By JIM CAMPBELL
This is part 2 of a defense of the Church and her authority, and a refutation of sola scriptura. If you have not yet read part 1, you can see it here.
Certain adherents of Sola Scriptura may very well agree with most of what we’ve said so far. They may say that the apostles taught and judged and were of course inspired, but then maybe more after the fashion of a modern evangelical pastor or council of elders, who might teach and govern with charisma and even a certain elevated authority, but who cannot of himself or themselves bind and loose consciences absolutely in matters of faith or morals. Leaving aside that this does not satisfactorily account for the full extent of binding and loosing granted in Matthew 16 and 18, the scriptural witness of the apostles themselves shows a much higher self-understanding. St. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians, “When you heard and received from us the word of God, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it truly is, the word of God” (1 Thess 2:13). The Word of God, by its very origin and nature, demands the obedience of faith, as St Paul makes clear in his salutation to the Romans, where he says that through Jesus Christ “we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations, including yourselves” (Rom 1:5-6).
Within the New Covenant system, the apostles served as the first legates of the revelation of Jesus Christ to the world. They were charged, by Jesus’ express command, to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation,” (Mk 16:15), to “make disciples of all nations,” (Mt 28:19), and to be his “witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). It was their job firmly to root the first generation of Christian faithful in the fullness of the Gospel, the fullness of revelation, handed to them directly by Christ and necessary for a saving assent of faith. To suggest that they could have imperfectly handled this task of delivering the spotless and life-giving doctrine is to suggest that the Church could have failed in its infancy.
Moreover, the task of perfectly and completely establishing the New Covenant system must have been accomplished even before the whole New Testament text was produced – again, demonstrably both from reason, and from the testimony of scripture itself. St. Paul says in the beginning of Galatians, “If any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received, let him be accursed” (Gal 1:9). It would seem that the Church in Galatia had already received the saving fullness of the Gospel prior to Paul’s letter. But Galatians is likely the earliest text of the New Testament, written toward the end of the 40s AD or perhaps AD 50 – indeed, after the binding judgment of the Jerusalem Council. At Paul’s placing of ink to paper to write to the Church of Galatia, the New Testament canon was, by the very act, just beginning. It would take a half-century, until John wrote his Gospel between AD 95 and 100, for scripture to be completely finished. But the apostles had already been preaching, and Christians already converting and dying within the New Covenant for seventy years. How could these Christians have hoped to be saved if they had no infallible New Testament texts, or at least an incomplete list of them, by which to assent in faith, without which man cannot be saved?
The apostles were therefore infallible in their authority, establishing a teaching Church, which, by the promise of the Lord, would never fall as a whole into soul-destroying error. To the objection that the indefectibility of the Church is accomplished not by the merit or perfection of men but by the direct protection of God, we would answer: correct. Agreed. But this indefectible teaching Church persisted after the death of the apostles. The Lord’s commission to the apostles to make disciples of all nations and sanctify them by trinitarian Baptism is joined to the promise that He will be with them “always, even unto the end of the age.” St Peter says in his second letter that he and the apostles “possess the prophetic message that is altogether reliable. You will do well to be attentive to it, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:19). Both the end of the age and the dawning of the day are terms for the Second Coming of Christ. There is thus both an admonition that continued obedience to the apostolic teaching will be necessary up until the second coming of Jesus, and a promise from the savior himself that his perpetual presence and protection will be upon the process of discipling all nations until that time. Is this protection present in scripture? Undoubtedly. As St. Paul says, “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). But it is, in fact, the Church of God which is called by the same apostle the “pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15).
In Acts 2, we already see the elevation of a new man, St. Matthaeus, to the vacant office of the deceased Judas the betrayer. St Peter cites Psalm 109 to justify this: “His office let another take” (109:8). The Greek word for office here is episkopein, better recognized in English as episcopate or bishopric. St. Paul ordains men to the episcopate and sends two of them letters counseling them on the proper conduct of the bishop, letters which are now contained in the New Testament canon as Titus and 1 and 2 Timothy. The central task of the bishop, as St Paul relates to Timothy, is to “command and teach,” and not to “neglect the gift you have, which was given you by the prophetic utterance when the elders laid their hands upon you” (1 Tim. 4:11 and 14). One might be tempted to remember back to the appointment of the seventy elders, accomplished as we have already seen through the laying on of hands and the indwelling of the Spirit of God.
But even more significant is the role of the bishops over something St. Paul calls the “deposit.”[1] This word is used in a threefold sequence in the apostle’s second letter to St. Timothy. Reflecting on his own teaching, apostleship, and preaching, he expresses his confidence that the Lord will “guard what has been deposited to me until that day” (1:12). Only two verses later, he turns his thoughts to Timothy, whom he has instructed, commanding him solemnly to “guard this deposit with the help of the holy Spirit that dwells within us” (v. 14). What had been entrusted to Paul directly from Jesus Christ has been entrusted further to the young bishop St. Timothy, one must imagine without corruption or error. Finally, after some further reflection on his own state as a prisoner in Rome, he solemnly instructs Timothy, “what you heard from me through many witnesses deposit to faithful people who will have the ability to teach others as well” (2:2). Here we see three generations of succession, beginning from the Godman himself, entrusting along with that succession the defense of the fullness of teaching, and an eye yet aimed toward further, even perpetual succession toward that same end. We must not forget here at the end how St. Paul began the idea: That he, Jesus Christ, will “guard what has been deposited to me until that day.” What is the ‘day’ so often mentioned by the apostles? It is that same ‘dawning of the day’ until which St Peter tells his faithful to hold fast to his own prophetic utterances. The judgment. It is St Paul’s express vision, therefore, that the deposit of faith that he received from the mouth of the Lord Jesus shall be guarded until his second coming, and not merely by the medium of inspired written word. In fact, in this immediate context, no reference is made at all to any writings of the apostles. In St. Paul’s own words, it will be guarded by the teaching of a perpetual succession of bishops, ensured by the laying on of hands and the supernatural gift of the Holy Spirit. While individual men may fail in this task, as indeed we saw in Judas, the church as a whole, guarded by her ministers the bishops as successors to the college of the apostles, cannot fail in her job to support and defend the truth delivered by the Lord until he comes again. Still less can the college of bishops fail in this when in union with their necessary head, the successor to St. Peter, to whom alone as an individual our Lord spoke the words, “I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail” (Lk 22:32).
This is the constitution of the Church envisioned by the words of scripture. It is the constitution derived from the divine source himself. To suggest that the Church has taken another essential form after the fact, or somehow retracted only to a collection of inspired writings after the death of the apostles in spite of successions of authority which they themselves had long overseen and approved, is to admit the death of the divine foundation of the New Covenant. The Church of today would not be in essential continuity with the one Our Lord entrusted to the apostles at the Great Commission. None of her children, therefore, would be redeemed: Every great Christian after the apostolic age would be proven deluded and, God forbid it, damned: Sts Hilary (d. 367) and Ambrose (d. 397), who both saw in the Council of Bishops at Nicaea a fulfillment of the victory of Abraham at the battle of five kings.[2] The christological titan St Cyril (d. 344), who took St. Paul’s biblical description of scripture as “god-breathed” and applied it to the judgment of the bishops at the Council of Ephesus, even calling it the judgment of the Holy Trinity itself.[3] St. Irenaeus (d. 202), who had faith not only in Scripture but also in the Church, “since the apostles, like a rich man [depositing his money] in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth.”[4] All these men whom even Protestants would count as Christians, and numerous more – us ourselves – would belong to a counterfeit church, and we would be a people without hope. Even that promise of Our Lord himself, that gates of hell shall not prevail against his Church, would rightly be called into question.
Do we believe that all this is possible? Or instead, do we trust the Holy Spirit and seek out where this sure “pillar bulwark of the truth” still stands whole today, where the deposit continues to be guarded by the modern-day successors to the apostles with and under the successor to the chief priest, St. Peter? It would only seem Christian to do the latter.
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END NOTES
[1] Παραθήκη parathéké https://biblehub.com/greek/3866.htm. The word is translated in RSVCE as “trust” or “entrusted.” This is an equally valid translation of the word, but I have replaced it with the equally valid alternative of “deposit” as a matter of tradition.
[2] On the Councils, LXXXVI and De Fide, I.5, respectively. For these two saints, the inspired parallel between the battle of the five kings and the Council of Nicaea can be seen by the number of those present at each. The commonly accepted number of bishops, 318, matches precisely the number of fighters under Abraham’s command. From Hilary: “Three hundred and eighteen recently accepted [The consubstantiality of the Son]. And for my own part I think the number sacred, for with such a number Abraham overcame the wicked kings, and was blessed by Him who is a type of the eternal priesthood.”
[3] Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum 1.1.2, p.70
[4] Against Heresies Bk III.4.1, 2
