered groups of Christians, a preference for an emotive and existential worship experience, and a conscious embrace of a "postmodern" worldview. All of these contain both promise and peril.
Relationships and Smaller Groups
In the twentieth century, the popular marketing of this small group trend went under the terms of "house church," "cell group," and so forth. The point was that since we as individuals get lost in the large group, we needed smaller, more intimate settings for discipleship and accountability. This felt need got coupled with a presupposition that the New Testament pattern of eccelsiology was to have several house churches meeting in one city. It appears that the current jargon describes this setup as a "multi-site congregation."
What's interesting to me, is that, historically speaking, this was the genesis for the parish-diocese dynamic. In other words, there was one Local Church (diocese) in a given city, headed by a bishop, and several house curches (parishes) served by presbyters/priests. (Admittedly, this is a very simplified model, but is, I think, a fair description of the very early development of the Traditional Church structure. One sees hints of it in the New Testament, but sees its more developed form in Clement's letter to the Corinthians [c. AD 95] and the Ignatian letters [pre AD 107])
If the trend, then, among the em churches, will eventually follow this historical organic model, I think this a good thing. Especially since another of the aspects of the em church is its conscious a la carte borrowing from various historic practices of the Church (the use of icons, for example). By following this historical development, and coupled with this growing appreciation for Church Tradition and history, the em church may well find themselves consciously returning to the proper ecclesiological structure.
Unfortunately, given the em church's self-conscious non-/anti-institutionalism, they will equate the dynamic organic ecclesiology of history with the sins of institutionalism. Further, since the impetus toward the "house church," "multi-site congregation" also appears to tend to take on the therapeutic motif of our culture, instead of moving toward a more communal understanding of ecclesiology, the individualism still inherent in postmodernism will likely win out and frustrate these efforts.
Existential Worship
The willingness of the em church to explore alternative forms of worship has some potential good. Some of these worship experiences utilize the historic liturgies of the Church. Since these liturgies formulate Christian belief in time-tested ways, then the shaping of Christian minds and hearts by these liturgical snippets is a welcome good.
Unfortunately, one cannot take a screwdriver from the toolbox and very effectively hammer nails with it. And given that the em church worship is still weighted with the orientation toward needs of the individual worshipper, whatever good might come from this eclectic style is bastardized.
Historically, the Church's worship has focused on God, not on the worshipper. While it is true that the liturgies (at least in the East) were translated into the vernacular, and local customs and (small-t) traditions were encouraged, the words, form and structure of worship were predetermined. The Church didn't ask the catechumens if they would prefer more praise choruses over the traditional hymns. The Church didn't bring non-Christians into a "seeker service" to evangelize them. The Church worshipped God. If you wanted to join in, fine, but no one asked your preference.
This alternative worship, furthermore, is too unstable. Though the point of worship is the praise of the Trinity, the effect is the formation of Christian minds and hearts in the beliefs of Christianity. With the style and words of the service changing weekly (or oftener) there is no chance for any substantive formation of Christian minds and hearts. Or rather, the substantive formation is one of pluralism and relativism, the lack of a solid criterion of discernment.
Postmodern Worldview
In many ways, this is the most troubling development of all. The positive, of course, is that insofar as this embrace of the postmodern offers a substantive critique of the modernist hegemony which invaded the Western churches, the em church has an opportunity to embrace again, in a renewed way, the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Another positive is that having learned how to communicate with the culture, the em church can experience a greater facility to keep the conversation going when it comes to evangelism.
The difficulty, however, is that it does not appear that the em church is adequately handling the pluralism and relativism with which postmodernist thinking is rife. So far as I can tell, the em church phenomenon does vocalize commitment to absolute truth (albeit not in modernist terms). But this commitment is contradicted by the pluralist and relativist worship--admittedly the most formative of Christian practices--which it promotes. How can one balance the commitment to an absolute, transcendent God with an approach to worship which communicates "It doesn't matter as long as it's sincere"?
There are other more superficial complaints I have, not the least of which is the (in my view) selling out to marketing that the em church phenomenon does. It seems as though new jargon must continually be invented so that it can be trademarked and the books copyrighted. This can lay dangerous foundations for a resurgence of theological nominalism.
Furthermore, the non-/anti-institutional commitments of the em church are themselves being institutionalised. Googling "emerging church" leads to dozens and dozens of websites, books, conferences, and so forth. It all may be "decentralized" but it's just as institutional as the historic Church they criticize for its institutionalism.
But once again, mine is only a beginning glance. These are but impressionistic concerns and questions. If others can help me see the substance, I would be grateful.
In disparate places on Tripp's blog a discussion has risen from the reflections on the occasion of Tripp's testimony at the local Theology on Tap at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Evanston last Thursday (24 July). The point at issue: the holiness of the Church.
Megan's stance seems to see the Church in terms of relative uselessness. For Megan, it appears that the Church is an organization. I'm not sure that she thinks the Church is merely an organization. I think she would admit that there is a "spiritual" Church that isn't equated with the organizational Church. It is this organizational Church that most often gets in the way of loving the world and living the faith. When the Church (organization) does whatever it is that it is to do well, then Church is helpful. Her experience, it seems, however, has been that the Church (organization) doesn't do things well, in which case, she can take this Church or leave it. If it hinders her from living the faith in a way that makes sense to her, it is the Church's loss. (Megan, if I've got this wrong in any way, please correct me. This is what I've heard you saying.)
Tripp wants to salvage the Church for Megan; though perhaps he could be a bit more clear which of Megan's churches he wants to salvage. I read him to want to salvage it all. He wants Megan to see what he sees, that the Church (organizational and "spiritual") is needed, that we need it as much as it needs us, and that this need plays itself out in reconciliation. The Church should forgive us. But we should forgive the Church. It's the dance of reconciliation.
Not surprisingly, I take exception to these understandings. In brief, I posit what I take to be the Church's historic and biblical understanding of herself. She is the Body of Christ. If we wish to be united to Christ's incarnate body, then we can only do so through the body that incarnates Christ, the Church. If Christ is the only way to union with God, then the only way to union with Christ, because the only place where it can be said the fullness of Christ dwells, is in the Church. This Church is both the Church triumphant, waiting in glory, and the Church militant, presently here struggling for the Gospel. This Church cannot be separated from its visible organizational aspects, nor can it be limited to some invisible conglomeration of the Christians whose borders we cannot know. It is both visible and invisible, and inescapably one. It is one because it is the Body of Christ. Christ is indivisible. The Trinity is indivisible. The Church is one with Christ as Christ is one with the Father. Therefore the Church cannot be divided.
I'm sure I've left out stuff, but there you go.
Now, Megan and Tripp have disagreed with this historic, biblical and patristic understanding of the Church. Megan discards the visible, incarnate, organizational aspect of the Church, making the Church divided. Tripp asserts that the Church is both sinful and holy, because sinful and holy people are in the Church.
But these conceptions of the Church bring immense and irresoluble problems:
1. If the Church is not incarnate, therefore its visible organizational self can be discarded from its invisible spiritual self, then the Church cannot be the Body of Christ, because Christ cannot be divided. And if the Church is not the Body of Christ, then the question that follows: how are we then united both to Christ and to one another? Without the Church, that doesn't seem possible. I would like to know the answer to these questions.
2. If the Church is in any way sinful (in whole or in part) then it cannot be the Body of Christ, because Christ is utterly holy. Without holiness no one will see the Lord, so if the Church is sinful, the Church can have no part of God. Furthermore, if the Church is sinful, she has no Gospel, because the Gospel is about deliverance from sin. But if the Church has not been delivered from sin, then she cannot speak authoritatively about what is holy and what is not. She has no standing to address the moral questions of our day: sexuality, war, the objectification of the defenseless and innocent as sexual tools, poverty, and so forth. If she is sinful, she cannot determine that which is righteous in these matters, and has no voice to speak. Furthermore, she proves the Gospel a lie. If the Church can be both sinful and authoritative, I would like to know how.
From my vantage point, Tripp's and Megan's positions on the Church create more problems than they appear to solve. I would like to see them address these issues.
The Church has never ceased to be. There is unbroken continuity, historically and ontologically, between the one holy Church of the New Testament and the present Church. One characteristic of that undying Church is that it is fully the Body of Christ.
"And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all." (Ephesians 1:22-23 NASB).
Another is that the Church is apostolic. This includes, in part, that the Church hold to and practice all that the Apostles taught and practiced.
"But we should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. It was for this He called you through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us." (2 Thessalonians 2:13-15 NASB)
"Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from every brother who leads an unruly life and not according to the tradition which you received from us." (2 Thessalonians 3:6 NASB)
"They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer." (Acts 2:42 NASB)
And the Church is "the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth." (1 Timothy 3:15 NASB)
So, in a very truncated form, I am arguing that departure from the Apostles' teaching, practice, and tradition, is tantamount to a departure from the Church, in whom the fulness of Christ dwells, which is the Body of Christ. Or, as the Church Fathers call it, a theandric (lit., "divine-human") entity.
I found Lewis' insightful essay on the net. You should read the whole thing. You can go to it here.
These two paragraphs are representative:
Now it is surely the case that if all these supposals were ever carried into effect we should be embarked on a different religion. Goddesses have, of course, been worshipped: many religions have had priestesses. But they are religions quite different in character from Christianity. Common sense, disregarding the discomfort, or even the horror, which the idea of turning all our theological language into the feminine gender arouses in most Christians, will ask "Why not? Since God is in fact not a biological being and has no sex, what can it matter whether we say He or She, Father or Mother, Son or Daughter?"
But Christians think that God Himself has taught us how to speak of Him. To say that it does not matter is to say either that all the masculine imagery is not inspired, is merely human in origin, or else that, though inspired, it is quite arbitrary and unessential. And this is surely intolerable: or, if tolerable, it is an argument not in favour of Christian priestesses but against Christianity. It is also surely based on a shallow view of imagery. Without drawing upon religion, we know from our poetical experience that image and apprehension cleave closer together than common sense is here prepared to admit; that a child who has been taught to pray to a Mother in Heaven would have a religious life radically different from that of a Christian child. And as image and apprehension are in an organic unity, so, for a Christian, are human body and human soul.
Like Jeff, I have been thinking about how we can tell where the true Church is--though we cannot say where it is not--and have come to some penultimate conclusions. (Note: I'm currently composing an essay on this and hope to post it prior to the start of the semester on 13 January.)
It seems that the criteria for discerning where the Church is will revolve around two foci: historical continuity with the New Testament Church and doctrinal continuity with the New Testament Church.
Doctrinal Continuity
This, to me, seems the most easily ascertainable, insofar as what criteria we should have. In actuality, there is only one criterium here: the living Tradition of the Church. But that Tradition is expressed authoritatively in three ways. First, Scripture. Though I do subscribe to the notion that Scripture arose out of the Tradition, nonetheless, it is the God-breathed quality of the Scripture which gives it an authority by which other aspects of the Tradition can be measured. Secondly, in conformity to "the apostles' doctrine," are the Ecumenical Councils of the Church. Though I used to believe that the Councils were often contrary to Scripture, that was a belief based on huge ignorance. I have since come to understand the "seamless" consistency of the Councils with the Scripture. The Councils make plain, particularly in light of specific heresies, what is the Gospel message of the Scriptures. Though there are only seven Ecumenical Councils, which "ended" due to the historical contingencies of the Schism, they are the common heritage of all Christians (including us Protestants), and if we would claim ourselves in communion with the New Testament Church, it makes sense that we must espouse the dogmatic decrees of the Councils. Thirdly, and finally, the Liturgy of the Church is our other doctrinal compass. By Liturgy I mean, just as is the case with the Councils, the inherited Liturgy of the Church. Since the Schism there has developed a great divergence in the liturgies of the various church groups. To the degree that these liturgies represent, in part, the unified tradition (while admitting some local variations) of the Liturgy, they may share in the dogmatic formation of our theology. (Some of the current liturgies in ECUSA, and other church groups, however, are heretical and dangerous.)
Historical Continuity
With regard to historical continuity, once again, there is one criterium, the Living Church as constituted by the Eucharist. Now as has been clearly shown since Ignatius of Antioch this Eucharistic constitution has two modes: apostolic genealogy and Eucharistic fellowship. By apostolic geneaology, I primarily mean those churches who can trace historical descent from the apostles. Either a church was founded by the apostles or by their representatives, and continued within the descent from the apostles through further valid charismatically appointed leaders. This tracing is seen in the tradition of apostolic succession. However, apostolic succession, as understood in tactile, or juridical terms, is more than just tracing parentage. Apostolic succession is a charism that demands not only the incarnated manifestation of Christ's ministry in the ordination and consecration of Church leaders, but demands fidelity to the deposit of the faith, dogmatic and canonical.
But valid ordinations and consecrations and adherence to dogma is not complete without Eucharist communion. Schism is different from heresy in that schism arises either from an imbalance in dogmatic faith, or in moral failures of leadership (failure in maintaining philia). One may pass the "test" of knowledge of the faith, but unless one lives it consistently, one's Eucharistic fellowship will be impaired. This criterium alone, of course, cannot determine the true Church, since communion among the churches has been impaired since the Schism. But it is to say, that once one has determined where the true Church is, if one is not in communion with it, one cannot claim to be that Church.
It seems to me then that one can utilize these criteria, as a whole, and come to some understanding of where the Church is. However, I should strongly and emphatically state that no one can use this to determine where the Church isn't. God's grace is bigger than us all. We do well to pursue it wholeheartedly.
While I'm no Martin Luther, and, indeed, this is neither All Saint's Eve nor a Reformation, nonetheless, I continue to try to coalesce my thinking on matters involving ecclesiology. As the Church nears the feast of Christ's birth, I post the following five Advent theses:
First of all, the starting point has to be that the Church is the Body of Christ. If the Church is the Body of Christ, then it will be an incarnate body, a visible body. The Church must be manifested visibly; it will not be some invisible spiritual body only--though, since those who have died in the faith are not dead but alive, then the members of the Body of Christ also include those who are not visible to Christians in their premortem state. Only the reality of a visible Body of Christ takes seriously the implications of the Incarnation. The only other conception of the Church, that of some invisible entity, is, ultimately, Gnostic, in that in such a conception it is only the intellectual and spiritual that truly matter.
Second, if the Church is the Body of Christ, it must be one. If the Church is one, then there is only one real Church. Making this claim does not limit the grace and workings of God to the embodied Church. God sends the sunshine on the good and the wicked. The Spirit moves where he will. But it is to say that one may and must say, "Here is the Church." In our present schismatic reality, this point must be strongly pressed, though it be as strongly disbelieved. If the Church is the Body of Christ, it cannot be divided, since Christ is one, and the Trinity is one. The schisms we have witnessed in history and presently are not divisions within the one, indivisible Body of Christ, but divisions away from it. However, as will be clarified momentarily, though schism away from the Church is a grave and serious matter, and the Church rightly both discerns various actions as schismatic and warns of the dangers of schism, it does not necessarily follow that the Church may judge the salvific fate of those who've sundered themselves from the one Body of Christ. Christ prohibits Christians from judging the salvation of others, though he likewise bids us discern truth from error, and calls us all to repentance.
Third, if the Church is the Body of Christ, then it is in and through the Church that the salvation Christ accomplishes may be realized. This is not to deny that salvation is ultimately a mystery into which humans may not fully look. But it is to say that insofar as God has revealed the way of salvation to us, it is accomplished in and through Christ alone. Since the Spirit has formed the Church to be the Body of Christ, Christ, as Head of the Church, accomplishes his saving work in and through his Body. If salvation will be accomplished outside of the Church, this we do not know. What we do know is that it must be through Jesus, for there is no other name under heaven, given to us humans, by which we must be saved.
Fourth, since Jesus is the incarnate God, since the Church has embodied existence, then this salvation which Christ works in his body, must be a whole salvation which involves the created world, especially the human experience. Thus, by the explicit teaching of Scriptures, our participation in the divine nature, our putting on of Christ, is not merely some ethical, moral or spiritual reality, though it is these things in part. Rather, our participation in Christ involves, through the reality of the bodily Resurrection, the transfigured elements of bread and wine, the holy oil of anointing, the water blessed in his name, the iconic visual representations of the incarnate Word and his saints, the union of man and woman, and the many varieties of gifts the Spirit bestows. Salvation is not an intellectual or disembodied reality, but encompasses all of human and created existence.
Fifth, if the Church is the Body of Christ and one, then it must be and proclaim the truth of Christ. That is to say, the genuineness of any group's claim to be the Church (or a part of the Church) rests significantly on whether or not it proclaims the truth of Christ, for Christ himself is the Truth, and departure from truth is a departure from Christ. Christ promised to lead the apostles, and the Church, into all truth. Part of that revelation, by Paul's own account, is both recorded in the documents that the Church has discerned to be the Scriptures and kept by way of the so-called "oral teachings" of the Apostles. It also, in concert with Christ's promises, includes those dogmatic decisions of the one, visible Church on matters of faith (for example, the ecumenical Councils). Thus, any group which teaches that which is contrary to Scripture or the ecumenical teachings of the Church, or denies those Scriptures and teachings, may rightly be doubted as to the veracity of its claim to be the Church, or part of the Church. Thus, for example, anyone who or any group which would deny the biblical and conciliar understandings of the person and work of Christ may invalidate, by their own mouths, their claims to be part of the Church. This would include, in part, the denial of Jesus' divinity and humanity, the Trinitarian understanding of God's being, the Virgin Birth, the bodily Resurrection, the unending rule of Christ, etc.
More can certainly be said. But I am a bear of little brain, and these will occupy me long enough.
Jeff and Tripp are impatient for me to discuss potential notions of exclusivism insofar as it's tied to my growing understanding of the Church as the human and divine means of our salvation. To be fair and honest upfront, I'm not sure this blog will actually answer that, so much as try to lay some groundwork for my further thinking on the matter. I should also note that I will both draw from and assume much of the thought contained in the essay I've already written on the unity of the Church. So, for more detail, you can go there. I will summarize my thought on the Church's unity, and attempt to draw it together with what I've been sorting out regarding salvation.
The point with which we, as Christians, have to start is the ontological unity of the Church. From Jesus' prayer in John 17 to Paul's majestic comments in Ephesians, as well as elsewhere throughout the New Testament (cf. 1 Corinthians 1-3, 10-11, 12-14; Colossians 1; etc.), the Church is one. I cannot stress this too strongly. There was not some glorious point in the past in which the Church was one, but then split. The witness of Scripture is that the unity of the Church is based in the person of Christ, indeed, on the unity of the Trinity. There can be no division within Christ, nor in the Trinity, nor can there be in the Church. If the Church were ever to cease to be one, it would fail to be in union with Christ and with the Trinity, and would cease to be. In which case, Jesus' promise that Hades would not prevail against the Church would be null and void, and make of Jesus a false prophet.
The witness of the earliest Christian writers, Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyons, Cyprian of Carthage, all witness as well to the, what I am calling, ontological unity of the Church.
Now, certainly there are historical difficulties which challenge our thinking on this matter. There are the Monophysite and Monothelite schisms, the Great Schism of east and west, the Western schism between Protestant and Catholics, and the 22,0000-plus schisms worldwide among the Protestants themselves alone. Had these schisms not taken place, and were we not Protestants, then the issue of unity would be a non-issue. Regrettably, however, all of us Protestants now living live within a milieu of schism, nor do we know anything different.
There seem to me to be only about three ways (though each has its own potential variations) to deal with the facticity of the Church's unity, and the myriad schisms among Christians. One way is to assert that the unity of the Church is coterminus with a specific body, though not denying the salvific and mysterious grace of the Holy Spirit among those outside that body. This is view of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches about themselves respectively. Another way is to assert the unity of the Church but to deny its applicability to any one church or group of churches, which is to assert something like an invisible unity among all believers in all churches. This is the view of most of the Protestant churches. What seems to me to be the only other major possibility is to deny the Church's essential unity in the present and to assert that this is only a proleptic state reserved for the eschaton.
This last seems to me to be the most problematic of all. It appears to me to wrench what I take to be the straightforward reading of the biblical texts, and, more importantly, divorces the present state of the Church from union with God. More to the point it radicalizes the Church to the point that the Church is each individual, and does not allow for any possibility for real union among believers. In other words, it normalizes schism in the here and now.
The so-called "Protestant" view, while charitable toward those who differ from us, and rightly affirming diversity in non-essential matters, as well as properly humble with regard to truth claims, is not without its own set of problems. Chief among those is an implicit denial of the Incarnation. By making of the Church's unity something like an invisible state, this view devalues the embodied existence we as Christians have and will have for eternity, in favor of some sort of Gnostic-like state of adherence to a set of beliefs, robust enough to still be Gospel, but small enough so that we can include, if not everybody, most everybody. The problem, however, is one of criteria. If, as Protestants generally assert, each believer, or each community, sets its own standards of belief and practice, how is it that some sort of invisible unity can make any sense? If we all go our own way believing whatever it is that we believe, how is this any better than the state of schism which prevails? We just simply open our arms and affirm our solidarity with those with whom we disagree? But then doesn't that make a mockery of the beliefs we hold? It seems to me that this view attempts to have diversity and unity at the same time, but the Protestant problem is primarily one of authority. And without a cogent answer to that, and with implicit Gnosticism and potential denial of the Incarnation, it seems a dead end. Considering that Protestant schisms continue to grow, it's not likely that the proof of the pudding is in the eating here.
But of course, it's not as though the Roman Catholic-Eastern Orthodox understandings of ontological and visible unity being conterminus with their respective churches seems any more palatable to the ones considered on the outside of the visible Church. The pluses here, of course, is that it both makes sense of the biblical texts and takes seriously the embodied existence we Christians have as redeemed people, and thus takes seriously the Incarnation, as well as providing the one thing that Protestants cannot provide in their claims--a tangible historic link to the New Testament Church.
This is not to be understated. All Western churches can only trace their history back to Rome. It is through Rome that any Protestants can lay claim to a historic connection to the Church of Peter, Barnabas, Stephen and Paul. Orthodox, insofar as I undertand it, are fortunate in that they go right on back. In fact, the Thessalonian church exists to this day. The historic connection is important. Even we Protestants have to base our understanding of the Gospel and the early Church on historically validated (or validatable) events. Rome and the East go right on back.
However, the problem here is one of criteria. How does one actually "prove" one's claim to being the Church? I'm not talking here of tracing a certain lineage. Rather, I'm talking about proving one is the Church Christ founded. Apostolic succession alone won't do it. Some of the worst heretics in the Church could have traced a valid sacramental line back to Peter and the Apostles. (Need we remind ourselves of Pope Honorius, or Nestorius?) Certainly continuity with the Apostles' teaching is paramount. But how does one discern between rival claims to orthodoxy?
Clearly, the implication here is that, depending on how one answers the question of unity, the undersanding I've come to regarding the role of the Church in our salvation will have huge implications for one's relation to the various schisms we see before us today. If the Church is located in Rome or the Orthodox churches, then, it seems to follow that one must find one's way to Rome or the East in order to experience the fullness of the grace of Christ. While not denying that grace operates outside the Church, there is a certain responsbility one has to the truth when one discovers it. But perhaps it's possible to work out the problems of Protestant invisible unity in such a way so as to preserve the understanding of salvation without having to swear allegiance to the Pope, or repent of one's former heresies as a Protestant when chrismated in Orthodoxy.
Well, I've already lengthened this beyond forbearance. So I'll leave it with that non-conclusion and duck the arrows sure to come.
Now, here I am, just barely underway, and that rascally Tripp accuses me of a high Christology, wants me to clarify how the Sacraments (Mysteries) fit in to this salvation thinking, gives an oblique warning about exclusivism, and, as if that weren't enough, lumps me in with Rowan Williams. (You can look under the comments for the previous blog in this series of thinking.) Rowan Williams, for crying out loud! Hmph. (Or, as Tripp says: Urf.)
Since Tripp caved to the feminine lobby on shopping yesterday, I'll just have to simply make him wait, since I need to further iron out some of my previous thoughts. High Christology, or just simply the Church's working out of the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth, I'll leave for others to decide, though I'm shy of the label, since it implies that a "Low" Christology (whatever that is) is equally plausible.
Romans 5, Hebrews 1, Colossians 1, and pretty much the entire epistle to the Ephesians clearly indicate that Jesus Christ is the type of the fulfillment of humanity, in a way that Adam is the anti-type. In Christ the entirety of humanity reaches its end, its culmination, its completion. The bodily Resurrection of the Christ from the dead, was God's seal of approval on the work of Christ. That is to say, the Resurrection completed the salvation event, and made possible the salvation of human beings. The human nature, which the Son of God took on becoming a human being, has been hypostasized, joined with the divinity of the Son in the union of one person, without confusion, change, separation, or division (per Chalcedon). Thus, the union with God, for which Jesus prayed in John 17, has, in Jesus Christ, become an accomplished fact.
But for humans to receive this gift of salvation, it takes the action of the Trinity. God the Father has sent forth the Spirit, not merely to accomplish the conception of Jesus, but also to bring forth the Body, the Church, of which Christ is the Head. The ministry of Christ is now the ministry of his Church, his Body. This Body was brought forth, or perhaps confirmed, on the day of Pentecost, a week and a half after Christ had ascended to the Father.
Furthermore, as Acts 2:38, and elsewhere in Acts and the epistles, shows, on a personal level, the Holy Spirit is also involved, in baptism. Especially in Acts, but also in Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 12-14 (and, of course, 1-3), and all of Ephesians (but especially 4), this salvation is accomplished in the Church. Frequently through Acts, there is the phrase "and x were added to their number." Without getting too pharasaical with the text, the salvation and the adding are presented together as one complete act. One could say, adding is being saved.
The very first account we have of the Church, in conjunction with the Pentecost narrative, is their devotion to the apostles teaching, to prayers, to fellowship and the breaking of the bread. This breaking of the bread has most often been associated with the Lord's Supper, or the Eucharist. And clearly, in light of 1 Corinthians 10 and 11, this is among the most natural ways to interpret the text. Be that as it may, Paul emphatically states in the Corinthians letter that participation in the Lord's Supper is participation in Christ. Though Protestants have disputed the intepretation of the text in ch. 11--where a "face-value" reading of the text indicates the elements of bread and wine are, in some unexplained way, the body and blood of Jesus--the force is clear: partaking of the Lord's Supper is participation in Christ.
The import of this is that the Church makes possible, on the human level, for one to receive salvation. Baptism is done by the Church (Acts 2), the Eucharist is the locus of the Body of Christ, so that appropriation of salvation and participation in Christ take place within the Church.
Well, Tripp, I hope that touched on the Mysteries for you. But clearly, you can see, I'm still processing these thoughts. Sorry, though, this thing about exclusivism will have to wait.
Now, I need to get ready for worship!
For a couple of weeks now I've been wanting to write out some of my disordered thoughts regarding salvation as I've interacted with the books by Panayiotis Nellas, Deification in Christ and John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion. Now that final papers are out of the way, and I've had a couple nights' rest, I thought I would attempt a beginning.
My understandings of salvation have been primarily juridical, along Anselmian lines. That is to say, I've had a great debt of sin, which I have no ability to repay. Jesus, in his vicarious substitutionary death upon the cross, and his bodily resurrection from the dead authenticating the effects of the cross, paid that debt for me. To appropriate the cancellation of that debt, I respond by grace in faith in repentance and baptism. (I'll leave aside any discussions of perserverance, as I'll be focusing on this transactional aspect.) Insofar as the Church figured, it was the place you went after being saved. It was important to be a member of a local congregation because that was part of what it meant for you to be a Christian. There is where you received assistance in living out your Christian life, where you served others, and supported "the work of the Kingdom." That has been my understanding, growing up in the Stone-Campbell churches.
Reading Nellas' and Zizioulas' works, however, has capped off a several-month period of thinking about the Church. Yes, in a blog on salvation, I mention the Church. This is what has been so revolutionary for me. Now, let me offer this disclaimer. The following are my own barely-formed thoughts on these things. They should not be construed as those of Nellas or Zizioulas, or of the Church. It is not unlikely that I have misunderstandings through which I still need to work. But here it is at this point.
Salvation, rather than being mostly an individual juridical transaction--you're now declared righteous on the basis of Christ's work--is more an incorporation into Christ himself. That is to say, I'm "saved" by virtue of the fact that I, by grace, have been made to participate in the resurrected Christ. Since Jesus assumed human nature, as a human being, though without sin, he is able to incorporate us into himself. This incorporation, by the hypostasis of the divine and human natures in Jesus, enables us, as 2 Peter 1:4 indicates, to participate in the divine nature. We do not become what God is by essence, or by hypostasis (person), but rather share in the uncreated energies of God. In the terms with which I have been familiar, this is the process of justification-sanctification.
Now this is all well and good, but still very Protestant, that is to say, individualistic. I'm still in danger of succumbing to the "me and Jesus" syndrome. And here is where Nellas and Zizioulas, in their different works, coincided in my thinking. The locus of my incorporation into Christ cannot take place apart from his Body, the Church. Or, only through and in the Body of Christ, the Church, may I be saved, and continue to be saved. The Church, by virtue of its being Christ's Body, in and by the power of the Spirit, is a divine insitution. It is not the amalgamation of tens of thousands of groups. It is one, because it is Christ's Body, which cannot be divided since it shares the undivided nature of Christ.
Or, to state it as simply as I can understand it at this point, if I want to be saved and continue to be saved, I can only do that by incorporation in Christ, which means incorporation in his Body, the Church.
More thoughts to come.