Orthodoxy and Catholicism, part 4

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

SDG here with a Q-and-A continuation of my exchange with my Orthodox-leaning friend…

Q. You have written many words and obviously put a great deal of thought into advancing your point of view…

A. Actually, when I first began thinking about all this, it wasn’t at all a question of “advancing my own point of view,” but of “Which point of view should I take in the first place?” I had come to a place where I knew that I couldn’t stay Protestant forever — the sand was sinking under my feet, and I knew I had to make a leap that would take me either to Catholicism or to Orthodoxy. Frankly, Orthodoxy was an appealing possibility. I did some reading and studying, and talked to a lot of people before it became clear to me that I must be Catholic.

I won’t pretend that I personally unraveled all the theological issues and proved to my own satisfaction that the Catholic Church was right. On the contrary, it was in part precisely my awareness of the sheer folly of presuming to think that I could sit down and sort out all the relevant data and arrive at a definitive judgment about which bishops were correct in their interpretation of the scriptures, the Councils, and the traditions that led me eventually to conclude that God couldn’t possibly have left me in the position of having to judge for myself which group of bishops is correct. The bishops are there to instruct me, not I to judge between them. So how I am to know which group of bishops to follow can’t be a matter of deciding for myself which are right and which are wrong. There must be another way, another authority capable of passing judgment on the bishops, whose judgment I can simply accept without first sitting in judgment of it.

And so eventually I concluded that the only candidate for the job — the bishop of Rome — had to be the man for the job.

Q. Of course, in a way, you WERE sitting in judgment because you DID choose the Catholic group of bishops over the Orthodox group of bishops.

A. That seems to me like saying that a man who converts to Christianity sits in judgment of Jesus because he chooses him as his Lord and Savior.

I didn’t decide to become Catholic rather than Orthodox because I first satisfied myself that the Catholic bishops rather than the Orthodox bishops agreed with me on all the issues, any more than I am a Christian because I examined Jesus’ teachings and was pleased to find that he supported my views.

If my judgment on the actual content of the issues that divide the Catholic and Orthodox bishops is the only basis I have for choosing between them, then in what sense are they my teachers? Why in that case have authoritative teachers in the first place, if indeed we can call them authoritative? Why have authoritative councils? Since every man must decide the truth for himself, why not just give the people the Bible and call it a day? For that matter, why not just let everyone decide for himself which books are inspired and which aren’t?

Look at it this way. In differentiating his beliefs from, say, Modalism or Donatism, is it enough for an Orthodox Christian to say that he personally has examined those teachings on the basis of the scriptures and the traditions and found their interpretations lacking? Or does he place great importance on the fact that the scriptures and traditions have been authoritatively interpreted by this or that council, to whose authority the heretics ought to submit but which they reject, and by which their interpretations have been explicitly rejected?

Of course I’m saying nothing against examining Donatism and knowing why it’s wrong. As a Western Catholic Christian, I’m all about critical thought. 🙂 But it’s important, isn’t it, to the Orthodox Christian’s self-understanding on this point that what stands between himself and the Donatist isn’t simply a question of individual interpretation of scriptures, traditions, and councils — that the matter has been authoritatively settled by an authority to which the Donatist ought to submit but which he rejects, and which explicitly rejects his interpretation?

Would not the same be true for the Orthodox Christian in distinguishing his beliefs from Protestantism, this time in connection with the authority of the bishops and of sacred tradition as well as that of the councils? Or from Judaism, in connection with the New Testament, or of Islam, in connection with the whole of scripture, and so on?

But now come to the Catholic Church. Suddenly it’s all very different. Both sides accept sacred tradition. Both sides accept the teaching authority of the bishops. Both sides accept the councils up to Nicaea II. For the first time, the only time, the Orthodox Christian has no higher ecclesiastical authority to which he can appeal — no authoritative interpretation to which Western Christians ought to submit but which they reject, and which explicitly rejects their interpretation. In fact, this time it’s the Catholic who claims the higher authority, and the Orthodox Christian who rejects it.

Suddenly the Orthodox Christian is in the same boat vis-a-vis Catholicism as is the Donatist or the Protestant vis-a-vis Orthodoxy. He must say that the problem with the Catholic Church is that although they accept the traditions and the councils, they interpret them wrongly, and claim false authority as their basis for doing so. In spite of lacking any authoritative interpretation condemning the Western errors that should be binding upon Western Christians but which they reject, he must argue, in effect, that they are simply mistaken, and that he is not.

It strikes such a different note, don’t you think? To me, it seems almost Protestant, almost in spirit analogous to an appeal to sola scriptura; it says, Judge for yourself and see, and agree with us, for we are right. Nothing wrong with that as far as it goes, of course, but in no other controversy does the Orthodox Christian consider that a sufficient response.

But there is no such different note on the Catholic side. The Catholic response to Orthodoxy is precisely the same as the response of both communions to everyone else. What stands between the Catholic and the Orthodox Christian as far as the Catholic is concerned isn’t just a matter of anyone’s interpretation or misinterpretation of sacred scripture, tradition, and the councils — the matter has been authoritatively settled by an authority to which the Orthodox ought to submit but which they reject, and by which their interpretations have been explicitly rejected.

So I do think there’s a difference between, on the one hand, “sitting in judgment” of authority in the sense in which heretics do so, and on the other hand what Orthodox Christians do in accepting the authority of the councils against the heretics, and what Catholics do in accepting the authority of the pope against the Orthodox.

Q. I guess the Roman bishop was the “only candidate for the job” because he was the only bishop who dared to claim that the job even existed — and since you had decided that somebody, somewhere, must HAVE that job, you agreed with him.

A. Given the way that some kind of final authority stands between the two sides of every other schism and heresy, an authority that is accepted by those on the right side and rejected by those on the wrong side, and which explicitly rejects the errors of those on the wrong side, then in coming to this knottiest schism of schisms, and finding here once again an authority that is accepted on one side and rejected on the other explicitly rejecting the errors on the other side, it seems a reasonable inductive conclusion that, in the workings of divine providence, one would not expect to find every single fork in the road until now so clearly and unambiguously marked, only to find this last, most subtle, most difficult division of all not only NOT marked by any comparable sign, but falsely marked, with a false sign, and only a false sign, and the only such false sign on the road.

If that is the case — if every single step along the long, long road from the deepest heresy to full orthodoxy, from believing less to believing more, from rejecting more authority to submitting to more, leads to ever-increasing truth, and then that last step to Catholicism, to believing the most, to submitting the most, is false — if it is God’s plan that we should reject the solas and instead accept the authority of sacred tradition, and reject every conceivable christological, soteriological, and ecclesiological error and instead accept the authority of the councils, but then when it comes to Catholicism vs. Orthodoxy he wishes us simply to open our eyes and say to ourselves, “I don’t need any special authority on one side or the other of THIS one, I can see for myself that this Catholic stuff just ain’t right,” and solely on this basis to reject the authority of the pope — well, then, I can only say that God has baited the trap too well for such a simple sheep as myself. At every turn, every fork, the reward was on the same side; I’ve done no more than follow the road to the end.

And if that be the case, if the last step is a trap, then in humility and love I can only trust that he will judge me mercifully for falling willingly into his trap, being moved by desire to accept all of his authority and all of his truth rather than nearly all, to risk believing and trusting too much rather than too little.

Not to say, of course, that I wasn’t also persuaded by positive scriptural and traditional arguments for the papacy and the Catholic Church, or that I can’t or won’t argue my convictions on the merits. I was, I can, and I will. But in the end, as with receiving Jesus himself, it’s a leap of faith. One either makes it, or not. To me, to be Orthodox rather than Catholic is to fail to make that last leap of faith.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3