Journeyman
A Journal for the Inquiring Christian

Vol. 1, No. 2, November 2001 Ecclesiology isn't Geometry Overview: In this reply to my article in the previous issue, Tim Enloe attempts to defend a Reformed approach to Scripture, Tradition and church authority. by Tim Enloe A Reply to "Those Catholic Presbyterians" In his article Those Catholic Presbyterians, Greg Krehbiel argues that Classical Protestant (hereafter "CP") ecclesiology is fundamentally unsound and historically unworkable. He complains that working through the CP argument only produces an intellectual migraine because there is great inconsistency in the way CPs accept creedal formulas. We could summarize his argument by asking "On what basis do CPs accept Nicea I, but not Nicea II?" Of course, having once been Reformed Greg knows the answer. The CP confessional documents plainly indicate that the ultimate standard of proof is the clear voice of the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture. Greg knows this answer, but he seeks to nullify it by invoking the specter of heretic-tomfoolery. When the Presbyterian General Assembly kicks Ariel Arian out for teaching doctrines that are not in accord with "how the Church has always interpreted Scripture," Greg wonders what is to stop Ariel Arian and his associates from calling a different council and saying that "the Church" says Arianism is correct. We cheerfully reply that nothing prevents Ariel from doing this. But since the original Arians themselves did this after the Nicene Council, we want to know what Greg's point is. Athanasius didn't care that the councils of Ariminum and Seleucia decreed Arianism to be "the Catholic faith" because he knew that Nicea had declared the same faith found in the divine Scriptures. The plain meaning of Scripture trumps heretical babbling every time (even if it takes time!), and if Athanasius is clear about anything it is that Scripture absolutely cannot be made to teach Arianism — its words are incapable of the meanings foisted upon them by the Arians. So why should the Presbyterians care if Ariel repeats the original Arian folly? It seems odd that a (Roman) Catholic is willing to give some ground to rank heretics simply to make a polemic point against (Reformed) Catholics. But Scripture is subject to varying interpretations, Greg says. Merely pointing to the clarity of Scripture does not solve any ecclesiological problems, since there are many churches that claim their own distinctives are plainly taught by Scripture. Thus he imagines that when the ordinary Christian asks what true Christian doctrine is, he gets a run-around consisting of (1) pointing to the doctrine taught in the Scriptures, (2) defining that as the doctrine taught by the true Christian Church, (3) and (coming full circle) identifying the true Christian Church as that which teaches the doctrine taught in the Scriptures. Well, yes...sort of. CPs do teach that the Church is known by true doctrine and that this doctrine can be discovered from Scripture by normal principles of interpreting written documents. Scripture is clear on all matters essential to the Christian faith. Now there are questions of application about using claritas Scripturae as a standard of proof. It is true that some CPs use it to act like naysaying sectarians or modern individualists — both of which are in direct contradiction to our stated ecclesiological principles. It is true that we are presently divided into multiple visible organizations. But, we rightly ask, what does any of this have to do with Scripture, the standard by which we evaluate truth claims? I have never received a fundamentally Christian answer to this question from RC apologists. Rather, all I have received are arguments that I have seen agnostics make against Christianity-in-general, innuendoes about how "uncharitable" Baptists and Presbyterians simply must be in their dealings with each other, increasingly sophistical word-games about the mere term "perspicuity," or scurrilous slanders against the Bible itself. Interestingly, when RC apologists argue this way they introduce an element of raw skepticism into Christian apologetics. By going to war against claritas Scripturae, they adopt a method that if consistently followed destroys the possibility of all knowledge. For if words do not mean definite things apart from "official" interpretation, what is the point in even attempting to communicate? If Scripture can be legitimately made to teach Arianism apart from the arbitration of "the Church" then Scripture is merely an appendage, for "the Church" is a law unto herself. After all, the Arians might say we are misunderstanding Scripture because we are reading it with "anti-Arian lenses." On the common RC apologetic logic they would have a cogent and undeniable point — one that could only be dealt with by a brute appeal to "apostolic succession" or some other test every bit as "circular" as appealing to "the plain meaning of Scripture." Why? Even if God provided us with an infallible interpreter of Scripture ("the" Magisterium), both its identity and its interpretations are always conveyed in words that their recipients must interpret. On the RC view we could know truth only by positing an infinite regress of infallible interpreters or arbitrarily stopping that regress with "the" Magisterium — thereby asserting claritas ecclesiae — a version of the clarity principle that is being attacked. Further, by attacking claritas Scripturae RCs set themselves against the very consensus patrum that they love to claim on other matters. This is intriguing since Greg wants CPs to answer for why they accept some pre-Reformation councils and not others. Do RC apologists have an answer for their own "cafeteria" approach to the witness of Church history? Why do they like Athanasius' episcopal powers but not his insistence that Scripture speaks in "inartificial and simple phrases" that cannot possibly lead to Arianism? Why do they like Augustine's belief that some of the regenerate are not of the elect, but not his assertion that the only enemy of claritas Scripturae is "the man who, being in error, is ignorant of its incomparable usefulness, or, being spiritually diseased, is averse to its healing power"? They might say they reject the idea because "the Church" tells them to, but in order to say this they again must assume claritas ecclesiae, so their logic destroys itself and they find themselves in the same vicious hermeneutical circle Greg says CPs are in. Observe: When an ordinary Christian wants to know where "the Church" is, he is given a run-around consisting of: (1) pointing to "the marks of the Church," (2) defining those as the identifiers taught by "the Church," (3) and (coming full circle) identifying "the Church" as that which conforms to "the marks of the Church." This is a fascinating parallel of the argument Greg made against CPs. Greg says that defining the "the Church" that arbitrates among pre-Reformation teachings according to a certain set of marks ("where preaching, doctrine, discipline and sacraments are administered correctly") is unhelpful and means RCs cannot take the CP program seriously. Yet RCs also identify the "the Church" according to a certain set of marks ("one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic"). Why is "apostolic succession" objective but "conformity to claritas Scripturae" not? Both are subject to multiple interpretations, after all, and both are dependent on definitions provided by the very authorities whose identities are under discussion. How do we know the Presbyterians have got baptism right and the Baptists do not? Well, how do we know that Rome has got the definition of "Catholic" right and the Reformed do not? History does not tell us that Rome is right, because absolutist claims that it does inevitably boils down to reading history through Rome-colored glasses. Practical needs do not tell us, because practical needs change with the passing of time. Philosophy does not tell us, because philosophers can't agree on anything and the man in the pew can't understand half of what they say, anyway. And Scripture (it is alleged) does not tell us because Scripture is a wax nose that can be shaped into any form given enough ingenuity and time. So who will tell us where the "the Church" is found? Eureka! Maybe we can get the "the Church" to tell us! Got some aspirin, Greg? All of this self-defeating wrangling begins with the skeptical premise that divine communication is unclear and with a perfectionistic belief that someone must have uncorrupted perception of truth right here and right now, or else "the Church" has fallen beyond recovery. Yet, in their better moments RCs have no problem promoting the principle of the clarity of divine communication. They readily assume that they can read a papal encyclical and at least get the gist of it, if not all the nuances. But while one can often find two RCs reading the same Magisterial document and getting different, conflicting nuances from it, when Baptists and Presbyterians both claim Scripture as their standard this is held up as decisive proof that Scripture is unclear and that Protestant ecclesiology is unworkable! This ignores the large amount of agreement that actually exists among CPs. But if RCs can say that their differences are in principle resolvable by further appeal to the Magisterium, why can't CPs say that our differences are in principle resolvable by further exegesis of Scripture? What's good for the goose, and all that. But further, why does this kind of argument neglect to admit that the differences found among Protestants are neither as numerous as rhetoric-abusing RC apologists imagine, nor as important as they would be in the RC system? Naysaying the supposed "unbiblical" nature of the concept of "primary" and "secondary" doctrines is of no help here — like it or not, the concept is a part of CP ecclesiology, and it vastly mitigates the impact of CP differences such as baptism or church government. Differences like these would likely lead to anathemas in the RCC; in CP circles they are "merely" unfortunate indicators that we all still have a very long way to go before we reach maturity. Christian doctrinal maturity (and the visible unity that follows inevitably from it) is a matter of long, patient, diligent, and humble reliance on the Holy Spirit to do as Christ promised He would — lead the Church into all truth. "All" truth doesn't mean only truths of "faith and morals," so in actual point of fact not even the RCC has yet reached this biblical standard of maturity. This makes her infallibility claims appear more like Jesuitical exercises in logic-chopping than actual faithfulness to Christ. And since corporate faithfulness to Christ ebbs and flows as God unfolds history, it's really not surprising to find that Christians have to this point always disagreed with each other about many matters. Yet, amazingly, the Church is still here. She has not defected and she has not been abandoned by her Lord. What she has done from time to time, however, is forget the lessons of the past. Not the past that only goes back 2,000 years, mind you, but the past that goes all the way back ("Abelic succession," anyone?) and includes many periods of visible apostasy by many of her outward members. On RC logic, King Josiah should have accepted the priestly apostasy of his day, and those priests themselves should have been quick to point out that the Book of Law might (given enough foolish talk about wax noses) be made to say quite other things than the King thought it said. Come to think of it, this sort of sophistry was exactly Christ's complaint about the "Magisterium" of His day. Seen in this light Rome looks like an immature holdover from the Pharisees. "We have Peter for our father and have never been slaves to anyone!" In sum, CPs deny the validity of Greg's perfectionistic "argument from inconsistency." Everyone interprets, everyone selects, everyone has periods of faithfulness and periods of unfaithfulness. Finding "the true Church" may be more difficult in the CP scheme than in the RC scheme, but who said faith was supposed to be easy? Positing an infallible interpreter to solve the "problem" of life's messiness is not only easy, but lazy. So why do CPs accept some pre-Reformation councils and not others? For the same reason that RCs accept some teachings of the Church Fathers and not others — authority. The difference? CPs locate the authority ultimately in Scripture and proximately in the Church; RCs locate it ultimately in the Church and proximately in Scripture. Both arguments are authority arguments, so epistemologically speaking what counts against one counts against the other. Appealing to "the plain meaning of Scripture" is just as "circular" as appealing to "apostolic succession." But whereas unbroken succession of hierarchical office holders in union with the Bishop of Rome is merely one theory — and a highly debatable theory at that — of how the faith is transmitted, claritas Scripturae is foundational to the Christian faith no matter what form it takes. So if Greg wants to attack that principle (and he must to make his argument work), he should explain his own various "inconsistencies" first. Otherwise, we don't need to take his program very seriously.