The Church Measures Scripture

This new essay is for the benefit of my good friend and former pastor Josh, and, while it was originally to be on the purpose of Scripture to the Church, I found this impossible to do so without first establishing why and how there is Scripture, and how it can be interpreted, in the first place.

The Church Measures Scripture

 

The interpretation of Scripture is of utmost importance to all Christians, Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant. Protestants may rely exclusively on the interpretation of Scripture, while Catholics and Orthodox claim to be backed up by their Church and her history, but the interpretation of Scripture is always important, as all branches of Christianity raise up Scripture as a (but not necessarily the) measure of orthodoxy.

The interpretation of Scripture is something that has been done by the Church since her beginning, and was the reason for her canonizing Scripture in the first place. While Protestants have more or less assumed that their augmented canon they inherited from Catholics is the measure of the Church, the Catholic and Orthodox Churches have historically believed otherwise, that the Church is the measure of Scripture. Based on the title, it should be seen by my reader that it is this view I am defending.

To defend this view, I would first like to lay out many historical facts which cannot be interpreted away.

The history of Christianity begins with a man called Jesus of Nazareth, who claimed to be the Son of God. He gathered around Himself twelve disciples who were privy to His explanations of parables, teachings, and His assertions on His purpose for being sent by God. These twelve are who we call the Apostles, and it was they who first taught that this Jesus who had been crucified and buried rose again, and established them as the stewards of His kingdom, to teach and baptize all who they could, after the Holy Spirit came to them.

The Apostles established, in history, the Church, the organization of Christianity, which taught and practiced the faith that Jesus had taught them. They did not establish, at any time, Scripture; they used the Scripture that they inherited from the Jews that Jesus Himself used to help support His claims and teachings. It was after the Apostles died that there was ever a discussion on a canon of Scripture in addition to the Jewish Scriptures which we now call the New Testament.

So, the first fact is that the Apostles established the Church, not Scripture. They were confident in the ability of the Church, and taught (historically) that the Church would be led by the Holy Spirit, and so presumably would be protected from error.

The first canon to ever be organized was by the heretic Marcion; his canon contained ten modified Pauline epistles, and a Gospel, the Gospel of Marcion, which was composed of an edited Luke. This canon, obviously distinct from the canon we accept today, was in its day heavily detracted from by orthodox theologians as being nothing more than a fudge for Marcion’s personal theology.

Later canons were devised, although there was no official Church agreement on a New Testament canon until the Synod of Hippo, 393, which declared that what is the now Catholic/Orthodox canon was fit for reading during the Mass. This is my second fact; the Church defined the canon of Scripture.

My third fact deals with more heretics. As the 19^th c. Anglican convert to Catholicism Cardinal Newman so articulately pointed out, Scripture has always been the base of heretical sects. Newman pointed out that where what is now the orthodoxy of today was always supported by the Catholic Church and detracted from by the multifarious heretical sects who supported their teachings with Scripture; Arianism supposedly had Scripture to back up its beliefs, Nestorianism supposedly had Scripture to back up its beliefs, Gnosticism, Marcionism, Paulicianism, and all the other heretical sects you can name all claimed to be backed up by Scripture.

My fourth fact deals with the practice of Sola Scriptura, where Scripture is the measure of the Church (in theory). If we hold that Catholicism is false, as did Luther and Calvin, and so the Holy Spirit was correct in guiding these two Reformers out of such falsity, then we must wonder why the Holy Spirit apparently stopped guiding them, for immediately after the Reformers (beyond just Luther and Calvin) agreed that Catholicism was false, their interpretations of Scripture shored them up in contradiction with each other on essentially every possible difference there could be. Calvin taught that the Eucharist was merely symbolic, Luther taught the real presence. Zwingli clashed with the Anabaptists on infant baptism. More illustrations could be drawn, but this is hardly necessary, as the contradictions between Protestant denominations is only too well known.

To explicate it, Sola Scriptura, where Scripture measures the Church, obviously leads to endless splintering. The two “solutions” to this are really problems; latitudinarianism, which is practiced in the Anglican church, which attempts to keep formal unity at the sake of doctrinal unity; sectarianism, which attempts to keep doctrinal unity at the sake of formal unity.

If the Protestants are right, then this concludes to us being unable to tell if we are interpreting Scripture properly, and if we cannot do that, then we cannot measure the Church. Even so if we are honest and as objective as possible about our interpretation of Scripture, we shall be wrong; Luther and Calvin are living testaments to this, and as Thucydides said, “History is Philosophy teaching by examples.” Therefore, we should not kid ourselves into believing we can interpret Scripture without the guidance of some infallible guide. Protestants, still even after living history, think the Holy Spirit will help, but clearly, if all we ever needed to do was call out to the Holy Spirit to help us, then Luther and Calvin and all the other Reformers would have been able to agree on everything, and, unless we posit they were all arrogant and dishonest about their interpretation of Scripture (which I think unlikely), then Sola Scriptura is invalid on that account, not going into the method by which Scripture itself is sustained and raised up.

Hence, we shall turn it around and say “The Church measures Scripture.”

This is further logically necessary when it is taken into account the question “How do we know that Scripture is divinely breathed and so inerrant?” One can’t use Scripture to prove Scripture, for that would be circular reasoning. The only possible force we can rely on, then, is the Church, and she defined the canon of Scripture for us the first time in 393 at Hippo. And, if one still tries to argue Sola Scriptura, how can it be supposed that a less authoritative voice can authoritatively deliver up something more authoritative than itself? That would be like a state legislature defining a national legislature to rule the said state legislature, even though the state legislature first defined the national legislature.

What could be, and has been assumed (even by my good friends), is that God used the Catholic Church as a less authoritative voice to deliver the more authoritative Scripture, and since it comes from God, it therefore can be most authoritative. However, this is wordplay, since how are we to know that such a decision came from God in the first place; and, considering the beliefs of the bishops who defined the canon of Scripture, who thought that they were themselves authoritative on the basis of Apostolic Succession and so were being led by the Holy Spirit since the Holy Spirit led the Catholic Church (and not the heretical sects), it would seem unlikely that such a conclusion can be drawn except as an effort to stave off concluding with the truth of Catholicism; and even then, to reach a non-Catholic answer, one accedes to Scriptural-interpretive and ecclesial nihilism and chaos.

So, if we are to allow ourselves a logical, rational answer that doesn’t posit nihilism for the mere sake of avoiding an answer, then we must conclude that the Scripture is meant to be under the authority of Church; the Church measures Scripture. Let me repeat; any non-Catholic conclusion can be reached only by positing arbitrary measures which assume that God has delivered the Christian canon of Scripture as the measure of the Church even though there is no possible way to verify this, since to cut out the authority of the Church is to, more or less, “cut off the branch one sits on” when proclaiming the authority of the Church. If the Church is not first raised up, then Scripture cannot be raised up. If one tries to raise up Scripture without raising up the Church, their choice to do so is arbitrary, irrational, and unfounded in history, and is based on a purposeful ignorance of ecclesiastical history which has always placed the Church as the center of authority, from the Apostles to their successors who claimed this authority from the Apostles.

The historical basis of the Apostles can be easily established by a reading of those early Christian writings we now consider Scripture. Now, though I am using what we now consider Scripture, I am not using it as Scripture, but only as historical documents which are taken as indicators of the honest belief of early Christians.

 

I can first establish that this man Jesus conceived of his later following being gathered up in the Church, and that He sent the Apostles out to establish this Church;

 

“[Jesus said to the Apostles,] ‘As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’” (John 20:21)

 

Now, applying logic, considering that Jesus says this, since He was sent to send, and the Apostles are being sent in the same way, they are also being sent to send; this is the very framework by which Apostolic Succession is defended.

 

“[Jesus said to the Apostles,] ‘Your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.’” (Luke 12:32)

 

So here, Jesus is promising to give the Apostles the Kingdom.

 

It was the belief of the early and post-Apostolic Church that the Church was established by and on the Apostles;

 

“God’s household [the Church], built on the foundation of the apostles.” (Ephesians 2:20)

 

“James, Peter and John [who are Apostles], those reputed to be pillars.” (Galatians 2:9)

 

Further, it can be established from later writings that Apostolic Succession was the norm of measuring and tracing the authority of the Church;

 

“And thus preaching through countries and cities, they appointed the first-fruits [of their labors], 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 a certain place, ‘I will appoint their bishops s in righteousness, and their deacons in faith.’… Our apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, and 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.” (Clement of Rome, Epistle to the Corinthians)

 

“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.” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies)

 

“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)

 

It should be then easily established that the Church is to measure Scripture, based on the teachings of Christ and the early Church. There is no historical or logical basis for which such a dictum could be switched around, and so Scripture can only be correctly understood within the parameters of God’s established Church, as Scripture is about the Church, which teaches of Jesus as Jesus established her to do. It is only in this way that interpretation does not become a matter of indeterminacy, and can be known to be correct where it is congruent to the Church that establishes Scripture.