Book References

MoT– The Meaning of Tradition, Yves Congar, O.P., Ignatius Press 1964, (translation from the French by A.N. Woodrow)

FCF- Foundations of Christian Faith, an introduction to the idea of Christianity, Karl Rahner, translated by William V. Dych, Seabury Press NY, 1978

CCC- Catechism of the Catholic Church

AVS– Apologia Vita Sua, St. Cardinal John Henry Newman

EDD– Essay on the development of Christian Doctrine, St. Cardinal John Henry Newman, LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO, NY, Bombay, Calcutta 1909

All Bible References are from the NRSV Catholic Edition.

Introduction

Every great religion has a secret to surviving existential challenges: Hinduism has “syncretism”, the assimilation of diversity, Buddhism has a calm detachment from challenges, and Christianity’s secret is the Church.

If I had one last breath with which to advice, I would say: “Go to Church”. These three words contain the formula of Salvation and the sure Path to Heaven.

Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!’ ¹⁷And he was afraid, and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’ Genesis 28:16,17

“God’s will is Creation and it is called the World, his intention is Salvation, and it is called the Church.” -St. Athanasius

PART I: INTERPRETATION OF TEXT- THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

Scripture as an Infallible Text

To start with, It is necessary to demarcate at the very beginning what it is that Christians are defining as infallible. It is purely the scripture as a body, a bound volume of text. This belief is quite uniform among all the Christian denominations, and the Old Jerome gave a really good explanation of why:

“Every revealed religion must sooner or later feel the urgency for a canon, for if God had broken the silence in order to disclose His will to man, it must be thereafter be possible to know with sureness where that disclosure lies. The canon guarantees this; it marks off the boundary between what is revealed and what is not, between what is human and what is divine. There is the need to preserve revelation, that is, to ward off any change or corruption. It’s pristine purity-as it proceeded from the mouth of God-must be kept intact.

Viewed objectively, the canon of Scripture stands as a body of literature endowed with an inner cohesion. Undoubtedly, this cohesion came about because these books were being used by a community guided by the Holy Spirit. They nourished the prayer life of the group, called forth reflection, and provided a rule of life. Books not conforming to this inner cohesion fall, by that very fact, outside the pale of canon. The faculty for judging such conformity or non-conformity resides in the Church. Acknowledgement from any other quarter, would be what Zwingli initially in his career feared, namely, a “human seal of approval set upon the work of God”. Augustine’s well known observation, “I would not believe the Gospel did not the authority of the Catholic Church move me to this.”

Isaiah 55:10-12 “…so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and prosper in the thing for which I sent it…”

Isaiah 66: But this is the man to whom I will look,
he that is humble and contrite in spirit,
and trembles at my word.

Hebrew 4:12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart

Rev 22 13-20  I warn every one who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if any one adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if any one takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.

The Myth of Individual Interpretation

Protestants disagree over the “main things” like baptismal regeneration (does baptism take away sin?), predestinations, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, or whether salvation can be lost. The Bible teaches (2 Pet3:16 NRSV) ”…speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures. (2 Peter 1:20, 2 NRSV) ^“First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, ²¹ because no prophecy ever came by human will, but men and women moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God”

The word ‘book’ occurs self-referentially 289 times in the Qur’an. Just a few examples: Sura 2:121 Those to whom We have given the Book recite it with its true recital. They [are the ones who] believe in it. And whoever disbelieves in it – it is they who are the losers. Sura 2:2 “This is the Book about which there is no doubt, a guidance for those conscious of Allah.” 3:65 “Ye People of the Book! Why dispute ye about Abraham…Have ye no understanding?” and so on… The Bible contains no equivalent verse. Muslims see themselves as the “People of the Book” and see also Jews and Christians as “People of the Book”, while no such term exists in either Judaism or Christianity. Perhaps it’s closest equivalent is Sikhism. Christians however do not idolize words on paper!

“Individual interpretation of Truth” is a contradiction in terms. “Truth can nowise be subjective” (St Thomas).  I heard a Catholic preacher say that individual scriptural interpretation is like claiming “I have a Copy of this book, therefore I am qualified to perform the deeds contained within it’s pages”. “Sola Scriptura”, or “Bible only” is a logically incomplete term: “Bible only WHAT?” “Biblical interpretation by an accredited authority” is its completed form. (“Bible believing Christian” is another self-descriptive term used by some Protestant Christians is either an incomplete thought process for the same reason as above “believing WHAT of the Bible?”). The meaning of sola scriptura is really a personal infallibility claim.

Sola Scriptura is a non-starter for me because it’s an epistemological contradiction. What a sentence is and what it means cannot be the same thing, the latter must be a non-identical sentence to the first. So if I say to you: “what’s the meaning of Jesus washes away our sins?” There’s no point just replying “it means that Jesus washes away your sins”. You would need to say something different from what I said to you. A book’s meaning cannot just be the book, it needs to be an additional document. That’s why even Protestants write books about the Bible just like James White has written many books about the Bible. Sola scriptura would mean that only scriptural sentences have meaning for the faith life, but this can never be the case. But if we need additional sentences then we need an authority to decide which sentences are acceptable for us.

As an illustration of this, the most simple sentences are the kind that you find in instruction booklets. These are intentionally simple so that nothing goes wrong during the construction. Say are using an instruction booklet on how put together something as simple as a shoe cabinet. If it says “turn the screw”, someone who has never turned a screw in their life could still have trouble, they would need to know how much? How tight? which direction?

That sentence “turn the screw” does not contain that information, that is additional information which must be given by someone who does possess the know-how. So despite any problems that might be pointed out or objections raised, with the magisterial model, It’s really the only option we have. In effect in the absence of the visible presence of the author, there is no other way to derive a single meaning from a text.

C S Lewis who died a Protestant once said: “It is Christ himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God. The Bible read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers, will bring us to Him.” The CCC boldly puts forth in 111 But since Sacred Scripture is inspired, there is another and no less important principle of correct interpretation, without which Scripture would remain a dead letter. “Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted in the light of the same Spirit by whom it was written.”⁷⁷

Vatican II tells us that we must read Scripture: (1) Noting the content and unity of the whole of Scripture. (2) Within living Tradition of the Whole Church and (3) Paying attention to the “analogy of faith”.

“So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.” Nehemiah 8:8

A Protestant typically assert that scripture is a “self-attesting authority”. This impossible because God is the only authority in the Universe, and there is nothing that can be set up in competition with Him. God Himself authoritatively attests the truth of Scripture. But to use the verse that states Scripture is “God-breathed” (2Tim3:16) to infer that it is therefore “self attesting” is a non-sequitur. The verse does not say that God breathed a self-attesting authority.

“All scripture is inspired by God (or “God-breathed”) and is useful (profitable/useful-ὠφέλιμος) for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient (Gk.-artios), equipped for every good work.” 2 Tim 3:16-17. The word for ἐξηρτισμένος, the perfect past participle for exartiso (having fully equipped, for to complete, furnish, equip) is used only once in the Bible and rarely used in Greek classic literature per se. The verse says “all scripture…”, not “only scripture…”.

Indeed it is not as though Jesus caused a Bible to drop out of the sky, the Bible came a few centuries later as we have been saying. Rather What Jesus did do is appoint apostles, set up a Church with Peter as the head, and so on, as Paul goes about setting up Churches. Thus we can see a false dichotomy being created here between the things that are essential for the life of Faith, such that by choosing one part of that, Scripture, it has become possible for Protestants to neglect the importance of the other, and a lot of the scriptural basis of this is the very verse in Timothy. Even when the verse was written much of the New Testament had not even been penned, certainly the Gospel of John. In fact as we have seen elsewhere “Scripture” when it is used in the Bible, as when Jesus uses the term relates to the Old Testament writing (which have also not been canonised).

Any passage of prose, no matter how beautifully crafted do not contain their own verifiability criteria. In the case of Holy writ, that verifiability comes by virtue of God’s authorship. Because God is author of the words of Scripture, there is a guarantee that the words are true in one of the senses that those words can be interpreted. However a passage of words can be interpreted in different senses. It is the necessary limitation of human language that it cannot authoritatively indicate which one of those senses in authentic.

Perhaps the best analogy is the case of legal language, where even the most exact juridical language that is employed as the law of a land is in need of constant interpretation in every new case, and moreso so the more complicated the case. It is not as though the matters of faith, morals and the Salvation of our eternal soul were simplistic. GK Chesterton has a famous passage in Orthodoxy asserts that it is not that God is not simple in his approach, rather that the complicated maze of sin that we have woven have made necessary for us to walk a circuitous seeming road back as we retrace our steps to God.

Thus when a Protestant uses one of the catch phrases like “let Scripture interpret Scripture” one must point out that this is impossible, or the interpretation of Scripture must be separate from Scripture: one could not otherwise tell the difference! Indeed it is not as though Protestants do not have lengthy commentaries on Scripture which are none other than interpretations. My good Protestant friend uses a study Bible with commentary occupying half the page! Were we truly to use nothing but “Scripture to interpret Scripture” then in any debate, nothing but the words of Scripture must be used, period. Anything explanation over and above obviously is an interpretation. This would of course make it impossible to explain the main Protestant reject doctrines like the supremacy of Peter and the real Presence in the Eucharist. On the flipside, one must also state that the most certain way of misinterpreting Scripture is individual interpretation, it is the single indispensable qualification of the misinterpreter of Scripture that he reject ecumenism.

As Scripture says (2 Peter 1:20) “First of all you must understand this, that no prophecy of scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation” A Protestant I was speaking to objected that this verse was in relation to prophecy contained in Scripture rather than Scripture (ie that the prophets were not making things up), but even so, surely neither must we, rather we too must “be moved by the Holy Spirit”, not “personally interpret.

(fn- Baruch Spinosa (1632-1677), a lapsed Jew, and hugely influential philosopher, carrying on in the tradition of “universal doubt” of Descartes, asserts in the seventh chapter of his Tractatus Logico Politicus that before theology can get off the ground one can only do so only after you have com eup with the meaning of every Hebrew word and of every possible meaning of the Hebrew text, have exhaustively described the historical context, the cultural background and the canonisation process…basically he does not believe that a theological process should ever get off the ground.)

In a sense one can agree with Protestants that many of the Catholic doctrinal teachings are “unbiblical”, for they certainly are unbiblical in the manner of Bible reading employed by Protestants.

We keep returning to the matter of whether Catholic veneration of saints is truly, “necessary” is the same question as to whether sanctity is truly necessary, for it is evidently not in Protestantism, the proof is that the means of it is simply not specified. Catholicism certainly does specify it, and it certainly does not make it easy, it necessitates the communion of all the heavenly hosts, the communion with the earthly liturgy, the receipt of the Lord himself in the Eucharist and the presence of the Holy Spirit himself in all the sacraments, making the effort to purity with our whole mind, body and strength”, indeed making a “perfect sacrifice”, “offering our bodies as..” (Romans 12:1) none of which are specified as essential outside the church (we are not saved by Baptism, Eucharist, works etc., and it is not specified also what perfect sanctification in obtained by). Not only is the path to perfection absent but also the desire to be perfect as expressed in the words “it is sufficient…” which take away the possibility of available avenues of improvement, like regular confession and heavenly intercession.

You might think that the obvious counter to this would be for the Protestant to state that it is the sincerity of their prayers that determine their perfection when in fact even this avenue is unavailable, for the immediate riposte is “your prayers do not save you”. Protestantism ends up being theologically becoming utterly bereft and void of theology itself, if theology were the path to perfection, in denying that there is aught that we are “saved by”, it is unable to assert anything that we must live by, that we might be saved.

This makes Protestant the blatant attempt to take into Heaven that which is impure within us. For nothing impure can unite with God.this become the only contention required to refute the Protestant doctrine of incomplete or bipartisan sanctification (sanctification of the Spirit gas separate from that of the soul)

In fact from a single premise that almost no one is perfect, we can either perceive that almost no one goes to Heaven or else that three words of a necessary dogma though not explicit in the Bible “purification after death”, in one word “Purgatory”

We cannot snow discursively that’s prayers to the saints are prerequisite to salvation, we can show that they are perquisite to sanctification, especially where the type of sanctification we speak of here that is to be had in union with the saints is not even broached by Protestants who are satisfied and define the scope of the human state as that which is below this sanctity that is in union with the heavenly hosts.

“[S]ince man is somebody, and not merely something, the ultimate explanation for what happens to him should rest with somebody, and not merely with something.”
—Étienne Gilson (AD 1884-1978), God and Philosophy, p. 22.

Literalism is no Substitute for Interpretation

The kind of literalism that Protestants employ in defining their doctrines is more pharisaic than Christian, and certainly does not equate to “interpretation”. An example of “literalism” would be a man who, faced with a fire in the building, sees the little box that says “in case of fire break glass”. He therefore crushes his spectacles underfoot, technically having followed the letter of the instruction. Interpretation requires human agency, and is an operation of human agency. In the case of Scripture, it is the operation of the Holy Spirit in the human agent. To truncate all of this to “scripture interprets itself” is a obvious fallacy. One has left both the Holy Spirit and the human person out of the foundation of one’s faith.

There are certain “necessary conclusions” that must be drawn from Scripture. Such conclusions run the risk of being subjective and heretical if unwarranted. However not to draw necessary conclusions at all runs the risk of impoverishing the faith. There’s nothing in Scripture that says “If a thing is not done here, then do not do it”. There is nothing in the Bible to imply that every detail of the form that worship and prayer must take is included in the letter of the Bible. Faithfulness to Scripture simply does not preclude the possibility that conclusions drawn from that very Scripture might not give rise to practices that are not themselves explicitly indicated in it. To refrain from drawing an explicit conclusion from an implicit teaching in Scripture is not to be faithful to Scripture. What the Word of God, and our worship of the Word of God binds us to, is not the adherence to the letter of Scripture, but rather the faithful interpretation of it. To exclude a practice that is implicit in Jesus’ teachings, is what constitutes the practice of “preaching a different Gospel” (Gal 1:8).

The Appearance of Change and Invention

But what’s more among those practices will be those that might seem to us who have arrived after several hundred years of development of doctrine, and valid development of that doctrine, for God institutes a valid Church, as discontinuous from the Biblical teachings, when however, these are practices have existed in the early Church and have been reflected upon and sanctioned by that valid Church of God. This the Plan of God has a failsafe for humility through the obedience for more than anything else it is God who teaches us humility and how to be obedient, and humility through obedience.

In the doctrinal development of the Church, the appearance for the uninitiated is so far from what they might derive from a self-directed reading of the Bible that they perceive in it the appearance of change and human invention. However to truly do scriptural interpretation justice, one would have to have lived for 200 years and through all the times of the Church to have a fair shot at coming to a balanced conclusion. Having done so, we might conclude that he would appropriate over the centuries all of the trappings and adornments that we see in the Church today, in a completely organic manner.

The Father lovingly prunes the Church the branches of Christ the True vine so that the appearance of the Church by all means changes from what it is initially, it is considerably more beautiful and fruitful, for this is precisely what pruning achieves. And that is certainly not to say that the nascent Church did not have the same ethos and germ for indeed it did but in nascent and germinal form. Possessing the same Spirit, the nascent Church possessed the same power that is in the Church today so that is not to say that the power of the Church somehow increases, but nor is it by any means to say that it is sapped. But for the uninitiated, the great love and devotion that is fully developed in the church looks like something that simply does not spring out of an unguided reading of a book. Because what he sees is divine love fully represented in the Body of Christ. It cannot be anything but “other” than every expectation of man.

One trying to comprehend two millennia of doctrinal development in an untutored reading of the Bible is certainly daunted and certainly suspicions from the natural protective instinct might be aroused, indeed even the cradle Catholic asks himself these same question at some point. The answer he must give is simply this: If what has developed in Church doctrine works safeguards loving intentions as a result of those developments, then it is not an innovation.  If what is added is love, there’s no problem, for love cannot be de novo to Word, it is implied by it and worthy of faithful elaboration.  As St Paul says, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law” (Gal 5:22-23). Love can never be an addition in the Bible, and expressions of love for God, and for his people stemming for that love, however exuberant, can never be taken to exceed the love that is already shown in the Bible of God for us.

The Development of Doctrine

(St. Newman, EDC)

(Ch. 1, Sec.1)The idea which represents an object or supposed object is commensurate with the sum total of its possible aspects, however they may vary in the separate consciousness of individuals; and in proportion to the variety of aspects under which it presents itself to various minds is its force and depth, and the argument for its reality. Ordinarily an idea is not brought home to the intellect as objective except through this variety; like bodily substances, which are not apprehended except under the clothing of their properties and results, and which admit of being walked round, and surveyed on opposite sides, and in different perspectives, and in contrary lights, in evidence of their reality. And, as views of a material object may be taken from points so remote or so opposed, that they seem at first sight incompatible, and especially as their shadows will be disproportionate, or even monstrous, and yet all these anomalies will disappear and all these contrarieties be adjusted, on ascertaining the point of vision or the surface of projection in each case; so also all the aspects of an idea are capable of coalition, and of a resolution into the object to which it belongs; and the primâ facie dissimilitude of its aspects becomes, when explained, an argument for its substantiveness and integrity, and their multiplicity for its originality and power. (2)

There is no one aspect deep enough to exhaust the contents of a real idea, no one term or proposition which will serve to define it; though of course one representation of it is more just and exact than another, and though when an idea is very complex, it is allowable, for the sake of convenience, to consider its distinct aspects as if separate ideas (…) (3)

Christianity, an ambitious essay as employed on a supernatural work, when, even as regards the visible creation and the inventions of man, such a task is beyond us. Thus its one idea has been said by some to be the restoration of our fallen race, by others philanthropy, by others the tidings of immortality, or the spirituality of true religious service, or the salvation of the elect, or mental liberty, or the union of the soul with God. If, indeed, it is only thereby meant to use one or other of these as a central idea for convenience, in order to group others around it, no fault can be found with such a proceeding: and in this sense I should myself call the Incarnation the central aspect of Christianity, out of which the three main aspects of its teaching take their rise, the sacramental, the hierarchical, and the ascetic. But one aspect of Revelation must not be allowed to exclude or to obscure another; and Christianity is dogmatical, devotional, practical all at once; it is esoteric and exoteric; it is indulgent and strict; it is light and dark; it is love, and it is fear. (4)

…it becomes an active principle within them, leading them to an ever-new contemplation of itself, to an application of it in various directions, and a propagation of it on every side (…) (5.) This process, whether it be longer or shorter in point of time, by which the aspects of an idea are brought into consistency and form, I call its development, being the germination and maturation of some truth or apparent truth on a large mental field. On the other hand this process will not be a development, unless the assemblage of aspects, which constitute its ultimate shape, really belongs to the idea from which they start…(7) In time it enters upon strange territory; points of controversy alter their bearing; parties rise and around it; dangers and hopes appear in new relations; and old principles reappear under new forms. It changes with them in order to remain the same. In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often. (7)

Ch1 Sec 2 (9) The mind which is habituated to the thought of God, of Christ, of the Holy Spirit, naturally turns with a devout curiosity to the contemplation of the object of its adoration, and begins to form statements concerning it, before it knows whither, or how far, it will be carried. One proposition necessarily leads to another, and a second to a third; then some limitation is required; and the combination of these opposites occasions some fresh evolutions from the original idea, which indeed can never be said to be entirely exhausted. This process is its development, and results in a series, or rather body, of dogmatic statements, till what was an impression on the Imagination has become a system or creed in the Reason.

Ch 2 Sec1 (2) It may be objected that its inspired documents at once determine the limits of its mission without further trouble; but ideas are in the writer and reader of the revelation, not the inspired text itself: and the question is whether those ideas which the letter conveys from writer to reader, reach the reader at once in their completeness and accuracy on his first perception of them, or whether they open out in his intellect and grow to perfection in the course of time (…) Christianity differs from other religions and philosophies, in what is superadded to earth from heaven; not in kind, but in origin; not in its nature, but in its personal characteristics; being informed and quickened by what is more than intellect, by a divine spirit. It is externally what the Apostle calls an “earthen vessel,” being the religion of men. And, considered as such, it grows “in wisdom and stature;”

Rather the Harmful Subtractions!

I fact rather than be alarmed at “additions” that are only the natural elaborations upon the infinitely rich theme of love of the Bible, what must truly be guarded against is harmful “subtractions” from that same there through the sin of an excessive scrupulosity in interpretation. One does not have to look far for examples of these abound in the Protestant Churches who have faith without works, salvation without sanctification, the Lord’s Supper without the Lord, the Lord without his Mother, the Church without apostolicity and thereby without unity. Is this really an appropriate price to pay for the omission of prayer requests to those who already pray?

We have spoken much of doctrinal development, but in this section it becomes obvious that the doctrinal development is necessary even to preserve the very integrity of the commandment of love, for any corrosion to the life of faith and morals is a corrosion of this commandment. At the same time, the development of loving and honourable practises add glory to glory, not in the sense of adding to that which was incomplete, but adding other facets to the practise and liturgy. Secondly, in a changing world with fresh unbiblical challenges produces by sin whose nature is unbiblical, the answers are also necessarily found in the same deposit of faith. Again because the same challenges were not previously present, to the novice unqualified with a holistic understanding of the faith form which to derive them, they seem an innovation.

The Protestant Faith does not Represent Historical Christianity

(St. Newman, EDC, Intro)

“History is not a creed or a catechism, it gives lessons rather than rules; still no one can mistake its general teaching in this matter, whether he accept it or stumble at it. Bold outlines and broad masses of colour rise out of the records of the past. They may be dim, they may be incomplete; but they are definite. And this one thing at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this (5)

…and this utter incongruity between Protestantism and historical Christianity is a plain fact, whether the latter be regarded in its earlier or in its later centuries. Protestants can as little bear its Antenicene as its Post-tridentine period. I have elsewhere observed on this circumstance: “So much must the Protestant grant that, if such a system of doctrine as he would now introduce ever existed in early times, it has been clean swept away as if by a deluge, suddenly, silently, and without memorial (…) Let him take which of his doctrines he will, his peculiar view of self-righteousness, of formality, of superstition; his notion of faith, or of spirituality in religious worship; his denial of the virtue of the sacraments, or of the ministerial commission, or of the visible Church; or his doctrine of the divine efficacy of the Scriptures as the one appointed instrument of religious teaching; and let him consider how far Antiquity, as it has come down to us, will countenance him in it. (6)

What can be more natural than that divines and bodies of men should speak, sometimes from themselves, sometimes from tradition? (…) what more certain than that they must all have been instructed and catechized in the Creed of the Apostles? (…) what more conclusive than that the doctrine that was common to all at once was not really their own, but public property in which they had a joint interest, and was proved by the concurrence of so many witnesses to have come from an Apostolical source? (7)

What then are the “Essentials of Faith” as Indicated in Scripture?

It is one thing for a Protestant to assert: “Scripture itself is very clear as to what are the essentials of faith” and another to arrive at what those essentials are. For to a Catholic, there is one “essential of Faith” and it is the Church, and the sacramental life  of the Church in which the Christian person is nurtured. Certain things are absolutely sacrosanct, which are the unity of the Church, for there is no possibility of a “valid” division in it, and apostolic authority, for the teaching authority of the apostles is not ceded with the passing of the original 12. The apostolic authority was not given to the apostles for their own sakes but for the sake of the Church.  So when That Church includes not only the Earth but all of the Heavenly Hosts, including the humans who have passed on either to Heaven or to Purgatory. There is but one possible separation in the Church and that is the separation is permanent, for it is that of Hell. Apart from this it is communion that is permanent, the communion of God with all his people. That Protestants are not the “one true Church” if from nothing else then in that they reject all of Heaven as part of their Church! Angels and saints are not invited to worship at Protestant services, while on the contrary, the Catholic faithful celebrates together with all the hosts of Heaven. It is certainly implicit in Scripture that the Mother God is deserving of honour, that there are saints in Heaven before the throne of God, that they are concerned for humans, and that they are likely to intercede, that God is a Trinity of Persons, and that The Lord’s Supper is the Lord Himself as “real food” and “real drink”. Are these implied derivations from Scripture “essential to Salvation”? Certainly, for God has one plan for Salvation, and nothing in His plan is redundant. Will anyone outside the Catholic Church be saved? Probably, but “Plan B” is down to the mercy of God. Everything that is required for one’s Salvation is indeed alluded to in Scripture, but indeed it is not contained in Scripture, for Scripture is well capable of indicating that which lies outside it as essential and in this case so essential indeed as to be required in the penning of that same Scripture.

A Protestant gentleman pressed me to answer the specific question: “what is it that is essential to salvation that is not in Scripture?”, and the answer was simply “The Church”. What you get in the Church you do not get in the Scripture. There is not one place in the Bible where it says one must follow Scripture in exclusion. There is not one verse in the Bible where the onus for scriptural interpretation is placed with the believer. Scripture is not even a book about Scripture, it is a book about the Church! Scriptural interpretation is always ecumenical. It is always to be done within the context of the community of believers. God intended Scripture to guide the truthful development of Orthodox theology, not the cultic overemphasis of certain verses in preference of others. We discuss this in detail mainly in the third part.

Protestants’ “Not Adding Words to Scripture”

Protestants are scrupulously observant in not doing anything that can be seen to be outside the letter of the Bible (apart from the obvious and unavoidable-by-definition ones like dividing the Church and inventing new Church names) .However they abundantly omit biblical requirements. They do not mind omissions, only commissions, because of the verse that says “do not add anything to the book…”, and because nowhere does it say “follow everything in this book”. Catholics on the otherhand follow everything that is commanded in the Bible. There are no sins of omission in Catholicism. This meticulousness to adhere to the entire Will Jesus itself leads to certain practices that look like additions. Protestants never put themselves at risk of appearing to add to scripture because they have no teachings at all, only a vague notion of “faith”, in a sola sort of way. Protestants will never appear, as a result to add things to scripture, because they have subtracted most things anyway. Thus they do not follow the clear teachings with regard to the papacy, apostolicity, unity of mind and belief, honour due to the Mother of God, the sacraments like Confession, the Real Presence in the Lord’s Supper,  Anointing of the Sick, and the co-operation with grace through faith. In their determination and diligence in conforming entirely to God’s Will, the Catholic church takes upon itself the risk of appearing to “add words to the Bible”, The Protestant church runs no such risk because it has no teachings, it only teaching is “sola fide” the teaching that prohibits any other teaching with respect to the ground realities and operational activity involved in the life of the Church.

Body Language, historical, Cultural Confounders:

Fr George Rutler in his television series “Unchanging Truths”, relates how as he was sat by his mother’s deathbed she said “just remember, I will always be your mother”, to which he, the trained theologian, replied rather pompously to that simple woman “But Jesus said “who is my mother, she who listens to my word…””…“Well, if He did”, was is mother’s reply, “He certainly did not use that tone!”

The best experts will tell you that human communication is only about 15% through words and the remaining is so called “non-verbal communication”. Non-verbal communication is defined by the Business Dictionary as “Behavior and elements of speech aside from the words themselves that transmit meaning. Non-verbal communication includes pitch, speed, tone and volume of voice, gestures and facial expressions, body posture, stance, and proximity to the listener, eye movements and contact, and dress and appearance”. Going on to state, “Research suggests that only 5 percent effect is produced by the spoken word, 45 percent by the tone, inflexion, and other elements of voice, and 50 percent by body language, movements, eye contact, etc.” To state that the entire life of the soul can be conveyed in mere words on paper involves a rather large presumption.

And this is not to begin to speak of historical and cultural confounders. A Nigerian lady gave me an example that were a westerner to be presented with a book of native writings he was certain to completely misinterpret its content. Historical turns of phrase and use of idiom are linguistic barriers to accurate interpretation in any historical literary genre.

Perfect Information?- the “Black Hole Paradox”

Who is like the wise man?

And who knows the interpretation of a thing?
Wisdom makes one’s face shine,
    and the hardness of one’s countenance is changed.

Ecclesiastes 8:1

In scripture, every word is married up to every other word in the Bible, every phrase to every other phrase, every verse to every other verse. There are 180000 words in the Bible. To take this into consideration at every turn, and at every item of doctrine in every matter pertaining to faith and salvation is impossible and the recipe for disaster. Philosophical careers have been devoted to the study of meaning in the field of hermeneutics, and the likes of Hempel, Derrida will attest to this. Whatever meaning is ascribed to words of whatever book, there will simply not be a unified agreement on the final meaning, we cannot at any point say that the meaning has been arrived at. This is worth examining in more detailed studies of those same authors though I do not have any available to offer at the present.

Indeed, there is a certain mystery in physics called the “Black Hole paradox” that caused scientists a great deal of stress. It was formulated by Stephen Hawking along with Beckenstein. The gist of the paradox is that anything that went into a black hole could never be retrieved, and this was a contravention of a law of quantum mechanics which states that information can never be lost (information is conserved). It seems that a complicated resolution involving holographic theory may have now been formulated as the closest that we have come to answering it. I do not seek to present you with one more maladaptation of a scientific theory, but save to posit that Information, is a sort of black hole itself. If you pick up any given topic, and start to read up on it, there is no real end of how much you can read on the topic. Wherever you look for information, just as in the case of that geometrical quirk called a “fractal”, you enter a sort of infinite mind-well. You might be studying a complicated and exciting affair, or something as mundane as the maintenance of roadways in the United Kingdom. There’s no place at which you can actually stop and say, “Now I have all the information”. The narrower the topic, the more of a drudgery will the information that is coming forth be.

The thing about the information age is that we have so much information about so many things, that one of two things is bound to happen: You imbibe all the wrong information while discarding what is truly important, or you assimilate the two together. There is NOTHING amongst all the flood of data to indicate decisively and authoritatively which is which. When Lex Luthor enters Superman’s spaceship in the latest “Superman vs Batman” movie, a robotic voice says to him “The Kryptonian archive contains the information of a hundred thousand worlds…”.”Teach me!” is Luther’s optimistic reply. The only sure course for non-caricatural beings however, is not to latch on to a library, but to an institution. Whichever philosophical path you choose, you will find an unlimited amount of reading in it. You will be enthralled, you will find things to satisfy, and you will find mysteries. Where you will not get, is to the bottom of it. What you will get, is dissolved in it. 

If you start watching movies, there is no end to the number of good, even intelligent movie that you can watch, and then watch again and still feel that there were some aspect of it you did not fully appreciate and need to go back to. Everytime you watch recordings of old world cup matches you will find something new for your astute sporting mind to appreciate. If you are a fan of cricket, there is an eternal sea of trivia that can be accessed and revelled in, same for trainspotters, racing enthusiasts, and so on..Same with poetry and prose, a lifetime is not enough to read all the good books that have ever been written, and be satisfied that you have read them well. I usually feel like I have to start reading a good book again as soon as I have reached the end of it. Every scientific discipline is a bottomless pit whether it be biology, chemistry or physics. 

Similarly every religion is a bottomless deluge of information. All the Hadith of Islam alone, is probably enough to fill a small room floor to ceiling, same of all the Jewish Midrash and Halakha and Talmuds. The entire Talmud consists of 63 tractates, and in standard print is over 6,200 pages long. It is written in Tannaitic Hebrew and Jewish Babylonian Aramaic and contains the teachings and opinions of thousands of rabbis (dating from before the Common Era through the fifth century CE) on a variety of subjects, including Halakha (law), Jewish ethics, philosophy, customs, history, lore and many other topics. The Talmud is the basis for all codes of Jewish law, and is widely quoted in rabbinic literature.

We are poor wretched creatures with only one lifetime, most of which is occupied by sleep and work, and this is the plain truth, and this is what makes us vulnerable to the first lie that comes along. The point of the article, is to choose carefully what you read. You only get to read so much in this life. The only way to choose, is to reference your authors. If you choose the right author, based on the right criteria, you are likely to hit pay-dirt. The prize is seldom seen: wisdom.

The greatest wisdom of youth lies in its regard for the wisdom of age, as does its greatest folly lie in its disregard. There is no new wisdom that is to be gained without the benefit of experience. An intelligent fool is one who is greatly talented in a particular field, say particle physics, but whose social and personal life is imploding about him. An ignorant sage is one who has the capacity to raise in their family someone with the capability to become a particle physicist.

After Luther declared that he would base his theology on “Scripture alone”, the Catholic scholar John Eck gave the apt reply: “Martin, there is not one of the heresies that have torn the bosom if the Church, which has not derived its origin from the various interpretation of the Scripture. The Bible itself is the arsenal whence each innovator has drawn his deceptive arguments”

Religion Cannot be Subjective:

Religion can therefore not merely be subjective: “Of course religion to be religion and Christianity to be Christianity must be taken up and transposed and realized subjectively. It is really present only where a personal decision in faith hope and love is present. And of course the objective and the authoritative and the institutional can never take the place of the personal dimension in Christianity. But a genuine subjectivity which sees itself situated in God’s presence, and therefore knows to begin that it has to allow itself to be at the disposal of something objective which it has not established, this subjectivity understands what church is in the realm of the religious: it understands, namely that there is something that obliges me, and which forms a point around which I can orientate myself. Bout which is not present only when I begin to be religious with my own subjectivity. . By its very nature, the subjectivity of man which no one can replace and for which no one can shirk responsibility, requires that it encounter an objectivity which is the norm for this subjectivity (…)

Within (italics) the potential of being a subject as something freely and personally granted, this objectivity must be able to appear as a norm for this subjectivity. As something which is able to act authoritatively, this objectivity must be a religion of God and mot only an explication of my own feeling about existence. Christianity is the religion of a demanding God who summons my subjectivity out of itself only if is confronts me in a church which is authoritative. Otherwise the concrete person, who is not only transcendentality, but a concrete person with body and soul, with historical conditioning and a subjective subjectivity. remains abandoned to his own poverty and problems and to the possibility of perverting and misinterpreting the religious…Either history is itself of salvific significance, or salvation takes place only in a subjective and ultimately transcendental interiority., so that the rest of human life does not really have anything t do with it…”p344

“and if this salvific event as an act of God is not merely to come to me in the ultimate depths of conscience, but rather in the concreteness of my existence, then the concreteness of this God, who makes demands upon me and who is not my discovery or my creation , is Jesus Christ and his concrete church which makes demands upon me in the same way.”p347

“The question to which church a specific Christian wants to belong is more a question merely of historical accident and individual taste. For us, however, this kind of ecclesiological relativism is out of the question (…) that we would have the church even being constituted anew (…)if he maintains at all that the church is an article of his own apostolic profession of faith (…) We cannot leapfrog over the ages in between and reject them as anti-Christian, anti-Church, and anti-Christ. For otherwise we would have done away with this incarnational. Historical and corporeal continuity, and hence also with a corporeal and ecclesial reality which is independent of us” Pg 353-4 Karl Rahner, Foundations of the Christian Faith.

Verses like “when any two agree on something…it will be done”, also need to be read in an ecclesiastic light, or they would not hold meaning, for a lot of persons agree on the wrong things.  In other words it is to believe, that Scripture being sufficient, that those scant instructions are the sufficient framework for ecclesiology in and of themselves. However it is clear that no such structure exists that does arise from Scripture “in and of itself”, for in this sense the church seems to appear de novo in different form in every time and in every place, suggesting that either there was no natural structure, or that one of the churches, separated in time and space from that in Jerusalem possess the right structure.

Sola scriptura can be taken in two ways. It can be taken as a fee ranging individual interpretative permissiveness, leading to a multifarious denominationalism. However if a single univocal guiding principle be sought, then it turns into “sola fide”, the only principle in the Bible that can be taken univocally no matter what the interpretative scheme: “personal belief in Jesus”. “Sola fide” gives the illusion of unity. In practice sola scriptura results in a necessary mixture of the two the latter representing the “what” of belief and the former the “how”.

There are many ways to misinterpret scripture, and these are probably all represented by all the non-Catholic Christian denominations and sects that have come and gone through the ages. There are also many permutations of human failings and when a human person brings his mind, which is not free of the flesh to bear in the interpretation of scripture, the resultant heresies are also probably representations of the permutations of those failings. Catholics and Protestants both accuse each other with the greatest possible conviction that the other disobeys Scripture, and yet they are both human and both quote at each other the very same verses from Scripture.

The Gospels as Truly Displaying the Glory of Christ:

As biblical interpretation develops into a systematic theology, the true meaning and intent of the verses of scriptures are brought to light within the framework of this systematic theology. In this way systematic theology displays the glory of each individual verse of the Bible just as a beautiful gilt frame displays a priceless painting. With every verse displayed correctly as in the rightly designed frame for it and in it’s righteous place so as to display to the people its original beauty of intention according to the will of God himself, the author of those very verses.

St Paul says the Gospel “displays the glory of Christ”, and certainly God’s glory is a unity, You will hear persons make various demands of God, and this is where it all comes into play, and where God gives His reply: For those who ask “why does God not show himself?” the answer is that the “glory of God (is) displayed in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). Given to be seen physically by the early Christians, for us we might see the Face of Christ mystically as “seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2Cor4:4). As the Gospel is “of the glory”, so the “light of the gospel”, “is” the Glory of God. But such a great promise can simply not be taken in an unqualified and unmitigated manner, such that it gives rise to every distortion of that most holy “Image”: It must first and foremost be one. In Christ, man indeed may see God “and not die”. That is the precise reason why both King Herod and Pontius could not see God although they were staring directly at Him in the Face: Herod desired spectacle, while Pilate desired not truth.

Could it be shown that scriptural interpretation is to be taken as anything more than a literal reading of the text, (and this we can assert as necessarily the case because of the very nature and form of scripture: it is a mixture of biographical accounts, various authors writing down several centuries, prayers, proverbs, laments, historical accounts and the Gospels and epistles in the New Testament. In fact in the New Testament epistles are written for a specific reason to a specific Church and once again not written as a systematic set of instructions for the faithful. A lot that is presumed known is left unsaid), given a revelation that is not a system and not either fully elaborated into all possible ramifications,   the only means of a focus for unity is ….

Even the Israelites when the DIvine Presence left them, could nto remain united, although they had the Law

Part II: APOSTOLICITY

Old Testament Interpretative Tradition

^“If cases come before your courts that are too difficult for you to judge—whether bloodshed, lawsuits or assaults—take them to the place the Lord your God will choose. Go to the Levitical priests and to the judge who is in office at that time. Inquire of them and they will give you the verdict. You must act according to the decisions they give you at the place the Lord will choose. Be careful to do everything they instruct you to do. Act according to whatever they teach you and the decisions they give you. Do not turn aside from what they tell you, to the right or to the left. Anyone who shows contempt for the judge or for the priest who stands ministering there to the Lord your God is to be put to death. You must purge the evil from Israel. All the people will hear and be afraid, and will not be contemptuous again.” (Deut. 17:8-13)

On one particular day quite lost in the sands of time, about two and a half millennia ago, a certain King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon received a vision in a dream that he found particularly vexing. So he does the obvious and calls his court magicians and soothsayers etc. for help. But his request is completely unexpected- he simply and obdurately refuses to divulge any details of the dream! “…therefore, tell me the dream, and i shall know that you can give me the interpretation.” (Daniel 2:5-9) King Nebuchadnezzar was no fool! In this account of his seemingly bizarre and capricious demand of his courtesans, and yes, perhaps from being weary of the convoluted webs spun by his courtesans and advisors, he nevertheless displays unexpected sophistication that seems well ahead of his time: he realizes that authentic revelation can only be safely received with authentic interpretation.

Ecclesial Authority Prefigured

The word “ekklesia” from which we get the Latin “church” is used in relation for the “assembly of the people of God”, that gathered together to worship in the desert with Moses as their leader. These verses from the Old Testament are examples of how the authority God invests in the leaders of that assembly is not to be flouted.

Lev.10 1-6 Now Nadab and Abi’hu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer, and put fire in it, and laid incense on it, and offered unholy fire before the LORD, such as he had not commanded them. And fire came forth from the presence of the LORD and devoured them, and they died before the LORD.

Korah’s rebellion consists of 250 “leaders of the congregation”, “well-known men”, who rally behind Korah’s arrogant challenge to Moses and Aaron: “You have gone too far! For all the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them; why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the LORD?”…and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households and all the men that belonged to Korah and all their goods.

2Chron26:16 But Azari’ah the priest went in after him, with eighty priests of the LORD who were men of valor; and they withstood King Uzzi’ah, and said to him, “It is not for you, Uzzi’ah, to burn incense to the LORD, but for the priests the sons of Aaron, who are consecrated to burn incense…” The punishment of God is upon King Uzziah who turns leprous and lives out the rest of his days banished from the House of the Lord.

Judges 17:4-6 …his mother took two hundred pieces of silver, and gave it to the silversmith, who made it into a graven image and a molten image; and it was in the house of Micah. And the man Micah had a shrine, and he made an ephod and teraphim, and installed one of his sons, who became his priest. In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.

St John of the Cross- Ascent of Mount Carmel  Ch. 22 “…despite the many occasions on which Saint Paul preached the Gospel, which he said that he had heard, not of men, but of God, he could not be satisfied until he had gone to consult with Saint Peter and the Apostles, saying…Perchance he should run, or had run, in vain, having no assurance of himself, until man had given him assurance. This seems a noteworthy thing, O Paul, that He Who revealed to thee this Gospel could not likewise reveal to thee the assurance of the fault which thou mightiest have committed in preaching the truth concerning Him. 13. Herein it is clearly shown that a man must not rely upon the things that God reveals, save in the way that we are describing; for, even in cases where a person is in possession of certainty, as Saint Paul was certain of his Gospel (since he had already begun to preach it), yet, although the revelation be of God, man may still err with respect to it, or in things relating to it. For, although God reveals one thing, He reveals not always the other; and oftentimes He reveals something without revealing the way in which it is to be done. For ordinarily He neither performs nor reveals anything that can be accomplished by human counsel and effort, although He may commune with the soul for a long time, very lovingly. (…)

…And we see this clearly in the Book of Exodus, where God had communed most familiarly with Moses, yet had never given him that salutary counsel which was given him by his father-in-law Jethro — that is to say, that he should choose other judges to assist him, so that the people should not be waiting from morning till night.418 This counsel God approved, though it was not He Who had given it to him, for it was a thing that fell within the limits of human judgment and reason.

With respect to Divine visions and revelations and locutions, God is not wont to reveal them, for He is ever desirous that men should make such use of their own reason as is possible, and all such things have to be governed by reason, save those that are of faith, which transcend all judgment and reason, although these are not contrary to faith.

14. Wherefore let none think that, because it may be true that God and the saints commune with him familiarly about many things, they will of necessity explain to him the faults that he commits with regard to anything, if it be possible for him to recognize these faults by other means. He can have no assurance about this; for, as we read (…)Saint Peter, though a prince of the Church, who was taught directly by God, went astray nevertheless with respect to a certain ceremony that was in use among the Gentiles, and God was silent(…) And God reproved not Saint Peter Himself for this fault, for that stimulation was a thing that had to do with reason, and it was possible for him to know it by rational means.

(…)And thus, as Christ says in the Gospel, they will marvel at that time, saying: Mat7:22,23 “Lord, Lord, were the prophecies that Thou spakest to us perchance not prophesied in Thy name? And in Thy name cast we not out devils? And in Thy name performed we not many miracles and mighty works? And the Lord says that He will answer them in these words: “Depart from Me, ye workers of iniquity, for I never knew you””. Of the number of these was the prophet Balaam and others like to him, who, though God spake with them and gave them thanks, were sinners.

But the Lord will likewise give their proportion of reproof to His friends and chosen ones, with whom He communed familiarly here below, as to the faults and sins of neglect that they may have committed; whereof there was no need that God should Himself warn them, since He had already warned them through the natural reason and law that He had given to them”

Obedience- the Examples of Christ and Joseph

The gates of Paradise were shut through the disobedience of one man, and they were opened only through the obedience of another, One who was obedient unto the death of the Cross. IF the Genesis story meant anything it was that we learn from our mistake, the cardinal mistake that screams out from the Story of the Garden of Eden is “disobedience”. If Genesis is meant by the Divine Author as an exposition of human error, then the remedy to that error is obedience. It is an obedience that is pre-rational, is echoed throughout the Biblical storyline. The obedience is not based on comprehension, but on the undeniable experience of God given to the human individual. Jesus himself showed to us the importance of obedience when even as a twelve year old who had begun to grow in wisdom, “he went home with them and was obedient to them” meaning his parents Mary and Joseph. He submits himself to the temple rituals of the Presentation, Circumcision, and as an adult to Baptism by John the Baptist “so that all righteousness might be fulfilled”. One might say that even in his visible ministry he did not flout the law. He helps the Pharisees to interpret the law correctly, for God never inteneded that helping people be prohibited on the Sabbath (when objectiosn were raised to Jesus healing on the Sabbath), nor is it against the law to eat! (when there is an objection to grain being plucked from the field).

The incredible thing about Joseph’s dream is this: Joseph simply states his dream, there is nothing in the narrative that leads us to believe that he is being pompous. I’ve always felt like he is just telling what he saw to the persons that he trusts the most, his father and his older brothers. Israel is taken aback at first, but we see that later on that he “kept the matter in mind”, which immediately reminds one of Mother Mary, who “pondered these things in her heart”, of her Son who was her Lord. This is obviously the attitude of obedience that we are all called to adopt when we are faced with teachings that come from the authority of God that we might find difficult to instill in our lives. What is incredible about the story is that it is in the fulfilment of this dream that the lives of Joseph’s brothers, his parents and the nations are saved. Submitting to God’s authority in our lives might seem difficult and it saves our lives too. Its hardly surprising that we should find it difficult, since saving a life does not come easy. Submitting to Joseph was difficult for this brothers and father to swallow and it saved them. And joy comes in the morning. Praise be to God.

Let us meditate on what St. Catherine of Siena has to say of obedience in the Spiritual Dialogue, Chapter on Obedience “It (the world) would have been entirely destroyed had not My only-begotten Son, the Word, come and taken this key of obedience in His hands and purified it in the fire of divine love, having drawn it out of the mud, and cleansed it with His blood, and straightened it with the knife of justice, and hammered your iniquities into shape on the anvil of His own body. So perfectly did He repair it that no matter how much a man may have spoiled his key by his free-will, by the self-same free-will, assisted by My grace, he can repair it with the same instruments that were used by My Word.”

The Early Church had no Scripture:

When Rome, the greatest empire in the world was converted to Christianity literacy rates among the populace were only about 10%. Today with near-100% literacy and Amazon.com books available to your doorstep and at a “click of the mouse”, we still struggle to fill a Church. Early Christians who had a “Church with no Book”, if anything fared better than today’s Christians who seem to have a “Book with no Church”. For one, they were united, much more than today and second, it spread, much faster than today. The First Gospels or epistles written were (it is debated) either Matthew, or St Paul’s letter to the Galatians, Thessalonians or First Corinthians (AD 50,53, 53-4 respectively). This is up to 10-20 years after Jesus’ death, and it is yet only a book or two even at this time! Thus the earliest Church was not just upheld but founded entirely by what can be called as the “tradition” of the apostles.

“In the earliest years of the Church, in the time when she was never more truly herself, there were neither letters by the apostles not written accounts of what Christ had said and done. The Gospel was preached, and the Christian Faith was handed on simply by “tradition”. In this connection one often hears of the Gospel that preceded the Gospels, by which I mean the one that was imprinted on the hearts of the apostles by the living word of Jesus, and by the winning, penetrating and forceful unction of the Holy Spirit…” pg. 15 Yves Congar. The Meaning of Tradition

Reflection on the fact that the persecuted early Church for nearly three centuries had no Bible provides initial support to the assertion that the verses in the Bible that seem to assert the “sufficiency” of Scripture (specifically Tim and 1John), are not intended to equivocate the mentioned “sufficiency” with “exclusivity” when it comes to a foundational basis for Christian teaching. In any case these verses the “scripture” used in these verses does not refer to the written volume that we call the “Bible” today, nor do the verses that speak of “Not adding words to Scripture ()” refer to it. Scripture is only “sufficient” in what it is: in providing the scriptural basis for Christian teaching. Based upon the Holy Scriptures, and never contradicting them, the Church can authoritatively teach and yet not restrict herself to the words that are used in Scripture. In this sense the Church can teach a matter of liturgy or morals or articles of faith that are seemingly not found or addressed in the Bible at all, and yet are essential and indispensable to the life of the Christian. The Church’s teaching office, as real, concrete, and distinctly “other” than Scripture as a body of teaching, yet organically is one with it, for the Church is not forced upon it as form the outside but is itself Scriptural and is in itself fulfilling Scripture, just as Jesus though really “other” than the old Law, yet is one with it.

This “otherness” of the teaching office of the Church was required in the matters of firstly that were incumbent upon it for its very birth and existence, as we see below. In the subsequent early centuries, it was necessary for the successful combating of erroneous views, for the right form of Worship, particularly at the event of the greatest significance to Christian worship, the Lord’s Supper, the only event of communal prayer that is ordained by Jesus himself. Thirdly it was only after the writing of the Gospels that not only the first Christians but the first humans were now to be formally recognised as truly being “with God” in Heaven, and for the first time, God truly had a Mother. These are by no means insignificant developments to the Judo-Christian faith tradition, but momentous changes signifying and representing in the concrete sense the fulfilment of man’s desire for Eternal Life itself, the promise of God, and the fulfilment of the great Sacrifice of Israel: the Passover, which in many ways, and as we will see in the next essay, in the only true rendering and interpretation of Scripture, is its meaning: The Church performs what Scripture commands and ordains for that Church and for that Church alone: priestly Sacrifice. Thus we see that Scripture alone cannot itself in exclusion source of all that is necessary in the Christian life, rather it itself points to the Church and the necessity of the apostolic priesthood as that source.

The Immediate Issues for the Church, and those Subsequent

“the Church could not wait until the critics were agreed among themselves; she had to live. She lived her own life, which had been handed down to her as such, before the texts and together with them, in the texts and yet not limited to them, independently of them. She did not receive her life from them. She was (italics) the Church from the time of the apostles and not the product of their writings…”ibid., pg. 22

Among these needs of the early Church was a form of Liturgy that was fitting for worship. Thus we see that the Church needed to get the essentials of worship and the view of salvation exactly right as they pretty much define the religion in its identity as well as demarcate it from all others. The very same theological debates caused the great fragmentation we see among Christians in the post-Reformation era. However in the early Church there was a manner dealing with divergent beliefs and this was the apostolic tradition: the buck unsurprisingly, stopped with the apostles.

The church required the setting up of ecclesiastical structures, councils to deliberate over matters of faith and morals. Already the Church is spreading like wild-fire and is becoming the world-wide Church: a “humble priest” who could be from any corner of that world could be eligible to the position of the Supreme Pontiff of the Church, so also is the apostolicity to be preserved up to the ends of the earth. This was possible through a visible hierarchical ecclesiology. What really is the practical relevance of Christianity if it does not give clarity in the moral life nor in the life of faith? Moral ambiguity is entirely unbiblical. Ambiguities arise from the myriad ramifications of those discussions and applications to human situations that do not arise in the narrative.

As time went by, the early church-goers would not have to wonder as to whether for example, they were saved by faith or works, because they would ask the apostles themselves, or get someone to do so. There was simply no individual conjecture in the early church nor any room for it, precisely because of the apostolic hierarchy. Similarly problems of wanting to open new-named churches would also have been effectively dealt with: the answer would have been “no”. The concept of “individual biblical interpretation” is completely alien to the early Church, it is ever interpreted in line with the apostolic traditions and the written word which is ever available to the nascent church and nor are they permitted to stray from it. Without doubt not all these traditions are explicitly written and there are constant allusions to and evidence for the fact that what we have received in the Epistles is neither the complete volume of St. Paul’s teaching nor was St. Paul’s teaching meant to be comprehensive, and yet no believer would have been at liberty to have his own version of eternity security or its absence, his own version of the roles and interplay of faith and works, nor his own view of what the Lord’s Supper is. With regards to this last, we have the evidence that St Paul instructs the employment of extreme care reverence and caution, and gives a strong allusion to Catholic practise.

The questions of abortion, contraception, masturbation are not explicitly taught about in the Bible. Many matters are unresolved like the eating of pork, circumcision, baptism of infants and the delegation of other ministries like the feeding of widows which is mentioned. Of course there is all the question of the intercession of the angels and the saints and the place of the Mother of God, all of which are covered in separate essays. Similarly also marriages to presided over, Confessions as being heard, Baptism in its full signification and the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity itself. To refute any of this is to refute the importance of the aforementioned issues and therefore the need for dogmatic stances on them.

Most importantly, it is the form of worship that must be arrived at. For Jesus did not merely say following his Death and Resurrection, “and now pray to me, etc.” He seems to have seriously complicated things His enigmatic words in John 6 and the Last Supper. This I have discussed in great detail elsewhere.

Did we ever come to a point where scripture ordained its own closure? What is explicit in the writings is this, that all teaching should be apostolic. It is apostolicity, the foundation of Christianity, which ordains the closure of an apostolic canon called the Bible, and whose vision mandates doctrinal development based it. The Bible itself is not systematically organised theology, nor contains explicit doctrinal teaching. Apostolicity creates a body of text, and defines the point at which no more might be added to it. But apostolicity itself is not restricted by the limits of that text, nor does it end with it. Apostolic doctrinal development is the same process as the manner in which Jesus himself developed doctrine in the Gospels as he taught the Jews gradually the fulfilment of the times in Him.

Apostolicity Founded by the Word Himself

There is only one world, and only one time, and in that time there was only one moment when the world required the establishment of a Church. This moment will never again occur, nor will it be required, because God’s manifest plan, and stated intent simply does not fail. Thus it was that the world received One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. That Church, although it came complete with all the necessary requirements for what we see in it today, the ecclesial hierarchy, the dogma, ceremony and liturgy, these were not fully developed at the outset. What was present it the foundation stone of the Church that was planted by Jesus at Caesaria Phillippi: “I will build my Church” (Mat:16:17). This pronunciation is an undeniable and irrevocable promise from the mouth of the Lord himself, a supremey effective word, and all the organisational activity following such an edict as the commencement and process of this establishment and fulfilment of the intention of Jesus. This “process” will always be unique, for that process is tied up eternally with the times and the places and the people who established it and their relation and proximity and witness to the biblical events. Having once occurred, it will never occur again.

The Uniqueness of the Times of Christ:

Attempts to re-enact that which has already been accomplished gives rise to the manifest problems in the churches that we see today, for that precise reason, the historical collusion of events that gave rise to the birth of the Church are historical and not present, they are simply not available nor opportune For even apart from the momentous spiritual events that gave rise to the birth of the Church, we see that there are momentous historical events that made the time of its birth opportune. (Like the culmination of the philosophical and literary age of the Greeks, the power and influence of Rome, all providing the ideal platform for the spread of the nascent Church). However equally this uniqueness is what makes the Church susceptible to challenges to its authenticity, for what is unique simply lacks a standard to which it might be compared and by which it might be validated.

The teaching of the Bible is not intended as a “cut and dried” bound up volume which is to be taught verbatim, rather in all its teaching the handing to and the preservation and handing down of the faith, what established is “the means” by which such teaching might occur faithfully to the intent and Will of Jesus. The description of this means is the ecclesial structure of the Church, and its product is its teaching. The modern view of tradition is no more than that of the colourful but rather superficial, irrelevant and mostly sentimental patina of the kind of which inevitably seems to accrue around any large-scale popular venture. We will argue that quite to the contrary, the tradition of the Church is the entire constellation of the forms of worship, belief, ceremony, community, morality, sexuality, family and clergy which is universal. The Holy Book is the Holy Book, but it is tradition and none else, which represents what it means to be “Christian” in practise.

Jesus Made Present in and for our Times

There is only one “cornerstone” of Christianity and that is Jesus. Christianity therefore must necessarily be based upon the very Person of Jesus, with Jesus as writing Scripture in and through his Person, and writing as “not on paper but on the tablets of human hearts” (“you are a letter written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, a letter written not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts” 2 Cor 3:3) The spectrum of psychological and emotional vexations that a human individual is faced with is truly infinite and infinitely nuanced, and yet an hour spent in the Presence of the Lord sufficient to faithfully encounter every of one these for a lifetime and for eternity. Traditional” Christianity is the tradition of Jesus himself, that which is at all times in complete accord with his own Will and intent whatever the time and whatever the situation. It is to worship Jesus in the way that he wants to be worshipped. All times and all situations are not explicitly addressed in Scripture, although Scripture is for all times, and it is so through the apostolic tradition that is itself scripturally based. It is by means of this Tradition, the Christian penitent can live the Life in Christ through all times and places.

Through the apostolic tradition Jesus himself is made present in our times. The thesis of the Catholic Church is the answer to the question: “Is Jesus Substantially present to His people today?”. The affirmative answer is anchored first and foremost in the biblical notion that the Church is the mystical Body of Christ. If this is true in the present time then first and foremost, the Church must issue authentically the teaching of Christ Himself.  In that mystical Body, we as it’s members are nourished  and grow in the Faith.

Apostolic Ethos, the “Mind of Christ” that cannot be written

The present day ecclesiastical structures are the means of preserving that very apostolicity, or the apostolic ethos in which all present day situations might be interpreted and responded to. Tradition necessarily develops, while the means by which it does develop is necessarily unchanging. Such an “original ethos” cannot be written down in words. The very “Mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:16) is the principle and governs all the Church’s actions and teaching. Indeed the “mystical Body of Christ” is not absent the Mind of Christ! And yet neither can the Mind of Christ be found anywhere with His Body. Thus the principle itself is ineffable, it cannot be written down in words, for it is Christ himself. The apostolic ecclesiology is the very model of the holy apostles themselves sitting in council and prayerfully deliberating over matters of faith and morals, and even prior to that it is Jesus himself, the first of the apostles (Heb 3:1 “…Jesus the apostle and high priest…”) teaching his apostles as one among them and present with them, as the only One who can “develop” the Law to its required perfection and yet not “change” it (Matt 5:18).

This “ethos” of Jesus, the “divine pedagogy” by which He guides and instructs his Bride, and yet what the principle itself is simply cannot be stated“For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Cor 2:16).  For what was Jesus’ principle when he disallowed the application of the Mosaic Law in the case of the adulterous woman? What was Jesus’ principle when he rose on the day after the Sabbath instead of on the Sabbath itself? What was the principle by which God deemed that the curtain of the Holiest of Holies be ripped apart from top to bottom? What was the principle that was followed when circumcision was deemed non-essential, though God himself had asked that the Israelites be circumcised in the desert? What was the principle by which He did not command the stoning of the adulteress? Apostolicity is what is precisely that which is preserved and guaranteed by the Holy Spirit. That “the Spirit will guide you into all truth” (Jn. 16:13) is to say that the Spirit will guide you into the fullness of the one Truth.

Thus the apostolic tradition serves as the basis for doctrinal progress at every point in history down to the present day. Although for the external viewer the development of doctrinal teaching in the Church might appear discontinuous and even jarring or innovative, yet for one within the Church it is experienced as an organic continuity: at no point does the Bride turn her face away from her Divine Master and Teacher.“…How are they to proclaim him unless they are sent (Gk: apostalōsin)” Rom 10:15.

The entire notion of the apostolic ecclesial tradition is underpinned in my view by the “mystical Body” verses (Eph1:22,23, 4:4,5, 5:23,29-32, Col 1:24, 1Cor12:27), for it is unthinkable that the Mystical Body of Christ might not give correct teaching, whatever the physical impediments. Jesus’ assurances of this “eternal apostolicity” can be seen in His three great “apostolic edicts”.

The first: “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.” (Lk. 10:16), [cf Jn 15:20 “If they keep my word, they will keep yours also”].

The second: “Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven…” (Matt 18:18,19) [cf Jn 20:23 about apostolic administration of God’s forgiveness].

and finally the greatest of them all (Matt 16:17-19) in which Peter is commissioned as the first Pope, given the keys, the promise of victory over the Gates of Hell, and the authority of binding and loosing all in one verse. (The thesis of the papacy itself is an entirely separate scriptural discussion in the relevant section, but in organic continuity with the thesis of the Church.)

For what else is it for us to “listen to the apostles”, than to be apostolic? Thus also in the present time Jesus continues to teach through the apostolicity of his Church, perfectly preserving the Galilean prototype. Christianity is the apostolic procession of teaching with regards to faith and morals for Salvation. It is the apostolic ethos, structure and hierarchy protecting the deposit of faith, ever renewing and rediscovering it. The Church is not constituted by her documents (although those documents do reliably document what they do document about the Church). It is a myth that Christianity can be bound in a volume and delivered through the post, it is always the living faith that is handed on organically. Christianity is the presence of God himself among his people, providing the right guidance at every point in time with regards to faith and morals “so that we may discern his good and perfect will” (Rom 12:2). Apostolicity and no other is the principle of the unity of the Church, and so also is the Body of Christ not to be divided, indeed it is not!

For do the apostles not have a greatly exalted place in Gods’ Plan? Jesus says to them, “Truly I tell you, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt 19:28), “Therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens of the saints and members of God’s household, 20built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone.” Eph 20:20 and Rev 21:14 “The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.”

The apostles are here, they are in the Church as its foundations, not as unconscious building material (may non-Catholics hold that the dead in Christ are “asleep”), but as providing active guidance, in concert with their Head, Jesus Christ himself.

from the Dogmatic constitution of the Church n22 “The order of Bishops is the successor to the college of apostles in teaching authority and pastoral rule…together with it’s head,…the episcopal order is the subject of supreme and full power over the universal Church.”

Hebrews 6.1-5: “Therefore let us go on toward perfection, leaving behind the basic teachings about  Christ, and not laying again the foundation…”

Bishops and Deacons:

Tit.1:[7] For a bishop, as God’s steward, must be blameless; he must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy for gain,

Phil.1[1] Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philip’pi, with the bishops and deacons:

1Tim.3 [8]And let them also be tested first; then if they prove themselves blameless let them serve as deacons.

Acts 1:20 King James Version (KJV): For it is written in the book of Psalms, Let his habitation be desolate, and let no man dwell therein: and his bishoprick let another take.

Necessity of Ecclesiastical Structures

All the Church’s colourful and elaborate ecclesiastical structures, ceremony and rite, are nothing but what is required for this apostolicity & priesthood engendered in Jerusalem to take on a world-wide reality, doing at a global what the Temple of the Old Covenant did for the Jewish nation at a local level. With all its pomp and grandeur the Church seeks to rouse and inspire the faithful to prayer. Allen B Hunt writes, “It became obvious why Catholics built such beautiful cathedrals and churches throughout the world. Not as a gathering or meeting places for Christians. But as a home for Jesus Himself in the Blessed Sacrament. Christians merely come and visit Him. The cathedrals and churches architecturally prepare our souls the beauty of the Eucharist.” Confessions of a Mega Church Pastor: How I discovered the Hidden Treasures of the Catholic Church.

Divine Pedagogy That Instructs the Heart

“Although I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink; instead I hope to come to you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.” (2 Jn. 12 and 3 Jn. 13)

Thus is St Thomas’ magnificent reply to the question: “Whether Jesus should have committed his Doctrine to writing?”: “No books written by Him were to be found in the canon of Scripture. I answer that, It was fitting that Christ should not commit His doctrine to writing. First, on account of His dignity: for the more excellent the teacher, the more excellent should be his manner of teaching. Consequently it was fitting that Christ, as the most excellent of teachers, should adopt that manner of teaching whereby His doctrine is imprinted on the hearts of His hearers; wherefore it is written (Matthew 7:29) that “He was teaching them as one having power.” And so it was that among the Gentiles, Pythagoras and Socrates, who were teachers of great excellence, were unwilling to write anything. For writings are ordained, as to an end, unto the imprinting of doctrine in the hearts of the hearers.

Secondly, on account of the excellence of Christ’s doctrine, which cannot be expressed in writing; according to John 21:25: “There are also many other things which Jesus did: which, if they were written everyone, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books that should be written.” Which Augustine explains by saying: “We are not to believe that in respect of space the world could not contain them . . . but that by the capacity of the readers they could not be comprehended.” And if Christ had committed His doctrine to writing, men would have had no deeper thought of His doctrine than that which appears on the surface of the writing.

Thirdly, that His doctrine might reach all in an orderly manner: Himself teaching His disciples immediately, and they subsequently teaching others, by preaching and writing: whereas if He Himself had written, His doctrine would have reached all immediately. (I add: and yet He does not choose this means. Again, neither Jesus nor the apostles write systematically or in the manner of the Law)

Hence it is said of Wisdom (Proverbs 9:3) that “she hath sent her maids to invite to the tower.” …Since the old Law was given under the form of sensible signs, therefore also was it fittingly written with sensible signs. But Christ’s doctrine, which is “the law of the spirit of life” (Romans 8:2), had to be “written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in the fleshly tables of the heart,” as the Apostle says (2 Corinthians 3:3).

It is not Scripture that is the guarantee of the Faith but the Holy Spirit working through the Church that is.” [STIII Q.42]

Against Conflicting Views- Infallibility of the Galilaean Prototype

The manner of the apostolic teaching is the eternal manner of teaching found in the Bible itself and therefore is faithful to scripture. Thus the whole essence of interpreting the Bible according to tradition is no more than the continuation of a biblical tradition, (and hence thoroughly “Biblical”), as begun in the OT and continued into the NT, whereby doctrinal matters relating to Faith and morals are decided by those individuals designated scripturally i.e. in the Bible itself. The Catholic Church does today the thing that was always done in the Bible as attested to by it and asserted in it. The seeming additions to the Bible’s teaching are all developments made “in-house”, so to speak. A man can do what he wants inside his own house, he does not need to submit to any authority. Further when that man is Jesus, what He does can only increase the beauty of the teaching and the manner in which we comprehend it, and our relationship with Him.

“…this method of communication is the one most essential to the Church, and that it would suffice if it alone existed. St Irenaeus testifies to this in approx. 180 AD “if the apostles had left us not Scripture, would it not be necessary to follow the ‘order of tradition’ that they have transmitted to those to whom they entrusted the churches? It is precisely to this order that many barbaric nations have given their assent; they possess that salvation written “without ink’ or paper ‘by the Holy Spirit in their hearts’(2Cor3:3), and they keep the ancient tradition most carefully, believing.” Against Heresies 3,4,1 and 2 (PG7:856).” , pg. 18

“And just as the office granted individually to Peter, the first among the apostles, is permanent and is to be transmitted to his successors, so also the apostles’ office of nurturing the Church is permanent, and is to be exercised without interruption by the sacred order of bishops. (14*) Therefore, the Sacred Council teaches that bishops by divine institution have succeeded to the place of the apostles, (15*) as shepherds of the Church, and he who hears them, hears Christ, and he who rejects them, rejects Christ and Him who sent Christ” Lumen Gentium Ch.1 Sec. 20

“The order of Bishops is the successor to the college of apostles in teaching authority and pastoral rule…together with it’s head,…the episcopal order is the subject of supreme and full power over the universal Church.” Dogmatic constitution of the Church n22

Hebrews 6.1-5: “Therefore let us go on toward perfection, leaving behind the basic teachings about  Christ, and not laying again the foundation…”

In any debate within Christianity one finds two sets of verses that are set up in conflict, and this is destined to be a feature and limitation not just of Christianity, but of all human use of language. Putting one’s self in the place of the apostles, imagine that you need to safeguard the deposit of faith, as well as propagate the church down the ages, then one could not make do without ecclesiastical structures, handing down of authority, and of accountability that resided in a particular individual which is precisely the papal infallibility, an individual that represents for posterity where the “buck stops” as it were.  Further, one would need to hand down what one considered the right form of worship in liturgy, and the preservation of that which one considered the correct interpretation of Scripture: orthodoxy, and of course, the “small” matter of deliberating upon just what constituted the canon of scripture. That the apostles’ (and thus Jesus’) intention be, after the age of rigorously controlled teachings in the early Church, that there be no more authoritative teachers, but individuals interpreting verses in isolation for their Salvation. There is only one conceivable condition under which such a situation could be envisaged, and that is the situation where everything that had to be elaborated on in writing, as well as all that could not be written from being un-writable, had indeed been written, closed and bound. The proof that this is not the case is firstly linguistic, secondly logical, thirdly the fact that the group that holds that teaching did have to be further elaborated, wins the debates on the elaboration of those same topics.

Faced with all these challenges, for one to then suppose that one could do nothing except that which is explicit in the writings, and then interpret those writings as to imply that the church needed no hierarchical structuring, this is not to interpret the meaning of the Bible but rather to interpret from the Bible, the structure and form of the machinery for the handing down and safeguarding of the faith, and deeming through such an interpretation, any such “machinery” or “structuring” to be heretical (It is notable that the Masonic lodge has no international headquarters, individual lodges acting autonomously and independently).

If such a scenario can be discounted, as we believe it should be, then the doctrine of papal infallibility proceeds naturally from scripture, and I have discussed this elsewhere, as to why it resides with the See of Peter. The “Galiliean prototype” of the Church is that of Jesus, the one who is “sent”, the first apostle (Gk: apostelein- sent) occupying the seat of authority and delegating that authority to men, in the case the 12 saying as in Matt. 28:18 “all authority under Heaven and Earth has been given to me. Therefore go…”. The buck for scriptural interpretation stops with the “apostolic college”, and not only that, they “Keys to the Gates of Heaven” (Matt 16:16-19) reside with them, so that no edict affecting the Church might be made apart from them, just as none ever was in the Bible, no new-named Church could ever be planted for that same reason of the presence of the apostolic college as the sole locus of any Church, and the eternal Salvation of souls to be dependent upon obedience to that apostolic college for posterity, just as it is scripturally. The reason for the papal infallibility is this, that the Mind of Christ is infallible. The Church is ever-united because of this: the Body of Christ can suffer no division.

Even the most cursory reading of the Bible is sufficient to tell on that Scripture is simply not given to us as systematised theology. One might ask: “Why is there no clarity/specificity of teaching?” God could have presumably revealed systematic theology verbatim, somewhat analogous to the Law of the Israelites that was explicit and required no interpretation, just pure application with prescribed punishments in its contravention. However the Bible that we received is a narrative story with interspersed teaching, prayer, prophecy, historical account, completely lacking explicit systematisation. If there was ever any need for proof of this then it is to be found in the existence of the numbers of interpretative attempts on Christianity that down the ages would be enough to fill many rooms of a library. Any one who objects to such a view would need to prove the clarity of his position by debating it against one with the opposite view and win. The Catholic Church takes the contrary view and believes it wins the debates on individual theological issues, thus proving the argument (at least in its eyes) for lack of clarity.

What could possibly be the purpose of God in giving us Scripture in this manner, but that such obedience to such a divinely ordained human teaching office may foster genuine humility and thereby also faith itself. The Church in its unity takes what is a true leap of Faith, trusting that God may bring about the unity that He promised, and thus through faith overcoming the myriad and serious human impediments to that very unity, emerging as “refined by fire” (1Pet1:7), trusting in the teachings in the teachings of his anointed Church leaders.

If at all it is accepted that the meaning of the Bible lies in anything more than the literal meaning of individual verses, then its meaning lies among those among whom it itself lay, and in the cradle of whom the Bible itself is engendered: the Church. The Church does not emerge as one of several necessary consequences of the text, rather the text emerges organically in the cradle of that perfection which is the Christ’s Mystical Body itself which is the Church, perfectly organised, for it is One and it is the Lord. The literalist interpretation of Scripture literally does not produce a unified interpretation, any more than there can be any literal unity in the Church any such interpretation engenders.

Now while it might be argued that a “perfect” Biblical translation is an impossibility, due to the presences of nuances which are linguistic, cultural, historic and archeological, and are common to the translation of any ancient language, a perfect interpretation for daily living might yet be possible, interpretation being related to the meaning as applied to belief and daily living, not just words. Perfect interpretation can only be arrived at and established by one means: the authoritative Scriptural interpreter: one Person must have the right interpretation, one person (or an institution of which he is the head) must play “Joseph” in King Nebu’s court. Such a person will interpret scripture: Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. In the living tradition of the Church that interpretation was begun in AD 30, with Jesus’ earthly ministry. (The office of bishop is referred to in the Bible in Acts 1:20 (KJV), Titus 1:7, 1 Tim3:8, Phil 1:1.)

In summary, the Galilean prototype, which is the authoritative “apostolic college” a council of persons in pre and post-Resurrection era which decides the articles of the faith, guards against the ambiguities of Scripture, while itself being unambiguous and entirely scriptural. We can only conclude that the reason that God intended it this way is for the benefits of the divine pedagogy previously discussed, and engendering the right attitude towards Revelation.

There is no reason to believe that the tremendous authority invested in the apostolic college represented by the handing over of the “Keys to the Kingdom, “whoever hears you, hears me” and the power to “loose and bind”, which while employed in the apostolic era, would be dismantled in the post apostolic age. It is a safe assumption that the Galilaean prototype is the model for the eternal Church, Jesus’ commandments being eternal and unchanging. Peter did not take his keys to the grave, nor did He hand them back to the Lord, queueing up with the other apostles also handing back their own powers. This is a bizzare interpretation of Scripture. It seems entirely reasonable to interpret from Scripture that all powers given to the apostles by Christ are left for the Church as the Church’s eternal heritage, her powers “breathed” upon her by Christ himself. Ubi Petus, ibi ecclesia. This is the “apostolic succession”.

A Canon for Scripture

It is essential here to give if but a brief outline of the canon of Scripture. The first thing is to have an idea of the situation in the first couple of centuries of the Church, and the bevy fo Christian and Christian-like writing that were and must have been in circulation at the time. The initial concept of canon came from an intention to standardize that which was “suitable for reading at liturgical celebrations”. There were we think in existence non-canonical writings even by the sacred authors, for eg there is evidence of an epistle to the Laodiceans by St Paul as well as a third letter to the Corinthians, sometimes referred to as “Corinthians 1.5) situated between the other two. IT is possible that all the apostles may have written epistles being lettered men. There were, by the second and third century we have well over a dozen accounts called “gospels”< a couple dozen epistles, apocalypses were a booming cottage industry, there were at least 10 apocalypses written, and there was a whole variety of Christian literature that was being produced, some was forged or purporting to be in the name of an apostolic figure and there were gospels being produced to support the theological agenda of gnostics and other heretics or those altering or mutilating other existing copies of the gospels. For eg the Ebionites took Matthew and hacked off the front and the Passion account. Thus the 27 books of the New Testament are really a minority in terms of early Christian writings. If Protestants Believe that the Holy Spirit inspired the Church Fathers to write for us sacred Scripture, then it should be much less to believe that the Holy Spirit inspires the Church first, not Individuals

There is no doubt that the greater authority resides not in the Book but in the writer of the Book. That is why no Christian will argue that it is indeed the Holy Spirit who is truly authoritative, not the mere letters on pages even though inspired by Him.

However, in the absence of objectively demonstrable and present day events of teaching of the Holy Spirit that can be independently confirmed, that authority is not shifted to Scripture as though validating “sola scriptura”, but onto the Church, the hands and fingers who lived and wrote the sacred Text, and to whom the authority is given, for authority must be present.

Part III: THE EMERGENCE OF THE CHURCH

The New Testament Ecclesiology

I once heard a priest and convert to Catholicism Msgr Stuart Swetland, relates what his friend at Oxford University said to him “…for Catholics really there’s one question more to ask, “DO you believe that the Catholic Church is who she says she is. She says that she is the Church founded by Jesus Christ, inspired with the Holy Spirit, that she is the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ extended through Space and Time, carrying on His mission through space and time…”? Various aspects of Church are dealt with in the New Testament and in a wonderful way, it seems that each Gospel writer deals with a somewhat different one. According to Rahner, “Luke’s special contribution to the theology of the church…(is) the fact that he situated the “period of the Church” and its missionary task explicitly between the “ascension” of Jesus and the Parousia (Second Coming)” Rahner is describing how Luke sees such a specific entity or period that is the “period of the Church” that begins with the Ascension of Jesus.

Further, quoting Schackenberg’s terming of Matthew as the “ecclesial Gospel”, he states: “Matthew is also concerned about the position of Israel and the interpretation of it in salvations history. It is said of the Jewish people “the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a people which will bring forth its fruit (21;43)…the law of Christ is proclaimed for this new people of God and for this new covenant in the Sermon on the Mount. The universality of the Church becomes manifest, (8:10, 28:18), and its constitution, its leadership an the discipline of the communities is are also clarified. This Gospel is conscious of evildoers in the community, and of the presence and support of the Lord for his community.

He goes on to say of Paul (of whom Luke is a follower, in writing his Gospel and Acts), “…But Paul still knows that he has to be in agreement with Peter and the original Jerusalem community. He preaches a doctrine which he has received from the tradition in a genuine process of paradosis…Even when he disagrees with Simon to his face, he knows that he has obligations to him, and hence basically he respects the church in its totality with its antecedent structures, structures which are binding on him even though he was added to the list of apostles.

(…) the church is also for Paul a cosmic reality and a heavenly presence…the penetrating idea of the body of Christ (see Appendix) was developed first and with special clarity by Paul. But (…) Paul has at his disposal a much richer and more comprehensive symbolism: the symbol of a plant, the building, the temple, the New Jerusalem, and the bride or spouse of Christ.” And with reference to the Pauline epistles, “the church is described in these letters as the well-ordered house of God and therefore as the pillar and foundation of truth. They contain very clear ideas about offices, ordination, catechical instruction and the purity of doctrine….” pg 337-339.

Rahner then discusses the rich ecclesiogical aspects also in the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Book of Revelations, but I will have to refer you to his book for further reading on this.

Acts 15 (NRSV) ²⁴Since we have heard that certain persons who have gone out from us, though with no instructions from us, have said things to disturb you and have unsettled your minds,^{* 25}we have decided unanimously to choose representatives…²⁸For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to impose on you no further burden than these essentials…

Eph 3:9-11 “…and to make everyone see* what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in* God who created all things; so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose which he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Matt 18: 15-18 “… If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.“

1Tim.3 [15] ”If I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth.”

1Cor.4:1-2 “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.”

1 Cor 15 37 “If anyone thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord.

Gal 9 ⁹As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received (the written Gospels had not been “received” at this point), let that one be accursed!“

Acts 16:4 (NRSV) ^“ As they went from town to town, they delivered to them for observance the decisions that had been reached by the apostles and elders who were in Jerusalem.”

1 Corinthians 11:2 (nrsv) ² I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions just as I handed them on to you.

1 Thessalonians 4 4 Finally, brothers and sisters,^[a] we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus that, as you learned from us how you ought to live and to please God (as, in fact, you are doing), you should do so more and more. ² For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.

2 Thess 2:15 So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.

Balthasar writes (pg 345) (the Divine) Hypostasis (Person- my addition), present to the Church produces in her a subsistence that is connatural to the Church, causing the latter to appeal “like a person”. In this view, therefore, the Spirit creates “the Church’s personality” by endowing her with the essential features of a person , namely, memory and consciousness (…) the dialogue between Christ and the Church, at its highest level, is a dialogue between Logos and Pneuma”p348 “When Christ, having become pneumatic, expands into the fullness of the Church two things happen simultaneously (and “in permanent dialectic”). Christ gives and inaugurates what is his own; thus the Church, to that extent, is his “Body”. He also sets it over against him, in dialogue, and to that extent the Church is his “Bride”. This can only be performed by the Spirit, who is “Person from Persons”, mediating immediacy…”

Scripture, the Result and Consequence of the Lived Tradition of Faith

“…and how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I wrote above in a few words, a reading of which will enable you to perceive my understanding of the mystery of Christ” Eph 3:4,5.

 Scripture itself is not independent of the Church, for scripture identifies not itself, rather the latter as that which “the Gates of Hell may not prevail against”, and the “bulwark of truth”.Scripture itself on the other hand, “contains everything needed for sound doctrine” and it is easy and non-conflicting to see this as pointing to the doctrine of the Church. What follows then is to explore the precise relationship between the Church and Scripture: Scripture is seen in the Catholic tradition, and based upon such verses that we have above enumerated, as the product of a living Church, a document (or collection of documents) that is valid precisely due to that fact: we have a valid Bible, because a valid church was founded, and not the other way round. Because the Church tells the truth, its Scripture is reliable. St Augustine’s famously quoted: “I should not have believed the Gospels, had the Church not pointed me to them”. Those very Gospels tell of how Jesus himself founded the Church.

But why dose the Church look different in the Scripture than it seemingly does today, and in subsequent years? In its early form the Church is a local organisation lacking the elaborate structures that we see built up around it today, but nonetheless still a Church, and simple simply because it was local and nascent. Yet it had within it everything needed to make that advancement to globalisation, its prime directive and intent. When it did make that advancement, then it was that the canon of Scripture was finalised, the hierarchical structure of the Church set up, and with it the commencement of the pronunciation of dogmatic teaching. All of this this took, for various reasons, and in no small part due to severe and repeated persecutions of the early Church, up to 4 centuries. Congar therefore states:

“It (Scripture) is not however the sole (italics) principle regarding the belief and life of the Church. To this end God has established two other principles: tradition and the Church, with her pastoral Magisterium. The Protestant reformation has unhappily put these three realities in opposition, subjecting one to the other and setting one against the other whereas the whole genius of tradition consisted in uniting them and recognizing their mutual relations, so closely linked that one cannot be conceived divorced entirely from the others. Scripture and tradition do not have the same function; tradition envelops and transcends scripture. It is more complete and could be self-sufficient. In fact, as Newman rightly says, the Church pronounces or teaches by means of tradition, and she verifies, confirms, proves, and where necessary, criticizes by means of Scripture. For Scripture is fixed; it remains as it is without alteration…the written Word has something unquestionable about it…This is why the Church verifies and proves her teaching by means of Scripture. But she interprets Scripture in her tradition and decides controversies by means of her Magisterium,, with reference to Scripture and tradition.”(pg 100-1)

Congar criticizes “historicism” quoting Blondel: “The Church possesses other sources of knowledge than the mere documents. She has the experience of Christian reality as such continually present within her, motivated and directed by the Holy Spirit.” Pg 121 “I think that at the deepest level this is due to (Protestants’) determination to make the religious relationship depend on nothing other than God (on his Word), so that he alone affects our Salvation. It is equally due to their lack of a satisfactory ecclesiology and, it seems to me, to the fact that the Protestant starts from the Word of God as the principle from which his religion reaches him (…)while the Catholic starts from the reality of Christianity itself that reaches him in and by the Church, ever since the apostles. The Protestant rejects what he does not find formally in the scriptures. The Catholic is unable to justify his position entirely by referreing to a text; but regarding it as an element of the Christian reality he has received, he can rediscover (italics) a certain testimony in Scripture.  Thus the Catholic tradition requires the verification fo documents without being rigorously and restrictively bound to the letter of text as such. It must justify itself by the text but from the standpoint of its present belief it recognizes in the text certain proofs not revealed by a simple reading of the text. The text controls it, but tradition clarifies the text…” Pg 126

“Scripture is the writing down of the history of faith of the original community (…) to this extent scripture is already the result of tradition (…) there is such a thing as an authoritative mission, a giving witness to faith in Jesus Christ, and Scripture itself represents the result and the consequence of the living tradition. Tradition is at once a transmitted succession both of witnesses and of what is being witnessed to. Scripture then, presents itself as something which appears only in connection with the living and authoritative mission of the church and with the testimony of the church which is grounded in the Spirit (…) Scripture exists because the church exists. It is not something that forms the church. And this church is a living church teaching authoritatively in tradition, and hence it has scripture. (…) (without the above), the authoritative significance of scripture could not be shown and made legitimate. (if it is, on the contrary understood that scripture does in and of itself does form the church), there still remains the question of how and to what extent and in what way this interior and pneumatic (Spirit-filled) power of scripture can seriously be formative of the church and can also divide the church (…) one cannot do this without contradicting oneself, or without simply making the principle of faith not scripture alone but rather man’s ultimate, inescapable and existential experience of the Spirit”. Ibid., pg.361-2

“that the community of believers can give at least a basic interpretation of scripture which is binding on individual Christians(…) Otherwise, of course, the church ceases to exist as a reality which is independent of one’s own subjectivity and private theology”Ibid., pg.363

“Scripture’s transposition*** into faith’s…pneumatic experience of reality*** which scripture means***are processes*** whose place scripture itself cannot take***, (…)(and the process of faith’s living understating of scripture) itself has an ecclesial character (…) it is…an affair (not only of the individual’s religious subjectivity) rather… of the church as such (…) this community of faith is not only the sum of individual religious subjectivities, but rather it really has a structure, a hierarchical constitution, and an authoritative leadership through which the church’s single understanding of the faith receives its unambiguous meaning and its binding character.” Ibid., p365

Scripture, as letters on a page, simply cannot do what tradition can do, it can act only in and through tradition. Scripture must be “transposed” into a living faith, and that lived faith is “Tradition”. This is why the Cathechism says that Scripture is “     “. Trent Horn: “In the case of sacred Scripture, God inspired the form through which his Word would be communicated so that the authors of Scripture would be “true authors (who) consigned to writing everything and only those things which He wanted” (cite). God is equally the author of Sacred Traditions that have been received in the Church apart from the written word. However God did not inspire the precise form or words through which sacred Tradition would be expressed. This means sacred Tradition is not inspired in the same way Sacred Scripture is inspired, but it is as inerrant and authoritative as Scripture.

The CCC Details the Method of Interpretation with Church Tradition:

76 In keeping with the Lord’s command, the Gospel was handed on in two ways:
– orally “by the apostles who handed on, by the spoken word of their preaching, by the example they gave, by the institutions they established, what they themselves had received – whether from the lips of Christ, from his way of life and his works, or whether they had learned it at the prompting of the Holy Spirit“;³³
– in writing “by those apostles and other men associated with the apostles who, under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit, committed the message of salvation to writing”.

77 “In order that the full and living Gospel might always be preserved in the Church the apostles left bishops as their successors. They gave them their own position of teaching authority.”³⁵ Indeed, “the apostolic preaching, which is expressed in a special way in the inspired books, was to be preserved in a continuous line of succession until the end of time.”³⁶

78 This living transmission, accomplished in the Holy Spirit, is called Tradition, since it is distinct from Sacred Scripture, though closely connected to it. Through Tradition, “the Church, in her doctrine, life and worship, perpetuates and transmits to every generation all that she herself is, all that she believes.”³⁷ “The sayings of the holy Fathers are a witness to the life-giving presence of this Tradition, showing how its riches are poured out in the practice and life of the Church, in her belief and her prayer.”³⁸

79 The Father’s self-communication made through his Word in the Holy Spirit, remains present and active in the Church: “God, who spoke in the past, continues to converse with the Spouse of his beloved Son. and the Holy Spirit, through whom the living voice of the Gospel rings out in the Church – and through her in the world – leads believers to the full truth, and makes the Word of Christ dwell in them in all its richness.”

80 “Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, then, are bound closely together, and communicate one with the other. For both of them, flowing out from the same divine well-spring, come together in some fashion to form one thing, and move towards the same goal.”⁴⁰ Each of them makes present and fruitful in the Church the mystery of Christ, who promised to remain with his own “always, to the close of the age“.

81 “Sacred Scripture is the speech of God as it is put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit…and [Holy] Tradition transmits in its entirety the Word of God which has been entrusted to the apostles by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. It transmits it to the successors of the apostles so that, enlightened by the Spirit of truth, they may faithfully preserve, expound and spread it abroad by their preaching.”

82 As a result the Church, to whom the transmission and interpretation of Revelation is entrusted, “does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy Scriptures alone. Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honoured with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.”⁴⁴

83 …the first generation of Christians did not yet have a written New Testament, and the New Testament itself demonstrates the process of living Tradition (…) 84 The apostles entrusted the “Sacred deposit” of the faith (the depositum fidei),⁴⁵ contained in Sacred Scripture and Tradition, to the whole of the Church

The Magisterium of the Church:

85 “The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.” This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome.

86 “Yet this Magisterium is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant. It teaches only what has been handed on to it. At the divine command and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it listens to this devotedly, guards it with dedication and expounds it faithfully. All that it proposes for belief as being divinely revealed is drawn from this single deposit of faith.”

“…the Bible is properly seen as the Holy Scriptures, a collection of writings that span some 1500 years or more. They represent a variety of genres, address very different situations and understandings of God, and lastly (in the case of the New Testament) represent the internal documents of the primitive Christian community. Christians treat these books as inspired, though there are some books not included, or only included by some Christians, that are also recognized as having a case for inspiration.

The Christian Scriptures are books (particularly in the Old Testament) that have a unique history of interpretation. Christians and Jews, traditionally, do not read these books in the same manner. In such a sense, they do not possess an “objective” meaning. Indeed, Christian Fathers have recognized more than one meaning being present in the text.

The Christian community predates its own texts (the New Testament) and is not described as in any way having a foundation on the Scriptures – the Apostles and Prophets are described as the foundation of the Church. And though the Tradition does not describe the Scriptures as somehow inferior to the Church, neither do they consider the Scriptures to exist apart from the Church. They are the Church’s book.” October 1, 2014November 9, 2014 · Fr. Stephen Freeman

Progress with Fidelity to Origins- the Divine Pedagogy:

Faith requires both progress in doctrine with respect to new challenges while in keeping in fidelity to the original. And so it is that tradition develops and integrates into what is the “Deposit of Faith”. Such a development has not just scripture as its principle, but the Lord in Person, nourishing the community and providing in and through that community and its structures a living milieu for this development leading to a creative flourishing, as we shall see.

What indeed, does the term “tradition” encompass?. Congar gives the example of Oxford and Harvard and goes on to say, “”tradition” connotes something more than mere conservatism; something deeper is involved, namely, the continual presence of a spirit and of a moral attitude, the continuity of an ethos…Tradition is not just a conservative force , but rather a principle that ensures the continuity and identity of the same attitude through successive generations”(pg2) he goes on to quote M. Dufenne, a sociologist “Tradition, in the true sense of the word, implies a spontaneous assimilation of the past in understanding the present, without a break in the continuity of a society’s life, and without considering the past as outmoded…Paul Claudel compared tradition to a man walking. In order to move forward he must push off from the ground, with one foot raised and the other on the ground; If he kept both feet on the ground, or lifted both in the air, he would be unable to advance. If progress is a continuity that goes beyond conservatism, it is also a movement and a progress that goes beyond mere continuity, but only on condition that, going beyond conservation for its own sake, it concludes and preserves the positive values gained, to allow a progress that is merely not a repetition of the past. Tradition is memory, and memory enriches experience. If we remembered nothing it would be impossible to advance; the same would be true if we were bound to a slavish imitation of the past. True tradition is not servility but fidelity.

This is clear in the field of art. Tradition conceived as the handing down of set formulas and the servile imitation of models learned in the classroom would lead to sterility…the aim of the lesson is to receive the vitality of their inspiration and to continue their creative work in the original spirit, which thus, in the new generation, is born again with freedom the youthfulness and the promise that it originally possessed”.

The Entire history of the Church is characterized by a tension between an ideal of plenitude (italics) and an ideal of purity (italics). The former leads her to seek breadth of vision, a receptive attitude and progress, and to make a synthesis of what she encounters, but it brings with it a risk of loss of purity. The latter must ceaselessly repeat its demands, in the name of the original principles, to which the holy scriptures bear the most constant, complete and undeniable witness. This is why Scripture is a necessary critical reference for any development or growth of tradition.”(p160)

Quoting E. Ortigues “The function of tradition is to make us share in the fellowship of the Spirit of Christ Jesus, in the faith. It is a means of participation in the body of Christ, that is, in the Church’s sacramental structure, the word “sacramental” signifying, in the widest sense, the sign through which the Holy Spirit enlightens us by uniting us. Scripture’s task is to confront us with the testimony of the apostles and the prophets to reminds us that the Word of God is an initiative that does not allow itself to be absorbed by the community, but takes the form of an ever-present dialogue. Scripture’s task is to bring constantly preaching back to the unity of this divine initiative…”

“The Spirit of God, who governs and animates the Church, produces an instinct in man, a form of Christian intuition that leads him to the true doctrine” (Mohler Symbolik, 38) (p79 Tradition) Congar quotes Mohler and his disciples, Newman and a great number of contemporary theologians after them who speak readily of the spirit of faith (sensus fidei Ecclessiae) in terms of “awareness”…in this view (tradition’s) role in the Church would be similar to that played by awareness in a person’s life: comprehension and memory, gauge of identity, instinct of what is fitting, witness and expression of personality.”

The Catholic is convinced however that there is a real development of the single deposit of faith whose substance is immutable…(it is not simply Scripture which) expresses the dogma of the church with an invariability which is set down in writing. Rather this constant (the deposit of faith- brackets my addition)  itself continues to have a historical nature because it had a historical nature during the apostolic period and during the period when the cannon was formed, and it is impossible to see why this history should suddenly and absolutely cease to exist.Not only is there scripture and a variably, temporally conditioned theology, but there is also an understanding of the faith which comes down from the apostolic tradition and has a genuine history. It is only in this developing history that it is really dialogical in relation to each era’s understanding of existence, and hence that it can make Christ himself present in every age.”Rahner p363

P114 “”Tradition”, wrote M Blondel in his articles of 1904, “anticipates the future and prepares to shed light upon it by its very effort to remain faithful to the past.” With reference to the fact that human history is replete with the “conflicts, advances and setbacks of men. All this demands answers from the Gospel, whose deposit is carried by the Church as by a holy ark upon a turbulent sea…in each vicissitude of the drama or comedy that constitutes (men’s) history. The good scholar in the Kingdom of Heaven should bring forth from his treasure-house new things as well as old”

“The key to the Scriptures must be received from the tradition of the Church, as from the Lord himself.”(Origen).

Fr Van den Eynde “The Church is like a paradise planted in this world. We must seek nourishment in this paradise, from its tree, we must read the sacred books in the Church…”(88)

“The Church is a proprietor: she owns the Scriptures. By what right to heretics seize them and betray their meaning?”(Tertullian AH 4,36,5) which Congar describes as a “well-known juridical formula”.(p89)

As the Vatican Council has said, “the Church herself, is, by her marvellous propagation, her wondrous sanctity, her inexhaustible fruitfulness in good works, her Catholic unity, and her enduring stability, a great and perpetual motive of credibility and an irrefragable witness to her Divine commission” (Const. Dei Filius).

Dr Malcolm Brennan writes in his introduction to St Campion’s writings: “The year was 1566 in the reign of Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More had been Martyred and buried for almost a generation. By now merry Olde England was becoming drenched with the blood of Martyrs who died for the Faith, which was on the horizon, the bright horizon of Truth, to be for the sake of the Holy Roman Mass, the immemorial Mass given to the Church by Christ Himself and safeguarded by the Apostles and the sainted Popes, handed down to Catholics as their especial patrimony, not to be touched by innovation, apart from an occasional organic addition, neither a rupture nor a dissolving, whether by priest alone or committee, for it was, is sacred, to be held inviolable as promulgated by Pope St. Pius V and the Council of Trent, complete with anathemas, even for the suggestion of such a possibility, and in the  words of English priest, Fr. Fabian Fortescue, “the nearest thing to Heaven.”

“A passionate love for the absolute Mind naturally engenders a love of dogma. The truth of Faith is the basis of our religion, and dogma serves to express the object of our religion (…) dogma has truth, it is more true even than science, and the object of dogma is above and beyond man (…) Take away dogma and you take God away; to touch dogma is to touch God. To sin against dogma is to sin against God.” – Pierre Rousselot, S.J., L’intellectualisme de saint Thomas, p. 240.

Catholicism is the most comforting place in the world to be. There is no more need to examine your beliefs. The only thing left to do is to examine your conscience. The Church is like the Immune system of Christianity. It guards and protects sacred Doctrine, and throws out what is not welcome.

St Hillary (De Trinitate bk.2,c.2) We are forced by the blasphemous errors of heretics to do what is forbidden: to scale the heights, to express the ineffable to dare to touch the unattainable…we are forced to imprison indescribable things within the weakness of our language… and in expressing it to surrender to the dangers of the human world what should have been kept and worshipped in our hearts”.

Congar goes on to say that Tradition “can be compared to all that is implied by the idea of upbringing as opposed to instruction. We do not bring up a child by giving him lectures in morality and deportment, but rather by placing him in an environment having a high tome of conduct and good manners, whose principles, rarely expressed as abstract theories, will be imparted to him by the thousand familiar gestures that chlothe him…the daily contact and inviting example of adult life, which is mature, confident and sure of its foundations, which asserts itself simply by being what it is, and presents itself as an ideal…”p22

He goes on to quote Max Scheller:”Tradition…is communicated automatically with life itself. It consist in acquiring a certain mentality, certain habits in exercising the judgement and will. By coming into contact with. And unconsciously imitating, the behaviour and way of life of the milieu.

He goes on to compare this precisely with the way that Jesus taught, and how the apostles learnt to be like Christ, by watching him as the suffering servant upto the sacrifice, and only then could they understand his teachings which hitherto were “hidden from them”.

Two other wonderful analogies are presented, first that of the “feminine or maternal touch in the vital aspect of tradition. A woman expresses instinctively and vitally what a man expresses logically. The man is the logos, the external agent. The woman is the recipient, the matrix and fashioner of life. She creates the surrounding in which life retains its warmth; one thinks of the maternal breast, of tenderness, of the home. He is fidelity. The man is intended for the hazards of the struggle outside, where he may receive wounds and me at the mercy of adventure and inconstancy. In the woman he finds again the one who waits. Keeping intact the warmth and intimacy of the home”.

radition is as undefinable as Faith which is transcendent and for the same reason. It is only through tradition of the church that we truly receive a transcendent faith: “We have received everything unconsciously in the same way that we benefit from our culture, simply by being born and educated in a society whose culture was built up, treasured and handed down right to us…in this way, Christianity is possessed wholly and regarded as a totality, defying perfect comprehension and formulation; it also escapes external justification of a historical and critical nature(26)…(a living fidelity  (is) more likely to keep the totality of the deposit intact right from the beginning than would a conscious and explicit record: “action has the privilege of being clear and complete, even when it is implicit, while reflection, with its analytic character, only becomes a science after lengthy and hesitant consideration: and that is why it seems essential to me to relate dogmatic knowledge, which is never perfect, to the Christian life, which does not need an explicit science in order to reach perfection. “” There is nothing pragmatic about that; it is merely a recognition of the privileged position held by Christian reality and the living fidelity enshrining it, and of its superiority over ideological assertions, fully analyzed and elaborated.”(28)

“so that through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places” Eph 3:1

Karl Rahner develops at length his thesis on the Church: Jesus Christ is God’s self-communication to man given to him as a historical and concrete reality and the irrevocable and permanent promise of Salvation. p323””love of neighbor cannot merely mean a private relationship to another individual, but also means something social and political, and implies responsibility for social and political strictures within which love for one’s neighbor can or cannot be practiced then it also follows from all of this that basically it would be a late bourgeois conceptions to think that religion has nothing essential to do with society and the church.” Pg. 329 “The church was founded in the first place by the fact that Jesus is the person whom the believers believe to be the absolute savior and to be God’s historically irreversible and historically tangible offer of himself (…) this faith may not be regarded as something which happens in the private interiority of an individual. In this case it could never be the continuation of God’s offer of himself in Jesus…the faith which in this sense forms community must have a history and hence so must the church itself, because there is a history of salvation. For Faith in Jesus in a later generation is always co-conditioned by the tradition of the previous generation, and does not always arise absolutely new by a kind of primordial generation. But this historicity of the faith and the church, a historicity which includes both change and ongoing identity because both belong to genuine history, this historicity includes the following: every later epoch in such a history continues to have its origin in the previous epoch, even when it diverges from the previous epoch. But this means that the historical ambivalence of the range of possibilities for historical decisions in an earlier epoch does not simply have to pass on to the later epoch. If continuity and identity are to be maintained with an entity which exists historically, then it is inevitable that in an earlier phase of this historical entity free decisions are made which form an irreversible norm for future epochs.”

P331 These structures can be understood this way even if they cannot be traced bacl to a specific unambiguous and historically identifiable saying of Jesus which founds them. P343By the very nature of Christianity, the Church must be understood in such a way that it springs from the very essence of Christianity as the supernatural self-communication of God to mankind which has become manifest in history and has found its definitive historical climax I Jesus Christ. Church is a part of Christianity as the very event of salvation. We cannot exclude communal and social intercommunication from man’s essence even when he is considered as the religious subject of a  relationship to God.”

How are we to deal with those uncounted little nuances of daily life and manner that make up the life of virtue, that the 614 ordinances of the Mosaic Law were completely inadequate to deal with? God showed us by becoming Man Himself and displaying all those nuances in person in the the New Covenant which will be “put…in their minds and (written) on their hearts.” (Jer 31:33, Heb 10:16), it will no longer be a “each man teach(ing) his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD” (Jer 31:34), for Jesus himself is doing the teaching in Person through the Apostolic Church which He established. Is this not the crux of the spiritual life, and it is that which God most intimately nurtured by himself undertaking.

The liturgy of worship develops within such a theology. For the expressed form is religion is liturgy, the words that are prayed in prayer back to God, the response to God’s revelation to man, the correct form of prayer that is the life of man. That is not to say that liturgy follows from theology, but that both advance and flower in unison and in being mutually nourishing. Right worship (orthodoxy) takes the form of Liturgy, the prayer of the people.

“Teach what is consistent with sound doctrine” Titus 2:1

Sacramental Aspect of Scripture and its “Ecumenical Reading”:

Cardinal Dulles says in his introduction to Congar’s book (pg ix) “…tradition is an essential social and ecclesial reality; its locus is the Church as a communion. It is transmitted not only by written and spoken words but equally by prayer, sacramental worship and participation in the Church’s life…”

“Scripture is regarded as a kind of sacrament; a grace-bearing sign that effectively realizes communion with God, and salvation, when it is used in the right conditions. These conditions are obviously spiritual: humility, purity of heart, a true desire to seek God and a strong love of the Gospel; but this spiritual approach is not of a psychological or moral order that is purely individualistic: it required that we place ourselves in God’s plan, in the framework of his covenant, in the perspective of the communication he himself wishes to make to us, that is, in the fellowship of his People. The scriptures do not surrendered their meaning by the bare text; they surrendered it to a mind that is living, and living in the conditions of the Covenant. This mind, or living subject is…the Church, God’s People, the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Thus in a certain way, Scripture possess its meaning outside itself. In the categories of the scholastic analysis of the sacraments, it would be termed the fruit of Scripture, its res (the spiritual reality resulting from the sacrament). The reality contained in the sacred text would be described as literary, historical  or exegetical meaning, but its dogmatic meaning is found outside the text, considered materially, which supposes the intervention og a new activity, namesly the Faith of the Church…” Congar says (pg90)

Fr. Congar then quotes some interesting thoughts of recent protestant writers along these lines(p94): we must in turn agree that Rome is right to insist that holy scripture is the Church’s book and can only be really understood in the midst of God’s People… We must learn afresh the value of a communal reading of Scripture: it is within the family raised up by scriptural revelation that the sacred writings assume their full meaning. (R. M. Achard). Much research remains to be done on the witness bore by the Holy Spirit to the Church. This task is all the more urgent since we have not finished ridding ourselves of our Protestant individualism. IF the Spirit gives to each believer the certainly that Christian witness fi truly God’s Word and that he is save din Jesus Christ, this witness and this certainty are only given to him and renewed if he lives within the fellowship of the Church. It is a fact experienced by everyone that the Spirit permits us to see a few pages of the Bible simultaneously and that we must discover and even constantly rediscover the others. Theology is equally the concern of all the members of Christ’s body.”

“Tradition is thus a universal and ecumenical reading of Scripture by the Church in the light of the Holy Spirit. This ecclesiastical reading alone will lead us to the fullness of God’s Word” and so on and many more in his larger work…

“The text as such is not the living Word of God, but only its sacrament (or sign). The decisive thing is the act (italics) accomplished by God and its actual operation within us. Let all sounds of words cease, cease too all visual reading of printed characters on a page, and let God bring about the communion and presence, spiritual realities of which the former are but the envelope and the means! The Bible is no more the reality of the religious relationship than is the Church: both of them are no more than its setting and means of transmission. All happens finally, in the relationship between two living subjects: the Living God and the human heart.” (pg. 102)

Unity is of Jesus, Sectarian Spirit is the Devil’s:

Any Church which does not make Church unity its concern has abandoned its prime directive, so to speak. It’s not as if the prospectus of the Church is something obscure and bureaucratic like the hilarious department within Moscow’s state machinery “Stiva” Oblonsky works for in Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”. The Church is concerned with nothing more than uniting human beings under its banner.

 Three times it is mentioned in our Savior’s own words in (John 17:11,20-23):

The first time, for protection in the Name of God:

“And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one…

The second time, He links it to belief:

“…I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.

The third time, to knowledge:

The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly (NRSV completely)one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me.”

The “Sectarian Spirit”: (p97-8) “clinging to a few particular verses and a building on them a whole conception of a religious relationship, while neglecting the balance of the whole and the rectification effected by other texts and, in fact the synthesis. This is the usual method pf procedure of the sects: The sectarian spirit is above all fundamentalise; that is, it interprests the teaxts materially and literally, disregarding literary styles, the hierarchy of values and the priority of reality over its verbal expression. It often takes pleasure in dwelling on the prophetic, and even apocalyptic passages. It adopts several of these and builds everything on them by rigidly following the most violent consequences and the sequence of prohibitions or condemnations.

Tradition is no disjunctive; it is synthesis and harmony. It does not skirt around the subject, isolating a few texts, but on the contrary operates from within, linking the texts to the center by situating the details in relation to the essential.

The Devil is in Disunity: The impacts of Protestantism are manifold. The FACT that the Church is fragmented today is nothing but evidence of humanity’s failure to obey the Will of God. The fact that ALL THE WORLD is not Christian is largely a consequence of the Church’s fragmentation. Now do not be so proud so as to presume that Heathen do not believe as a consequence of their own failings, nor look into the Church presuming to be wise enough to find failings in it.

The greatest wooer of the human heart is Christ, and the greatest corrupter of His Church are not forces from without, but are those within, who present their version of His own teachings. An impregnable citadel must be ousted from within.

Some truths are simple and undeniable. Disunity is a work of the Devil, and every new division in the Body of the Church, at least in some sense, however reduced, is part of his plan. This is hardly a question that requires great spiritual insight, since in every mundane human endeavor, whether domestic or communal, the disadvantages of disunited-ness, are never in dispute among either the sons of men or the denizens of the spiritual realm. Like the Devil himself, even the most depraved of humans will seek alliance, and indeed even the animal kingdom is not naïve of this. Therefore to state that there is somehow benefit in disbandment is folly.

The certainty of maleficent design in disunion is manifest by the evidence of injustice as it’s fruit. If Christianity, as a whole, is meant to be a stance against the bastion of evil in the world (as a whole), there can be no doubt that a divided stance grants a disservice not only to those who are victims of the dark kingdom and it’s overlord, but also to the families and selves of the witless serfs of Satan, in the loss of the battle for these souls to that same prince.

Could there be a greater force in this world for evil than discord among the good? Is there any failure greater in this world than defeat in our bodies the victory that Christ already won for us in his? So the ramifications of disunity do lead to a disjointedness in charitable effort, the effects of which lead not only to the suffering on Earth, but certainly the perilous transport of souls into the unforgiving embrace of the eternal darkness of unconsuming and unquenchable fire. If charity and justice did not in some way augur and even ordain this destiny for those who in them have failed, then charity and justice themselves would have no purpose upon this Earth. Just as if there were no Hell, then there would likely also be no God.

If unity were not desirable, then it is likely that God would also not be. If Unity were optional, then it is likely that God would so also be. If Unity were not imperative, then it is likely that union with God would also present no pressing concern.  Not so! If it had been RIGHT to break away From the Church, then there would have been ONE ALTERNATIVE Church, with one alternative CREED. Indeed if the Church was wrong in a THOUSAND WAYS then there would have been ONE Church incorporating all of those thousand corrections, not thousands with one correction each. As it is, there are a thousand splinters from the ONE. The fact that there is NO COMMON SOLUTION certainly indicates that there was never any PROBLEM. Rather it is the ‘corrections’ that are the problem.

It’s based on the presumption that God would necessarily have one creed for mankind. In order to show that there was a problem with it, it would be necessary to show a solution to the problem. God could not have left us with no solution. The failure of that particular endeavour is, for me a vindication of the True Church.

If the Catholic Church was indeed the ‘WRONG CHURCH’, then a certain ‘RIGHT CHURCH’ should have appeared in history. Since this has not come to pass, the former assumption simply cannot be true. “Whoever does not gather with me, scatters…”

“The Apostles”, says St. Augustine, “saw the Head and believed in the Body; we see the Body let us believe in the Head”

, which St Paul speaks of, “I belong to Apollos, I belong to Cephas….”, what he as an apostle, means when he makes the appeal to unity, not as a plea, but as the form of the faith to be handed down, is that not only must there  be no divisions in the apostolic faith, it is precisely in and through the apostolic faith that unity is a reality, and this as an apostle speaking. The primary battle that faces Christianity is the “battle within”, that between the conceptualization of a unified Church ecclesiology which seems explicit in Scripture from the very first word to the last, and some form of permissible multifariousness (based upon perhaps the interpretation of scripture one verse (Lk 9:50,Mk 9:40).

Finally, How to Choose the Wrong Church

(2Sam.15:1-6) “…After this Absalom got himself a chariot and horses, and fifty men to run ahead of him. Absalom used to rise early and stand beside the road into the gate; and when anyone brought a suit before the king for judgement, Absalom would call out and say, ‘From what city are you?’ When the person said, ‘Your servant is of such and such a tribe in Israel’, Absalom would say, ‘See, your claims are good and right; but there is no one deputed by the king to hear you.’ Absalom said moreover, ‘If only I were judge in the land! Then all who had a suit or cause might come to me, and I would give them justice.’ Whenever people came near to do obeisance to him, he would put out his hand and take hold of them, and kiss them. Thus Absalom did to every Israelite who came to the king for judgement; so Absalom stole the hearts of the people of Israel…”

What does a prostitute do when you go to their room? She makes you feel welcome, she makes available the things you need, she makes you feel part of the family…she does what it takes to make you feel you can return. And if she doesn’t do it, her pimp will. Don’t hang your eternal destiny upon these motivations when you select a Church. Make prayer, sound doctrine and truth your only guides.

How the Institutional Church Stands as a Beacon in the World

There is a religious communion claiming a divine commission, and holding all other religious bodies around it heretical or infidel; it is a well-organized, well-disciplined body; it is a sort of secret society, binding together its members by influences and by engagements which it is difficult for strangers to ascertain. It is spread over the known world; it may be weak or insignificant locally, but it is strong on the whole from its continuity; it may be smaller than all other religious bodies together, but is larger than each separately. It is a natural enemy to governments external to itself; it is intolerant and engrossing, and tends to a new modelling of society; it breaks laws, it divides families. It is a gross superstition; it is charged with the foulest crimes; it is despised by the intellect of the day; it is frightful to the imagination of the many. And there is but one communion such. (Ch.6, Intro)

On the whole then I conclude as follows:—if there is a form of Christianity now in the world which is accused of gross superstition, of borrowing its rites and customs from the heathen, and of ascribing to forms and ceremonies an occult virtue;—a religion which is considered to burden and enslave the mind by its requisitions, to address itself to the weak-minded and ignorant, to be supported by sophistry and imposture, and to contradict reason and exalt mere irrational faith;—a religion which impresses on the serious mind very distressing views of the guilt and consequences of sin, sets upon the minute acts of the day, one by one, their definite value for praise or blame, and thus casts a grave shadow over the future;—a religion which holds up to admiration the surrender of wealth, and disables serious persons from enjoying it if they would;—a religion, the doctrines of which, be they good or bad, are to the generality of men unknown; which is considered to bear on its very surface signs of folly and falsehood so distinct that a glance suffices to judge of it, and that careful examination is preposterous; which is felt to be so simply bad, that it may be calumniated at hazard and at pleasure, it being nothing but absurdity to stand upon the accurate distribution of its guilt among its particular acts, or painfully to determine how far this or that story concerning it is literally true, or what has to be allowed in candour, or what is improbable, or what cuts two ways, or what is not proved, or what may be plausibly defended;—a religion such, that men look at a convert to it with a feeling which no other denomination raises except Judaism, Socialism, or Mormonism, viz. with curiosity, suspicion, fear, disgust, as the case may be, as if something strange had befallen him, as if he had had an initiation into a mystery, and had come into communion with dreadful influences, as if he were now one of a confederacy which claimed him, absorbed him, stripped him of his personality, reduced him to a mere organ or instrument of a whole;—a religion which men hate as proselytizing, anti-social, revolutionary, as dividing families, separating chief friends, corrupting the maxims of government, making a mock at law, dissolving the empire, the enemy of human nature, and a “conspirator against its rights and privileges;”—a religion which they consider the champion and instrument of darkness, and a pollution calling down upon the land the anger of heaven;—a religion which they associate with intrigue and conspiracy, which they speak about in whispers, which they detect by anticipation in whatever goes wrong, and to which they impute whatever is unaccountable;—a religion, the very name of which they cast out as evil, and use simply as a bad epithet, and which from the impulse of self-preservation they would persecute if they could;—if there be such a religion now in the world, it is not unlike Christianity as that same world viewed it, when first it came forth from its Divine Author. (Ch. 6 Sec.1 EDC)

On the whole, then, we have reason to say, that if there be a form of Christianity at this day distinguished for its careful organization, and its consequent power; if it is spread over the world; if it is conspicuous for zealous maintenance of its own creed; if it is intolerant towards what it considers error; if it is engaged in ceaseless war with all other bodies called Christian; if it, and it alone, is called “Catholic” by the world, nay, by those very bodies, and if it makes much of the title; if it names them heretics, and warns them of coming woe, and calls on them one by one, to come over to itself, overlooking every other tie; and if they, on the other hand, call it seducer, harlot, apostate, Antichrist, devil; if, however much they differ one with another, they consider it their common enemy; if they strive to unite together against it, and cannot; if they are but local; if they continually subdivide, and it remains one; if they fall one after another, and make way for new sects, and it remains the same; such a religious communion is not unlike historical Christianity, as it comes before us at the Nicene Era. (Ch.6 Sec.2 EDC)

If then there is now a form of Christianity such, that it extends throughout the world, though with varying measures of prominence or prosperity in separate places;—that it lies under the power of sovereigns and magistrates, in various ways alien to its faith;—that flourishing nations and great empires, professing or tolerating the Christian name, lie over against it as antagonists;—that schools of philosophy and learning are supporting theories, and following out conclusions, hostile to it, and establishing an exegetical system subversive of its Scriptures;—that it has lost whole Churches by schism, and is now opposed by powerful communions once part of itself;—that it has been altogether or almost driven from some countries;—that in others its line of teachers is overlaid, its flocks oppressed, its Churches occupied, its property held by what may be called a duplicate succession;—that in others its members are degenerate and corrupt, and are surpassed in conscientiousness and in virtue, as in gifts of intellect, by the very heretics whom it condemns;—that heresies are rife and bishops negligent within its own pale;—and that amid its disorders and its fears there is but one Voice for whose decisions the peoples wait with trust, one Name and one See to which they look with hope, and that name Peter, and that see Rome;—such a religion is not unlike the Christianity of the fifth and sixth Centuries (Ch.6 Sec.3 EDC)

Examples of Development of Doctrine

the Dogma of the Holy Trinity

The Catholic Truth in question is made up of a number of separate propositions, each of which, if maintained to the exclusion of the rest, is a heresy. In order then to prove that all the Ante-Nicene writers taught the dogma of the Holy Trinity, it is not enough to prove that each still has gone far enough to be only a heretic—not enough to prove that one has held that the Son is God, (for so did the Sabellian, so did the Macedonian), and another that the Father is not the Son, (for so did the Arian), and another that the Son is equal to the Father, (for so did the Tritheist), and another that there is but One God, (for so did the Unitarian),—not enough that many attached in some sense a Threefold Power to the idea of the Almighty, (for so did almost all the heresies that ever existed, and could not but do so, if they accepted the New Testament at all); First, the Creeds of that early day make no mention in their letter of the Catholic doctrine at all. They make mention indeed of a Three; but that there is any mystery in the doctrine, that the Three are One, that They are coequal, coeternal, all increate, all omnipotent, all incomprehensible, is not stated, and never could be gathered from them. Of course we believe that they imply it, or rather intend it. God forbid we should do otherwise! But nothing in the mere letter of those documents leads to that belief. To give a deeper meaning to their letter, we must interpret them by the times which came after. (Intro, 11 EDC)

The Canon of the Bible

(Sec 3,1,1 EDC) “For instance, as to the Epistle of St. James. It is true, it is contained in the old Syriac version in the second century; but Origen, in the third century, is the first writer who distinctly mentions it among the Greeks; and it is not quoted by name by any Latin till the fourth. St. Jerome speaks of its gaining credit “by degrees, in process of time.” Eusebius says no more than that it had been, up to his time, acknowledged by the majority; and he classes it with the Shepherd of St. Hermas and the Epistle of St. Barnabas. Again: “The Epistle to the Hebrews, though received in the East, was not received in the Latin Churches till St. Jerome’s time. St. Irenæus either does not affirm, or denies that it is St. Paul’s. Tertullian ascribes it to St. Barnabas. Caius excludes it from his list. St. Hippolytus does not receive it. St. Cyprian is silent about it. It is doubtful whether St. Optatus received it.” Again, St. Jerome tells us, that in his day, towards A.D. 400, the Greek Church rejected the Apocalypse, but the Latin received it.

Again: “The New Testament consists of twenty-seven books in all, though of varying importance. Of these, fourteen are not mentioned at all till from eighty to one hundred years after St. John’s death, in which number are the Acts, the Second to the Corinthians, the Galatians, the Colossians, the Two to the Thessalonians, and St. James. Of the other thirteen, five, viz. St. John’s Gospel, the Philippians, the First to Timothy, the Hebrews, and the First of St. John are quoted but by one writer during the same period.”

St Peter and the Papacy

The Need for Infallible Authority and Succession:

“We teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma that when the Roman pontiff speaks EX CATHEDRA,

So then, should anyone, which God forbid, have the temerity to reject this definition of ours: let him be anathema.”

– Vatican I, Session 4 Chapter 4

There is the eternal question about the fallacy of the Church’s doctrine. This is seems a rather innocuous abstraction, an ethereal consideration, even a mere esoteric embellishment on the real state of the world today and the exigent problems that it faces. But make no mistake, what is at stake here is not some sapless technical debate, rather it is the very heart of the battle of atheism as opposed to belief. If it can be shown, that God is incapable of achieving infallible guidance, then it can also be shown that there is no God to give it. If indeed it can be shown that God is incapable of keeping his promises, then it can more easily be argued that there is no God to keep them. My effort, for most of this essay is to show that we are not so despairingly afflicted

“ The common sense of mankind does but support a conclusion forced upon us by analogical considerations. It feels that the very idea of revelations implies a present informant and guide, and that an infallible one…Surely, either an objective revelation has not been given, or it has been provided with means for impressing it’s objectiveness upon the world.

If Christianity be a social religion, as it certainly is, and if it be based on certain ideas acknowledged as divine, or a creed…and if these ideas have various aspects and make distinct impressions on different minds…what power will suffice to meet and to do justice to these conflicting conditions but a supreme authority ruling and reconciling individual judgements by a divine and right and recognised wisdom?…Philosophy, taste, prejudice, passion, party, caprice will find no common measure, unless there be some supreme power to control the mind and to control agreement.” -St Cardinal John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1878 ed pp105-107

Some excerpts from Bishop Vincent Ferrer Gasser’s The Gift of Infallibility, which was read out to the delegates sitting in at Vatican II prior to the promulgation of the doctrine of Infallibility:

“There is contained in the definition the object of infallibility. Infallibility has been proposed in order to guard and unfold the integral deposit of faith…the object of infallibility is doctrine about faith and morals…there is undoubtedly contained the fact that this infallibility extends at least to those things which in themselves constitute the deposit of faith…(p78)…Together with revealed truths, there are…other truths more or less strictly connected. These truths, although they are not revealed in se, are nevertheless required to guard fully, explain properly, and define efficaciously the very deposit of faith. Truths of this type, therefore to which dogmatic facts pertain per se, inasmuch as the deposit of faith is not able to be preserved and expounded without them, these truths, I say, concern the deposit of faith, not indeed of themselves, but as necessary for guarding that deposit of faith…(Matters of morals” included not only what was directly revealed by God, but also the natural law, and the specific, concrete decisions that the Church had to make on moral matters for which “an answer was not found in revelation itself…The Church is infallible not only in those which are revealed per se, but in also in those things which, in some way, cohere with what has been revealed….the condition of human life is so various and multiform that innumerable questions arise about morals for which we find no answer in revelation itself…(Joseph Kleutgen, who sat in on the Council) -footnote by translator (p98)”

“According to Catholic doctrine, the infallibility of the Church’s magisterium extends not only to the deposit of faith but also to those matters without which the deposit cannot be rightly preserved and expounded” (Vatican II 2:432)

“Since Christ bestowed on the Church everything indispensable for carrying out the mission entrusted to her, could he hold back from her the gift of certainty about the truths she knows and proclaims? Above all, could He withhold this gift from those who, succeeding Peter and the apostles as shepherds and teachers, inherited therewith a special responsibility for the community of the faithful? Precisely because human beings are fallible, would it be possible for Christ, while desiring to preserve the Church in truth, to leave her shepherds and bishops, and especially Peter and his successors, without the gift by means of which He would assure infallible teaching of the truths of faith and the true principles of morality?” St Pope John Paul II p101

Bishop Gasser continues: “Either God has revealed himself to us, giving us a lasting message of truth, and provided that this truth be preserved secure and certain through an office capable of teaching the truth without error, or he has not revealed himself at all, at least not definitely and once and for all in Christ. “There can be no combination on the basis of truth without an organ of truth”, in St Cardinal Newman’s words. His organ of truth the Catholic Church claims as existing in the teaching function of the bishops united with the successor of St Peter, a teaching office or organ of truth called in recent centuries “the Magisterium”…it functions, therefore, in the order of grace, of charism, and, in particular, of a grace given to some for the benefit of others (gratia gratis data, as the theologians call such manifestations of God’s favour)…It is hard to imagine where the Gospel would be or what state it would have reached us in if, per impossible, it had not been composed, preserved, and commented on within the greater Catholic community- hard to picture the deformation and mutilation it would have suffered both as to text and as to interpretation….history speaks forcefully enough. There have been no counting the number of aberrations that have been based on an appeal to the Gospel, (p102)…Indeed, by this sense of the faith which is stirred up and sustained by the Spirit of truth, the People of God, under the leadership of the sacred Magisterium to which it faithfully submits, truly receives not the word of men, but rather the word of God (Th 2:13), clings without error to the faith once handed on to the saints (Jude 3), penetrates it more profoundly by correct judgements and applies it more fully to life” (Lumen Gentium no 12) (p105)…the Church, as a whole is rendered immune from falling away from the faith (p108).

G K Chesterton The Everlasting Man P 143 The Key Second, the shape of a key is in itself a rather fantastic shape. A savage who did not know it was a key would have the greatest difficulty in guessing what it could possibly be. And it is fantastic because it is in a sense arbitrary. A key is not a matter of abstractions; in that sense a key is not a matter of argument. It either fits the lock or it does not. It is useless for men to stand disputing over it, considered by itself; or reconstructing it on pure principles of geometry or decorative art. It is senseless for a man to say he would like a simple key; it would be far more sensible to do his best with a crowbar. And thirdly, as the key is necessarily a thing with a pattern, so this was one having in some ways a rather elaborate pattern. When people complain of the religion being so early complicated with theology and things of the kind, they forget that the world had not only got into a hole, but had got into a whole maze of holes and corners. The problem itself was a complicated problem; it did not in the ordinary sense merely involve anything so simple as sin. It was also full of secrets, of unexplored and unfathomable fallacies, of unconscious mental diseases, of dangers in all directions. If the faith had faced the world only with the platitudes about peace and simplicity some moralists would confine it to, it would not have had the faintest effect on that luxurious and labyrinthine lunatic asylum. What it did do we must now roughly describe; it is enough to say here that there was undoubtedly much about the key that seemed complex, indeed there was only one thing about it that was simple. It opened the door.

–

The Authority of the Keys

Matthew 18:16-19 “¹⁸ Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. ¹⁹ Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.”

Matthew 16:17-19 “¹⁹ I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

John 20:23 “2When He had said this, He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.²³ If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

“Will have been” used in Matthew 16, is a tense very seldom used in Greek, and rarely seen in manuscripts of the age. It is the future perfect.

““Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; but whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me.” (Luke 10:16): this verse is the only of the three that is not addressed to the 12 but to the 72. But it is a useful reminder of the authority that Jesus can accord such authority to men.

Incredibly this authority of keys and of “opening and shutting” is referred back directly to Jesus!  “To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open.” (Rev 3:7)

The Primacy of Peter

Matthew 10:2 The names of the twelve apostles are these: first, Simon, who is called Peter…
The Greek word here translated as “first” is “protos”, which the Protestant Blue Letter Bible lexicon defines as: “first in time or place, in any succession of things or persons “first in rank: influence, honour, chief, principal”

The More one reflects one Matthew 16:17-19 and indeed the entire Gospel, the more one is impressed by the implication of the papacy for Peter from it. Jesus begins with and exuberant “Blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah!..”, He addresses Peter a full seven times in the short passage. None of the other apostles are addressed directly by name by Jesus as much in the Bible, nor does any other apostle speak directly to Jesus in the Bible, for himself or on behalf of the twelve. No disciple approached Jesus, walking, drowning, running, wading as much as Peter.

But it doesn’t end here. Peter’s authority continues in the Acts. Two examples of Peter exercising his primacy over the other twelve: 1)He initiates the election of the successor to Judas by lots, and says that it is by the power of the Holy Spirit in Acts 1. 2) in Acts 2, when he speaks at the Pentecost. 3) In Acts 3, he preaches in the Temple without any authorization form the temple authorities. He puts the whole Sanhedrin on trial when they think that he stands on trial by accusing them of crucifying Jesus. 4) When Ananias lies to Peter about the proceeds of the sale of his home, Peter says that he has not lied to men, but to the Holy Spirit. It is said that at this, a great fear came upon all the disciples. Paul in Galatians 2, challenges him not for his infallibility, but for not obeying his own infallible teaching at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 11! Moses, when the people challenge his authority falls down upon is face as if to say to the people, “do not get distracted by my humanity, for it is actually the power of God that I am given to wield, and this is not to be flouted. Only the prophet could enquiry of God Ascent p232n When Miriam and Aaron challenge his authority, Miriam is afflicted with leprosy.

Remember, Jesus never said that the Papacy had to be based at Rome. He said the worlds that He did to Peter at Caesaria Phillipi. What He did say to Peter was as simple as this: That one man would be Prime Minister of the Church, and with his office would reside the keys to Heaven. It was up to the early Church to realize this teaching. The Church did not need to be Roman, it is Roman. Because that is where Peter was. Ubi Petrus ibi ecclesia. Where is Peter, there is the Church.

Isa 22 Thus says the Lord GOD of hosts, “Come, go to this steward, to Shebna, who is over the household, and say to him:… you will be cast down from your station… In that day I will call my servant Eli’akim the son of Hilki’ah, and I will clothe him with your robe, and will bind your girdle on him, and will commit your authority to his hand; and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open. And I will fasten him like a peg in a sure place, and he will become a throne of honor to his father’s house. And they will hang on him the whole weight of his father’s house, the offspring and issue, every small vessel, from the cups to all the flagons.

“Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! (…) and I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and

whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”- Matt 16:17-19 “κἀγὼ δέ σοι λέγω ὅτι σὺ εἶ Πέτρος (Petros), καὶ ἐπὶ ταύτῃ τῇ πέτρᾳ (petra) οἰκοδομήσω μου τὴν ἐκκλησίαν καὶ πύλαι ᾅδου οὐ κατισχύσουσιν αὐτῆς.”

 “…Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” (…) “Feed my lambs.” A second time he said to him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” (…) He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”(…) Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep””. (John 21:15-17)

“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift each of you (ὑμᾶς- you plural) like wheat. But I have prayed for you, (σοῦ– all pronouns and verbs here on are in the singular) Simon, that your faith will not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” “Lord,” said Peter, “I am ready to go with You even to prison and to death.” (Luke 22:31-33)

Luke 12: 40-42 “You also must be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an unexpected hour.” Peter said, “Lord, are you telling this parable for us or for all?” And the Lord said, “Who then is the faithful and wise steward, whom his master will set over his household, to give them their portion of food at the proper time?”

“Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me (…)”(Luke 10:16)

“Take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God which he obtained with the blood of his own Son.” (28)

The office of bishop is referred to in the Bible in Acts 1:20 (KJV), Titus 1:7, 1 Tim3:8, Phil 1:1.

The Development of the Papacy

3 The Papal Supremacy EDC, St. Newman

Ch 4 Sec3

“No Doctrine is defined till it is Violated:

While Apostles were on earth, there was the display neither of Bishop nor Pope; their power had no prominence, as being exercised by Apostles. In course of time, first the power of the Bishop displayed itself, and then the power of the Pope. When the Apostles were taken away, Christianity did not at once break into portions; yet separate localities might begin to be the scene of internal dissensions, and a local arbiter in consequence would be wanted.

…It is a common occurrence for a quarrel and a lawsuit to {150} bring out the state of the law, and then the most unexpected results often follow. St. Peter’s prerogative would remain a mere letter, till the complication of ecclesiastical matters became the cause of ascertaining it. While Christians were “of one heart and one soul,” it would be suspended; love dispenses with laws. Christians knew that they must live in unity, and they were in unity; in what that unity consisted, how far they could proceed, as it were, in bending it, and what at length was the point at which it broke, was an irrelevant as well as unwelcome inquiry. Relatives often live together in happy ignorance of their respective rights and properties, till a father or a husband dies; and then they find themselves against their will in separate interests, and on divergent courses, and dare not move without legal advisers

(4) When the Church, then, was thrown upon her own resources, first local disturbances gave exercise to Bishops, and next ecumenical disturbances gave exercise to Popes; and whether communion with the Pope was necessary for Catholicity would not and could not be debated till a suspension of that communion had actually occurred. It is not a greater difficulty that St. Ignatius does not write to the Asian Greeks about Popes, than that St. Paul does not write to the Corinthians about Bishops. And it is a less difficulty that the Papal supremacy was not formally acknowledged in the second century, than that there was no formal acknowledgment on the part of the Church of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity till the fourth. No doctrine is defined till it is violated.

It was impeded by persecutions:

(5) Moreover, an international bond and a common authority could not be consolidated, were it ever so certainly provided, while persecutions lasted. If the Imperial Power checked the development of Councils, it availed also for keeping back the power of the Papacy. The Creed, the Canon, in like manner, both remained undefined. The Creed, the Canon, the Papacy, Ecumenical Councils, all began to form, as soon as the Empire relaxed its tyrannous oppression of the Church (…) “In the first times,” he says, “while the Emperors were pagans, their [the Popes’] pretences were suited to their condition, and could not soar high; they were not then so mad as to pretend to any temporal power, and a pittance of spiritual eminency did content them.” Again: “The state of the most primitive Church did not well admit such an universal sovereignty. For that did consist of small bodies incoherently situated, and scattered about in very distant places, and consequently unfit to be modelled into one political society, or to be governed {153} by one head, especially considering their condition under persecution and poverty. What convenient resort for direction or justice could a few distressed Christians in Egypt, Ethiopia, Parthia, India, Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia, Cappadocia, and other parts, have to Rome!”

Again: “Whereas no point avowed by Christians could be so apt to raise offence and jealousy in pagans against our religion as this, which setteth up a power of so vast extent and huge influence; whereas no novelty could be more surprising or startling than the creation of an universal empire over the consciences and religious practices of men (…) If such be the nature of the case, it is impossible, if we may so speak reverently, that an Infinite Wisdom, which sees the end from the beginning, in decreeing the rise of an universal Empire, should not have decreed the development of a sovereign ruler.

Own additions: thus the criticism of the papal supremacy is actuall taking advantage of both the difficult circumstances that the church found itself in in the initial centuries and that it could not extablish universal institution and visible, as well as the love and unity of  the initial church which did nto necessitate this

Church Fathers on Apostolic Succession

http://www.cin.org/users/jgallegos/church.htm

Apostolic Succession

Clement was the Bishop of Rome well before the 4th century. His letter to the church at Corinth was probably written around the year 100 AD (give or take 20-30 years). Here are some of the passages relevant to this discussion. This letter was written in response to a request from the Corinthian church. That church was not only taught directly by an Apostle (Paul) but also had several books of Scripture in their original form. Yet they wrote to Rome for the settlement of the disputes they were having. In the first two passages we clearly see Apostolic succession being taught. In the third we see that the bishop of Rome is claiming God speaks through him. The letters of St Clement are two, only the first is attributed authentically to Pope St. Clement. Earliest copies of both are present in the 5^th century Codex Alexandrinus. Eusebius himself attests to the great reverence to the Epistle of Clement in the earlist Church and Eusebius attests that the letters were read out at the gathering of the brethren and treated seemingly as part of sacred scripture. The canon list of Jerome (?) lists the letter among those of high esteem (?) along with (?), and it seems that the letter only narrowly missed out of being included in the final Biblical canon.

” And thus preaching through countries and cities, they[the Apostles] appointed the first fruits [of their labours], having first proved them by the Spirit, to be bishops and deacons of those who should afterwards believe. Nor was this any new thing, since indeed many ages before it was written concerning bishops and deacons. For thus says the Scripture in a certain place, I will appoint their bishops in righteousness, and their deacons in faith.” (Ch 42)
“Our apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, that there would be strife on account of the office of the episcopate. For this reason, therefore, inasmuch as they had obtained a perfect fore-knowledge of this, they appointed those [ministers] already mentioned, and afterwards gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry.” (Ch 44)
“If, however, any shall disobey the words spoken by Him[God] through us, let them know that they will involve themselves in transgression and serious danger;” (Ch 59:1,2)

“For what is the bishop but one who beyond all others possesses all power and authority, so far as it is possible for a man to possess it, who according to his ability has been made an imitator of the Christ Of God? And what is the presbytery but a sacred assembly, the counsellors and assessors of the bishop? And what are the deacons but imitators of the angelic powers, fulfilling a pure and blameless ministry unto him, as … Anencletus and Clement to Peter?”
Ignatius,To the Trallians,7(A.D. 110),in ANF,I:69

“Hegesippus in the five books of Memoirs which have come down to us has left a most complete record of his own views. In them he states that on a journey to Rome he met a great many bishops, and that he received the same doctrine from all. It is fitting to hear what he says after making some remarks about the epistle of Clement to the Corinthians. His words are as follows: ‘And the church of Corinth continued in the true faith until Primus was bishop in Corinth. I conversed with them on my way to Rome, and abode with the Corinthians many days, during which we were mutually refreshed in the true doctrine. And when I had come to Rome I remained a there until Anicetus, whose deacon was Eleutherus. And Anicetus was succeeded by Soter, and he by Eleutherus. In every succession, and in every city that is held which is preached by the law and the prophets and the Lord.’ “
Hegesippus,Memoirs,fragment in Eusebius Ecclesiatical History,4:22(A.D. 180),in NPNF2,I:198-199

“True knowledge is [that which consists in] the doctrine of the apostles, and the ancient constitution of the Church throughout all the world, and the distinctive manifestation of the body of Christ according to the successions of the bishops, by which they have handed down that Church which exists in every place, and has come even unto us, being guarded and preserved without any forging of Scriptures, by a very complete system of doctrine, and neither receiving addition nor [suffering] curtailment [in the truths which she believes]; and [it consists in] reading [the word of God] without falsification, and a lawful and diligent exposition in harmony with the Scriptures, both without danger and without blasphemy; and [above all, it consists in] the pre-eminent gift of love, which is more precious than knowledge, more glorious than prophecy, and which excels all the other gifts [of God].”
Irenaeus,Against Heresies,4:33:8(A.D. 180),in ANF,I:508

“But if there be any (heresies) which are bold enough to plant themselves in the midst Of the apostolic age, that they may thereby seem to have been handed down by the apostles, because they existed in the time of the apostles, we can say: Let them produce the original records of their churches; let them unfold the roll of their bishops, running down in due succession from the beginning in such a manner that [that first bishop of theirs] bishop shall be able to show for his ordainer and predecessor some one of the apostles or of apostolic men,–a man, moreover, who continued stedfast with the apostles. For this is the manner in which the apostolic churches transmit their registers: as the church of Smyrna, which records that Polycarp was placed therein by John; as also the church of Rome, which makes Clement to have been ordained in like manner by Peter. In exactly the same way the other churches likewise exhibit (their several worthies), whom, as having been appointed to their episcopal places by apostles, they regard as transmitters of the apostolic seed. Let the heretics contrive something of the same kind. For after their blasphemy, what is there that is unlawful for them (to attempt)? But should they even effect the contrivance, they will not advance a step. For their very doctrine, after comparison with that of the apostles, will declare, by its own diversity and contrariety, that it had for its author neither an apostle nor an apostolic man; because, as the apostles would never have taught things which were self-contradictory, so the apostolic men would not have inculcated teaching different from the apostles, unless they who received their instruction from the apostles went and preached in a contrary manner. To this test, therefore will they be submitted for proof by those churches, who, although they derive not their founder from apostles or apostolic men (as being of much later date, for they are in fact being founded daily), yet, since they agree in the same faith, they are accounted as not less apostolic because they are akin in doctrine. Then let all the heresies, when challenged to these two tests by our apostolic church, offer their proof of how they deem themselves to be apostolic. But in truth they neither are so, nor are they able to prove themselves to be what they are not. Nor are they admitted to peaceful relations and communion by such churches as are in any way connected with apostles, inasmuch as they are in no sense themselves apostolic because of their diversity as to the mysteries of the faith.”
Tertullian,Prescription against the Heretics,33(A.D. 200),in ANF,III:258

“And that you may still be more confident, that repenting thus truly there remains for you a sure hope of salvation, listen to a tale? which is not a tale but a narrative, handed down and committed to the custody of memory, about the Apostle John. For when, on the tyrant’s death, he returned to Ephesus from the isle of Patmos, he went away, being invited, to the contiguous territories of the nations, here to appoint bishops, there to set in order whole Churches, there to ordain such as were marked out by the Spirit.”
Clement of Alexandria,Who is the rich man that shall be save?,42(A.D. 210),in ANF,II:603

“We are not to credit these men, nor go out from the first and the ecclesiastical tradition; nor to believe otherwise than as the churches of God have by succession transmitted to us.”
Origen,Commentary on Matthew (post A.D. 244),in FOC,407

“Our Lord, whose precepts and admonitions we ought to observe, describing the honour of a bishop and the order of His Church, speaks in the Gospel, and says to Peter: ‘I say unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.’ Thence, through the changes of times and successions, the ordering of bishops and the plan of the Church flow onwards; so that the Church is founded upon the bishops, and every act of the Church is controlled by these same rulers.”
Cyprian,To the Lapsed,1(A.D. 250),in ANF,V:305

“Therefore the power of remitting sins was given to the apostles, and to the churches which they, sent by Christ, established, and to the bishops who succeeded to them by vicarious ordination.”
Firmilian,To Cyprian,Epistle 75[74]:16(A.D. 256),in ANF,V:394

“It is my purpose to write an account of the successions of the holy apostles, as well as of the times which have elapsed from the days of our Saviour to our own; and to relate the many important events which are said to have occurred in the history of the Church; and to mention those who have governed and presided over the Church in the most prominent parishes, and those who in each generation have proclaimed the divine word either orally or in writing… When Nero was in the eighth year of his reign, Annianus succeeded Mark the evangelist in the administration of the parish of Alexandria… Linus … was Peter’s successor in the episcopate of the church there … Clement also, who was appointed third bishop of the church at Rome.”
Eusebius,Ecclesiastical History,1:1,2:24,(A.D. 325),in NPNF2,I:81

“Lo! In these three successions, as in a mystery and a figure … Under the three pastors,–there were manifold shepherds”
Ephraem,Nisbene Hymns,The Bishops of Nisibis(Jacob, Babu, Valgesh),13,14(A.D. 350),in NPNF2,XIII:180

“[W]hile before your election you lived to yourself, after it, you live for your flock. And before you had received the grace of the episcopate, no one knew you; but after you became one, the laity expect you to bring them food, namely instruction from the Scriptures … For if all were of the same mind as your present advisers, how would you have become a Christian, since there would be no bishops? Or if our successors are to inherit this state of mind, how will the Churches be able to hold together?”
Athanasius,To Dracontius,Epistle 49(A.D. 355),in NPNF2,IV:558

“[B]elieve as we believe,we , who are, by succesion from the blessed apostles, bishops; confess as we and they have confessed, the only Son of God, and thus shalt thou obtain forgiveness for thy numerous crimes.”
Lucifer of Calaris,On St. Athanasius(A.D. 361),in FOC,274

“[W]e shall not recede from the faith … as once laid it continues even to this say, through the tradition of the fathers, according to the succession from the apostles, even to the discussion had at Nicea against the heresy which had, at that period, sprung up.”
Hilary of Poitiers,History Fragment 7(ante A.D. 367),in FOC,273

“[D]uring the days of that Anicetus, bishop of Rome, who succeeded Pius and his predecessors, For, in Rome, Peter and Paul were the first both apostles and bishops; then came Linus, then Cletus … However the succession of the bishops in Rome was in the following order. Peter and Paul, and Cletus, Clement …”
Epiphanius,Panarion,27:6(A.D. 377),in FOC,279

“He[St. Athanasius] is led up to the throne of Saint Mark, to succeed him in piety, no less than in office; in the latter indeed at a great distance from him, in the former, which is the genuine right of succession, following him closely. For unity in doctrine deserves unity in office; and a rival teacher sets up a rival throne; the one is a successor in reality, the other but in name. For it is not the intruder, but he whose rights are intruded upon, who is the successor, not the lawbreaker, but the lawfully appointed, not the man of contrary opinions, but the man of the same faith; if this is not what we mean by successor, he succeeds in the same sense as disease to health, darkness to light, storm to calm, and frenzy to sound sense.”
Gregory of Nazianzen,Oration 21:8(A.D. 380),in NPNF2,VII:271

“For they[Novatians] have not the succession of Peter, who hold not the chair of Peter, which they rend by wicked schism; and this, too, they do, wickedly denying that sins can be forgiven even in the Church, whereas it was said to Peter: ‘I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound also in heaven, and whatsoever thou shall loose on earth shall be loosed also in heaven.’ “
Ambrose,Concerning Repentance,7:33(A.D. 384),in NPNF2,X:334

“It has been ordained by the apostles and their successors, that nothing be read in the Catholic Church, except the law, and the prophets, and the Gospels.”
Philastrius of Brescia,On Heresis(ante A.D. 387),in FOC,280

“Let a bishop be ordained by three or two bishops; but if any one be ordained by one bishop, let him be deprived, both himself and he that ordained him. But if there be a necessity that he have only one to ordain him, because more bishops cannot come together, as in time of persecution, or for such like causes, let him bring the suffrage of permission from more bishops.”
Apostolic Constitutions,8:27(A.D. 400),in ANF,7:493

“For if the lineal succession of bishops is to be taken into account, with how much more certainty and benefit to the Church do we reckon back till we reach Peter himself, to whom, as bearing in a figure the whole Church, the Lord said: ‘Upon this rock will I build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it !’ The successor of Peter was Linus, and his successors in unbroken continuity were these: — Clement, Anacletus, Evaristus, Alexander, Sixtus, Telesphorus, Iginus, Anicetus, Pius, Soter, Eleutherius, Victor, Zephirinus, Calixtus, Urbanus, Pontianus, Antherus, Fabianus, Cornelius, Lucius, Stephanus, Xystus, Dionysius, Felix, Eutychianus, Gaius, Marcellinus, Marcellus, Eusebius, Miltiades, Sylvester, Marcus, Julius, Liberius, Damasus, and Siricius, whose successor is the present Bishop Anastasius. In this order of succession no Donatist bishop is found. But, reversing the natural course of things, the Donatists sent to Rome from Africa an ordained bishop, who, putting himself at the head of a few Africans in the great metropolis, gave some notoriety to the name of “mountain men,” or Cutzupits, by which they were known.”
Augustine,To Generosus,Epistle 53:2(A.D. 400),in NPNF1,I:298

” ‘To the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi.’ Since it was likely that the Jews too would call themselves ‘saints’ from the first oracle, when they were called a ‘holy people, a people for God’s own possession’ (Ex. xix. 6; Deut. vii. 6, etc.); for this reason he added, ‘to the saints in Christ Jesus.’ For these alone are holy, and those hence-forward profane. ‘To the fellow-Bishops and Deacons.” What is this? were there several Bishops of one city? Certainly not; but he called the Presbyters so. For then they still interchanged the titles, and the Bishop was called a Deacon. For this cause in writing to Timothy, he said, “Fulfil thy ministry,’ when he was a Bishop. For that he was a Bishop appears by his saying to him, ‘Lay hands hastily on no man.’ (1 Tim. v. 22.) And again, ‘Which was given thee with the laying on of the hands of the Presbytery.’ (1 Tim. iv. 14.) Yet Presbyters would not have laid hands on a Bishop. And again, in writing to Titus, he says, ‘For this cause I left thee in Crete, that thou shouldest appoint elders in every city, as I gave thee charge. If any man is blameless, the husband of one wife’ (Tit. i. 5, 6); which he says of the Bishop. And after saying this, he adds immediately, ‘For the Bishop must be blameless, as God’s steward, not self willed:’ (Tit. i. 7.) “
John Chrysostom,Homilies on Phillipians,1:1(A.D. 404),in NPNF2,XIII:184

“[I]f any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly. For a bishop must be blameless as the steward of God.’ And to Timothy he says: ‘Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.’ Peter also says in his first epistle: ‘The presbyters which are among you I exhort, who am your fellow-presbyter and a witness of the sufferings of Christ and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed: feed the flock of Christ’ … taking the oversight thereof not by constraint but willingly, according unto God.’ In the Greek the meaning is still plainer, for the word used is episkopountes, that is to say, overseeing, and this is the origin of the name overseer or bishop. But perhaps the testimony of these great men seems to you insufficient. If so, then listen to the blast of the gospel trumpet, that son of thunder, the disciple whom Jesus loved and who reclining on the Saviour’s breast drank in the waters of sound doctrine. One of his letters begins thus: ‘The presbyter unto the elect lady and her children whom I love in the truth; ‘ and another thus: ‘The presbyter unto the well-beloved Gains whom I love in the truth.’ When subsequently one presbyter was chosen to preside over the rest, this was done to remedy schism and to prevent each individual from rending the church of Christ by drawing t to himself. For even at Alexandria from the time of Mark the Evangelist until the episcopates of Heraclas and Dionysius the presbyters always named as bishop one of their own number chosen by themselves and set in a more exalted position, just as an army elects a general, or as deacons appoint one of themselves whom they know to be diligent and call him archdeacon. For what function excepting ordination, belongs to a bishop that does not also belong to a presbyter? It is not the case that there is one church at Rome and another in all the world beside. Gaul and Britain, Africa and Persia, India and the East worship one Christ and observe one rule of truth. If you ask for authority, the world outweighs its capital. Wherever there is a bishop, whether it be at Rome or at Engubium, whether it be at Constantinople or at Rhegium, whether it be at Alexandria or at Zoan, his dignity is one and his priesthood is one. Neither the command of wealth nor the lowliness of poverty makes him more a bishop or less a bishop. All alike are successors of the apostles.”
Jerome,To Evangelus,Epistle 146:1(ante A.D. 420),in NPNF2,VI:288-289

“We must strive therefore in common to keep the faith which has come down to us to-day, through the Apostolic Succession. “
Pope Celestine[regn A.D. 422-432],To the Council of Ephesus,Epistle 18(A.D. 431),in NPNF2,XIV:220

“Examples there are without number: but to be brief, we will take one, and that, in preference to others, from the Apostolic See, so that it may be clearer than day to every one with how great energy, with how great zeal, with how great earnestness, the blessed successors of the blessed apostles have constantly defended the integrity of the religion which they have once received.”
Vincent of Lerins,Commonitories,6:15(A.D. 434),in NPNF2,XI:135

“Moreover, with respect to a certain bishop who, as the aforesaid magnificent men have told us, is prevented by infirmity of the head from administering his office, we have written to our brother and fellow-bishop Etherius, that if he should have intervals of freedom from this infirmity, he should make petition, claring that he is not competent to fill his own place, and requesting that another be ordained to his Church. For during the life of a bishop, whom not his own fault but sickness, withdraws from the administration of his office, the sacred canons by no means allow another to be ordained in his place. But, if he at no time recovers the exercise of a sound mind, a person should be sought adorned with good life and conversation, who may be able both to take charge of souls, and look with salutary control after the causes and interests of the same church; and he should be such as may succeed to the bishop’s place in case of his surviving him. But, if there are any to be promoted to a sacred order, or to any clerical ministry, we have ordained that the matter is to be reserved and announced to our aforesaid most reverend brother Etherius, provided it belong to his diocese, so that, enquiry having then been made, if the persons are subject to no fault which the sacred canons denounce, he himself may ordain them. Let, then, the care of your Excellency conjoin itself with our ordering, to the end that the interests of the Church, which you have exceedingly at heart, may not suffer damage, and that increase of reward may accrue to the good deeds of your Excellency.”
Pope Gregory the Great[regn A.D. 590-604],Epistle 6(A.D. 602),NPNF2,XIII:94

” ‘…thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church’ … It is on him that he builds the Church, and to him that he entrusts the sheep to feed. And although he assigns a like power to all the apostles, yet he founded a single Chair, thus establishing by his own authority the source and hallmark of the (Church’s) oneness…If a man does not fast to this oneness of Peter, does he still imagine that he still holds the faith. If he deserts the Chair of Peter upon whom the Church was built, has he still confidence that he is in the Church?” Cyprian, De Unitate Ecclesiae(Primacy text),4(A.D. 251),in NE,228-229

“For the extremities of the earth, and all in every part of it who purely and rightly confess the Lord, look directly towards the most holy Roman Church and its confession and faith, as it were a sun of unfailing light, awaiting from it the bright radiance of our fathers, according to what the six inspired and holy Councils have purely and piously decreed, declaring most expressly the symbol of faith. For from the coming down of the Incarnate Word among us, all the churches in every part of the world have possessed that greatest church alone as their base and foundation, seeing that, according to the promise of Christ Our Savior, the gates of hell do never prevail against it, that it possesses the Keys of right confession and faith in Him, that it opens the true and only religion to such as approach with piety, and shuts up and locks every heretical mouth that speaks injustice against the Most High”
Maximus the Confessor,Opuscula theologica et polemica(A.D. 650),in PG.

The Tree of Life once again appears in St John’s Revelations, bearing twelve crops of fruit in the year, signifying the Twelve Tribes, represented by the Twelve Apostles the foundation of the Catholic Church–

Petros and Petra- an Authentic Word Study of Matthew 16

Protestant argument: “There’s a distinction between the two “rocks” in Greek. The text actually reads, ‘You are petros,’ which means small pebble, ‘and on this petra,’ which means 0massive boulder, ‘I will build My Church.’ The first rock is Peter, the second rock is Christ. See? Christ didn’t build the Church on Peter, but on Himself.”

Response: Petros is simply the masculine form of the feminine Greek noun petra. Like Spanish and French, Greek nouns have gender. So when the female noun petra, large rock, was used as Simon’s name, it was rendered in the masculine form as petros. Otherwise, calling him Petra would have been like calling him Michelle instead of Michael, or Louise instead of Louis.” Even Protestant Greek scholars like D.A. Carson and Joseph Thayer admit there is no distinction in meaning between petros and petra in the Koine Greek of the New Testament? [Joseph H. Thayer, Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1996), 507; D.A. Carson, “Matthew,” in Frank E. Gaebelein, ed., The Expositor’s Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984), vol. 8, 368.] As you pointed out, petra means a ‘rock.’ It even usually means a ‘large rock.’ And that’s exactly what petros means, too — large rock. It does not mean ‘pebble’ or ‘small stone,’ as you’ve been told. The Greek word for ‘pebble’ or ‘small stone’ is lithos, not petros.

For example, “In Matthew 4:3,” you continue, “the devil cajoles Jesus to perform a miracle and transform some stones, lithoi, the Greek plural for lithos, into bread. In John 10:31, certain Jews pick up stones, lithoi, to stone Jesus with. In 1 Peter 2:5, St. Peter describes Christians as ‘living stones,’ lithoi, which form a spiritual house. If St. Matthew had wanted to draw a distinction between a big rock and a little rock in Matthew 16:17-19, he could have by using lithos, but he didn’t. The rock is St. Peter!”

When Jesus gave Simon the name ‘Rock,’ we know it was originally given in Aramaic, a sister language of Hebrew, and the language that Jesus and the Apostles spoke. And the Aramaic word for ‘rock’ is kepha. This was transliterated in Greek as Cephas or Kephas, and translated as Petros. In Aramaic, nouns do not have gender as they do in Greek, so Jesus actually said, and St. Matthew first recorded, ‘You are Kephas and on this kephas I will build My Church.’ Clearly the same rock both times.

“And just as Greek has a word for ‘small stone,’ lithos, so does Aramaic. That word is evna. But Jesus did not change Simon’s name to Evna, He named him Kephas, which translates as Petros, and means a large rock.”

If we look at the parallel passage in John 1:42. ‘Jesus looked at [Simon] and said, “So you are Simon the son of John? You shall be called Cephas” (which means Peter).’ See? St. John knew that the original form of the name was Kephas, large rock, and he translated it into Greek as Petros, or Peter.”

Jesus addresses St. Peter directly seven times in this short passage? The context seems pretty clear that Jesus gave authority to St. Peter, naming him the rock.”

“notice Matthew used the demonstrative pronoun taute, which means ‘this very,’ when he referred to the rock on which the Church would be built: ‘You are Peter, and on taute petra,’ this very rock, ‘I will build My Church.’ “Also, when a demonstrative pronoun is used with the Greek word for ‘and,’ which is ‘kai,’ the pronoun refers back to the preceding noun. In other words, when Jesus says, ‘You are rock, and on this rock I will build My Church,’ the second rock He refers to has to be the same rock as the first one. Peter is the rock in both cases.

“Jesus could have gotten around it if He’d wanted to. He didn’t have to say, ‘And,’ kai, ‘on this rock I will build My Church.’ He could’ve said, ‘But,’ alla, ‘on this rock I will build My Church,’ meaning another rock. He would have then had to explain who or what this other rock was. But He didn’t do that.”

The Old Testament references to the Rock are one of the greatest prophetic symbols that is used. There is no doubt that the Rock is Jesus Christ himself. Psalm 118, Isaiah 28:16, Daniel 31. Yet Jesus calls Peter the rock on whom He will build his Church. This reading is quite a cornerstone, and is worth analysing in detail. Jesus does not even say “you will be called Rock”, he says “You are Rock”. To say that by this Jesus was referring to Peter’s confession of Faith seems inane to me. It is like telling your gardener “Mow my lawn and I will pay you for it” and after he has mown it, you say that you actually meant to pay for the bottle of Coke he had picked up for you earlier. This is a horrendous interpretation of the verse used to prop up a horrendous theology. It’s like building a house of straw or a sand castle. What’s moral of the story of the three pigs? That’s why I ask, who do you trust to interpret the Bible and what are the reasons for your confidence in them, because that one surely couldn’t have inspired any. I would sooner entrust the eternal salvation of my soul to the gardener, at least he got it right.

It is the reason that Jesus calls Peter blessed in the same sentence. It is the reason that he changes the name lovingly given to him by his own parents that means ‘Gift of God’. It the reason he entrusts to him the keys and the authority in the very next sentence. It is no accident that he uses an analogy that in the OT is unmistakably and multiply applied to his own very Self, indicating that Peter will be his vicar on Earth. And before his Ascension it is why He says to him three times to feed his lambs and look after his sheep. Did Protestant interpreters even read the whole Bible?

The verse from Matt 16, is understandably the least quoted Protestant verse. Because it clearly and undisputably states that the keys to Heaven, and the absolute authority to make or break eternal laws, lie with the Church. And there was no Protestant Church for more than 1500 years! What did Peter do with these keys if he didn’t hand them over to the Church? Did he take them along with him, what would have been the point of that. To return them to Jesus a few decades later saying ‘Here you are, the Church that you built on me as the Rock is done with these, they don’t need any keys now…’.  He left them with the Church, obviously. But he didn’t cut 41,000 copies and counting! So they have to be with the One Church. As the only copy.

Jesus says “I am the gate”, and “I am the Good Shepherd”. But before He ascended, He said: Now you look after my sheep. That is not, obviously, in any way to say that He has abandoned us, or the Pope. “I am with you always, even to the end of the age”. But this is how He has set up His Salvation. Not because He is lazy. Because it’s good for us this way.

The “Holy Father” Controversy

Luke23:9 “And do not call anyone on earth ‘father,’ for you have one Father, and he is in heaven.” This is a puzzling verse, for by that stretch, one should also be prohibited from calling one’s biological parent ‘father’, however there is not one who would seriously think that this was the implication. This even though the instruction is very clear “anyone on Earth” with no exception. Again “only one Father and he is in Heaven” does not brook any exceptions. Now if you say He didn’t mean this literally, then how do you explain this?

Some Useful videolinks: