Scripture and the Church
6th March 2011
Much of the modern world is today the product of Protestant cultures – or cultures in which the view of the Bible has been largely shaped by the Protestant project.
The most critical part of that intellectual project was the decoupling of Scripture and Church. For Martin Luther or the early Reformers (particularly the successors of Luther, Calvin and Swingli), the Bible became the only authority (sola Scriptura) and it was through the Bible that the Church was to be judged, corrected and reformed. Thus the Scriptures took on a new form – one in which they became an independent book with authority over everything else. Problems of interpretation were often met with theories of “soul competency” in which it was postulated that each individual soul was competent to interpret the Scriptures for themselves. Of course, these were all novel doctrines, unknown to the Fathers of the Church.
One of the results was to create something of a Christian parallel to the Koran. Christianity, at the hands of well-intentioned reformers became a “people of the book.” A single Christian, with a copy of the Scriptures, somehow became a sufficient example of Christianity. Of course this phenomenon was itself a contradiction of the Scriptures. Today we see the embodiment of this sea-change. Crowds of young and old, carrying Bibles under their arms, dutifully make their way into buildings, euphemistically called “Churches,” although in America they are increasingly called something more attractive than “Church.”
Not really news, but a useful reminder.
March 7th, 2011 at 12:43
I hate to be the one stirring this up (or maybe not), but this article has the very Catholic view of “Don’t bother reading The Book; we’ll tell you what it means.”
March 7th, 2011 at 14:22
If by ‘Catholic’, you mean ‘Roman Catholic’, that’s a common myth. The only territory where reading the Bible was discouraged by the clergy was England after Tyndale started to make his tendentious and partisan translations. Anybody who could read Latin was welcome to read it for himself, and many did. The Cambridge History of the Bible has a good review of this stuff. Nobody ever said ‘don’t bother reading the book’ — and ‘we’ll tell you what it means’ is of the essence of what a bishop does, just as ‘we’ll tell you what the law means’ is of the essence of what a judge does.
The idea that the New Testament is somehow a complete and authoritative blueprint for Christianity was a political tool adopted by the Protestant ‘reformers’ because otherwise they had no stick with which to beat the medieval Roman Church. To the Orthodox Churches, of course, it was entirely unknown until Protestants contacted them during the 16th century, and their reaction was naturally to be appalled. (See http://orthodoxinfo.com/inquirers/tca_solascriptura.aspx) To anybody with knowledge of early Church history, it’s ludicrous; the Church ran itself very competently, including surviving the Great Persecutions, for 400 years prior to the New Testament text being settled. Protestants act as if the Holy Spirit must have hid a copy of the current New Testament under a rock for the Apostles to find somehow on Pentecost.
The doctrine of the Church has always been passed down orally; it was only when the Church grew too big for convenient oral transmission of the teachings of the Apostles that some disciples started writing stuff down and sending it around. The New Testament is certainly a compendium of useful information for Christians, just as the Boy Scout Manual is a compendium of useful information for Boy Scouts. But there’s more to being a Christian than what’s in the Bible, just as there’s more to being a Boy Scout than what’s in the Boy Scout Manual. As Paul said in 2 Th. 2:15: ‘Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.’ The word came first.
March 7th, 2011 at 15:21
Longest response you’ve made in awhile. I should comment more often.
While I will not disagree that Christianity is more than just the Bible, there are certainly denominations where “The Church” has taken authority well beyond the Bible and perhaps the Roman Catholic church is the most egregious of the major religions in doing so. Someone who converted from Catholic to Baptist remarked that she was surprised at how much the Bible contained and wondered why she was never encouraged to read it in the 50 years she was in the Catholic church.
Certainly there are activities for which a church can act without involving a particular interpretation. You have to fix the roof and pay the electric bill, for example. Physical churches are organized in different manners to accomplish those practical matters. In the Biblical sense, “The Church” is “..whenever 2 or more are gathered in My name…” and is independent of that physical organization.
The Roman Catholic church encourages the belief that the Bible contains the public information and the rest is a big secret that only they know. Hence the ‘believability’ of Dan Brown’s ridiculous “The Da Vinci Code” and sequel(s?). Wouldn’t work if Da Vinci was Methodist.
The cited article has good points, but still comes back to that idea that you can’t find God without the help of the Vatican. I don’t share that perspective.
As for the Roman Catholic church functioning just fine until the Refomation disturbed the status quo, that dog don’t hunt. Luther wasn’t the first to have problems with their operation; he was just the first to take a stand after the printing press became wide-spread enough for his opinion to make it across Europe. He and Calvin were not in it to create their own personal religion (a la L. Ron Hubbard), but rather to eliminate the structured corruption and abuse of power that had long existed.
OK, I’d better stop before the next comment is TLDR.
March 7th, 2011 at 18:58
For the Roman Church to ‘take authority well beyond the Bible’ is not the inconsistency that you seem to think it is, since the Catholic Church (the Orthodox Churches and perhaps the Roman Church) don’t base their authority on the Bible; rather, they base the Bible’s authority on its acceptance and approval by the Church. Modern culture, especially in America, reflects the last three or four hundred years of Protestant dominance, so that will sound odd to modern ears, but it’s a tradition that goes back to Pentecost.
Your supposition that ‘In the Biblical sense, the Church is “…whenever 2 or more are gathered in my name…”‘ likewise reflects that recent Protestant meme, and the Catholic Churches would say that you’re wrong. The Catholic Churches have always maintained that there is no ‘church independent of that physical organization’; they would assert that the Christian Church is not just a religion, the way Judaism and Islam are, but an actual organization with formal requirements for association and a hierarchy of authority. To extend my earlier analogy, you can’t just buy a copy of the Boy Scout Manual and sew up a uniform and call yourself a Boy Scout; you’ve got to join the actual existing organization. As the Jewish mother famously said, ‘To you, you’re a pilot, and maybe to me you’re a pilot – but to a pilot are you a pilot?’ Protestants are, from the standpoint of the ancient Apostolic Churches, do-it-yourself Boy Scouts; to the pilots, they’re not pilots.
The Roman Church doesn’t even, as you suggest, ‘encourage the belief that the Bible contains the public information and the rest is a big secret that only they know.’ That’s the oddest story I’ve ever heard. The Roman church publishes tons and tons of documents every year dealing with dogma and ecclesiology, the Code of Canon Law and the various Creeds and Catechisms are taught in the schools, and the Roman Congregations publish a tiresome amount of material telling people what the Roman position is on any conceivable question.
The key concept here is that knowledge of the Bible is not necessary for salvation; the Catholic view is that one can be born, baptized, live a holy life, die, and go to Heaven without ever cracking the book even once — again, because Catholics (and here I include the Orthodox) are not a ‘people of the book’, but rather a people of the Eucharist and the Tradition. Knowledge of the Bible is highly beneficial but not even necessary, much less sufficient, for salvation. Most Protestants (and others whose exposure to Christianity is dominated by Protestant culture) either don’t know this or don’t accept it. (The cited article is from an Orthodox information web site; I rather doubt that they even mention the Vatican, much less put it forward as being some kind of necessity. Gotta keep the players straight, here.)
Certainly the Catholic Church, not just the Roman Church, has had problems throughout its history; the point is that those problems weren’t settled by reference to the Bible as if it were some sort of Constitution that trumped everything. (The dispute with the Arians, for example, was settled before the canon of the New Testament was settled.) Consider the Council of Jerusalem that is mentioned in Acts – why didn’t they just refer to the New Testament to settle the question? Well, duh, because it didn’t exist; under the Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura, they should have shut up and gone home until there was a New Testament to consult. Protestants make a big production out of being ‘Bible-based’ but half of the time the Bible they’re basing their position on contradicts them directly. (Ask a Baptist sometime why they don’t have bishops when Paul explicitly says in 1 Timothy that bishops are great, and watch them do a verbal dance that would strike Obama green with envy.)
As for the TLDNR problem, I can’t promise you that anybody else will read or respond to your comments, but I guarantee you that I read every comment submitted and won’t hesitate to comment if I think it worthwhile. This is the sort of discussion I’d love to see more of on this blog.
March 8th, 2011 at 12:33
“…This is the sort of discussion I’d love to see more of on this blog.”
I agree. I think the Founding Fathers would have been amazed that 21st century people have such an amazing variety of ways to exchange ideas and we waste it on Facebook and YouTube booger videos.
March 8th, 2011 at 13:33
Well, the problem (I think) is a frictional one. They had to sit down with a printed (expensive) book and write out stuff with a dip pen on paper that was also expensive. Then they had a choice of talking things over with local people or paying more money to send letters or buy newspapers to engage in discussion. It was just a lot harder for them to push things down the road.
Nowadays, everything is (too?) easy – if we twitch wrong we inform the world. (Cf. the term ‘butt-dialing’.) If something is easy to do, people will do it whenever the impulse strikes; thoughts go directly from the brain to the outside world without any intermediation. That results in low quality more often than not. Personally, I’ve never understood the attraction of Facebook and Twitter and YouTube – is narcissism that prevalent in the world?
March 8th, 2011 at 15:26
“..– is narcissism that prevalent in the world?”
Consider what Charlie Sheen is worth. Paris Hilton? The Khardasians?
We’re discussing church and God. They tweet about coke, prostitute baby-sitters, and botox.
Shallow is in. Shallow pays. Shallow gets you elected to the White House. Further verification of the “Dyspepsia Generation”.