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

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.