Apologeticae sive Theologiae Fundamentalis, Tomus II (Pars Altera): Demonstratio Catholica

¹

That tribunal is called authentic which has been instituted by a legitimate power (e.g., a king) to discharge the authority of that power (e.g., the king), and to which, consequently, citizens are bound to subject themselves. Since, however, in every well-ordered society authentic tribunals are had for profane causes, it may already be suspected a priori that Christ likewise constituted in His Church an authentic magisterium, which proposes revelation to the faithful and to which the faithful are obliged to assent. Yet, in order that we may proceed safely and certainly in so grave a matter, we shall treat of the authentic magisterium of the Church: first, negatively, by showing the falsity of the Protestant principle by which that magisterium is denied; secondly, positively, by proving the truth of the Catholic principle by which the said magisterium is affirmed.

From what has been said it follows that the principle common to all Protestant sects holds that revealed truth is to be learned from sacred Scripture by the private or subjective spirit of individuals, with no authority of the Church intervening. Thus Luther: “It is the office of Christians to judge and decide concerning doctrines ... Let everyone who has the care of his own salvation be certain what he believes and follows, and let him be the freest judge of all who teach him, taught within by God alone ... Therefore it is lawful for us not only to recover that office of judging ..., but unless we recover it, we deny Christ our brother.”¹ With similar utterances all Protestants express the same principle.²

But although all agree in fact, the older Protestants nevertheless define the aforementioned principle in one way, and the more recent ones in another. The former, trusting in pseudomysticism or false supernaturalism, claim a private inspiration by which God directs each individual reader of Scripture; the latter, favoring rationalism, boast of a private inquiry by which individual readers of Scripture direct themselves. Both forms of the Protestant principle must be refuted.

The Reformers, in order to vindicate for individuals the faculty of judging concerning faith, taught that a private inspiration, or subjective illumination, is granted by the Holy Spirit to each one who reads Scripture. For they said that the word of God, objectively inspired, by its inherent power, which is the power of the Holy Spirit, so illuminates each reader subjectively that they necessarily understand the genuine sense.¹

And so individual faithful are constituted judges of all dogmas and of all teachers, since they themselves immediately have God as interpreter and teacher, according to that saying of Luther: "Let everyone be the freest judge of all who teach him, taught within by God alone."²

Nevertheless, this private inspiration is refuted both by Sacred Scripture and by Protestant history.

1. Sacred Scripture. Nothing do the Protestants hold more solemnly than the assertion: that nothing is to be believed unless it is proved from Scripture. And necessarily indeed, since Scripture is for them the unique source of revealed faith, as they commonly affirm, e. g. in the „Formula concordiae" (1577): „We believe that the sacred letters alone are that unique and most certain rule, to which all dogmas must be referred, and according to which judgment must be passed on all doctrines and all teachers."³ But private inspiration cannot be proved valid by any testimony of Scripture, although the Protestants scrape together many texts of the Old and New Testament to support it.⁴

From the Old Testament they adduce the prophecies of Isaiah:⁵ „All your children shall be taught of the Lord"; of Jeremiah:⁶ „And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor ... saying: Know the Lord: for they shall all know me from the least of them unto the greatest, saith the Lord"; of Joel:⁷ „And it shall come to pass after this, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy." But by these prophecies it is only promised that in messianic times men will be given the perfect revelation of God — nay, that by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit even charisms will be conferred. But of private inspiration, insofar as it would explain Scripture to individual faithful to the exclusion of the authority of the Church, no mention is made.

From the New Testament they object the words of Paul: „But the sensual man perceiveth not these things that are of the Spirit of God ... but the spiritual man judgeth all things; and he himself is judged of no man",⁸ and also those of John: „You have the unction from the Holy One, and know all things ... you have no need that any man teach you".⁹ By these and similar words the apostles — without speaking of a subjective inspiration granted to readers of the Scriptures — warn the faithful not to lend their ear to private teachers, but to preserve intact the faith received through the help of the apostolic magisterium. Hence, having rejected the private norm, whether written or oral, they establish as the proximate rule of faith the one magisterium of the Church.

2. Protestant history demonstrates to the eyes that that private inspiration of the Holy Spirit is defended in vain, since Protestantism abounds in dissensions and contradictions. The „inspired" men had scarcely abjured the Catholic Church when they quarreled among themselves and at different times taught different and opposed things about one and the same matter. V. g. Luther was consistent neither with Zwingli, nor with Calvin, nor with himself. In the most serious heads of doctrine a truly Babylonian confusion soon prevailed; e. g. concerning original sin sixteen, concerning justification twenty, concerning the eucharistic words „Hoc est corpus meum" two hundred opinions were put forward. There is no absurdity so impious and so monstrous that it has not been evolved out of Scripture by force of that feigned private inspiration. Scripture left to the arbitrary judgment of individuals is rightly described by the Protestant theologian Samuel Werenfels († 1740) in verses:

„This book it is, in which each one seeks his own dogmas, And likewise each one finds his own dogmas."¹⁰

And thus gradually there arose almost innumerable sects, which, while they continually changed their own doctrines,¹¹ most bitterly attacked the opinions of others, devastating England, Belgium, Germany, and Scotland with fire and sword.

Unless, therefore, you wish to call the Holy Spirit the author of these absurdities, it must be conceded that the Protestants, in explaining the Scriptures, were led not by private inspiration but by private caprice.

In truth, the more recent Protestants, rejecting that pseudo-mystical inspiration, judge that one's own natural endowment fully suffices for the reason of any private individual, by conducting an inquiry into the biblical text, to arrive at the genuine understanding of revelation. In place of private inspiration, therefore, they introduce a merely subjective scientific inquiry. Now if these Protestants affirmed by their principle only that private inquiry, or the scientific study of the Bible, is lawful for all, they would say nothing but the truth. They err, however, insofar as they contend that everything, and only that, is to be believed which each individual draws out of the Bible by private inquiry. Private inquiry, understood in this sense, is refuted both by human reason and by Protestant history.

1. Human reason perceives without difficulty that private inquiry into Scripture is not a rule of faith suited and sufficient for all men. For the Protestants wrongly teach that Scripture explains itself to all, or at least can be explained and understood by all with certainty and ease.¹ In truth, nothing is more difficult to understand than the Bible, if it must be understood by private inquiry alone. The original codices of the Bible have perished; the Hebrew and Greek languages, in which the sacred books were first written, are unknown to most; the ancient and vernacular versions are imperfect; the canon of sacred Scripture is drawn out only by long study; many texts are obscure in themselves:² countless historical, archaeological, and philological questions must be solved if the sacred books are to be understood at all.

Hence the unlearned are unequal to the private inquiry into Scripture. Nor can the knowledge of the learned be commended to them, as the adversaries infer. For uncultivated men cannot grasp the critical-scientific demonstrations of the scholars. Moreover, the learned neither deserve faith nor are able to win it for themselves. For even they are found in that worst condition, that they agree on no truth of Scripture and believe none to be certainly revealed. Hence both unlearned and learned Protestants must recall that word of the Lord: „But if a blind man give guidance to a blind man, both fall into the pit."³ Certainly:

2. Protestant history leads the principle of private inquiry ad absurdum. For it shows that Protestants, swearing by this one principle, are forced either to have recourse again to the authority they spurned or to slide into bare unbelief.

Luther himself, the father of the principle of private inquiry (for we know that his pretended inspiration was nothing but private inquiry), soon attempted to rein in the much-vaunted „freedom of the spirit" by the authority of the ecclesiastical magisterium. Indeed, when the necessity of curbing the rebellious peasants and teachers pressed upon him, he attributed to himself and to his church properly an authentic or divine magisterium.⁴ Nay, while the reformers were still living, Protestants began to compile the „Confessions" (the Augustan, the Belgic,⁵ the Helvetic, the Scottish, etc.) or „symbolic books", which they prescribed to their people as norms of believing and preaching. And even down to our own times the „orthodox" are driven to announce the gospel according to the rule of the symbolic books or of other ecclesiastical „Confessions".⁶ For without the authority of the Church, they confess, the whole faith and the Church itself would necessarily perish.⁷

And indeed those Protestants who have sincerely used the principle of private inquiry have fallen into bare unbelief, that is, into a rationalistic negation of the whole revelation. This needs no proof, since it is known to all that modern Protestantism is almost the same as rationalism. For whoever sets up the subjective inquiry of reason as the norm and judge of revealed truth, by that very fact contends that revelation contains nothing that does not belong to the sphere of pure reason. Behold crass rationalism! And moreover, with tradition and the authority of the Church denied, there perishes also the only source of revelation admitted by the Protestants, namely Scripture inspired by God. For the inspiration of Scripture is not sufficiently established except by Tradition and the authority of the Church, as will be shown.⁸ Hence the Protestant principle of faith leads by logical necessity to the total destruction of the Christian religion.⁹ The Christian religion cannot be preserved, unless the revelation once given by God is always proposed through the magisterium ordained by God.

The truth of the Catholic principle, therefore, is already discerned from the falsity of the Protestant principle, just as, conversely, the falsity of the Protestant principle clearly shines out from those things by which we shall presently prove the truth of the Catholic principle:

That Christ instituted in His Church an authentic magisterium of faith is implicitly evident from the hierarchical constitution of the Church.¹ For in the hierarchical power, that is, in the power of governing the Church, the power of the magisterium is also included. To be sure, the power of teaching, inasmuch as it is referred to what is to be believed, is distinguished from the power of governing, which is concerned with things to be done. But both powers agree in this, that they proximately impose precepts; by governance precepts of life are imposed, by the magisterium precepts of faith. Hence the acts of the magisterium are truly acts of governance or of command. Indeed, since the whole ecclesiastical command tends to this, that it direct men according to the principles of revelation and faith and thus preserve and administer the Christian religion, the command of the Church necessarily contains, presupposes, and demands the magisterium. To this implicit argument we nonetheless add explicit testimonies of Sacred Scripture and of Christian antiquity, which pertain to the authentic magisterium implanted by Christ in His Church.

From the books of the New Testament it is clearer than the sun that the apostles received, held, and handed on the authentic magisterium.

1. The apostles received the authentic magisterium from Christ. Christ, as we have set forth elsewhere,¹ at the beginning of His public life chose the twelve apostles, i. e. legates, instructed them in the faith in a special manner, taught them the office of discharging the apostolate, and sent them forth to preach the gospel. And although by this manner of acting He already sufficiently signified the authenticity of the apostolic magisterium, yet He admonished them also in express words that they were sent as legates in the name and by the authority of the Master to teach men: "He who receives you, receives me: and he who receives me, receives him who sent me."² "He who hears you, hears me: and he who despises you, despises me. But he who despises me, despises him who sent me."³

Finally, about to return to heaven, He solemnly confirmed the magisterium already granted to them, saying: "You shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Samaria and Judea and even to the uttermost part of the earth"⁴ "Going into the whole world, preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved: but he who does not believe will be condemned."⁵ "All power is given to me in heaven and on earth: going therefore, teach all nations: baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold, I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world."⁶ Therefore, by the authority of Christ Himself, the apostles are commanded to make all nations (πάντα τὰ ἔθνη) and all men (πάσῃ τῇ κτίσει) their disciples (μαθητεύσατε διδάσκοντες). And indeed for all time even to the consummation of the world, so that the authentic magisterium of the apostles must always be continued in their successors. Moreover, the faithful are bound to believe the apostles and their successors when teaching, with the sanction of eternal salvation added for believers, and of eternal damnation for non-believers. Therefore the authentic magisterium of the apostles and of their successors, established by Christ Himself, is the proximate rule of faith which all must follow.

2. The apostles themselves held the authentic magisterium. For, mindful of the mandate received, "they went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word with signs that followed."⁷ And indeed they exercise the magisterium in the name and by the authority of Christ: "We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were exhorting through us."⁸ "Christ sent me ... to evangelize."⁹ They demand absolute obedience from the faithful: "We have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith in all nations for His name."¹⁰ "The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty to God for the destruction of fortifications [of adversaries], destroying counsels and every height that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every understanding into the obedience of Christ, and having in readiness to avenge every disobedience."¹¹ And indeed they inflict the gravest punishments upon the disobedient, who fall away from the faith they have received: "Some have made shipwreck concerning the faith ... whom I have delivered to Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme."¹² "Everyone who revolts and does not remain in the doctrine of Christ has not God."¹³ They establish their preaching as the only proximate rule of faith: "Let that which you have heard from the beginning [the apostles preaching] abide in you."¹⁴ "If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine [apostolic], do not receive him into the house; nor say to him, God speed."¹⁵ "Although ... an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel other than that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema."¹⁶ But in order that the office of teaching might always remain in the Church:

3. The apostles handed on the authentic magisterium to others. For together with the pastoral office they delegate to their disciples also the office of teaching. Thus Paul exhorts Timothy, to whom he had entrusted the government of the Ephesian church: "Attend ... to exhortation and to doctrine ... Take heed to yourself and to doctrine. For in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you."¹⁷ "O Timothy, keep the deposit [of faith], avoiding profane novelties of words and oppositions of knowledge falsely so called."¹⁸ "Labor in the gospel according to the power of God ... Hold the form of sound words, which you have heard from me in faith and in charity in Christ Jesus. Keep the good deposit through the Holy Spirit."¹⁹ "Carefully study to present yourself approved to God, a workman not to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth."²⁰ "Preach the word, be instant in season, out of season ... do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry."²¹

But what the apostles enjoin upon their disciples, these in turn must enjoin upon their associates and successors, namely the bishops of the individual churches. Therefore Paul to Timothy: "The things which you have heard from me by many witnesses, commend these to faithful men, who will be fit to teach others also."²² "It behooves therefore a bishop to be blameless ... a teacher."²³ Likewise to Titus: "For this cause I left you in Crete, that you should set in order the things that are wanting, and should ordain priests in every city, as I also appointed you ... For a bishop must be without crime, as the steward of God ... embracing the faithful word which is according to doctrine, that he may be able to exhort in sound doctrine and to convince those who contradict."²⁴ Whence the rulers of the individual churches, who at that time were called now bishops, now presbyters, were the authentic masters of the faith and of the faithful.

Nay, Paul asserts that these pastors and doctors were given by Christ the Lord Himself to the Church of all times and places, with the same right as the apostles: "He gave some indeed apostles, some moreover prophets, others indeed evangelists, others moreover pastors and doctors for the perfecting of the saints into the work of the ministry, into the edification of the body of Christ: until we all meet into the unity of faith ... that we may no longer be little children fluctuating and carried about by every wind of doctrine in the wickedness of men, in cunning craftiness for the circumvention of error."²⁵²⁶ Behold the authentic magisterium committed by Christ to the apostles and their successors for preserving the integrity and unity of the faith, and for warding off error and uncertainty among the faithful. How consonant are these testimonies of Sacred Scripture with the Catholic rule of faith, how dissonant with the Protestant rule!

The same rule of faith, which the apostles had received from Christ and had held and handed on, the unanimous consensus of the Fathers likewise proclaimed, and the perpetual practice of the Church confirmed.

1. The unanimous consensus of the Fathers proclaimed the authentic magisterium as the proximate rule of faith. That this holds with regard to the post-Nicene Fathers even the Protestants themselves concede. But how futilely they deny that the ante-Nicene Fathers were ignorant of the authentic magisterium of faith is evident from the testimonies of St. Ignatius, St. Irenaeus, and Tertullian.

St. Ignatius affirms in many ways that bishops preside over the churches in the name and in the place of God, and consequently also over all the faithful and all ecclesiastical affairs.¹ From this it follows that the office of teaching the faith also, and that preeminently, belongs to the bishop. Hence Ignatius expressly admonishes not only the faithful but also the clergy to obey the bishop when he commands and teaches: "Attend to the bishop, that God also may attend to you."² "Be obedient to the bishop in all things, as Jesus Christ [is obedient] to the Father."³ "For since you are subject to the bishop as to Jesus Christ, you appear to me to live not according to man, but according to Jesus Christ."⁴ "It is fitting that you concur in the judgment of the bishop, as indeed you do. For your memorable presbytery, worthy of God, is so attuned to the bishop as strings to a cithara."⁵ Concord alone with the episcopal magisterium forestalls heresies: "I beseech you therefore ... use only Christian nourishment, but abstain from the foreign herbage, which is heresy ... This, however, will come to pass if you are neither puffed up nor torn away from God Jesus Christ and from the bishop."⁶ Therefore the faithful, when division and heresy press upon them, are bound to follow inviolably the faith proposed by the bishop: "Flee division and evil doctrines: but where the pastor (ὁ ποιμήν) is, there follow as sheep ... For all who are of God and of Jesus Christ, these are with the bishop."⁷

St. Irenaeus teaches that the apostles left to the bishops, their successors, both the doctrine and the magisterium of the faith: "We are able to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors down to our own times, who taught and knew nothing of the sort that is raved about by these [heretics]. For if the apostles had known hidden mysteries ... they would have delivered them especially to those to whom they were also committing the churches themselves. For they wished those whom they left behind as successors, handing over to them their own place of magisterium, to be very perfect and irreprehensible in all things."⁸ Therefore, when bishops propose the faith, they must be obeyed: "Wherefore it is proper to obey those presbyters who are in the Church, those who have the succession from the apostles, as we have shown; who, together with the succession of the episcopate, have received the certain charism of truth, according to the good pleasure of the Father. But the rest, who stand apart from the principal succession and gather together in whatever place, [it is proper] to regard with suspicion, as either heretics or of evil opinion."⁹ Therefore only those bishops have the authentic magisterium and an infallible faith who are joined to the "principal succession," that is, the primatial succession of the Roman church: "For to this church, on account of its more powerful principality, it is necessary that every church resort."¹⁰

Tertullian insists that the Christian doctrine was handed down by Christ to the apostles and by the apostles to the churches: "The apostles, having gone forth into the world, promulgated to the nations the same doctrine of the same faith. And accordingly they founded churches in each city, from which the other churches thenceforth borrowed and still daily borrow the shoot of faith and the seeds of doctrine, that they may become churches ... Hence therefore we direct our prescription: if the Lord Jesus Christ sent the apostles to preach, no other preachers are to be received than those whom Christ instituted. But what they preached, that is, what Christ revealed to them, I will also here prescribe: it ought to be proved in no other way than through those same churches which the apostles themselves founded, preaching to them both with the living voice, as they say, and afterwards through epistles."¹¹ But in saying "churches" he understands the presidents of the churches, that is, the bishops, as he expressly teaches when he sharply rebukes heretics: "Moreover, if any (heresies) dare to insert themselves into the apostolic age, so that they may on that account seem to have been handed down by the apostles because they existed under the apostles, we can say: let them therefore produce the origins of their churches, let them unfold the order of their bishops, running down through successions from the beginning, so that that first bishop had some one of the apostles or of apostolic men — who nevertheless persevered with the apostles — as his author and predecessor. For in this way the apostolic churches present their registers."¹²

2. The perpetual practice of the Church confirmed the authentic magisterium as the proximate rule of faith. The faithful never had the right to settle questions of faith; but the whole right and duty of defining dogmas, of deciding controversies of faith, of preaching the Gospel belonged exclusively, from the first centuries, to the bishops and above all to the bishop of bishops, namely the Roman pontiff. The principal part that the Roman pontiffs exercised in matters of faith we have already described elsewhere.¹³ The other bishops, at first, when the storms of persecutions raged, communicating by formatae letters, and afterwards gathered in ecumenical councils, decided the controversies and proposed the dogmas to be believed. The ancient monuments show that they prevailed first against the Valentinians, Montanists, and Sabellians, and later in the cause of the Arians, Macedonians, Nestorians, Eutychians, and of the subsequent heresies. Each of the bishops, moreover, exercised the ordinary magisterium in the individual particular churches either immediately or mediately through the clergy delegated by himself. The Church never knew another way of propagating and proposing the divine doctrine, as the whole most ancient history testifies. And if at last any Christians did not acknowledge this authentic magisterium or obstinately resisted it, they were struck with anathema and rejected from the Church.

All things therefore bear witness that the authentic magisterium in the Church is the organ chosen by Christ for proposing, propagating, and dispensing the revealed faith. Christ, the apostles, the disciples of the apostles, the Fathers of the earlier centuries, the whole conviction of the most ancient Church teach that the catholic principle of authority is the proximate rule of faith. Protestant subjectivism, rejecting the authority of the magisterium and substituting for it either the private inspiration of individuals or free inquiry ("Freie Forschung"), is alien to the Christianity of the first fifteen centuries and is therefore unchristian.

Corollary. That the bishops alone, not however the inferior clerics, are the authentic teachers of the faith is evident both from what has just been said and from the fact that only the bishops are the successors of the apostles in the ordinary office of pastoral care.¹⁴ Nothing, however, prevents priests from being made sharers in an extraordinary way in that power of teaching which is ordinary in the bishops. But priests deputed to teach, whether by individual bishops or by the supreme pontiff himself, exercise the magisterial office only by delegated force and authority, and therefore depend on the will of the one delegating.