Is Church Discipline Incompatible with Sola Scriptura?

Church Discipline Is, in Theory, Compatible with Sola Scriptura

In their arguments against Sola Scriptura, I have frequently heard Catholics argue that Protestant churches are acting hypocritically when they discipline members for disagreeing with or opposing the teaching of the church, given the teaching of Sola Scriptura.  The argument often goes something like this:  "Sola Scriptura teaches that there is no Magisterium, no Supreme Court in the Church that determines what the true interpretation of Scripture is.  Rather, everyone has a right to interpret Scripture for themselves.  This is called the 'right of private judgment'.  Each Protestant church can maintain its own existence only by maintaining this right, because their independent position is based on their own unique biblical interpretations.  But Protestant churches, particularly confessional churches that have courts that try people for false teaching, are being hypocritical, because the leaders maintain their own positions by means of the right of private judgment, while they deny that right to their members and discipline them for disagreeing with the biblical interpretations of the leaders.  They tell everyone to practice Sola Scriptura--which includes the right of private judgment--but then they discipline them when they do so."

I think this argument--or at least this form of it--is fundamentally flawed.  Here's why:  Protestants who affirm Sola Scriptura do not affirm a "right of private judgment" understood as described above.  No such right is inherent in the idea of Sola Scriptura.  Protestants (at least historical, theologically-conservative, confessional Protestants) do not teach that people have a right to interpret Scripture any way they like.  Protestants affirm rather that the Bible is the supreme authority in matters of doctrine, and that everyone has a duty to agree with the Bible.  Confessional Protestant churches affirm the Bible as the supreme authority, so they do indeed recognize a right and a duty belonging to each Christian to check the views of their leaders against the teachings of Scripture and to reject those views if they go against Scripture.  But if, instead, it is the leaders' position that is in accord with Scripture, the church member has no right to oppose it but rather a duty to submit to it.  So if a church member opposes the teaching of Scripture which is enshrined in the church's official confession, the church has every right to discipline that member.  Such discipline is perfectly consistent with the idea of Sola Scriptura.

In short, confessional Protestants do not teach that everyone's individual interpretation of Scripture is the ultimate authority, or that everyone's personal views are the ultimate authority; rather, they teach that Scripture, rightly interpreted is the ultimate authority, and everyone has a duty to conform their views to Scripture.  So it is perfectly appropriate, then, for churches to discipline members for rejecting or opposing the proper interpretation of Scripture on the basis of their own false interpretations of Scripture.

Church Discipline Is, in Practice, Often Incompatible to Some Degree with Sola Scriptura

However, while this common Catholic argument is fundamentally flawed in the way it is often formulated, there is some truth to it.  Sola Scriptura does say that every individual has the right and the duty to conduct his own investigation into the meaning of Scripture and, after he has done so, to stick with that interpretation even in opposition to church leadership.  That investigation must be conducted with care, diligence, humility, and prayer, with deference to the Church's tradition, to the great doctors of the Church, to the work of scholars, etc.  It cannot be a sloppy, haphazard, biased investigation.  But, once a properly-executed investigation of Scripture is carried out, every individual has a right and a duty to follow the interpretation that emerges from such a study--not because every individual has a right to believe whatever he wants, but because every individual has a duty to follow Scripture as the supreme standard.

However, under the Sola Scriptura view, unlike in Catholicism, there is no human Supreme Court on earth in doctrinal matters that can be looked to with implicit trust to provide the objectively-correct interpretation of Scripture.  This causes some serious problems in Protestant practice that Catholics (and others) have often justly pointed out.

1. For one thing, even if Scripture is perfectly plain and clear in its teachings, the lack of a human supreme doctrinal court tends to contribute to a significant amount of anarchy and division among Protestants.  It is evident why that would be the case, when we understand human nature.  A church may have come to the correct understanding of Scripture, and enshrined that understanding in their confession of faith.  A church member comes along and opposes that teaching.  The church attempts to discipline that member, but the member says, "I have the right and duty to conduct my own investigation into the meaning of Scripture.  I have done so, and I find your interpretation incorrect.  So, since Scripture is a higher standard, a higher court of appeal, than you are, and since you disagree with Scripture, I have a right and a duty to refuse to submit to your discipline and to continue to promote what I see Scripture as teaching.  We must obey God rather than men."  There is no human court to which both sides in this dispute can turn to adjudicate this difference over the proper interpretation of Scripture, so this controversy must end at an impasse, practically speaking, unless one side changes their view.  The two sides will go their separate ways, both insisting that they are right because they are in accord with the true supreme standard--the Scriptures.

Here is a statement of this problem coming, not from a Catholic, but from an Atheist Libertarian author:

The likelihood of conflicting interpretations of special revelation did not pose as much of a theoretical problem for Catholics as it did for Protestants. In the Catholic Church the pope was the ultimate arbiter of doctrinal controversies. His function was rather like that of the Supreme Court in American law; what the pope said was final, and that was the end of the matter (at least in theory). But Protestants, in rejecting papal authority and in maintaining that each person should use his or her own conscience to understand Scripture, generated a serious problem for themselves. Hundreds of Protestant sects arose, and their conflicting interpretations of the Bible frequently spilled over into politics. Thus Catholic critics of Luther, Calvin, and other Reformers were basically correct when they predicted that the Protestant approach to the Bible would result in a type of religious anarchy, as each individual viewed himself as the supreme authority in religious matters. Reverting to my previous analogy, the result was similar to what would happen if America had no Supreme Court, or judicial system of any kind, and each American was free to interpret and implement law according to his own judgment.

2. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that, in reality, Scripture is not always completely plain and clear.  Certainly, there are some things on which Scripture is so explicit and clear that hardly anyone will be able to find themselves in honest disagreement with what almost everyone can see that it says.  For example, if someone wants to argue that Jesus was just an ordinary human being, it is pretty easy to see that Scripture is clearly against such a view.

However, on many issues which often constitute the basis of theological controversy, Scripture is not so explicitly clear.  Take infant baptism, for example.  This is one of the issues over which Protestants and Protestant churches have often been divided.  Scripture never explicitly addresses the subject.  And yet this is an issue that cannot be avoided.  A church must take some stand on this subject.  It must embrace and practice infant baptism, oppose infant baptism, allow infant baptism as optional, etc.  Any church cannot but take some position on this issue that others disagree with.  Since Scripture never explicitly addresses this subject, nor even clearly and plainly hints at it, if one is practicing Sola Scripture one must come to one's convictions on this subject by looking at what Scripture does say and trying to infer, based on all available evidence, what the most likely correct answer is.  But here we are into complex literary and doctrinal interpretation, and at this level of interpretation it is going to be very difficult to come to any clear, objective conclusion.  We simply do not know what the apostles would say if we were able to ask them what the proper answer is.  We can find clues in Scripture that we can try to use to help us lean more one way or another, but we have to admit that the evidence is sparse enough that we would not think it terribly surprising or absurd if, were we able to ask, say, the Apostle Paul what the correct answer is, he gave an answer different from ours.

This is exacerbated by the fact that we can't even know if this method of trying to figure out the truth is the proper one until we first show that Sola Scriptura is the correct presupposition for interpreting Scripture.  If Sola Scriptura is correct, then the proper way to figure out the answers to doctrinal disputes is to do one's best to interpret Scripture for oneself, making use of all the clues available, trying to infer the correct answer as best one can even in areas where Scripture is not plain or explicit.  But if Catholicism should turn out to be true, this would be the wrong way to interpret Scripture.  According to Catholicism, Scripture comes as part of a package deal which includes also an infallible Tradition and an infallible Church teaching authority (Magisterium).  Scripture is meant to be interpreted within the context of the infallible Tradition of the Church and under the guidance of the Church's God-guided interpreters.  The Magisterium of the Church constitutes a divinely-appointed human, visible Supreme Court to adjudicate doctrinal disputes.  So if Catholicism is true, the Sola Scriptura method of interpreting Scripture is almost certainly going to lead to false conclusions, at least sometimes, because we will not be using the proper, God-ordained method for its interpretation.

So when we try to come to a conclusion about something like infant baptism on the basis of our own personal investigation into Scripture, trying to sort out the most likely answer based on whatever clues and hints we can find, without any reliance on an infallible Tradition or Magisterium, we are in deep waters, and the results of our investigation are going to be very subjective.  If we know for a fact that Sola Scriptura is the right method for interpreting Scripture, then we can trust that God will overrule the obvious tendency towards subjectivity here and ensure that, if we do our best, we will end up with the right answer.  And, when we find ourselves in dispute with lots of other readers of Scripture who come to different conclusions, we will assume that they are objectively wrong, even though it is hard to prove on a human level that one's own conclusion was arrived at in a clearly, objectively-better way than the alternative conclusions.  (After all, in disputes over the meaning of complex and subtle literary documents, it is notoriously difficult to separate objectively-better interpretations from differences rooted in personality, background, bias, etc., and the Bible is certainly an extremely complex literary document, written in ancient times in ancient languages by many different people in ancient cultures, very alien from our own in many ways, over thousands of years, containing a variety of literary forms, etc.)  But when we throw in the fact that we first have to prove that Sola Scriptura is even the proper way of proceeding to begin with, I think it must be concluded that there is simply insufficient data in Scripture available to do what Protestants try to do with it.  To a large extent, Protestants are trying to squeeze the milk of a complete and detailed doctrinal system out of the stone of a Scripture that simply cannot yield what they want from it.

Conclusion

I think that Catholics should be more careful in their criticism of Sola Scriptura not to caricature the viewpoint.  To conflate the idea of Scripture as the supreme doctrinal standard with the idea that people have a right to interpret Scripture in their own way is inaccurate and misrepresents what Protestants believe.  However, I think that this caricature is based on some true observations and legitimate criticisms that, if stated more carefully and clearly, can constitute some significant and legitimate concerns and objections regarding Sola Scriptura without mischaracterizing the position.  While Sola Scriptura does not imply that individuals have an intrinsic right to interpret Scripture contrary to the teachings of the leaders of their particular church, and so church discipline is not, per se, contrary to Sola Scriptura, yet, in practice, the lack of a supreme human doctrinal court combined with Scripture's lack of explicitness and clarity on many important doctrinal subjects does indeed lead to the conclusion that there is a degree of inconsistency between the practice of Sola Scriptura and the practice of church discipline.  For a church to be able reasonably to discipline one of its members for rejecting or opposing the doctrinal positions of the church and its leaders, the church has to be able to show with objective conclusiveness that its own doctrinal positions are indeed the positions of Scripture.  Since the Sola Scriptura method of interpreting Scripture cannot supply that kind of objective conclusiveness, there is often an unreasonable inequality involved when the church regards its own interpretations of Scripture as objectively superior to the interpretations of its allegedly erring members.

For more, see here, here, and here.

Published on the feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe.

A Catholic Response to Some of the Arguments of Jonathan Edwards Regarding Justification by Faith Alone

For, whereas Jesus Christ Himself continually infuses his virtue into the said justified,-as the head into the members, and the vine into the branches,-and this virtue always precedes and accompanies and follows their good works, which without it could not in any wise be pleasing and meritorious before God,-we must believe that nothing further is wanting to the justified, to prevent their being accounted to have, by those very works which have been done in God, fully satisfied the divine law according to the state of this life, and to have truly merited eternal life, to be obtained also in its (due) time, if so be, however, that they depart in grace: . . . Thus, neither is our own justice established as our own as from ourselves; nor is the justice of God ignored or repudiated: for that justice which is called ours, because that we are justified from its being inherent in us, that same is (the justice) of God, because that it is infused into us of God, through the merit of Christ. Neither is this to be omitted,-that although, in the sacred writings, so much is attributed to good works, that Christ promises, that even he that shall give a drink of cold water to one of his least ones, shall not lose his reward; and the Apostle testifies that, That which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory; nevertheless God forbid that a Christian should either trust or glory in himself, and not in the Lord, whose bounty towards all men is so great, that He will have the things which are His own gifts be their merits.

~ Council of Trent, Session Six, Chapter 16

The classic Reformed Protestant doctrine of justification (at least interpreted in an anti-Augustinian way) holds that we are righteous, or morally pleasing and acceptable before God and his moral law, only by means of Christ's personal satisfaction and righteousness being imputed to us (legally credited to our account), and not at all by means of Christ's satisfaction and righteousness being infused into us and worked out in our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Reformed Protestants believe that such infusion and working out occurs, but they say that this sanctification is no part of the grounds of our justification--our becoming morally acceptable to God.  Sanctification always accompanies justification, but it is completely distinct from it.  Catholics, on the other hand, hold that we are justified by Christ's righteousness not only being imputed to us but also by its being infused into us and worked out in our lives by the Holy Spirit.  For Catholics, sanctification is part of the grounds of justification.

Reformed Protestants often support their view by arguing that while sin is infinitely heinous because of the infinite greatness of the value of God whom sin is against, any virtue we could have would be completely worthless because of the infinite inferiority of ourselves in comparison with God.  So once we sin, we have committed an infinite crime deserving of infinite punishment.  After that, it doesn't matter how much sanctification we have from the Holy Spirit, we can never satisfy God's justice for our previous sins, nor can we merit God's favor or acceptance, because of the worthlessness of any goodness we can offer as mere creatures.  We cannot possibly have anything to offer God that would counterbalance or make up for our sin, or warrant God's favor.  What we need, therefore, is someone else's righteousness, the righteousness of a person whose value is infinitely greater than ours, and that person is Christ, because he is God as well as man.  When Christ suffers for our sins, this satisfies the justice of God and brings forgiveness.  And when Christ obeys God, God is so pleased with this that he considers it to infinitely outweigh the debt of our sin and to merit his good favor.  Christ's satisfaction and righteousness are given to us by means of a legal imputation, so that what we do not have and cannot have in ourselves (whether from our own power or from the power of the Holy Spirit) we can have through imputation, and thus become justified before God.

One of the greatest Reformed theologians and philosophers of all time, in my opinion, was Jonathan Edwards.  (He is also one of my own personal favorite theologians and philosophers, and a personal hero of mine.)  Here is how Edwards makes some of the arguments I just articulated above in his discourse on Justification by Faith Alone:

That the evil and demerit of sin is infinitely great, is most demonstrably evident, because what the evil or iniquity of sin consists in, is the violating of an obligation, or doing what we should not do; and therefore by how much the greater the obligation is that is violated, by so much the greater is the iniquity of the violation. But certainly our obligation to love or honour any being is great in proportion to the greatness or excellency of that being, or his worthiness to be loved and honoured. We are under greater obligations to love a more lovely being than a less lovely; and if a being be infinitely excellent or lovely, our obligations to love him are therein infinitely great. The matter is so plain, it seems needless to say much about it.

Some have argued exceeding strangely against the infinite evil of sin, from its being committed against an infinite object, that then it may as well be argued, that there is also an infinite value or worthiness in holiness and love to God, because that also has an infinite object; whereas the argument, from parity of reason, will carry it in the reverse. The sin of the creature against God is ill deserving in proportion to the distance there is between God and the creature; the greatness of the object, and the meanness of the subject, aggravates it. But it is the reverse with regard to the worthiness of the respect of the creature to God; it is worthless (and not worthy) in proportion to the meanness of the subject. So much the greater the distance between God and the creature, so much the less is the creature's respect worthy of God's notice or regard. The unworthiness of sin or opposition to God rises and is great in proportion to the dignity of the object and inferiority of the subject; but on the contrary, the value of respect rises in proportion to the value of the subject; and that for this plain reason, viz. that the evil of disrespect is in proportion to the obligation that lies upon the subject to the object; which obligation is most evidently increased by the excellency and superiority of the object. But on the contrary, the worthiness of respect to a being is in proportion to the obligation that lies on him who is the object, (or rather the reason he has,) to regard the subject, which certainly is in proportion to the subject's value or excellency. Sin or disrespect is evil or heinous in proportion to the degree of what it denies in the object, and as it were takes from it, viz. its excellency and worthiness of respect; on the contrary, respect is valuable in proportion to the value of what is given to the object in that respect, which undoubtedly (other things being equal) is great in proportion to the subject's value, or worthiness of regard; because the subject in giving his respect, can give no more than himself: so far as he gives his respect, he gives himself to the object; and therefore his gift is of greater or lesser value in proportion to the value of himself.

Hence, (by the way,) the love, honour, and obedience of Christ towards God, has infinite value, from the excellency and dignity of the person in whom these qualifications were inherent; and the reason why we needed a person of infinite dignity to obey for us, was because of our infinite comparative meanness, who had disobeyed, whereby our disobedience was infinitely aggravated. We needed one, the worthiness of whose obedience might be answerable to the unworthiness of our disobedience; and therefore needed one who was as great and worthy as we were unworthy. . . .

Having thus, as I imagine, made it clear, that all sin is infinitely heinous, and consequently that the sinner, before he is justified, is under infinite guilt in God's sight; it now remains that I show the consequences, or how it follows from hence, that it is not suitable that God should give the sinner an interest in Christ's merits, and so a title to his benefits, from regard to any qualifications, or act, or course of acts in him, on the account of any excellency or goodness whatsoever therein, but only as uniting to Christ; or (which fully implies it) that it is not suitable that God, by any act, should, in any manner or degree, testify any acceptance of, or pleasedness with, any thing, as any virtue, or excellency, or any part of loveliness, or valuableness in his person, until he is actually already interested in Christ's merits. From the premises it follows, that before the sinner is already interested in Christ, and justified, it is impossible God should have any acceptance of or pleasedness with the person of the sinner, as in any degree lovely in his sight, or indeed less the object of his displeasure and wrath. For, by the supposition, the sinner still remains infinitely guilty in the sight of God; for guilt is not removed but by pardon: but to suppose the sinner already pardoned, is to suppose him already justified; which is contrary to the supposition. But if the sinner still remains infinitely guilty in God's sight, that is the same thing as still to be beheld of God as infinitely the object of his displeasure and wrath, or infinitely hateful in his eyes; and if so, where is any room for any thing in him, to be accepted as some valuableness or acceptableness of him in God's sight, or for any act of favour of any kind towards him, or any gift whatsoever to him, in testimony of God's respect to an acceptance of something of him lovely and pleasing? If we should suppose that a sinner could have faith, or some other grace in his heart, and yet remain separate from Christ; and that he is not looked upon as being in Christ, or having any relation to him, it would not be meet that such true grace should be accepted of God as any loveliness of his person in the sight of God. If it should be accepted as the loveliness of the person as in some degree lovely to God; but this cannot be consistent with his still remaining under infinite guilt, or infinite unworthiness in God's sight, which that goodness has no worthiness to balance. While God beholds the man as separate from Christ, he must behold him as he is in himself; and so his goodness cannot be beheld by God, but as taken with his guilt and hatefulness, and as put in the scales with it; and so his goodness is nothing; because there is a finite on the balance against an infinite whose proportion to it is nothing. In such a case, if the man be looked on as he is in himself, the excess of the weight in one scale above another, must be looked upon as the quality of the man. These contraries being beheld together, one takes from another, as one number is subtracted from another; and the man must be looked upon in God's sight according to the remainder. For here, by the supposition, all acts of grace or favour, in not imputing the guilt as it is, are excluded, because that supposes a degree of pardon, and that supposes justification, which is contrary to what is supposed, viz. that the sinner is not already justified; and therefore things must be taken strictly as they are; and so the man is still infinitely unworthy and hateful in God's sight, as he was before, without diminution, because his goodness bears no proportion to his unworthiness, and therefore when taken together is nothing.  (Jonathan Edwards, Justification by Faith Alone, text taken from the plain text version at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library, but also found here or here)

I would like to spend the remainder of this article analyzing this overall argument.  I think there is both truth and error in the argument, and the error leads to the support of a false doctrine of justification (the Anti-Augustinian Reformed doctrine) and the rejection of the true doctrine of justification (that taught by the Catholic Church).

There are two parts to the argument, as Edwards lays it out.  The argument argues that 1. our sin is infinitely heinous before God and thus deserving of infinite punishment, on account of the greatness of God and our own littleness, and 2. that we can only be made right with God by virtue of the imputed righteousness of Christ because any internal righteousness we could ever have, even if worked in us by the Holy Spirit, would be worthless before God in terms of being able to counterbalance our sin or to make us morally pleasing to God and thus worthy of his favor, on account of the greatness of God and our own littleness.

1. It is true that our sin is infinitely heinous before God and thus deserving of infinite punishment on account of our infinite inferiority to God.  (See, for one example of a Catholic statement of this principle, the Catechism of Pope St. Pius X, Fourth Article of the Creed, questions 9-11.)  I have little to add here, as Edwards has spelled out the reasons for this quite clearly and accurately.  God is infinitely great.  He is the fullness of Being, the Supreme Good.  To reject him, then, is to reject the Supreme Good, and obviously this is going to be supremely bad.  The rejection of the Supreme Good cannot but be seen by an accurate view as anything other than infinitely hateful and wicked, and it is evident that the natural consequence of such rejection must be supreme calamity and misery.  God is the fullness of goodness, while we have no goodness of ourselves.  All positive being that we have comes from God.  So without God, we have nothing.  We ought, then, to honor God infinitely above ourselves and look to him and value him as the fount and source of all goodness.

2. Edwards is also right to say that we, as mere creatures, could not possibly have anything to offer God that could make up for the infinite hatefulness of our sins.  For that hatefulness is rooted in the fact that we have rejected the Supreme Good.  The only way we could make up for this is to offer God some good that is equal in value to himself.  But, of course, we are infinitely far away from being able to do any such thing.  Imagine breaking someone's priceless antique vase, and then attempting to make up for this by giving them a stick of chewing gum.  But our trying to make up for our sins by giving God some kind of creaturely satisfaction or righteousness is infinitely more absurd, for God is infinitely more valuable than an antique vase and what we have to offer God is inferior even to a stick of chewing gum (even chewing gum is a gift from God, after all, like every other good, and not something we possess of ourselves).  So we cannot make up for our sins or merit God's positive favor by anything we can offer as mere creatures.

3. Where Edwards goes wrong is in failing to notice the enormous--indeed, infinite--difference between a mere creaturely offering to God and an offering to God that comes about by means of the sanctification of the Holy Spirit.  When the Spirit sanctifies us, he infuses Christ's righteousness into us.  He applies Christ to our hearts, so that the virtue of Christ's righteousness comes to live within us and to manifest itself in our actions (both internal and external).  The righteousness of sanctification is thus a divine righteousness and not merely a creaturely righteousness.  The Holy Spirit elevates us to a level that is infinitely beyond our creaturely capacity.  Thus, the righteousness offered to God by those who are sanctified by the Holy Spirit is indeed a righteousness worthy of God's pleasure and acceptance.  It is so worthy not at all because it comes from us, for we are mere creatures, but because it is "Christ in us, the hope of glory."  Our Spirit-wrought righteousness, being the righteousness of Christ in us, is infinitely worthy of God's acceptance.

Edwards grants that, even though Christ took upon himself our sins, he was able to overcome them because he was able to offer to God a satisfaction and a righteousness that could make up for those sins and merit God's positive favor.  He was able to offer God something in return for our sins that God's justice was fully satisfied to accept as a basis for pardon and acceptance.  What Edwards, along with Reformed Protestants in general, failed to recognize is that sanctification amounts to the Spirit applying Christ and his satisfaction and righteousness within us, so that their virtue lives through us.  So Christ's satisfaction works itself out in our lives by our own repentance and turning from sin to God, putting sin to death and being reborn to new righteousness.  Christ's righteousness is applied to and works itself out in our lives in our inward righteousness and our good works, our love to God and neighbor (the heart of the moral law) and the actions that flow from that love.  When we, as reborn children of God, offer to God our repentance and our love and obedience, this is eminently satisfying to God and his moral law, so that he justly pardons our sins and accounts us righteous in his sight.  Christ's satisfaction and righteousness, infused within us and worked out in our lives through our repentance and obedience, reconciles us to God.  There is no boasting here for us, for all of this is entirely a gift of grace.  It is not our own righteousness that reconciles us to God, but Christ's.  The difference between the Reformed Protestant and the Catholic view is not that the Protestant view puts all our hope in Christ's righteousness while the Catholic trusts in his own righteousness.  The difference is that what the Protestant sees as happening only externally (by legal imputation) the Catholic sees as happening internally as well (in our sanctification).  But in both cases, we offer up to God what Christ has given us, and what Christ has given us is infinitely acceptable to him and sufficient to reconcile us to himself.

So there is no need to make justification and sanctification two completely distinct things.  There is no need for God to give to us another righteousness purely by imputation distinct from the righteousness he has given us in sanctification, on account that the righteousness of sanctification is insufficient to reconcile us to God and to warrant God's moral favor.  The righteousness of sanctification is fully sufficient, because it is not a mere creaturely righteousness but a divine righteousness, and so is not worthless but eminently worthy of God's regard, able to wash out our sins and make us right before God.  When we stand before the judgment seat of Christ after this life and at the end of history, and God looks at all that he has accomplished in our lives from beginning to end, he will be fully satisfied with his completed work (for we must remember that sanctification is a process that is not brought to full completion before this life is over).  He will render to us according to our works, and we will forever thank and praise him for his grace and mercy to us in Christ.

I'll close with the words of St. Paul:

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.  (Romans 8:1-18)

For more, see here and here.  (Text at the top of this article from the Council of Trent was taken from the Hanover Historical Texts Project at Hanover College, page number removed.)

Published on the feast of Pope St. Sixtus II and Companions, martyrs, and St. Cajetan.

Is Ordinary Magisterial Teaching Infallible?

I've already discussed this substantially and at some length here, so I will refer you there for a full treatment of this subject with evidence, sources cited, etc.

In this brief post I simply want to focus in on the term "infallible", and whether that word accurately describes the ordinary, non-definitive teaching of the Church.

I want to write briefly on this because it seems to be an unending source of confusion in some circles.  The reason for this is that the word "infallible" is subject to more than one meaning.  In general, the word infallible means "unable to fail", and applied to Church teaching it means "unable to teach error".  However, the two fundamental categories of Church teaching--definitive and non-definitive--are protected from error in different ways, relative to the nature of the teachings as definitive or non-definitive.

The definitive teaching of the Church refers to teachings that are given in order to provide a final, universal word on some subject.  For example, God is a Trinity.  This is an absolute truth, not contingent on any particular situation.  It is true to affirm this now.  It was true to affirm this two thousand years ago.  It will be true to affirm this two thousand years from now.  Etc.  It is a truth that is not connected to some limited set of circumstances or a limited level of knowledge.  We will never learn anything that will make it no longer appropriate to affirm that God is a Trinity.  No circumstances will ever change that will make this any less true.

Non-definitive teaching, on the other hand, refers to teachings that are, or at least may be, provisional or conditional in some way.  As an example, consider Pope Francis's recent teachings on the death penalty.  Pope Francis has affirmed that, given the state of our knowledge today and the various circumstances that hold in the world today, we ought to consider the death penalty "inadmissible" and work for its abolition.  The Magisterium has made clear that this does not mean that the underlying principle behind the death penalty--that the state has an obligation even sometimes to use lethal force to protect the common good--is invalid.  The Church has always affirmed, and continues to affirm, this principle.  But the Magisterium teaches that, given the state of things at this time, we ought to consider it inappropriate to resort to the death penalty because it is not necessary to protect or promote the common good.  We ought instead to work for the abolition of the death penalty.  Now this teaching is clearly contingent in a number of ways.  Its truth is linked to the peculiarities of our own time, and no claim is made that it has always been true or would be true in any possible set of circumstances.  The teaching is linked to the current state of our knowledge, in that no claim is made that growth in knowledge or awareness in the future, based on further thought or research, will not alter the conclusion.  All the teaching says is that, right now, given what we know and are aware of now, given the current circumstances obtaining in the world today, the death penalty is morally inadmissible and we should work for its abolition.

It is typically granted that the Church's definitive teaching is infallible--it cannot include error.  (Or at least it is granted that this is what the Church teaches about her own teaching.)  But some Catholics--particularly some among the Catholic traditionalists and some liberal-leaning Catholics--think that the Church's non-definitive teaching is not protected from error, that it can err and lead the people of God astray, and that the faithful sometimes have a right and a duty to resist and reject it if, upon personal investigation, they judge it to be wrong (it contradicts their interpretation of Scripture, of Church history, of the previous teaching of the Church, etc.)  As evidence for their position, they will often point out that the Church typically reserves the word "infallible" for the definitive teachings of the Church, not her non-definitive teachings.  They reason that if only definitive teachings are infallible, then non-definitive teachings must be fallible.  And since "fallible" means "can be wrong", they conclude that non-definitive teachings are not guaranteed to be reliable and so may sometimes require resistance.  They maintain this even though the Church has said again and again that all official magisterial teaching, including non-definitive teaching, is guided and protected by the Holy Spirit, comes with the authority of Christ, and demands submission of will and intellect from all Catholics, and in spite of the fact that the Church has never endorsed their ideas about the need to check non-definitive teaching for error using one's private judgment and then to reject it if it fails that test.

The problem here is equivocation over the word "infallible".  It is true that the Church most often uses the word "infallible" to refer to definitive in contrast to non-definitive teachings.  But it is equally clear, as I said above, that the Church guarantees the unfailing reliability as well as the binding authoritativeness of non-definitive teaching.  But how can non-infallible teaching be unfailingly reliable?  Isn't "unfailingly reliable" just another way of saying "infallible"?  The answer is that the Church tends to use the term "infallible" in a strict sense which includes the idea of "irreformability" and "definitiveness".  And we can see why she might do that.  Non-definitive teaching, even though it is unfailingly reliable as far as it goes, doesn't go as far as definitive teaching.  It is not intended to.  Non-definitive teaching tells us what we need to know for the moment, but it doesn't necessarily give us the absolute, final answer and guarantee that that answer will not change in the future.  The teaching leads us to the right answer in the present, but that's all it does  (Of course, some non-definitive teachings may be closer to universal and absolute than others, but, by definition, non-definitive teaching is . . . well, non-definitive.)  Since non-definitive teachings are potentially subject to alteration and even, in a sense, correction due to changing circumstances, they could be said to be less "infallible" than definitive teachings.  That is, if we are using the term "infallible" in a strong sense that suggests absoluteness and unchangeability, then non-definitive teachings are not infallible.

The mistake, however, comes in thinking that, because a teaching is not infallible in this strong sense, it is not unfailingly reliable as far as it is intended to go.  The dissenters create a false dichotomy:  Either a teaching is infallible in the strong sense of irreformable and absolute, or the teaching must be fallible in the sense of not inherently trustworthy or reliable.  This false dichotomy ignores a third category, which is the correct category for understanding the Church's non-definitive teachings:  Non-definitive teachings are not absolute and irreformable, but they are unfailingly reliable as far as the magisterial teacher's intention goes.  As such, they demand assent.  They don't demand the same kind of assent as definitive teachings, but they demand assent.  We are to assent to them according to their own nature--as non-definitive teachings--just as we are to assent to definitive teachings according to their own nature--as definitive teachings.  We are to assent to all official magisterial teaching according to the expressed magisterial intention in teaching it.  We are not to attribute more to the teaching than the magisterial teacher intends, but we are also not to attribute less to it than the magisterial teacher intends.

So there is no great mystery in the Church's position regarding the unfailing reliability and therefore the authoritativeness and binding quality of her non-infallible, non-definitive teachings.  The key is that all magisterial teachings are guided and protected by the Holy Spirit, come with the authority of Christ, and thus require submission of will and intellect.  All magisterial teachings are protected from error, but not all in the same way.  Definitive and non-definitive teachings are completely equal in terms of their reliability, but they are not equal in terms of the reach of the magisterial intention, and so, while both require assent, this assent must be matched to the nature of the teaching.  I'll end with the words of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith as they defined the nature of and assent owed to non-definitive teachings in their well-known and very helpful Doctrinal Commentary on the Profession of Faith written back in 1998:

10. The third proposition of the Professio fidei states: "Moreover, I adhere with religious submission of will and intellect to the teachings which either the Roman Pontiff or the College of Bishops enunciate when they exercise their authentic Magisterium, even if they do not intend to proclaim these teachings by a definitive act". 

To this paragraph belong all those teachings – on faith and morals – presented as true or at least as sure, even if they have not been defined with a solemn judgement or proposed as definitive by the ordinary and universal Magisterium. Such teachings are, however, an authentic expression of the ordinary Magisterium of the Roman Pontiff or of the College of Bishops and therefore require religious submission of will and intellect. They are set forth in order to arrive at a deeper understanding of revelation, or to recall the conformity of a teaching with the truths of faith, or lastly to warn against ideas incompatible with those truths or against dangerous opinions that can lead to error.

A proposition contrary to these doctrines can be qualified as erroneous or, in the case of teachings of the prudential order, as rash or dangerous and therefore 'tuto doceri non potest' ['not possible to be taught safely']. . . . 

As examples of doctrines belonging to the third paragraph, one can point in general to teachings set forth by the authentic ordinary Magisterium in a non-definitive way, which require degrees of adherence differentiated according to the mind and the will manifested; this is shown especially by the nature of the documents, by the frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or by the tenor of the verbal expression. (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Professio fidei, #10, 11, found here on the Vatican website, footnotes removed)

 For more, see here (the shorter version) or here (the longer version).

Published on the Feast of the Transfiguration

The Heart of Reality

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it, I see everything else.”

~ C. S. Lewis

The heart of the Christian worldview exhibits the light of its own truth.  Whether we apprehend it on a more intuitive level or in the form of explicitly-articulated arguments, the Christian worldview testifies to us of its truth by providing us with the key that unlocks the door of reality.  It tells us the truth about ourselves and our world, cutting through the confusion, the errors, and the incompleteness of alternative viewpoints.  To describe it is thus to exhibit both its beauty and its truthfulness.

The heart of Christianity is that God exists.  Matter and energy, time and space, are not the ultimate reality.  The story of history is not, as Macbeth put it, "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."  There is a Person at the back of all things.  Consciousness, and everything that goes along with that--awareness, wisdom, love, relationship, values, purpose--is the stuff of ultimate reality. It is not simply a by-product of mindless processes of matter and energy.

There is only one God, one Supreme Being from whom all things come.  This accounts for the unity of reality.  There is a oneness to all things.  All things are bound together and interdependent - like pieces of a puzzle.  Puzzle pieces fit together to make a puzzle because they come from a common source and a single vision.  Likewise, reality is one and interconnected because all of it flows from one common and unified Supreme Reality.  If there were only multiple, independent gods or original causes with no common source in one Supreme Being, or if God was himself disunified and divided into independent pieces lacking a common source, there would be no explanation for the unity of reality or source from which that unity could have arisen.

God is also a Trinity.  There is one God, and that one God exists in three Persons.  Each Person is a distinct, but full, manifestation of the single Divine Essence.  For an analogy, I like to think of a website.  There is an original version of each website that exists on a server computer somewhere.  Then that server “serves” the website to different computers, so that the same website exists on multiple computers.  It's one website, but multiple manifestations of that same website.  Each manifestation is distinct from the others, but they are all manifestations of the same site.  Similarly, there is one Divine Being, but that Divine Being manifests himself in three distinct Persons.  God the Father begets the Son, sharing with him his very Being, and the Holy Spirit is a third instantiation of the single Divine Essence who proceeds from the Father and from the Son and from their relationship.  (In my website analogy, the Holy Spirit might be analogous to the website as it exists flowing through the air or through the wires between computers, going from one computer to another.)  This is important because one of the essential characteristics of personhood is relationship.  Relationship, love, community--these are not mere accidental by-products of the universe; they are at the very heart of what reality is all about.  God is not just a Person; he is a Community.

Everything that exists that is not God was made by God, and the entire story of the universe is meant to reflect and exhibit God's glorious perfections, his supreme beauty.  We humans are made in God's image.  On a lesser scale, we reflect God's nature--his life, his consciousness, his reason, his love, his relationality.  Because we exist by sharing in the Supreme Good, we too have value.  Human life, and indeed all life, has value and dignity which we ought to respect.  Morality, too, is not simply a by-product of an amoral universe.  It is part of the fundamental essence of reality.  God's values constitute an objective standard of morality.  Moral goodness is not something we pursue simply because we are programmed to do so by our genes, while it has no meaning in any more ultimate sense.  Treating people with respect and love, treating all things with respect and love, and loving God above all else, really matters objectively and ultimately.

We were created to share in, to reflect, and to enjoy God's beauty, the beauty of the Supreme Good.  That's the purpose of life.  At the very heart of reality is the loving, joy-filled Community of the Trinity where the three Persons bask in the full enjoyment of all Good.  The goodness of this world--all the beauty, all the things we enjoy and that delight us--are derived from God and point back to him.  Our destiny, if we follow it and don't reject it, is to enjoy what God has made and to "follow the bread crumbs," as it were, of joy as they lead us back to the fount of all good, God himself.  We all know from experience that this world is but a foretaste of joy.  It is full of appetizing delight, but it never satisfies.  This is not because the universe is ultimately meaningless and we've simply evolved a taste for joy that can never be satisfied.  It is because this world comes from a Higher Realm and we are meant to follow its sign-posts to finally arrive there in the end.

The Christian faith teaches us that evil and suffering are a very real part of our world--something else we know only too well from personal experience.  The very idea of evil is meaningless unless there is true goodness.  Because God exists and we sense that intuitively, we are also aware of how far short our world falls when it comes to goodness.  The world is full of horrible acts of wickedness and terrible suffering.  Christianity does not sidestep this or trivialize it.  In the Christian worldview, God dives down fully into the world of our experience, thus validating it while at the same time linking it to something more.  Our world, while reflecting God, also contrasts with him.  Our weakness, ignorance, foolishness, ugliness, wickedness, and suffering contrast with God's strength, knowledge, wisdom, beauty, goodness, and joy.  Only God possesses Life and Joy in himself.  Our world can only get these things from God.  And the Christian faith teaches us that our world has rebelled against God, declaring independence from him and trying to strike out on its own, with the result that we have brought infinite calamity down upon ourselves.  We do not have the resources to save ourselves.  But God has come down into our world.  The Second Person of the Trinty, God the Son, has taken upon himself a human nature, so that his Divine Person is expressed now not only through a divine nature but through a human nature as well.  He has embraced our weakness, ignorance, foolishness, ugliness, wickedness, and suffering.  Rather than remaining aloof from us and our condition, he has come right down into it fully, but because he is God he has also brought with him the only thing that can save us--the power of the Divine Life.  He has bridged the gap between God and the world.  He has absorbed our evil while not being destroyed by it, and he has overcome our evil with his own infinite goodness.

This is why the cross is the central image of Christianity.  Notice the depth of profundity in this.  Some views of the world recognize the Supreme Good, but they fail to take seriously the reality of evil.  I sometimes call these "playground religions," because they sidestep the horrors of the world and try to make out that everything is really OK.  They do not speak to the darkness we all know so well.  Other views embrace the horrors of evil, but they become mired in despair and nihilism, abandoning hope of a Supreme Good that can provide the ultimate context for evil and promise its eventual overthrow and the redemption of the world.  Christianity embraces both sides and maintains the proper balance.  The cross exhibits this fully.  There we have a man whose feet and hands are nailed to wooden beams.  He hangs there, suffering and dying in agony, a victim of the wickedness and cruelty of the world.  He cries out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  God himself suffers and dies an agonizing death at the hands of the evil of this world.  The cross is thus a sign and validation of the reality of evil and the full horror of it.  And yet the Scriptures tells us that this scene, with Jesus dying on the cross, was planned by the Sovereign and Good God from all eternity as the lynchpin to the fulfillment of his good plan for all history.  On the cross, by absorbing all our evil, he brings that evil in contact with the Supreme Good, and the end result is that Goodness overcomes and obliterates the evil.  Jesus does not give way to despair.  He does not fall into sin and reject God.  He dies, but in dying he destroys death.  In embracing evil, by facing it and not sidestepping it, he defeats it, and three days later he rises from the dead, conqueror of sin and death and hell.  He ascends into heaven, completing the circle.  He who came down from heaven into our world goes back up into heaven.  But he brings back up more than he brought down.  He has bound us to himself.  He remains fully God and fully human forever.  In his ascension, he brings our nature up with him, filling us with his Divine Life.  The Holy Spirit, who flows between the Father and the Son eternally, flows down to us and brings us up into the Divine Life and Love, and we are adopted as children of God.  Our evil overcome, we become heirs of God, destined, unless we refuse it, to share in the eternal celebration that is God's own inner life.  Only in Christianity are both sides of the equation affirmed and properly balanced--evil is acknowledged and accepted for all that it is, and yet it is put in its place as subservient to the Ultimate Good, giving way to that Good in the end.  The cross is a symbol of the power and reality of evil, but also a symbol of its defeat and the ultimate triumph of Goodness.  Whenever we see a cross on the outside of a church, in a church building, in the homes of the faithful, or anywhere, we see the sign of a faith that tells us the full truth about ourselves, leaving out nothing.  The whole story of all we are is there.  As the Church, we are the official witnesses of God in this world, bringing the message that unlocks the door of reality to all people, calling them to take up their crosses and follow Christ to eternal life.

Deep within all of us, whether we recognize it or not explicitly, we know that consciousness, love, relationship, and joy are a deeper part of reality than mere mindless matter and energy and physical laws.  We know that there is a point to all of this, that reality is a story with a purpose that is unfolding.  We know that life and happiness matter, and that we ought to seek the good of ourselves and others and hate and oppose cruelty and wickedness and suffering, and that we ought to love the Supreme Good above all else, because goodness is not merely a by-product of a mindless and amoral universe but is at the heart of what reality is all about.  We know that there is great evil in this world, and that that evil is not merely out there but runs through our own hearts as well.  We know that we need to get back to the source of life and goodness, and that that source is outside of us, outside of our world, and we don't have the resources within ourselves to fulfill our longings for goodness or to fix the brokenness of our world.  We have to go back to the Source of all Being, the Supreme source of Goodness, to fill and replenish what we lack.  We know that if we are to be saved, and if any meaning is to come out of all of this, it must come from goodness overcoming evil--not sidestepping it, or ignoring it, or trivializing it, or succumbing to it, but facing it head-on, embracing it, and overcoming it.  There must be a bridge that can link us to the Supreme Good, and only the Supreme Good himself can build that bridge.  We can see in the cross the fulfillment of all that we know deep down, at the most fundamental level of our being.  And that is why we know, or can know, that Christianity really is God's message to us, God's coming to us, and that therefore it is true.

For more on our intuitions about morality and why they require God, see here and here.  For a short case for Christianity that makes use of explicit philosophical arguments, see here.  For a fuller case for Christianity, see here.  For a short case for Catholicism more specifically, see here.

Published, appropriately, on the Feast of the Transfiguration.