Why Not Eastern Orthodoxy?

See here for a dialogue-style outline of my main line of argument in this post.

In this post, I gave an outline of some of my doctrinal progression over the past couple of decades which sheds light on our current conversion to Catholicism.  I mentioned there that a major part of what has moved us towards Catholicism was the realization that Sola Scriptura is not the default option when it comes to Christian epistemologies.  To think of it as the default position betrays a Protestant bias and a lack of historical perspective.  The gospel, and the Scriptures, do not come to us floating out there by themselves, but they come enmeshed in a larger tradition handed on to us by the Catholic Church.  Sola Scriptura is a novel position historically which requires us to divorce the Bible from its original context in the Catholic tradition.  If we are going to do that, we need to have really good reason, but I don't think we have it.  Once this is realized, we see that we need to go back to the original church, the original denomination founded by Christ, the one about which he said that "the gates of hell will not prevail against it," and that it would succeed in faithfulness where the leaders of Israel failed, and that he would guide it by his presence through his Holy Spirit into all truth, etc.  This rules out all denominations that are "break-offs" from the original denomination--which includes all Protestant churches, including Anglicans.  "Break-off" groups are groups which have broken from an earlier position clearly and definitively established by the church broken off from.  If we have reason to defer to the original denomination, then we aren't going to go with groups which have begun at some point in history to dissent from what the church previously embraced.  (Note:  I have recently written up a dialogue addressing this controversy with Protestantism.)

Things would be a lot easier if we could say that after ruling out all "break-off" groups, there was only one candidate for the true de jure church left standing, but in fact it's not quite that simple.  While it is easy to see that Protestants came into being by repudiating a previously established tradition of the Church and forming new bodies with new constitutions, this is not so easy to see with regard to the breaks between Rome and the Eastern churches.  While I think the historical evidence strongly favors the Catholic Church over the Eastern Orthodox Church and other Eastern churches, it is harder to make this case than it is to make the historical case against Protestantism.  There was no formally recognized ecumenical council in the first millennium of the Church enthusiastically embraced by all the churches, East and West, which clearly defined and declared in favor of the papal claims of Rome, for example (though papal claims had widespread acceptance in both the East and the West in the early Church, and there were times, like the end of the Acacian Schism, when Eastern churches even signed on formally to the claims of the papacy).  In short, it takes more than an easy empirical glance to determine who was the break-off when it comes to the splits between Rome and the Eastern Churches.  In light of that, why have we gone with Catholicism over the Eastern churches?

The major reason for not going the Eastern Orthodox direction, in my view, is that it lacks an adequate epistemology.  Let me put it this way:  In order find the true church, we have to have a principled way of choosing between contenders.  If we do not have an epistemology (a way of knowing) that allows us to do this, joining the true church would be a natural impossibility (and God cannot command natural impossibilities).  Rome has a coherent, workable epistemology at this point.  How do we decide between Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy, in their view?  We follow the bishop of Rome, who is the successor of the Apostle Peter.  Whether or not this way of thinking is actually correct, at least it is logical.  It works.  If we follow it, it will give us a definite answer to the question we need an answer to.  The primacy of the bishop of Rome provides a clear way of resolving doctrinal disputes when the church is split in such a way that we cannot easily declare one side a "break-off" position merely by obvious empirical observation.

So what is EO's epistemology?  How do they tell us to decide between such splits in the church?  Here we come to the glaring problem with the EO position:  They simply, literally have no answer to this question, and they themselves acknowledge it to be so.  Let's hear from one of EO's most well-known spokesmen, Bishop Kallistos Ware, in his famous book, The Orthodox Church (London: Penguin Books, 1997), pp. 251-252:

     This conception of the laity and their place in the Church must be kept in mind when considering the nature of an Ecumenical Council.  The laity are guardians and not teachers; therefore, although they may attend a council and take an active part in the proceedings (as Constantine and other Byzantine Emperors did), yet when the moment comes for the council to make a formal proclamation of the faith, it is the bishops alone who, in virtue of their teaching charisma, take the final decision.
     But councils of bishops can err and be deceived.  How then can one be certain that a particular gathering is truly an Ecumenical Council and therefore that its decrees are infallible?  Many councils have considered themselves ecumenical and have claimed to speak in the name of the whole Church, and yet the Church has rejected them as heretical: Ephesus in 449, for example, or the Iconoclast Council of Hieria in 754, or Florence in 1438-9.  Yet these councils seem in no way different in outward appearance from the Ecumenical Councils.  What, then, is the criterion for determining whether a council is ecumenical?
     This is a more difficult question to answer than might at first appear, and though it has been much discussed by Orthodox during the past hundred years, it cannot be said that the solutions suggested are entirely satisfactory.  All Orthodox know which are the seven councils that their Church accepts as ecumenical, but precisely what it is that makes a council ecumenical is not so clear.  There are, so it must be admitted, certain points in the Orthodox theology of councils which remain obscure and which call for further thinking on the part of theologians.  With this caution in mind, let us briefly consider the present trend of Orthodox thought on this subject.

Bishop Ware then goes on to discuss some proposed solutions within the Orthodox Church to the dilemma he has described, and we'll come back to those in a moment.  But what I want to highlight now is that Bishop Ware is saying that there is no official Orthodox answer to the question of how one can tell if a council is ecumenical.  This is a crucial blind spot, because what gives Ecumenical Councils their infallibility is that they are the deliverances of the whole church guided by the Holy Spirit.  If it is impossible to know when the church is delivering something, there is no way to know which doctrines the Holy Spirit has led the church to affirm, and the whole foundation of trust in God's infallible guidance of his church is completely overthrown.  We are back to something like Protestantism, where there is no (discernible) infallible guidance given to the church to get things right.

The "orthodoxwiki" website entry on "Ecumenical Councils" makes the same point:

At the current time, the episcopacy of the Church has not as yet put forward a universal definition as to what precisely lends a council its ecumenicity.

If the church cannot tell what its own doctrine is, it cannot tell us why we should go with the EO church over against the Roman Catholic Church.  To put the state of the issue briefly, then, we have a situation basically like this:  We want to decide between Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy.  Our first question is, "Do both sides have a coherent epistemology?"  We ask Rome how, in its view, a split such as between Rome and EO could be decided, and their answer is, "follow the bishop of Rome."  OK, well, at least this is coherent and would do the job.  We then ask the EO the same question, and their answer is, "We have no idea."  Well, that is obviously not going to do the job.  So right then and there we can discount the EO position, because they themselves acknowledge no foundation for thinking they are right.  Therefore, Rome is the winner.

Before we leave off, however, we should note that EO theologians have put forward ideas as to how one might determine true doctrine.  None of these ideas are the official EO view, and so we have no basis from the EO point of view to actually think that any of them are in fact correct, so they really have no weight, but they are still worth looking at.  Let's hear Bishop Ware as he discusses one of these proposed solutions (p. 252):

     To the question how one can know whether a council is ecumenical, Khomiakov and his school gave an answer which at first sight appears clear and straightforward: a council cannot be considered ecumenical unless its decrees are accepted by the whole Church.  Florence, Heiria, and the rest, while ecumenical in outward appearance, are not truly so, precisely because they failed to secure this acceptance by the Church at large.  (One might object:  What about Chalcedon?  It was rejected by Syria and Egypt - can we say, then, that it was 'accepted by the Church at large'?)  The bishops, so Khomiakov argued, because they are the teachers of the faith, define and proclaim the truth in council; but these definitions must then be acclaimed by the whole people of God, including the laity, because it is the whole people of God that constitutes the guardian of Tradition.

The problem with this solution (besides the fatal fact that the EO church has not put it forward as certainly true anyway, so we can't have any basis for considering it correct even if it worked) is obvious.  Bishop Ware himself pointed out the fatal flaw in it (without even attempting to give any answer to the objection):  Our task is to decide between the claims of competing parts of Christendom; this is not helped at all by simply telling us to "go with the claims accepted by the whole church"?  Which "whole church"  The Roman Catholic Church?  The Eastern Orthodox Churches?  The Oriental Orthodox?  All three?  Two out of three?  Or what?  It's as if we were in a room full of people where two groups have formed with contrary views, and one side proposes that the split be decided by going with "what the whole group wants."  Well, the "whole group" doesn't have a single opinion; that is the problem we were trying to solve in the first place!  The "orthodoxwiki" page puts the objection this way (embedded links are in original text):

Another ecclesiological problem is also created by receptionism: Why is it, for instance, that the Fourth Ecumenical Council may be said to have been "received by the whole Church" while significant numbers of Christians apparently within the Church rejected it, leading to the schism which even now persists? Such reasoning is circular, because whoever accepts a council is therefore inside the Church, but any who reject it are outside. In other words, such councils are ecumenical essentially because those who hold to their decrees declare themselves exclusively to be the Church.

So where do we go from here?  Bishop Ware, quoting John Meyendorff (another Orthodox scholar), puts forth another suggestion (pp. 253-254):

     It is not the 'ecumenicity' but the truth of the councils which makes their decisions obligatory for us.  We touch here upon the fundamental mystery of the Orthodox doctrine of the Church:  the Church is the miracle of the presence of God among humans, beyond all formal 'criteria', all formal 'infallibility'.  It is not enough to summon an 'Ecumenical Council' . . . it is also necessary that in the midst of those so assembled there should be present He who said: 'I am the Way, the Truth, the Life.'  Without this presence, however numerous and representative the assembly may be, it will not be in the truth.  Protestants and Catholics usually fail to understand this fundamental truth of Orthodoxy: both materialize the presence of God in the Church--the one party in the letter of Scripture, the other in the person of the Pope--though they do not thereby avoid the miracle, but clothe it in a concrete form.  For Orthodoxy, the sole 'criterion of truth' remains God Himself, living mysteriously in the Church, leading it in the way of the Truth.  ("J. Meyendorff, quoted by M. J. le Guillou, Mission et unité [Paris 1960], vol. 2, p. 313.")

Once we get past the flowery language, the suggestion here is simply this:  The way we know if an ecumenical council is infallible and obligatory is if it teaches the truth.  The "orthodoxwiki" page puts it this way:

At the current time, the episcopacy of the Church has not as yet put forward a universal definition as to what precisely lends a council its ecumenicity. What is generally held is that councils may be regarded as ecumenical and infallible because they accurately teach the truth handed down in tradition from the Church Fathers.

Well, it is evident that this is not going to be very helpful.  We've moved away from a Protestantism which tells us to rely on our own fallible interpretation of Scripture towards trust in God's infallible guidance of his church, only to be told that the only way to know when the church has said something infallible is if it conforms to what we've previously discovered to be the truth through our fallible interpretations of not only Scripture now but the entire corpus of the church fathers.  Thanks, that helps a lot!  Again, this is simply taking back with one hand that which was given with the other--we were promised infallible guidance, and we're given only a harder task for our own fallible judgment.  By now, it is becoming quite clear that EO has nothing of any substantial value to offer us with regard to our question.  They may offer us much flowery, mystical, cool-sounding language, but it is only a smoke-screen that covers up the fact that nothing of substance is there.  (In my experience, when one raises this concern, one is typically told that one is being too "rationalistic" or too "scholastical" in one's thinking.  In reality, we are simply asking basic, foundational questions that require a clear enough answer to warrant coming to a conclusion.  This is not "rationalism"; it is merely "good thinking."  The fact that it must be dismissed as rationalistic, though, is not surprising given that there is no rational answer to be had from the EO position to the serious concerns raised.)

At this point, the EO position will often argue that Rome has added to the deposit of faith and so has departed schismatically from the church fathers, thus warranting separation from Rome.  From what I have seen, the specific arguments put forward to substantiate this claim tend to be very subjective.  Both churches are not Protestant; both acknowledge that the church is supposed to infallibly and authoritatively interpret, unpack, and apply the faith to the church and to the world over time, guided by the Holy Spirit.  Both sides agree that legitimate doctrinal development must be an organic, natural development of pre-existent principles embedded in revelation, rather than a "development" that is really a break from the tradition that strikes off in new and contrary directions.  St. Vincent of Lerins, in chapter 23 of his famed Commonitory (taken here from the New Advent website), has beautifully described the sort of "doctrinal development" that a Catholic (here including both "Roman Catholic" and "Eastern Orthodox") view of the church leads us to expect (embedded links are in the original text):

[55.] The growth of religion in the soul must be analogous to the growth of the body, which, though in process of years it is developed and attains its full size, yet remains still the same. There is a wide difference between the flower of youth and the maturity of age; yet they who were once young are still the same now that they have become old, insomuch that though the stature and outward form of the individual are changed, yet his nature is one and the same, his person is one and the same. An infant's limbs are small, a young man's large, yet the infant and the young man are the same. Men when full grown have the same number of joints that they had when children; and if there be any to which maturer age has given birth these were already present in embryo, so that nothing new is produced in them when old which was not already latent in them when children. This, then, is undoubtedly the true and legitimate rule of progress, this the established and most beautiful order of growth, that mature age ever develops in the man those parts and forms which the wisdom of the Creator had already framed beforehand in the infant. Whereas, if the human form were changed into some shape belonging to another kind, or at any rate, if the number of its limbs were increased or diminished, the result would be that the whole body would become either a wreck or a monster, or, at the least, would be impaired and enfeebled. 

[56.] In like manner, it behooves Christian doctrine to follow the same laws of progress, so as to be consolidated by years, enlarged by time, refined by age, and yet, withal, to continue uncorrupt and unadulterate, complete and perfect in all the measurement of its parts, and, so to speak, in all its proper members and senses, admitting no change, no waste of its distinctive property, no variation in its limits. 

[57.] For example: Our forefathers in the old time sowed wheat in the Church's field. It would be most unmeet and iniquitous if we, their descendants, instead of the genuine truth of grain, should reap the counterfeit error of tares. This rather should be the result—there should be no discrepancy between the first and the last. From doctrine which was sown as wheat, we should reap, in the increase, doctrine of the same kind— wheat also; so that when in process of time any of the original seed is developed, and now flourishes under cultivation, no change may ensue in the character of the plant. There may supervene shape, form, variation in outward appearance, but the nature of each kind must remain the same. God forbid that those rose-beds of Catholic interpretation should be converted into thorns and thistles. God forbid that in that spiritual paradise from plants of cinnamon and balsam, darnel and wolfsbane should of a sudden shoot forth.

It would be too much for this one post to attempt to evaluate all the individual issues the Orthodox tend to bring forward as proof that Rome has "innovated" in an illegitimate way.  What we have to do if we wish to examine these claims is to look at the specific Roman doctrines deemed to be problems and see if we can show that they are a distortion of the principles of Scripture or earlier Catholic tradition (without begging the question, such as by assuming at the outset that the Pope and the bishops in communion with him have no authority to develop doctrine).  I have not found that this can be proven in any case I have yet seen.  Every issue I have examined seems like a plausible (and often very logical, once one dwells on it a bit) development from the principles of the universal Catholic tradition (assuming the authority of the church, guided by the Holy Spirit, to interpret, unpack, and apply God's revelation and its implications).  Oftentimes, the EO accusations remind me of the saying about the "pot calling the kettle black."  For example, the EO often attack Rome for affirming the Immaculate Conception of Mary (the idea that Mary was preserved free from original sin by God's grace from conception) as a defined dogma required to be believed by the whole church.  "Why, such a thing was never mandated in the time of the fathers!"  But the fathers, for the most part, believed that Mary was free from personal sins.  She is often praised by them as being "pure," "immaculate," "free from stain," etc.  (See here for a strong example of this from the 4th century.)  The EO today sing similar hymns to Mary, and many of them at least believe her to have been free from all personal sins, and others who believe that she may have committed venial sins believe her to have been free from mortal sins, etc.  (It is often hard to pin down EO doctrine, which is probably not surprising given what we have seen earlier in this post.)  Most EO hold that it is acceptable within the EO church to believe in the Immaculate Conception (so long as one does not declare it mandated).  It is true that the question of whether Mary had been kept from original sin at conception or was cleansed from it upon conception or before birth, etc., so that she never personally sinned, was debated through the Middle Ages in the western church.  The Roman Catholic Church has since come to the firm conclusion that she was kept free from original sin at conception.  "You see, an innovation!"  A doctrinal development, to be sure, but so was the decision of the Seventh Ecumenical Council that icons must be regarded as appropriate in the church.  Before that council, the church had not pronounced on the issue definitively, and there were earlier fathers and leaders in the church who rejected icons.  "But that was a legitimate development, even though it was a development!"  And so we see how subjective a charge of innovation can be, and how careful we must be in handling such charges.  In later posts, it is highly likely, I will make further responses to particular charges of "innovation" in the Roman Catholic Church.  (In the meantime, see here for a great article, in three parts, on the Immaculate Conception and modern EO objections to it, if you are interested.)  Suffice it to say for now that I find the accusations too subjective to enable us to decide between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

So, in conclusion, as the EO position puts forward no objective, authoritative criteria for deciding between Rome and EO, we can dismiss their position as unwarranted.  Assuming there are no other contenders for the "original denomination" (and that Rome has no fatal problems of its own), we can declare Roman Catholicism the winner.

Here is another good, brief article from a Catholic point of view articulating some of the same epistemological concerns I have raised above (though I don't necessarily agree with every single point he makes).

I should add, briefly, that I think the Anglicans have similar epistemological problems.  Perhaps I will comment on this more fully in the future.  For example, in an Anglican podcast I am currently listening to, the speaker makes the argument that Anglicans believe in the catholicity of the church (which for him includes Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Anglicanism, at least--the classic "branch theory" of the church), one of the implications of which being that no one branch of the church should do anything substantial unilaterally, without the agreement of the other branches.  As I recall, as an example he says that it would be inappropriate for the Anglicans to proceed with installing women deacons (even if a good case could be made for this) without the agreement of the RC and EO branches of the church.  As I listened to this, I kept thinking to myself, "So you're not OK with installing women deacons without the RC and the EO churches, but you're fine with Anglicans having formed an entirely new denomination in the sixteenth century with all sorts of unique doctrinal positions affirmed without the approval of either the RC or the EO communions!  Sounds rather like straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel."  Anglicans like to appeal to the tradition of the "whole, undivided" church as authoritative, but they fail to observe that the questions that divide the existing churches cannot be settled merely by appealing to what they all hold in common.  Like the Orthodox, they also like to accuse Rome (and the EOs) of "innovations" that have departed from the patristic tradition, and yet their arguments, so far as I've seen thus far, tend often to be as subjective and superficial as the EO's also tend to be in this matter.

ADDENDUM 7/30/15:  What about the other Eastern churches, such as the Assyrian Church of the East and the Oriental Orthodox Churches?  From what I have been able to gather thus far, it appears that their ecclesiology (and their theology in general, for the most part) is basically the same as that of the Eastern Orthodox Church.  They seem unclear as to whether they are themselves the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church or whether they are merely part of the one church along with each other and the Eastern Orthodox.  (There seems to be a stronger sense that they are further separated from Rome.)  Either way, their justification for their distinctive positions would seem to be basically the same as that used by the Eastern Orthodox--namely, that they are in accord with the Fathers.  As I argued above, what this amounts to is that they are right and orthodox (and those, like Rome, who disagree with them are wrong and heterodox) because they are in agreement with the consensus of "the whole church" in the first millennium of the church (which is really what "agreement with the Fathers" means), the problem with this being that there is no such thing as any clear consensus of the "Fathers" or the "whole early church" on the matters dividing Rome from the Eastern churches.  There is no clearly defined early tradition from which it is empirically obvious that either Rome or the Eastern churches have broken (though I think Rome has a stronger case for this on their side than the Eastern churches do).  Rather, we see both positions developing during the first millennium (though, I would add, the Roman position is much more clearly defined and the alternate position consists mostly in a vague, unclear, unsystematic, and somewhat sporadic refusal to recognize Rome's position rather than a clearly defined alternative) and culminating in the eventual East-West split.  Here is a document that illustrates this to some degree reasonably well.

I have come across a document from from the Diocese of California of the Assyrian Church of the East which seems pretty clearly to state that the Assyrian Church (though it is not in communion with any other church at present, nor has it been for some time) does not consider itself to be the one true church, but rather considers itself only a particular branch of the one church.  For example, the document describes the Assyrian Church in this way:

The identity of the Church of the East, though intimately tied in the last centuries to the Assyrian and Indian people, was originally the Mother Church of all true and right-believing Christians residing east of the historical lines of the Roman Empire.

ADDENDUM 11/10/15:  Here (in this comment from Michael Liccione) is another good statement of the fundamental problem with Eastern Orthodox epistemology.

ADDENDUM 2/5/16:  I just came across an interesting comment by Eastern Orthodox Archdeacon (and theological adviser to the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople) John Chryssavgis in a First Things article about the upcoming Pan-Orthodox council:

For Orthodox Christians, there hasn’t been an Ecumenical Council since 787, with the Second Council of Nicaea that resolved the problem of iconoclasm, namely the debate about whether icons can or cannot be used for liturgical and devotional purposes. If you’ve been to an Orthodox Church recently, you know who won that argument! However, the Orthodox believe that it is the whole church that must convene—East and West—in order for a council to be considered ecumenical. In a world where Christians are so tragically divided, the Orthodox are reserved about boasting of an ecumenical council. In any case, an ecumenical council is normally recognized retrospectively.

That last sentence is reiterating what was pointed out in my article above about how the only way to know whether a council is ecumenical (and therefore authoritative) or not is to wait to see if the "whole church" accepts it.  I discussed above the somewhat nebulous and question-begging nature of that criterion.  What I found more particularly interesting in this comment, however, is that Archdeacon Chryssavgis points out another reason why the Eastern Orthodox have not had an ecumenical council since 787:  Since the Church has been divided between East and West (that is, Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic), neither the East nor the West by itself has had authority to convene one or to recognize one.  I've heard that this is a concern of the Orthodox from other people talking about what they think, but this is the first time I've been able to find it articulated by someone who is Orthodox himself (and theological adviser to Patriarch Bartholomew no less!).

This position illustrates further the serious problem the Orthodox have in terms of epistemology.  The reason why it is important to know whether a council is ecumenical or not is because ecumenical councils, being the thought and decisions of the whole Church, are definitively and infallibly authoritative and reliable (being certainly guided by the Holy Spirit).  Non-ecumenical councils aren't.  So the underlying principle here is that only East and West together can be ultimately authoritative.  The Roman Catholic Church (the West), by itself, has gone off into all kinds of errors, according to the Orthodox.  But here's the problem:  It also follows from this thinking that the East is no more reliable and authoritative than the West, which means that, in articulating this principle, the Orthodox are implying that the distinctive doctrines of the Orthodox Church are not infallibly authoritative or reliable, for the Orthodox Church by herself can't deliver anything on that level.  But if this is so, why should we believe what she teaches?  For example, when she tells us that the Church is supposed to function in a conciliar manner without a visible head on earth (the Pope) and doesn't need the Bishop of Rome intrinsically, according to this principle, we have no infallible reason to think this to be true.  All the Orthodox Churches can do, then, is try to prove their positions from the Bible and the Church Fathers without any reliance on any authoritative, infallible guidance from the Holy Spirit (imitating how Protestants function), thus falling into a morass of subjectivity (as I talk about more here).  In short, the Orthodox complain against Protestants that they do not rely on how the Holy Spirit guides the Church infallibly and authoritatively, but then they themselves are forced to go the same route by undercutting any basis for themselves to claim any such infallible guidance.

The Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, is the only Church that claims God's infallible guidance and which actually puts forth a way in which that would work that doesn't contradict or undercut itself--reliance on the See of Peter as the foundation of doctrinal integrity and unity within the Church.  There simply is no other existing alternative, and there never has been.  By cutting themselves off from the See of Peter, the Orthodox have undercut their ability to ground their own doctrine and authority, because they have abandoned God's plan for how such grounding is supposed to occur.

ADDENDUM 2/9/16:  Here is another good article articulating how Eastern Orthodoxy cannot ground its own claims and how it ends up being in the same fallible, subjective mess as Protestantism because it rejects the See of Peter.  A couple of quotations from the article's conclusion:

To be sure, Protestants are right to respect the authority of Sacred Scripture, and Orthodox are right to respect the authority of both Scripture and Church Councils. But trying to hold to either Scripture in isolation from the Church, or Councils in isolation from the papacy, and the end result isn’t the elevation of Biblical or conciliar authority. Rather, it’s the exact opposite: by reducing the Bible to a fallible collection or the Ecumenical Councils to a fallible list, they’re stripped of true authority. . . . 

The infallibility of the Church isn’t a threat to the authority of Sacred Scripture. On the contrary, when the infallible Church clarifies which Books of the Bible are inspired, that brings the revelation of God into focus. So, too, the infallibility of the pope serves the Church collective, rather than undermining or supplanting it. It’s through papal infallibility (and the particular role of the pope in accepting or rejecting Councils) that Catholics can know whether or not a particular Council is valid and infallible.

ADDENDUM 2/24/16:  This is a fascinating article by an Orthodox writer who agrees with Catholic papal claims and makes a very interesting and insightful (and challenging) case for the Catholic Church addressed towards Eastern Christians.

ADDENDUM 3/1/16:  Here is another good article by a Catholic author articulating the key fatal flaw in Eastern Orthodox epistemology.

Orthodoxy’s Achilles’ Heel is its inability to offer a positive principle of unity for the Church. . . . What does Catholicism say the principle of unity is? Answer: St. Peter, the bishop of Rome, and his successors are the principle of unity. . . . 

It is not enough for the Orthodox to propose negations to positive Catholic statements. They must also present positive alternatives to the Catholic position. But on the all-important issue of authority and unity within Christ’s Church, the Orthodox have no compelling answer.

The link within the quotation above connects to another good article about how St. Cyprian taught that the principle of unity is the primacy of Peter and his successors in the Church of Rome.

In short, we ought to follow the method of St. Jerome.  As he put it in the year 393 (Against Jovinianus [Book I], section 26--New Advent website),

[T]he Church was founded upon Peter: although elsewhere the same is attributed to all the Apostles, and they all receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the strength of the Church depends upon them all alike, yet one among the twelve is chosen so that when a head has been appointed, there may be no occasion for schism.

St. Jerome therefore appealed to Rome to resolve disputes that were causing schism in the Church, such as in this letter (#15) of Jerome to Pope Damasus written in the year 376 or 377 (New Advent--added biblical references removed):

Yet, though your greatness terrifies me, your kindness attracts me. From the priest I demand the safe-keeping of the victim, from the shepherd the protection due to the sheep. Away with all that is overweening; let the state of Roman majesty withdraw. My words are spoken to the successor of the fisherman, to the disciple of the cross. As I follow no leader save Christ, so I communicate with none but your blessedness, that is with the chair of Peter. For this, I know, is the rock on which the church is built! This is the house where alone the paschal lamb can be rightly eaten. This is the ark of Noah, and he who is not found in it shall perish when the flood prevails.

Here we have a living, authoritative voice that can truly guide us.  In the papacy alone have we truly escaped from the subjectivism that has plagued much of Christendom for centuries.

For more on the early church and the papacy, I highly recommend the work of an Anglican scholar Edward Giles, in a book entitled Documents Illustrating Papal Authority AD 96-454, which can be found here.

See also another article I have recently written up that is relevant to this topic, in which I argue that the Eastern Orthodox Churches, having abandoned the See of Peter as the principle of visible unity, have ended up with the same subjectivism that plagues Protestantism, although instead of Sola Scriptura they have substituted Sola Primitiva Ecclesia.

ADDENDUM 5/9/16:  I have been increasingly impressed over the past year at the evidence from the early church supporting the view that the doctrine of the papacy, in its various facets, was nearly universally accepted and practiced in the early church from the beginning.  That is not to say that the practice was always consistent, or that development in understanding and articulating this idea did not occur.  But the recognition of Roman primacy, often in a theological form, seems pervasive in the early church, both East and West.  It is often strongly asserted, by popes and others (including prominent Easterners), and it is hardly ever contradicted, and no alternate theory of the preservation of unity in the Church or how to determine whether a council is fully authoritative or not was, to my knowledge, ever proposed by anybody.  (Even today, as I note above, there is no accepted answer to these questions in any of the Eastern non-Catholic churches.)

I've cited Edward Giles's book above, including in the last "Addendum," and I would refer anyone to that book to see what I am talking about in the centuries from Apostolic times up to Chalcedon.  One might also take a look at the fascinating events of the Acacian schism in the 6th century--see here and here--and the council which took place at Constantinople from 869 to 870--see here--in which the majority of orthodox Eastern bishops, it would seem, signed a formula that went like this:

The first salvation is to keep the rule of right faith, and in no way to wander from the laws of the fathers. And that the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, who said: Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church, etc., may not be ignored is proved by the result: because in the Apostolic See religion has always been kept immaculate. Desiring therefore by no means to be separated from this hope and faith, and following in all things the laws of the fathers, we anathematize all heretics; especially . . . [here follows a list of names]. 

Wherefore we receive and approve all the letters of Pope Leo, whichever he wrote concerning the Christian religion. Hence, as we have said, following the Apostolic See in all things, and teaching its decrees, I hope that I may be worthy to be in the one communion with you [referring to the Pope], which the Apostolic See teaches, in which is the full and true solidity of the Christian religion. Promising also that the names of those who are banished from the communion of the Catholic Church, that is, those who do not consent to the Apostolic See, are not to be recited in the holy mysteries.

Chapter four of Session Four of the First Vatican Council in the 19th century referred to this formula as evidence that the papacy was not foreign to but was affirmed by the Eastern churches in the past.

Granted, the Eastern Orthodox have their own ideas about what all this really meant and implied, and there are lots of arguments that could be had.  In the case of the above formula, it could be argued that pressure from the emperors influenced people's actions in signing formulas, for example.  So perhaps (although I am not certain of this) it cannot be maintained that the East as a whole (or even the whole Chalcedonian East) ever formally accepted the papacy in an absolutely clear, empirically obvious way.  But it seems we can maintain just about the next step down from that, and that is an important testimony.  The doctrine of the papacy was never just "Western"; it was always an important part of the thinking and activity of the early Catholic Church in both the East and the West.

See also this article, which provides some quotations showing the high regard had for the papacy by many Eastern writers through the centuries of the early church.  (Again, note that Eastern Orthodox have their own explanations of these things.  His Broken Body is a good Orthodox source which provides a careful, honest appraisal of the evidence arguing ultimately for an Orthodox rather than a Catholic point of view.)  Here is one quotation from St. Maximus the Confessor, a very important Eastern saint of the 7th century and a saint in both the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic churches today (footnotes removed--the quotation is from "The Ecclesiology of St. Maximos the Confessor," by Andrew Louth, published in the International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, Vol. 4, No. 2, July 2004, p. 116):

All the ends of the inhabited world, and those who anywhere on earth confess the Lord with a pure and orthodox faith, look directly to the most holy Church of the Romans and her confession and faith as to a sun of eternal light, receiving from her the radiant beam of the patristic and holy doctrines, just as the holy six synods, inspired and sacred, purely and with all devotion set them forth, uttering most clearly the symbol of faith. For, from the time of the descent to us of the incarnate Word of God, all the Churches of the Christians everywhere have held and possess this most great Church as the sole base and foundation, since, according to the very promise of the Saviour, it will never be overpowered by the gates of hell, but rather has the keys of the orthodox faith and confession in him, and to those who approach it with reverence it opens the genuine and unique piety, but shuts and stops every heretical mouth that speaks utter wickedness.

ADDENDUM 5/11/16:  Here is a nice, succinct statement of the problem with Eastern Orthodox epistemology written within a conversation on an internet forum by a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church.  (The whole conversation is quite interesting.)

The Roman Catholics have a criterion by which they judge: the Pope. Love him or loathe him, he is at least a consistent principle of authority on the face of things. We, seemingly, do not have any such criterion. So why should an honest seeker, looking for the authority of the true Church, go with the Orthodox, which can't even tell you how they know to accept/reject what they accept/reject, rather than the Catholics, who have an historically consistent standard by which their claims may be judged? 

ADDENDUM 6/13/16:  Here is another way of looking at the whole question of how to evaluate the claims of Rome vs. Eastern Orthodoxy and other Eastern churches:

The Protestant churches are clearly break-off groups, because they formed by breaking off from a previous agreed-upon position.  (For example, the Anglicans used to be Roman Catholics, but they changed their theology and their accepted allegiances in order to do something different and contrary to what they had been doing before.)  Although it's more subtle, it could be said that the Eastern churches also came into being as break-off groups.  To see this, we must think of the time when the various Eastern churches broke from communion with Rome, and then we must ask:  What was their justification in doing so?  From what we have seen above, it is clear that they had no justification whatsoever.  So if we went back, say, to whenever the Eastern Orthodox broke with Rome, and right before that point (I'm oversimplifying the history a bit here, of course) we contemplated that there were just about to be two churches instead of one, and we were trying to decide which one to follow (should we break with Rome and stay with the new EO church, or vice versa?), we would note that the EO group had no official justification for thinking they were right.  Even to this day they don't know what the basis of their own claim is, so it is clear they didn't know back then either.  If we asked them, "So, you are about to break with Rome; on what basis are you going to do this?" their answer would have been, in effect, "We have no official basis to know we are right in doing this."  In that case, it is clear that their position would be schismatic, because to break communion with a sister church for no reason is by definition to be schismatic.  Unless the EO party could prove that they had good, conclusive reason to break with Rome, their position must be considered schismatic.  So that is what we would have to conclude, and so we would, of course, stay with Rome.

Although there was (perhaps) no formal, binding agreement made that acknowledged Rome's view of the papacy before the Rome-EO split, unlike with Protestant churches like the Anglican church, yet we cannot say that the tradition of the undivided Church did not provide the answer to the question of who would be right in the split.  That tradition had produced only one answer to the question of how to tell who is right in such disputes, and that answer was the papacy.  Rome, and many others (including many Easterns) had been putting that answer forward from as early as our history records, and no other clear answer was ever put forward by anybody.  But when a split like the Rome-EO split occurs, in order for the tradition to remain viable, we must have an answer as to how to tell who is right--for if we can't tell that, then it will be at that point impossible to know where the true Church is, making it impossible for us to rely on the Holy Spirit's guidance of that Church.  So if the tradition has put forward only one answer by the time the split occurs, and one side in that split professes that answer as their basis for continuing existence while the other side has no answer, then it is clear that the tradition at that point has spoken definitively as to what the right answer is.  If it is a choice between the papacy and nothing, the papacy obviously wins.  So, if we were there when the Rome-EO split occurred, then we could say that as soon as the split was decided upon, the Church's tradition, if it had not before, definitively at that time decided upon Rome's view of the papacy, and definitively labeled the other side schismatic.  And therefore, in the end, we can say that the EO group was a break-off just as much as the Protestant groups would later be.  (And this goes for the two other earlier Eastern churches as well--the Nestorians and the Oriental Orthodox).

ADDENDUM 6/16/16:  I've just written up a new post that puts the basic arguments made in this post into a dialogue format.

ADDENDUM 11/10/16:  Here is a nice list of Eastern fathers through the centuries talking about the Roman church and its authority.  Of course, if I were going to use any of these quotations definitively, I would want to go back and check them out, their full context, etc.  Proof texting can be dangerous, particularly when it comes to a very controversial subject.  But I know from my research that the Eastern church did indeed have a very high view of the papacy from the earliest times, and this list helps to illustrate this.

ADDENDUM 9/21/17:  Here and here are a couple of helpful articles on the Acacian Schism and the Formula of Hormisdas.  This was a schism between Rome and the Eastern churches in the fifth and sixth centuries that lasted for a number of decades.  The Eastern churches had adopted a kind of watered-down Christology that was supposed to avoid deciding between Chalcedon and Monophysitism.  Rome opposed this, and communion was broken between them for some time.  What is especially interesting in terms of our topic of focus is that the schism was only ended when the Eastern churches agreed to sign a formula written up by the pope which basically affirmed that the papacy, by Christ's promise to Peter, is always free from heresy and apostasy, that communion with Rome is the way to preserve the purity of the Christian religion, and that those who are not in communion with Rome are not in communion with the Catholic Church.  I quoted it above in the 5/19/16 addendum.

A Trajectory of Doctrinal Progression

I wanted to put our recent conversion to Catholicism into a larger context in terms of a trajectory of doctrinal evolution I have experienced for the past couple of decades.  So this is it!  Of course, I have not attempted to be systematic or exhaustive, but simply to note particular points of change that seem particularly relevant or interesting to me, especially in light of our most recent change.  I have focused on my own journey, but it should be noted (and is often obvious below) that for a large portion of this journey I have been traveling with others (particularly my wife and more recently my children).

When I entered college, I would have described myself as a "mere Christian."  I hated labels beyond that, because I wanted there to be a focus on the unity of all orthodox Christians, no matter what the denomination.  I was very much influenced in this way of thinking by C. S. Lewis (although I used to hate how he says at the beginning of Mere Christianity that we all have to choose a particular "tradition" and not just hang out in the "hallway" of "mere" Christianity--I used to ask, "Why can't I stay in the hallway if I want to?").  My concept of "orthodox" Christianity was basically anything that held the "essentials" of belief in God, the Trinity, the Incarnation of Christ, salvation through Christ's death and resurrection for sins, etc.  It included, in my view, historic Protestantism as well as Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

Soon after entering college, I became a Calvinist, in the looser, "evangelical" sense of the word--not a follower of every aspect of the Reformed tradition but basically a believer in the TULIP doctrines, particularly the idea that God is sovereign over all things, including in salvation, and that salvation is a product of God's grace alone (not excluding human will and works, but that the whole of salvation, including our will and works, are a product of God's grace, so that we contribute nothing good from ourselves independently).

That was at the beginning of 1997.  In the year 2000, we moved from Wheaton, IL, to Salt Lake City, UT, and joined the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC), a church in the historic Reformed tradition.  More and more during this time I came to think of myself as Reformed, but it wasn't until 2005 that I came to be in full agreement with the doctrinal standards of the OPC.

In 2000 or 2001, I came to hold what I called an "Augustinian" doctrine of justification and to oppose what I considered the classic "Protestant" doctrine.  Mostly, this had to do with the question of imputation vs. infusion with regard to the righteousness of Christ.  I felt concerned that the Protestant doctrine of justification too much separated imputation from infusion, insisting that we are right with God wholly by means of the imputation of Christ's righteousness apart from the infusion of Christ's righteousness that constitutes regeneration and sanctification.  I held, rather, that it is both the imputation of righteousness and its infusion and effects in us that makes us right with God.  Until Summer of 2003, I felt myself to be at odds with the Protestant position on these matters.  This was resolved when I came to see that I could reasonably interpret the Protestant doctrine and language in such a way as to avoid this conflict.  This is a large subject, and I won't go into details here, but suffice it to say that I felt reconciled with the Protestant position after the Summer of 2003.

Over the next few years, I continued to think about many issues and honed my philosophical and theological awareness, but my next big advance in doctrine I would probably place around 2004, when I abandoned my previous idea that the Bible was only infallible in matters of doctrine but not in matters of science, history, etc.  I came to the conclusion that if the Bible is God's Word, how can I decide on my own which of its affirmations I am bound to accept?  How can I draw a line and say that "this is important enough to be infallible, but this is not"?  This came to seem arbitrary to me, and so I decided that I must hold that if the Bible says it, God says it, and that is that.

A number of other changes happened to me doctrinally in 2004 as well.  This was one of my biggest years of growth, partly because I came under care of the Presbytery of the Dakotas of the OPC (this is something one does if one is thinking about trying to enter the ordained ministry in some form or another in the OPC) in the Fall of 2004.  One of the 2004 changes was that I came to have my views challenged in the area of social morality / politics.  Before this time, I held a vaguely secular view of politics, but after this time it occurred to me (through being challenged by my wife) that if Christianity is really true, then not only individuals but societies ought to embrace and follow its principles.  So at that time I came to the position that human societies, as such, ought to embrace the true religion and follow it in their laws and policies.  A short time later, as I continued to think through this, I came to the position that the judicial laws in the Law of Moses still apply in their "general equity" (as the Westminster Confession puts it), and so civil society ought to be following their instructions.  (This is a complicated issue that I won't get into in too much detail right now--but if you're interested in seeing this position spelled out, see here.)

Also in 2004, I came to hold what is called the "regulative principle of worship."  This is the idea that our service and worship to God cannot simply be based on our own whims, but must follow God's instructions.  We cannot consider as commanded by God anything which he has not commanded in his revelation, and we cannot enforce such things on others.  This meant that anything that I could not prove to be commanded by God from necessary reason or from the Bible could not be passed off as commanded or enforced on anyone.  So, for example, take the observance of Christmas.  It is nowhere commanded in the Bible.  It is obviously not a dictate of reason.  So this way of thinking eventually led me to the conclusion that churches should not take up the celebration of Christmas, because in doing so they would be confusing the commanded worship of God with something not commanded and enforcing human traditions on people without divine warrant.  Another worship implication this way of thinking eventually led me to was a position called "exclusive psalmody."  The argument goes basically like this:  In the Bible, we are commanded to sing psalms from the Book of Psalms.  We are never commanded to sing anything else.  Therefore, only songs from the Book of Psalms can be considered commanded or enforced on people.  Therefore, churches cannot include anything other than songs from the Book of Psalms in their worship.  (See here for a much fuller treatment of this position from someone who holds it.)  Now, I did not actually come to these more extreme conclusions of "regulative principle" thinking until later, early in 2012.  I almost came to them earlier, but for a while I was thinking that churches could still practice things that aren't commanded in the Bible so long as they are not passed off as necessary or commanded by God.  Early in 2012, I came to realize that simply having such things as a part of a church's worship amounts to placing them on the level of God's commanded worship and has the effect of enforcing them on the people.

Also in 2004, I came to hold the belief that the Lord's Day is a holy day that ought to be held and observed by Christians (as a day of worship and rest), and that special revelation had ceased at the end of the 1st century.  (Before, I had held the view that special revelation has in fact ceased, for the most part, but I held this merely as a result of observation rather than as a theological position.)

Before I go on, a few comments are in order:  First, you will note that during this time period I was assuming the position of Sola Scriptura--that the (Protestant canon of) the Bible is alone infallible, and there is no infallibility in the handed-down tradition of the church or invested in the official teachers of the church.  Why was I assuming this?  Mostly, at this time, it was simply because I had never really seriously considered any other position.  I had never taken any church tradition as infallible before, and it wasn't really on my agenda during this time to consider doing so.  Without my really realizing it, I simply took it for granted that the Bible is God's Word and is thus the only infallible authority I had to listen to.  (If asked, I would have articulated a reason for this position, but I had not systematically thought it through due to lack of challenge on the subject.)

And this brings me to another general observation:  Why did I come to certain doctrinal conclusions at different times?  Why not all at once?  The answer is mainly that it is impossible for the human mind to think about everything all the time.  I knew why I was a Christian.  I had honed my reasons for being a Christian throughout all of this time period, and had it pretty well worked out.  But I was still something of a "mere" Christian--that is, I thought of Christianity as being a set of core essentials, with other doctrinal issues being important but not determinative of whether a person is a Christian or whether a church is Christian or should be joined with, etc.  (Having become a Calvinist, I eventually added the sovereignty of God and salvation by grace alone to the list of essentials, and came to consider Arminianism--which denies these things--a heresy.)  Because of this attitude, it didn't bother me that I had not systematically thought through every existing doctrinal controversy and come to a clear conclusion on every issue.  As a result, I tended to progress in my thinking on some particular issue usually when that issue was brought to my attention by something--a conversation, an interest piqued, going under care of the presbytery, etc.  I suspect that most people, particularly Protestants, think in this way.  (That is how they keep from going insane--but see below.)

My next major period of doctrinal transition occurred around the beginning of 2012.  (I spent the majority of my thinking energy from around 2006 until 2012 interacting with Atheist/Agnostic ideas, and therefore developed mainly in the areas of epistemology, apologetics, metaphysics, etc.  During this time I wrote a book outlining my reasons for being a Christian rather than holding to various other worldviews.)  Back in the Fall of 2011, spurred on by interactions with more historically traditional Presbyterians over the internet, I came to embrace the idea that it is most likely that the Antichrist of Scripture is the Roman papacy (and in general the corruptions of the church during the period of the late church fathers and the Middle Ages).

But more importantly, my interactions with these more traditional Presbyterians led me to think once again about the regulative principle, and this led me to the full embracing of exclusive psalmody and in general the positions on worship articulated in the Westminster Directory for Public Worship.  I would characterize the Presbyterian approach to worship as "minimalistic" as opposed to the more "expansive" views on worship held by Protestants like the Anglicans or the Lutherans.  I think this comes from taking Sola Scriptura and the corresponding regulative principle of worship very seriously, and therefore being very careful not to allow anything into the commanded worship of God that cannot be proved to be commanded by Scripture.

I was also spurred on by these interactions to reconsider a position that I've come since to label "latitudinarianism."  Up until this time, I held that churches ought only to enforce within their congregations those doctrines/practices that can be proved to be "essential" to the Christian faith--like the Trinity, or not murdering, etc.  I felt that "non-essential" doctrines, even if they could be shown to be biblical, should not be enforced on church members, because these are matters about which truly regenerate Christians might be in honest disagreement.  I felt that churches with disagreements over non-essentials could (and should) legitimately be denominationally divided (on the grounds that official teachers in the church ought to be held to the whole of Scripture and not just to the essentials), but that these denominationally divided churches should consider each other as true churches so long as they hold the essentials, and that church membership should only be based on the essentials.  But around the beginning of 2012, I came to feel that this position was wrong.  If the Bible really does teach something, who are we to say that some of that teaching is "non-essential" and so the people of God are not to be held to it?  Is not the whole of God's Word mandatory for belief and practice?  Is not something mandatory simply because God has communicated it, and not because we have decided to consider it "essential"?  So I abandoned my "latitudinarianism."

Probably the most important doctrinal change I embraced around this time, also spurred on by my interactions with more traditional Presbyterians, was in the area of church government.  I came to reaffirm my commitment to a presbyterian form of church government, and I came to realize that presbyterian church government is incompatible with denominational separation.  In a presbyterian system, when two churches are denominationally separate, the necessary implication is that the churches are rejecting each others' de jure legitimacy as churches (though not necessarily the de facto existence of truly regenerate believers in them).  The practical conclusion of this is that we must sort through all the existing denominations and settle which one has a right to separate existence, because then all those divided from it must be schismatic.  We cannot be a part of just any denomination so long as it holds the "essentials."  (If you want to see an argument for this, see here.)

These last three doctrinal changes, together, led to highly significant practical effects in our lives.  I decided that the proper denomination to be a part of is the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland (FPCS), which has only one congregation in the United States.  Being a ruling elder in the OPC at the time (I had become one in the Fall of 2005), I thought I ought to report this conclusion to the rest of the session (the ruling body of elders over a congregation in a Presbyterian church).  (Here is the report I gave them.)  At first, there was little response.  I ceased being a ruling elder in the Fall of 2012 (presumably) because the congregation was not thrilled with my having become an exclusive psalmodist (they sing hymns as well as psalms).  But it wasn't until I actually started trying to create a formal connection with the FP church down in Houston, TX, that I got the serious attention of my church's session.  To make a long story short, a conflict began, because the elders of the church decided that my position was slanderous against the OPC (because it held that the OPC is schismatic) and that our joining a church as far away as Texas amounted to leaving the visible church of Christ altogether and thus, in their words, "relinquishing all rights to be considered Christians."  I managed to hold off the final conclusion of this conflict for about a year-and-a-half, but in the Fall of 2014, we finally removed our membership from the OPC and were banned by the session from even attending church there anymore.  This conflict caused me to work very hard to examine, scrutinize, and hone my views on church government and the unity of the church, and I continued to defend them as what I saw to be the true biblical teaching.  The pastor at the OPC accused me of being arrogant for defying the teaching of the church and following my own more unusual biblical interpretation.  Who was I to think that my interpretation of Scripture was more right than that of the rest of the Reformed churches?  I pointed out to him that my position was in line with historic Presbyterian thinking (although indeed quite unusual--but not unheard of--in this day and age) and that, more importantly, it was biblical.

My next major doctrinal transition began to occur in March of 2015.  We had been trying to figure out how to get our newborn son baptized in the FPCS, considering the difficulties involved in our living in Utah while the only US congregation of the FPCS is in Houston.  I had asked one of the Houston elders to give me a list of things I could expect to be asked with regard to being interviewed for our suitability to receive infant baptism.  In his reply, he pointed out that on my blog profile, I talk about liking various kinds of music, enjoying reading fiction, and some other things.  He told me that it was worldly to do these kinds of things, and suggested that unless we gave them up we could not have our child baptized.  I knew the FPCS had some practical views that I found disconcerting, but I had been hoping that, in the interests of the unity of the church, things would not be stretched to the breaking point.  But this was quite devastating.  We quickly decided that it was past the breaking point to be asked to permanently relinquish all fiction forever, among other things.  It seems to me that fiction is a natural expression of our creativity as humans made in the image of God, and that it would be inappropriate to cut it out categorically from our lives.  It would be like lopping off a finger--cutting off a part of our humanity that we ought not to throw away in such a manner.  So now it seemed we were in even more trouble.  What if this difference of opinion was going to keep us out of the FPCS (assuming others in the FPCS shared or backed up this elder's point of view)?  I already had troubles with every other existing denomination, always finding some problem that seemed unbiblical.  Having abandoned latitudinarianism and the idea of the legitimacy of denominational separation, I had come to the conclusion that it is justifiable (and, indeed, if one can do it, often a duty) to separate and reject as schismatic any church that embraces something clearly unbiblical in its teaching and join a denomination that gets the Bible right or form a new one if there is no existing one.  It looked like things might be coming exactly to that kind of situation.

At that point, I began to question the principle of Sola Scriptura.  Is Sola Scriptura really feasible?  Does it really work?  Ever since having abandoned my "latitudinarian" views and my weaker views on church government, my doctrinal life had become increasingly stressful.  Before 2012, I had been able to pay less attention to "non-essential" doctrinal differences, but after that time, I realized that I had an obligation to try harder to get all of God's Word right (If God has taken the initiative to communicate to us what he wants us to to know in his Word, don't we have an obligation to listen to him and follow him?), and that even relatively minor errors in doctrine must cause church divisions (because churches cannot "wink" even at small sins or errors, persisted in, because God commands us to teach and enforce everything that Christ has commanded--Matthew 28:20).  We must be faithful even in the least things, not just the things of apparently greatest importance.  The church must preserve the fullness of the faith and pass it on, not just the parts of it we deem "important".  No longer, then, could I take a more casual approach, not worrying too much about doctrinal differences in more minor areas.  Now I had to make sure I was doing all I reasonably could to get everything right, because if I did not I would be shirking my duty, and I might lead my family into the wrong denomination (making things very difficult for us down the road).  Part of this stress came from the fact that my oldest daughters are now 15 and 13, and I had become increasingly aware of the fact that my doctrinal decisions were not just my own but would affect my entire family in crucial ways.  (For example, if we joined the FPCS, whom would my children marry?  Whom would they marry if we didn't?  Etc.)  So after 2012, the incredible complexity of all the myriad doctrinal divisions existing in the Christian world came increasingly crashing down upon me.  According to Sola Scriptura, I, on my own (that is, without any infallible guidance), have the responsibility to decide for myself, for my family, and for the entire church, what precisely is the true doctrine and practice taught in the Scriptures.  I must personally check the work of the entire Christian theological tradition of the past, and if my own personal biblical interpretations that I come to in my research do not match up with something in that tradition, I must go with my own interpretation (since the only alternative is to blindly, implicitly trust fallible theologians).  Is this really the way it's supposed to be?  Is each and every one of us really called to be the pope of the world?

Another thing that happened back in 2011 and 2012 was that some other members of our OPC church became Roman Catholic.  In 2012, I began to dialogue with them, and they sent us some Catholic literature.  Over the next few years, they continued to send us literature.  Up until that time, I had not really paid much attention to Catholicism.  Despite an early, pre-college interest in the Catholic Church (in connection with my interest in "mere" Christianity), I was never really interested in exploring distinctive Catholic doctrines.  From 2012 until Spring of 2015, I periodically read Roman Catholic literature.  My focus during this time was mostly on presbyterian church government and the conflict it was producing in our life, but I also developed a growing interest in Catholicism as well as Eastern Orthodoxy, particularly as I observed that the Catholic and Orthodox Churches had retained a biblical emphasis on the unity of the church that Protestants had largely abandoned.  So in the year-and-a-half or so before March of 2015, I had been learning more and more about Catholicism and Orthodoxy and had had my commitment to Sola Scriptura more and more challenged.  I had written a brief defense of Sola Scriptura as part of my book of Christian apologetics back in 2010, but it wasn't a major focus of the book, and at that time I had not been really challenged by the Catholic or the Eastern Orthodox point of view.

So now, back in March of 2015, we had begun to seriously question Sola Scriptura.  If Sola Scriptura is true, then God commands us to follow his true doctrine and preserve the unity of his church on the basis of all of us agreeing on biblical doctrine by means of coming to it independently through our own individual study of Scripture.  But if this is correct, how could it be that our doctrinal progress had led increasingly towards a situation where we seemed to be in agreement with just about nobody else on earth outside of ourselves on all matters required for unity?  The oddity of this situation led me (along with my wife) to begin examining Sola Scriptura more carefully.  Very soon after beginning this more intensive investigation, I came to see that I had some unquestioned assumptions at the foundation of my belief in Sola Scriptura.  Sola Scriptura had seemed like the "default" option to me, because I knew I had good reasons to think the Bible is the Word of God, and the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox agreed with me on that, but I didn't think I had any good reason to trust the claims of the Orthodox or the Catholics to have an infallible tradition or an infallible teaching authority.  Since Scripture alone is all that we need, I thought, there is no good reason to accept such claims for further infallibility.  The fallacy here, of course, is that I was simply assuming that Scripture could function alone, without having the context of an infallible tradition or teaching authority.  But I had no basis for that assumption.  I had simply been used to using the Bible in that way as a Protestant, and it hadn't yet occurred to me that I needed to show that this was not misusing the Bible.  It may seem superficially to be safe to stick with Sola Scriptura, but what if God intends for Scripture to be interpreted and applied in the context of an authoritative and infallible tradition?  In that case, a person using the Bible in a Sola Scriptura fashion is likely to go very wrong.  He would be attempting to use the Bible in a way in which it is not supposed to be used, and ignoring crucial aids given to him for the purpose of enabling him to get it right.  Once I realized that I had been working on the basis of an unquestioned Protestant assumption about the sufficiency of Scripture, it became clear that the "default" is actually not with Sola Scriptura but with the "infallible tradition" paradigm held by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches.  Christ founded a church, and he commanded his people to obey its shepherds and preserve its unity.  Therefore, our default should be obedience to the historic church and communion with her.  Not unless we can prove that we have a good reason to defy those leaders or rupture that unity should we do so.  But I saw that Sola Scriptura, and all other Protestant distinctives, could not actually be proved from Scripture or from reason or anything else, and so to embrace the Protestant views at the expense of obedience to and unity within the historic church would be inherently schismatic.

The same point can be put historically as well.  It is easy for Protestants to feel that Protestantism is the "default" position because they see established Protestant churches all around them that are quite "old" (they go back to before they were born, etc.).  If I am already in an OPC, wouldn't the default for me be the OPC, and wouldn't it be a "break" for me to move over to the Catholic or the Orthodox Churches?  Well, yes, for an individual person already in the OPC, he should assume that position until he has reason to doubt it, because it would be a break to move somewhere else.  But from a broader, more objective, historical point of view, obviously it is Protestantism rather than Catholicism or Orthodoxy that must be considered the "break-off."  Objectively, therefore, the default is not the Protestant position but the historic Catholic or Orthodox point of view, and that default should not be broken from without conclusive reasons to do so.  Each Protestant needs to ask himself something like this:  "If I had lived in the sixteenth century, would I have left the Catholic Church to follow Martin Luther's new sect?"  (If you're an Anglican, you can ask, "Would I have left the Catholic Church to follow the bishops who went along with Henry VIII in breaking from their previous Catholic position to found the Anglican Church?")  If you can't conclusively answer "yes" to this, then you have no business being a Protestant, for you have no justification for it.  The objective, historically-aware question, in short, is not, "Why should I leave Sola Scriptura to embrace all these Catholic or Orthodox ideas?", but rather, "Why should I leave the historic, Catholic Church and its tradition of the past 1500 years in order to embrace this new idea of Sola Scriptura?" So once these biased Protestant ways of thinking were uncovered, the move towards Catholicism became very rapid.  (I'll not get into this much here, but we went towards Roman Catholicism rather than the Eastern Churches for a number of reasons, including the observation that the Eastern Churches have a confused, self-refuting epistemology, and also a belief that they rejected the Augustinian doctrines of predestination and efficacious grace.)

Once my paradigm had changed from Sola Scriptura to the Catholic paradigm, this affected my views in other areas as well.  For example, previously I had been opposed to the practice of praying to saints--that is, asking the saints to pray for us.  I could not find any warrant for this practice in Scripture, and so I felt it would be presumptuous to adopt it.  If no one ever makes requests of dead saints in Scripture (except by means of evil magic), wouldn't I be violating the norms of Scripture to engage in this practice?  Doesn't it seem too close to idolatry?  Of course, it is true that we ask other living people to pray for us, and that is not idolatrous but is rather a thing greatly encouraged by Scripture. "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much" (James 5:16).  So why not pray to saints who have passed on from this life?  If the prayer of a living righteous man is greatly effective, wouldn't it be likely that the prayer of a saint whose soul has been made perfect in glory and who is in the presence of God himself be far more effective and worth requesting?  But still, without Scriptural proof that this is a good thing, or positive Scriptural example, it seems unwarranted and presumptuous to do it (particularly when Protestants have always been so much against it).  So that was my position as a Protestant.  But now I hold a paradigm which teaches that Scripture is not to be interpreted in isolation, but in the context of an authoritative and infallible tradition under the guidance of authoritative teachers led by the Holy Spirit to accurately and effectively gather, preserve, interpret, unpack, and apply the revelation of God to the church and to the world through the ages.  (For an official Catholic description of this paradigm, see here--especially Chapter II.)  So if the Catholic Church has derived from the biblical doctrine of the communion of saints and other doctrines, in the context of the experience and teaching of the church through the ages, the idea that it is not only appropriate but also right and good to pray to saints in this manner, then it is right and good!  So that is my position now on this issue.  I could go through a number of other doctrinal issues and show how my transition to the Catholic paradigm has made similar changes with regard to them as well.  I should note, though, that far more of my doctrinal positions have remained the same than have changed, and my most central convictions are the same as ever.

It would be worth going back through my list of doctrinal attainments in previous years to see how they've been affected by the transition to Catholicism.  Obviously, first of all, I am still a Christian.  My foundational reasons for being a Christian have not changed.  I have subjected those reasons to thorough examination over the years, and they are firm.  If Catholicism was opposed to any core teaching of Christianity, I could never accept it, because those ideas have been too well proved to me to reject.

I am still a Calvinist.  No, I don't call myself that anymore, because it conveys the wrong impression in a Catholic context.  But I still hold to the sovereignty of God and salvation by grace alone.  These are Catholic doctrines.  I have been examining these issues for decades, and they are firm.  I have had my position on the perseverance of the saints modified a bit.  I now hold that a person can be regenerated temporarily without being elect, and that such a person will not be given the gift of perseverance to the end.  But other than that, I'm still a five-point Calvinist (in the "evangelical" sense of that phrase).  (See here for some general stuff on the Catholic doctrine of salvation.)

My commitment to an "Augustinian" view of justification has been justified (no pun intended), as this is the form of the doctrine in the Catholic tradition.  But my attempts to see my views as in harmony with the Protestant view (see also here) has given me a helpful awareness that will serve well as I continue to work to help Catholics and Protestants understand each other better.

I still hold that the Bible is infallible in all that it affirms (though now I recognize that I must submit to the authoritative interpretation of it provided by the Catholic Church).

I still hold that society has an obligation to follow God's law (though I now have a more nuanced view of the continuing application of the specific judicial laws in the Law of Moses gained from the Catholic tradition).

I still hold the regulative principle of worship.  God is only to be worshipped and served in the ways he has prescribed.  (But now I know that I am not limited to what I personally can prove out of the Bible in terms of what that amounts to specifically.  It turns out the Catholic Church has used its authoritative and infallible interpretive and unpacking authority to develop from the principles of Scripture a system of rituals, ceremonies, holy days, etc., that have full authority from God and are legitimate developments and applications of the principles of God's revelation.  So I am no longer an exclusive psalmodist, and I recognize the church's celebration of Christmas, for example.)

I still hold that the Lord's Day is a special holy day of rest and worship (though now I look to the Catholic tradition for further details on how it is to be kept, etc.).

I still hold that there has been no further special revelation after the first century (although I now also recognize that the infallible and authoritative interpretation and application of God's revelation by the church continues to develop through the years since the first century and until the end of time).

Of course, I no longer think the pope is the Antichrist.  With church tradition, I now have a much larger authoritative context for speculations on such matters.

I still hold my anti-latitudinarian views.  If God communicates something to us, we have an obligation to believe it and follow it.  And it must be possible for us to do so, for God cannot command natural impossibilities.  But within the Catholic paradigm, as opposed to the Sola Scriptura paradigm, anti-latitudinarianism doesn't lead to a stressful sense that I must solve every doctrinal issue on my own and get them all right.  With Sola Scriptura, I was obligated to understand all that the Bible taught (and I had to do it as soon as reasonably possible, and soon enough to prevent serious theoretical and practical errors in terms of where I led myself, my family, other Christians, etc.), but in the Catholic paradigm, I recognize that it is not my job to come to sure conclusions on everything the Word of God teaches.  It is the church's job to be the authoritative interpreter and "unpacker" of the teachings of the Word of God.  This does two things that preserve sanity:  1. It provides an authoritative guide to the interpretation of the Word of God.  2. It also means that if the church has not yet definitively settled an issue, I do not have to definitively settle it myself!  I may sometimes be sure of something the church has not definitively defined, but I have no obligation to try to have a definitive interpretation of all divine teachings.  I don't have to worry that the unity of the church is at stake if I can't figure something out adequately.  It is a wonderful feeling to realize that I don't have to be pope!  In the Catholic paradigm, even the pope does not have the same gargantuan task I had to adopt for myself in the Sola Scriptua paradigm, so perhaps I should say it is a wonderful feeling to realize that I don't have to be super-pope!

I no longer hold to presbyterian church government, because the Catholic tradition teaches an episcopalian view of church government.  (Now I get to be in line with the first 1,500 years of church history!)  However, my presbyterian concept of the unity of the church was right-on.  The church is indeed intended to function collegially, and denominational division is indeed unacceptable and inherently involves schism.

The Catholic Church, of course, has no problem with fiction, or the arts in general.  It strongly recognizes their place.  (J. R. R. Tolkien was a devout Catholic.  Need I say more?)  I've always held this view anyway, so there has been no change, but now I don't have to worry about being alienated from every visible body of Christians on earth because of it, so that's nice!

My becoming Catholic seems to me also to have a sort of definitive character to it.  The reason for most of my doctrinal developments over the years has been my belief that it was up to me to come up with all my doctrines by myself using Sola Scriptura.  I never felt justified in trusting any church tradition.  Because of this, I had to reconstruct all of Christian theology by thinking through everything myself, and this kind of thing takes time!  Before 2012, I took this at a leisurely pace, while after 2012 I felt the urgency of it more and so became more and more stressed out with trying to figure everything out more swiftly and efficiently.  Transitioning to the Catholic paradigm changes all of this.  Now I believe I have warrant to trust implicitly the content of the historic Catholic tradition, stretching back 2,000 years and beyond (counting Old Testament times).  Much of what I used to feel I had to do myself has already been done, and I don't have to redo it all.  Therefore, a host of doctrinal questions that might have taken a lifetime and more than a lifetime to figure out (and which I no doubt would have gotten wrong in some instances anyway) are already resolved for me!  Nor do I have to resort to a stressed-out way of thinking through these issues.  Of course, this is not to say that there is no more doctrinal growth of any kind for me in the future, or that I don't have to continue to think through doctrinal matters.  It is just that now I am moving forward using the proper tools, and so have the means to avoid error and to know where to draw the line as to what I can definitely know right now and what I cannot.

ADDENDUM 3/15/16:  I wanted to add briefly some further clarification on how I viewed Sola Scriptura and why I believed it as a Protestant.  As I mention above, my main reason for believing it was that I saw it as the "default" position.  What that means is that I knew I had good reasons to think Christianity was true, and I knew that Christianity is a revelation from God, and so there must be a locus of that revelation, a place where it can be found and is available.  Christian tradition points quite clearly towards the Bible as a locus of revelation.  Over the years, Christian tradition has come to think of other things--particularly Tradition and the Church--as loci of revelation as well; but my thinking was that since I knew I had good reason to think the Bible was the Word of God, the need to have a locus of divine revelation was adequately satisfied by that, and so there was no intrinsic need for anything more from Tradition or anything else.  Therefore, my attitude was that Sola Scriptura was the "default."  Tradition and the Church were welcome to provide evidence to prove themselves to be additional loci of revelation, but the burden of proof was on them, because we did not need them.  I wasn't aware of anything that constituted to me such proof, and so I stuck with my default.  (I also thought there were a few contradictions with Tradition and Church teaching that confirmed this--such as the Catholic Church's teaching on religious freedom before and after Vatican II.)

What changed was that I became aware, finally, that my assumption that the Bible by itself could adequately satisfy the need for a locus of revelation lacked adequate backing up.  The Bible could satisfy that need if the Bible could function on its own without an infallible Tradition and an infallible Church.  But I realized that I was just assuming that it could function alone without having a positive basis to show that it didn't need Tradition and the Church.  This ungrounded assumption, I believe, was the result of a lack of adequate appreciation for the historical fact that Sola Scriptura is not the position of the historic Church but is, for the most part, a relatively new doctrine that the historic Church rejected, holding rather to infallible Scripture in the context of infallible Tradition and an infallible Church.  This means that the default is not the assumption that the Bible can function alone, but rather that the Bible should be interpreted in the context of an infallible Tradition and Church.  If that is the case, then I don't need further positive evidence to go with Tradition and the Church but rather I need it for going with Sola Scriptura.  I then saw that I didn't have sufficient evidence to provide that further positive evidence, and so I needed to default to the historic Church's position.  Everything else followed from there.  (With regard to the concern about there being a few contradictions in Tradition and Church teaching, this concern was cleared up with further research; indeed, even before the Catholic transition began I was already beginning to rethink my position on the Catholic view of religious freedom and was recognizing a good bit of nuance in a few other areas as well, such as the Catholic view of predestination and efficacious grace.)

In addition to lacking a full appreciation of Sola Scriptura as a non-historical position, before 2012 I had not fully thought through the implications of a biblical view of church unity on the legitimacy of denominationalism, nor had I fully thought through the issue of "latitudinarianism" (both of which are discussed further above).  I held the (today) common Protestant view that the catholic church exists legitimately in a whole slew of divided denominations, even if many of those denominations contain various errors, so long as those errors don't mess with the "essential," core doctrines of Christianity.  This nebulous view of the unity and purity of the catholic church dulled my sense both of the practical problems that arise out of a serious attempt to apply Sola Scriptura as well as of the serious problems posed by church error and division, thereby causing it to take longer for me to recognize the fatal flaws of the Protestant position.

ADDENDUM 4/13/17:  Here is my wife's account of her own perspective on her and our Catholic transition, part 1 and part 2.

ADDENDUM 6/7/20:  My wife and I were invited last Fall to be guests on the Coming Home Network's TV program The Journey Home.  This is a wonderful program in which Marcus Grodi interviews people who have come into (or back to) the Catholic Church and lets them tell their stories.  You can find our program here.  Also, the Coming Home Network published a written version of my story which you can find here.  I've also written a book over the past few years making an argument for Catholicism addressed especially to Protestants (but also to other kinds of Christians) called No Grounds for Divorce: Why Protestants (and Everyone Else) Should Return to the Unity of the Catholic Church.  You can find it here.

ADDENDUM 4/24/21:  I just wrote up a brief post examining further how my lack of historical awareness caused my error in reasoning regarding Sola Scriptura being the default position.  And here is one more article on this.

What does the FPCS think of the OPC?

I raise this question in response to some who have challenged my claims on this point in recent months.  Despite these challenges, the answer to the question need not be a difficult one to arrive at.  The FPCS is a Presbyterian church.  It holds to a presbyterian form of church government.  In a presbyterian form of church government, the visible church has a duty to be united in formal unity and the government of the church has a duty to function collegially.  Under such a system, denominational division entails a charge of schism against the church one is divided from and a refusal to recognize that other church's ecclesiastical authority.  The FPCS and the OPC are denominationally divided from each other.  Therefore, the FPCS (giving it the benefit of the doubt and assuming that it is consistent with its own professed presbyterianism--and this is the charitable way to understand a church's actions unless the church gives good reason to think otherwise) thinks of the OPC as a schismatic sect--part of the visible church de facto, but a part that has cut itself off from the de jure unity of the legal body.

We can confirm that this is the FPCS's position also by looking at the Free Presbyterian Catechism, written up by the FP church itself (a new edition having just been issued in 2013).  I have pasted relevant portions from that catechism below, combined with a little commentary of my own (in red).

106 Q. What is meant by Christ’s Church being Catholic?
A. The word Catholic means Universal, which teaches us that the Church of Christ is one in all nations.

There is only one Body of Christ, and so that Body (the church) is one in all nations, throughout all the earth.  Here we see articulated the biblical and presbyterian view of the unity and catholicity of the church.  There are not many "bodies of Christ" divided up into separate and independent portions in different nations or other localities.

108 Q. What do we mean by the term “the visible Church”?
A. The visible Church is made up of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, together with their children (Acts 2:39).

Again, we see the worldwide or international character of the church--not just in its "invisible" aspect but in its "visible" aspect as well.  There is only one visible church on the earth, and so it is one in all nations.

112 Q. How should we describe the Free Presbyterian Church?
A. The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland should be described as a branch of the visible Church in the world.

The language of "branch" suggests that there are other branches.  The FPCS is not itself the totality of the visible church in the world.

114 Q. What are the other Presbyterian Churches in Scotland?
A. The other Presbyterian Churches in Scotland today are the Church of Scotland, the United Free Church, the Free Church, the Free Church (Continuing), the Reformed Presbyterian Church, the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, the Associated Presbyterian Churches and the International Presbyterian Church[17]

Here are some other branches of the visible church in the nation of Scotland.  The Catechism focuses in upon Scotland because the FPCS exists mostly in Scotland and considers itself by Scottish national constitution the rightful official church of the nation of Scotland.  But there are, of course, other branches of the visible church in other nations as well, such as the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, which exists primarily in the United States.

128. Q. Are there other forms of Church government adopted by men professing to follow the New Testament?
A. Yes, there is the Independent or Congregational form of government in which congregations are not in subjection to superior courts, and frequently no distinction is made between teaching and ruling elders.

In presbyterianism, church government is collegial, and so congregations are not independent.  They are subject to superior courts.  As Charles Hodge articulated it, "The Presbyterian doctrine on this subject is, that the Church is one in such a sense that a smaller part is subject to a larger, and the larger to the whole."  In independency, by contrast, congregations are not subject to larger binding church councils.

140 Q. What is its Supreme Court of the Free Presbyterian Church?
A. The Synod is the Supreme Court of the Free Presbyterian Church and regulations for its affairs, and those of all the other Church courts, are to be found in the Church’s Manual of Practice.

The highest court recognized by the FPCS is its own Synod.  This highlights its separation from other denominations, as there are no mutual courts uniting the FPCS to any other denomination and so no recognized mutual submission with any other denomination.

141 Q. Is the Free Presbyterian Church opposed to union with other Churches?
A. No, the Free Presbyterian Church encourages biblical union with any Church in Scotland or overseas provided that there is a unity in doctrine, worship, government, discipline, and practice.

Of course the FPCS encourages biblical union with other churches.  This follows from its commitment to a presbyterian understanding of the unity and government of the church.  In a presbyterian system, the visible church throughout the earth is to function in formal unity and with collegiality in its government.  Denominational independency is forbidden.

142 Q. But should we not for the sake of brotherliness overlook differences and join with other Churches?
A. No, it is not brotherly to overlook important principles in doctrine, worship, government, discipline, and practice and so unless there is common ground on all these, any union would be at the expense of truth (Rom. 16:17, 18; 2 Thess. 3:6).

Although unity is a requirement, that unity must be in the truth.  There is therefore a warrant and a duty to refrain from uniting with churches that have compromised the faith and practice of the church in matters where Scripture has spoken clearly.  Here, the catechism articulates the FP church's opposition to latitudinarianism.

143 Q. Can Christ’s prayer “that they all may be one” (John 17:21, 23) justify creating a single Church from every Church that professes to be Christian, irrespective of its doctrine?
A. No, because this would make it contradict the clear testimony of Scripture that Church unity can only be in the truth (Eph. 5:11; 1 Cor. 1:10; Eph. 4:13-16; 1 Tim. 3:15).

Same comments as just above.

144 Q. Are there any in the visible Church who are not true believers?
A. In every Church that professes Christ there will be a mixed company of true believers and others who are not true believers.

This articulates the distinction between the "invisible" and the "visible" church.

145 Q. May there be such declension in a professing Christian Church that it becomes no longer Christian?
A. The Scriptures speak of a “synagogue of Satan” in spite of its profession (Rev. 2:9 and 3:9). Christ calls his people to come out of Babylon, which is the name given to the apostate Church of Rome in Scripture (Rev. 18:4).

Churches can become so corrupted that they should be considered "apostate."  Among these is the Romanist church, which has vitiated the core of the gospel by its false doctrine and worship.

146 Q. When should individual believers separate from the fellowship of others?
A. The Scriptures enjoin believers to withdraw themselves from those who are professed brethren and who walk disorderly (2 Thess. 3:6), so when men have so rejected sound doctrine, right government, and discipline, or have introduced superstitious worship, or are maintaining a schismatic position, and when an orderly correction of these evils fails, then believers are to separate from such.

Christ has given the keys of discipline to his church in order to preserve purity in doctrine and practice.  When believers fall into sin in various ways, if they cannot be reclaimed through an "orderly correction," they are to be cut off from the visible body until they repent.  This applies not just to church members, but to church leaders as well.  If church leaders are called to repent and refuse to do so, are then cut off by discipline (in the name of Christ) from the visible church, but yet continue to maintain that they continue to possess ecclesiastical legitimacy, the result will be the creation of two church bodies (denominations) where before there was only one.  In this case, continuing denominational separation becomes a duty.  (This happened, for example, when the FP church separated from the Declaratory Act Free Church in 1893.)

The concept of "schism" is introduced here, which will be discussed further below.  It is important to note here that we are to separate from those who "are maintaining a schismatic position."  That is, we are to refrain from union with those who are schismatics.  If there are professed church leaders who are schismatic, we are not to join with them by recognizing and submitting to their professed authority, for they are to be regarded as cut off from the fellowship of the church (and therefore also, obviously, from office in the church) until they cease to be schismatic.

147 Q. When is it lawful to break ecclesiastical union through separation?

A. Unity is an absolute duty and therefore the only lawful reason for separation is when one is compelled unavoidably to sin in order to maintain the bond of union. In this case the sin of schism is made by those compelling to sin. Up until this point any separation would be unjust schism since one may still testify against corruptions in the Church and use all lawful means to have them removed.

"Unity is an absolute duty."  Of course.  This follows, again, from the presbyterian nature of the church.  Since unity within the visible church is an absolute duty, we have a moral obligation to preserve that unity unless continuing in that unity requires us to sin, in which case we are warranted and have a duty to separate.  For example, when the former Free Church of Scotland adopted the Declaratory Act (see link above), this altered the constitution of the church and thus required sin of all its officers.  Therefore, the fathers of the FP church had no choice but to separate in the name of Christ from the Free Church.

Such a separation is warranted because those who have forced the separation by requiring sin must be disciplined by the church according to Christ's command.  Denominational separation is thus an act of discipline, by which the faithful party cuts the erring party off from the church and refuses to acknowledge its continuing legitimacy and authority.  It entails a charge of schism from the faithful party to the erring party, and the erring party is henceforth (until it repents) to be regarded as schismatic.

If separation is engaged in when sin is not required to maintain unity, this separation is unwarranted and is thus itself a schismatic act.

148 Q. What is schism?
A. Schism is a breach of the union and communion that ought to exist within the visible Church in doctrine, government and worship (1 Cor. 12:25; Rom. 16:17).

The visible church, being one in all the earth, has a duty to manifest that oneness by unity in its doctrine and worship (and practice), and in its government.  That is why unity is an absolute duty.  It is why "the Free Presbyterian Church encourages biblical union with any Church in Scotland or overseas."  Schism--that is, the unwarranted division of one part of the visible church from another part--is thus a sin.

A question arises here:  What is the status of a "schismatic church"?  Should it be considered a part of the visible church or not?  I think the answer is "yes" and "no."  In a de facto sense, schismatic churches are parts of the visible church because they profess Christianity.  (It is in this sense that the FPCS claims to be one branch among others within the visible church.)  That is precisely what makes schism possible and so heinous.  We do not speak of the church being in "schism" from the body of Buddhists in the world precisely because Buddhists do not profess to be parts of the Body of Christ at all.  There can only be schism between parts of the de facto visible church.  On the other hand, we are not to have formal fellowship with schismatic churches.  We are not to join formally with them and submit to their authority.  They do not possess formal legitimacy as churches.  Thus, they can be said to be out of the visible church considered de jure.  Historian James Walker, I think, expresses this nuance well as he attempts to articulate how the Scottish Presbyterian churches of the 1600s viewed schismatic churches:  "It is not clear to me what, according to this view, was the exact position of a schismatical Church. If it had the main truths, it was still a Church,--a Church, I think they would have said, in concreto and materially, and salvation work might go on there; but formally and in abstracto, it could not be recognized as a Church, or communion held with it as such."  A distinction of this sort seems the only way to preserve the nuances articulated here in the catechism.  John Calvin articulated a similar distinction in his comments on the status of the Church of Rome in his Institutes:  "In one word, I call them churches, inasmuch as the Lord there wondrously preserves some remains of his people, though miserably torn and scattered, and inasmuch as some symbols of the Church still remain - symbols especially whose efficacy neither the craft of the devil nor human depravity can destroy. But as, on the other hand, those marks to which we ought especially to have respect in this discussion are effaced, I say that the whole body, as well as every single assembly, want the form of a legitimate Church."  Of course, none of this is to say that all schismatic churches are on the same level in terms of how far they have departed from orthodoxy in doctrine and practice.

Can we have any Christian fellowship with those in schismatic churches?  Clearly, we cannot have any kind of fellowship which would negate our position regarding the schismatic nature of those in schism.  But if we can recognize (as I think we can, and as is implied in the above discussion) that the Body of Christ is manifested in various ways (though not legally) among schismatics at least in some circumstances, and that there are grounds for a charitable hope that many even among schismatics are truly regenerate Christians (members of the invisible church), then it seems to me (though this question is not addressed by the catechism) that we can engage in various kinds of informal fellowship with schismatics, so long as we do not engage in any fellowship that would condone their schism or negate our formal separation.

149 Q. What is the duty of Churches in Scotland who profess to represent the Reformed Church?

A. All Presbyterian Churches in Scotland claiming to represent the Reformed Church and who have caused or who maintain schisms contrary to the avowed Westminster Standards are bound to repent and to return to purity in doctrine, worship, government and discipline. The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland is not guilty of schism and claims to be the true heir of the Reformed Church of Scotland in doctrine, worship, government and discipline. While she certainly does not claim perfection, she maintains that all Churches in Scotland should unite around her constitution and testimony.

Here, the catechism makes explicit in the context of the nation of Scotland the conclusions already implicit above.  Since the FP church has a right to exist, and to exist for now separately from other denominations in Scotland, it follows that the other Scottish churches are in schism and thus need to "repent and to return to purity in doctrine, worship, government and discipline."  The FP church, of course, does not hold that itself is in schism, for that would be to reject its own legitimacy and authority and thus undermine its very claim to have a basis for separate existence.  Because the visible church has a duty to be unified, all churches in Scotland have a duty to unite around the FP testimony and thus with the FP church.

Of course, it is evident from the entire context that these same conclusions apply to the FP church's relationship with churches in other nations as well.  The catechism zones in to focus on the churches of Scotland because of its unique connection to Scotland, but the catechism has acknowledged that the visible church of Christ is and has a requirement to be "one in all nations," and thus, as it articulated earlier, biblical union is to be sought with churches in Scotland "and overseas" (and in nations other than Scotland but not overseas as well--that is, England).  The FP church's commitment to the international unity of the visible church in manifested, for example, in its existing congregations and presbyteries in other nations, such as its congregation in Santa Fe. TX, in the United States.  It has been said that these congregations in other nations are the seeds of national churches in these nations.  The 2011 FP Religion and Morals Committee Report (p. 11) put it this way:  "The Committee believes that this Presbyterial structure is the model for Church government in every nation and that our presence as a Church in other nations implies that we aim at fully established Presbyterian structures within these nations."  Thus, the FPCS does not recognize, for example, the OPC in the US as constituting the de jure church in the US, but has begun the process of building its own "Presbyterian structures" within the US.

Our look through the FP Catechism's discussion of the church and church unity has confirmed what we already knew from the implications of the FP's confession of presbyterian church government:  The FPCS believes itself warranted to continue for now in denominational separation from the OPC, and this means that the FPCS thinks of the OPC as a part of the de facto visible church but also as a schismatic sect speaking de jure.  There are other ways this conclusion can be confirmed as well, but we have now fulfilled my intentions for this particular article.

For more, see here and here.

UPDATE 3/10/15:  I thought I'd add a few quotations from the FP website further confirming what the FP Catechism says about the the oneness of the visible church throughout the world (not just in Scotland), the concomitant duty of unity, and thus the schismatic nature of any denomination (in Scotland or in any other nation) which is not in formal communion with the FPCS.

First of all, from the "What We Stand For" section of the FP website.  Under the heading of "Reformed in Church Practice" the website affirms that the FP church professes an "[a]ffirmation of Presbyterianism as the Scriptural system of church government to the exclusion of all others" and an "[a]cknowledgment that whilst all who profess the true religion should seek ecclesiastical union in one visible church, the Church’s testimony to Biblical truth should never be diluted: therefore our separate stance from other denominations is our unavoidable duty at the present time" (links in original).

Then, from the "Frequently Asked Questions" section of the website, we have this comment in response to the question, "Are You Ecumenical?":

Being a Presbyterian church we believe in the unity of congregations in a Presbyterian structure. We do not believe in the spurious unity of the modern “ecumenical movement” which minimises doctrinal difference between the Protestant churches and which is leading towards reunion with Roman Catholicism under the pope. We believe in the unity of all Spirit-taught, born-again, believers in Christ throughout the world, and that this should be expressed ecclesiastically in Presbyterian church government.

See also this statement on "Our Separate Stance," which includes this comment:

Accordingly, conduct giving the impression that there is no obstacle to association with other Churches undermines the necessity for a separate position and is therefore inconsistent with loyal adherence to the Free Presbyterian Church, and is consequently disapproved of by this Church.