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Journeyman
A Journal for the Inquiring Christian
Vol. 1, No. 3, March 2002
The Two-fold Magisterium and Ecumenism
| Overview: I heard that Cardinal Dulles had written an essay called "Moderate Infallibilism." That sounded very interesting, since "infallibilism" usually doesn't seem very moderate. The essay was published in a collection called A Church to Believe In, with which I interact in this essay. |
by Greg Krehbiel
Reflections on Avery Dulles' A Church to Believe In |
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Summary
The Holy Spirit speaks to the entire people of God in the context of the authentic community of faith. A proper expression of the faith must be officially taught by the hierarchy and acclaimed by the faithful. The ecumenical efforts of the Roman Catholic Church implicitly recognize the Holy Spirit's role in teaching those outside the visible church, but the church has yet to effectively incorporate the magisterial role of its own laity in its ecclesiology.
The authority of the church does not flow from the hierarchy down to the people or from the people up to the hierarchy: it ascends, descends and permeates the organizational structure. A popular idea does not become dogma until it is accepted by the official church, and the official proclamations of the church do not become dogma until they are accepted by the people. Ecumenical dialog forces the hierarchy to refine its presentation of dogma to win the assent of all Christians, and it is in this consensus of the Christian faithful and the hierarchy that we see the infallibility of the church expressed.
Introduction
This essay seeks to pull together the ecclesiological insights from Father (now Cardinal) Avery Dulles' collection of essays titled A Church to Believe In and to present a vision for the government of the church that is both hierarchical and popular. In one of these collected essays Dulles speaks of a two-fold Magisterium consisting of the ordained hierarchy and the professional theologians. I argue for a Magisterium consisting of the hierarchy and the faithful. While this may seem like a significant point of departure, I believe the substance of my proposal is consistent with Dulles' comments, as I hope to demonstrate below.
I had thought of arguing for a three-fold Magisterium of hierarchy, theologians and faithful, noting that a church ruled by the masses will institutionalize pedestrian theology and worship, a church ruled by theologians will endlessly debate the arcane and the irrelevant, and a church ruled by the hierarchy will be distracted by power. Each of these groups, inspired by the Holy Spirit, have their special area of competence and must be harnessed for the good of the church. But as I worked on my three-fold Magisterium I found it hard to decide whether theologians really are a separate group, and even harder to find compelling biblical support for such a distinction. As the proposal stands I would say that theologians are part of both groups.
Dulles' approach to discipleship (as summarized, and possibly modified herein) offers a way to bridge the gaps between Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox churches. Speaking very broadly, Protestant churches sometimes emphasize the voice of the people (or even the individual) at the expense of the organization while Catholics sometimes emphasize the rule of the hierarchy at the expense of the faithful. The Orthodox incorporate both, recognizing that while the Holy Spirit speaks in councils and through the episcopate, the faithful have a role in acclaiming (or rejecting) such decisions.
The Hierarchical Church
“The Catholic emphasis since the sixteenth century has been predominantly on the institutional, especially on the hierarchical,” says Dulles. “The late Scholastic and Neo-Scholastic authors since Trent have particularly favored this approach. Christ, they hold, founded the Church as a visible society and equipped it from the beginning with institutional means adequate for every occasion. The hierarchy, having the fullness of the apostolic ministry, is in charge of the official doctrine, worship, and discipline of the Church.” (pp. 23-24)
This Catholic emphasis on the institution springs from clear words of Scripture. Christ told the apostles, “The one who listens to you listens to me” (Luke 10:16), and “Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven” (Mt. 18:18). He gave the apostles the authority to forgive or retain sins in His name (Jn. 20:23) and He gave the rulers of the church the right to exclude the impenitent (Mt. 18:17). When there was a dispute in the early church about circumcision, the hierarchy came together and issued a decree for the people to obey (Acts 15 and 16:4).
It is also clear from Scripture that Jesus set up a church with a hierarchical structure: “And God has appointed in the church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers ….” (1 Cor. 12:28). Specific individuals are appointed to shepherd the flock (Acts 20:28) and the flock is instructed to obey their leaders and submit to them (Heb. 13:17, 1 Cor. 16:16).
Furthermore, there is only one church (Eph. 4:4-6), and we are to conform our behavior and beliefs to its practices (1 Cor. 11:16). (For more on the privileged status of the ordained, see Korah's rebellion in Num. 16.)
This all sounds pretty straight-forward. Jesus established rulers in the church who passed on their office to successors to rule in their place and with their authority. The institutional hierarchy speaks, judges and rules and the rest of us listen, consent and obey. If we were to stop at this point we might sign on with those who believe in a top-down structure for the church: “The church says it, that settles it.”
Institution and Charism
Of course there is another side, but before we get to the other side — Scripture's teachings on the bottom-up management of the church — we have to pause and consider an interesting twist in the expression of the church's hierarchy. One of Dulles' essays discusses the interaction between institution and charism. While some wish to emphasize the “official” nature of church leadership as a simple matter of office, authority and succession, others point to the biblical role of specially gifted individuals whom God raises up from time to time. Dulles says this was part of the nature of the church from the very beginning.
“The 'institutional' apostolate of the Twelve in the New Testament is complemented by the 'charismatic' apostolate of Paul. Both ingredients are essential to Christianity.” (p. 25) Dulles distinguishes “law and order” Christians who favor the official hierarchy with those who see Christ reigning through charismatically gifted individuals, and he insists that trying to choose between them has caused many of the disagreements and ruptures in the church.
Dulles appeals to Congar, Balthasar, Rahner and Kung to support the idea that contemporary Catholic opinion allows room for the non-sacramental ministries of the laity to have some role in the structure of the church.
Dulles goes on to explain that as the church is the sacrament of Christ's presence and saving power in the world, there can't be a contradiction between its institutional features and the gifts of its members. The institutional features of the church externally signify what the church represents and effects in the world. “The relation between institution and charism is a particular instance of the general relation between sacramental signs and the spiritual realities to which they point.” (p. 31)
“Without Scriptures, creeds, sacraments, and pastoral office the church could not sufficiently define itself against all that is alien to Christ; it could not … bring its own members into a concrete and historically experienced relationship of obedience to their Lord.” (p. 32) Institution is necessary for order and stability, because “the characteristic tendency of the free charismatic is to follow the momentary impulses arising out of transitory local situations, without sufficient regard for established order and for universal, long-term needs.” (p. 36)
But a strictly authoritative church distorts the faith by undermining the need for teaching, discipleship and growth in the laity. “The special charism of the pastoral office is not to replace or diminish other charisms but to bring them to their fullest efficacy.” (p. 35)
I suspect that the miserable state of Catholic preaching and religious education is the result of an over-emphasis on the institutional and hierarchical functions of the church. If the hierarchy can simply meet behind closed doors, define doctrine and force their conclusions on the laity under penalty of sin, what need is there of preaching or education? Or, looking at it the other way around, the biblical mandate for preaching and unity of mind among the disciples itself rebukes an over-emphasis on hierarchy and top-down management of the church.
Institution and charism are necessary to counterbalance one another. But after recognizing this, Dulles goes on to make a curious comment that points out a weakness in his ecclesiology (as explicitly expressed): “there is no ultimate juridical solution to collisions between spiritually gifted reformers and conscientious defenders of the accepted order.” (p. 38)
Indeed, that is the problem, but I think Dulles knows more than he lets on, for he suggests the steps to the juridical solution in later essays.
The Biblical Role of the Laity
We've seen from Scripture that Jesus clearly established a hierarchical church and that our concept of hierarchy must be broad enough to include institutional and charismatic elements. Now we will turn to passages showing that the hierarchy rules with the consent of the laity.
“If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes true, concerning which he spoke to you, saying 'Let us go after other gods (whom you have not known) and let us serve them,' you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams. … But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he counseled rebellion against the Lord your God ….” (Dt. 13:1-5)
I don't see a complacent laity here. I can't read this and accept the notion that “the pope said it, that settles it.” This passage isn't about a wandering snake-oil salesman with shiny hair, dressed in a bad suit — it's about a prophet who can confirm his ministry with miraculous signs! Even he must pass the test of orthodoxy at the hands of the laity.
But it goes further. The laity are also to judge faith and morals.
“I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters; for then you would have to go out of the world. But actually I write to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he should be an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler — not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges. Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.” (1 Cor. 5:9-13)
Catholic apologists rightly point out that wicked rulers are still rulers. (See Mt. 23:2-3, Jn. 11:49-51.) But we have to avoid the idea that the one teaching annuls the other. It is entirely consistent for the community to say that a wicked bishop remains a bishop, but to shun him.
The “law and order” Christian will say that only the hierarchy can police the ordained, and that the hierarchy itself is subject only to God. But we've already seen that the people of God were to stone miracle-making prophets if they didn't approve of their message, and Jesus praised the church in Ephesus for testing and rejecting false apostles (Rev. 2:2). Since the apostle is the highest rank in the church (1 Cor. 12:28), this shows that the hierarchy is subject to the judgment of the church and not only to God. Furthermore, Paul insisted that the Galatians had the right to reject him (or even an angel!) if he presented a different message. (Gal. 1:8) Once again, we can't set the hierarchical proof texts against the congregational proof texts and decide which ones we like. We have to work them all together into a biblical ecclesiology.
The dual role of the hierarchy and the laity extends to the promise of divine guidance. While Scripture contains clear promises of guidance for the hierarchy (e.g., Mt. 18), it also contains promises of guidance for the faithful. (E.g., 1 Jn. 2:20, 27.) Rather than play the one against the other, Scripture harmonizes them. The unity of the church will come about through the mutual growth of the hierarchy and the faithful as each does its part.
“And He game some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by that which every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.” (Eph. 4:11-16)
The conclusion from Scripture is inevitable: the hierarchy sets the official teachings of the church, but the laity have the right to judge and reject false teachers. The unity and growth of the church requires the cooperation of both.
The Solution to Sola Ecclesia
Those who wish to put the church under the rule of a hierarchy that is accountable only to God are advocating an impossible position that some have called sola ecclesia. Sometimes it's also called “the Magisterium of the Moment.” While lip service may be paid to the authority of Scripture and Tradition, Scripture can't be an authority in the sola ecclesia church because the church interprets Scripture, and Tradition can't be an authority because the church interprets Tradition. Trying to reform such a church would be like reforming a court where the judges have an unrestricted right to interpret the law and the rules governing judges! It puts the fox in charge of the hen house.
Sola ecclesia leaves us under the arbitrary will of the current Magisterium. Whatever pope Pius IX really meant by his (alleged) cryptic saying, “I am Tradition,” it illustrates the hierarchical church at its worst: the church ruled by the whim of the pope. Dulles expresses this problem as a “demand for total submission to the teaching of the church without regard for the content of the teaching” (p. 42).
Scripture anticipates and resolves this problem by giving a doctrinal role to the hierarchy and to the laity.
Multiple Convergent Signs
I mentioned before that Dulles might actually know the juridical solution to this problem. The first glimmer is in his review of Cardinal Newman's view of conversion. “The act of faith, for Newman, was a concrete choice involving the 'illative sense' — a personal power to discern and assess the force of multiple convergent signs that could not be turned into logical premises.” (p. 42, emphasis supplied.) Unfortunately, Newman may have also pushed Dulles in the wrong direction: “As Newman found, there is no via media. Either we hold that the formally established society determines the Christian religion, in which case we are catholic, or we believe that the Christian consciousness determines the forms of Christian society, in which case we are evangelical.” (p. 54) If “the formally established society determines the Christian religion” means top-down management from the hierarchy, then Newman is on the track to sola ecclesia. But if we can understand “the formally established society” as the whole church — clergy and laity — then Newman's language can be understood in a way consistent with the two-fold Magisterium, and it shows the truly catholic nature of the proposal.
Just as Newman recognized the need for multiple convergent signs in the individual's life of faith, so the authority of the church doesn't come from one source alone. An over-emphasis on hierarchy results in sola ecclesia while an over-emphasis on the people (or the individual) results in the wandering fate of the consistent charismatic. We learn the true Christian faith from multiple convergent signs — the convergence of the official doctrine of the church and the faithful reception and belief of that doctrine.
A Test Case: Papal Infallibility
An objection may be raised at this point that the Roman church has shut the door on this kind of interpretation. Vatican I famously states that the infallibility of the pope's definitions do not depend upon the consensus of the faithful, and Dulles' “law and order Christian” would take this as the final word: the pope says it, that settles it. But Dulles would not.
“Vatican I ruled out the consent of the church as the source of irreformability in papal teaching. The source, it said, is the Holy Spirit, who assists the pope by special charisms attached to the papal office. The Council, however, did not deny that the consent of the church will be present or even that such consent is necessary as a condition for recognizing an authentic exercise of the infallible magisterium. Hence Vatican II deemed it proper to add the explanation:
Therefore his definitions, of themselves, and not from the consent of the church, are justly styled irreformable, for they are pronounced with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, an assistance promised to him in blessed Peter …. To the resultant definitions the assent of the church can never be wanting, on account of the activity of that same Holy Spirit, whereby the whole flock of Christ is preserved and progresses in unity of faith (Lumen gentium, 25).” (pp. 138-139)
Dulles goes on: “it seems evident that definitions, if they authentically correspond to the charism of the papal office, will find an echo in the faith of the church and will therefore evoke assent, at least eventually. If in a given instance the assent of the church were evidently not forthcoming, this could be interpreted as a signal that the pope had perhaps exceeded his competence and that some necessary condition for an infallible act had not been fulfilled.” (p. 139)
This is a far cry from sola ecclesia and the “Magisterium of the moment.” Dulles explicitly conditions the infallibility of the pope on (a) agreement with Scripture and Tradition, (b) agreement with the present faith of the church, (c) agreement with the universal episcopate, and (d) sufficient investigation. (pp. 138-140) He sums up thus: “if grave and widespread doubts were to arise among committed Christians who are orthodox on other points, the definition would have to be treated as dubious and hence as not canonically binding.” (p. 142)
But Dulles goes even further. Since the pope is not the head of the Roman church alone, “a doctrine would not be recognized as infallible unless a serious attempt had been made to speak not only to and for Roman Catholics, but to and for Christians of all churches.” (p. 144) This ties the church's infallibility directly to the need for ecumenism. In another context Dulles had said, “The unity of the 'divided' church must be sought by means that will build up everything that the Holy Spirit has accomplished in the separate communities.” (p. 50)
“We [Roman Catholics] have grown accustomed to councils that have their authority 'a priori' by reason of fulfilling the juridical requirements in the Code of Canon Law. Vatican I denied that the ex cathedra teaching of the pope has its infallibility thanks to the consent of the church. But Vatican II added that because the same Holy Spirit is at work in both the teachers and the people, the assent of the church can never be wanting to the definitions of the infallible teachers. The patristic concept of 'consensus' as integral to the authority of popes and councils is still very much alive in Orthodox theology and has recently been revived in World Council circles. Ecumenically involved Catholics are finding this patristic doctrine very pertinent to the concerns of our age.” (pp. 108-109)
“Vatican II again made room for the ancient concept of reception. The infallibility of popes and councils in teaching, it affirmed, was matched by the infallibility of the entire people of God in believing.” (p. 116)
“Vatican II, largely through its skillful resuscitation of the patristic model of representation and consensus, supplied a helpful corrective to the juridicalism and papalism of the post-Tridentine and Neo-Scholastic periods. But it did not provide a new or thoroughly consistent paradigm, and thus left to the postconciliar church the task of completing its own program.” (p. 117)
The Reason for Ecumenism
Dulles has clearly argued that the hierarchical infallibility of the church is conditioned by its reception among the faithful — even the faithful outside the institutional borders of the Roman Catholic Church. His position shows, first of all, that the laity are not to be brainless automatons who simply accept whatever the Magisterium of the moment decrees. He also shows why the church must be in dialog with non-Catholic Christians.
“According to Vatican II, the communion of the church of Christ extends far beyond the visible borders of the Roman Catholic Church. The Council's teaching on this point was not a new departure, but an assertion of a very traditional position, held by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. All who have the gifts of faith, hope, and charity, even though they be not Catholics or even Christians, are in some sense members of Christ's body, and therefore of the church.” (p. 59)
If the definitions of the church are not met with the acclaim of the faithful, this may be an indication that they did not meet the conditions of an infallible declaration. Therefore the church must be in constant dialog with the faithful to refine and clarify the content of the faith in terms that are not merely Roman or western, but truly Catholic and Christian.
Conclusion
The infallibility of the church is not expressed in its teaching alone, but when its official teaching is acclaimed by the faithful. At a human level, the hierarchy is a safeguard against the tyranny of the majority and the faithful are a safeguard against the tyranny of abusive authority, but on a spiritual level the Holy Spirit works in the church in different ways to train Christians in love, interdependence and mutual submission.
Because the Holy Spirit is just as involved in the assent of the faithful as in the proclamation of the hierarchy, it follows that the church is most fully itself when her official teaching is met with the acclaim of all the faithful. Doctrinal division among faithful Christians is prima facie evidence that a teaching has not been expressed well.
Ecumenism is therefore the servant of infallibility. By finding ways to express the belief of the church in ways that unite the faithful, the church more clearly and accurately defines and describes the deposit of faith.
A Church to Believe In: Discipleship and the Dynamics of Freedom (The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1982).
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