De locis theologicis

WHAT AUTHORITY THE CATHOLIC CHURCH HAS IN MATTERS OF FAITH

We have said what seemed necessary about the name “Church,” matters we could neither omit nor ought to have omitted. Let us now address the subject at hand and show that the Church's authority has such force to establish faith that it also provides theologians with the firmest arguments. Before doing so, it is worth pointing out that “Church” means not only the assembly of Catholics who through baptism have given themselves to Christ and have been consecrated as a distinct and new commonwealth, but also the ecclesiastical leaders and rulers themselves, in whom the authority of this commonwealth chiefly resides. We neither invent this from a recent opinion nor assert it without testimonies of Scripture. Aristotle's famous saying is relevant: “…a city is above all what is primary in it.” For whatever the leaders and rulers of a city do and think, the city is said to do and think. There is a sacred example of this: “All the elders of Israel assembled with the tribal leaders and the heads of the families of the children of Israel before King Solomon in Jerusalem.” A little later: “The king turned his face and blessed the whole assembly of Israel; for the whole assembly of Israel was standing.” This is similar: “Moses came, summoned the elders of the people, and set before them all the words the Lord had commanded. All the people answered together, ‘We will do everything the Lord has said.’” The faithful should therefore not shrink from the word “Church” in this sense, as heretics are accustomed to do out of hatred for ecclesiastical power, which Christ willed to reside not among the common people but with the Church's priests and pastors; this will be explained elsewhere, at another time, if opportunity allows. For now we shall conclude, in the scholastic manner, the whole matter that forms the subject of this book in four conclusions. Let the first conclusion be: The faith of the Church cannot fail. For through faith it is Christ's bride, as it is written, “I will betroth you to me in faith.” If the Church lacked faith, the marriage of bridegroom and bride would be dissolved, although their union is indissoluble and everlasting. “I will betroth you to me forever,” he says. And the bride says, “I held him and will not let him go.” He says again, “Behold, I am with you all days, even to the end of the age.” Leo uses this testimony to prove the point in epistola ad Augustam et Theodoram. In his decrees Julius also proves it by that testimony from the Psalm: “Surround Zion and encompass her… for this is God, our God forever and ever; he will rule us forever.” Anyone who reads the Psalm will understand, even without my showing it, that this must be understood of Christ's Church. The same is shown by this: “He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and there will be no end to his kingdom.” If, then, Christ's Church is sustained forever by his hand, armed by his protection, upheld by his power, and governed by his wisdom, faith will certainly remain in it, without which Christ's kingdom on earth would be no kingdom.

This is confirmed by Isaiah's clearest prophecy: “This is my covenant with them, says the Lord: my Spirit who is upon you, and my words which I have placed in your mouth, will not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your offspring, nor from the mouth of your offspring's offspring, says the Lord, from now and forever.” This is like the passage, “I have made a covenant with my chosen ones; I have sworn to David my servant: I will establish your offspring forever.” Likewise, Psalm 131: “The Lord has chosen Zion; he has chosen it for his dwelling. This is my resting place forever.” Jeremiah's passage is very similar: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord…” Further, the Lord describes a wise man who built his house upon rock; therefore Christ founded his house upon rock. Neither rain, rivers, nor winds can overwhelm it. “For by faith we stand,” as Paul says; therefore the Church will always have faith, since otherwise it would not stand but fall. What is more, the Lord promises the Church's firmness in faith in express words: “Upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” Hell, then, cannot take away the Church's faith. The second conclusion: The Church cannot err in believing. Some interpret the Church's perpetual faith to mean that God is with the Church until the end of the age, so that true faith and charity will never be lacking to it; yet it may still be ignorant, plausibly, of any particular matter, and its ignorance of that matter would not mean that the Church had lost faith. Let us suppose for the sake of argument that it had not been revealed by God that the Blessed Virgin was preserved from original sin. There is nothing to prevent our using an invented matter as an example, to make the issue easier to understand—although the example is true, as we shall show later. They say, then, that even if the Church believed and defined that all must believe that the Holy Virgin was conceived without sin, it would not be considered to have suffered a loss of faith. Although it would be mistaken, an error that was plausible and inculpable would not exclude the Church's faith. At first glance, the interlinear Gloss on “the gates of hell will not prevail against it,” as it is called, seems to hold this view; so too St. Thomas in 4 dist. 6 quaest. 1, art. 3. quaest. 2. ad 3.; Cardinal Torquemada in lib. Summae ecclesiae, 2. cap. 91.; and Alphonsus a Castro Zamoren. de iust. haeres. pun. lib. 1, cap. 5.. But in fact we established the proposition above, namely, that the Church will always have faith. This is true—who denies it? But, in addition, the claim that the Church cannot err in faith must be understood by the faithful to mean that whatever the Church holds as a dogma of faith is true, and that nothing false is believed or taught by it as something to be believed. Since the Church is Christ's body, as the Apostle teaches ad Ephes., it is surely moved and governed by its head. Therefore an error of the Church would be attributed to Christ as its author. It can in no way err in faith. For the Spirit of truth is the soul of this body: “There is one Spirit,” he says, “and one body.” If the Church is led by the Spirit of truth, it cannot be moved to any error, even unknowingly. The Church also has a splendid promise that it will never be abandoned by Christ, but will be led by his Spirit into all truth. “I will ask the Father,” he says, “and he will give you another Paraclete, to remain with you forever, the Spirit of truth… You will know him, because he will remain with you.” And later: “The Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and bring to your minds whatever

“I will tell you.” Again: “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will teach you all truth.” I am not unaware that heretics try to evade this argument in two ways. First, they say that such words must be understood of the Apostles alone and do not pertain to their successors in the Church. Then they assert that Christ promised the Spirit of truth not only to the twelve as a group, but also separately to each Apostle, and even to other disciples, whether those he had already taken up or those who would come later. For if we interpret such promises as given not to any Christians but to the whole Church collectively, they say we would do nothing but take away from all Christians the consolation that should have come to them especially from this promise. In both points they babble crudely and ignorantly. First, it is clear above all from the words “who will remain with you forever” that these words must be referred not only to the Apostles but also to their successors. The same is true of “Behold, I am with you all days, even to the end of the age.” Again, it is also clear from this: “Sanctify them in truth; your word is truth. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be sanctified in truth. I do not pray for them alone, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.” Isaiah seems to me not only an illustrious prophet but also an interpreter of this promise: “My Spirit who is upon you… shall not depart from your mouth or the mouth of your offspring, from now and forever.” Therefore, unless we wish the Church to have been abandoned by the Lord after the Apostles died—and, indeed, to have neither the counsels nor commandments of the Gospel apply to it—Christ promised the same Spirit of truth to the Church that would exist after the Apostles. For they claim that what the Lord said to the Apostles concerned only them and not those who would come after them in the Church. What could be said more foolishly? The second evasion is equally empty and ridiculous. For if they want this to have been said commonly to the faithful in such a way that it applies individually to each, it follows that the Spirit of truth is with every faithful person forever, teaching each all truth and reminding each of everything said in the Gospel. But suppose that all have the Spirit of wisdom, understanding, light, and truth. Can we deny that whatever is given in particular to each member belongs entirely and fully to the whole body? Let us hear Calvin's reply. “Although this,” he says, “has some appearance of truth, nevertheless I deny that it is so.” O foolish man, resisting manifest truth! Does he not know that the gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed to the individual members are bestowed together on the whole? Does the eye see, while the person sees less? Is not the eye the lamp of the body? What could be more absurd than that a member could do something the body cannot, or that the part possessed what the whole lacks? “To each one of us,” he says, “grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.… He gave some to be apostles.… For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the building up of Christ's body.” Later: “Let us grow in every respect into him who is the head, Christ; from him the whole body, fitted and joined together, according to the working in the measure of each member, makes the body grow for its own building up in love.” Therefore, since a member is what it is as a part of the whole body, it claims nothing for itself, but contributes everything to the body, so that its actions and perfections seem to belong more properly to the body than to the member.

Accordingly, it is absurd that those with whom we now dispute fail to take the care they ought to take, and instead take the care they ought to lack. They do not prove that Christ's words do not pertain to the Church; they prove that they pertain to individuals, which is the opposite of what they needed to do if they intended to weaken the force of the argument. We know that the soul is first and foremost the act and perfection of the whole organic body, and secondarily of each of its individual members, in which it performs various functions; yet all those functions properly belong to the body and are naturally given to the members for the body's sake. In the same way, we refer the Spirit of truth first to the body of the Church, and then, for the Church's sake, to each part of the Church—not equally, but in a fitting analogy and proportion, according to the measure of each member. “One body,” he says, “and one Spirit.” “To each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.” What is this measure of Christ? “According to the working,” he says, “in the measure of each member.” The Spirit, then, is promised to each in its own way, teaching the great and teaching the little ones too. To the little ones he gives milk to drink; to the mature, solid food. To the former he speaks of Christ, and him crucified; to the latter he speaks of wisdom hidden in a mystery. The Spirit of truth is present to the individual members in such a way that he is not only present to the whole body, but is understood to be present first and more properly to the body than to its members. Indeed, if truth is a gift of all the members, it will be stronger and more certain when all the members concur in it together. Therefore, if the Church held anything false as a dogma of the Catholic faith, the Spirit of Christ would not remain with the faithful forever, nor would he teach them all truth. These promises cannot be true and reliable unless we make Christ's promises neither empty nor ineffective. And if the Church believed something false, or proposed it for belief, even if it did so through ignorance, how would it be the pillar and foundation of truth? Certainly, if truth rests upon the Church's shoulders, it cannot be absent from it altogether, unless Christ is absent from his Church and truth itself from Christ. In short, if the Church could be deceived in a question of faith, it could also receive as divine a book that was not from God, since the same reasoning applies to one book and to any one dogma. The argument “The Church regards Matthaei evangelium as canonical, therefore it is canonical” would then fail. Since it would be most impious and absurd to say this, let us say instead that the faithful rightly believe the Catholic Church not only in the sense that its faith will never fail, but also in the sense that it can neither believe nor teach anything contrary to true faith. Calvin and Bucer interpret our view cunningly and deceitfully, as though we deny that the Church can err in this sense: that, relying on the Spirit's favor and presence, it can go wherever it wishes, even without the word, and still be safe. Thus, they say, if it believes, establishes, or defines anything beyond God's word, that must be regarded no differently from a certain oracle of God. They claim that the difference is this: we place the Church's authority outside God's word, while they wish it attached to the word and will not allow it to be separated from it. Calvin takes great pains to gather passages in which the prophets, Apostles, and even Christ himself are said to have brought nothing of their own, but to have spoken from the Lord's mouth. He concludes that it is much more fitting for Christ's Church, as his disciple, to depend constantly on his mouth, and to know or think nothing of itself, but to set a limit to its wisdom where he has finished speaking. For St. Chrysostom says most piously: “Many, ¹

Chrysostom says, “Many boast of the Holy Spirit, but those who speak their own thoughts falsely invoke him.” Just as Christ testified that he did not speak of himself, so if anything beyond the Gospel is pushed on us under the title of the Spirit, we must not believe it. Certainly, Christ declares nothing further to be expected from his Spirit than that he illumine minds to understand the truth of his teaching: “The Spirit,” he says, “will lead you into all truth.” How? “Because he will remind you of everything I tell you.” So much for Calvin. Bucer spoke much more ignorantly: the Church is to be believed, he said, when it pronounces according to Scripture rightly understood. But by saying this he makes everything defined by the Church uncertain. For if it can pronounce otherwise than correctly understood Scripture requires, we will always make this exception: the Church is mistaken in that it falsely understands Scripture. Who, then, will judge whether the Church interprets Scripture rightly or wrongly? Those who grant the Church authority not absolutely but conditionally therefore contribute nothing. If the matter stands in this way, I too must be believed when I pronounce according to Scripture rightly understood. For this is to believe not me, but Scripture. The people believed the Lord and his servant Moses absolutely, not conditionally. The people also believed the prophets and Apostles absolutely. How would it be to detract from the faith of prophets and Apostles who were speaking by adding the exception that they had understood God's words incorrectly? What if the other exception were added as well: “You speak falsely; the Lord our God did not send you”? It is astonishing how shameless these scoundrels are. What authority will the Church have in the end if every dogma, law, and definition can be evaded in two ways: either the Church does not speak on its own, or, if it is the Lord's speech, it is not correctly understood? But I return to Calvin. When that familiar testimony of the Lord was brought against him—“If he does not hear the Church, let him be to you as a pagan and a tax collector”—he finally admits that the Church must be obeyed, since it never consents to anything but God's truth and pronounces nothing but what comes from the Lord's word. He insists on this: the Church is not permitted to devise new teaching or hand down as an oracle anything more than the Lord has revealed in his word. Yet among his own people he babbles astonishingly about this and either foolishly fails to understand or maliciously lies, when he says that we regard as an oracle of faith what human beings have customarily held without God's revelation. We certainly want our faith to be joined to God's word by an unbreakable bond, and we confidently and firmly uphold no assent of the Church unless we know that it came from God and hold this fixedly in our minds. But we are also firmly persuaded that the Lord is constantly and continuously present to his Church and governs it by his Spirit, so that it hands down nothing as a doctrine of faith that God did not also hand down to the Apostles. Thus we abhor all profane innovations and reject in the judgment of faith everything the Apostles did not hand down to the Church. The chief point of dispute is not this, but rather that the Lutherans deny that the Church received anything from the Apostles without writing, while we assert that it received many such things. We have often said much on this subject before and shall say much more later. Although in the preceding book the question was explained so fully and at length that nothing further seems needed, the truth itself took me by the hand, compelled me to pause and linger briefly while explaining the first conclusions. We must therefore hasten more quickly to the later ones.

Let the third conclusion be this: not only could the ancient Church not err in faith, but neither can nor will the Church that exists now or will exist until the end of the age err in faith. This conclusion was partly shown in libri secundi capite septimo and is partly proved by what we have just said. For Christ's promises about his presence, the Spirit of truth, his everlasting kingdom, and the body of which he was to be the head must pertain not only to the Church that existed in the time of the Apostles, but also to the Catholic Church that was to exist until the end of the age. Since this clearly follows from the arguments given to confirm the earlier conclusions, it would be futile either to do again what we have already done by repeating the same arguments, or, if we offer new ones, to use arguments entirely unnecessary for a matter beyond doubt. Certainly, one who insists on denying the present Church the Spirit of truth will deny it the power to bind and loose, and will deny all the sacraments and priesthood, and indeed all the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The Church of Christ would thus be reduced to a bare name and become a fictitious word without reality. Enough about the third conclusion. The fourth conclusion. Not only does the universal Church—that is, the assembly of all the faithful—have this everlasting Spirit of truth, but the Church's leaders and pastors have it as well. For we have said that the word “Church” is used both for the faithful people and for the Church's pastors. The earlier conclusions therefore asserted that whatever the Church, that is, the assembly of all the faithful, holds is true. This conclusion asserts that the Church's pastors and teachers cannot err in faith, but that whatever they teach the faithful people concerning the faith of Christ is entirely true. I shall show this conclusion shortly, after first pointing out that the error of one pastor or another, or even of all the pastors, does not undermine the faith—just as the error of a few of the faithful does not undermine the faith of the Christian people. We therefore maintain that all the pastors and teachers can never depart from the faith. So it is. In my opinion, this is first plainly demonstrated by that testimony of the Apostle: “He gave some to be apostles, some prophets, others evangelists, others pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the building up of Christ's body, until we all come to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the fullness of Christ's stature, so that we are no longer little children tossed about and carried by every wind of doctrine, by the wickedness of men and the cunning with which they scheme to deceive.” Certainly, if pastors and teachers wandered here and there and departed from the straight path of faith, the sheep too would wander and stray, scattered without a shepherd. For when the shepherd goes over a precipice, the flock must follow, as Gregory says. Nor can it happen otherwise than that the other members are led wherever the eyes direct their power and sight, and the head inclines and turns. Paul therefore rightly asserts that it is part of divine providence to give pastors and teachers to the Church so that by their authority the people, by nature restless and changeable, may be held firm in the constancy of faith by heavenly grace.

If Christ gave no pastor to his Church, then that good Shepherd would undoubtedly abandon his own fold. It would be much better for the Church to have no pastors than to have mistaken ones. If all the pastors without exception were to depart from the truth, Christ would have abandoned his sheep most of all. Further, if all the pastors were in some error, they would either dislodge the people from their state and position or at least make them waver and fluctuate. Christ's house would then not be the pillar and foundation of truth. Let us also suppose that all the bishops together agreed on the same opinion and proposed it to an unlearned people as something to be believed. I ask: should the people follow them or not? If they should, then the people must also err along with the erring priests and bishops. The error of all the priests would therefore be the error of the whole Church. But if the people may regard the teaching of all the pastors as worthless, consider whether anything more absurd can be said or imagined. If pastors on one side and sheep on the other are split into opposing camps, the separation of a body fitted together and joined at every joint will break up all the unity of the Church. It will overthrow not only the fellowship Christ established between the leaders and the people but also the common association of the faithful with one another, whose closest bond is the same agreement and accord of faith, with its parts not torn apart. But all the parts will be torn apart if the members of the people are separated from their heads. Once an unlearned people have departed from the common judgment of their teachers, whose teaching will they follow afterward? If they have thrown away the salt, with what will they be salted? If they have turned their mind's sight away from the light, what will they see but darkness? If the eye is evil, will the whole body not be dark? Where then is this: “The scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; whatever they tell you, do”? Will the scribes and Pharisees be in a better state and condition than the pastors and teachers of Christ's Church? Certainly, if the Lord had spoken only to those then present and not also to those in the future, as the author of the unfinished commentary argues, those words would have been spoken, not written. They were spoken for those people, but written for these. Moreover, as we established in secundo libro and must confirm libris etiam quinto et septimo, in Catholic controversies the truth of faith is not to be sought from the people. First, because it would be an endless task to ask the opinion of all the faithful to decide every question. Second, even if it could be done most conveniently, it would not be fitting to seek and await the judgment of cobblers or womenfolk one by one. Whether you ask each person separately about a disputed question, or want to gather everyone together in a council, this sort of inquiry would surely be ridiculous. Thus no controversy could be settled by the Church's authority at all, if we had to seek the agreement of the whole people in order to settle it. We should add something we said long ago: certain matters belong to the Church's doctrine and faith which the common people entirely ignore, such as that the Father and Son are one principle of the Holy Spirit; that the intellectual soul is the substantial form of the human body; Librum Esther esse canonicum; and similar matters. To seek the people's judgment on these would be so absurd that it would not occur even to the minds of fools, let alone wise people. No one could approve of such great matters being judged by the votes of an unlearned crowd. Further, in epistola Ephesini concilii ad Nestorium id a Nestorio requires of Nestorius, if he wishes to satisfy the Church rightly, that he swear he believes and teaches what all the bishops and leaders of the people throughout East and West believed and taught. Which

The same epistle was also confirmed by sexta synodus, action. II. Likewise, at the council too, Trident. Sess, 3, it was defined that it belongs to the Church to judge the true sense and interpretation of Scripture. But it would be madness for the whole congregation of the faithful to wish to pass judgment on a matter of this kind. The pastors and teachers of the Church, therefore, are those to whom such judgments belong. Eusebius of Caesarea records in his writings Egesippus’s most diligent inquiry into the faith: when Egesippus was traveling to Rome, he did not seek the opinion of ordinary people about the faith, but thought he had done enough to confirm his own faith if, in conversation with bishops in each place, he found all the preachers and teachers of the same faith. Again, when Irenaeus brings the authority of the Church against heretics, he brings forward only the judgment of the bishops, according to the succession of those who follow the apostles; he considers their understanding and faith to be the understanding and faith of the Church, and whoever opposes them to oppose the Church. Cyprian too, in libro de simplicit. praelat, says: “Does he seem to be with Christ who acts against Christ’s priests? He who separates himself from the fellowship of the clergy carries arms against the Church and resists God’s arrangement … who, despising the bishops and abandoning God’s priests, dares …” And in his letter to Pupianus: “Christ,” he says, “speaks to the apostles, and through them to all the rulers who succeed the apostles by a deputy ordination: ‘He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me.’” Later he asserts that the Church is not a multitude of the disobedient, but a people united to its priest and a flock clinging to its shepherd. Hence those who are not with the bishops are not in the Church, and those who have not kept peace with the priests flatter themselves in vain. “Since the Church, which is one and Catholic, has not been split, but is joined together and bound by the bond of priests who are mutually united …” Finally, Augustine—since it would take too long to mention everyone—when he relies on the authority of the Church against heretics, clearly understands the bishops who succeed the apostles down to his own time. ²