Will the Pope's Pronouncement Set Ecumenism Back a Hundred Years? (Challenge to Apostolicity)

Yesterday's Reuters headline: "The Vatican on Tuesday said Christian denominations outside the Roman Catholic Church were not full churches of Jesus Christ." The actual proclamation, posted on the official Vatican Web site, says that Protestant Churches are really "ecclesial communities" rather than Churches, because they lack apostolic succession, and therefore they "have not preserved the genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic Mystery." Furthermore, not even the Eastern Orthodox Churches are real Churches, even though they were explicitly referred to as such in the Vatican document Unitatis Redintegratio (Decree on Ecumenism). The new document explains that they were only called Churches because "the Council wanted to adopt the traditional use of the term." This new clarification, issued officially by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but in fact strongly supported by Pope Benedict XVI, manages to insult both Protestants and the Orthodox, and it may set ecumenism back a hundred years.

The new document, officially entitled "Responses to Some Questions Regarding Certain Aspects of the Doctrine on the Church," claims that the positions it takes do not reverse the intent of various Vatican II documents, especially Unitatis Redintegratio, but merely clarify them. In support of this contention, it cites other documents, all issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Mysterium Ecclesiae (1973), Communionis notio (1992), and Dominus Iesus (2000). The last two of these documents were issued while the current pope, as Cardinal Ratzinger, was prefect of the Congregation. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was born in 1542 with the name Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition, and for centuries it has operated as an extremely conservative force with the Roman Catholic Church, opposing innovation and modernizing tendencies, suppressing dissent, and sometimes, in its first few centuries, persecuting those who believed differently. More recently, the congregation has engaged in the suppression of some of Catholicism's most innovative and committed thinkers, such as Yves Congar, Hans Küng, Charles Curran, Matthew Fox, and Jon Sobrino and other liberation theologians. In light of the history of the Congregation of the Faith, such conservative statements as those released this week are hardly surprising, though they are quite unwelcome.

It is natural for members of various Christian Churches to believe that the institutions to which they belong are the best representatives of Christ's body on earth--otherwise, why wouldn't they join a different Church? It is disingenuous, however, for the leader of a Church that has committed itself "irrevocably" (to use Pope John Paul II's word in Ut Unum Sint [That They May Be One] 3, emphasis original) to ecumenism to claim to be interested in unity while at the same time declaring that all other Christians belong to Churches that are in some way deficient. How different was the attitude of Benedict's predecessors, who wrote, "In subsequent centuries much more serious dissensions appeared and large communities became separated from full communion with the [Roman] Catholic Church--for which, often enough, men of both sides were to blame" (Unitatis Redintegratio 3). In Benedict's view, at various times in history groups of Christians wandered from the original, pure Roman Catholic Church, and any notion of Christian unity today is predicated on the idea of those groups abandoning their errors and returning to the Roman Catholic fold. The pope's problem seems to be that he is a theologian rather than a historian. Otherwise he could not possibly make such outrageous statements and think that they were compatible with the spirit of ecumenism that his immediate predecessors promoted.

One of the pope's most strident arguments against the validity of other Churches is that they can't trace their bishops' lineages back to the original apostles, as the bishops in the Roman Catholic Church can. There are three problems with this idea.

First, many Protestants deny the importance of apostolic succession as a guarantor of legitimacy. They would argue that faithfulness to the Bible and/or the teachings of Christ is a better measure of authentic Christian faith than the ability to trace one's spiritual ancestry through an ecclesiastical bureaucracy. A peripheral knowledge of the lives of some of the medieval and early modern popes (e.g., Stephen VI, Sergius III, Innocent VIII, Alexander VI) is enough to call the insistence on apostolic succession into serious question. Moreover, the Avignon Papacy and the divided lines of papal claimants in subsequent decades calls into serious question the legitimacy of the whole approach. Perhaps the strongest argument against the necessity of apostolic succession comes from the Apostle Paul, who was an acknowledged apostle despite not having been ordained by one of Jesus' original twelve disciples. In fact, Paul makes much of the fact that his authority came directly from Jesus Christ rather than from one of the apostles (Gal 1:11-12). Apostolic succession was a useful tool for combating incipient heresy and establishing the antiquity of the churches in particular locales, but merely stating that apostolic succession is a necessary prerequisite for being a true church does not make it so.

The second problem with the new document's insistence upon apostolic succession is the fact that at least three other Christian communions have apostolic succession claims that are as valid as that of the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox Churches, which split from the Roman Catholic Church in 1054, can trace their lineages back to the same apostles that the Roman Catholic Church can, a fact acknowledged by Unitatis Redintegratio 14. The Oriental Orthodox Churches, such as the Coptic and Ethiopic Orthodox Churches, split from the Roman Catholic Church several centuries earlier, but they too can trace their episcopal lineages back to the same apostles claimed by the Roman Catholic Church as its founders. Finally, the Anglican Church, which broke away from the Roman Catholic Church during the reign of King Henry VIII, can likewise trace the lineage of every bishop back through the first archbishop of Canterbury, Augustine. In addition to these three collections of Christian Churches, the Old Catholics and some Methodists also see value in the idea of apostolic succession, and they can trace their episcopal lineages just as far back as Catholic bishops can.

The third problem with the idea of apostolic succession is that the earliest bishops in certain places are simply unknown, and the lists produced in the third and fourth centuries that purported to identify every bishop back to the founding of the church in a particular area were often historically unreliable. Who was the founding bishop of Byzantium? Who brought the gospel to Alexandria? To Edessa? To Antioch? There are lists that give names (e.g., http://www.friesian.com/popes.htm), such as the Apostles Mark (Alexandria), Andrew (Byzantium), and Thaddeus (Armenia), but the association of the apostles with the founding of these churches is legendary, not historical. The most obvious breakdown of historicity in the realm of apostolic succession involves none other than the see occupied by the pope, the bishop of Rome. It is certain that Peter did make his way to Rome before the time of Nero, where he perished, apparently in the Neronian persecution following the Great Fire of Rome, but it is equally certain that the church in Rome predates Peter, as it also predates Paul's arrival there (Paul also apparently died during the Neronian persecution). The Roman Catholic Church may legitimately claim a close association with both Peter and Paul, but it may not legitimately claim that either was the founder of the church there. The fact of the matter is that the gospel reached Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, Edessa, and other early centers of Christianity in the hands of unknown, faithful Christians, not apostles, and the legitimacy of the churches established there did not suffer in the least because of it.

All the talk in the new document about apostolic succession is merely a smokescreen, however, for the main point that the Congregation of the Faith and the pope wanted to drive home: recognition of the absolute primacy of the pope. After playing with the words "subsists in" (Lumen Gentium [Dogmatic Constitution on the Church] 8) and "church" (Unitatis Redintegratio 14) in an effort to make them mean something other than what they originally meant, the document gets down to the nitty-gritty. "Since communion with the Catholic Church, the visible head of which is the Bishop of Rome and the Successor of Peter, is not some external complement to a particular Church but rather one of its internal constitutive principles, these venerable Christian communities lack something in their condition as particular churches." From an ecumenical standpoint, this position is a non-starter. Communion with Rome and acknowledging the authority of the pope as bishop of Rome is a far different matter from recognizing the pope as the "visible head" of the entire church, without peer. The pope is an intelligent man, and he knows that discussions with other Churches will make no progress on the basis of this prerequisite, so the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the pope, despite his protestations, has no interest in pursuing ecumenism. Trying to persuade other Christians to become Roman Catholics, which is evidently the pope's approach to other Churches, is not ecumenism, it's proselytism.

Fortunately, this document does not represent the viewpoint of all Catholics, either laypeople or scholars. Many ordinary Catholics would scoff at the idea that other denominations were not legitimate Churches, which just happen to have different ideas about certain topics and different ways of expressing a common Christianity. Similarly, many Catholic scholars are doing impressive work in areas such as theology, history, biblical study, and ethics, work that interacts with ideas produced by non-Catholic scholars. In the classroom and in publications, Catholics and non-Catholics learn from each other, challenge one another, and, perhaps most importantly, respect one another.

How does one define the Church? Christians have many different understandings of the term, and Catholics are divided among themselves, as are non-Catholics. The ecumenical movement is engaged in addressing this issue in thoughtful, meaningful, and respectful ways. Will the narrow-minded view expressed in "Responses" be the death-knell of the ecumenical movement? Hardly. Unity among Christians is too important an idea to be set aside. Will the document set back ecumenical efforts? Perhaps, but Christians committed to Christian unity--Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant alike--will get beyond it. The ecumenical movement is alive and well, and no intemperate pronouncement from the Congregation of the Faith, or the current pope, can restrain it for long. Even if ecumenism, at least as it involves the Roman Catholic Church's connection with other Churches, is temporarily set back a hundred years, that distance can be closed either by changes of heart or changes of leadership.

then by allowing people to be born whom he knows will never do the right thing

P-Marlowe raises a valid argument here, imo. Why would God create (or has pre-destined) someone knowing that he or she will never do the right thing?

For whatever its' worth, then why did He create Adam and Eve and make everything good, knowing it would turn sour? And why did He create the world knowing that mankind would turn so wicked that He would have to drown all but a few? Or why was the Serpent in the Garden, or why does He allow evil if everything has been predestined...what good are prayers when they can't change what has been predetermined before the foundations of the world, etc., etc.

You raise a good question, but my only objection to this is that predestination doesn't answer these questions either. It avoids them.

In fact, predestination makes salvation an illusion as well. Before they were even guilty, they were destined for "salvation?" Salvation from what? You are pardoned before you have committed a crime?

What is the point of speaking of sin if all we do is what we have been pre-programmed to do? Then the evil ones are evil because God made them evil? Dioesn't it follow that he who does evil is evil himself? Does that mean that God is sometimes good and sometimes evil? Or does it mean that, since God is always sovereign and good, even the evil is good? If so, then why are the evil ones not saved as well? After all, they were predestined to be evil and are evil for no fault of their own, right?

Are we not going through empty rituals by praying and preaching and baptizing, if everything has been predetermined? Why then the Great Commission? Those who will become Christian will do so of no effort of their own, whether we preach to them or not.

It's like a movie. The end will not change regardless what you are doing in the theater or even if you are watching the movie. So what we do in the movie changes nothing; its meaningless whether we sleep, talk, pray, behave, misbehave, or whatever. You don't even have to be in the movie theter or even know the movie exists; the movie will end the way it was choregraphed to end.

That makes our existence and what we do completely menaingless.If nothing we do can change then why are we doing it? Predestination is like lobotomizing everything we do, think and believe.

The end of the world will come suddenly and unpredictably, as Jesus said (in His human nature), and the hour is known but to the Father. What we will see in the sky will be the fiery furnace of a crashing asteroid that came from behind the Sun and was not detectable. That can happen at any moment, as the Bible warns. And we should be prepared.

We have already had near misses with such bodies (two of them) in the last couple of years. The trajectory of collision is the only predetermined certainty known but to God. Our state of souls is a matter of our choice. We will not alter the fate of the world, but will affect how we are judged.

Clothing is worn in Heaven? There are different rewards in Heaven? I really haven’t explored much along these lines before. Are there different levels of the afterlife - like the LDS beliefs?

Protestants believe, like the LDS, that the "after life" is just like the life on earth. In fact, the LDS take it one step further and believe that we even continue our marital lives in heaven! Apparently they didn't read that part of the NT that says we will be 'just like angels (no marriage).

The difficulty with Revelation is that it contains many Old Testament ideas, which is why so many Church Fathers didn't accept it outright. If the warning against private interpretation is ever to be applied, Revelation is the one for obvious reasons.

This is why the Orthodox Church never reads from the Revelation in the Divine Liturgy.

The Jews always believed that Shoel (the place where the dead souls congregate) is basically continuation of our earthly life (that's why the Sadducees tried to trick jesus with the question about a woman who married seven brothers, whose wife shall she be in heaven).

Thus, apocalyptic Jews believed that in a parallel way the life in heaven would be like continuation of our earthly life. So, clothing could be taken literally or allegorically. Of course, the Protestants take it literally.

You raise a good question, but my only objection to this is that predestination doesn't answer these questions either. It avoids them.

Whether predestination answers the questions or avoids the questions is irrelevant to the issue of whether or not we are predestined. We are. Unless God has no idea what is going to happen tomorrow, we are all predestined by no other reason than by the omniscience of God.

In fact, predestination makes salvation an illusion as well. Before they were even guilty, they were destined for "salvation?

Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. (Jeremiah 1:4-5 KJV)

If we are not called to preach to them, then perhaps they are not predestined to eternal life. If we do not baptize them, then perhaps they were not predestined to eternal life. God has called us all to preach the gospel to everyone. If we do not do so, then perhaps we are not called to eternal life.

I don't know.

..what good are prayers when they can't change what has been predetermined before the foundations of the world, etc., etc.

we are told that the fervent effectual prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Our prayers do change things on a temporal level, but God knew from the foundation of the earth whether you would pray that prayer and whether or not he would answer it. In that sense your prayer was as predestined as God's answer to it.

Thank you.

And I still cannot imagine, given my understanding of Scripture, why God would create individuals in order to toss them into hell

God created man in His image and likeness. Where does it say He created some men specifically to be discarded and destroyed? The scriptures do say that He created an everlasting lake of fire for the devil and his angels, but not for mankind.

Obviously, some "goats" will be mixed with the "sheep" at the final judgment, but it is clear that God did not create the "goats." They became goats by their choice and steps they took.

It's like a parent giving a child an opportunity to go to school. The parent's role is not to do the work needed to graduate. The parent can help, encourage, reward, etc., but the parent will not study and take exams for the child.

The Parent only makes it possible for the child to go to school. But the studying and passing is the child's responsibility and doing. Those who sit on their butts and play games instead of studying will get nowhere. Those who study and pass will repeat the rewards for their work.

No loving parent will have children with the intention of making sure they fail. Loving parents shower their children with blessings of their own work, and want to see them succeed. But a parent won't shackle and beat or destroy a child who doesn't make good on his blessings.

Predeterminism is really an escapist approach. One escapes any and all responsibility for one's state or deeds. "I am honored to be God's rag doll" is an excuse.

(Jeremiah 1:4-5 KJV)

God chose specific individuals to reveal Himself to gradually. They are far and few in between. That doesn't mean He has predestined all of us.

I agree with the first portion, but not with the second. The verse below suggests that God is granting something because they prayed. If their prayer was a meaningless predestined act, then God is playing games.

Thus says the LORD, the God of your father David, "I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will add fifteen years to your life." [Isa 38:5]

why did He create Adam and Eve and make everything good, knowing it would turn sour? And why did He create the world knowing that mankind would turn so wicked that He would have to drown all but a few?

In Genesis 6:6 God repents or regrets that He made man and decides to do away with him. Later, He changes His mind.

We know these involve anthropomorphisms, yet they are descriptive of something, perhaps that evidence of this paradox goes way back to the beginning of our tussle with God.

It's said that truly transcendent truth statements reduced to logic appear as a paradox. I think this question may be an illustration of that.

Interesting argument that since God is omniscient, He knows what is going to happen before it happens and therefore He made us and we are merely players acting out a script.

Matthew 13:41-42, The Son of man (Jesus) shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Revelation 21:8, But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.

2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is...not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his ONLY BEGOTTEN Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

Further, about.com gives the following comparison:

Free Will vs Predestination

Anglican/Episcopalian - “Predestination to Life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby ... he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen ... to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation ...” 39 Articles Anglican Communion

Assembly of God - “And on the basis of His foreknowledge believers are chosen in Christ. Thus God in His sovereignty has provided the plan of salvation whereby all can be saved. In this plan man’s will is taken into consideration. Salvation is available to “whosoever will.” AG.org

Baptist -”Election is the gracious purpose of God, according to which He regenerates, justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies sinners.It is consistent with the free agency of man ...” SBC

Lutheran - “...we reject ... the doctrine that conversion is wrought not by the grace and power of God alone, but in part also by the co-operation of man himself ... or anything else whereby man’s conversion and salvation is taken out of the gracious hands of God and made to depend on what man does or leaves undone. We reject also the doctrine that man is able to decide for conversion through “powers imparted by grace ...” LCMS

Methodist - “The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and works, to faith, and calling upon God; wherefore we have no power to do good works ...” UMC

Presbyterian - “There is nothing that we can do to earn God’s favor. Rather, our salvation comes from God alone. We are able to choose God because God first chose us.” PCUSA

Roman Catholic - “God predestines no one to go to hell” Catechism - 1037 See also “Notion of Predestination” - CE

So, if predestination is the way of God, then we should act according to our whims only, with the elect’s whims leading them to God and the non-elect’s whims leading them straight to hell and nothing is going to stop that progress.

Mark: Clothing is worn in Heaven?

If not I better go on a diet......When you think about it perhaps it isn't so strange. If we are created in His image then our bodies are the same and I don't want to walk around naked. Of course, Adam and Eve were au natural, but then why would He tell us about the white linen woven from our righteous acts if there is no clothing? Kosta could be right when he says, So, clothing could be taken literally or allegorically. Of course, the Protestants take it literally.

Mark: There are different rewards in Heaven? I really haven’t explored much along these lines before. Are there different levels of the afterlife - like the LDS beliefs?

I don't know about the beliefs of the LDS. I don't think there are different levels but scripture does seem to point to some "wearing white linen" and being in the sanctuary. Other than that???

Kosta: In fact, the LDS take it one step further and believe that we even continue our marital lives in heaven! Apparently they didn't read that part of the NT that says we will be 'just like angels (no marriage).

I read that part and take it to mean that literally, however there are other verses that point to children. (Isaiah 11:6,8) I believe those are allegorical but who knows for sure?

Kosta:The difficulty with Revelation is that it contains many Old Testament ideas, which is why so many Church Fathers didn't accept it outright.

I know this will hit a sour note with you Kosta but those Old Testament ideas were put there by God and need to be accepted by everyone.

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