I got a little bogged down when trying to elaborate why I didn't think the Reformed notion of the visible church cohered with their notion of the invisible Church. Namely, there is no necessary connection between my visible community, and the universal Church. The discrete visible communities of Christians which are the visible outposts containing those among the saved, have nothing to do with each other. There is nothing which unites a Reformed believer and a Methodist, unless it is something revealed prior to the existence of those discrete communities. The supposed unity between them, and between all those who emerged from the Protestant Reformation, is a pretense, and an ad hoc fabrication. Those orthodox believers within those communities who wish to preserve dogma may express passionate concern about that goal, but their own profound disagreements with one another puts the lie to the claim that the hermeneutical methodology of Sola Scriptura can produce the clarity always sought, in contrast to the dominant theology and practice of the Catholic Church at the time.
What is the mechanism by which what is most important in the preservation of the faith once delivered is maintained? No visible ecclesial body in the Protestant interpretive paradigm is ever empowered to proclaim infallibly what ought to be believed. In that situation, what is the purpose therefore, of those visible bodies? And since the Christian people in those communities live in those visible spaces, since they worship as a visible community, since they live and pray together as a visible community, then the determinations of dogma have to be made within those visible communities. What are you supposed to do, if you cannot get a final, definitive answer on any matter of faith and morals? More to the point, the most relevant aspect of those deliberations is that they have an origin in God Himself; humanity in whole or in part cannot rest their eternal souls in any merely human thing. Infallibility therefore is the mark of definitive divine proclamation of the truth about the cosmos, and humanity's place within it. Considered in general, I should not even contemplate submission to any authority on any spiritual matter--that is, pertaining to the eternal--unless it is at least situationally infallible.
The appeal to the Holy Spirit in the Protestant interpretive paradigm relies on Sola Scriptura, and depends upon a robust notion of the perspicuity of Scripture. Because the Holy Spirit is God, whatever faults in the process exist must be the fault of the human beings. The inability to agree on grave matters of faith is usually ascribed to some moral or spiritual failure of the other participant. Each participant believes that the Holy Spirit has led him or her to the correct interpretation of any passage of Scripture. But how would any one of them know? And, most provocatively, how does anyone actually know that Scripture is meant to settle all questions of faith and morals? It does not appear that the earlier ancient Christians used the Scripture in this way. Therefore, even if we could overcome these interpretive challenges, whilst also knowing that our conclusions have been safeguarded by God, we have the balance of Christian history standing against both the methodology we are using, and the conclusions we reach by means of that methodology.
This of itself is not a problem; we could simply send all Christians who lived prior to the Reformation in our judgment to the fires of hell, for not believing the true and correct doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ. Most people don't want to do this; most people arguing against the claims of the Roman Catholic Church nevertheless want to claim large numbers of those luminaries of the first millennium as their own. But frankly, why do we believe that we have been deputized to make such determinations? And again, by what means will we distinguish a merely human opinion from that which is sanctioned by God? I return once again to my axiom: "One cannot be both the arbiter of divine revelation, and a humble receiver of it at the same time." It has always been curious that the Holy Spirit has been invoked so assuredly when individuals are in contention, while interpreting Scripture ostensibly for themselves. And yet somehow, it is believed that the Holy Spirit cannot guide the visible authorities and structures of the Church from which we all have come. If the God of the Bible is the God of faithfulness, could he not preserve and protect the dogma of His visible Church?
It is not my purpose to make that case today, or to prove it, but I note with a morbid fascination that I hadn't even thought of it until I really began to examine the claims of the Catholic Church to be the Church that Christ founded. It is inconsistent to believe that God protects me as an individual interpreter of Scripture, but not whoever I happen to be arguing with, and certainly not the Catholic Church, even though the persistent seeker will discover that the ancient faith would not be known to us without the authority of the Catholic Church.
What is the mechanism by which what is most important in the preservation of the faith once delivered is maintained? No visible ecclesial body in the Protestant interpretive paradigm is ever empowered to proclaim infallibly what ought to be believed. In that situation, what is the purpose therefore, of those visible bodies? And since the Christian people in those communities live in those visible spaces, since they worship as a visible community, since they live and pray together as a visible community, then the determinations of dogma have to be made within those visible communities. What are you supposed to do, if you cannot get a final, definitive answer on any matter of faith and morals? More to the point, the most relevant aspect of those deliberations is that they have an origin in God Himself; humanity in whole or in part cannot rest their eternal souls in any merely human thing. Infallibility therefore is the mark of definitive divine proclamation of the truth about the cosmos, and humanity's place within it. Considered in general, I should not even contemplate submission to any authority on any spiritual matter--that is, pertaining to the eternal--unless it is at least situationally infallible.
The appeal to the Holy Spirit in the Protestant interpretive paradigm relies on Sola Scriptura, and depends upon a robust notion of the perspicuity of Scripture. Because the Holy Spirit is God, whatever faults in the process exist must be the fault of the human beings. The inability to agree on grave matters of faith is usually ascribed to some moral or spiritual failure of the other participant. Each participant believes that the Holy Spirit has led him or her to the correct interpretation of any passage of Scripture. But how would any one of them know? And, most provocatively, how does anyone actually know that Scripture is meant to settle all questions of faith and morals? It does not appear that the earlier ancient Christians used the Scripture in this way. Therefore, even if we could overcome these interpretive challenges, whilst also knowing that our conclusions have been safeguarded by God, we have the balance of Christian history standing against both the methodology we are using, and the conclusions we reach by means of that methodology.
This of itself is not a problem; we could simply send all Christians who lived prior to the Reformation in our judgment to the fires of hell, for not believing the true and correct doctrine of our Lord Jesus Christ. Most people don't want to do this; most people arguing against the claims of the Roman Catholic Church nevertheless want to claim large numbers of those luminaries of the first millennium as their own. But frankly, why do we believe that we have been deputized to make such determinations? And again, by what means will we distinguish a merely human opinion from that which is sanctioned by God? I return once again to my axiom: "One cannot be both the arbiter of divine revelation, and a humble receiver of it at the same time." It has always been curious that the Holy Spirit has been invoked so assuredly when individuals are in contention, while interpreting Scripture ostensibly for themselves. And yet somehow, it is believed that the Holy Spirit cannot guide the visible authorities and structures of the Church from which we all have come. If the God of the Bible is the God of faithfulness, could he not preserve and protect the dogma of His visible Church?
It is not my purpose to make that case today, or to prove it, but I note with a morbid fascination that I hadn't even thought of it until I really began to examine the claims of the Catholic Church to be the Church that Christ founded. It is inconsistent to believe that God protects me as an individual interpreter of Scripture, but not whoever I happen to be arguing with, and certainly not the Catholic Church, even though the persistent seeker will discover that the ancient faith would not be known to us without the authority of the Catholic Church.
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