Through the Stained Glass

Believe it or not, that’s how the story stood for years. I knew it was an ugly mess, but I didn’t see any way out of it. The whole trend of my theological journey seemed to be heading in one direction, and then when I got there, I found that it wasn't what I expected.

I have run, I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you

But I still haven't found what I'm looking for

-- I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, by U2

It's as if there had been, once upon a time, a Great King with a Magical Sword who was building a Heavenly Kingdom on the Earth. The Kingdom had its good times and bad, but tales told that the King was always fighting the good fight and slowly, progressively, like yeast in a lump of dough, working his leaven through the Earth.

This Great King was succeeded in every generation by another man, gallant, bold and just, who fought for the Heavenly Kingdom with the Great and Ancient Sword.

A young man heard about this Kingdom and his heart yearned to lend it his sweat and blood. He studied all the legends and stories about it, and after years of arduous work he finally hit on the trail of the Great King. He tracked him through a dense forest and found him, surrounded by his Mighty Men, under a great tree.

They were all wearing velour loin cloths, smeared with fuchsia body paint, beating on drums, dancing and singing Barry Manilow songs and crying about their fathers. Their horses were festooned with frills and fluff and silk and lace, and the Great Sword itself rested, half rusted from ill-use, next to a pink, plastic sheath.

The youth lost his lunch all over the forest floor and ran screaming from the woods to take up service with a band of mercenaries.

My journey was like that. I couldn't reconcile myself with being a Protestant or a Catholic. Neither appealed to me, and neither seemed to answer all my questions.

I had given up on being a pastor. All I wanted to do was be a regular Christian -- to work, pray, worship and raise my family. But I couldn't even do that. When I knelt at the communion rail and received the bread and wine, I had to wonder. Is this the Eucharist I'm supposed to take it? Is it valid? If Peter is the rock on which the church is founded, am I in the church?

The Need for an Authoritative Church

Reporter: "So what do you think are the key advantages to having a law degree and a background in English for your job?"

Chief Counsel: "You can make words say what you want them to say."

--A conversation overheard at a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Christmas party.

For several years I have taken part in online discussions with other Christians about theological issues. The most obvious lesson from this experience is that intelligent, well-meaning people can interpret the Scriptures in a lot of different, mutually exclusive ways.

Scripture may well be sufficiently clear in matters of salvation that anyone of normal intelligence can read it and come to saving faith, but there is no question that Scripture alone is insufficient as a guide to the rest of the Christian life -- that is, Scripture divorced from the interpretation of the church. I'm not going to argue this point because it's too obvious. If you don't believe it, simply log on to an Internet discussion for a few weeks and see for yourself. You will have to come to one of two conclusions: everyone who disagrees with is exercising bad faith, or Scripture is not so clear and straight-forward that one interpretation is the dead ringer. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not blaming Scripture. The blame lies with us. We're too stupid, or too blind, or too prejudiced to get the message. But one way or the other, it’s the ugly truth. Smart people who sincerely try to understand Scripture and obey the Lord come to radically different conclusions.

So what's the church to do? One alternative is to let everybody believe what they want, so long as they hold to a possible interpretation of Scripture. (Never mind who decides which interpretations are possible.) Of course this restricts the church's teaching to the lowest common denominator: Gospel Minimalism.

"Oh, we can't insist on that. Reasonable people can differ, you know."

So much for the law going forth from Zion, eh?

Or we can all split up into our own little denominations and be hard-headed about our own interpretations. So everybody in X denomination agrees that infant baptism is clear from Scripture, so they'll kick out those who disagree. And the folk who are kicked out will simply walk down the street to Y denomination where they kick out the paedobaptists.

By the way, this creates a great business opportunity. You create a chart of all possible beliefs and variations on beliefs, ask people to fill out a questionnaire, and presto, you can guide them to the right church (provided there are enough co-religionists in that area of the country -- and if not, you create a virtual church on the Internet). Look, we've already got the Left-Handed Divorcee's Devotional Bible. This is just niche marketing taken one step further.

No, the church is supposed to be a city set on a hill and a light to the nations, not a bad joke.

So what’s the alternative? How do we avoid this “pick/create your own church” ecclesiology? It seems to me that the experience of the last couple hundred years gives a clear answer: the church has to have the authority to say that this interpretation is right and this other one is wrong. Without such authority, doctrinal chaos reigns.

Of course that's not enough. While your garden-variety, radio-junkie Evangelical would never give "the church" such authority, there truly are Presbyterians and Anglicans and Lutherans who believe that the church must settle disputes. So the question becomes, which church has that authority, and how do we know that it's this one and not that one over there? The answer is obvious if you've thought about it for a while, but since most people don't, let's take the slow route.

Take infant baptism as an example. A plausible case can be made either way from Scripture alone. In other words, while I believe that Scripture teaches infant baptism, I also believe that reasonable people can come to different conclusions based on the data in Scripture alone. So, since God has given teachers to resolve doctrinal issues (see Acts 15), we have to ask the Authoritative Church for the answer. Which church will we ask? How will we know which church is the True, Authoritative Church?

The standard Protestant answer is to say that the True Church is the one that teaches true doctrine. But that's precisely what we're asking, isn't it? The very question we want to solve is which doctrinal position is true, and we want to ask the True Church for the resolution, but the Protestant answer has this the other way around: first you have to know the true doctrine in order to find the true church in order to ask it what the true doctrine is.

How does that make any sense? Protestant ecclesiology starts with the individual, sure of himself, knowing all things, and moves from there to the church. In other words, Protestant ecclesiology doesn't answer this question. In fact, it's awfully hard to get most Protestants to admit the problem, much less discuss an answer.

Some say that the church has essentially no authoritative teaching office -- the church teaches, and you can believe it or not. Others come up with (unimpressive) reasons for believing their church is "the authoritative church." But neither of those answers get you very far.

The obvious solution to this dilemma is that the True, Authoritative Church has to have an external, objective mark of identity. This is the obvious answer because the subjective route sends us right back to square one: "What is true doctrine? Ask the church. Which church? The one that teaches true doctrine. Where's the Excedrin?"

I believe in one, holy, Catholic and apostolic church.

Protestants believe in “one” church, but they don’t believe that the “one” church is an “institution.” It’s an invisible reality that transcends any organization or group.

There’s a sense in which that is correct. Certainly there is a sense in which the “people of God” transcends any given group. We can’t define any one organization that is precisely identifiable with “all Christians.”

But when we talk about ecclesiology, that’s not “the church” we’re talking about. We all believe that “all the elect,” or “all the people of God,” or “all Christians” is a different category from “all the people in this (or the) visible church.” Nevertheless, “the church” has a visible, institutional component. It has to if it’s going to answer theological questions. So the question is whether this visible aspect of the church is united -- is it a single institution -- or can it be divided.

Protestants say that it can be divided, and I accepted that for a long time, but I had to ask myself whether this is really what Scripture teaches, or just “yeah, but” theology -- which reads what the Bible teaches, doesn’t like it, and says, “yeah, but.”

The question I had to wrestle with is whether the visible, organizational church can do and be what Scripture says it’s supposed to do and be if it can be divided into factions and denominations that teach different things. I decided that it cannot.

So why is that? What does Scripture say about the church, and how does that teaching apply to the question of institutional unity?

What Does Scripture Say About the Church?

The church is the body of Christ. (See Rom. 12:5, 1 Cor. 12:12, 27, Eph. 3:6, 4:10-16, Col. 1:18.) It’s hard to define any precise organizational mandate from that fact alone, but it certainly yells “unity” at us. There may be some wiggle room, but Ephesians puts the “oneness” of this body in the same context as the oneness of the faith, our hope, and our baptism, which makes me think that we’d better come up with a solid reason before we start in with the “yeah, but.”

The church is also the bride of Christ. Eph. 5:24-32. Once again, it’s hard to find justification for the “buts” here. What do we say of a man who has more than one bride?

The church is an assembly that exists in heaven and on earth. Heb. 12:23. Ah. This sounds a little more organizational. An assembly has common rules and things. Once again, there’s some wiggle room, but do we build our theology on the plain sense of the passage, or on the wiggle room? “Assembly” points to organizational unity.

The church is also a structure built on Christ. Mt. 16:16 ff., Eph. 2:19-22, 1 Pet. 2:4-5. See also Rev. 21. It’s not many structures, but a single structure. Again, unity is the logical assumption.

The church is God's household. Eph. 2:19 (see 11-22), 1 Tim. 3:15. What do we call a man who has more than one household?

The church is the pillar and support of the truth. 1 Tim. 3:15. I think this whole long book shows that if we’re going to have any “pillar and support of the truth,” it has to be one group. If I want to know what the truth is, I have to ask “the” church. If there isn’t a “the” church, then how can I ask? If I want to know, for example, which books belong in the Bible, I have to ask a thing that is capable of rendering a decision or giving an answer. A visible, organizational, institutional church is such a thing. A disembodied, spiritual “oneness” is not. So, if I ask the PCA, have I asked “the church”? What if I ask the LCMS? Or the OPC?

So, the very idea that “the church” is supposed to teach and make authoritative decisions implies that it is the kind of thing that can teach and make authoritative decisions -- that it is an organization, an institution.

The church disciples the nations. Ps. 2, Is. 2:2-3, Mt. 28:18-20. This means that the nations have to know to whom to go. If there are 100 different churches teaching, how do the nations know which one is “the” church teaching “the” faith?

The church makes binding decisions. Mt. 18:15-19, Acts 15. Unless, that is, you go and join the church down the road that doesn’t accept the binding decisions of the first one, right? Of course not. “The church” makes decisions, which means that “the church” must be the kind of thing that can render them.

The church sets precedent regarding Christian practices. 1 Cor. 11:16. But which church sets precedent? “The” church, of course, which means that it is one, and identifiable.

These biblical images of the church, and teachings on the function of the church, all point to organizational oneness. I admit that there’s wiggle room in all of these passages and in every image. We can say, “yeah, but” a little bit. That’s not always the wrong thing to do. When Luke says “all the world went to be taxed,” we are right to say “yeah, but.”

We can make excuses and scratch our heads and hem and haw, but I see no way to take all of these passages seriously and remain a Protestant. And believe me, I tried, and I asked a whole lot of people to help me. It just doesn’t work. Practically speaking, when you admit that the visible church can be divided, any statement about “the church” is emptied of all meaning.

So what’s the solution? Where is this “the” church?

The Marks of the Church

From the earliest days of Christianity, the episcopacy -- bishops appointed in succession from the apostles -- has been held up as the visible sign and guarantee of unity and orthodoxy. That answer seems to have been good enough for the early apologists, but it makes for an amusing read after thousands of years of episcopal schism -- with the Copts going one way and the Orthodox another and the Anglicans yet another.

Once again, the biblical evidence ("there is one body and one spirit ... one Lord, one faith, one baptism" Eph. 4:4-5) requires a sensible scheme of church unity. Protestant ecclesiology is wholly inadequate to the task. Episcopal ecclesiology does better (there are slightly fewer schisms among the churches with bishops), but it still doesn't get us home. There must be a single symbol of unity, and the only reasonable option with a shred of biblical or patristic support is the papacy.

I know what you're thinking. "But that hasn't worked either. What about the popes and the anti-popes? And weren't there three at once?"

Yes. (Well, there were three people who claimed to be the pope. I don't know if they were beating on drums and crying about their fathers, but they probably were wearing dresses with lots of frilly stuff.) Obviously the Roman papacy hasn't been a perfect answer either. It has been too entrenched in politics and kingdom building, and often too worldly. John Paul II has decided that the Year 2000 Jubilee is a time for the church to apologize for the errors of the past, and I believe all of the world should have screamed, “IT’S ABOUT TIME!”

I suspect that many of the problems with popes and anti-popes occurred because the papacy was too closely tied to local political interests. A broader church, such as existed before the east-west split, might not have been as subject to political turmoil. And so I hope that the terms of the future east-west reunion (for which we all hope) will clarify the role of the papacy in a way that will prevent such foolishness in the future.

Nevertheless, despite its obvious flaws, it seems that the papacy is the only live option. If there is to be a visible, external, non-subjective sign of the True and Authoritative Church, the only possibility is Rome -- where Peter is, there is the church. Every other answer drowns in a sea of subjectivity (where no one loves to drown).

The Sacred and the Profane

But why does it all matter? Have you been to a Roman Catholic Church lately? Do you realize what you're asking? You want me to give up good sermons, tremendous, spirit-filled worship, good fellowship, a wonderful Sunday School program, joy and song and smiles and decent donuts on some Sundays .... For what, for heaven's sake? For these crazy notions of "ecclesiology"? I hadn't even heard the word until I read this stupid book.

--What an Evangelical would be thinking right now.

Believe me, I get it. I've agonized over this for years, and when I finally decided to give in and go begging to the local priest, I hated my own conclusions. I really did. I wished we could all just do as we like and know that God is pleased with us anyway. But reality isn't optional.

Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange fire before the LORD, which He had not commanded them. And fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD.

--Leviticus 10

And David arose and went with all the people who were with him to Baale-judah, to bring up from there the ark of God which is called by the Name, the very name of the LORD of hosts who is enthroned above the cherubim. They placed the ark of God on a new cart that they might bring it from the house of Abinadab which was on the hill; and Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, were leading the new cart. ... Meanwhile, David and all the house of Israel were celebrating before the LORD with all kinds of instruments made of fir wood, and with lyres, harps, tambourines, castanets and cymbals. But when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out toward the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen nearly upset it. And the anger of the LORD burned against Uzzah, and God struck him down there for his irreverence; and he died there by the ark of God.

--2 Sam. 6:2-7

We don't know what Nadab and Abihu were thinking when they offered the strange fire. It's comforting to imagine that they were drunk, or obstinate, or willfully rebellious, or, gee, let's use a fancy word -- "contumely," or something like that. Something other than merely careless.

We like to hope that so long as we're sincere, God will accept us. But the text is frighteningly bare. All it says is that they violated the rules and God killed them. The fact that their motive is left out of the account implies that motive is irrelevant to the story. (If the author wanted you to know motive, he’d have told you.) They may have been singing How Great Thou Art or Sympathy for the Devil. We have no idea. All the text says is that they broke the rules and they died.

Likewise with David. Singing and playing on lyres and harps and tambourines and dancing and good feelings were not enough to save Uzzah when he touched the ark.

Good feelings and good intentions are not enough.

Given this background, we should be careful about judging the validity of a church by spirit-filled worship and fun Sunday School classes.

So, how should we view the church? Is sincerity alone going to save us? (Is that the new "sola" for the Evangelical?) Provided we baptize our converts with upbeat psalms on the guitar, with dancing and hearts overflowing with joy, does it matter if we do it all wrong? Or, so long as we meditate deeply on Jesus' death for our sins on Calvary, does it matter if we do the Supper however we see fit? Or so long as we try to teach others about Jesus, does it matter if we don't have a divine calling to preach?

It would be nice to believe that, but do we have any biblical excuse for it? Can we justify that kind of casual regard for God's ordinances in light of Nadab and Uzzah? I think not. Ananias and Saphira died at the feet of Peter for lying, and Corinthian believers "slept" prematurely for dishonoring the Lord's Supper. God is still a consuming fire.

This is why, after years of agonizing over ecclesiology, I finally decided that I couldn’t take communion in a Protestant church. If I wanted to follow the rules, I had to ask myself who is authorized to consecrate and distribute the Lord's Supper. The New Testament is remarkably silent on the issue. Of course the modern Evangelical takes New Testament silence to mean that the field is wide open and he is free to do as he pleases. But that's an unhistorical position. Before there was a New Testament there was a church, and this church celebrated the sacraments regularly. Where did they get their instructions? From the apostles, of course, and from the Old Testament, which was the only Scriptural rule at the time. And in the Old Testament, the priests and Levites presided over the offerings -- not anybody indiscriminately. So without evidence that things have changed, New Testament silence implies that the Old Testament practice still prevails -- the officers of the church preside over the rites of the church.

This conclusion is supported by the church fathers. "Let that be considered a valid Eucharist which is celebrated by the bishop, or by one whom he appoints." (Irenaeus' Epistle to the Smyreans.)

Once again, episcopal polity is forced upon us. Priests, like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther, consecrate the sacrament of the altar at the direction of the bishop. Without the bishop's blessing, Fr. Martin Luther is not authorized to celebrate the Supper (according to Irenaeus).

Once again, it comes down to the question I confronted back in Great Commission Church: anyone can claim to be Jesus' minister, but how do I know? And again the answer seems clear: a man is appointed directly by God, with signs following, or he is appointed in legitimate and lawful succession from a previously existing authority. (And Irenaeus would add to that, he has to be subject to his episcopal superiors.) If a church or a minister does not have a reasonable claim to legitimacy -- to valid succession in office -- dare I participate in that church's sacraments? And given God’s rather serious response to Nadab, Abihu, Uzzah, Ananias and Saphira, is this something I want to guess about?

I'm not saying that God is going to strike me dead if I take the Eucharist in a Lutheran Church. (At least it didn’t happen for the seven years I was in the LCMS.) Certainly others have lied to the Holy Spirit and not suffered Ananias' fate. But does that mean I should lie to the Holy Spirit? Likewise, I don't doubt that others have mishandled the ark of the covenant without suffering Uzzah's fate. But would you do it?

Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction. 1 Cor. 10:11

Not me. If the ark of the covenant were put on display at the Smithsonian, and 10,000 people had walked past and touched it with no ill effects, I would tell my kids to put their hands in their pockets.

"But these men are such gifted teachers! Have you heard Dr. Boice preach? Can you compare him to your run-of-the-mill Roman Catholic priest?"

--The Evangelical continues to complain.

I have heard Dr. Boice preach (God rest his soul), and no, most Roman Catholic priests don't compare. (Neither do most Protestants. And don’t ask me to defend the miserable state of Roman Catholic preaching. I won’t. It’s a tragedy.) But if we follow that sort of logic, the same argument can be used to support the ordination of women ("Susie can preach better than Rev. Billy, so she should be pastor"), and Scripture and tradition are both clearly against women in the pastoral office. In other words, ministry gifts are not a sufficient cause of ordination.

Certainly God has given many men and women ministry gifts, and these ought to be employed for the common good. That does not necessarily mean that they should be used in the office of public ministry. In fact, in some cases they most definitely should not.

I tried not to be a Roman Catholic. Very hard. But my convictions gave me no rest. I came to believe in tradition as a guide to Scripture. This is necessary because we only know what Scripture is -- which books belong in the Bible -- because of tradition. If we mistrust tradition, we’re sawing off the branch we’re sitting on. So we are compelled to believe in a reliable tradition, and tradition clearly teaches that there is one visible church, ruled by bishops, that that only those bishops are authorized to dispense the sacraments of the Kingdom. Tradition also teaches that New Testament worship centers on the Eucharist, which the fathers taught to be both Christ's Body and Blood, and a true sacrifice. These traditional Christians beliefs not only do not contradict Scripture, but they make it come alive.

These convictions ruled out everybody but Rome and the Orthodox, and it seems to me that the indivisibility of the visible church requires the papacy. There was simply no escaping it. I had to give in.

The Last Challenge

I finally gave up. I was ready to become Catholic. I met with a priest and talked things over, and things seemed to be moving along smoothly until I asked Dr. Scott Hahn to sponsor me. Of course he was overjoyed that we had finally decided to join the Church, but he knew that I still had reservations about some Catholic teachings, and couldn’t sponsor me under those circumstances. He said there’s all the difference in the world between coming to believe Roman Catholic doctrines on my own and believing them because the church says so.

I also learned that at my reception into the Church I would have to recite a statement that I believe all that the Catholic Church teaches.

If I was bitter and frustrated before, I was just plain angry now. After all this .... Who did the pope think he was, requiring me to make such a statement? If I was to go point by point through the catechism, I was probably more Catholic than 95 percent of the Catholics in my state, and now I was going to be kept out of the Church because I couldn’t say that I believed all that the Catholic Church teaches. Some priests don’t believe all the Catholic Church teaches!

And why was God treating me this way? This seemed incredibly unfair. I had no options left, except permanent status as an exile. I pictured myself in mass, 20 years later, saying, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word, and I shall be healed,” but forever unable to come to the sacrament.

I couldn’t be a Protestant any longer, and now it looked like I wasn’t going to be a Catholic either. I was stopped at the door, held hostage by this tyrannical decree: our way or the highway.

And then, right in the middle of my anger and frustration, God broke through and pointed me in the right direction. It happened while I was mowing the lawn, which is when I do my best thinking. (Fortunately we have a fairly large lawn.) I immediately ran inside and quickly typed up my thoughts, which later became a short essay called Agnostics, Pagans and Catholics, which I’ve included as Appendix II.

Here’s the short version. In every step from atheism to generic belief in God to Christianity to Catholicism, the evidence is, by itself, not finally conclusive. It points and indicates and hints and winks, but it doesn’t compel. There’s no intellectual arm-twisting. At every stage, you have to decide to trust where the evidence is leading without complete certainty.

Go forth from your country, and from your relatives and from your father's house, to the land which I will show you. (Gen. 12:1)

It’s as if a hundred lines of circumstantial evidence make belief probable, but there’s still room to doubt if you really want to.

In my studies of ecclesiology I had seen lots of hints and indications of an authoritative and divine institution that God protects from error, but I was always able to find a reasonable way out of accepting it. There was a lot of decent evidence, but I didn’t trust it. It wasn’t completely persuasive. The final step from Christianity to Catholicism involved trusting that those various hints weren’t there to deceive me.

He who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. (Heb. 11:6)

I finally realized that I was being just as skeptical toward Catholic claims as an atheist friend of mine had been towards the claims of Christianity. I chided him for rejecting the coherence of the Christian worldview -- that while no individual argument pointed conclusively to Christianity, all the arguments cohere and make sense within the Christian system, and they don’t make sense anywhere else. Christianity provides a framework in which all the loose ends of his philosophy could work together without being just a bunch of haphazard loose ends.

Then I realized that I was doing the exact same thing with the Catholic faith. All roads pointed to Rome, but not exactly -- not perfectly. I needed to trust the mapmaker.

I don’t really believe that God speaks to me, but I imagine that if He did, He’d have said something like this. Yes, this is God’s Church, and yes, I do know what I’m doing, and yes, this is the key to Catholic faith: belief that I lead and guide the Church.

That, I discovered, is the basic difference between Catholic faith and all other Christian faiths -- the belief that God preserves His Church in the truth. There isn’t some vague, will-o-wisp church that pops up here, fades away and then apostacizes only to reappears over there under new management, but a specific church, founded by Christ upon Peter.

That was the missing element in all my searching and pondering. I knew the Church taught that, of course, but it always seemed like an annoying detail. Now I saw it as the ecclesiological pearl of great price. It was the one thing that tied together all my concerns and complaints and theories.

We submit to this one church because God guides it into the truth. Dispense with that, and everything unravels. It’s not good enough to agree with the church’s doctrine. You have to believe that the God is at work in the church, leading it into all truth.

Scott dared to be a true friend and speak the truth in love, and that brought about the final conversion.

And so, on December 11, 1999, my wife and I, along with our children, were received into the Church. Ever since then, we’ve been wondering why we didn’t do it sooner. We’ve also been wondering why the guy who writes Catholic music isn’t in jail somewhere.

Loving the Church

At first I had very mixed feelings about becoming Roman Catholic. I decided to swallow my bad feelings and follow my convictions, but I really didn't like it. I resigned myself to my fate -- Kum-Ba-Ya and Barney liturgies, holding hands during prayer and similar touchy feely stuff.

But good feelings or not, the conclusion is this. It doesn't matter how good the Bible studies and worship music is in Jeroboam's Israel, I have to plug my nose and put up with Rehoboam's Judah, where the temple, the Levitical priesthood and the sacrifices are done according to the law.

The Roman Catholic Church is the church founded by Christ. Its ministers are authorized by God to administer Christ’s sacraments, and in the mass I participate in the heavenly liturgy and receive a foretaste of the world to come.

No, the music and the preaching is not as good as I’d like, and I certainly hope things get better. But is that really the bottom line? I suspect that lots of men are better fishermen than my dad and lots of women are better cooks than my mom. But guess who I’d rather fish with, and guess where I go for Thanksgiving?