We need to assimilate
things slowly, rather than their explanations.
- Fr. Pie Duployé [1]
Before we start to examine some of the specific teachings of the Catholic Church which some Evangelicals question, let us summarise some of the main general principles which underpin Catholic scriptural interpretation. We have seen in Chapter Three how easily the same Bible verses can be interpreted in so many different ways. So what has led the Church to interpret Scripture in the particular way it has? Are there any common principles behind it all, and where do they come from?
Mystery and unity
Let us remind ourselves of some of the main conclusions we reached in Chapter Three. We saw that the early Christians, including the New Testament writers, knew that Scripture’s main purpose was to reveal to mankind “inexpressible things, things that a man is not permitted to tell” (2 Cor. 12:4). Often these things by their nature could not be described literally, or even in “plain” language, but were best expressed as “types” (typoi – cf. 1 Cor. 10:6, 10:11; Rom. 5:14): networks of images which reveal connections and correspondences throughout Scripture, thus illuminating the mysteries of God’s nature. These “types” demanded interpretation and re-interpretation at multiple levels: the Jews call this sort of interpretation midrash, Paul and other early Christians called it “allegory”. Jesus Himself, we have seen, used and invited these techniques, in His parables and elsewhere.
We saw also how the multi-layered nature of Scripture means that often there are passages in the Bible which do not reveal only one possible authentic meaning, but can genuinely and reasonably be interpreted in different ways. Different does not necessarily mean mutually incompatible. Christianity, to borrow a phrase from Catholic theologian Karl Adam, “is a union of contraries. But contraries are not contradictories.” [2] Indeed, the Bible is full of verses which appear to contradict each other; but these “biblical tensions” [3] are an essential part of our faith, and we must accept them as surely as we must embrace Jew and Greek, “signs” and “wisdom” (Gal. 1:22), Peter and Paul. As Evangelical writer Stephen John March declares:
If we hold that all Scripture is divinely inspired, then it follows that, in order to be authentic, each Christian spirituality must seek to embrace and to hold in tension all biblical revelation. [4]
So many things in our faith, as we saw in Chapter Five, depend upon the unification of apparent opposites. That is why many of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity are what we call “mysteries”: they are not simple or easily defined, and if we allow our reason to over-dominate then we can be tempted to reject them as impossible or illogical. For example, our understanding of Jesus depends upon our embracing both those parts of Scripture which proclaim His humanity and those which proclaim His divinity. And our understanding of God depends upon embracing those parts of Scripture which proclaim His unity as well as those which proclaim the individuality of His three Persons. Catholic priest and scholar Thomas Weinandy explains:
There is a difference between striving for doctrinal purity and rationalistically probing the mysteries of the gospel. The true theologian or church body wishes to know ever more clearly the mysteries of the faith so that… we know better what the mystery is, not that we comprehend the mystery and so deprive it of its mystery. The Trinity is three persons in one God. Jesus is the one person of the Son existing as God and man. This is doctrinal purity, but the mystery survives, and actually with the clarity comes more mystery – more awe and reverence. [5]
What then is Christian mystery? The word “mystery” has been somewhat debased in recent years, because the modern rationalist mind does not like to think of things which we cannot fully know. And so the word has come, in modern secular parlance, to mean nothing more profound than those things which we don’t know but could find out if we investigated them properly (as in a “murder mystery” or a “mystery novel”). However, as Orthodox bishop Kallistos Ware explains, in Christian thought, a mystery is
something revealed to our understanding [see Eph. 1:9, 3:3-4] yet never completely revealed, for it extends beyond our understanding into the limitless darkness of God [Ex. 20:21, Ps. 18:11]. [6]
Mysteries are not meant to be grasped, but accepted; they are not to be mastered, but submitted to; even if not understood, they can be faithfully affirmed. The Triune God, and the two natures of Christ, are examples of such mysteries.
In this modern age, surrounded as we are by secular rationalism, even Christians often find it difficult to embrace the language of Christian mystery. Yet, as Orthodox writer Tony Ugolnik explains, embrace it we must:
The Western mind has little tolerance for mystery, and it often casts in vaguely condescending terms those who do… Living among… utilitarian rationalists…, we Christians can forget the nature of Christian perception. We confess to doctrines profoundly mysterious by their nature – that a man should be God, that one God should be at the same time three persons, that we of corruptible flesh should also be temples of the living God. So we believe, but so we cannot comfortably think… We Christians in the West… have mystery in plenty, yet our discourse averts it, avoids it as if in embarrassment. For mystery is what we have been taught through our education to relentlessly extinguish. [7]
As Evangelical theologian Dan Clendenin explains:
The impenetrable mystery of God is not a puzzle to decipher or a defect to expunge; it is something to contemplate and adore… A truly biblical theological method adores the mystery rather than eliminates it. [8]
It is partly because of the early Christians’ experience of Christ’s power to unify through mystery that the Catholic Church has developed such a love for the simultaneous embracing of opposites. Whereas Protestantism has often defined many of its key doctrines with “onlys” (“only Scripture”, “only faith” etc.) and has sought, understandably, to preserve its doctrinal integrity by deliberately excluding theological tendencies which threaten to contradict that which it already knows to be true, Catholicism has seen that sometimes the fullness of truth can only be reached by eschewing “onlys” and embracing “boths” and “ands”. If the Church had decided that Christ was “only” God, then we might now be Docetists; if “only” man, Arians. And imagine what a disaster it would have been if the Church had decided that God could not be both three and one but had to be “only” one or the other!
If we are serious about wanting to understand God’s Word,
then, we must recognise and embrace its unity.
Remember – though God chose to use a variety of different authors as channels
for His Word, it is not their
meanings which matter most. It is God’s meaning we seek, which, like the Holy
Trinity, is whole and complete and one, though it may show many “faces”. Accepting
mystery allows us to accept the unity of Scripture – precisely because
accepting mystery allows us not to insist upon having to understand and
rationalistically reconcile it all. Accepting mystery means that if we find a “difficult”
verse in Scripture whose message appears awkward or inconvenient, we do not
need to ignore it or hope to explain it away. Similarly, if two verses appear
to contradict each other, we have no need, or right, to declare one “obscure” and
use the other to explain what it “re
affirms the truth of two opposing ideas that cannot be logically reconciled. Such truth is greater than either of the two sides of the paradox... We can make peace with this paradox, but we can never solve it. [9]
If we were desperate to avoid mystery, we could of course be
tempted to suggest that certain passages in the Bible are “central” to the
interpretation of certain issues whilst others are “peripheral”. But no: the
Bible does not say what is “central” and what is “peripheral”; indeed, if it is
truly all God’s Word, then it is all
central! Scripture is a unified whole, and we cannot c
Language and unknowing
Inevitably, when dealing with matters of faith which are mysterious, we will struggle to express them in the correct language. And, at the end of the day, the precise language we use to describe the affairs of God is not the most important thing. We saw in Chapter Five how frustrated early Christian leaders such as Hilary of Poitiers became with the pressure of “daring to embody in human terms truths which ought to be hidden in the silent veneration of the heart.” [10] And so we should not be too worried about making sure that we express our faith, or that others express their faith, using absolutely the correct words. We should heed the warning of Evangelical theologian J. I. Packer, who decries the way that some Christians are wont to
follow the path of contentious orthodoxism, as if the mercy of God in Christ automatically rests on persons who are notionally correct and is just as automatically withheld from those who fall short of notional correctness on any point of substance. [11]
But no: our words are our way of struggling to express inexpressible things; they are at best mere approximations of the Truth. Indeed, they are only one way out of many possible ways to imperfectly express the inexpressible perfection of God. And so we should be humble in front of the many ways in which Christians have, over the millennia, expressed their faith, even if they at first appear strange to us.
Things which are inexpressible are, in one sense, at least partly unknowable. This notion may make us feel uncomfortable if we have grown up in the West surrounded by science and rationalism and the apparent determination that anything worth knowing should be utterly comprehensible and expressible in clearly understood terms. But Scripture is clear that as Christians we have no right to expect this. These profound words of the apostle Paul –
Oh, the depths
of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How
unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths
beyond tracing out!
“Who has
known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has
been his counsellor?” [Is. 40:13] (Rom. 11:33-34)
echo some of the greatest wisdom of the Old Testament:
“Can you
fathom the mysteries of God?
Can you
probe the limits of the Almighty?
They are
higher than the heavens – what can you do?
They are deeper
than the depths of the grave – what can you know?” (Job 11:7-8)
And, as we saw in Chapter Three, complete doctrinal clarity and consistency are not characteristics of the mindset into which Christianity was born, or has lived most of its life. Some of the greatest of early Christians testified to the fact that sometimes humility in the face of unknowing is a gateway to a greater level of knowledge. And so we find that the ancient Church housed a great treasure-store of mysticism. A mystic is someone who embraces mystery. And in that sense all Christians are called to be mystics – for without mystery our faith is incomplete.
Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa (c. 335-395 A.D.), was one of the greatest of early Christian mystics:
Human speech finds it impossible to express that reality which transcends all thought and every concept, which the soul that has been torn from evil constantly seeks, and to which it yearns to be united once it has been found. And he who obstinately tries to express it in words, unconsciously offends God. For He Who is believed to transcend the universe must surely transcend speech. [12]
Evangelicals may be wary of talk like this – and understandably, for in our modern age, those people who talk of “not knowing” in the Christian context are often seeking the opposite of what Gregory of Nyssa wanted: they are the relativists and the secularists whose agenda is often to undermine all Christian truth by declaring the sources of that truth (whether Scripture or Tradition) to be unreliable. And modern “mystics” often find their “mystery” by declaring all the great Christian truths to be nothing more than “spiritual” ideas, unconnected with the real world. But this is not Gregory’s purpose here. For him, the “reality which transcends all thought and every concept” is just that: a reality. Recognising that it transcends all thought is an essential step in eventually understanding it. It helps us to be unafraid of the strange and mysterious things that God does. It helps us to be humble before Him.
Whatever we say about God, our words will fall short of the truth. And, since the differences between Evangelicals and Catholics – or, for that matter, any religious differences at all which we may attempt to explain – can only be expressed in imperfect words, let us be cautious about how much we praise or condemn each other for how we express our faith. Let us seek understanding rather than identical semantic formulations. Evangelical theologian Robert Webber expresses it well:
It would be well for us all to hold our theological formulations with a degree of tentativeness. This is no way means that we are to be tentative about the gospel or the deposit of faith. The truth which has been revealed and passed down in history is unchangeable… But our formulation of that truth into a system… must be expressed with tentativeness, even hesitancy… Such an approach serves the gospel, for it accents what we are sure about and makes what has been passed down in history unmistakeably clear. It avoids making nonessentials essential and sets forth an attitude of Christian humility and graciousness which makes us accepting of and open to other Christians who also stand in the historic faith, but articulate it through a different frame of reference. [13]
And Catholic theologian Hans Küng echoes him, with this compelling allegory:
Every school of theology has its own particular direction of flow or inclination… This flow does not in itself imply an overflow into error but it does imply limitation. No particular gradient ought to claim absolute authority; the water can pour into the valley by many different routes. Perhaps one riverbed channels the waters more swiftly and impressively than another… Yet its flow will be finite and circumscribed, not comparable to the all-inclusive infinity of the ocean… Any theology, even the best, can in its own way become a victim of its own inclination. Any theology, even the best, has its most dangerous currents precisely at the point of maximum flow. God’s Word alone is the all-encompassing ocean, alive yet at rest.[14]
Experience and history
The Catholic Church is profoundly aware of how the convictions of the early Christians developed from their personal experience as much as from the exclusively rationalistic examination of texts. As we saw in Chapter Five, the Church’s conviction of the divinity of Holy Spirit cannot be said to have come purely from an objective examination of Scripture: otherwise it would have been arrived at far sooner, and with much less debate. Rather, it came out of the personal relationship of early Christians to the Holy Spirit: it was their experience of the lordship of the Spirit in their lives that led them to search Scripture for things which would contextualise and explain this personal experience. As Kallistos Ware insists, “if we believe in God, it is because we know him directly in our own experience, not because of logical proofs.” [15]
We should, rightly, be suspicious of convictions which come solely from individual personal experiences: we individuals are, after all, so easily deceived. But, Bishop Kallistos goes on, “a distinction needs to be made between ‘experience’ and ‘experiences.’” [16] Individuals have experiences; the Church has experience. We individuals can only personally relate to what has happened to us in our short lives. The Church strives, albeit in an imperfect way, to relate to its total experience, from Creation, through the patriarchs, through the Exodus, through the Kingdom of Israel, through Christ, through the apostles, through the early “fathers” of the Church, through the Middle Ages, through the Reformation, to the present day. This is how the Jewish people have always related to God – through their history:
Remember
the days of old;
consider
the generations long past.
Ask your
father and he will tell you,
your
elders, and they will explain to you. (Deut. 32:7)
Religious historian Gary Macy puts it this way:
The Christian past is indeed a storehouse, full of treasures, marvels and challenges. The past, seen in this way, keeps us honest. [17]
We need to be kept honest. Therefore we too, the new people of God, should likewise know our history. For out of the whole history of “God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone” (Eph. 2:19-20) comes our understanding of who we are and what we believe. Catholic writer Sean Innerst warns us:
Without memories, minds, and hearts full of the whole family history of the People of God contained in the Scriptures and “stored in the depths of the Church’s memory,” we condemn ourselves to an amnesia of the soul. Lacking those memories, we have no individual or corporate identity. [18]
Let us try not to make that mistake too often.
Acts and actions
History is made of events as much as words. Jesus did not write books, but did things. This does not mean that we should ever take lightly the words of Scripture. But we should recognise that they are a doorway to God’s actions. As Catholic biblical scholar Raymond Brown explains:
In the Old Testament Yahweh is pictured not only as a God who speaks (e.g., through the prophets) but also, nay chiefly, as a God who acts. His actions in salvation history were effective signs of His protection of His people; they accomplished what they signified. It is not surprising, then, that when God’s Son came to establish God’s dominion over men, He was also a God who acts… [19]
God speaks to us as much through what He does as through what He says about it. And these acts of God almost always have had their context within the actions and experience of a people. God does things to people, with people, and for people, as a community. For the early Christians, it was the lived communal experience of God’s actions which enabled them to write about them afterwards. They understood repentance by repenting; they understood baptism by being baptised; they understood the breaking of bread by breaking bread (e.g. Acts 2:42); they understood charity by loving.
Therefore, our own understanding of God’s work develops best in the context of our own lived action. The two are not separable. As Scottish Quaker philosopher John Macmurray explains:
Action includes thought; it is not something which can be distinguished from thought. The life of reflection is not different from the life of action… Ideas are true or real only through their reference to reality, and not in their own right. Reality is only to be found in action. Real things are the things we deal with in action, and therefore the whole life of thought has meaning only in reference to the full reality of intentional action upon the world which includes it. [20]
And so we cannot understand Scripture merely by thinking about it or studying it: we have to do it – because God did it. Just as the Jews, every Passover, re-enter by ritual action into their salvation history in order to understand it and appropriate it better, we too need to continually re-enter into the events of our salvation history as God’s people in order to progress in our understanding of what those events mean. Kallistos Ware again:
Doctrine cannot be understood unless it is prayed: a theologian, said Evagrius, is one who knows how to pray, and he who prays in spirit and in truth is by that very act a theologian [On Prayer 60]. And doctrine, if it is to be prayed, must also be lived: theology without action, as Saint Maximus put it, is the theology of demons [Letter 20]. The Creed belongs only to those who live it. Faith and love, theology and life, are inseparable. [21]
Love
I said above that we have no right to declare what is central and what is peripheral in God’s Word. Actually, this is not strictly true, for Jesus Himself told us one thing about God which trumps everything else:
Hearing that Jesus has silenced
the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law,
tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in
the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord
your God with
All the Law and the Prophets
hang on these two commandments. In other words,
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… This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us. (1 Jn. 4:7-8,10)
Therefore, the whole of Scripture is a testament to God’s love. Scripture is not so much a set of instructions and explanations as a long event-filled love story. This means that our interpretation of the Bible must fit into the context of a God who not only loves us, but who is love – a God who is Trinity, and who sent His Son to redeem the world.
Thus armed, let us proceed to examine some specific Catholic
doctrines, and why the Church has interpreted the testimony of Scripture the
way it has. This book is entitled “Catholicism Explained to Evangelicals”. It
is not entitled “Why Evangelicals Should All Become Catholics”! I am not
expecting an Evangelical who reads this book to be suddenly convinced that the
Catholic interpretation of Scripture is necessarily a better one. And no
Catholic should claim that the Evangelical interpretation of Scripture is an
irrational one either: it too is rooted, in
BIBLICAL SUMMARY of
Chapter Six
What is Christian
mystery?
Ex. 20:21, Ps. 18:11, 2 Cor. 12:4; Eph. 1:9, 3:3-4
Truth is at least
partly unknowable.
Job 11:7-8, Is. 40:13, Rom. 11:33-34
Our history and our
actions help to reveal the truth.
Deut. 32:7, Eph. 2:19-20
The greatest
commandment is Love.
Matt. 22:34-40, 1 Jn.4:7-10
[1] Fr. Duployé, in Maison-Dieu 10 (1947), p. 43, quoted in Yves
Congar, The Meaning of Tradition,
trans. A. N. Woodrow (Ignatius, San Francisco, 2004), p. 143
[2] Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism, ch. 1, on www.ewtn.com
[3] Anthony N. S. Lane, Justification by Faith in Catholic-Protestant
Dialogue (T&T Clark, London, 2002), pp. 132-135
[4] David Bjork & Stephen March, As Pilgrims Progress: Learning how Christians
can walk hand in hand when they don’t see eye to eye (Aventine, San Diego,
2015), p. 67
[5] Fr. Tom Weinandy, letter to
Charles Colson, 1992, quoted in Charles Colson, The Body: Being Light in Darkness (Word, Dallas, 1992), p. 10
[6] K
[7] Anthony Ugolnik, The Illuminating Icon (Eerdmans, Grand
Rapids, 1989), pp. 91-92
[8] Daniel B. Clendenin, Eastern Orthodox Christianity: A Western
Perspective (Baker, Grand Rapids, 2003), pp. 150-151
[9] Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes (SPCK,
London, 2008), pp. 115 & 117
[10] Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity II.2, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Ser. II,
vol. 9, ed.
[11] J. I. Packer, “On from Orr:
Cultural Crisis, Rational Realism & Incarnational Theology”, in Reclaiming the Great Tradition:
Evangelicals, Catholics & Orthodox in Dialogue, ed. James S. Cutsinger
(InterVarsity, Downers Grove, 1997), p. 174
[12] from Gregory of Nyssa, Commentary on Ecclesiastes sermon 7, in From Glory to Glory: Texts from Gregory of
Nyssa’s Mystical Writings, ed. Herbert Musurillo (St. Vladimir’s Seminary,
Yonkers, 2014), p. 126
[13] Robert E. Webber, Common Roots: A Call to Evangelical Maturity
(Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1979), pp. 142-143
[14] Hans Küng, Justification (Burns & Oates, London, 1981), p. 278-279
[15] Bishop Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (St. Vladimir’s,
Crestwood, 2001), p. 18
[16] Bishop K
[17] Gary Macy, The Banquet’s Wisdom: A Short History of the Theologies of the Lord’s
Supper (OSL, Ashland City, 2005), p. 11
[18] Sean Innerst, “The Family That Learns
Together, Yearns Together: The Liturgy as Family Pedagogy”, in Catholic for a Reason: Scripture and the
Mystery of the Family of God, ed. Scott Hahn & Leon J. Suprenant Jr. (Emmaus
Road, Steubenville, 1998), p. 161
[19] Raymond E. Brown, New Testament Essays (Doubleday, New
York, 1965). pp. 224-225
[20] John Macmurray, The Clue to History (SCM, London, 1938),
p. 7
[21] Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church (Penguin, London, 1964), p. 215
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