From the Fortress to the Fire



The B-I-B-L-E,

Yes that's the book for me,

I stand alone on the Word of God,

The B-I-B-L-E.

-- "The B-I-B-L-E."

One of the distinguishing marks of Protestant Christian faith is reliance on Scripture as, in some sense, the only authority for faith and life. That general idea is expressed in the Reformation slogan, sola scriptura: Scripture alone.

Sola scriptura is a slogan, not a doctrine, and different Protestant groups apply it differently. Anglicans, for example (some of whom might object to being called “Protestant”), have a three-fold standard: Scripture, reason and tradition, but most Anglicans would say that all church doctrines must be taught in Scripture. Many other Protestants assert that Scripture is the sole rule not only for doctrine, but for church practices as well.

One of the debates in the OPC focuses on how "scripture alone" relates to worship. Most Presbyterians believe in something called the "regulative principle," which applies sola scriptura to worship: we are offer God the worship, and only the worship, that is specifically prescribed in Scripture. For the more conservative Reformed folk (the "Truly Reformed") the regulative principles means that we must sing Psalms instead of hymns because the Psalms are Scripture and hymns are not. They would also say that Christmas and Good Friday celebrations are not authorized by Scripture, so they are not permissible. The only approved/required corporate worship is the weekly Sabbath, they say, and the church has no authority to create new religious holidays.

As much as I grew to like the Truly Reformed perspective on some issues, I had to laugh at this one. These so-called exclusive psalm singers didn't really sing the psalms, they sang versified, rhymed paraphrases of the psalms. Back in GCC we really sang the psalms -- straight out of the New American Standard version of the Bible. Somebody sat down with a guitar and a Bible and created a tune that matched the words of the psalm -- not vice versa.

But of course these hippy guitar songs aren't what the Truly Reformed want. For one thing, some of them didn't believe in the use of instruments, but for another, they wouldn't have approved of the style of the music. They claimed to have doctrinal problems about such things, but of course it was just a matter of taste. The truth, as I’m learning more and more, is that doctrine and culture get tossed into the same pot and simmer on the stove for a while until it's very hard to pull out a bit of doctrine that doesn't have some culture mixed in with it, and vice versa. (Apologies to Tolkien for borrowing this analogy.)

In any event, the "regulative principle" can be criticized as an attempt to make the Bible into a worship manual, which it clearly is not. Scripture says a lot about worship, but you can't come to the conclusion that worship must be derived from Scripture alone -- that is, unless you’ve already made up your mind about it because of some other theological commitment.

In fact, the regulative principle is refuted by Scripture itself. For one thing, when we see a picture of heavenly worship in the book of Revelation, they're not singing the psalms. For another, Jesus participated in forms of worship that are not prescribed in Scripture, e.g., using the traditional Passover liturgy, including wine, which is prescribed by Jewish tradition but is not mentioned in the scriptural accounts of Passover. Jesus also attended the Feast of Dedication (Hanukkah -- see John 10:22ff), which is not commanded in Scripture.

Scripture doesn’t tell us how the early church worshipped, which is, or at least ought to be, awfully frustrating for people who want to apply “scripture alone” to the worship of the church. It certainly was frustrating for me, so I started to study the question. I began to wonder what the church did without New Testament instruction -- i.e., before the New Testament was written, when believers only had the Old Testament and the oral instructions of the apostles. That made me wonder what kind of authority those oral instructions held in the church, and it also made me wonder what became of them once the New Testament was written.

For example, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:34 that he will give instructions on worship when he comes on a visit to Corinth. But what did he tell them? We don't know. And notice what this does to our modern ideas about using Scripture as a guide for worship. Picture a modern-day, Truly Reformed Presbyterian going back to Corinth in, say, 85 A.D. He visits the church and notices that they are doing things in worship that aren't prescribed in Scripture (and therefore, from his perspective, aren’t allowed in church), so he accuses them of idolatry for worshipping God in a way God has not prescribed in His word.

"But Paul told us to do this!," they reply.

I trust you can see the difficulty. I did, and I began to search the Scriptures for other examples of the same thing. And I found a few. In Samuel's day, the people "poured out water before the Lord" (1 Sam. 7:6), for which I can't find any commandment in the law. But even more significantly, when Hezekiah and Josiah reformed worship, they used divine commands from outside of Scripture -- the extra-scriptural words of prophets. (See 2 Chron. 29:25 and 35:4) Even more significantly, the prophets on which Josiah and Hezekiah relied had been dead for quite a while, which means that God preserved these prophetic instructions outside of Scripture beyond the life of the prophet.

That pokes a huge hole in the common understanding of sola scriptura, and I was scrambling to figure out what to do about it. I tried to find some Protestant author who'd dealt with this issue, but I couldn't find one. They spoke in generic platitudes and didn’t seem to realize the extent of the problem. So I contacted theology professors and asked them, but they weren't much help. I got on the Internet and e-mailed some pretty sophisticated theological talent.

All for naught! Those who held to sola scriptura weren’t aware of the problem (or wouldn’t admit that it existed), and those who were aware of the problem were Catholics or Orthodox. It was getting very frustrating.

A Thought Experiment in Church Government

In the middle of all this -- during the time I was studying in seminary and hoping to be a pastor in the Presbyterian Church -- there was a small dispute in my denomination about whether children should be admitted to the Lord's table. For my purposes here it doesn't matter which position was right, only that there are respectable arguments on each side.

I wanted to figure out what I should do if I came to one conclusion and the denomination came to another. Would I be obligated to follow my own opinion or the decisions of the denomination? If so, why?

For example, I could decide to follow the denomination for purely practical reasons (e.g., leaving the denomination would take away a valuable support to ministry), or because of some belief in divine guidance (e.g., that God leads through the deliberative bodies of the church). If the former, then how far does practicality go? Doesn't it become rather arbitrary? Some people are naturally easy-going and will put up with a lot before they're driven to rock the boat, while others have no tolerance for any foolishness at all. One man will die rather than admit children to the Lord's table while another will just shrug and say, "it's not what I'd do, but ...."

Submission for the sake of practicality and good order is an option, but it doesn't deal with the question of whether and how the Holy Spirit guides the church into the truth, and it takes no account of passages that seem to imply that God will lead through lawful authorities. (For example, Caiaphas was said to prophesy concerning the death of Jesus merely by virtue of the fact that he was high priest that year. John 11:51-52.)

A related issue is whether a pastor has a more weighty obligation to submit to the church's doctrine than a layman. In other words, by taking up the ministry, would I be putting myself in a fundamentally different position with respect to church authority? Whether or not there ought to be a difference is one question, but practically speaking, especially in Reformed churches, the pastor has a more serious commitment because he takes an oath to teach the church's doctrine. A layman usually doesn't take as strict an oath about his faithfulness to his church's theology.

But if a clergyman vows to God to teach the truth, and to the church to teach according to the confessions and standards of the church, what is he supposed to do when one comes in conflict with the other?

A typical, somewhat reflexive Protestant answer is to say, "we must obey God rather than man." (Acts 5:29) But when a sacred vow is given to a group of men, obeying God and obeying men have been joined at the hip. So the simple, reflexive answer needs a little more work.

It seems that a pastor has three reasonable options when his personal opinions differ from those of his denomination. (I’m assuming, of course, that the first course of action was to take all reasonable measures to come to a common opinion, but that differences remained.) He can ...

Some people might to want to introduce a fourth option: stay in the church and work for change. In other words, break your vow to the denomination and teach against the official position of the church. I’ll discuss that option as well.

All these possibilities were running through my head while I was preparing for ministry in the Presbyterian church. Presbyterians are sometimes called the Split Ps, because Presbyterian history is riddled with fights and splits. It was no idle speculation that I might end up in the middle of a doctrinal controversy in the course of my ministry. In fact, it was almost a dead certainty. So thinking out how to respond to this kind of situation seemed like prudent preparation.

Consequently, I began a grand thought experiment about pastors who disagree with their churches.

Didn't I Choose You?

Most Christian groups believe that pastors are gifted and called to their ministry by God, and some believe that ordination is non-revocable -- once a clergyman, always a clergyman -- as if ordination makes some indelible mark on a man. I will leave that latter point alone, because it doesn't address my main concern here, which is how pastoral dissent can work in the context of biblical church government. The important point is that the pastor believes he has been called into the ministry by God, and that belief influences how he will respond to a crisis.

So, when a pastor dissents from his denomination's position, his immediate question is whether he's being obedient and faithful to God. If God has called him to the ministry, and some human organizational structure is getting in the way, what's he supposed to do, especially when he's made a vow to follow that human authority structure?

Resignation seems like an easy and valid option because it seems clear that we needn't feel bound to responsibilities when circumstances beyond our control prevent us from fulfilling them. So, for example, if a man marries a woman and has a son, he has responsibilities before God for that woman and that boy. And yet unhappy circumstances may arise where he is unable to fulfill those responsibilities. For example, his wife might leave him, and the state may grant her custody of the child, or even issue a restraining order against him. In such a case, the man has to come to terms with the fact that his God-given responsibility to his wife and son have been overtaken by events. If he has no reasonable way to exercise his responsibility, that's just the way it is.

In the same way, I believe a pastor who cannot fulfill his ministry, for practical reasons, is relieved of any sense of duty to his call to God. Or, at the least, there can be circumstances where a man could feel that way.

But must every pastor resign when he disagrees with his church? Aren't there other options?

Switching Confessions

Another possible option for the pastor is to find a church that agrees with his theological views. For example, if he is a Presbyterian and believes that Christians should not drink alcohol, he could leave the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and join the teetotaling Bible Presbyterian Church.

Leaving aside the practical difficulties of a switch in denominations (e.g., what about the congregation? Who owns the church property? Who controls the pastor's pension?), this option won't be available in every situation. There's not (yet) a denomination for every possible theological position. (Even among Presbyterians!) So there’s not always a place to run to for refuge.

When the Christian church split east-west back in the 11th century, there were only two options. If you believed in the filioque (that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son) and the pope, you went west, and if you didn't believe in the filioque or the pope, you went east. (I realize that nobody, or at least very few, had the option to choose. I'm just considering the logic of the argument.)

But what if a pastor believed in the pope but not in the filioque? There was no church to accommodate him. What was he supposed to do? Start another church?

So this idea of switching denominations based on doctrine is fraught with difficulty. There may not be a church to join, and if not, what then? I think every pastor would agree that joining an existing denomination is a less serious matter than actually trying to start a new one.

Since this is just a thought experiment, let's assume that somebody else is always willing to start up the new denomination, which means the troubled pastor only has to decide whether or not to join it. And let's assume that there is always a denomination available, no matter how precise and persnickety the pastor's theological views are.

Now then, what kind of monster have we created (only in our thoughts)? If we want to respect every pastor's conscience, and allow him to exercise his ministry in a church that teaches "right" doctrine (i.e., his understanding of right doctrine), is it worth the cost? Do we really want this proliferation of sects? This model -- where a troubled pastor joins the church that matches (or at least accommodates) his theological preferences -- logically leads to one of two end states: either we have 20 billion denominations, or we have churches that make no dogmatic pronouncements and accept anybody.

It should be obvious that neither of those situations are acceptable, so there's clearly something wrong with the premise.

The Voice of God and Not a Man

The last option for our troubled pastor is to believe that the church is authorized by God to make theological judgment calls, and it is his duty to conform his opinion to the church's, or at least to keep his personal opinion to himself and teach what the church says.

I chose my words carefully in that sentence. Observe that the pastor does not have to believe that the church always makes the right decision, or that it is divinely protected from error in its decisions. All the pastor has to believe is that God has authorized the church to make the call -- just as a father is authorized to make decisions for his family, even though he sometimes makes the wrong decision.

If we stop and review the options so far, we see three visions for the church.

First, there's the "we don't care about doctrine" church, where nobody leaves because of doctrinal disagreements precisely because there's no doctrine to disagree with. The church doesn't insist that its pastors teach the Trinity, or any particular view of the sacraments, or the reality of Heaven or Hell, or, for that matter, of God.

If this vision of the church appeals to you, you can quit reading right now.

The second option is the church of the infinite denominations, where teeming masses of Christians make and break alliances based on the current state of their theological views. In that world, denominations proliferate like cold medications at the drug store, where ten possible ingredients create thousands of different products.

The third option is the authoritative church, where individuals may be free to have their own opinions about things, but pastors are not free to teach them, or to start new churches based on their own ideas. This option is grating and uncomfortable (who wants to give the church such authority?), but it may have the virtue of avoiding the ugly ramifications of the other views.

Our tortured imaginary pastor (and you and me, I hope) hates the first and second options with a passion, and since he'd rather not give up his ministry, he's going to explore option three a little more. What does it mean to submit his private opinions to the church? Which church is he supposed to submit to? And how far does such submission go?

How Far Does Submission Go?

As our imaginary pastor continues to wrestle with his options, he tries to get a handle on the extent of submission. He imagines three possibilities: submission in indifferent things, submission on debatable things, and complete and total submission.

The first option seems both easy and obvious. Only a cantankerous old coot would make a big deal out of indifferent things, so our pastor gladly adopts the idea that he should submit his private opinion on such matters to the collective judgment of the denomination. So, for example, if the denomination wants every church to say “debts” instead of “trespasses” in the Lord's Prayer, he's happy to go along for the sake of unity because it doesn’t matter that much one way or the other.

The second level of submission is a little more difficult, especially in an age where it seems as if everything is debatable. In fact, he sighs, there's hardly a question of Christian doctrine or practice on which reasonable minds haven't differed.

Our imaginary pastor remembers a seminar class in school on women in the ministry. He strongly believes that the pastoral ministry is reserved to men, but he has read enough of the feminist theologians to know that their position is not completely unreasonable. He thinks it's wrong, but it's not crazy. Reasonable, intelligent people can differ on that question.

Of course this rubs him the wrong way. He doesn't want to come up with a theory of authority that requires people to submit to "reasonable" feminists and assorted other troublemakers. So he files that option away with some reservations. Submission on "debatable" matters is an option, but it has some uncomfortable implications.

The last option, complete and total submission, seems to go way too far. It's one thing to submit on indifferent things, and another to give the church the benefit of the doubt on debatable matters, but why on Earth should a pastor submit to an authority that he believes is clearly and unquestionably wrong? How can God possibly expect him to do that? Everything he's ever learned about the rule of conscience is against the idea. Furthermore, the solution is radical, and our pastor knows that radical ideas require radical evidence, and he doesn't see it. Where is the biblical evidence that a pastor is supposed to stand in front of his congregation and preach, in the name of God, something that he strongly believes to be false? Surely that would be an inexcusable sin against conscience.

Love the One You're With?

Our imaginary pastor is a Protestant. We can assume that his troubles result from one of two causes: either his theological convictions have changed since he took up the ministry in his denomination, or his denomination has changed.

When he tells himself that he has to submit to "the church," his mind responds in two ways. First, he realizes that he is a member of a particular denomination with its own rules and authority structure. Second, he realizes that the institution he's a part of is not exactly the same thing as "the church" -- that there are other groups out there that have just as good a claim to be called "churches."

So his first dilemma is whether submission to "the church" is the same thing as submission to his denomination. He could, for example, take the position that he will submit his private opinions to what the Christian Church has always believed. This allows him to believe that the Holy Spirit guides "the church" into the truth without having to pick which particular denomination the Holy Spirit likes best.

That seems like a reasonable solution, but it doesn't resolve his practical dilemma. For example, if his denomination requires all of its pastors to teach infant baptism, and he doesn't believe in baptizing infants, then submitting to "the whole church" doesn't help when he's brought up on charges at the next Presbytery meeting.

But if he's supposed to submit his private opinions to a particular denomination, how does he know that his denomination is the one he's supposed to submit to? Does God want him, a credobaptist, to submit to a denomination that believes in paedobaptism, while his friend, a pastor with paedobaptist convictions, is supposed to submit to his credobaptist denomination? Isn’t this the old “that’s true for you” business that he preaches against?

When he preaches, he is supposed to be presenting the word of God to his congregation. Certainly a doctrine of preaching and a doctrine of submission to authority should be able to get along, for heaven's sake. If they are both a legitimate part of the church -- if they both come from the mind of God -- then there has to be a resolution.

His skeptical, ornery side butts in. Maybe "submission to authority" is just a prop to keep organizations from falling apart. It’s not God’s idea, but man’s.

Doesn’t that make things nice and easy. Now he can follow his own conscience and teach according to the light of his own understanding, and if the authority doesn’t like it, too bad. He leaves, or tells them to jump in a lake, or whatever. What liberty! What an idea!

But easy solutions are often imaginary, and two thoughts yank him back to reality. First, he remembers that submission is taught in Scripture. Second, he remembers that gospel ministry is in the church, and the church is a group of people working together for a common goal -- not his private soap box.

Setting the skeptic on his left shoulder aside for a moment, he listens to the little goblin on his right. Maybe submission assumes -- indeed, requires -- another answer. Maybe submission to authority assumes that "the church" is reliable and worthy of submission.

A Supreme Court for the Church?

The skeptic screams. Submission may be a good idea, or even a necessity, but it does not lead to the conclusion that the authority is always right. Submission to parents and governments is both good and necessary, but parents and governments are not always right, so there’s nothing about submission that requires that we assume the authority has some sort of gift of reliability.

When Dad tells the boys it's time to go to bed, he's not saying it's Time to Go to Bed, as if, in the nature of the case, as a matter of fixed moral law, this is The Time for Going to Bed. Dad is just making an administrative rule. Of course he tries to conform his rules to fixed moral law, when such things apply, but he's not proclaiming his word as The Law.

Government operates in the same way. Fifty five on the highway is a good idea based on general rules of prudence and love for our neighbor, but there’s nothing inherently wicked about 45 or 80. The government bases its laws on Morality, but it does not pretend that its laws are Morality.

The same thing is true about the church in many respects. The church doesn't create the faith, it just preaches it. It's entirely possible that the authority of the church is the same as, say, a father's authority. He can create rules for the family, and they may be right or wrong, but, right or wrong, the children can't change them. God has established an order where children obey parents, citizens obey governments, and pastors and faithful obey the church.

The conclusion has to be that the nature of the case doesn't demand an unerring church, only an authoritative church. But it does seem to suggest One authoritative church, because it seems crazy to say that pastors ought to submit, higgledy-piggledy, to the denominations they just happen to be in. Surely Christ had more foresight than that!

But wait. Our imaginary pastor interrupts his headache with a blaze of insight. He realizes he's been trying to reason this all through in a post-Reformation world. He's been assuming the existence of thousands of denominations. But is that a necessary assumption? How would things be different if our troubled pastor cast his imaginary dilemma so that he dissented from the one and only church?

Ah. Now those church history classes start to come to mind. Our Protestant pastor's early church history class went something like this: he spent three weeks on the apostolic era, two days on the church fathers, the Medievals and all that, and then two months on the Reformation. So when he thinks of a pastor dissenting from the One church, his mind can hardly get past images of a hammer-wielding Teuton in monk's garb.

"St. Martin, protect me," he cries in despair, and then looks around nervously to make sure no one heard that.

Cutting the Church a Little Slack

It was nice to put all this on somebody else’s shoulders for a few pages, but our imaginary pastor’s journey has taken us exactly where my thought experiment landed me: at a re-evaluation of the Reformation. How would all this authority business play out in Brother Martin's day? And what about that idea of giving the church the benefit of the doubt on disputable matters. Did Brother Martin do that? Was he required to? And if he didn't, what then?

As I understood things, I saw an inconsistency in the Protestant position. The Orthodox Presbyterian Church expected me to be bound by its official decrees, and to give them the benefit of the doubt on disputable matters. Well and good. But did the Protestant Reformers give the church of their day the same deference? It wouldn't be right for a Protestant church to expect more submission from its members than the Reformers gave to Rome, would it?

And so I began the next phase of my study. What if Brother Martin had been through the thought experiment I'd just been through? Would he have behaved differently? Are Roman Catholic doctrines so wrong that they can't be sustained even when we give them the benefit of the doubt?

The Fat Hits the Fan

While I was thinking through all these things and, reluctantly, starting my study of Roman Catholicism, I was meeting once a week for breakfast with several men from church. I discussed my concerns about Protestant ecclesiology with them. The group included the pastor, and I later discovered that it was very, very stupid to let him know that I regarded Catholicism as anything but a bad wind from Hell.

Most of the men in this breakfast group couldn't understand my concerns. They were thoroughly Protestant in their thinking, and my method simply wasn't Protestant. (If Protestant seminarians studied this kind of stuff, would there be so many Protestant denominations?) Authorities could and often did err, they reckoned, so you have to go with Scripture alone. For them, it was a no-brainer.

"Of course you go with Scripture," I would reply. "The issue is which interpretation of Scripture. And while we’re at it, what does Scripture say about submission to authority?"

"Well I know a Catholic who has a shrine to Mary in his back yard,” meaning “so Rome can’t possibly be right, you’ve gotten off track somewhere.”

And so it would go. It was as if they couldn't see the problem. In their mind, Catholics were obviously wrong, case closed, so any theory about authority or submission or interpretation that implied anything less than hatred for Rome was ipso facto condemned, stupid, foolish, and forget about it. It was as if the concepts bounced right off their heads.

All heads except for one. One of my friends saw the problem, and we began to talk about it. Coincidentally, about this time he received in the mail a tape recounting a Protestant minister's conversion to Roman Catholicism. He loaned the tape to me.

Of course any man who would convert from Presbyterianism to Roman Catholicism was, prima facie, a raving lunatic. At least that's what I would have thought a month before. But my thought experiments on authority, my long-term struggle with the idea of apostolic succession, and the beginnings of my studies in the early church made me wonder if there might be a kernel of wisdom to be gleaned from his story, so I gave it a listen.

The man's name was Scott Hahn. He had been, coincidentally, a Presbyterian minister, and even more coincidentally, associated with the seminary I was attending. He spoke briefly of his studies on sola scriptura, sola fide, the papacy, and, of course, the Marian doctrines, and he gave me some new things to think about.

Sola Scriptura and Roman Catholic Claims

My study on authority led me to the preliminary conclusion that we ought to give a lawful authority the benefit of the doubt on disputable matters, so that's how I intended to study Roman Catholicism: I would evaluate their claims and see if, given the benefit of the doubt, Roman Catholic doctrine was a reasonable interpretation of Scripture.

But my studies in the early church had convinced me that the early church had access to apostolic instructions that we don't have any more. (See, e.g., 1 Cor. 11:2, 34.) And some Roman Catholics claim that some doctrines -- for example, the assumption of Mary -- are derived from tradition and not from Scripture.

What in the world was I supposed to do with those things? It seemed there were two options. First, at a minimum, anything that supposedly comes from the apostles has to be consistent with Scripture, even if it's not completely clear from Scripture alone. This seems to follow from what the early Christians had to do with the Christian message itself. For example, when Paul taught about Jesus, everything he said was consistent with the Old Testament Scriptures, but not everything was derivable from the Old Testament Scriptures. The early church had to test what Paul said against Scripture, not in the sense of deriving New Testament doctrines from the Old Testament, but in the sense of checking them.

The implication for me was that I had to test these "traditional" Roman Catholic doctrines against Scripture to see if they were necessarily false.

But that's not quite good enough. A doctrine that all left-handed men have to shave their heads is not inconsistent with Scripture. That is, nothing in Scripture directly contradicts that idea. A negative test isn't good enough. There needs to be positive evidence that the doctrine is apostolic.

For the early church, one of those positive evidences was the miraculous ministry of the apostles. (See, e.g., 2 Cor. 12:12.) God placed his stamp of approval on the apostles so people could reasonably trust their message.

The modern Roman Catholic Church doesn’t authenticate its claims with miracles, but the same principle can apply -- that is, that consistency with Scripture is not enough, there has to be positive evidence that the message is from God. In the case of these alleged extra-biblical apostolic traditions, that meant digging through the church fathers to see if there was any evidence that these doctrines were really taught by the apostles.

At first, that sounds like a hopeless task. Have you ever seen a collection of the writings of the church fathers? Take my word for it, it's more than you want to read. But I did think I had come up with a kind of cheater's short-cut, however.

I'd been reading about the transmission of the text of the New Testament. Of course copies of texts pick up errors from time to time, and those errors get propagated into all the subsequent copies that are made from that erroneous original. Similar texts tend to have similar "ancestry," and they are grouped into "families."

One of the principles that scholars use to establish the original text of Scripture is that where geographically diverse textual families agree, the reading is probably original, since it's unlikely that the same reading would be accidentally invented by two different scribes.

Based on this same principle, I invented my own short-hand version for evaluating whether doctrines were apostolic. It seemed to me that if a doctrine was believed by all the churches that had ancient roots (e.g., the Roman Catholics, the various branches of Orthodoxy, the Copts, and, or a lesser degree, the more "catholic" Anglicans), it was likely to be apostolic.

That was about as technical as I got at first. Later I would try to be more sophisticated at tracking down where these doctrines came from, but my short-hand approach worked for my early studies.

And so, the books piled up. I had to read church history to get some idea of who believed what, when and where, and how to differentiate the various "families." (Remember the text "families.") I also had to read up on Roman Catholic doctrine from Roman Catholic sources, not from Protestants who were trying to shoot it down. Finally, I had to brush up on my knowledge of the Reformation to decide if St. Martin and the other reformers had given Rome the benefit of the doubt that I assumed they ought to have given.

Here's a brief overview of some of the major issues I investigated.

We Have a High Priest

Five bleeding wounds he bears,

Received on Calvary,

They pour effectual prayers,

They strongly plead for me,

"Forgive him, O forgive," they cry,

"Forgive him, O forgive," they cry,

"Nor let that ransomed sinner die."

-- A communion hymn used in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.

I think I've mentioned that I hated the mass with a passion, so it made sense to start there. I figured that if Roman Catholicism is clearly wrong on anything, it's the mass, because if Scripture is clear on anything, it's clear on this -- Jesus' sacrifice on Calvary has accomplished redemption for His people. There is nothing to add to it. It doesn't need to be re-done, embellished or helped. He came to earth to be the savior, which means that He does the saving. He rescues us from sin and sets us a place at the heavenly banquet. That is the heart of the gospel, and anything that contradicts or muddies that central tenet of Christianity must be rejected. More than that, it ought to be despised, resisted and spoken against.

And that's exactly what I thought the mass was. The mass is said to be a sacrifice for the sins of the living and the dead, and it is very easy to see why that sounds like a straight-forward contradiction of the Gospel. If Jesus is being sacrificed on the altar in a Catholic church, then the sacrifice on Calvary wasn't good enough. It has to be done again, which contradicts Hebrews 10:11-14.

Every priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins; but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, SAT DOWN AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD, waiting from that time onward UNTIL HIS ENEMIES BE MADE A FOOTSTOOL FOR HIS FEET. For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.

One offering. Forever. If that's not clear, then I can't read.

So there's not much hope for the mass, eh? It sounds like a straight-forward case.

But I was beginning to realize a very important lesson, which I think most Protestants have not learned. Are you ready for this? This is a blazing insight, but you may have to read it a few times before it sinks in.

Catholics have read the Bible too.

I know it's a shock, and it’s hard to grasp, but they know about that letter to the Hebrews. Some of them have even read it. It wasn't my big secret.

That was probably the most important lesson I learned in my whole study of Roman Catholicism. When the other side's position seems mind-numbingly stupid, one thing's almost certain: you've misunderstood it. They've got a better reason for believing than you think, and you can't evaluate their position accurately until you learn to see the issue from their perspective.

So, how in the world does a Roman Catholic say that the mass is a sacrifice, repeated day in and day out in a thousand parishes all over the world, when Jesus offered the one sacrifice on a hill outside of Jerusalem a couple thousand years ago?

The answer is to look a little deeper into the theology of the cross in the book of Hebrews.

Now the main point in what has been said is this: we have such a high priest, who has taken His seat at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens, minister in the sanctuary and in the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices; so it is necessary that this high priest also have something to offer. Now if He were on earth, He would not be a priest at all, since there are those who offer the gifts according to the Law; who serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things, just as Moses was warned by God when he was about to erect the tabernacle; for, SEE, He says, THAT YOU MAKE all things ACCORDING TO THE PATTERN WHICH WAS SHOWN YOU ON THE MOUNTAIN. But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, by as much as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which has been enacted on better promises. (Hebrews 8:1-6)

There's a ton of information here, but let me highlight a few points. First of all, every priest has something to offer, so the writer says that Christ has something to offer as well, which is, of course, his own sacrifice in Calvary. Note, he has something to offer. He is the minister in the true sanctuary.

Second, note the comment about the tabernacle erected by Moses. It was designed as a replica of the true tabernacle in heaven. We can see from this that earthly worship is supposed to correspond to what is going on in heaven. The earthly tabernacle was the sign, not the real thing.

Therefore it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ did not enter a holy place made with hands, a mere copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; nor was it that He would offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the holy place year by year with blood that is not his own. Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. (Hebrews 9:22-26)

The earthly tabernacle, which is a copy of the heavenly tabernacle, was cleansed with copies of the real sacrifice -- i.e., animal offerings. But the real tabernacle -- the one in heaven -- had to be cleansed with a perfect offering, which is Christ.

Christ's sacrifice on Calvary was not merely a bloody death on a hill. As the eternal Son of God, he entered the true tabernacle in heaven and made atonement, not of the earthly copies, or at an earthly altar, but before the throne of God. In light of that, consider the relationship between what was done on Earth and what is presented in heaven. The death of a man on a cross on a hill in Palestine is offered before the throne of God in heaven in such a way that the heavenly temple is cleansed by that offering. There is some kind of identity between the two acts. Jesus doesn't go up into heaven and die again, or sacrifice himself again at the heavenly altar. Rather, the one sacrifice exists in both places: on a cross on Calvary and in the heavenly temple.

That one sacrifice on Calvary "now appears" to plead forgiveness for all His people, as the Presbyterian hymn quoted above says. Because heaven is not time-bound, as we are, there is a sense in which the wounds he received 2,000 years ago plead for us even now -- today. That sacrifice in time, once for all on Calvary, is presented in heaven, outside of time, by our Great High Priest who offers Himself for our forgiveness.

And I saw ... a Lamb standing, as if slain.... Revelation 5:6

It’s clear that Jesus' earthly sacrifice has some kind of identity with his priestly ministry in heaven. The sacrifice on Calvary is somehow present in heaven. So now let's look at it the other way. Remember that earthly worship is supposed to be a picture of what is going on in heaven. "See that you make all things according to the pattern." Our earthly worship participates in the heavenly worship with all the saints and angels.

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel. Hebrews 12:22-24

Since earthly worship is a participation in the heavenly worship, the mass is the earthly presentation of that sacrifice that Christ now offers for us in heaven. Just as the sacrifice of Calvary is somehow the same as the sacrifice in heaven, so the sacrifice in heaven -- which is the sacrifice on Calvary -- is the sacrifice of the mass -- the earthly, sacramental re-presentation of the heavenly worship. The mass is not another sacrifice, or a different sacrifice. It is precisely the same sacrifice, sacramentally presented on earth.

That's what Rome means by saying that the mass is a sacrifice for sins. It’s not in addition to Calvary, or instead of Calvary. It is Calvary.

I studied the mass because I thought it was going to be the easiest place to find where Rome had gone off the deep end. Certainly here, I thought, Rome's position was clearly and necessarily wrong, and then I could go on with my thought experiment in church authority and figure out how to be a good Presbyterian pastor.

But things didn't work out that way. Not only did I fail to find a flaw in the Catholic understanding of the mass, I was transported. Worship seemed like a brand new thing to me. It wasn't just a time for singing and listening. The Supper wasn't just a memory-jog, or some "means of grace," whatever in the world that is. Instead, worship is our participation in the kingdom of God. It's the earthly presentation of what is going on in heaven, in which, by tangible signs and symbols, the people of God are included and participate in the heavenly worship. It's the nexus between heaven and earth.

I'd cut my Christian teeth on happy, fun worship. At GCC, we had up-beat songs that were straight from Scripture and fun to sing, and I was an advocate of doing the same sort of thing at the Presbyterian Church. Get rid of the old, boring hymns and let's sing some good songs.

But after studying the relationship between the Lord's Supper, the worship in heaven and the sacrifice of Calvary, that all seemed like a squabble on the sidelines now. That's not the issue at all. The real issue was making worship "according to the pattern" and participating in it. (I still like the better music, by the way.)

This new perspective on the mass didn’t resolve all my problems with the mass. Luther's central critique of the Roman doctrine of the mass was that they'd taken God's gift to us and turned it into our gift to God -- a meritorious work that we do to earn God's favor. Luther was dead-on-center right about that. While the identity of the mass with the sacrifice of Calvary means that it is a propitiatory sacrifice, we can never turn it into a work that we offer to God. Christ is the priest who offers himself to God on our behalf. We are privileged to participate “through him, with him, in him” in that sacrifice and join the offering of our own lives to the offering of Christ. But in no event is the mass anything other than God's gift to us.

Liturgy

If I was right about the Eucharist, and if there is a pattern to worship, then why isn't that pattern spelled out in Scripture? The Protestant side of me cringed at the thought, but my studies were showing me that the early church was quite comfortable with the idea of extra-biblical rules.

So where did New Testament worship come from?

Let's think back to the time immediately before the ascension. Jesus appeared to the disciples over a 40-day period after the resurrection. Isn't it likely that he gave them some instruction on worship during that time? And after the ascension, the apostles stayed together in Jerusalem for quite a while. (See Acts 8:2.) Maybe decades. They certainly worshipped together during that time. Isn't it likely that they agreed on a common form of worship for the church?

Of course it's not only likely, it's quite probable. When the apostles did leave Jerusalem to take the gospel to the ends of the earth, they were already accustomed to a form of Christian worship, and they took it with them. And just as the agreement between extant manuscripts points us to the original language of the autographs of Scripture, so the agreement between the liturgies of the ancient churches shows us what this form of worship was.

More than that, there are early documents that summarize portions of these apostolic instructions on worship, and, again, they look nothing like what we did at GCC or COPC. Rather, the early church’s worship looks like a modified form of first-century Jewish worship. The traditional Christian liturgy is divided into two parts: the liturgy of the word and the liturgy of the Eucharist. The liturgy of the word -- the reading of Scripture, the chanting of psalms, a sermon and prayer -- follows the synagogue model. But Jews didn’t only worship in the synagogue. They also worshipped in the temple, and that formed the basis for the second part of the early church’s worship, the liturgy of the Eucharist.

So the early church, which was predominantly Jewish, adapted the two forms of worship it received from its Jewish heritage to the new situation, and the two-part Christian liturgy is the result.

The circumstantial case for adopting this two-part liturgy as the approved pattern of worship seemed awfully strong. The only real counter-argument is that old Protestant slogan, sola scriptura. But I had studied sola scriptura to death, and it was obvious to me that, properly understood, there was no contradiction between sola scriptura and using the ancient pattern of the liturgy as a norm for church worship. After all, we have to worship some way, and there's certainly nothing in the liturgy that contradicts Scripture, so what's the problem? (For more on sola scriptura, please see the Appendix.)

Certainly the apostles instructed the early church in a form of worship, and whatever it was it's not written down for us in Scripture. There are hints here and there, but the Bible is not a worship manual.

So, after the apostles died, was the early church supposed to abandon the apostolic instructions, hire a polling firm to ask the good people of Thessalonica why they don't come to the liturgy, and then set up a new, user-friendly style of worship to draw seekers?

Somehow I doubt it. The early church was preaching that people should be willing to live chaste and modest lives, give up their possessions and possibly feed a Roman lion with their arms and legs. I don't think it would have entered their minds to adapt the teachings of the apostles to be "relevant" to the pagans.

And then there's that matter of making earthly worship according to the heavenly pattern. Worship style isn’t ours to tamper with in any event. There is a model to follow, we just have to find out what that model is.

All in all, it seemed more than probable to me that Jesus and the apostles left a very definite form of worship for the church -- one that seeks to recreate on earth the worship that goes on in heaven.

Mary, Ever Virgin and Assumed to Heaven?

My review gave the Roman Catholic Church passing grades on the mass and the liturgy, but the next big subject was a biggee: Mary. I often wonder if Roman Catholics realize just how offensive their Marian devotions are to a Protestant.

Protestants are schooled in devotion to Jesus.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full in His wonderful face,

And the things of Earth will grow strangely dim,

In the light of his glory and grace.

-- "Turn your eyes upon Jesus."

We pray to Jesus. We sing to Jesus. We long to see Jesus in heaven. Jesus is all in all. He is the standard by which everything is judged. Anything that detracts from that singleness of purpose is an idol, doomed for destruction.

Roman Catholics sometime seem confused about this. They think of Mary as the mother of Jesus, and how can these Protestants claim to be devoted to Jesus and have such a problem with His mother?

And there's the rub. Protestants are most definitely not against Jesus’ mother. The problem is that, to a Protestant, the Mary of Roman Catholic devotion is not the Mary of the Bible -- not Jesus’ mother at all, but some kind of mixture of pious sentiment and pagan goddess worship. As far as the Protestant is concerned, the Mary of the Bible is a humble Jewish woman who wouldn't dream of asking anyone to pray to her, or make statues of her, or go on pilgrimages to her shrines. The Protestant sees the Mary of Roman Catholicism is an idol. And if there's anything to these Marian apparitions beyond self-deception, .... Well. Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

So there's a huge culture gap to cross before a Protestant can even begin to understand Roman Catholic Marian doctrines. Before he can honestly evaluate Roman Catholic claims, he has to entertain the notion that this humble Jewish woman in the Bible might be the same person as the idolized Queen of Heaven, with statues and gold and splendor who is crowned and hymned each May -- just like an idol.

It’s hard enough for the Protestant to study official Roman Catholic teachings about Mary, but the task is quite a bit harder than it sounds. “Official teachings” get mixed up with “what Catholics do,” and Roman Catholic Marian devotions go way beyond the official dogmas. Some of the excesses of Marian devotion have certainly crossed the line to Mariolatry. Yes, some Roman Catholics do worship Mary as something like a goddess who has supplanted Jesus in their affections.

I had to wrestle with my own prejudices before I could even consider the Roman Catholic position. I had to remind myself that I was going to try to give Rome the benefit of the doubt on disputable matters, and I had to remind myself again and again that practice is one thing and doctrine is another. Protestants are often unfaithful to their doctrines too, and it's no fairer to judge Roman Catholic doctrines by the actual practice of Catholics than it is to judge Protestant doctrines by the actual practice of Protestants.

So, with intense mental effort and my finger firmly clenching my nose, I began to investigate the Marian claims. I started with her perpetual virginity.

The first common objection to Mary’s perpetual virginity is that Jesus had brothers and sisters. Now, if you think about it logically, there’s no reason in the world why “brother of Jesus” has to mean “son of Mary.” Joseph could have had children by another wife. For example, Isaac had a brother, but Sarah had only one child. So the existence of brothers and sisters does not disprove Mary’s perpetual virginity -- but in Protestant circles it is widely assumed to be a clincher.

The other explanation for the “brothers” of Jesus is that they were kinsmen, and this gets to the question of the literary range of the Greek word “adelphos.” Even in English, “brother” doesn’t necessarily mean son of the same mother. At GCC we often called male believers “brother,” and there are fraternity brothers and lodge brothers and that sort of thing. But of course the Gospel writers weren’t thinking of the local American Legion post when they mentioned Jesus’ brothers and sisters. The question is, can “adelphos” mean “cousin,” or some other close kinsman.

Apologists on both sides love to argue about this, but the argument is quickly lost on me. Words simply don’t have precise meanings; they have a range of meanings, and we have to allow some flexibility when the context doesn’t demand precision. Abraham could truly say that Sarah was his sister even though she wasn’t the daughter of his mother. And we don’t accuse him of lying on that account.

The question I was trying to answer was this: is there any clear evidence that Mary was not a virgin her whole life? Say what you will about which interpretation of “brother” is more likely, we have to admit that the “brothers of Jesus” don’t prove that Mary had other children. There are other reasonable explanations.

The next objection to Mary’s perpetual virginity is that Scripture says Joseph kept Mary a virgin until she gave birth to a son. The implication is supposed to be that he did not keep her a virgin afterwards.

Again, the objection is unpersuasive. "Until" simply doesn't carry enough freight to prove that Mary had marital relations after Jesus’ birth. Scripture sometimes speaks of people not doing things "until" the day of their death. Does that mean that they did them after death? Of course not. "Until" means "up to," and while we can assume that certain things happened after the “until,” the text doesn’t require it.

Another objection to Mary's perpetual virginity comes from 1 Cor. 7. Paul said, "Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again lest Satan tempt you because of your lack of self-control." The point of the objection is that husbands and wives have a duty to meet one another's sexual needs, so Mary had a duty to fulfill Joseph.

This objection doesn't seem that serious to me. First of all, the law prescribes certain periods of abstinence for special circumstances: e.g., when a woman is menstruating, or after childbirth. So the command to “come together” is not universally applicable. It can be set aside for other reasons. Second, Paul is giving general instructions on married life. Certainly different rules apply in special circumstances, and if the birth of the second person of the Trinity is not a special case, then what is? Third, Paul's motivation here is clear: he tells married couples to come together "lest Satan tempt you because of your lack of self-control." If the problem (lack of self control) doesn't exist, the solution is unnecessary. In other words, I don't believe you can read this verse to say that married couples are required to have sex even if both of them don't want to, for whatever reason.

The fact is that we are treading on sacred ground here. Sex itself is a mystery, and the incarnation is a bigger mystery still. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that there may have been some special circumstances going on with Mary and Joseph. In fact, the contrary seems ridiculously unlikely. I’m not saying that the incarnation necessarily leads me to believe in Mary’s perpetual virginity, but I am saying that the incarnation seems like a sufficient cause to set aside these piddling little objections based on general teachings. We’re dealing with a special case.

But two things captivated me about the arguments for Mary's perpetual virginity. First, there is very strong support for the notion in the early church. But second, and more persuasive to me, is the light it sheds on the annunciation.

One theory (chronicled in a non-canonical book from the early church) holds that Mary and Joseph had taken a vow of celibacy before they were engaged. Supposedly that was a common practice in those days for very devout Jews. But imagine, as you read the story of the annunciation, that Mary had taken such a vow.

"The angel Gabriel was sent by God to ... a virgin engaged to a man .... And the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb, and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and His kingdom will have no end.' And Mary said to the angel, 'How can this be, since I am a virgin?'"

Here's a challenge for you. Go to a church where people believe in modern-day prophecy and find an engaged young woman. Tell her that God gave you a message that she will have a son who will be great and do wonderful things for the Lord. I'll bet you dollars to donuts that that young woman won't reply the way Mary did. She'll automatically assume that you mean after the wedding, because nothing in those words implies anything other than the normal procedures for having a kid.

So what could have made Mary reply the way she did? I don’t know, but a vow of perpetual virginity is certainly one option.

Over the years since I've studied this issue, I've had lots of discussions with other Christians about Mary's perpetual virginity. One thing that troubles me about these discussions is the tendency to try to bring everything down to the lowest common denominator. "Mary was just another woman. What's so special about Mary? Why do we have to put her on a pedestal? Of course she had sex with Joseph after Jesus was born. What's your hang up about sex?"

Well, first of all, I have five children and absolutely no hang up about sex. But for goodness' sake, people, we're talking about the woman who gave birth to the creator of the universe. Isn't there room for something slightly special and out of the ordinary in this case? Do we have to insist that every garden variety “normal” circumstance had to apply to this particular woman?

So the conclusion of my research (up to that point) was that you can't prove the perpetual virginity of Mary from Scripture, but there was certainly nothing in Scripture to contradict the doctrine.

And then there’s the assumption. I have very little to say about that. Enoch was assumed into heaven. Elijah too. Why not Mary? While I didn’t see anything in Scripture to convince me that Mary was assumed to heaven, there was nothing to deny it either.

Prayer to the Saints, etc.

Hail Mary, full of grace,

The Lord is with thee,

Blessed art thou among women,

And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus,

Holy Mary, mother of God,

Pray for us sinners,

Now, and at the hour of our death.

-- The Hail Mary.

It's one thing to say that some of the Marian doctrines aren't necessarily unscriptural. After all, Calvin and Luther believed in the Mary's perpetual virginity. (Of course most Protestants think that was just out of sentimentality, or that they didn't have enough time to evaluate and reject all Roman Catholic beliefs, or, of course, that they weren't reformed enough.) It's another thing entirely to pray to her. Prayer to Mary and the saints cuts to the heart of the Protestant critique of Roman Catholicism.

"Those Catholics don't love God -- after all, they don't have the peace that comes from having been justified by faith (Rom. 5:1) -- they're afraid of God because they approach him on the basis of their own good works -- so they have to flee for refuge to an idol."

That's the way I viewed Marian devotion, and I think many Protestants react the same way.

But in this study I was trying to give Rome the benefit of the doubt to see how it all fit in with my grand thought experiment on authority. I wasn’t trying to derive Catholic beliefs from Scripture, I was trying to see if it was possible to see the issues their way. So I consulted the books, as well as all the Roman Catholics who were trying to get my scalp, and this is what I heard ....

When a Roman Catholic prays to Mary, he is not asking her to answer the prayer out of her own ability, or power. Rather, he is asking Mary to pray for him, just as someone might ask for the prayers of a friend, or a pastor. After all, the Hail Mary says, "pray for us sinners." And so, if the "prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much," how much more effective is the prayer of a saint in heaven, and how much more the very mother of God?

Furthermore, Scripture speaks of the "great crowd of witnesses," the saints who are cheering us on, and the book of Revelation speaks of the saints praying for things on earth. (Rev. 6:10.) Also, Protestants have this unfortunate habit of referring to departed believers as if they were dead, but of course they are more alive than we are! (John 8:51)

Well, okay, I thought. So maybe the idea isn't completely wacky. The saints are alive with God, and they do pray for things on earth. So maybe there's no essential difference between asking them to pray for you and asking your pal to pray for you. Once again I had to admit that Scripture didn’t contradict the Catholic doctrine -- at least if it is understood the way the apologists defended it.

But prayer to the saints is a big one for a Protestant to swallow, and by this point I was starting to get annoyed at all this deference and “what if” and “maybe” and “it doesn’t have to be” that I was giving Rome. When you have to bend over backwards and do mental gymnastics to make something seem possible, the brain starts to revolt. Mine did.

It's one thing, I figured, to say that there's nothing wrong with praying to the saints, and it's another thing entirely to say that there's anything worthwhile about it. After all, maybe the saints pray for us, but who says they can hear our prayers? I have a Christian friend in Africa. There's nothing wrong with asking him to pray for me, so I suppose I could whisper as I kneel at the foot of my bed, "Friend, would you pray for me about such and so?" But it's a little unlikely that he will hear me, so, I figured, I think I'll save my breath, and use that time praying to the omniscient God, who can hear me.

Also, it’s all well and good for apologists to put the best spin on Catholic doctrine, but you have to wonder if this is really what Roman Catholics mean when they pray to the saints. It certainly doesn’t seem that way! Most people who pray to the saints seem to believe that the saint himself is going to grant the petition. It's almost as if God is irrelevant.

Infallibility

Rome was still barely hanging on after my review of the Marian doctrines. So far, nothing seemed necessarily wrong. I didn’t agree with it all, but, given the benefit of the doubt, I had to say it was possible.

The next point of study was the infallibility of the church, and I didn’t study this subject in quite the same way. I wasn’t really evaluating the Roman Catholic claims, per se. I was shifting back into my thought experiment on church authority.

If a pastor was supposed to submit to the church, he had to ask himself two questions: which church, and why should I trust it?

I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all truth. John 16:12-13

The church has always believed that somehow, in some way, God protects her from error. The church cannot completely apostacize (as the Mormons say it did shortly after the apostles) because Jesus promises that the gates of Hell will not prevail against her.

This has traditionally been expressed as the "infallibility" and "indefectability" of the church. Infallibility means that the church, in certain situations, is incapable of error. Indefectability means that the church will never completely fall away from the faith. Note that infallibility does not imply moral perfection. So, for example, the infallibility of the pope, as it was defined at Vatican I, does not mean that the pope is sinless or never makes any mistakes -- only that he cannot err when he speaks as universal pastor on a matter of faith or morals.

At first blush the doctrine of infallibility seems to contradict Paul's statement about the Ephesian bishops -- that savage wolves would rise up among them. (Acts 20:29-30). If a bishop can err, and a group of bishops can err, then when are they infallible?

If you're thinking the way I did back in those days, you're beginning to ask, "But how do we know which bishops in which church?" After all, if we were to try to have a council today, which bishops would we invite? There's all kinds of people calling themselves bishops. As the title of one book I skimmed says, Bishops. But What Kind?

Some people imagine that the early church didn’t have all the problems we have. It wasn't broken up into hundreds of denominations: there were just Catholics and heretics, and you could tell them apart by whether they had that gentle look on their face and a halo over their heads.

Of course the early church had its own share of problems. There were heretics of all sorts and degrees, and it wasn't always clear who was on what side, or just how much orthodoxy was required to be inside the fence.

So which bishops are infallible, and when?

The eastern churches seem to have ended up with a very squishy view of the infallibility of the church. They say that you can't tell ahead of time whether a council will be infallible -- there's no distinguishing mark. Some councils have been overturned by other councils, and even by the laity. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit in the church, and it's only by reflection, after the fact, that the church recognizes what the Holy Spirit has done and accepts one given council as infallible, rejects another as erroneous and regards another as a bit of a mixed bag.

I simply couldn't get my hands around that. Whose after-the-fact-reflection decides the issue? If we adopt that standard, haven't we just moved the whole issue somewhere else? Under the eastern scheme it seems that we're not asking which councils are infallible, but which council critics are infallible.

I have tried to understand the Orthodox view on this, and I've had no success at all. When I ask Orthodox apologists why one council is infallible and another isn't, the reply is usually to the effect that it just turned out that way. When I follow up with the obvious question, "How do you know it just turned out that way?," they say that's the faith they've received from the church, and they trust the church. And then I ask, "What church? Who is it that you're trusting to tell you which councils turned out to be infallible?," and I hear the same circular stuff -- we trust the Orthodox Church. "But what is it that defines the Orthodox Church?" It's the Church that follows the apostolic tradition and the great councils, they say.

Pardon me, but I can't do that too long or I feel as if I'm going to explode. Some people like circular reasoning, but it drives me mad. And then they tell me that I can't understand it because I'm thinking like a westerner. In the east they view these things differently.

Mea culpa. I am a westerner. But when I have tried to nail down what the difference is between western and eastern thought, I'm told that I simply can't do it that way. You see, trying to "nail down" the differences and evaluate them in an analytical way is western. You can't understand eastern thought that way.

So had to give up on all that. If I end up a damned heretic because I'm trying to think analytically, then so be it. It's the only way I know how to think. The only trouble, of course, is that when I ask St. Peter why I can't get into heaven, he'll tell me to stop thinking like a westerner.

Rome, on the other hand, is conveniently western, and they have a western answer for all of us damned analytical heretics.

First, let me re-state the question. My poor, battered imaginary pastor is trying to decide if it makes sense to submit to “the” church: which one, and why. As he reviews church history and sees the mess of councils and fathers and traditions and churches, he asks if there is a way to discern when, or in what circumstances, the church (which church?) is protected by God from error? Rome's answer is, yes, there is: the church is the one united to Peter's successor, and it is protected from error in ecumenical councils and ex cathedra statements of the pope.

The Papacy

I have set up the issue of the papacy this way because this is how I approached it. There has to be a standard for Christian doctrine, and I'd long since recognized that "we just believe the Bible" wasn't very helpful. The church needs confessions and catechisms and doctrinal statements to be precise about what it believes, both to inform believers and to set up a standard to identify and condemn heresy. But who has the authority to make those statements? And why should we follow them?

The Roman answer has two virtues, it seemed to me. First, consider the problem of councils. How do we know which one is right? "Where Peter is, there is the church," Rome says, which, even if it's not true, is at least something you can get your hands around. If there are two councils that disagree, you just appeal to the pope. Which one did the pope attend, or agree with?

It's a neat solution.

The second virtue of the Roman solution is that it has some exegetical basis. After all, Jesus did say, "You are Peter, and upon this rock and I will build my church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it."

Up to this point in my Christian life I had never bothered to consider the papacy as anything more than a relic from the medieval church -- like those monks I saw the first time I went to mass. But now I saw a theological reason for the idea. How, after all, was the Christian Church to know which positions were orthodox and which were heretical? "By comparing them with the Scriptures," the Protestant thunders, and I say, yea, and amen, but that's not the issue. Of course all doctrines must be compared against the Scriptures. The question is who is going to do the comparing and give the authoritative answer? When the Protestant says, "we have to check church decrees against Scripture," that's like someone saying that we have to check laws against the constitution. Sure we do. But who does the checking? Every citizen? Every lawmaker? Does he then make his own decision and set up his own country?

Think of paedo-communion again. Both sides of the debate agreed that the issue had to be settled by Scripture alone, and if the issue came before Presbytery, that's how it would have been decided. In other words, the only arguments that would have been considered would be arguments from Scripture. But "Scripture alone" doesn't answer my question, which is whether I should follow the Presbytery's read on what Scripture alone says, or my own. If Presbytery concludes A and I conclude B, then what do I do? Scripture says, "obey your leaders and submit to their authority," and the decisions of the first council of the church were sent to the people to be obeyed (Acts 16:4). So does that mean that God protects the Presbytery from making an error in a way that he does not protect me? Or does that mean that I am to obey Presbytery, whether they're right or not? And if I choose to go my own way, no matter what Presbytery says, then what's the point of a Presbytery, or a denomination, or a council? Everybody just does what he thinks is right. If you happen to agree, fine, go ahead and team up with like-minded folk, and if you don't, split.

But what about "one faith, one hope, one baptism, one church"?

I wanted to find a solution to that problem. Who is authorized to make these judgments?

Rome's solution is to offer a visible head and principle of unity in the office of the papacy, and this office, or rather the person in that office, is given a special grace that protects him from error.

Rome’s answer is convenient, but is it right?

Kephas, Peter, Rock

The central text to the whole question of the papacy is Mt. 16, where Jesus asks the disciples, "Who do you say that I am," and Peter answers, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades shall not overpower it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

A typical Protestant interpretation of this passage is illustrated in the relevant footnotes in The Open Bible (1979, Thomas Nelson Publishers).

He said to Peter, "You are Peter, (Petros, a little rock) and upon this rock (Petra, a big rock) I will build My church." Jesus did not say that He would build His church on Peter, but upon Himself, the Rock of Ages.

I had always accepted that explanation until I started reading a little more about it. It's not a good interpretation of the text, and contemporary Protestant scholars are abandoning it.

The first problem is that it ruins the word play, "you are rock and on this rock." If Jesus intended to make a distinction between Peter and the rock, there are better words to use for "little stone" than "petros." Furthermore, if "petros" is supposed to mean "little stone," we're left with no textual clue as to what the "rock" is. If Jesus meant "you are a little stone, and on this big stone I will build my church," then what's the big stone? We're left to guess. Some say it's Peter's confession, while other's say it is Christ. But Matthew never calls a confession a "rock," and the hymn "Rock of Ages" hadn't been written yet. In short, this reading obscures the text rather than clarifying it. The interpretation in The Open Bible imports into the text a theological concept that isn't found in the text itself -- the idea of Jesus as the Rock. Yes, Jesus is described as a rock (1 Cor. 10:4), but not in Matthew.

Another problem is that Jesus was almost certainly speaking Aramaic, not Greek (cf. Jn. 1:42), in which case it would have been, "You are kephas and on this kephas." (Forgive my spelling if I got that wrong -- I don’t pretend to be an Aramaic scholar.) There would have been no change in the words. "You are rock and on this rock."