Where I Sit with Churches of Apostolic Succession

As those of you who know me know, I've been expressing a certain affinity with Roman Catholicism for awhile now. Indeed, my encounters with the Church of Rome and to a lesser though still important degree my brushes with Eastern Orthodoxy have resulted in a rather significant shift in my theological outlook. I've gone from being a dogmatic Protestant to a confused one of the kind that should scare the be-Jesus out of all dogmatically convinced anti-Catholics.

I must admit that some of this arises from a felt need to embody the prevailing cultural fascination with novelty and thus one could say that to some degree I question and challenge conventional Protestant convictions simply because that's my background. Thankfully, that rather suspect and dangerous motivation is not my primary one. I may be a rebel, but I'm no rebel without a cause. My peculiar fascination arises from that point in my spiritual development when I began to feel a strong desire to see Jesus Christ in the face of the Christian other but found that my Protestantism was of a far too narrow character to admit that those Christian believers who differed significantly from me in any way could even rightly be called Christians.

In order in my mind to rescue the vast majority of Christian believers who have ever lived from the fires of hell, my theological outlook got "all messed up," as some would undoubtedly describe it. In that messy process, I've spent some time studying Church history—the undivided Church of ancient times, the medieval Church—and the great figures—the Church Fathers, the Protestant Reformers. As I had suspected, historic Christianity, including classic Protestantism, looks and sounds peculiarly Catholic.

I have also spent some time studying the character of Christianity as it currently exists throughout the world. To view the contemporary global Church through my former narrow separatist Protestant lenses would be to cast off the greatest part of Christ's body as chaff, whereas to view it through the more charitable eyes I believe God has given me is to see a miraculous God-wrought diversity in Christ's Kingdom as it advances ever gloriously on to the ends of the earth.

What exactly is my theological and ecclesiological identity at this point, then? As I said, I'm a confused Protestant; I have a strong dose of Reformed but I find myself even more captivated by forms of Christianity that value the sacraments and the mystical side of faith and hold the Church and its continuity of life and thought in highest regard.

Yes, I recognize that for many this place where I am at is the beginning of the road that leads to Rome or to Constantinople. Even as I write this, I am thinking of a friend who is well down that road and wrestles with whether to continue on to Rome or to remain a Protestant. I am praying for him that God grants him peace as he wrestles with this question that I myself have spent some time considering. I take this opportunity to take stock of my own thoughts as to where I sit in regard to those venerable churches that claim apostolic succession as a mark of the true Church.

1. The strongest and most compelling link in the apologetic chain for either Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy is that the line of succession of bishops down to the time of the apostles has been regarded since the beginning of the Christian movement as a mark of the true Church. Indeed, the first time in Church history that we see significant numbers of Christian people not under the authority of bishops within lines of succession from the apostles being regarded as genuine Christians is at the Reformation, and even then, it is only the Protestants who regard themselves as genuine Christians.

So what? It's no matter of small consequence that the apostolic succession of bishops in the period of the early Church was vital to the Church's preservation of theological orthodoxy against the claims of the heretics.

So much, in fact, did the Reformers value apostolic succession that they were initially very reluctant to break with it but later rejected the doctrine in no uncertain terms. Was this because they could not substantiate it based on Scripture or because apostolic succession became an impediment to the Reformation when few bishops sided with the Protestants?

That we call ourselves Protestants seems to imply to me that, at some level, reunion with Rome was the stated objective of the Protestant movement. Considering that the division of churches is a scandal to the Gospel and that unity between Christians is a command of the Savior, if all the doctrinal issues that separate Protestants and Catholics were to be resolved tomorrow, even if the Catholic Church still maintained its administrative structure intact, I would say that individual Protestants and all Protestant communities would be obligated to at least give the possibility of reunion with Rome serious consideration. For me, even if we were to pare that down to most or even half of the doctrinal issues that separate us, I think it would still be "Rome sweet home" for me!

2. Like the apostolic succession claim, the inability of Sola Scriptura to produce a consistent, principled hermeneutic for interpreting Scripture hits right at the heart of the conversions from Protestantism to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. It's high time that we Protestants admit that the Scriptures are not nearly as perspicuous in a broad systemic sense as we have been saying they are.

Due to the privileging of private interpretation over any kind of tradition (except for that of one's own Protestant tradition), not to mention the limits of human perspective in regard to any text, using Sola Scriptura as a biblical hermeneutic always results in interpretations of Scripture that are ultimately unfalsifiable. When a private interpretation or the interpretation of a group of Protestants has been opposed (even with other Scripture verses), the invariable response has always been, "You are stiff-necked and wicked people! If you would just listen to the Holy Spirit and approach the Scriptures objectively, you too would see what we see. You obviously do not listen to the Spirit or to reason because you do not see what we see; therefore, we are going to separate from you!" Thus goes the standard justification for our countless schisms.

Even when we push past the pop Protestant, "solo Scriptura," just me and my Bible distortion for the true, historic Sola Scriptura of classic Protestantism, i.e. Scripture as the final and sufficient doctrinal authority when interpreted in light of the historic Rule of Faith, we are still operating with a degree of subjectivity sufficient to shipwreck the prospects for doctrinal unity, since 1) Anglicans, Lutherans, and Reformed did not arrive at confessional consensus, and 2) the Rule of Faith Tradition 1 Protestants appeal to includes a great many items, like apostolic succession and Marian devotion, for instance, we would eschew out of hand.

The problem, however, for the Roman Catholic position on final doctrinal authority, is that appeals to an infallible teaching Magisterium and infallible Pope, even when limited to those circumstances in which papal and magisterial infallibility are said to apply, also result in pronouncements of Christian truth that are ultimately unfalsifiable. Indeed, for Catholics there is the conviction that when the Pope has ruled ex cathedra or when an ecumenical council or the Sacred Magisterium has ruled infallibly on a matter pertaining to faith or morals that Jesus Christ has spoken with His own authority. That being said, one still cannot help but fear that the line between "The Church has so ruled because it is true" and "It is true because the Church has so ruled " can easily disappear if the inability of the Church to be wrong is a given right from the get-go.

A great deal of misrepresentation has settled in with regard to the self-purported infallibility of the Pope and the Roman Magisterium—no, papal infallibility does not mean the Pope is incapable of personal sin or that all his public statements are to be viewed as infallible, nor does the infallibility of the Sacred Magisterium mean that everything the Church teaches or has ever taught is to be regarded by Catholics as infallible. I do not wish to add to the misinformation, but I can sincerely say that the degree of un-falsifiability insulating Roman Catholic dogma from critique is as great a logical shortcoming for Roman hermeneutics as the subjectivity and un-falsifiability inherent in Sola Scriptura is for Protestant hermeneutics. However, in light of the sheer weight of 2000 years of official Roman Catholic teaching that the Magisterium and the papacy must avoid running afoul of, there is little room left in their procedure, at least at this point in history, for the subjectivity and innovation that has so often plagued Protestant teaching.

The Eastern Orthodox position on Church infallibility appears somewhat more tenable to me than the Roman Catholic position, as it centers on the authority of the entire Church represented in the gathered bishops of an ecumenical council. In effect, then, the Eastern Orthodox Church speaks infallibly only when it speaks with the voice of the entire Church. This is not all that different from the way confessional Protestantism has strived to work, but it has not worked to preserve Christian unity the way it has in Eastern Orthodoxy. Stay tuned for more to come.

We Already Share in Body and Blood

Here's just one gem of many from today's Calvin reading:

But the flesh of Christ does not of itself have a power so great as to quicken us, for in its first condition it was subject to mortality; and now, endowed with immortality, it does not live through itself. Nevertheless, since it is pervaded with fullness of life to be transmitted to us, it is rightly called "life-giving." In this sense I interpret with Cyril that saying of Christ's: "As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself" [John 5:26, cf. Vg.]. For there he is properly speaking not of those gifts which he had in the Father's presence from the beginning, but of those with which he was adorned in that very flesh wherein he appeared. Accordingly, he shows that in his humanity there also dwells fullness of life, so that whoever has partaken of his flesh and blood may at the same time enjoy participation in life.

We can explain the nature of this by a familiar example. Water is sometimes drunk from a spring, sometimes drawn, sometimes led by channels to water the fields, yet it does not flow forth from itself for so many uses, but from the very source, which by unceasing flow supplies and serves it. In like manner, the flesh of Christ is like a rich and inexhaustible fountain that pours into us the life springing forth from the Godhead into itself. Now who does not see that communion of Christ's flesh and blood is necessary for all who aspire to heavenly life?

This is the purport of the apostle's statements: "The church . . . is the body of Christ, and the fullness of him" [Eph. 1:23]; but he is "the head" [Eph. 4:15] "from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by . . . joints . . . makes bodily growth" [Eph. 4:16]; "our bodies are members of Christ" [I Cor. 6:15]. We understand that all these things could not be brought about otherwise than by his cleaving to us wholly in spirit and body. But Paul graced with a still more glorious title that intimate fellowship in which we are joined with his flesh when he said, "We are members of his body, of his bones and of his flesh" [Eph. 5:30]. Finally, to witness to this thing greater than all words, he ends his discourse with an exclamation: "This," he says, "is a great mystery" [Eph. 5:32]. It would be extreme madness to recognize no communion of believers with the flesh and blood of the Lord, which the apostle declares to be so great that he prefers to marvel at it rather than to explain it. Institutes 4.17.9

If we as the Church already share in the Body and Blood of Christ through our union with Him, is it such a stretch to consider that in some mystical way we share truly and really in flesh and blood in the Supper of the Lord and not just in the Spirit? This is precisely the line of reasoning Calvin is following here.

A Change of Direction

I'm not much good lately about keeping the promises I make regarding what I'm going to write about in the future on this blog. I've promised posts on predestination, the doctrine of Scripture, and probably numerous other things, so I apologize to my great faithful horde of blogosphere followers for my grave dereliction of duty. I know the two of you (presumptuous, I know) are desperate to learn further from my wisdom, but please, hang in there a while longer and I just might get to the promised projects . . . one of these days.

Truthfully, I don't feel a great deal of motivation lately to do much writing. It's not that I'm too busy. I'm just taking one class, leading a Bible study, and not doing much of anything else productive other than these two things that really are important. No; I have struggled from time to time throughout my life with laziness, procrastination, and depression, and that’s where I am at in the current season of my life. When mired in the mud, it can be difficult to find that surge of energy that is required to crawl lose, dig out, and get up into standing position again like a man.

The source of my current malaise is an unresolved question of purpose coupled with a fear of continuing for all of my days in a state of disappointment and unfulfillment. I am profoundly unhappy, and I do not know how to proceed to remedy that. I never have known how to change that.

Plans have been frustrated, the search for deep community in the embrace of a local expression of Mother Church has been unsatisfactory, my isolation has increased, my search for "Eve" has been ill-conceived and thus unproductive, friends do not draw close (mostly, I fail to seek them out), I drink from empty or fouled cisterns, I capitulate to fear, and pervasive feelings of unreality and futility—embodied in the questions, Who reads my stuff? Is it important, and, even if it is, does it make a difference?—stifle the creative urge to write.

That's enough feeling sorry for myself. I think you get the picture about my emotional, relational, vocational, missional, creative, etc., state at the present time. I truly covet your prayers, but the point is that problems don't get solved by wallowing or by withdrawing deeper into oneself to find the answers. That's what I have always done and it doesn't help. I hear the Savior calling us to a better way: "He who loses his life for My sake will find it" (Matthew 10:39). He's telling me, "If you're unhappy with yourself and the direction your life is headed in, quit worrying about it. Turn your attention from yourself and your problems and focus on serving others!"

I'm worrying too much about my purpose writ small. Our purpose writ big is, "LOVE GOD, LOVE PEOPLE!" That's first. Get that established and you're on the right track. You don't have to go to seminary to do that or write brilliant blog rants that acutely point out and remedy everything that's wrong with American Protestant Christianity.

I have apologies to issue and prophetic words to preach to myself before I preach them to others. Much of what I have written from my armchair theologian's position as a blogger has been self-important, hypocritical, and self-serving. I have written a good deal about certain emphases held by the historic Church that have been neglected in American evangelicalism, much to our detriment. Usually the emphases I have taken up to recover are those that have been thrown out the door in the name of protecting equal and seemingly opposite emphases we have deemed to be priorities in authentic Christian faith and practice.

For instance, in order to preserve the utter transcendence of God and the immediacy of His saving works in His creatures and in His world, we have exclusively emphasized the way that God works using spiritual means, rejecting the ideas that God works redemptively in His creatures and in His world through a human church and the material means of the sacraments as "superstitious," Roman Catholic-sounding doctrines that belong in the dust heap of Church history.

I have engaged in some pretty harsh rhetoric on this front, so, undoubtedly, some of my writing has proved to be less than charitable to the Baptist tradition of my youth and to other credobaptist and non-sacramental traditions. I apologize to friends of these persuasions whom I might have alienated in my overzealous attempts to recover a robust ecclesiology and sacramental theology for evangelicals. I have been obtuse and rude and self-important to think my efforts alone could make apparent the correctness of a high ecclesiology and sacramental understandings of baptism and the Lord's Supper, much less show how important it truly is to believe correctly on these matters. I mean well, and I will try to speak more charitably on these points from here on out.

In the same vein and more directly to the point I'm trying to make, I have made a great deal of bother about how we have blown up the importance of one's personal relationship with God and the application of salvation to individuals to the point that the communal nature of our salvation and the importance of the church to that salvation has been obscured and thus that the love Christians are to have for one another (both the love we are to give and that which we should receive) has been downgraded from being one of God's surest testimonies to His children that they are His own to being simply a matter of optional, supplementary support for private Christians in their personal relationships with God. I absolutely think this is the case, and I think that this is one of the chief tragedies rampant individualism in American Protestantism has wrought.

I will inevitably be, and have been, accused of advocating salvation by love and will be accused of mixing up loving one another—a matter of sanctification—with individual justification before God, but does not John say, "We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death." (1 John 3:14)? Has he not also said, "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love." (1 John 4:7-8)?

Doctrinal issues aside, I must confess that, what I believe has been a burden given to me by God to be prophetic voice for reform in mainstream American evangelicalism arises (I will have to tell you the story sometime of how a charismatic/Pentecostal revivalist anointed me with oil and asked for God to give me the gift of prophecy and how I see that as an authentic commissioning, but that's for another time) from my own self-interest. I am so passionate for God's Church and for my vision of what a wonderful, loving, world-changing, Kingdom-ushering-in reality it was meant to be, can be, and will be because I want to find a place for myself where I can be loved and accepted at any time and in any place by loving Christian people in spite of the deep relational, emotional, and social brokenness and isolation I so often feel. I know God is for me, and when I stop to ponder God's graciousness to me, I remember so many instances of extravagant love that so many brothers and sisters in the Lord have undeservedly poured into my life at so many times and in so many ways and when I needed it the most. You wonderful folks know who you are! Still, I long for the days when the consolations of God's Spirit through His people will constantly flood over my loneliness and brokenness, freeing me to love fully in turn and be all that God has called me to be for the sake of the Church and the world!

What I have just said puts all the focus on my own needs, and I know our joys in the Lord and in one another will never be complete until Christ returns, but I also want you to have power to grasp "together with all the saints . . . how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:18-19).

This is where I must preach prophetic words to myself. I am part of the problem. When I clamor for my rights as a believer for the love of my fellow Christians while failing to love my brothers and sisters in the Lord as passionately as I desire them to love me, I fail to pay the debt of love I owe to Christ and to my co-heirs in and with Him. I too fail to love my brothers and sisters in Lord as they deserve to be loved. As C.S. Lewis reminds us repeatedly in the Chronicles of Narnia, "Each is only told his own story," and as Jesus said to Peter, "What is it to you? Feed my sheep" (John 21:17, 22).

If I am lonely, let me love my brothers and sisters in the Lord unreservedly. If I am concerned that I be included and welcomed more deeply into the community of my church, let me strive ever-harder to warmly love those I worship with. If I am concerned that I as a marginal person be loved and accepted among the cultural majority in my congregation, let me love in a radically counter-cultural way both those esteemed as marginal and those esteemed more favorably. If friends seem to be far away in times of need, let me reach for them in-season and out-of-season. If I believe God has something to say through me, let prophets preach to themselves.