What Separates Catholics and Protestants: A Rejoinder

Dr. Chris Castaldo is lead pastor at New Covenant Church in Naperville, IL.  I got to know Chris a bit when I was living in Naperville.  We had coffee a few times and talked theology and life.  I very much enjoyed getting to know Chris.

Besides being a Protestant Pastor, Dr. Castaldo is also a former Catholic.  He has a particular interest in Catholic-Protestant dialog, and has even written a book, Talkingwith Catholics about the Gospel: A Guide for Evangelicals.  Dr. Castaldo is also an academic theologian.  I have witnessed the great care he takes in accurately portraying what the Catholic Church actually teaches.  No one could accuse him of being uninformed about Catholicism; he knows Catholicism better than most Catholics.

Dr. Castaldo recently wrote a brief piece on his blog entitled "A Lenten Friday: What Separates Catholics and Protestants" which I thought deserved a Catholic response.

He begins:

I am often asked, “What is the fundamental difference between Catholic and Protestant belief?” 

He concludes his article by answering:

...the issue of Church authority is the fulcrum that separates Catholics from Protestants. 

On that Chris and I agree fully.  All other issues that divide Catholics and Protestant - including important ones like justification, the nature of grace, the sacramental economy, the role of Mary and the Saints - all of these can be traced back to the question of authority.  When it comes to authentically interpreting the Sacred Scriptures, who gets the final say?  If Church "X" teaches that baptism for spiritual regeneration is necessary for salvation and should be conferred on infants, and Church "Y" teaches a believers' baptism with no interior effects, and both churches appeal to the same scriptures, how is the Christian to adjudicate this important difference?  The Protestant answer is that the believer, like churches "X" and "Y" is left with the scriptures alone that  she can and must interpret for herself.  The Catholic answer is that Jesus founded a Church to make provision for this very thing, and entrusted that Church with a certain authority to authentically interpret the deposit of faith.  So on the basic thesis of Dr. Castaldo's article, I agree.  Sola Scriptura was the formal principle of the Protestant Reformation and remains at the heart of what separates Catholics and Protestants.

I think a few words are in order, though, on the rhetorical device by which Dr. Castaldo illustrates his point, and perhaps a challenge at the end to his position.

To illustrate the concept of apostolic succession and the authority of the bishop, Dr. Castlado gives the example of a bishop offering a dispensation to eat meat on a Friday in Lent at a gathering for wealthy donors.  He concludes:

My eyes turned toward old Joe Sedlak who sat beside me thinking that if he had choked on his steak and died apart from the bishop’s blessing, he might have been roasted. But now, after the bishop’s prayer, he could feast in peace.

From a Protestant point of view, clerical authority of this kind stretches incredulity to the breaking point. Even so, the Bishop’s announcement makes sense in the context of Catholic theology. If authority is vested in the Bishops to the extent that they mediate forgiveness and sanctifying grace, then such priestly action follows logically.

Dr. Castaldo presents a kind of reductio ad absurdum.  Dispensation granted? Eat your steak in peace of conscience.  No dispensation from the bishop: the fires of hell!  Certainly this shows the folly of the Catholic position.

But notice what the article does in a brilliant use of rhetoric.  It takes the most seemingly absurd, mundane, insignificant example in order to criticize the principle.  No doubt an evangelical audience would already have no esteem for the particular practice of required abstinence from meat on Lenten Fridays.  Add to that that this was - choke - a fundraiser (!).  This is theologically low-hanging fruit.

But it serves the purpose for a popular presentation.  A real test of the principle of the authority of the Church in the person of the bishop through apostolic succession may be not a steak at a fundraiser, but the Council of Nicaea.  Before we can ask if a bishop has the authority to bind and loose regarding an ecclesiastical discipline, let's ask if the Fathers of the Council of Nicaea had the authority to bind the Christian faithful to a Creed that used non-biblical terms.  Did those bishops have the authority to anathematize those who denied the Creed they promulgated?  That, it seems to me, is the better test case for the principle in question.  If apostolic succession carries an authority strong enough to bind the Church to the homoousios, then certainly a fortiori, it can impose and lift ecclesial disciplines regarding fasting.  

Finally, Dr. Castldo ends by saying:

Do you recognize authority to be found in the Bishops by means of apostolic succession? If so, you are a Catholic. If instead you see ultimate authority to be in Scripture alone, you are a Protestant.

Three points.

First, I think the way this is phrased is a bit of equivocation or false dichotomy.  For the Catholics, the ultimate authority in matter of faith is found in the Word of God, which is transmitted by both Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition (another dividing issues between Catholics and Protestants to be sure).  That is the unique authority of what God has revealed.  But that does not preclude another kind of authority, an interpretive authority.  The interpretive authority is not above the revealed Word of God, but serves it.  As Dei Verbun, the Second Vatican Council's document on Divine Revelation says:

But the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit, it draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed (10).

Second, at perhaps a bit nitpicky, but if "you recognize authority to be found int he Bishops by means of apostolic succession," that does not necessarily make you Catholics.  All of Eastern Orthodoxy is also quite adamant on this point.  This is simply to say that the reality of apostolic succession is not a peculiarity of Catholics.  If one wants to deny it, one has to deal with a whole other realm of Christians who have no special interest in the doctrines of Rome.

Finally, a bit of a challenge.  If we are to take the above description of Catholics and Protestants seriously, who was the first "Protestant" after the apostolic age?  Who was the first Christian writer after the biblical canon who showed evidence of NOT recognizing authority to be found in the Bishops by means of apostolic succession, but instead saw ultimate authority in Scripture alone?

By this description, Ignatius of Antioch (d. 110 AD), a man who knew the Apostles, was Catholic.  He wrote at length about the role of the Bishop in the Church:

“See that ye all follow the bishop, even as Jesus Christ does the Father, and the presbytery as ye would the apostles; and reverence the deacons, as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the Church without the bishop. […] Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude [of the people] also be; even as, wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. […] Whatsoever [the bishop] shall approve of, that is also pleasing to God, so that everything that is done may be secure and valid.” (St. Ignatius: Letter to the Smyrnaeans; Ch 8)

“It is becoming, therefore, that ye also should be obedient to your bishop, and contradict him in nothing; for it is a fearful thing to contradict any such person. For no one does [by such conduct] deceive him that is visible, but does [in reality] seek to mock Him that is invisible, who, however, cannot be mocked by any one. And every such act has respect not to man, but to God.” (St. Ignatius: Letter to the Magnesians; Ch 3)

Irenaeus of Lyon, writing against the heretics of his day in 190 AD, specifically appealed to apostolic succession as a refutation of the Gnostics he was reproving.  Apparently he, the disciple of a man who learned from the apostle John, was Catholic as well:

"It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known to us throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times, men who neither knew nor taught anything like what these heretics rave about" (Against Heresies 3:3:1 [A.D. 189]).

 "But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the successions of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul—that church which has the tradition and the faith with which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles. For with this Church, because of its superior origin, all churches must agree, that is, all the faithful in the whole world. And it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition" (ibid., 3:3:2).

 "Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with many who had seen Christ, but was also, by apostles in Asia, appointed bishop of the church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for he tarried [on earth] a very long time, and, when a very old man, gloriously and most nobly suffering martyrdom, departed this life, having always taught the things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the Church has handed down, and which alone are true. To these things all the Asiatic churches testify, as do also those men who have succeeded Polycarp down to the present time" (ibid., 3:3:4).

 "Since therefore we have such proofs, it is not necessary to seek the truth among others which it is easy to obtain from 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, so that every man, whosoever will, can draw from her the water of life. . . . For how stands the case? Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important question among us, should we not have recourse to the most ancient churches with which the apostles held constant conversation, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the present question?" (ibid., 3:4:1).

 "[I]t is incumbent to obey the presbyters who are in the Church—those who, as I have shown, possess the succession from the apostles; those who, together with the succession of the episcopate, have received the infallible charism of truth, according to the good pleasure of the Father. But [it is also incumbent] to hold in suspicion others who depart from the primitive succession, and assemble themselves together in any place whatsoever, either as heretics of perverse minds, or as schismatics puffed up and self-pleasing, or again as hypocrites, acting thus for the sake of lucre and vainglory. For all these have fallen from the truth" (ibid., 4:26:2).

 "The true knowledge is the doctrine of the apostles, and the ancient organization of the Church throughout the whole world, and the manifestation of the body of Christ according to the succession of bishops, by which succession the bishops have handed down the Church which is found everywhere" (ibid., 4:33:8).

These are but two early examples.  It seems that if what makes one Catholics is recognizing the authority to be found in the Bishops by means of apostolic succession, rather than holding to sola scriptura, then every Christian for at least the first millennium after Christ was Catholic!  What this implies for the Protestant is the need to admit a mass apostasy that happened 1) immediately after the apostolic age, 2) universally in the Church with no cries of protest to the contrary, and 3) despite Christ's promise that the gates of Hell would not prevail over His Church (Mt 16:18), which the Spirit would lead into all truth (John 16:13), and which Paul called the pillar and foundation of the truth (1 Tim 3:15).