De locis theologicis

IT EXPLAINS WHAT THE NAME “SYNOD” OR “COUNCIL” MEANS HERE

There was no doubt that by the name “synod” or “council”—for they mean the same thing—our forebears always understood priests, especially bishops, gathered in one place to settle matters concerning the faith or morals of the Church. But the Lutherans want a new kind of council, unheard of throughout all past ages, in which questions of faith are judged not by bishops and priests but by rhetoricians and a crowd of laypeople, prevailing not by reason and method but by words and shouting. It is very easy to remove this error. The whole Church of the faithful cannot assemble; and even if it could, it would not be expedient to refer disputes in our discipline to an undisciplined mob. If it would be foolish to seek the counsel of an agitated and uneducated crowd for keeping a state in peace or at war, it is foolish—and much more so—to want the consent and judgment of the people in the most serious questions of faith. If in temporal matters the people safely and prudently entrust themselves to the care, diligence, and counsel of magistrates, and claim no counsel or authority for themselves in making laws, why do these men incite the Christian people not to entrust themselves to their rulers, but to insist on admission to a gathering where public matters are to be settled not by private persons but by the Church’s public ministers? “We are not so ignorant and slow,” they say, “as to want the whole people called into a council, which would be madness, or questions of doctrine referred to an uneducated crowd, which would be folly. We want only what we rightly and justly want: that unlearned priests not enter a council; and that laypeople skilled in Sacred Scripture—of whom there are very many—be summoned to a synod; and that prudent and wise men, whether priests or laypeople, be chosen to direct all the Church’s affairs and public business by their counsel. For in matters of religion it is not fitting that an irreligious bishop be preferred to a devout layman, or that an unlearned priest surpass a learned layman in matters of doctrine.” We shall explain in refuting the arguments their slander about ignorant bishops; this was already raised among the other objections in the first chapter. But in saying that selected men from among the people should be called into a synod, they are grossly mistaken and do not understand the form and character of the Christian commonwealth instituted by Christ. Albert Pighius and other Catholics have discussed this sufficiently in many volumes. I am not now disputing with the Lutherans over whether all the faithful are priests, or whether Christ admitted women to the duties of the Church and the administration of sacred things; such questions do not belong to the present work and undertaking. I say only that not women and not laypeople, but priests and bishops alone, ought to be called into a council. “I will come to you,” says the Lord to Moses, “in a thick cloud, so that the people may hear me speaking with you and believe you forever.… Go down and warn the people, lest they wish to cross the boundaries to see the Lord, and a great multitude of them perish. The priests also who approach the Lord shall be sanctified.… And you and Aaron shall go up with you,” etc. In this way, then, Christ, through bishops and priests, established the Christian people;

The laity, however, must not ascend to deliberate with priests, but must remain within the boundaries laid down. But someone objects: “Moses was not a priest, and yet he taught the people and settled questions of religion.” First, I deny that Moses was not a priest. “Moses and Aaron among his priests,” says the Psalm (Psalm. 98). Further, he not only offered gifts to God and made sacrifices, but also consecrated Aaron and his sons. Moses was therefore a priest. This is set out clearly in Leviticus 8. Next, give me another lawgiver, another leader and prophet appointed by God, give me a man to whose words God granted such authority, and then perhaps I will say that such a man, even if a layman, may deliberate with priests. But this was granted to Moses alone, and must not be transferred indiscriminately to others. For what the lawgiver himself prescribed for settling controversies is clear and explicit in the Law. “If,” it says, “you see that a judgment among you is difficult and ambiguous … you shall come to the priests of the tribe of Levi,” etc., “and you shall follow their judgment, and you shall not turn aside to the right or to the left.” In ambiguous questions, then, the people must go to the priests and rest in their judgment. Add the words of Haggai: “Ask the priests about the law.” Add also those of Malachi: “The lips of a priest shall guard knowledge, and they shall seek the law from his mouth, because he is the angel of the Lord of hosts.” This prescribed form for settling controversies and teaching doctrine was not given only in the Old Testament; it is also kept in the New, so that in both matters the people depend on the words and judgment of bishops and priests. That the teaching of the Gospel is to be received from bishops is witnessed by Paul in Ephes. 4, where he says: “He gave some as apostles, some as prophets, others as evangelists, and others as pastors and teachers,” etc. There Paul divided apostles, prophets, and evangelists into three classes; but he carefully, wisely, and rightly distinguished pastors and teachers in thought alone, though in reality they were joined, so that we might understand that those in the Church who feed the flock are also those who teach. Yet loose custom has twisted these words from their course and gradually led to the view that some are pastors and others teachers. No greater harm could have been brought to the Christian way. For the Apostle wanted bishops to have authority not only to govern but also to feed and teach. “Pay attention,” he says, “to yourselves and to the whole flock, in which the Holy Spirit has appointed you bishops to govern the Church of God.” And again, in his letters to Timothy and Titus, he prescribed not separate bishops and teachers but the same man as bishop and teacher. Through Jeremiah the Lord also says: “I will give you shepherds who will feed you with knowledge and doctrine.” The doctrine of the Gospel, then, is to be expected from the shepherds of the Church, whom Paul taught to be both bishops and teachers. That bishops and priests also have the right to decide disputes of faith is taught by Luke in Acts 15. When Paul and Barnabas and some others came to Jerusalem, the Church there received them; but when the question was raised, they assembled, he says—not women, not young men, not laypeople, but “the apostles and elders to consider this matter.” Since Peter thought that, in order to strengthen the minds of the Antiochenes who doubted, not all the faithful but only the elders should be gathered with the apostles under the authority of a synod, why should we wish to admit into the most serious assembly of the Church women, butchers, cooks, and tailors,

since we know that among the Lutherans many such people claim knowledge of Sacred Scripture? Further, when it is in question which pastures should be allowed for sheep and which forbidden, it is the shepherds, not the sheep, who deliberate. The Lord therefore entrusted such matters to the shepherds of the Church. Moreover, Christ granted the keys of the heavenly kingdom not indiscriminately to the common people but to the apostles and their successors, as is said in cap. Firmiter, de summa Trinitate. For we need not now prove points belonging to another place and time; but the power of the keys consists in opening and loosing, shutting and binding, as Christ himself explained in Matth. 16. To resolve questions that arise concerning faith and, once judgment has been completed, to bind the faithful to belief is therefore not for just anyone, but only for those who have authority both to shut and open and to bind and loose. This is especially confirmed by the fact that removing the obstacles that shut the door of the kingdom of heaven is the particular office of the keys. Ignorance of the faith, which is without doubt one of these obstacles, will therefore be removed properly by those to whom the keys were entrusted. In addition, the Apostle understood the heavens in Rom. 10 to be the apostles, applying to them the words, “Their sound has gone out into all the earth,” etc. It will therefore belong to the apostles and their successors to enlighten others and hold the people together by their power. If you remove the illuminations of heaven, by which all that the earth brings forth ripens and grows, it must remain barren, truly dry by its name. And if darkness covers the earth and gloom the peoples, no one will disperse it except those to whom Christ said, “You are the light of the world.” Those who assign to inferiors in the Church what belongs to their superiors are like people who place the power of illumination in the earth or the power of sight in the feet. Since others have discussed these matters more fully and carefully, it is enough for us to have touched briefly on these few points. There is certainly no reason to desire a greater light on this matter than reason alone and the Church’s constant practice have made clear. For within living memory only bishops and priests have been called to a council—and not all of them, but those who are shepherds and rulers of the Church. Bishops whom our age calls titular bishops have sometimes been admitted into a synod without reason. But that is no wonder: they are in the Church without reason too. However, that is for another time. Now I shall briefly summarize what I proposed. Unless I am mistaken, titular bishops ought no more to be called into a synod than simple priests. For the whole business of an ecclesiastical council is conducted by the power of jurisdiction, not by order. No one can pass judgment, loose, or bind without jurisdiction. It is clear that the fathers in a synod either give the people laws on morals or judge questions of faith; a priest does neither without the right to bind and loose. However this may be, the Lutherans are plainly mistaken in broad daylight when they define a synod as anything other than an assembly of bishops and priests. Bucer is also shamefully and childishly mistaken when he says that only children of God should be called into a synod of the Church. First, if only children of God make up a Church synod, I ask whether they ought to assemble on their own without being summoned, or whether there will be someone by whose authority they are called. If they come to the council when summoned, who, I ask, will recognize the true children of God? If they come of their own accord, then everyone will judge himself and, trusting his opinion of his own goodness, push himself into the council. But even if someone can form an estimate of himself, how will he know that the others are just and holy?

To expose the madness of such men more clearly, imagine citizens in some commonwealth gathering of their own accord and on their own authority to judge laws, magistrates, and religion, each doing so with greater boldness the more he trusts in his own virtue and learning. Would any sensible person approve such a form and condition of a commonwealth—not Solon or Lycurgus, but anyone at all? We must not therefore introduce into a Church synod the confusion and disorder that no sane person would allow even in villages and small towns. Unless, perhaps, we fall into the madness of thinking that as soon as a person ceases to be a child of God, he is also deprived of the power to govern, feed, judge, bind, and loose. It is not this work’s purpose to show what that would mean, but it can be seen in a secular commonwealth, where the honesty or dishonesty of citizens is not so obscure that it cannot sometimes be recognized easily. It is not nearly so easy in the Christian commonwealth, whose chief virtue—by which people are both called and are children of God—is most deeply hidden. For the true Jew is not the one who is so outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; rather, the true Jew is the one who is so inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart, in the spirit and not the letter, whose praise comes not from people but from God. If public authority were also lost when charity was lost, no one could say how deeply darkness would cover the Church. We discussed this argument in the previous book, as have many others at much greater length. We have mentioned it in passing so that readers may understand what is enough for the present point: bad bishops are to be called into a synod because they have not lost the power to feed, judge, bind, and loose. Let us therefore set the Lutherans aside in this discussion; we should understand that the name “ecclesiastical synod” includes not just anyone, but the pastors and prelates of the Church gathered in one place to pronounce on ecclesiastical matters, that is, morals, faith, and religion.