THEREIN LIE CONTENT

Since I am just recently back from a vacation situation in which there was a professional song leader and gamester who tried to get me to “participate” and to enjoy just lots of “togetherness,” I am unhappily reminded afresh of all the people who have tried so hard to entertain me or, even worse, to get me to entertain myself. I don’t blame these leaders of fun, mind you. I just report that they never lead me into much fun.

I used to tease my youngsters. After breakfast, say on a bright Saturday morning, I would say to them, “Where are you going?,” and they would say, “Out to play.” And I would say, “Play what?” “Well, just play,” they would say, which is exactly what they did. If you have play in you, it shouldn’t be very hard to go out to play. Something is bound to turn up; but if you don’t have play in you, someone else can’t put it into you. Out of the heart are the issues of life, and a merry heart does good like a medicine.

A recent writer has suggested that we do our own brand of whistling in the dark these days by “inventing imperatives.” We tell each other brave things like “don’t worry.” As far as I can tell I have never worried on purpose; but, on the other hand, I have never been able to quit worrying by telling myself that I just won’t worry. My worries arise from deeps some of which I can’t analyze. Then they tell me that a great many things would be different if I would “just start the day happily.” Or maybe “have sunshine in your heart.” I am tempted to a loud guffaw over such advice. Not having the good things in me I try to produce them synthetically, and it never quite comes off. When people tell me to count to ten before I lose my temper, they don’t seem to understand me. If I have really lost my temper, I can’t count!

The plain fact is that the kind of person I really am keeps pumping up to the surface in spite of everything. The question then is how do I get at the sources? “Renew a right spirit within me.” I don’t think I can touch the well-springs of my own life, but He can. Anything less is a superficial fake.

EUTYCHUS II

ANTIDOTE AND APPLAUSE

For an antidote to Professor Seerveld’s ill-founded polemic (“What Makes a College Christian?,” Aug. 30 issue), let me simply direct your readers’ attention to such constructive works as Faith and Knowledge by John Hick, Language and Christian Belief by John Wilson, and even to my own Language, Logic and God and (with Kent Bendall) Exploring the Logic of Faith.

FREDERICK FERRE

Chairman, Philosophy and Religion Dept.

Dickinson College

Carlisle, Pa.

Mr. Seerveld (“An American Bathtub”) has been intemperate in trying to indict philosophy on the basis of charges that are too general.

Canoga Park, Calif.

FRED C. PATTERSON

I am so greatly pleased with the first issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY since becoming a subscriber that I cannot resist the impulse to tell you so.

Calvin Seerveld’s two articles in particular deserve appreciation for the clarity and good sense of the answer to the question as to what makes a college Christian. They strongly appeal to me because it was my privilege to “sit on the same log” with a great teacher who used to say that it is the duty of a college to “make my boy discriminating,” e.g., as to the difference between right and wrong.

HENRY FRANCIS SMITH

Kennebunkport, Me.

CHALLENGE SHORT OF PRAYER

I agree with almost every assertion made in your profound editorial statement, “Religion in the Public Schools” (Aug. 30 issue).

The point of disagreement is that I do not believe that voluntary religion will wither in a secular climate of public affairs. Quite the contrary, a secular state where the government maintains an official neutrality toward all religion is the surest guarantee of religious freedom and vitality. Religion will, and should, enter the public life through the public performance of religiously informed persons rather than through superficial, rote, public manifestations of religiosity. There is a danger, in fact, that when a religious rite becomes incorporated into the state machinery, it loses its religious significance and becomes part of the secularized state religion.

On the other hand, I agree with you that state neutrality toward religion must be “wholesome neutrality.” Neutrality should not be defined in such a way that it becomes hostility to religion. Thus, for example, I would agree that an intensified effort ought now be made to assure a public school curriculum: that will inform all children regarding that aspect of religious truth which is part of our heritage in Western civilization; that will also clarify, for our young, the values, choices, and sanctions that are available to them in our society and challenge them to make ethical decisions in accordance with their profoundest ideals.

Certainly, at the minimum, the theistic affirmations that are part of the historic documents of American political life should be understood by all citizens whether they accept these affirmations or reject them.

In a word, I am saying that the public school, as a state agency, ought not to pray. The state can, however, through its public schools, inform and challenge the heart and the mind. This function properly belongs to the school.

RABBI ARTHUR GILBERT

The National Conference of Christians and Jews, Inc.

New York, N. Y.

JERICHO’S FALL PLUS SOUND EFFECTS

Had “Some Comments on Bible Teaching” by Lucile Long Strayer (Aug. 30 issue) appeared in The Christian Century, we should have rejoiced. But if addressing evangelicals, she shows a lamentable ignorance of current Sunday school literature in the evangelical orientation. Our preschool children, for instance, not only hear the story of the fall of Jericho, but are urged to play it with noise and movement. The trend to more “meat” in content both in the secular and in the liberal religious fields today finds evangelical literature right where it has been all along, offering solid Bible study to all ages.…

Who are these adults who know so little about the Bible? Has anyone compared information among adults from liberal and from evangelical Sunday school backgrounds? True, the ignorant ones may be evangelicals; if so, surely other factors than curricula are at fault. As long as evangelicals consent to the necessity of public school teachers having many hours of educational method and content, while a teacher of the Bible needs nothing but an hour on Saturday night to teach a Book which comes from a different culture, and which is not written at a child’s level, we can hardly expect biblically literate products from our Sunday schools.

MARY E. LEBAR

Prof. of Christian Education

Wheaton College

Wheaton, Ill.

IN ONE PIECE, EVEN

I read the article “Give Me Back My Child” (Aug. 30 issue) with interest, but I was disappointed with the conclusion. The distressing situation which the author described is certainly true and calls for action. However, it seems to me that the writer is guilty of two errors. The first is that he acknowledges the biblical principle of parental responsibility in educating a child but he is not ready to return to that principle in educating his own child. The second error is that he seeks to defend the public school as not being “Godless.” I admire his loyalty to the position of his denomination but I fail to see how he can uphold that stand especially in the light of what he has written himself in the article. The public school system in the main is not Christian, it is not neutral, but it is anti-Christian. It is the expression of the spirit of the world. Therefore, it seems to me that the only logical conclusion to the matter is the private Christian day school which as an extension of the home can impart the faith of the home. Then the author will have his child back and in one piece also.

NORMAN B. HAAN

Volga Christian Reformed Church

Volga, S. D.

AMPLIFICATION DESIRED

Your article “The Fourth ‘R’ ” by Dr. Joseph M. Hopkins (Aug. 30 issue) is one of the finest I have ever read by any Protestant on present-day trends in religion. I wish every Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox would read it, especially leaders in government and public and state education. Dr. Hopkins’ suggestions should be given thoughtful and serious study.

SAMUEL H. SAYRE

Kingston Parish (Episcopal)

Mathews, Va.

If public schools are to teach religion as the fourth “R,” what religion is it to be—Catholic, Protestant, Jewish?… No, religious instruction can only be the province of the home and the church.

Pasadena, Calif.

WILLIAM G. WIRTH

We are at an impasse: the kind of education our children should have is exactly what the state cannot legitimately provide. Why do we hesitate to come to the logical conclusion, that it is our responsibility to provide the kind of schools that can dispense a spiritually founded education?

As one who has fought the battle, I am aware of the arguments con. There is first the rallying cry of our obligation to defend the public schools. At the risk of being branded a bolshevik, an anarchist, or a lunatic, I ask: Whose obligation? The appeal is often made to Matthew 22:21, where Jesus told the Pharisees to “Render … unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.” Overlooking for the moment the dubious applicability of this verse on exegetical grounds to our problem, is there anything in Scripture or in theology which hints that education is one of things “which are Caesar’s”? The claim that education is a function of the state came entirely from the side of the state, and that quite recently. But we have been so brainwashed by the notion that we accept it as of the order of nature. The state may have sound arguments, from a secular point of view, to support its claims to the right to maintain schools. But wherein are we permitted to suppose that these … take priority over the God-given responsibility of parents?

Then there is the argument of cost. Of course it costs money to build and operate schools. But I do not find any warrant in Scripture for the idea that we can fulfill any of our spiritual and moral duties at little cost, least of all such a crucially important one as that of educating our children. Obedience to God in any sphere costs—and more than mere money. Obedience that costs less than my all is incomplete obedience.

Finally, there is the argument that goes like this: “What will happen to children in the public schools without the witness of the Christian children? And what will happen to the Christian child if he is sheltered from the reality of a world hostile to his God?” On the basis of my experience with three children who are at least as interested in evangelism as the average Christian child, I can testify that the opportunity to witness in school is much less than is supposed, while the opportunity to witness out of school is much greater than is supposed. When our children were in a Christian school, their witness was just as vital and effective as it is now that they are in a public school, if not more so. And as for the “hothouse” argument, I accept it. I purposely and designedly would provide for my children a measure of protection, until they are of age to exercise a greater measure of discernment, discretion, and judgment than they are at present capable of. We are not facing the facts if we exaggerate the capacity of our children to discriminate in assimilating what is taught in school, including what is taught implicitly, which is not inconsiderable, and when we minimize the impact of a secular approach to the universe upon an impressionable child.

Hartford, Conn.

CHARLES R. TABER

PLEA FOR AMPLIFICATION

I want to heartily endorse the article “The Non-Conformists” by James J. Short (Aug. 2 issue).

This article should be published in Editor and Publisher, it should appear as “Speaking Out” in the Saturday Evening Post, it should be in the trade journals of the movie and television industries. It should appear as pungent letters to the editors in our metropolitan papers, and magazines with national coverage. It should be sent to the professors of literature in our great universities and colleges. It should be in the publications of our education associations. It should be delivered as a speech after dinner to the half-drunk crowd attending various professional or business organizations.

H. GLENN STEPHENS

Director

United Presbyterian Center

Frenchburg, Ky.

James J. Short … is correct in his suggestion that there remains in society an uncelebrated core of morally upright people. Several of his comments or observations seem to be rather extreme, however. For example, he observes that Sinclair Lewis in Elmer Gantry “personifies gospel evangelists by … a religious charlatan who profits from his preaching and fornicates from his profits.” Is it not possible that Lewis was not also attacking the gullibility of certain kinds of congregations as well as the morals of his preacher? Furthermore, is Lewis really saying that all evangelists are like this, or is he simply telling the story of one such charlatan? Mr. Short also mentions that Dickens was “religiously oriented and did not attack people in this regard” (for holding high moral principles). Any biography of Dickens’ life will suggest that the novelist himself had his favorites among the women.

While it is true that people who like to think of themselves as part of the core of non-conformists Mr. Short describes may find certain aspects of modern literature decadent, they should continue to read it, not only to understand better modern man’s needs of redemption, but also for the insights books like Ulysses, Sons and Lovers, and A Farewell to Arms give us into human behavior.

KENNETH E. WILLIAMS

Ashbourne Presbyterian Church

Elkins Park, Pa.

ONTOLOGICAL SHOCK ABSORBED

Addison H. Leitch’s postscript to your August 30 issue reminds me of an incident that took place several years ago in our seminary. As seminarians we liked to discourse learnedly (we thought) for hours on end about such high-sounding terms as “existentialism,” “ontological shock,” “points of contact,” “ideological encounter,” and other wordy terms vaguely defined. In our midst that year was a Canadian Lutheran pastor, fresh from the wilds of Saskatchewan, who was writing the thesis for his S.T.M. degree. One day he listened to one of our lengthy learned debates, saying nothing until we paused for collective theological breath. Then he quietly asked:

“How does it happen?—there are scores of pastors in our parishes today who have never heard about existentialism and ontology, and who couldn’t care less if someone told them. How, then, have they survived as effective pastors? Yet that’s exactly what they have all been for twenty, thirty, or even forty years.”

EDWARD A. JOHNSON

St. Peter’s Evangelical Lutheran Community Church

Hay Springs, Neb.

The writer is a firm believer in a well-trained ministry, but since graduating from theological school thirty years ago he has had time to do a considerable amount of reading as well as attending theological discussions and listening to the “wise men from the East.” However, the theologian seems to be engaged in a lost cause.

On Continental Europe and the British Isles the minister must have four or five degrees or he is regarded as an ignoramus. Does this fact account for the poor church attendance and the little or no influence of the Church in the life of the people?

A few years ago the writer attended the meeting of the Baptist World Alliance. One of the speakers spoke on “Jesus Christ: Our High Priest.” A person with only an eighth-grade education could have understood every word which he spoke. His name: George Truett.

Eagle, Idaho

MERRILL C. SKAUC

A STUDENT’S REJOINDER

As a student of Dr. Stagg, and having read both his books closely, I feel that Dr. Tenney did not read the latest book [New Testament Theology] closely enough (Book Reviews, May 24 issue).

In my opinion, Dr. Stagg is more neo-orthodox than conservative. As Dr. Tenney points out, Dr. Stagg is ambiguous in discussing inspiration. I believe that he is purposely ambiguous about a number of things. He teaches a Pelagian doctrine of sin. Compare chapter 2 with pages 334 and 335 on this. He teaches the wholistic view of man. He suggests a modalistic Trinity on page 39, which is in fact what he teaches.

In chapters 4 and 5 he makes even more serious errors. A careful study of his teaching on the Atonement will reveal that it is wholly subjective. There is no objective Atonement to be found in his teaching. There is a total lack of what Leonard Hodgson describes as “something accomplished, something done.” He rejects the substitutionary death of Christ.

D. WAYNE EVANS

New Zion Baptist

Monticello, Miss.

LEST WE FORGET

It is a small thing to add two letters of the alphabet to one’s personal and business correspondence and to have one’s children, as an act of devotion and commemoration, place upon their school papers on the dateline the letters A.D. (Anno Domini, the year of our Lord). This is but a renewal of the proper form. Thus we daily publish and commemorate the birth of our Redeemer, Saviour, and Lord.

With the days of the week named and still called by the names of pagan gods and the months honoring Janus, a two-faced god, and Mars, the god of war, and others—where … is the Prince of Peace?

Let us recall the words of Kipling:

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet;

Lest we forget, lest we forget.

As Dr. Rene de Visme Williamson, professor of government at Louisiana State University, writes in CHRISTIANITY TODAY (Feb. 15 issue): “Even the pagan world must reckon all history as before or after Christ. So must each individual reckon his own personal life as before or after Christ’s birth in his own life.”

Jacksonville, Fla.

ROBERT MANLEY

That man is a fallen creature in need of salvation is acknowledged by Roman Catholics and Protestants alike. It is also agreed that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. This may appear to be an all-important area of agreement, but unfortunately Roman Catholicism must be charged with having distorted the biblical doctrine of salvation to such an extent that in fundamental respects it has departed from the pure Gospel of the New Testament. This is a serious charge to make against an ecclesiastical system; but it is made in a spirit of charity, not contentiousness, and in the hope that Roman Catholic friends will be prepared, as befits Christians, to reconsider their position in the light of the teaching of Holy Scripture.

In the first place, Rome teaches that the fall of man involved only the loss of original righteousness, which is explained as a gift added to man after his creation; this loss therefore leaves him in the state in which he was created—a purely natural state, and a supposedly neutral state, in which he is predisposed neither to good nor to evil. This in turn permits man the ability to incline himself either to good or to evil and to cooperate with God in the achievement of his salvation.

Thus we find the Council of Trent both pronouncing an anathema on all who teach that man is justified by faith alone, and declaring that man must cooperate in obtaining the grace of justification, that his justification may be increased by good works which he performs, and that a man once justified can lose his justification.

These official Roman Catholic pronouncements are still in force today and are aimed directly against the Reformed doctrine, consciously formulated from the apostolic teaching of the New Testament, that a man is justified only by faith in the perfect atoning work of Christ, and not at all by any works of his own doing (cf. Eph. 2:8 f.; Rom. 3:28; 5:1; 11:6; 2 Tim. 1:9; Tit. 3:5); that in Christ his justification is full and complete, and therefore cannot be added to; and that, as it is entirely the work of Almighty God, it cannot fail or be lost (cf. Col. 2:9 f.; 1 Cor. 1:30; Phil. 1:6; John 10:28 f.). The Reformers, none the less, laid great stress on the importance of good works—not, however, in any sense as a cause or root of justification, but as the necessary effect or fruit of the faith which justifies.

The teaching of Roman Catholicism follows from that church’s conception of fallen man as being, as far as his will is concerned, in a state of neutrality, so that he has the faculty of preparing himself and contributing to his own salvation. The Reformers learned from Scripture, however, that man is not morally neutral, but rather that his will is in bondage to sin and hostilely opposed to the will of God. The wonderful thing about God’s grace in Christ is that it is freely bestowed on man when by sin he has made himself God’s enemy and has no strength to help himself (cf. Rom. 5:6, 8 ff.). The complete powerlessness of man to contribute anything towards his salvation is nowhere more graphically stated than in Ephesians 3:1 ff., where the Apostle Paul describes the state of fallen man as a condition of being dead in trespasses and sins.

Man’s eternal security in Christ rests squarely on his justification’s being entirely the work of God’s grace. To give man even a small part in the achievement of his own justification is to place him in a position of uncertainty. It is to rob him of the full assurance of his salvation which is every believer’s birthright (Rom. 8:15 f.; 2 Tim. 2:19). This fundamental insecurity is reflected in the elaborate sacerdotal system of the conveyance of grace of Roman Catholicism, in its penances, indulgences, and purgatorial perspective, which can flourish only where man is uncertain of his ultimate justification before God because his spiritual status is jeopardized through defections and sins committed after his baptism. The Reformed reply to this is that the New Testament knows only one means of atonement for sin, only one purgatory for the cleansing away of defilement, and that is the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the Cross, which cleanses the believer from all sin (cf. 1 John 1:7 ff.; Heb. 10:18).

The Roman Catholic teaching means, further, that justification and sanctification become hopelessly confused. The voluntary endurance of severe penances, affliction of the body with painful indignities, repetition of prayers, and withdrawal from the world, which together constitute the high road of holiness for the Roman Catholic who can travel it, are in reality a way of preoccupation with one’s acceptance (= justification) before God. The hope all along is to gain favor with God by what one does to oneself and for oneself.

The Treasury Of Merits

The assumption of the neutrality of the “natural” man lends itself to yet another elaboration, namely, that a man may even perform good works over and above what is necessary for his own acceptance and thereby accumulate a reserve of surplus merit. These are known as works of supererogation, and the credit balance thus built up in “the bank of merit” is then made available in the form of indulgences to the common run of church members, whose spiritual accounts are “in the red.” Application of this concept of superfluous merit has in the past provided a lucrative source of revenue for the papal coffers. It was rightly denounced by the Reformers as a dreadful corruption of the Christian Gospel, doing despite to the perfect adequacy of Christ, whose work alone is meritorious for our salvation, and showing an astonishing disregard for the admonition of Christ himself that even if one were to perform all that God demands of him, yet he should still describe himself as an unprofitable servant (Luke 17:10).

If a man may thus amass surplus merit which others may draw upon, it is not surprising to find the Roman Catholic Church encouraging its members to pray to apostles and saints for assistance (hagiolatry), and if to human creatures, then to super-human creatures also (angelolatry). Once again, all this is contrary to the clear teaching of the New Testament. It is God alone whom we can worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). Thus when Cornelius wished to worship an apostle, Peter forbade him (Acts 10:25 f.), and when the Apostle John was about to worship an angel, he was told by the angel: “See thou do it not … worship God” (Rev. 22:8).

The Worship Of Mary

It is, however, in the cult of Mary (mariolatry) that this extension of worship reaches its fullest expression. Mary has been exalted to a position which in effect is on a par with that of Christ. Adored as “the Queen of Heaven,” she has virtually ousted the Holy Spirit from the Trinity. The title “Mother of God” (Theotokos), which was applied to her at the Council of Ephesus (431 A.D.) in preference to the title “Mother of Christ” (Christotokos), has been effectively manipulated by those who have promoted the cult of Mary over the centuries. In more recent times the cult has been immensely strengthened by the official ex cathedra papal definitions of the dogmas of the immaculate conception (1854) and the bodily assumption of Mary (1950). Neither of these dogmas receives any support in Holy Scripture, and until the respective dates of their definition they were both hotly disputed within the Roman Catholic Church. Now, however, all Roman Catholics are bound to believe them for the salvation of their souls.

For centuries, it is true, extravagant claims have been made for Mary; but, bolstered by the definitions of 1854 and 1950, these claims have been hardened into official dogmas. They have been supported, moreover, by a series of papal pronouncements. In 1891, for example, Pope Leo XIII declared that “as no one can come to the Most High Father except through the Son, so, generally, no one can come to Christ except through Mary.” Pope Benedict XV affirmed in 1918 that Mary had redeemed the human race in cooperation with Christ. In 1946, on the occasion of the crowning of Mary’s statue at Fatima, Pope Pius XII made the unequivocal statement: “Mary is indeed worthy to receive honor and might and glory. She is exalted to hypostatic union with the Blessed Trinity.… her kingdom is as great as her Son’s and God’s.” The phenomenal growth, too, of the cult of Mary at places like Lourdes in France and Fatima in Portugal has not been without strong encouragement from the highest quarters—so much so that there is wide expectation that the next papal dogma to be defined infallibly ex cathedra will be that of Mary’s co-redeemership with Christ.

This, in any case, is the logical outworking of the Roman Catholic doctrine of salvation. If fallen man is neutrally disposed, so that he both can and must cooperate in his own salvation, then man as well as God has a saving capacity; and, this being so, it is reasonable that one human being (Mary), who is supposed to have been without taint of sin, should become the exponent of all man’s potentialities by being exalted to the status of Christ’s fellow redeemer and fellow mediator, and even to the height of consubstantiality with God.

It is regrettable that it should be necessary to point out that Mary, though highly favored of God (Luke 1:28), was a sinful human creature in need of salvation with the rest of mankind (hence her description of God as her Saviour, Luke 1:47), and that to ascribe to her the glory which is due to Christ alone (cf. 1 Tim. 2:5 f.; Phil. 2:5–11; Rev. 5:9, 12 f.) is both blasphemous and destructive of the Gospel.

Prospects Of Vatican Ii

What, finally, may be said of the Vatican Council, shortly to be resumed under the new pope, which is so largely concerned with the question of Christian unity? We welcome every opportunity for frank and charitable discussion with our Roman Catholic friends on the subject of the vital doctrine of our salvation in Christ, especially in humble attentiveness to the testimony of God’s holy Word.

But, in the first place, Dr. Hans Küng, whose writings have been so enthusiastically received in Protestant circles, has made it clear that his church’s “dogmatic definitions express the truth with infallible accuracy and are in this sense unalterable” (The Council and Reunion, 1961, p. 163); secondly, Cardinal Bea, president of the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity instituted by the late Pope John XXIII, has asserted categorically that reunion, as far as Rome is concerned, must mean “submission in matters of Doctrine and Discipline” under “the supreme pastor, the successor of St. Peter, the Bishop of Rome,” and, with reference to the World Council of Churches, that “the Catholic Church cannot, as has often been asked and desired, become a member of this organization, which has a completely different character from the structure given by Christ Himself to the Church He founded” (Christian Unity: A Catholic View, 1962, pp. 63, 68 f.); and, thirdly, the new Catholic Dictionary of Theology (Vol. I, 1962), now in process of production, has declared, with particular reference to Anglicanism, that reunion can only entail acceptance of “the supremacy of the Holy See and the doctrinal definitions of 1854, 1870, and 1950, together with those of the Council of Trent,” and that any amalgamation of the Church of Rome with the Church of England or the Anglican communion is, “as anyone with the smallest knowledge of these matters knows to be the case, inconceivable.”

On these terms, reunion is inconceivable for those who hold the evangelical doctrines of Holy Scripture.

Philip Edgcumbe Hughes is editor of The Churchman, Anglican theological quarterly. He holds the M.A and D.Litt. degrees from the University of Cape Town and the B.D. from the University of Londan. Vice-president of the International Association for Reformed Faith and Action, he edits its International Reformed Bulletin.

For Roman Catholicism, Holy Scripture is a primary source of revelation. As Trent puts it, saving truth and moral teaching “are contained in written books.” These are the books of the Old and New Testament, which are venerated, “since one God is the author of both.” A highly respected and authoritative Scripture is thus the basis of Christian preaching and teaching.

How important and authoritative this source is may be seen even more fully from the declarations of the Vatican Council of 1870 and subsequent statements. Thus the books of the Old and New Testaments must be “accepted as sacred and canonical in their entirety, with all their parts.” “They contain revelation without error.” “They were written as a result of the prompting of the Holy Spirit, they have God for their author, and as such they were entrusted to the Church.” Anathema is pronounced on all who deny that they were divinely inspired (Vatican Council I).

In answer to modern critical and theological developments, Roman Catholicism has maintained this high view of Scripture. While there may have been errors in copying, it is wrong “either to limit inspiration to certain parts … or to concede that the divine author has erred.” It is also impossible to restrict inspiration “to matters of faith and morals” (Providentissimus Deus, 1893). Nor are the historical passages to be construed in terms of relative rather than absolute truth. Even if fallible men were used as instruments, “God stimulated and moved them to write and so assisted them in their writing that they properly understood and willed to write faithfully and express suitably with infallible truthfulness all that he ordered.” The divine writings are thus “free from all error” (Spiritus Paraclitus, 1920).

In respect of the positive statements of Roman Catholicism concerning Holy Scripture, classical orthodoxy can have no quarrel. Here is a sure foundation of theological and evangelistic truth. Here is a source from which sound preaching and teaching may draw for the evangelizing of sinners and the edifying of saints. If Roman Catholicism were to stop at this point, or to relate all else strictly to this foundation, a giant step would be taken towards the ecumenical healing of the Church.

Unfortunately, however, Roman Catholicism does not stop at these basic statements. It proceeds to a series of minor and major additional statements which involve at least the serious possibility of modification or restriction of the primary thesis. It is true that today there are powerful forces in the Roman Catholic world which are seeking in some degree to prevent such modification or restriction. It is also true, however, that the qualifying statements naturally tend in this direction.

First, the definition of the canon of Scripture is expanded to include the apocryphal books of the Old Testament. Although the Jews saw a distinction between the canonical and the apocryphal books, and although Jerome himself was aware of this distinction, the Council of Trent goes its own way, anathematizing “anyone who does not accept these books as sacred and canonical in their entirety, with all their parts”; and this decision is endorsed by the Vatican Council of 1870. At many points this enlargement of the canon makes little difference. But from the standpoint of the sources of revelation it has three serious implications. First, these sources are widened in principle. Again, a decision of the Church imposes this extension on the Christian world. And finally, there are practical effects at a few significant points, for example, in respect of the support of prayers for the dead from the apocryphal books.

Secondly, the Latin translation usually known as the Vulgate is exalted to a position of virtual parity with the Greek and Hebrew originals. The Tridentine statement is not absolute in this respect, but it is far-reaching. “The ancient Vulgate … should be considered the authentic edition in public readings, disputations, preaching, and explanations; and no one should presume or dare to reject it under any pretext whatever.” This position has been defended as recently as 1943 in the encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu. This encyclical admits that the Vulgate’s authenticity is “juridical” rather than “critical.” It allows consultation of the originals, and even vernacular translations from them. But it insists that the Vulgate is “free from all error in matters of faith and morals,” and that “it can be safely quoted without the least fear of erring.” The admission that the Vulgate’s authority is in some sense relative rather than absolute lessens the dangers inherent in the Tridentine decision. Nevertheless, the elevation of a particular translation even to this eminence carries with it a serious qualification of Holy Scripture as the pure source of revelation. For the possibility arises that matters of faith or morals may be grounded merely upon the Vulgate without any possibility of its correction by the original Greek and Hebrew. For practical purposes many translations, the King James for example, are often used in this way. But it is rather another matter to give to the practical use codified definition as a principle.

Thirdly, and rather more seriously, the Roman Catholic world adds to its acceptance of Scripture not merely certain qualifications in respect of Scripture, but also the endorsement of a second source of revelation, namely, unwritten tradition. Saving truth and moral teaching are also contained, says Trent, “in the unwritten traditions that the apostles received from Christ himself, or that were handed on … from the apostles under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.” The council “accepts and venerates traditions” “with the same sense of devotion and reverence” as it does the written Scriptures. Thus a second source of revelation is set alongside the Old and New Testaments.

How Relate Scripture And Tradition?

Now it is true that no precise definition has been given either of unwritten tradition or of its relation to Scripture. This was an unfulfilled task of the Vatican Council of 1870, and it is one of the most important and contentious issues of the Second Vatican Council. There are those who would bring spoken tradition and written Scripture into the closest possible relation, as though the one were merely the oral form of the other. In this case, no possibility of qualification by addition arises, for Scripture remains a constant check upon living proclamation. The evangelical emphasis on the importance of preaching might well be fitted into some such understanding.

The more traditional view, however, is rather different, and far more dangerous. On this interpretation unwritten traditions are apostolic truths and precepts which were never committed to writing, but which are equally authoritative with what is written. Thus the Church might teach and practice many things which cannot be substantiated from Scripture. If challenged, as at the Reformation, it counters the argument from Scripture by an appeal to unwritten tradition. “Biblical” and “apostolic” are not necessarily coterminous. Thus the Bible loses its unique position as the one absolute authority and criterion in the Church. Tradition is not merely another aspect of the one source of revelation. It is a second source in the stricter sense. Or rather, the apostolic preaching is the one source. And this has come down to us in the complementary forms of Scripture on the one side and tradition on the other. Hence many things may be defended as authentically apostolic even though there is no sanction for them in Scripture. On this reading, the control of Holy Scripture is very largely undermined.

Finally, Holy Scripture is subjected to the authoritative interpretation of the Church itself. It is the office of holy Mother Church “to judge about the true sense and interpretation of Sacred Scripture” (Trent). “In matters of faith and morals, that sense … is to be considered as true which holy Mother Church has held, and now holds.” “No one is allowed to interpret Sacred Scripture contrary to this sense nor contrary to the unanimous agreement of the Fathers” (Vatican Council I). In other words, the infallible Scripture is accompanied by an infallible interpretation, which is vested in the Church in its teaching office.

In the modern period this appeal to the authority of the Church has tended to become more important for Roman Catholics than the sixteenth-century appeal to tradition. It is expressed in the teaching of Newman that the Church progressively brings out what is implicit in Scripture, so that the relation of modern dogma to Scripture is that of the grown tree to the seed. It finds even more important statement in the work of theologians like Scheeben, which identifies the Church with living tradition, and which leads to the express definition of the Church’s infallibility in 1870, namely, that “the [Church’s] prerogative of infallibility … embraces … everything that, although not in itself revealed, is necessary for safeguarding the revealed word, for certainly and definitively proposing and explaining it for belief, or for legitimately asserting and defending it against the errors of men.” It reaches its logical climax in the argument that, by virtue of its primacy, the Holy See enjoys supreme power of teaching, and that the Son of God has thus deigned to join the prerogative of infallibility to the highest pastoral office (Vatican Council I).

At every level this exaltation of the teaching office represents a serious invasion of the true source of revelation. While the absolute authority of Scripture is still maintained, it is also shackled. True Scripture is identical with Roman Catholic interpretation, or with the implications which Roman Catholicism finds in Scripture. No appeal is possible to Scripture itself in relation to the pronouncements of the teaching office. The infallible Church becomes in truth the mistress of infallible Scripture. Apostolic truth is scriptural, but that is scriptural which the teaching office rightly or wrongly declares to be so. There is no possibility of openness to the Word of God. There is no possibility of the Word of God exercising its free sovereignty.

Yet Roman Catholicism still pursues the study of Holy Scripture. In spite of every shackle, the Bible maintains its independent entity. The theoretical impossibility of its lordship can still be refuted by the practical demonstration. Indeed, the truly significant fact in the modern Roman Catholic world is that biblical study has begun to pose afresh both questions and possibilities that seemed to have been closed forever at the Council of Trent. Perhaps the ultimately decisive issue at the Second Vatican Council is whether Holy Scripture will emerge again as the one authentic and apostolic source of revelation in spite of the qualifications of the past. If it does not, there can be no question of real rapprochement with Roman Catholicism. If it does—and we hope and pray that it may—then the outlook is bright for a true and powerful moving of the Word and Spirit over a far wider front in our generation.

Geoffrey W. Bromiley is professor of church history and historical theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena. He holds the M.A. from Cambridge University, the Ph.D. and D.Litt. from the University of Edinburgh. Formerly vice-principal of Tyndale Hall, Bristol, he is the translator of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics.

It belongs to the nature of Christian theology that all of its questions have a practical, vital character. In the trinitarian and Christological controversies which accompanied the decline of the ancient world, the issue was: what did it mean that God had entered the world to redeem it. The doctrinal discussions of the age of the Reformation centered on the vital question of how man can stand in the divine judgment toward which all human life is moving. Thus a very practical question also stands behind the theological debates which in this “century of the church” dominate the theology of all Christendom: If we all confess the only holy Church, what do we mean by that and what does the reality of this Church mean to an age in which the entire social life of mankind is undergoing unprecedented revolutionary changes?

What is the Church? Every branch of Christendom has to give its answer, and none of the answers so far given can claim finality. This is shown by the remarkable fact that even the elaborate doctrinal system of the Roman Catholic Church to this day does not contain a dogmatic statement on the nature of the Church. Up to the beginning of the sixteenth century all Christendom was satisfied with the clause of the Nicene Creed: “I believe one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.” The churches of the East have never gone beyond this. They have left the exposition of this article to the theologians. But none of their theories have become dogma.

It was the Reformation which caused the first dogmatic statements on what the Church of Christ is. When the Reformers found themselves excommunicated by the pope, they had to show that this condemnation did not exclude them from the Church which is confessed by the creed. The pertinent articles of the great confessions from Augsburg to Westminster are attempts to say in an official and binding way what, according to Holy Scripture, the Church is. With their imperfections and limitations, and despite obvious errors contained in some of them, they express some insights which even Rome had to accept, as was done in the Catechismus Romanus, published after the Council of Trent. However, what this catechetical handbook (for use by the priest in his exposition of the creed) says about the Church is not regarded as dogma, for Trent had not spoken on this matter.

It was not until 1870 that ecclesiology became an object of dogmatic decisions in the Roman church. A draft of a “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ” was put before the First Vatican Council. Written opinions of the bishops were solicited and given. They yet remain important contributions to a Catholic ecclesiology. But the schema as a whole could not be discussed. Only a section of the doctrine of the Church, the dogma of the papacy, could be finalized and proclaimed at the last possible moment—on the eighteenth of July, the day before the outbreak of the Franco-German War—as the “First Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ” (Pastor aeternus).

Starting Point Of The Doctrine

It was not only lack of time, however, that made solution of the ecclesiological problem impossible at that point in history. The schema had met with the severest criticism by the most learned bishops. Their main objection was directed against the starting point of the proposed doctrine, the description of the Church as the mystical body of Christ. This was an innovation. If the Catechismus Romanus, in this case in harmony with the confessions of the Reformation, defined the Church from the meaning of the word ecclesia as “assembly, congregation, people of God,” it followed the theological tradition of the entire Church. The Greek fathers had always started from the meaning of the word ekklesia, which they found in their Greek Old Testament as “assembly, people of God.” The Latin fathers had followed their example. In Augustine’s theology the idea of the mystical body of Christ plays a great role. But wherever he defines the Church, he starts from the meaning “congregation.” Nowhere does he identify the visible Church with the body of Christ. The language of the liturgy corresponds to the usage of the theologians. The liturgy always represents an early stage of doctrine—the Roman Mass, for example, contains neither an invocation of Mary nor the doctrine of transubstantiation, and speaks in the solemn oration more than fifty times of the Church as the “family” or the “people” (plebs, populus) of God, while the word “body” occurs only once.

In 1870, A New Method

How then is it to be explained that the schema proposed in 1870 abandoned the old method and began the doctrine of the Church with the concept of the Church as the mystical body of Christ? This was the result of a development that had taken place in modern Catholicism. To the question “What is the church?,” Bossuet already had given the famous answer: “The Church is Jesus Christ, however Jesus Christ, spread abroad and communicated.” This idea was taken up by J. A. Möhler, whose books The Unity in the Church (1825) and Symbolics (1832) inaugurated the rediscovery of the Catholic concept of the Church after the Age of Enlightenment. Möhler, who influenced the Tractarians, such as Newman, as well as Russian thinkers like Chomjakow, developed his understanding of the Church as an organism in which the Spirit of Christ is embodied, under the influence both of German Protestant thinkers (Hegel and especially Schleiermacher) and of the sociology of Romanticism, which understood the great phenomena of the social life as living organisms. He established definitely the idea of the Church as “Christ living on in history,” or, as it was later put by the Anglicans, “the continuation of the Incarnation.” It was under his influence that by the middle of the century Catholic theologians began to accept that understanding of the Church as the mystical body of Christ which we find at the First Vatican Council. While rejected by most of the bishops who put in their written opinions, it became more and more accepted not only by modern Catholic theology (e.g., see Karl Adam, The Spirit of Catholicism), but also by Anglicans and many Protestants who under the influence of the ecumenical movement have adopted at least the terminology without realizing its meaning and sensing its perils.

How dangerous this idea of the Church is becomes obvious from the encyclical Mystici Corporis, which Pius XII issued in 1943 and which was regarded as the first step toward the future solution of the ecclesiological problem. Its first part, which deals with “The Church as the Mystical Body of Christ,” describes the Church as a body, as the Body of Christ, and as the Mystical Body. As a body, the Church must be not only one and undivided, but also something concrete and visible. The word from Leo XIII’s Satis cognitum is quoted: “By the very fact of being a body the Church is visible.” Who belongs to this body of the Church? “Only those are to be accounted really members of the Church who have been regenerated in the waters of Baptism and profess the true faith and have not cut themselves off from the Structure of the Body by their own unhappy act or been severed therefrom, for very grave crimes, by the legitimate authority.” “Schism, heresy, or apostasy are such (sins) of their very nature that they sever a man from the Body of the Church; but not every sin, even the most grievous, is of such a kind.…”

This visible society is the body of Christ. Christ as the Head rules his body partly by invisible and extraordinary government, partly “visibly and ordinarily through His Vicar on earth and, in the dioceses, through the bishops.” “That Christ and His Vicar constitute only one Head was solemnly taught by Our Predecessor of immortal memory, Boniface VIII, in his apostolic letter Unam Sanctam.…” But the name “body of Christ” means more than that Christ is the Head; “it also means that He so upholds the Church, and so, after a certain manner, lives in the Church that she may be said to be another Christ.” As scriptural proof for this identity of Christ and the Church are adduced First Corinthians 12:12 and the words addressed by the Lord to Paul: “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” The Church is called “mystical Body” to distinguish the social body of the Church from Christ’s physical body which is now in heaven and lies hidden beneath the eucharistic veils. The expression at the same time distinguishes the Church from any body of the natural order, whether physical or moral. The Church is a society of the supernatural order. “The Mystical Body of Christ is like Christ Himself … who is not complete if we consider Him only in His visible humanity … or … His invisible divinity, but is one from and in both natures” (quotation from Leo XIII, Satis cognitum). From this it follows that the Church itself is sinless—although this word is not used—even though among its members there exists “the lamentable tendency of individuals towards evil, a tendency which the divine Founder suffers to exist even in the higher members of His mystical Body for the testing of the virtue of both flock and pastors and for the greater merit of Christian faith in all.” The Church herself is holy. “She cannot be blamed if some of her members are sick or wounded. It is in their name that she prays daily to God: ‘Forgive us our trespasses,’ applying herself with motherly and valiant heart to their spiritual healing.”

Union Yet Diversity

In a later chapter the encyclical calls to mind that the Apostle, “though he combines Christ and His mystical Body in a marvellous union, yet contrasts the one with the other, as Bridegroom with Bride.” This is said against a false understanding of the union of Christ and his members which, while attributing divine properties to human beings, makes Christ our Lord subject to error and human frailty. There is also a strong emphasis on the necessity of the sacrament of penance and of the constant petition for forgiveness of the venial sins. It would be emphasized today even more than in Mystici Corporis that all members of the Church, including the Vicar of Christ, need forgiveness. But the Church as such is sinless, as was Mary, who is the type of the Church. This follows from the doctrine of the Church as another Christ.

There are other consequences. What is the place of ecclesiology in the system of dogmatics? Partly at least it would belong in Christology, where Aquinas deals with it (Summa Th., III, q. 8, “Of the Grace of Christ as the Head of the Church”). There is a remarkable tendency in modern Catholic dogmatics to deal with the doctrine of the Church in the introduction to “Fundamental Theology” in connection with “the sources of Revelation”; for example, in the Summa of the Spanish Jesuits the treatise “Of the Church of Christ,” which also contains the doctrine on tradition, is followed by the treatise “Of Holy Scripture.” Nowhere else in the four volumes is the Church treated. The practical reasons given by modern dogmaticians for this method reveal the final consequences of the modern concept of the Church as another Christ. If it is true not only that the Church is to interpret Holy Scripture with infallible authority, but also, as we are told today, that tradition is not a second source of revelation but rather the exercise of the function of interpreting the Scriptures by the Church, then the Church becomes, in the last analysis, a source of revelation. Not tradition, but rather the Church is the source of a dogma like that of the assumption of Mary. The attempt made by the present council to restore the authority of the Scriptures by subordinating tradition to them amounts actually to the elevation of the Church to a source, and perhaps the main source, of revelation. The title of Tavard’s book, Holy Writ or Holy Church, is characteristic, in a way which the author certainly did not have in mind, of the real situation of Christianity today.

Decision Too Momentous For Hurry

It is a decision of immeasurable importance which the Second Vatican Council will have to make in the “Second Dogmatic Constitution on the Church of Christ,” and we can only hope that it will not be made in a hurry. Will the council follow the lead of Mystici Corporis, or will it listen to the objections raised by learned and loyal Catholic theologians? Promising attempts are being made to overcome the traditional narrowness in defining the relation between the Roman church and the “schismatics” and “heretics,” who are now regarded as “separated brethren” because they have received the indelible character of children of God in their baptism and because their defection from the true Church was not an act of their own will and, consequently, not their personal sin. The broadmindedness with which today “baptism by desire” is ascribed to pagans of good will who live according to the natural light of reason seems to us, who have learned from our Reformers to take seriously the First Commandment, to abolish the biblical concept of the Church of Christ. Does not the lack of certainty about the borders of the Church indicate that any definition of the Church must be preceded by a thorough reexamination of traditional Catholic ecclesiology?

Such reexamination should begin from the fact that so many bishops of the First Vatican Council rejected the doctrine of the Church which started from the concept of the body of Christ. St. Paul’s profound thoughts on the body of Christ—the one body in Christ, the body of Christ, the body whose head is Christ—defy any attempt to rationalize and systematize them. A false rationalization is this sentence: “By the very fact of being a body the Church is visible.” One of the roots of Paul’s doctrine of the Church as the body of Christ is certainly to be found in the Eucharist. Should not the concept of the sacramental body which is received by each communicant in its entirety shed light on the fact that the smallest congregation in one place is not less the body of Christ than is the sum total of all believers? If then the expression “body of Christ” hints at the deep mystery of the relationship between Christ and his Church but does not define it, the theologically legitimate way of defining the Church is to use the original meaning of ekklesia as the congregation of the believers, the people of God. Should not modern Catholic theology also in this doctrine return to a new biblical approach? And does not this biblical approach help us, in a better way than any sociology can, to understand the divine-human character of the Church?

The Church And The Last Things

The Church is the people of God “in these last days,” at the end of the world. The Holy Spirit was poured out at Pentecost “in the last days” (Acts 2:17). Hence the Church has its place in the Creeds of the Third Article, which deals with the last things: the Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, the life everlasting. This is the place of ecclesiology in Christian dogmatics. In this sense Paul and the Epistle to the Hebrews have understood the Church as the people of God, freed from the bondage of the old aeon, on their way through the desert of this world into the promised land of the new aeon, the new Jerusalem where Christians have their citizenship (Phil. 3:20; Heb. 13:14; cf. Heb. 11–13 and 1 Cor. 10:1 ff.). This understanding of the Church alone can explain what the holiness of the Church is. It is the holiness of the people of God—sinful men, and yet accepted by God as his own, justified by faith in Christ. This is the Church which prays not only vicariously for some of its weak members, but for all its members and, therefore, for itself daily: “Forgive us our trespasses”—and which lives by this forgiveness.

Is this understanding of the Church impossible in Roman Catholicism? We must leave it to our Catholic brethren to answer this question. But we want to point out that at least once a year the Roman liturgy shows this understanding of the Church. It is on Good Friday, when the Church stands under the cross of Christ and the Improperia are sung—the reproaches of God against his ungrateful people that has crucified its Saviour—based on Micah 6:3, 4 and other Old Testament passages: “My people, what have I done unto thee? and wherein have I wearied thee? Testify against me. For I brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.…” After each of the reproaches against the old people of God, the Church as the new Israel gives the answer in the Trisagion, sung in Latin and Greek: “Holy God, Holy Strong one, Holy Immortal one, have mercy upon us.” Here the Church identifies itself with the people that has crucified the Redeemer and lives by his merciful forgiveness.

Will Rome ever be able to return to this biblical concept of the Church? But perhaps we had better first ask ourselves whether we have kept it.

Hermann Sasse teaches at Immanuel Theological Seminary in Adelaide, Australia. He was formerly professor of church history at the University of Erlangen and active in the World Conference on Faith and Order.

An evangelical layman well known to successive generations of students in an ancient English university went to conduct the service in a local church. Glancing at the list which had been handed to him, he announced: “We will sing Hymn Then, reaching the place in the hymnary, he startled the congregation by bellowing: “Oh no, we won’t! Oh no, we won’t!” He had discovered the hymnwriter was a Roman Catholic, whose co-religionists (he was convinced) had lied, tricked, tortured, and sold his Master all down the centuries. At Vatican Council I, on the other hand, Bishop Strossmayer stirred angry reaction when he reported having seen the love of Christ in many Protestants.

If we deplore the ecclesiastical varnish which conveniently covers up our divisions, we ought to deplore also the misguided loyalty in each party which makes it a touchstone of orthodoxy to echo Macbeth’s words: “I could not say ‘Amen’ when they did say ‘God bless us.’ ” We cannot do full justice to Protestantism if we do injustice to Roman Catholicism. However painful the process, many of us need at this point to reclaim a whole lost area in our thinking. When we have run out of black paint in dealing faithfully with the Borgia popes, and been thoroughly illogical in the conclusions we draw therefrom (forgetting that God can write straight with crooked lines), it is disconcerting to discover that the whole story has not been told. To the pre-Reformation Church we owe a very real debt, as a glance at the history of previous councils will demonstrate. Vatican Council II, as we are constantly reminded, did not begin with a tabula rasa: it took up the story where Vatican Council I left off, which council in turn was built on the nineteen earlier councils regarded by Rome as ecumenical. Not a word may be rewritten, though clarification is legitimate.

Sixteen centuries ago a battle went on at Nicaea over a humble diphthong. Athanasius saw the real issue and contended successfully for the Christian doctrine of God and of the Incarnation against the specious logic of the Arians. He saw things in terms of great principles rather than of the theological subtleties by which Eastern theologians tended to befog the issue. (He was also a pioneer in the campaign against giving Caesar no more than his due.) The fight was not yet won, however, for thirty-four years later “the world awoke and groaned to find itself Arian,” and it needed the Council of Constantinople in 381 to uphold orthodoxy. This council urged, against Apollinaris, that Christ had in fact assumed man’s reasoning mind and will, and that to deny this was to empty the Incarnation of its meaning. (A similar heresy features prominently in a current English best seller.) This council, in addition, proscribed Macedonianism, which denied the divinity of the Holy Ghost. The faith was further safeguarded at Ephesus in 431 when Nestorius, anxious to safeguard Christ’s true human nature, held that He possessed two separate and incommunicable natures—divine and human. In overthrowing Nestorius (who, incidentally, sounded a warning note against the expression “Mother of God”), the Church affirmed that in Jesus Christ the manhood and godhead were inseparably united. To this the Council of Chalcedon in 451 added that the two natures were united “without change, without confusion, without separation, without distinction.”

During the period covered by the other four ecumenical councils held in Eastern Europe or in Asia Minor (553–869), the feud between East and West had steadily been building up and was now to enter on its final stage before the ostensible harmony was completely broken in the mid-eleventh century. The first eight councils were predominantly oriental; thereafter councils were Latin and Western, and for a time comparatively free of secular interference.

A series of Lateran Councils followed, concerned partly with papal aggrandizement in various ways, partly with ecclesiastical reform which found it necessary to burn a reformer, Arnold of Brescia (1155). The Fourth Lateran Council condemned the Manichaean tendencies of the Albigensians and the trinitarian deviations of Joachim of Fiore, but the shape of things to come was seen in 1215 when for the first time the word “transubstantiate” was used in defining the doctrine of the Eucharist. Political and nationalistic factors were looming ever larger. The first of two councils at Lyons in the thirteenth century formally deposed the Emperor Frederick II as an anti-ecclesiastic and suspected heretic; the second saw the Greek church for diplomatic reasons reuniting with Rome, with the Eastern emperor’s legates even repeating three times the odious Filioque clause. (The marriage of convenience was to end fifteen years later.)

The “reformation in head and in members” talked of at the Council of Vienne (1311) was finally avoided at Constance a century later with the condemnation of Wycliffe and Hus, though some half-hearted attempts were made at the Council of Basel which began in 1431. A significant change took place about this era. “We hear no more of Councils for some time,” comments Neville Figgis, “save as a threat in the regular way of diplomatic business.” The Fifth Lateran Council (1512–17) defended the immortality and individuality of the soul, and denied that philosophical truth is independent of revealed dogma.

In 1545 the Council of Trent was convoked by Paul 111, and it continued under the next four popes until 1563. It reaffirmed the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed as the basis of faith, and asserted the equal validity of Scripture and tradition as sources of religious truth, the sole right of the Church to interpret the Bible, and the authority of the text of the Vulgate. It defined the theology of the seven Christ-instituted sacraments and held to their necessity to salvation. The council also affirmed transubstantiation, repudiated the Lutheran, Calvinist, and Zwinglian eucharistic doctrines, denied the chalice to the laity, defined the sacrifice of the Mass, and dealt somewhat cursorily with purgatory, the invocation of saints, the veneration of relics and images, and indulgences. Though there is here much unscriptural accretion, the catechism of the Council of Trent upheld the doctrine of the Trinity: Christ is represented as “the Son of God, and true God, as is the Father who begot him from Eternity.” Continues the catechism: “… he is the second person of the blessed Trinity, equal in all things to the Father and the Holy Ghost.” It is the Spirit, moreover, “who infuses into us spiritual life.” The same council reiterated the efficacy of Christ’s death, but added those peripheral features that no Protestant could accept. No one who studies the Roman church can afford to neglect the decrees and canons of this council.

Summoned by Pius IX in 1869, Vatican Council I widened the gulf with Protestantism: it decreed the infallibility of the pope when speaking ex cathedra, that is, “when, as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, he defines a doctrine concerning faith and morals to be held by the whole Church.” The council deplored the pantheism, materialism, and rationalism of the time, and defined the respective spheres of reason and faith, especially with the intention of excluding traditionalism (which made an act of faith in a revealed tradition the origin of all knowledge).

The impression is sometimes given in our day that one of the chief difficulties between Protestants and Romans lies in terminology. An eminent theologian, Father G. H. Tavard, discussing free justification, Scripture, and faith, suggests that when these are “properly understood there is no irreducible fundamental contradiction between them and Catholic doctrine.” This is a pleasingly specious thesis. One might point, for example, to the number of speeches in the opening months of Vatican Council II reflecting a reverence for Scripture—a reverence seen in Leo XIII’s encyclical of 1893, and in Gregory the Great (d. 604), who said: “When we are persuaded that the Holy Spirit was its author, in stirring a question about the author [of any biblical book], what else do we do than in reading a letter inquire about the pen?” But, of course, Rome speaks also of tradition, and here we hit the crux of the matter, as Karl Barth thus points out in a recent interview: “In my view the greatest obstacle to rapprochement between the Reformed Church and the Catholic Church is a tiny little word which the Roman Church adds after each of our statements: the word ‘and.’ When we say Jesus, the Catholics say Jesus and Mary. We try to obey Christ as our only Lord; the Catholics obey Christ and his representative on earth, the Pope. We believe that Christians are saved by the merits of Jesus Christ; the Catholics add, ‘and by their own merits,’ i.e., by their works. We believe that the sole source of Revelation is Scripture; the Catholics add ‘and tradition.’ We say that knowledge of God is obtained through faith in his Word as expressed in the Scriptures; the Catholics add ‘and through reason.’ ” Taking up the same point, Oscar Cullmann says: “I believe that dialogue will move forward when our Catholic brethren cease to look negatively on this ‘not quite enough’ in what they find in us; that is, when they do not see it as something missing, as a result of arbitrary reduction, but as a concentration, made under the prompting of the Holy Spirit, upon what we feel ought to form the nucleus of our faith in Christ.”

The Cambridge layman referred to at the beginning of this essay gives the impression of measuring his distance from God by his distance from Rome, perhaps forgetting that Rome is impeccably orthodox in some doctrines (such as the Resurrection and original sin) which divide his fellow Protestants. All who call themselves Christians are facing a hostile world; many of the themes to be discussed by Vatican Council II involve problems not peculiar to Roman Catholicism: the continued secularization through technical advances and social well-being; the division of the world into two or three blocs, and the danger of self-annihilation; the universal movement toward nationalism exploited by international Communism; the menace to Christianity from the militant atheism of totalitarian regimes. Even in an age when more than ever men have lost sight of their eternal destiny, not all will interpret such terms of reference as a summons to ecumenical compromise. But none will deny that Paul’s word to the Ephesians is still a word for today: “Use the present opportunity to the full, for these are evil days” (NEB).