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

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.