Authority

The authority issue is a fundamental one that has concerned me over the years. By this, I mean on both sides--looking at Catholics and wondering how they could submit to the authority of the Church/Pope (and what exactly does this mean? what are they really doing?), and looking at Protestants and wondering where is their authority to declare what we should be believing and teaching. Thinking of the Body of Christ: if the left arm teaches covenant theology, the right arm teaches dispensationalism, the eyes teach that you can't lose your salvation, the mouth teaches you must persevere until the end, the left leg teaches baptism as an adult, the right leg teaches baptism as an infant, etc., then the Body of Christ is inconsistent in its teaching. This is not God's design for the Body of Christ! It's not that I'm saying we aren't all in the Body because of the disagreement, simply that this fracturing wasn't God's desire.  Is there anything we can or should do to help in this situation?  God intends one body that is unified in purpose, without contradiction in teaching. Wouldn't God, in His wisdom (e.g., knowing man's sinful condition and inclinations), have instituted a mechanism from the beginning to preserve the core teaching? To preserve the Body of Christ, His Bride? Just as Moses (a sinful man) was leading the Israelites, and all the instructions that were given for them to remember what they were taught, to pass it down to their children, all the feast days to commemorate the core milestones in their salvation history, etc.--God had a mechanism in place for the transmission of the Old Covenant. With the coming of Christ, and the Church, wouldn't God do a similar thing? (Or at least, it's not totally foreign to think that He'd do such a thing, right?)

I listened to a talk by Ken Hensley, who was a Protestant pastor who became Roman Catholic, and he explains some of the questions and answers that accompanied his journey. Much of what I write below comes from his talk. He argues that the authority of the Church is necessary for:

• Leaders to speak with the authority that Christ commanded/commissioned/directed. ("All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations...and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you." "As the Father sent me, so I send you" etc.). This was a command--but how can we be obedient to do so, with such confident authority, if there's so much disagreement? (Pastor Ken had found himself, as head pastor over a large congregation, no longer feeling he could speak with authority, because his denomination believed so differently than other genuine Bible-believing congregations. He could preach what he was supposed to, but it lacked a genuine authority behind it.)
• Unity in the church. Again, we were commanded to be unified as believers in the Body of Christ. But how can we be obedient to do so, if there's such disagreement and lack of authority in telling us what principles/teachings to be unified over?
• Individuals to have an understanding of what is true, what is to be believed. The "average farmer" doesn't know the details of theology and can't study all the arguments for each doctrine in order to decide which local church to join, or which Christian path to accept for his salvation and living a life pleasing to God? E.g., if miraculous healings no longer occur in today's "dispensation," then should he not be laying hands on his ailing daughter and asking for healing intervention, and if she was, is it a sign of a demonic presence (as John MacArthur would claim)?

These are interesting points to ponder...

Meanwhile, let's examine the authority of the church in Scripture a bit more...we see how disagreements are handled in Acts: Acts 15 shows that they called a council of the apostles to decide the matter (this instance was about whether circumcision was required for salvation). The individual congregations were not left to decide for themselves, rather they had to adhere to the authority of the council. Paul and Barnabas could not settle it alone (a la Pastor/Deacon of local congregation), they they to go all the way from Antioch to Jerusalem (over 300 miles) "to see the apostles and elders about this question." It wasn't that Paul and Barnabas just went to get some advice, rather there was an authoritative letter from the apostles and elders sent to the church in Antioch, with Judas and Silas also sent to confirm the decision in  person (as if Paul & Barnabas weren't enough?). The letter included "...not to burden you with anything beyond the following..." The idea being that they were laying down the requirements on this matter, since it wasn't already clear to the congregation in Antioch.

(Note also, for future reference, that it was Peter who first stood up in this council in Jerusalem: "The apostles and elders met to consider this question. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them..." Then it was James (known as the first bishop of Jerusalem, as Peter was the first bishop of Rome), who gave the last/final word: "When they finished, James spoke up...'Simeon [Peter] has spoken....It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not make it difficult for the Gentiles who are turning to God...'" This is of note in discussions between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, but I won't go into that here.)

What about the passage when Christ gives the keys to Peter? Matt.16:18-19,

"And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."

Protestants would say Christ is saying it is on Peter's confession of faith that He will build His church. What do the keys and the binding/loosening have to do with this confession? Some would say it's something about opening the door for the Holy Spirit's work in different movements. Catholics would say it's on Peter's office/leadership upon which Christ builds the church. (This also makes sense with Christ later telling Peter to "shepherd my sheep/feed my sheep" three times in John 21, when Jesus reinstates Peter after Christ's resurrection.) Giving the keys is a reference to Isaiah 22:20-23,

“Then it will come about in that day, That I will summon My servant Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, And I will clothe him with your tunic And tie your sash securely about him. I will entrust him with your authority, And he will become a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. “Then I will set the key of the house of David on his shoulder, When he opens no one will shut, When he shuts no one will open. “I will drive him like a peg in a firm place, And he will become a throne of glory to his father’s house."
 
In Isaiah, the Prime Minister that is put into place is given the Key to the Kingdom and whatever he binds on earth will be bound in heaven, etc. So Catholics would say Peter is the Prime Minister of the Kingdom Christ established.  Peter was also given a name change when he was given the keys; in the Old Testament, God changed the name of Abram to Abraham and Jacob to Israel whenever He called them to a new higher purpose. These figures are regarded as Patriarchs of the Old Covenant. Catholics would say that here, Christ is establishing the Patriarch of the New Covenant and giving him a new name, Peter.

Now, I can see how one might have different interpretations, and call upon various other passages to support their view. But in light of the other broader/larger issues (e.g., the need for unity & authoritative interpretation), it's not totally crazy for Catholics to have this interpretation on this passage. There seems to be a valid argument for their interpretation and there exist other passages and such to back up such an interpretation. I.e., even we don't agree, can't we now understand/respect where they are coming from and not be so dismissive?

Let me interject to say I am not giving an exhaustive treatment of this issue by any means--there is much more thorough analysis at www.catholic.com. It's noteable that this site has answers, explaining the Scriptures and the history of thought, to every question you can imagine, and the answers are signed at the bottom with:

NIHIL OBSTAT: I have concluded that the materials presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors. Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004 

IMPRIMATUR: In accord with 1983 CIC 827 permission to publish this work is hereby granted. +Robert H. Brom, Bishop of San Diego, August 10, 2004

I love that--that there is an authoritative place one can go--whether Christian or Non--and know that what they are reading has the approval of the Church as being correct. In this day and age, where there are so many websites and individuals blogging and such, it's extremely easy for slightly erroneous ideas to get perpetrated...and then a slippery slope of more and more afield of the truth, perhaps totally innocently but without the knowledge and expertise to see the consequences of such an idea on other ideas within the larger system of belief. This way, the burden is off the individual to try to make sense of all the complex and conflicting doctrines he/she is exposed to in every direction. Here is the official, authoritative teaching of the Catholic Church. Individual parishes might have priests who are off (intentionally or not), just as in Protestant churches, but here is where one goes to find the official teaching.

Just a few more bullet points gleaned from these cd's I listened to (also taken from Tim Staples' talks)--these aren't meant to "prove" anything, but simply give more context for why a reader might be inclined to interpret Matt. 16:18-19 in the way the Roman Catholics have (i.e., it's consistent with other passages, it's not totally crazy).

E.g., Matt 14--Peter walks on water...he is given supernatural power and Jesus holds him up when he's failing, just as Christ will prevent the Pope from teaching error?

Luke 22:28-32 ,"You are those who have stood by me in my trials. And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”   Here, it says Satan will sift all of you (plural), but Jesus prayed for Peter singular, that he would strengthen the brethren.

 ·    Mt 10:2—Now the names of the twelve apostles are these: The first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; and James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother;" Why was Peter listed first?  Andrew had been the one who first called first chronologically, so this first means something different. In fact, the word, "the first" is "protos," and means principal, or most important. Peter was chief of the Apostles, which is also consistent with Acts chapters 1-15--Peter was the primary leader, having headship among the Apostles.

So there ya have it, just a few more things to ponder, or at least understand where Roman Catholics are coming from.

The Bible and Tradition...and Authority...and Infallibility?

Let us examine the evidence from Scripture that Catholics use regarding the authority of the Church for interpreting Scripture:

Peter in Acts 2, in his sermon in the Upper Room, and in other recorded sermons, gave an authoritative New Covenant interpretation of salvation history--basically, the first time to summarize all the events, now in hindsight, culminating with Christ. It was binding before it became "inscripturated," because it was from an apostle.

The Church had binding authority in the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15). Acts 15:28-29: "For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity." At what point did the Church lose this? As soon as the last apostle died (John?), then the Church lost its authority to bind men to interpretations and laws; to "bind and to loose" (Matt. 16:19; 18:18)? That doesn't really make sense, and this idea can't be found in Scripture itself. There's not indication in Scriptures that this profound authority would later be lessened and that the Bible would be the sole infallible rule of faith...
 

In the next chapter, Acts 16, we read that Paul, Timothy, and Silas were traveling around "through the cities," and Scripture says that "they delivered to them for observance the decisions which had been reached by the apostles and elders who were at Jerusalem" (Acts 16:4). This is Church authority. They simply proclaimed the decree as true and binding.

Hmmm. This naturally leads one to question the notion of the infallibility of the Church (again, a domino effect of questions...). Evangelical Protestants already believe the Bible is infallible.  But not the Pope or the Church. Why not? If God can use sinners to write an inspired Bible, certainly He can use sinful men to proclaim infallible teachings in Tradition?  Should one conclude that either Scripture was a merely human tradition (not authoritative, inspired, etc.) or else God must have ordained some sort of revelation outside of Scripture as the means by which we could know what Scripture was?

In fact, the Papal/Church infallibility is a lesser claim that the claims we hold of the Bible--infallibility of the Church/Pope is merely a protection from error, not a positive quality of inspiration.  Hmm.  How can we as Protestants explain how a random individual (led by the Holy Spirit) can trump a received Tradition and the authority of the Church? How is that individual in modern society somehow more free from error than educated, vocational theologians on committee and councils with a collective expertise of all Christian writings and thought for 2000 centuries?  For if we discount the Church's binding authority because individual men leading the church are sinners, then we obviously have to discount every individual's interpretation, as each person is a sinner, too.  Ugh. Again, how can we know the true interpretation unless God provided an authoritative/inspired/infallible agent to accompany His Scripture? (Holy Spirit is a great answer, but the Holy Spirit speaking to whom?)

We Protestants give the authority ultimately to the individual to decide, by the illumination of the Holy Spirit, what is true and what isn't. Yet we deny it to the Church. This doesn't really make sense. And it's starting to appear to not be totally consistent with passages in the Bible (which one could argue suggests there is a binding, authoritative Tradition passed down and preserved in the Church).

I knew that one single Catholic dogma or interpretation of Scripture on its own, without the broader context, could seem so totally off in my Protestant lens growing up. However, I was starting to see that if one considers the assumptions of the Catholic church regarding Scripture and Tradition, one can see how one sort of naturally and logically follows from the other, and leads them to interpret, for example, Matt. 16:18-19 in the way Catholics do. Even if you don't accept the assumptions, you can still see how if one does, then everything follows and makes sense/is natural in that paradigm, it's not such an off-the-wall-desperate-attempt-to-distort-Scriptures-to-obtain-power-and-deceive-the-masses.

Matt. 16:18-19, "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.  I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”  The Catholic interpretation of Jesus giving the keys to Peter, building His church on this leadership (Catholics say the authority was to the seat of Peter, as Bishop of Rome; the Orthodox say the authority was to the Apostles, who ultimately govern by councils), and giving this leadership the authority to bind and loose, doesn't seem as off the wall and totally unlikely--given the context of all the other ideas we've discussed thus far and the concern for an authoritative voice and a unified Church and teaching that will never be in error (i.e., gates of Hades will not overcome it). But if one doesn't consider those assumptions and such, then that verse could easily be interpreted other ways, to conveniently fit the rest of one's theology that one wants to subscribe to.  So I'm not saying I subscribe to the Catholic/Orthodox way, but simply that this is yet another example (and a new one to me) of important passages in the Bible being interpreted in different ways by very serious, well-meaning, prayerful people. At this point, there was no way I could ever argue full-heartedly the Protestant version of this--I would have to concede that there is an alternative interpretation that some hold and it may be right, just as much as some interpret passages toward Calvinism and others toward Armenianism and we just have to agree to disagree. Basically, it's me saying, "I don't know, I see the arguments for both sides, let me present you with both and you can decide and I won't judge you either way." (An approach that obviously wouldn't be accepted in Protestant churches.) But golly, there were some major issues that were the root of significant division and fighting between Christians for centuries!!

Whoa boy.  I did not like the direction this is going. But I knew enough of the rules of logic from my math degrees that if one can disprove a logical conclusion, then that automatically disproves the hypothesis.  That is, if you have a logical IF  THEN statement, and you prove THEN can't occur, then you have proven that the IF can't occur.  So IF the church teaches something that is binding that is clearly against Scripture, then it it would prove that the church's teachings are not authoritative and infallible. Thus why my journey has continued and continued...it hasn't reached it's end yet.

Before I sign off on this post, I want to reiterate that all these considerations have not diminished my regard for the Bible--I still believe it is the authoritative, infallible and inerrant word of God. These have simply potentially elevated my regard for the Church, in its position to preserve the integrity and interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures, the Church being inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit in this responsibility.  Naturally, one must ask what "Church" is this having the ultimate leading of the Holy Spirit for interpretation. Protestants are only 500 years old and quite fractured in denominations, there is no consensus on the interpretation nor authority in declaring an interpretation to be the "official" way, and no single denomination, except from Church of Christ?, stakes a claim at being the authoritative interpretation--it's still always portrayed as categories of perspective that an individual can pick and choose which one sits the best with their individual conscience--a sort of relativism that is accepted once in the boundaries of Christianity. Only the Catholic (and in some sense, Orthodox) churches can claim continuity for 2000 years and have the rigorous system of councils and hierarchical structure for this authoritative interpretation to even be conceivable. Naturally this leads to the notion of Apostolic Succession and government, which will be addressed in a later post.

I also want to note that before the printing press, every single copy of the Bible was an original manuscript that a monk or friar had laboriously copied onto pages of parchment. During the Roman invasion, the Irish monks “saved civilization” by storing all the manuscripts in their high towers in the distant island of Ireland.  For 1500 years, when there were no Baptists, Lutherans, Pentecostals, Methodists, Presbyterians, Anglicans, non-denominations, etc., the Catholic Church preserved the Scriptures from error, saved them from destruction and extinction, multiplied them in every language under the sun, and conveyed the truths they contained to people everywhere.  It seems to me Protestants should be more careful about regarding Catholics with such disdain and antagonism, and take some time to truly listen to the reasoning for the beliefs Catholics hold. Even if not accepting all the teachings, perhaps at least one could understand where they are coming from, that it's not some absurd thing way out in left field (which is what I'd sort of always thought when reading the Protestant portrayal of the Catholic Church).

The Bible (Part II)...and Tradition

What did the Bible have to say about the Church's authority and this notion of "Tradition" (extra-biblical teaching) that we hear talked about in Catholic churches, in opposition to sola scriptura?  (Contrary to my assumption and implicit understanding in my Protestant upbringing, Tradition does not mean rituals and superstitious customs of the Catholic Church.) Tradition, to the Catholic Church, refers to the teaching of the Church that is passed down throughout time, beginning with the Apostles. It may not be explicitly stated in the Bible, but it is what the Church claims has always been understood by men everywhere and exists as a part of the "deposit of faith" (the Catholic Church defines the Deposit of Faith as the body of saving truth entrusted by Christ to the Apostles and handed on by them to be preserved and proclaimed). The claim of the Catholic Church is that they have a living voice that announces the life and teachings of Jesus Christ with Tradition in one hand and the Scriptures in the other.

There are many examples within the New Testament of the Apostles calling upon tradition (paradosis) as an authority:

2 Thess. 2:15 “So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions [paradosis] which you were taught, whether by word of mouth [extra-biblical oral teaching] or by letter from us.”

2 Thess. 3:6 “Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep aloof from every brother who leads an unruly life and not according to the tradition [paradosis] which you received from us.”

Lk 1:3-4 “It seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught [that is, the oral paradosis]”

For Paul and Luke, the litmus test for authentic Christian teaching is not “Is this written?” (as Protestants would ask) but “Is this apostolic (i.e., taught by the Apostles)?” John also acknowledges that his mention of specific stories and teachings of Jesus is not meant to deny other extra-biblical traditions (Jn 20:30; 21:25), so long as these traditions do not oppose his teaching and that of the other apostles. (1 Jn 2:18-19; 4:1-3; 2 Jn 7-9)

Lk 10:16 Christ told the Twelve Apostles: “He who listens to you listens to me.”

 

1 Cor. 11:2 “Now I praise you because you remember me in everything, and hold firmly to the traditions (paradosis), just as I delivered them to you.”

Paul twice tells the Corinthians “what I received I passed on to you” (1 Cor 11:23; 15:3)—what he received is the teaching concerning the events surrounding the Lord’s Supper and Resurrection, and this was via apostolic paradosis, the transmission of tradition (Paul was not one of the 12 Apostles, so what he received was passed down via extra-bilblical teaching, or tradition). Paul also refers to it as “from the Lord,” which gives the apostles’ teaching Christ’s authority.

1 Th 2:13 “we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God.”  These words have authority not because they are written but because they are apostolic; apostles knew that Christ had told them “He who listens to you listens to me.”

Acts 8:31 Ethiopian eunuch “How can I [understand the Scriptures] unless someone explains it to me?”  Oh wow. This seems to sum up the matter I'm wrestling with precisely...how can we know the right interpretation of the Scriptures? Would God provide that authority to some entity as a way to preserve all the teaching He inspired to be written and passed down? The Catholic church would say yes, and that the Bible and Tradition are two sides of one coin, that cannot be separated, and the "Magisterium" is the authoritative teaching body within the Catholic church. The Orthodox church also has a notion of tradition and particular loyalty and unity around to the teachings of the first seven councils (but after that, it becomes a bit less clear, where tradition and teaching depends on the region of the church). The Protestant church would say it's up to every individual's conscience and inner working of the Holy Spirit (I think--I'm not sure there actually is a consensus on that answer, as there is not much consensus about many things...)?

2 Tim. 3:14-15 “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which were able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”  Paul is writing this before the Bible as we know it was established ("Scriptures" refers to the Old Testament), and he's saying, “what you have learned and believed” is to be trusted “because you know those from whom you learned it”—that is, because the Body of Christ, the Church, is teaching it, then you know it is true and should be continued. The Scriptures are a part of and consistent with this, which reinforce what Timothy had been taught.

For Paul, the inspired Scriptures are trustworthy, not because they attest to themselves, but because they rest on the Church's teaching, for as he writes in 1 Tim. 3:15, "God's household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth."  Hmm. The church is the foundation of truth?? What in the world?? I'd never heard this. The Bible is the foundation!  But this foundation as that of the apostles teaching (which is held in the Church) is referenced again in Eph. 2:19-20, "...members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone." The foundation of the church (God's household) is not of paper and ink, but of the apostles and prophets (with Christ as the chief cornerstone). The books of the Bible are truthful because the group of people who wrote, edited and canonized the books is the Body of Christ.  Paul also writes in Eph. 3:10, "His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms." The pillar and foundation of their faith (1 Tim. 3:15)  is not first and foremost a sheet of papyrus, but a living community which Paul refers to again in 2 Cor. 3:2-3, "You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts."

So in summary, the claim of the Catholic and Orthodox Churches is that New Testament believers did not come to trust the Church and its Head (Christ) through the book of Scriptures; they came to trust the book of Scriptures through the Church and its Head. So this issue of Scriptures and Tradition naturally leads to the issue of Authority (which I'll address in a later blog post).

Hmmm...this all just seemed too radical, ideas that I was not permitted to accept as a Protestant. Yet I couldn't deny that there seems to be something to this line of thought. If nothing else, even if I didn't embrace it, I could at least see where Catholics get their claims for Scripture and Tradition being part of one package.  If God would go to such lengths to give His people holy Scriptures, then it made sense that He'd also give the Body of Christ, the Church, the Bride, a means of correctly understanding and transmitting the Scriptures.  Yes, He gives the Holy Spirit to all believers--but whose version of what the Holy Spirit is telling them do we use?  It makes sense that God would give some part of the Body the ability to correctly discern the Holy Spirit and disseminate this message. Otherwise, what good is the Scriptures if we all have our individual (and conflicting) interpretations and there isn't unity but rather divisiveness in the face of non-believers?

So, even if I didn't embrace it, I could not call Catholics heretical for believing this idea of Scripture and Tradition.  That was a huge step for me.  But I couldn't just stop there in saying the Catholics have an argument for it, I needed to investigate further to see if I was going to embrace that one idea--not any of the others, mind you!

Perhaps allowing for the Bible and church history, or "Tradition" as the Catholic Church calls it, to go hand-in-hand would help to bolster all that I believed about the Bible (it's authority, inspiration, infallibility, inerrancy, etc.) and provide me a solid foundation for determining the appropriate interpretation of all the sticky/confusing aspects of my theology that I'd wrestled with for years (since entering college in 1997).  All of this was not diminishing my understanding of and reverence for the Bible's inspiration and authoritative revelation, it was simply bringing the possibility of the Catholic Church's version being a bit more legitimate.  As John Henry Newman (an Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism in 1845...and the founder of University College Dublin, where I worked in my post-doc) put it, “A revelation is not given, if there be no authority to decide what it is that is given.”  Hmm.

I then discovered this quote by one of my all-time favorite Christian thinkers and writers, and one of the highest regarded in Protestant circles: C.S. Lewis, in "Miracles," writes: “Nothing could be more unhistorical than to pick out selected sayings of Christ from the gospels and to regard those as the datum and the rest of the New Testament as a construction upon it.  The first fact in the history of Christendom is a number of people who say they have seen the Resurrection.  If they had died without making anyone else believe this “gospel,” no gospels would ever have been written.” What this seems to be saying is from the very beginning, the Gospel was transmitted and believed because of the witness and testimony of the Apostles and the first generation of believers...the transmission of the Gospel of Christianity was not due to the transmission of the Bible, but of the teaching of the early church/church members, so to speak.

Note also that the first three covenants are all passed on orally, not only from God to Adam, Noah, Abraham, but from them to their descendants. Genesis, etc. was not written until the time of Moses, yet God assumes Moses will know who God is talking about when He declares, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham,” etc.  That's a form of Tradition existing among the Israelites...why are we so opposed to it as Protestants?  I supposed Protestants would say they aren't opposed to it, as long as it's backed up by Scripture. But here we have hundreds of years, both in the Old Testament time, and in the first 400 years after Christ, when there were no Scriptures to back it up, so it had to be upheld with authority. 

There was starting to seem to be circular reasoning in the Protestant theory/approach to things, or at best cafeteria style pick-and-choose what you want to accept...based on what the Holy Spirit was showing you as an individual to be true, basically. In the Protestant world, it seems that ultimately, decisions are up to the individual's conscience, and far be it for anyone to "bind my conscience." But we've seen where that approach has gotten us--there are as many combinations of theories for theology as there are people! (Okay, that's a hyperbole, but you get the idea.) If every man is an island, just my Bible and me and the Holy Spirit, then there is vast room for distorted beliefs. There has got to be some sort of vetting process, some oversight about what can and should be taught...

Okay, so Protestants might argue that we should “Keep silent where Scripture is silent, and not bind the conscience of the believer to tradition on questions in which Scripture is ambiguous; extra-biblical may be useful, but not revelation.”  But there are issues accepted by Protestants and Catholics alike that are not explicitly defined in Scripture alone but by Scripture rightly understood in the context of a larger tradition (which Catholics argue is just as much from God as the Scripture it interprets):

• polygamy: not provable from Scripture alone
• Luther, “I confess that I cannot forbid a person to marry several wives, for it does not contradict the Scripture.  If a man wishes to marry more than one wife he should be asked whether he is satisfied in his conscience that he may do so in accordance with the word of God.  In such a case the civil authority has nothing to do in such a matter.”
• Paul mentions remarriage is forbidden while one’s spouse is still living (Rom 7:3, 1 Cor 7:39), but he only specifically mentions for women
• if we “let Scripture interpret Scripture” we are given biblical figures as Jacob, David, Solomon, who are spoken of with great approval by God, yet who are polygamous
• the problem, according to Scripture (1 Kgs 11:2-6), with Solomon’s wives is that they were pagan, not that they were many
• the command in Deut. 17:17 warning against having many wives also warns in previous verse against having many horses, so are we only allowed one horse?
• Paul command’s overseers to be a husband of but one wife (1 Tim 3:2, Ti 1:6); fact that Paul gives this command only to overseers (bishops) suggest (if we have no tradition outside Scripture) that other Christian men could have more than one if they liked (especially since in that culture embraced polygamy and there’s no specific teaching against it in Scripture)
• Basil the Great says the Church’s teachings on polygamy are “accepted as our usual practice, not from the canons but in conformity with our predecessors.”
• Jesus forbids divorce and remarriage (Mk 10:11-12), does not forbid multiple wives if you retain the previous ones.  But with Church Tradition of Monogamy, we understand the meaning of the passage--so we Protestants are deriving our belief from Scripture as it has always been understood by the mind of the Church
• Trinity-not explicitly in Scripture, but historic Christianity, twenty centuries of Christians, including people who had heard the apostles with their own ears and who clearly regarded Jesus as God, believed this
• when Evangelicals speak of absolute union of Father, Son, Holy Spirit, we are resting not on the Bible alone, but on the Bible in union with the interpretative tradition of the Church, just as we rested on its Tradition of the Table of Contents of Bible
• Note that the Church Councils formulated ("one in three persons") and promulgated the dogma years before the canonical books of the Bible assumed its present shape in 397 AD.    
• Protestants accept (and require) belief in this conventional understanding of the Trinity...yet we are never taught how it came to be established (for that would be giving credit to the Catholic Church Councils? During which the same councils decided upon books of the Bible that we are going to reject as divinely inspired?)
• the Closure of Public Revelation is unwritten tradition, which we all regard as crucial; nowhere in the New Testament does it say public revelation will close after the apostles (Rev. 22:18-19 refers to that book specifically)

Thus, we can see that we as Protestants are interpreting the Scriptures through the lens of the Church's historical teaching. To say Scripture is the sole source of revelation and must interpret itself, seems to say that some of the most basic dogmas and ethics of the Faith are up for grabs.

Again, this line of thought naturally leads one to the issue of Church authority--is Church Tradition (i.e., teaching that may not be explicitly found in the Bible) authoritative and binding for a Christian?? I somehow didn't see this question coming, when I asked my original questions at the beginning of the post. But such it has been with this journey--it's like a domino effect, when you answer one question, then the logical next question or implication has to be addressed, etc.

We will begin to comment on this issue in the next post...

The Bible, Part I

Recall one of the questions I mentioned facing in an earlier post was, "If the Bible is inspired and protected from error in transmission, then who's interpretation of it is correct?"  Given my Protestant upbringing, I felt the Bible was the ultimate authority, and in order for me to figure things out--which Protestant denomination I should belong to, such Baptist, Presbyterian, etc., what theology I'd hold such as Calvinism versus Armenianism, how best to evangelize to my non-believing friends and defend my use of the Bible in determining my position on social issues, etc.--then I needed to understand the origin of the Bible better (e.g., how did they decide which books to be included in this sacred text) and be better equipped to defend it.  This happened to also have relevance to the fact that folks I knew were converting to Catholicism, and I knew there was controversy there about sola scriptura (Scripture alone) on the Protestant side versus Scripture and Tradition on the Catholic side.

So when my friend had a book called, "By what authority?" by Mark P. Shea, I decided to read it. Whoa, was my mind blown by what I read and learned. And it actually made sense--it explained why I was finding myself in the predicament I was in when evangelizing and discerning what version of scriptural interpretation/theology I was going to embrace.

First, in terms of "which came first," the church or the Bible, it seems to be an indisputable fact that it is historically accurate to place the Church before the complete Bible—the church existed decades before it was all written and centuries before it was fully collated and canonized.  That was why there was a Thessalonian Church for Paul to write the earliest parts of the New Testament to!

It is also a fact that it was not until the Councils of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397 and 419) that the Church defined which books made it into the New Testament and which didn't.  So for the first 400 years, there were different sets of scriptures that folks were teaching from and finally at the councils, it was decided which set (canon) would be declared and deemed the authoritative and divinely inspired scriptures.  

So when we, as Christians, hold firmly to the divine inspiration and authority of the Bible, it is because the Church declared it to be so.  As Augustine wrote (“Against the Letter of Mani”): “I would not believe in the authority of the Gospel myself if the authority of the Church did not influence me to do so.”  Yes, 2 Timothy 3:16, says, "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness," but this was referring to the Old Testament Scriptures, and it was the Church's authority that canonized the additional New Testament Scriptures as a part of our authoritative Bible.  Protestants would probably say that we believe in the authority of the Bible because 2 Tim 3:16 refers to past and future Scriptures that God would give us. But this is not logical reasoning, to remove the inspiration of the Church from the loop--to say the Bible is inspired, inerrant, authoritative, but the Church who declared the books that would be in the Bible somehow is not.

Note that again at the Council of Trent in 1546, the Catholic Church reaffirmed the (same) canon, in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, and the Synod of Jerusalem (1672) established the canon for the Orthodox Church. It was at this time that the Protestants removed the deuterocanonical books (the "Apocrypha") from the Old Testament canon (and Luther also wanted James removed, calling it "an epistle full of straw," and others wanted 2 Peter and Revelation removed, but they weren't). For 1500 years, these books had been included in the Bible and affirmed around the world as divinely inspired, but then a group of European reformers removed them.  Why? These books were set aside in part because they were not in the Hebrew Old Testament that the Jewish people used. However, they were in the Greek Old Testament--the Septuagint, which is the oldest manuscript of the Old Testament in existence, dated 2nd century BC, written in Greek. (Some of the Septuagint manuscripts are the oldest surviving nearly-complete manuscripts of the Old Testament in any language; the oldest still existing complete Hebrew texts date from around 1000 AD.)  The Apostles themselves were quoting from the Septuagint in the Gospels, and were teaching their congregations to use it as well. So the early, unified Church (and later the Catholic and Orthodox Churches) choose to include these books. This is an example of the church keeping with the apostolic (i.e., Christian) tradition, rather than the rabbinic (i.e. Jewish) tradition--the early Church had canonized books because they were attested by apostolic tradition, and the Catholic and Orthodox churches remained faithful to this, while the Protestant churches broke the consistency and continuity with the Scriptures that had been transcribed and transmitted for over 1500 years.

How did I not know this already?? It seems like foundational background knowledge for anyone putting such weighty stakes on the Bible in evangelical discourse. Protestants are so committed to the authority of Scripture, yet we aren't trained in knowledge about how they came to be? It seems like Protestants would be ready and equipped to defend their/our position against this narrative the Catholics and Orthodox have about the Bible's origins, but here I was blindsided. I was raised going to church and Bible studies 2-3 times a week and went to a Christian (Baptist) university, yet I was never taught about this history.  I do remember reading the intro to my NIV study Bible when I got it in high school, and it explained in very verbose/confusing language about the scholarship that went into various manuscripts and such to determine it. But this was all presented in a scholarly way with no context of what the Church throughout history had believed.  So now learning this, I actually felt somewhat deceived, like something was being hidden from me, and it seemed suspicious. I was taught to always give a reason for what I believed, and yet here was exposed an area where I hadn't been taught why and how we came to revere the Bible so--and to such an extent that we broke away from the historical church of 1500 years, proclaiming sola scriptura.

So I was compelled to keep investigating. What if those historical claims about the councils and such were somehow inaccurate? Why don't I go straight to the Bible and see what it says about the matter, what examples are there?

How did this journey get started? Part II

We left off Part I with the many questions I was having about where to find an authoritative statement of Christianity (and interpretation of the Bible).  At that point, Catholicism was not really on my radar at all. It simply wasn't an option. Was never to be considered. I had sort of implicitly lumped Catholics in together with Mormons--"they think they are Christians, but true Christians don't accept them as Christians." In fact, I remember in 2002 (after one full year into grad school), we had a dear friend of the family (my sister's childhood best friend), who was dating a Catholic, and I emailed her various links of articles from the Christian Research Institute of reasons why Catholicism is wrong, the are not truly saved, one should not be unequally yoked with them. I'd been listening to CRI's "The Bible Answer Man," Hank Hanegraaff, regularly for a year, and he was a firm advocate of evangelical Protestantism, and as I'd written this friend, CRI's is "a trusted website I go to for any spiritual question." Catholicism was not considered to have any answers to my questions. (Interestingly, the girl decided to marry the Catholic, but did not convert and they were married by a Protestant minister...who knows if I had a role in that...)

What you're going to start to see here is a collision of events--conversations, experiences, encounters in my life and events happening in the churches in the US--that propelled me onto this journey with increased focus. We've already discussed my upbringing and the questions arising in college, then grad school with my Turkish friends and colleagues.

So in 2004, during the same time period of all these questions from the previous blog post, I took a one month trip to Turkey. There, I was really struck by seeing the churches that were built in the 6th century (e.g., Aya Sofya in A.D. 537) and learning about their history and the Christians of that time. Wow. Never in my entire life had I ever been taught about church history. (Why? We learn about the history of our nation, of scientific discoveries, of music, but not of our faith? Well, we learn of how it was thousands of years ago, and then there's a 1500 year gap.) It had never crossed my mind to wonder what theology was taught in the first and second generations of Christians after Christ (i.e., those who were children of those who'd walked with Christ), how they worshiped, how they remained unified in the face of so much persecution and lack of rigorous understanding and established teaching of the Scriptures that we have today. It was mind-blowing to imagine *one church.* Not havine any denominations. One church. Aya Sofya was the central basilica in Constantinople (Istanbul) for all of Christendom in that time. It is an enormous engineering wonder, one of the most advanced and ambitious structures for over 1,000 years. Standing there amidst it's ancient mosaics, towering columns and massive dome, it felt so symbolic of the one true church established by Christ, uniting all Christians around the world, enduring for all time. This felt like the sort of presence the Body of Christ should have, a united force, not the fractured denominations that can't work together for a common goal, the Kingdom of God.  My heart yearned for unity and it became a burden on my heart that I prayed for among believers.  It also sparked a curiosity of things antiquity. What was life like for the early Christian in the generation after what is recorded in the Bible? Surely there were all kinds of slightly differing preferences and interpretations of things back then, how were things handled in order to preserve the essence of the Gospel? There was one church for the first 1,000 years, until the Great Schism in 1054 that split the church east and west, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. What was that all about? What had everyone believed for 1,000 years, and what was the split all about? And then in 1517, Martin Luther had nailed his 95 theses to the church door (back in 1999, I'd visited Wittenberg, Germany, where Luther lived and preached, the church, etc.) and the Protestant Reformation began to really take shape that century. The first Baptists were traced back to 1609...how much of the teachings of the first 1500 years of Christianity did they retain and what all did they throw out? Why didn't I know any of this?

I didn't do anything about these questions, for 2004 was a very rough year--a month after returning from being in Turkey for 4 weeks, I had major surgery that wiped me out for months. I was also preparing for major candidacy exams in my Ph.D. program and did not have the energy to pursue answers to these questions. Meanwhile, for that past year (since 2003) I'd also been participating in a weekly dinner group at the home of Dr. J. Budziszewski, who is professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin and a devout Christian. The group was by invitation only, for Christian graduate students, and what tremendous, intellectually stimulating, mind-exercising gatherings those would be! Extremely intelligent people reflecting on current events, politics, religion, science, philosophy, family, etc., all through a Christian worldview. Being a part of this group was such a unique experience and helped to form my mind and spirit in many ways. It turns out that on Easter 2004, Dr. B and his wife converted to Catholicism, and thus the following year's discussions often found their way back to questions (and arguments) about his decision. It rocked the group. Many couldn't believe it. Others began investigating to understand more. In the summer of 2005, I returned to Turkey. I also had a friend from Dr. B's group living with me for a couple weeks, and she was one of those utterly stunned by Dr. B's decision and had to investigate to see what in the world was he thinking?! She had a stack of about 10 books that she was working her way through on this topic, so I borrowed a couple of them and read them also. There was also a prominent blog, Pontifications, by an Episcopal priest who was blogging about his wrestlings in deciding whether to convert to Catholicism or Orthodoxy or remain Protestant (he ultimately became Catholic).

You see, another collision of events was that this was about the time that the Episcopal church of the USA (ECUSA) really went off the deep end in ordaining a homosexual as bishop (Gene Robinson in 2003), then females (2006), and on a more and more liberal path.  So many Episcopal priests and congregants were fleeing--either to other Protestant denominations or to the Catholic or Orthodox churches. There had already been a movement of Protestants into the Catholic church in recent decades, but this really opened up the floodgates of people suddenly examining their faith, church government, how things had gotten there, etc., and being forced to make a decision.  Similarly, other mainline Protestant denominations were taking a more liberal path, causing formal splits/off-shoots from them too (e.g., PCUSA vs. PCA, Lutheran Missouri Synod vs. ELCA). I was also leading a Bible study for a collection of friends from UT and church, and it turns out two of them were entering the Catholic church, which I had no idea about until they had already made the decision and announcement. This caused a rift in the Bible study, as some of the other people were horrified by their decision and concerned they'd be spreading false teaching in our study. So me, as the leader, had to act as a mediator between these two sides and helped everyone reach an agreement and understanding about how the Bible study would continue. It's astounding how heated these matters can become, between people with passionate beliefs on both sides! Similarly, a friend of mine wanted to intervene in the apparent course of another friend who seemed to be on the direction of converting to Catholicism, so I helped be a mediator between those two in the discussions--to help both sides understand what the other side was concerned with and trying to communicate. Often, folks have their mind made up and can't really listen to the perspective of the other side, so it seemed effective to have me as a mediator between them in both these cases. I understood both sides of the arguments and could rephrase them with a bit of the emotion and abrasiveness removed.

So all of these experiences culminated in the summer of 2005 for me to begin examining seriously the matters for myself. I still was opposed to Catholicism in principal, so I was actually interested in understanding Orthodoxy, as it had never been anything I'd really even heard of (besides 2 sentences in 10th grade world history class), much less understood what they believed.  As I read books and blogs, I was fascinated with Orthodoxy. I absorbed everything I could about their teachings and how they are different than Roman Catholicism. Enough of my theology was changing (more about those particulars in another post) to bring me out of the churches I'd been attending and cause me to land in a small "Continuing Anglican" church (basically, of the old school traditional Anglican ilk from England, not the Episcopal church of the US; this one only used the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, and the 1940 Hymnal, before all the controversial changes started happening in the American version of the BCP).  I actually met with the wife of one of the pasters/elders at the non-denominational church I'd been attending, and she shared with me her secret attendance at that Anglican church, as well as her deep affection for the Orthodox church, her collection of icons, books, music, and seasonal attendance at the local Orthodox church. Hmm.

It turned out, unbeknownst to me, at the Anglican church, there was a dear elderly couple, the Mc.'s, with whom I had many mutual friends, who had recently begun going there too, and had a similar story as mine. Dr. M. was a well-known and well-respected doctor, author, and speaker on Focus on the Family.  The Mc's took me in as their sort of adopted daughter, and we met weekly for dinner and discussed various matters of faith, culture, etc.  I requested to meet with the priest of this parish, and for a couple hours shared and discussed with him my questions and wrestlings, and got his opinion of the matters, him having formerly been a Catholic priest. I decided to enroll in the classes to be confirmed as an Anglican in early 2006, as a first step in a direction that I was sure I was feeling called to, though was not sure it would be the end or if there would be more to come.

Meanwhile, at our family reunion in the Fall of 2005, I unexpectedly got into some profound conversations with my dad's Uncle L. (who lives in Tennessee and I'd had conversations with about 2-3 times in my life) about Orthodoxy...it had never dawned on me to wonder what he believed regarding all these matters, nor had I thought about the fact that they spent time in Russia. All I knew was my entire family had deep respect for him as a Christian and as an intellect, and somehow (I don't remember how), I mentioned my ecclessial journey, and he indicated a great fondness for Orthodoxy, and we discussed some of the reasons, somewhat vaguely. Then in February 2006, he and I began an email correspondence about Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism. Whoa. It kind of blew me away...confirming so many of the conclusions I was having (more about this later), that I wasn't way out in left field. 

In the summer of 2006, I spent two weeks in India, and was overwhelmed by the Hindu practice of bringing sacrifices to idols, giving them food and water at night, etc. I had never actually seen such graven images as idols and people worshiping them like you read about in the Bible. I remember the first Sunday I returned to my Anglican church in Texas, when we said the Nicene Creed, I wanted to just shout it from the rooftops--"I believe in ONE God, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, and in ONE Lord Jesus Christ." It suddenly became crystal clear to me the importance of having a creed stating the fundamental essentials of the faith, that one affirms every week, to keep you grounded in the Truth in the face of such wayward beliefs. In Texas or Southern America, it doesn't seem as critical or distinctive, but wow, the face of global religions, this stating this creed was powerful!

Also in 2006, immediately after being in India, I spent 2 weeks in Bulgaria. There, I went to an Orthodox monastery (Dryanavo) up in the mountains and stayed the night. I went to the services, spoke with a priest, and spent much time in prayer and reflection. The remainder of the two weeks in Bulgaria, I attended every Orthodox service I could manage, again really observing and absorbing the experience and the impressions on my heart and spirit when in prayer in those settings. They were very positive experiences--eye-opening at an entirely new and different way of responding to the faith and interacting in communion with the Lord.  I forgot to mention, in the spring of 2006, I also had the privilege of being the driver for Fredericka Matthews-Green, a reknown speaker, author and convert to Orthodoxy (who was speaking at an event in Austin). What are the odds of this? Then, my Anglican church also had a book study of her book, Illumined Heart.And I became good friends with a math post-doc from Cyprus at UT who was Greek Orthodox and a very genuine, overt Christian. I attended the Paschal (Easter) service at an Orthodox in downtown Austin (and the Triduum services during Holy Week at the Catholic Cathedral downtown, just to be fair).  So having never been exposed to Orthodoxy in 27 years, suddenly I was immersed/surrounded, getting some first-hand experience instead of just in books.

We'll pick up the next blog here. Basically, I'm giving an overview of the timeline of things, then I'll get into more detail of particular teachings and such.