So Matt and Brad have asked the question that is lurking behind a good bit of this discussion, and that has to do with the nature of authority.
When must Christians submit to authority? At what point is a Christian justified in fleeing that authority, rejecting authority, etc?
I just want to start the conversation by answering two points from the comments of the Who Do You Trust? post.
First, as to Matt’s last assertion that Calvin always had the option of submitting, this is just not the case. The historical circumstances were incredibly topsy-turvy not to mention the fact that he was a wanted man from time to time. When they’re killing all your friends and chasing you with swords, that’s not exactly an invitation to dialogue. Perhaps you’ve heard of the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre? Christ establishes families and says what God has joined together let no man put asunder, and yet when a husband begins beating his wife and children, the wife has a biblical obligation to run. Authority is not absolute, automatic, or irrevocable, sacrament or no sacrament. And when the family has a long tradition of beating wives and children, the wife has an even greater obligation to break that tradition.
I put up a post a while ago here which covered some of the exact same points focusing on the idea of unity, but the same point holds for the concept of authority as well. It is simply not true that the foundation of ecclesiastical authority is found in people. God certainly bestows authority on particular people as he wishes and normally it should be orderly and predictable, but the foundation of ecclesiastical authority is Jesus Christ, the image of the invisible Triune God. This is why when Paul is speaking about unity and humility he grounds it in the person of the “One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all” (Eph. 4:6).
Second, as to Brad’s question in the comments regarding the reformers’ willingness to reform within, I would again appeal to the analogy of the brow-beaten wife. Of course a wife is biblically required to submit to her husband in the Lord. But when that husband abuses her and her children and for many years, she is not under the obligation to stay and suck it up. And it won’t do to tisk-tisk that same wife when she objects to moving home after only a year or two of slightly better behavior. And it is simply not true that this refusal to trust an abusive husband somehow throws Paul’s injunctions to Christian wives out the window. It is not a threat to authority to tell an abused wife to run. Neither is it a threat to the church authority to flee the bishop who wants your head on a pike. And when he chuckles and invites you to talk things over a few weeks later, I wouldn’t blame anyone for staying far away (in fact I would advise it). Several centuries of high-handed abuse doesn’t qualify the abuser for leniency when he calls for a Church Council. At the same time, surely you are aware that there were continuing talks between Geneva and RCC bishops. At least one conference resulted in a united statement on justification. But the Magisterium required those bishops to repudiate their attempted peace. Likewise, there were Protestants at the Council of Trent and a number Protestant-minded Catholics as well. Bucer, for one, is famous (or infamous) for his attempts at reconciliation throughout his life. But for all the progress that the RCC has made, modern day Catholics that do not recognize the gross failings of the established church leading up to the Protestant Reformation are simply blind. This does not mean it was not the church of Jesus Christ, but God is not bound by human tradition. As lovely as an unbroken chain of bishops might be, God was pleased to go beyond that, and it has still pleased him to do so. I’m sure there were a number of Israelites none too pleased with the Reformation of Samson in the era of the Judges either, but it was still the work of the Holy Spirit delivering the people of God from her enemies. The work of Calvin, Luther, Wycliff, Huss, Bucer, and Zwingli was no less heroic.
Lurking beneath questions of ecclesiastical authority is the question of what Jesus actually commanded his apostles and therefore what we are required to follow, and this gets at Brad’s assertion that Presbyterianism was/is an historically novel notion. But again, that’s simply not the case. The early church was a gloriously messy place, and it is simply not true that all the orders of bishops, presbyters, and deacons had shiny little job descriptions. The way Christian authority works and has always worked is through the way of service. If you want to be great in the Kingdom of God you must become like a little child and a slave of all. Clement of Rome, Polycarp, Ignatius, Tertullian, Origen, and even Cyprian in the middle of the third century are not working with fully developed Episcopal forms of church government. It does not prove anything to quote them saying they have bishops. We do too even if we don’t call our pastors by that name. Ambrose of Milan (376) and even Augustine later on refer to the fact that their customs of church government where not the law of the church by divine fiat but rather rested on the wisdom of the church to build unity and order. And this does not mean that I don’t think we have anything to learn from the fact that through most of the church’s history it has been organized in an Episcopalian fashion. Nor am I defending every last thing the reformers did or said. I am saying they are/were heroes of the faith, judges like Samson and Gideon who delivered God’s people from hirelings that had broken into the sheepfold. And it doesn’t matter if hands were laid on their head, they spoke in tongues at their ordination, or they were dressed exactly like shepherds. You can always tell a tree by its fruit, and you can always tell a hireling by his way with the sheep.
Matt says
Toby, it’s not as if Calvin was sitting at home minding his own business, attending St. John parish and leading a bible study that the parish priest approved of when all of a sudden he turned around to see a group of black hooded Jesuits chasing him with a noose.
Calvin was an un-ordained layman teaching doctrine that was contrary to what was being taught in his local Church and by the universal Church.
To claim that he had some special charism from God by which he could preach doctrine in rebellion to the authorities put in place by God without being ordained himself or having any approval from the Church universal is absurd.
It seems roughly akin to an unbaptized man insisting that he didn’t have to be baptized because God isn’t limited by baptism, that God is working directly though him and he has no need of the sacraments and structures put there by Christ Himself.
Or someone standing on the street corner with a bottle of orange juice and a pound cake claiming to be celebrating the Sacrament of Our Lord’s Body and Blood.
If this “sometimes you gotta color outside the lines” sort of approach doesn’t apply to baptism or the Eucharist, I don’t know where you get the Scriptural warrant to claim that it works that way for Holy Orders.
And even if it did, as St. Frances de Sales pointed out, those who had this special calling from God would need to come with miracles since that’s how God always sends ministers who come outside of the established hierarchy.
Since the reformers had neither miracles nor orders, where did their authority to preach and rule come from?
Johannulus de Silentio says
Thanks for the interaction, Toby. This little discussion here is just the tip of the iceberg, of course, and I won’t go into all the arguments or issues I’m currently working through, but we’ll be talking in person soon, and maybe we can go into it more then.
It’s funny that you should reference that old “Why I Won’t Convert” post from last year, because that was the last time I commented on your blog, and Matt commented too, along similar lines as now. Of course, I’ve changed my mind on a number of things since last year.
A couple responses to this and recent posts:
You say here that “it is not true that the foundation of ecclesiastical authority is found in people.” Well, of course the foundation is Christ, but that foundation is built on through people. Christ is not visible to us now personally, and he must mediate his presence by people. And, if there is not to be a multiplicity of leaders all claiming the charism of the Spirit, claiming that they are of Paul, or Apollos, or Peter, or Christ, then the people who are indeed authorized to represent him should appointed in such a way that they are recognized and clear to all. Of course authority comes by service, and I will readily admit that anyone who is a mature and godly and wise servant of God is, ipso facto, an authority of mine in some sense, a father in the faith whose voice must be listened to and respected. But that, by itself, does not make that servant a proper authorized minister of word and sacrament. There are many great godly wise serving men in churches sitting under less qualified, less mature pastors, who know that, whatever his shortcomings, that pastor has a unique authorization and authority they don’t have. If we don’t recognize this, we’re back to a charismatic church in which anyone who thinks they have the Spirit can speak up and preach in the service.
So of course I agree with you that just getting the certificate by itself shouldn’t enough for ecclesiastical authority. But good fruit and good service shouldn’t be enough either. You need both. Otherwise, I fail to see how we don’t end up with the flock scattered all over the hills, following dozens of self-appointed (and perhaps indeed, eminently competent) shepherds.
Matt,
Again, I will disagree with you as well (looks like I’m the via media here 🙂 )
Whatever the value and validity of the Catholic Church, you have to admit that they had made some grievous errors at the time of the Reformation (they admit it themselves, in an oblique sorta way), and many of those who were supposed to shepherd the sheep were most definitely not doing so–just look at Julius II! I think Toby is mostly right to appeal to the OT for examples. What happens there? Yes, God appoints legitimate, outwardly authorized authorities, but, if they fall down on the job, he judges them. How? By raising up nobodies, upstarts, folks like Gideon, with no lineage and no visible authorization to do their job for them. Of course, these guys don’t do the job perfectly, and often screw things up (look at Samson), but they have been raised up by God, because the people who were supposed to do the job weren’t doing it.
That’s the Reformers. Heroes, mostly, I have to say. Flawed heroes, yes. Upstarts, yes. Their job, in my mind, was to make the established authorities wake up and realize that they weren’t doing their job.
Since you appealed to baptism, I think I can use that example too. Does God command us to be baptized? Yes. Is this how he wants to regenerate people? Yes. Does he sometimes save people without it, because he’s merciful and mysterious? Well, yes. God can give a special charism, and he often does, in emergency situations, or, as a judgment against those who have the ordinary charism. Right now, there’s lots of people running around who are on fire for God, and doing all kinds of things for his kingdom, who don’t give a darn about baptism. And, problematic as that might be, I think we are missing part of the picture if we don’t say, “Wow, look what God is doing through these people–we who have the gifts and the promises better get our act together and live up to it.”
jon says
Guido, you make an interesting point that I don’t think I’d ever heard until recently. All my life in a Calvin-loving tradition and I never knew he was an unordained layman! I knew he was a lawyer, but I thought he was ordained too. Weird. Not that you’d recognize his ordination if he was just ordained by the Genevan elders, but still weird. Here’s a post by a friend-of-a-friend that explores this in greater depth:
http://mphilliber.blogspot.com/2008/01/was-john-calvin-ordained.html
Of course, it’s not like Calvin started the Reformation. Wycliffe, Hus, and Luther all had valid Catholic ordinations (and, granted, excommunications in Hus’s and Luther’s cases, as well as execution – burning at the stake – in Hus’s case). Sounds like Luther might end up being exonerated, though, centuries later now by Pope Benedict XVI:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3492299.ece
Matt says
Jon,
As regards Calvin’s ordination, I meant that he wasn’t ordained by the Church as it existed at the time. He may have had hands laid on him by some folks in Geneva, but they wouldn’t have been Bishops in the Church either.
As regards the Luther link, I saw this a few months back as well. Catholic blogger Amy Welboune has a sound rule that displays its usefulness here:
Anything the British press says about the Catholic Church is not true.
The situation in reality was like this: every year, for some years now, Pope Benedict (and even when he was Cardinal Ratzinger) has had a meeting of former students to discuss some issue of philosophical interest. It is not any sort of official Church gathering, just a theological discussion group.
It turns out Luther wasn’t even one of the actual topics discussed at said meeting. This British journalist grabbed hold of a rumor and decided that Luther was to be exonerated. For better or for worse, nothing could be further from the truth.
Toby says
Hey Guys,
I’m just now getting back to the conversation. And I see things have gone on a pace. This first response is primarily to Matt’s first comment though it perhaps touches on some of Brad’s thoughts as well.
I guess the thing that astonishes me about your first comment, Matt, is how thoroughly it ignores the circumstances of the Reformation. You offer only two possibilities: either proper ordination or “special charism” validated by signs and wonders. But there is another option. There is the very real possibility that the French Church hated God, hated his Word, and was doing everything in its power to ignore, subvert, and overturn what was clearly written in Scripture and handed down from the Fathers. The kind of debauchery that had become normative particularly in the French portion of the church was infamous. Authority is not automatic, absolute, or irrevocable. If an angel from heaven proclaims another gospel, Paul says, God damn him (Gal. 1:8), and the same sentiment holds true for anyone else who preaches a false gospel, ordination or no. The gospel always trumps ordination, and that doesn’t mean ordination is worthless. It just means that Christian humility always submits to the Lord Jesus and his word first and foremost. So how bad would the church have had to have gotten before you’d let the reformers off the hook?
Again, I would point to the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre as clear evidence on a large scale of the sort of church Calvin and company were dealing with. Do you remember that the Pope himself praised the Massacre, ordered a Te Deum to be sung in its honor, and later had a coin minted to commemorate the event? And that’s not to exonerate the Protestants for their share of failings as well; the point is just that we aren’t talking about a pristine, Thomas Kinkade church that Calvin and his buddies somehow broke into and ransacked. When the shepherds are killing the sheep, it is the duty of the sheep to run.