Category: Church Fathers

5 Things to Know About the Pope, St. Vincent of Lérins and Doctrinal Development

In a recent interview, Pope Francis invoked St. Vincent of Lérins in relation to the concept of doctrinal development — especially as a remedy to what the Pope called indietrismo (an attitude of “being backward-looking”) among some Catholics. He has done so previously.

The linkage of doctrinal development to Vincent of Lérins may come as a surprise for two reasons. One is that the concept is commonly linked to St. John Henry Newman, and the other is that Vincent is most famous for a quotation that some might take as rejecting doctrinal development.

Here are five things to know and share.

1) Who was St. Vincent of Lérins?

Vincent of Lérins was a French monk who lived in the early 400s. He belonged to a monastery on the Island of St. Honorat, one of the Lérins Islands off the southern coast of France.

When Vincent was born is unknown. His death occurred sometime between A.D. 434 and 450.

One of the controversies of his time centered on questions of grace, free will, predestination and original sin. The two poles of this debate were the British monk Pelagius and the North African bishop St. Augustine. The former stressed free will and minimized the role of grace in the Christian life, while the latter did the reverse.

Many in this time were not fully satisfied with the positions proposed by either Pelagius or Augustine, and some advocated middle positions, some of which were later deemed heretical and referred to as “semi-Pelagianism.”

Like many in France at this time, Vincent has been regarded as a semi-Pelagian, but it is unclear what his exact position was. Further, since semi-Pelagianism had not been condemned in his day, he was not blocked from being regarded as a saint.

His feast day in the Roman Martyrology is May 24.

 

2) What is St. Vincent famous for writing?

We may have more than one work that Vincent penned, but the only one regarded as certainly by him is called the Commonitories (from a Latin term meaning “remembrances” or “warnings”).

He wrote it under the pen name Peregrinus (Latin, “the Pilgrim”), and he composed it about the year 434 — three years after the Council of Ephesus declared that the Blessed Virgin Mary can be referred to as the Theotokos (Greek, “God-Bearer” or “Mother of God”).

This title is not found in Scripture and arose from popular piety. As a result, some viewed it as an impermissible addition to Christian faith and practice.

Between the Theotokos controversy and the Pelagian-Augustinian controversy, the topic of whether developments of doctrine were legitimate or heretical was under discussion at the time.

It was in this context that Vincent wrote the Commonitories, and he set before himself the task of determining how to distinguish the true Catholic faith from heresies, writing:

With great zeal and full attention I often inquired from many men, outstanding in sanctity and doctrinal knowledge, how, in a concise and, so to speak, general and ordinary way, I might be able to discern the truth of the Catholic faith from the falsity of heretical corruption.

From almost all of them I always received the answer that if I or someone else wanted to expose the frauds of the heretics and escape their snares and remain sound in the integrity of faith, I had, with the help of the Lord, to fortify that faith in a twofold manner: first, by the authority of the divine Law; second, by the tradition of the Catholic Church.

Vincent thus appeals to both Scripture and Tradition, and the Commonitories has passages that have been cited both by those who are cautious about the idea of doctrinal development and by those who are enthusiastic about it.

3) What did Vincent write that those who are cautious about doctrinal development cite?

Vincent explains that, although Scripture is “more than sufficient in itself,” it is interpreted in different and heretical ways by some people, and so he explains that one must interpret it in light of how it has been read in the Church. He states:

In the Catholic Church itself, every care should be taken to hold fast to what has been believed everywhere, always and by all [quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus].

This is truly and properly ‘Catholic,’ as indicated by the force and etymology of the name itself, which comprises everything truly universal.

This general rule will be truly applied if we follow the principles of universality, antiquity and consent.

This is the most famous passage in St. Vincent. It is an expression of what has become known as the “Vincentian Canon” and — taken on its own — it could be read as putting a firm break on any doctrinal development.

If we must “hold fast to what has been believed everywhere, always and by all,” then that could seem to leave no room for development in Catholic teaching over time.

The passage thus has been cited by those who wish to deemphasize the possibility of doctrinal development.

However, this is not the only thing that Vincent has to say on the subject.

4) What did Vincent write that those who are enthusiastic about doctrinal development cite?

Later in the Commonitories, Vincent makes it clear that he believes in the idea of doctrinal development, which he refers to as “progress [profectus] of religion.” He writes:

Teach precisely what you have learned; do not say new things even if you say them in a new manner.

At this point, the question may be asked: If this is right, then is no progress of religion possible within the Church of Christ?

To be sure, there has to be progress, even exceedingly great progress.

You’ll notice that one of the things Vincent mentions is the possibility of teaching things one has learned in the past but saying them “in a new manner.”

This refers to the controversies the Church had gone through in which new vocabulary was introduced to express ideas handed down from the apostles — such as saying that Christ is homoousios (Greek, “consubstantial”) with the Father or that Mary is Theotokos.

This teaching of ancient things “in a new manner” thus refers to a form of what is today called doctrinal development. He later refers to this as “presenting in new words the old interpretation of the faith.”

To explain his idea of progress or development, Vincent states that:

It must be progress in the proper sense of the word, and not a change in faith.

Progress means that each thing grows within itself, whereas change implies that one thing is transformed into another.

Hence, it must be that understanding, knowledge and wisdom grow and advance mightily and strongly in individuals as well as in the community, in a single person as well as in the Church as a whole, and this gradually according to age and history.

Vincent then offers an analogy:

The growth of religion in the soul should be like the growth of the body, which in the course of years develops and unfolds, yet remains the same as it was.

Much happens between the prime of childhood and the maturity of old age.

But the old men of today who were the adolescents of yesterday, although the figure and appearance of one and the same person have changed, are identical.

There remains one and the same nature and one and the same person.

The limbs of infants are small, those of young men large — yet they are the same.

By contrast, he states:

If, on the other hand, the human form were turned into a shape of another kind, or if the number of members of the body were increased or decreased, then the whole body would necessarily perish, or become a monstrosity, or be in some way disabled.

In the same way, the dogma of the Christian religion ought to follow these laws of progress, so that it may be consolidated in the course of years, developed in the sequence of time, and sublimated by age [ut annis scilicet consolidetur, dilatetur tempore, sublimetur aetate] — yet remain incorrupt and unimpaired, complete and perfect in all the proportions of its parts and in all its essentials.

Finally, he states:

It is right that those ancient dogmas of heavenly philosophy should in the course of time be thoroughly cared for, filed and polished; but it is sinful to change them, sinful to behead them or mutilate them.

They may take on more evidence, clarity and distinctness, but it is absolutely necessary that they retain their plenitude, integrity and basic character.

Vincent thus believes in a form of doctrinal development whereby what has been passed down from ancient times can be expressed in new words that provide greater clarity and distinctness but that leave its fundamental substance unaltered.

5) What should we make of St. Vincent’s discussion of these points?

It is clear that Vincent is aware the Catholic faith can be expressed (and has come to be expressed) in ways that were not used in the past, and thus that a form of doctrinal development occurs.

However, this is not a form of development without limits. For Vincent, something is only a genuine development if it preserves what was authoritatively handed down from the beginning — at least implicitly, similar to the way men may grow beards even though babies don’t have them.

Vincent thus seeks to strike a balance that acknowledges the necessity of doctrinal continuity with the past and the need for variability of expression with time in order to bring out ancient truths more clearly in the present.

This is essentially the form of doctrinal development endorsed by St. John Henry Newman and — more recently — by Benedict XVI.

In the Commonitories, Vincent has more to say about the application of the principles he describes — and applying the principles correctly is the real challenge.

However, it would be a mistake to focus on the Vincentian Canon to the exclusion of doctrinal development — as if all development is illegitimate — or to focus on his statements about doctrinal development to the exclusion of the Vincentian Canon — as if we could engage in a form of development untethered from the teaching of Christ and the apostles.

Vincent believed in both continuity and development.

How Not to Fight About Words

In his final letter, St. Paul gives Timothy an important exhortation for those under his pastoral care:

Remind them of this, and charge them before the Lord to avoid disputing about words, which does no good, but only ruins the hearers (2 Tim. 2:14).

In his previous letter, Paul gives an even more strongly worded warning:

If anyone . . . does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching which accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit, he knows nothing; he has a morbid craving for controversy and for disputes about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, base suspicions, and wrangling among men who are depraved in mind and bereft of the truth (1 Tim. 6:3-5)

As you can see, Paul is not a fan of fights about words.

Yet Paul’s letters are filled with arguments about various issues. How can we square these two facts?

The basic resolution is that Paul cares about substance—that is, what a person believes—and he’s willing to argue about that. But he doesn’t want to argue about expression—that is, how a person phrases his beliefs. Paul is concerned about substance rather than style. As long as the substance of what a person believes is correct, Paul doesn’t want to quibble about how expresses himself.

I’m sure there would have been limits to this. I can imagine situations where Paul would have thought a person was expressing a true thought in a manner that was so misleading that he would have considered it worth discussing.

However, the principle remains: We shouldn’t be quarreling about words in the Christian community. We should recognize that a true belief can be expressed in more than one way, and the mode of expression is not what we should be concerned about.

This is especially true in discussions among different groups of Christians. Because language naturally changes over time, it is only to be expected that different Christians will develop their own ways of using language and their own nuances for terms.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot of arguing about words in the Christian community today, and a good bit of it comes from not recognizing how flexible language can be.

People have a natural tendency to assume that words are just meant to be used the way they use them, and if somebody is using them differently, that person must be wrong.

So, let’s look at how some terms have changed over time, and see what conclusions we can draw.

We may learn something about how not to fight about words.

 

Words that Change Meaning in the Bible over Time

Though it may be surprising, there are terms that shift in their meaning even during biblical history.

That’s what you’d expect, since the Scriptures were written over a period of about 1,100 years, and nobody should expect a community’s mode of expression to stay static over that length of time. (Just look at how English has changed since the year 800!)

The matter is complicated by the fact that, not only did terms change meanings over this period, but the language itself shifted, with God’s people first speaking Hebrew, then Aramaic, and then Greek.

Nevertheless, we can track changes in meaning across biblical vocabulary:

Salvation: The basic meaning of this term is “to rescue” or “to make safe,” but there is a dramatic shift in how it is used between the Old and the New Testaments.

In the Old Testament, salvation is connected almost exclusively with being rescued from temporal dangers—ones we encounter in this life, like war, defeat, famine, plague, or death.

However, in the New Testament, the focus has shifted from this life to the next, and the salvation that is primarily under discussion is being rescued from the consequences of sin so that we can share eternal life with God.

One way of expressing this is that the Old Testament is principally concerned with “temporal” salvation, while the New Testament is principally concerned with “eternal” salvation.

Forgiveness: A corresponding shift is the way forgiveness of sin is understood.

In the Old Testament, being forgiven of a sin principally means not being punished—or fully punished—for it in this life. In particular, it means not dying as a result of the sin.

Thus, when David repents of having brought about the death of Uriah the Hittite, we read:

Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against Yahweh!”

Nathan said to David, “Yahweh has also forgiven your sin; you shall not die. But because you have utterly scorned Yahweh in this matter, the son born for you will certainly die” (2 Sam. 12:13-14, LEB).

David had been forgiven in that he would not die, but that doesn’t mean he would escape all punishment. He would be forced to witness the death of his son.

Notice that both of these penalties—David’s death and the death of his son—are temporal rather than eternal.

By contrast, when forgiveness is discussed in the New Testament, it is principally in connection with being forgiven the eternal consequences of our sins, so that we can be eternally saved.

 

Words that Change Meaning in Different Biblical Passages

Even within a single time period, words can be used in different senses in different biblical passages.

Faith/Belief: A classic example is the term “faith” or “belief” (Greek, pistis). In many New Testament passages, this concept involves trust in God. Thus, when Jesus has rebuked the wind and the waves, he turns to the disciples and says, ““Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?” (Mark 4:40).

However, a different sense of the term is on display in James, who informs us that “Even the demons believe—and shudder” (Jas. 2:19). Here “faith” is understood as a purely intellectual one. Demons know the truths of Christian doctrine, but they lack the more robust faith that involves trust in God.

Still a third usage is found in St. Paul, where he says, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail, but faith working through love” (Gal. 5:6). Here we have faith formed by love (Latin, fides formata caritate), which combines intellectual assent, trust, and charity—the three theological virtues (1 Cor. 13:7).

 

Words that Change Meaning Between the Bible and the Fathers

Of course, language did not stop developing with the close of the apostolic era, and so we find terms continuing to change in meaning:

Witness/Martyr: The Greek term martus originally meant “witness,” and in this sense we find St. Paul writing:

For God . . . is my witness [martus], how constantly I make mention of you, always asking in my prayers if somehow now at last I may succeed to come to you in the will of God (Rom. 1:9-10).

However, this term came to be associated with those who served as witnesses to the truth of the Faith by giving their lives for it and so being “martyred.”

Following the age of persecutions in the early Church, the term became so associated with being killed for the Faith that people who were not killed became known by other terms, such as “confessors” (those who confessed the Faith under persecution, even though they were not killed).

Today, a popular Christian audience would never understand the term martyr to refer simply to a person who bore witness to something.

Sacrament: The term sacrament (Greek, musterion, Latin, sacramentum) originally meant “secret” or “mystery,” and it occurs in this sense in the New Testament, as when Jesus tells the disciples, “To you has been granted the secret of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside everything is in parables” (Mark 4:11).

However, in the era of the Church Fathers, the term came much more to be associated with various rites of the Christian faith, such as baptism and the Eucharist.

Eventually, this usage came to predominate, and today nobody would know what you meant if you translated Jesus as saying, “To you has been given the sacrament of the kingdom of God.”

 

Words that Change Meaning Between the Fathers and the Scholastics

The Middle Ages also saw shifts in terminology that had been present earlier in the tradition:

Anathema: Though this term is found in the Greek New Testament (Gal. 1:8-9) and even has roots in the Old Testament, it shifted meaning over time, and by the Middle Ages it had come to refer to a special form of excommunication.

This form had to be performed by a bishop, who imposed it with a special ceremony. (There was a parallel ceremony for lifting the anathema once the offender had repented—which was a key goal of excommunicating him, to prompt him to repent of sin and come back to God.)

Unfortunately, knowledge of this meaning has been lost in many circles, leading to enormous confusion about the meaning of the phrase anathema sit (Latin, “let him be anathema”) in Church documents.

For example, many in the Protestant community understand anathema to mean something like “damned by God,” and take anathemas to be something that takes effect automatically and is pronounced upon all Protestants.

None of these things are true. In ecclesiastical usage, anathema referred to a special, ceremonial form of excommunication. Because it involved a ceremony, it did not take place automatically, and it was not applied to non-Catholics. Eventually, it was abolished, and it no longer exists in current canon law.

Elect/Chosen: By the Middle Ages, the term elect came to be used for a specific group of people—those who will be saved on the Last Day.

This meaning has been inherited by most contemporary doctrinal traditions, including both Catholic and Protestant ones.

However, this is not how the term is used in the Bible or the earliest Church Fathers—as I document in a study I did of this question. Instead, the primary meaning of elect was being chosen to have a special, intimate relationship with God, but not one that implied salvation on the Last Day.

The model was Israel’s status as God’s “elect” or “chosen people,” which implied a special relationship between them and God but not the final salvation of every single Israelite.

 

Words that Change Meaning Among Doctrinal Traditions

The fragmentation of Christendom into different doctrinal traditions—especially the fragmentation that occurred following the Protestant Reformation—has led to further developments in how terminology is used:

Law and Gospel: For example, while Law and Gospel are important concepts in the Bible, they have taken on unique usages in the Lutheran tradition. Thus, the Lutheran Book of Concord states:

Anything that preaches concerning our sins and God’s wrath, let it be done how or when it will, that is all a preaching of the Law. Again, the Gospel is such a preaching as shows and gives nothing else than grace and forgiveness in Christ.

It is certainly possible to go through the Bible and identify passages which speak of sin and divine wrath and compare them to passages that speak of grace and forgiveness in Christ, but these are not the primary ways that the biblical authors use the terms law and gospel. They are distinctively Lutheran usages.

In the Bible, the primary conceptualizations of law are either as divine principles given to guide human conduct or, specifically, the Law of Moses (Gen.-Deut.). Similarly, the principal focus of the gospel is God and his actions through his Son, especially Christ’s death and resurrection.

While law is related to sin and wrath, and while the gospel is related to grace and forgiveness, Lutheran theology has developed its own uses for these categories that do not map directly onto the thought worlds of the biblical authors.

Justification: A notable difference has developed in how the term justification is often understood in Protestant and Catholic communities.

The Catholic community uses justification to refer to “not only the remission of sins, but also the sanctification and renewal of the interior man” (CCC 1989). It also uses the term justify to mean “to cleanse us from our sins and to communicate to us the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ” (CCC 1987).

Two elements are thus found in the Catholic use of justification:

1. The remission of sins/being cleansed from sins

2. Inward sanctification/renewal/reception of righteousness from God

For the most part, the Protestant tradition has focused on justification as involving the first of these (with a corresponding understanding of justification as the impartation of legal righteousness), but not the second.

Instead, Protestant schools frequently refer to the inward renewal of the Christian using a second term: sanctification.

 

Words that Change Meaning Among Theological Traditions

Even within a given doctrinal tradition, different theological schools develop their own nuances for terms:

Regeneration/New Birth: For example, in Protestantism the term regeneration has taken on several meanings.

In Calvinist circles, regeneration is used to refer to a transformative reception of grace that occurs prior to the expression of personal faith and which makes explicit personal faith possible.

In Lutheran circles, regeneration is used to refer to a transformative reception of grace that occurs in baptism, regardless of whether explicit personal faith is present.

In Baptist circles, regeneration is used to refer to a transformative reception of grace that occurs when a person makes an explicit act of personal faith.

Predestination: Similarly, in both Protestant and Catholic circles the term predestination is understood in different ways among different theological schools.

Thus, in the Protestant tradition, Calvinists understand predestination differently than Arminians.

And in Catholic circles, Thomists understand it differently than Molinists.

 

Some Conclusions

Having gotten a sense of the ways religious terms change across time, what conclusions can we draw?

Principally, we’ve seen that there is no single way to use terms, which is the fundamental reason for Paul’s dictum not to engage in word fights.

The Bible itself shows different usages, both across times and by different authors living in the same time.

Given this diversity in Scripture itself, we should not expect doctrinal vocabulary to be frozen at any given moment in history.

What is normative is the fundamental doctrinal substance of the Faith, which was frozen with the end of public revelation at the conclusion of the apostolic age.

Even then, that fundamental content remained to be meditated upon and further elaborated, with its implications being fleshed out through the process of doctrinal development (which any accurate understanding of the history of Christian doctrine and theology must recognize).

But what are we do to about the different usages that have grown up in the Christian community?

Lest confusion result, each communion should in general retain the usages that have developed within it, though even these are not frozen and are subject to further development with time.

For the sake of accurately understanding of the Bible, of history, and of each other, there also should be an awareness of the way terms have shifted and continue to shift.

  • Exegetes need to be aware of how terminology is used in the Bible and how to translate it into the vocabulary of their own traditions—without forcing their tradition’s meanings back onto the biblical text.
  • Patristic scholars need to do the same thing with respect to texts from the Church Fathers.
  • Historians of doctrine and theology need to do it with the historical texts they study.
  • And Christians in dialogue among different doctrinal and theological traditions need to be able to do it across the biblical, historical, and contemporary texts.

Part of learning how not to fight about words is learning to translate between these vocabularies.

For example, when it comes to the terms like justify and justification, we should not suppose that there is only a single way that these can be used—or that Scripture uses them in only one sense (it does not; Scripture has multiple uses for them).

Instead, we should be able to explain how our tradition uses the term and what we mean by it—and be prepared to explain the basis for what we believe.

Catholics and Protestants typically believe in both the forgiveness of sins with an accompanying legal status of being righteous—and a renewal of the inner man by God’s grace.

We do not need to be divided by the terminological issue of whether our community uses justification to refer to just the first of these or to both, as long as we agree on the substance—the fact that both occur.

When it comes to the biblical texts, we need to be prepared to recognize that Scripture may or may not use terms the way that they have developed in our communities. We should not force our doctrinal or theological uses back onto the text.

Instead, we should seek to determine—as best we can—what the biblical authors meant, regardless of whether it corresponds to later uses.

Sometimes, it will. The different uses of faith that are emphasized in different schools today are all found in Scripture. But the conventional meaning of the term elect is not.

It is good—to the extent possible over time—to steer our vocabularies so that they correspond to the way terms are used in Scripture, but language change requires time and cannot be suddenly imposed without causing tremendous confusion and dissension.

Such dissension is precisely what St. Paul sought to avoid by prohibiting quarrels about words. As long as we agree in substance, precisely how we express that substance is a secondary matter, and—even if we think another school is departing from the language of Scripture in how they express themselves and it would be better if they didn’t—we should still be able to recognize it when they are correct in substance.

“Changing the Sabbath” and the Antichrist

Recently I was contacted by someone who seems quite openminded and who asked me some questions about why we worship on Sunday rather than the Sabbath.

In particular, this person was wondering why that should be the case if the only person in the Bible who seeks to change the Sabbath is the Antichrist.

I responded as follows . . .

When you refer to the Antichrist changing the Sabbath, I assume that you’re referring to Daniel 7:25, where a coming king will “think to change times and seasons.”

Concerning this prophecy specifically, I’d make several points:

1) It does not specifically mention the Sabbath, but this is almost certainly included in the meaning of changing times and seasons, for reasons we will see below.

2) Prophecy can refer to more than one thing (i.e., have more than one fulfillment). Thus in Revelation the Beast from the Sea’s seven heads are both seven mountains and seven kings (Rev. 17:9-10).

We see the same thing in other prophecies, which can have more than one fulfillment. For example, Isaiah’s prophecy of Emmanuel had a near-term fulfillment in the birth of a child in the time of King Ahaz–something that is obvious because the sign was given to him as a sign that the alliance of kings against him would not succeed in toppling him from his throne (see Isaiah 7:1-16).

For Ahaz, the child Emmanuel would be a sign that God was with his people against this alliance of kings. But the prophecy also has a later fulfillment in Jesus Christ, who was God with us in an even more literal sense.

3) Because prophecies can have more than one fulfillment in history, it is important to identify the original historical fulfillment before exploring possible later fulfillments.

4) In the case of Daniel 7, scholars of multiple persuasions (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, other) hold that the most likely original fulfillment of this vision is to be found in the kingdoms leading up to the triumph of Alexander the Great in the 300s B.C. (who is also clearly in focus in chapter 8 of the book) and the kingdoms that came about in the wake of his empire. This does not mean that it does not also have one or more later fulfillments, but this is what the original fulfillment involves.

5) In particular, Daniel 7:25–and other passages in Daniel–appear to be referring originally to the post-Alexander king Antiochus IV (i.e., Antiochus Epiphanes). He was king of the Seleucid Empire, which was one of the kingdoms that grew out of Alexander the Great’s conquests, and he persecuted the Jewish people in the 160s B.C.

Specifically, Antiochus tried to compel them to give up the Jewish faith and adopt the Hellenistic (Greek) religion. This meant compelling them to give up celebrating Jewish feasts, including the Sabbath, and this is what Daniel 7:25 apparently is referring to when it says this king will “think to change times and seasons.”

The “think” is important, because Antiochus did not succeed. The Jewish people resisted him, won their freedom, and retained their ancestral faith and its practices–as chronicled in the books 1 and 2 Maccabees.

6) It is possible that a future dictator may also try to compel the Jewish people to give up their faith–including its holy days–and this future dictator may be the same as the final Antichrist, but we must be careful about such speculation as the prophecy is not repeated in the New Testament and not every prophecy has a later fulfillment.

At least, I couldn’t prove that they all will have a fulfillment at the end of the world, so I have to leave this proposal as a possible speculation but only a speculation.

So, you may well be right that the final Antichrist will attempt to force the Jewish people to drop the Sabbath, but I can’t say this for certain, myself.

However, this is an independent issue of what liturgical calendar Christians, and especially Gentile Christians, should follow.

The Sabbath–along with the monthly New Moons and the annual feasts (e.g., Passover, Tabernacles)–was part of the liturgical calendar that God gave to the Jewish people before the time of Christ.

It was never binding and was never meant to be binding on Gentiles, as Jewish scholars have always held. (In fact, Gentiles were even positively prohibited by Jewish law from being able to do things like keep Passover, as circumcision was required for eating the Passover lamb.)

The uniqueness of the Sabbath to the Jewish people is due to the fact there is nothing in natural law/human nature that demands that one day in seven (as opposed to one day in five or one day in ten) be set aside for rest and worship or that it must be the seventh day in particular (rather than the first or the third). Since God did not build this into human nature/natural law, such a law could only come from a divine mandate, and God only mandated this for the Jewish people, not for all peoples.

When the early Church began making significant numbers of Gentile converts, one of the questions that arose was whether they needed to be circumcised and become Jews in order to be saved (cf. Acts 10-11, 15, Gal. 1-2). The answer was that they did not.

The Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) ruled on this question, and even though it involved a few points to help Jewish and Gentile Christians live together (Acts 15:29), you’ll note that keeping the Sabbath was not one of these. The Jerusalem Council thus recognized that Gentile Christians did not need to be circumcised and adopt Jewish practices. Though a few points were asked of Gentiles for the sake of harmony with Jewish Christians, observing the Jewish ceremonial calendar was not among them.

St. Paul sheds even more light on the subject, indicating in his letters that–even though he is a Jew–he is not bound by the Jewish Law (1 Cor. 9:19-23), because Christ has fulfilled the Jewish Law and so put an end to it. He indicates this in various passages, such as Romans 14:1-6, where he writes:

As for the man who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not for disputes over opinions. One believes he may eat anything, while the weak man eats only vegetables. Let not him who eats despise him who abstains, and let not him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats; for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Master is able to make him stand. One man esteems one day as better than another, while another man esteems all days alike. Let every one be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. He also who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God; while he who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord and gives thanks to God.

Here Paul takes up two examples of practices that could affect different groups of Christians: keeping kosher laws (not eating unclean foods) and observing the Jewish calendar (honoring certain days). He characterizes some–who believe that they cannot eat certain things and must observe certain days–as “weak in faith,” and others–who recognize they are not bound by these laws–as strong in faith, by implication (for they recognize Christ has eliminated the need for such things by his fulfillment of the Jewish Law).

Rather than trying to get people to abandon their positions, Paul urges peace among Christians by letting everyone do what their conscience says they need to do to honor God.

Paul could not argue in this way if the “weak in faith” position was correct and it was mandated that Christians keep kosher and observe Jewish holy days. It is only because we are not bound by these things that he can allow those who are “weak in faith”–i.e., who have scrupulous fears that Jesus might not have freed us from these things–to continue to practice them rather than violate their consciences.

If everybody was bound to avoid certain foods and keep certain days as a matter of divine law, Paul would have said so–as he does with other things that are matters of divine law. Thus, in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, he warns that people who practice a variety of sins will not inherit the kingdom. He doesn’t say, “You get to do these sins if your conscience tells you it’s okay.” He says “This is a sin; don’t do it!”

Therefore, in Romans 14 the allowance of both positions–eating and not eating certain foods, observing and not observing certain days–is because neither is a violation of divine law. We have the liberty of eating all foods and treating every day alike because God has not mandated that we do otherwise.

Paul is even more explicit in Colossians 2:14-17, where he writes that God has “canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in him. Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath. These are only a shadow of what is to come; but the substance belongs to Christ.”

He thus indicates that the various regulations of the Mosaic Law concerning food and liturgical days (the annual feasts, monthly New Moons, and weekly Sabbaths being the three kinds of days on the Jewish liturgical calendar) were shadows that pointed forward to Christ, but now that Christ has come and fulfilled the Jewish Law, “nailing it to the Cross,” even Jewish Christians–such as himself–are no longer bound by these, for God has “cancelled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands.”

Consequently, he says “let no one pass judgment on you . . . with regard to a festival or a new moon or a sabbath.”

The Sabbath thus is not binding, even on Jewish Christians, because of what Christ did on the cross.

In the first century and for a time thereafter, many Jewish Christians did continue to observe the Sabbath, as Paul indicated was possible for them in Romans 14. However, this was not the day that Christians held their religious gatherings on.

Instead, they observed the first day of the week, because it was the day on which the Lord Jesus rose. Thus, we see Paul recommending that collections be taken up in the church of Corinth on this day:

Now concerning the contribution for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that contributions need not be made when I come (1 Cor. 16:1-2).

This day soon came to be known as “the Lord’s Day,” because it was the day on which the Lord Jesus rose. Thus, we see St. John writing:

I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet (Rev. 1:10).

And from the first century forward we see the early Christians continuing to celebrate the first day of the week–the Lord’s Day–rather than the Sabbath, as illustrated by the quotations from early Church documents listed here:

https://www.catholic.com/tract/sabbath-or-sunday

In time, the Church used the power of the keys that Christ had given to Peter to “bind and loose” (Matt. 16:18) to institute a new Christian liturgical calendar, built around the weekly observance of the Lord’s Day.

It is this exercise of the keys that is the reasons Christians today are bound to observe the Lord’s Day–not because one day intrinsically requires observance compared to other days.

However, the Church did not “change” the Sabbath. The Sabbath is when it always was: the seventh day of the week. It’s just that Christians are not required to observe it, as it was something that pertained to the Jewish people prior to the time of Christ. Instead of celebrating the Sabbath, Christians celebrate the first day of the week in honor of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

For more on the Church’s official teaching, see here:

https://www.ncregister.com/blog/did-the-catholic-church-change-the-sabbath

I hope this helps, and God bless you!

Evidence for Reincarnation? (& Bridey Murphy) – Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World

Continuing their discussion of reincarnation, Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli look at the Bridey Murphy case to see if her memories match the historical record and can’t be explained in a natural way, then examine what the faith perspective has to say about past lives.

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Did Jesus Have a Miraculous Birth?

You might think that the question we are asking has an obvious answer, since Jesus was conceived without a human father. That, of itself, makes his birth miraculous, doesn’t it?

It does, but we are actually asking something different: Did the process of the birth itself—presumably nine months after conception—involve a miracle?

The New Testament does not address this question, but, as we will see, it has been discussed from surprisingly early times.

Basically, two types of miracles (and usually both) have been proposed in connection with Jesus’ birth:

  1. Mary did not experience labor pains.
  2. Jesus did not pass through Mary’s birth canal. Instead, he passed from her womb the way he passed through the walls of his sealed tomb.

On what basis have these been proposed?

 

An Argument from Genesis

One basis for Mary being free from labor pains has been seen in Genesis 3:16, where God tells Eve—and, by extension, future women:

I will greatly multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.

The argument is that, since Mary was immaculately conceived, she was not under this curse and thus would not experience labor pains.

The argument has some weight, but the biblical text does not require that Eve would have experienced no pains at all. God says that he will “greatly multiply” (Heb., harbeh arbeh) her pains, which could suggest that there would have been pain even in an unfallen state.

Some theologians have proposed that an unfallen Adam and Eve would have experienced no pain, but this is a matter of theological speculation. (In Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Ludwig Ott lists the view as sententia communis or “common opinion,” p. 104.)

What Scripture indicates entered the world for the first time upon the fall was human death (cf. Gen. 2:17), not any and all pain (note also Jesus’ sufferings in an unfallen state).

 

An Argument from Revelation

At the other end of the Bible, in Revelation 12:1-2, John sees a great sign in heaven:

And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery.

This symbol, in part, refers to the Virgin Mary, for the woman gives birth to “a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron” (Rev. 12.5)—that is, she gives birth to Jesus.

Since she is explicitly stated to have labor pains, some have proposed that the Virgin Mary did experience labor pains in giving birth to Jesus.

While this is a natural interpretation of the text, it also is not certain.

First, Mary experienced post-birth sufferings in connection with being the mother of Jesus (Luke 2:34-35), most notably when she saw her Son hanging on a cross (John 19:25-27). Given the prominent role of symbolism in Revelation, it could be that Mary’s post-birth sufferings as the mother of the Messiah are here depicted rather than literal labor pains.

Second, while the image of the woman in Revelation 12 does point to the Virgin Mary, it also points to other things, like other symbols in Revelation (cf. Rev. 17:9-10). Thus the symbol also points to Israel and the Church.

The birth pains, therefore, might not apply to Mary but to one of these other referents, such as the pains that Israel endured as part of its national experience when the Messiah appeared (think: Roman oppression).

 

A Physiological Argument

One also can propose a physiological argument for an absence of birth pains: If Jesus didn’t pass through Mary’s birth canal then there would be no need for her to experience labor pains.

The cause of labor pains are the forceful contractions that are intended to push the child through the birth canal, so if Jesus didn’t go through the latter then there would be no need for contractions and thus no need for labor pains.

This argument also has weight, but it depends on the timing of Jesus’ departure from the womb. If it happened early enough, then there would be no labor pains. However, if it happened late enough then such pains would have resulted.

The physiological argument brings us to the second miracle that has been proposed in connection with Christ’s birth—his exiting Mary’s womb without going through the birth canal—so what is the evidence for that?

 

Virginity In Partu

Church teaching holds that Mary was a perpetual virgin, meaning that she was a virgin before, during, and after Jesus’ birth.

The fact she was a virgin in the act of giving birth is referred to as her virginity in partu (Latin, “in bearing,” “in giving birth”).

Thus the Second Vatican Council taught that “at the birth of our Lord,” Jesus “did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it” (Lumen Gentium 57).

Historically, this has been understood as meaning that Jesus did not injure Mary’s hymen, the presence of which was taken in biblical times as proof of virginity (cf. Deut. 22:13-17), though this is not a medically sure test for reasons we will not discuss.

On the assumption that Jesus did not injure Mary’s hymen, would this show that he did not pass through her birth canal?

It could mean that, and that has certainly been the common historic understanding, but God is omnipotent, and if he can miraculously take Jesus out of the womb altogether, he also could miraculously preserve Mary’s hymen through a vaginal birth.

 

What Does Church Teaching Require?

In his book Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, German theologian Ludwig Ott proposes that the teaching that “Mary bore her Son without any violation of her virginal integrity” is defined as a matter of faith “on the ground of the general promulgation of doctrine” (p. 205).

In other words, he argues that it is a dogma (something that has been infallibly defined as a matter of divine revelation) by the ordinary and universal magisterium rather than by a decree of a pope or council. However, he then states:

The dogma merely asserts the fact of the continuance of Mary’s physical virginity without determining more closely how this is to be physiologically explained. In general, the Fathers and the Schoolmen conceived it as non-injury to the hymen, and accordingly taught that Mary gave birth in miraculous fashion without opening of the womb and injury to the hymen, and consequently also without pains (cf. S. Th. III 28, 2).

However, according to modern natural scientific knowledge, the purely physical side of virginity consists in the non-fulfilment of the sex act (“sex-act virginity”) and in the non-contact of the female egg by the male seed (“seed-act virginity”) (A. Mitterer). Thus, injury to the hymen in birth does not destroy virginity, while, on the other hand, its rupture seems to belong to complete natural motherhood. It follows from this that from the concept of virginity alone the miraculous character of the process of birth cannot be inferred, if it cannot be, and must not be derived from other facts of revelation. Holy Writ attests Mary’s active role in the act of birth (Matt. 1:25; Luke 2:7: “She brought forth”) which does not seem to indicate a miraculous process.

But the Fathers, with few exceptions, vouch for the miraculous character of the birth.

From this one might conclude that, although Jesus was miraculously conceived, he didn’t experience a miraculous birth—either in terms of Mary not having labor pains or in terms of not passing through her birth canal.

On that view, the Fathers who advocated a miraculous birth simply made a mistaken inference based on how virginity was understood in their time. Mary remained a perpetual virgin even if Jesus had a totally normal birth.

However, before adopting such a conclusion, one should be aware that this isn’t an idea that only arose in later centuries. It’s early.

Amazingly early.

 

The Protoevangelium of James

For example, a document known as the Protoevangelium of James (also called the Infancy Gospel of James) attests to Christ’s miraculous birth. It was probably written in the mid-second century (c. 150).

According to the Protoevangelium, when the holy family was on the way to Bethlehem, the following happened:

And they came into the middle of the road, and Mary said to him: Take me down from off the ass, for that which is in me presses to come forth (ch. 17).

This would suggest that Mary experienced at least some discomfort, though not necessarily the sharp pains of labor. The miracle itself occurs afterward, and it occurs in two parts.

First, after finding a place for Mary in a cave in Bethlehem and making sure she is taken care of, Joseph goes in search of a midwife. While doing so, he sees an amazing vision in which time seems to stop for a moment (ch. 18). However, this is something that accompanies the birth and does not directly pertain to the birth itself.

Second, upon finding a midwife, Joseph takes her back to the cave and the following occurs:

And they stood in the place of the cave, and behold a luminous cloud overshadowed the cave. And the midwife said: “My soul has been magnified this day, because my eyes have seen strange things—because salvation has been brought forth to Israel.”

And immediately the cloud disappeared out of the cave, and a great light shone in the cave, so that the eyes could not bear it. And in a little that light gradually decreased, until the infant appeared, and went and took the breast from his mother Mary (ch. 19).

This does not directly say that Jesus didn’t pass through Mary’s birth canal, but it suggests that since the great light fades and the baby Jesus seems to appear without a normal birth.

 

The Odes of Solomon

An earlier and more explicit reference to a miraculous birth is found in the Odes of Solomon, which is a collection of 42 early Christian hymns that were written in the second half of the first century—perhaps fifty years after the Crucifixion. According to the Odes:

So the Virgin became a mother
With great mercies.

And she labored and bore the Son but without pain,
Because it did not occur without purpose.

And she did not seek a midwife,
Because he allowed her to give life.

She bore with desire as a strong man.
And she bore according to the manifestation;
And she possessed with great power (Odes of Solomon 19:7-10).

The translation of this passage is difficult, and scholars have rendered portions of it differently. For example, some have taken the statement that Mary bore Jesus “with desire as a strong man” to mean that she gave birth as a deliberate act of will and that the birth did not come upon her suddenly, with her playing a passive role like a normal woman experiencing the onset of labor.

However that may be, what is not in doubt is that the passage says that Mary “bore the Son without pain.”

We thus have first-century testimony to a painless birth.

 

The Ascension of Isaiah

Another first century document that records a miraculous birth is the Ascension of Isaiah. Based on clues it gives, this work appears to have been composed in A.D. 67.

According to it, the birth of Jesus took place two months after Joseph received Mary into his home:

It came to pass that when they were alone that Mary straight-way looked with her eyes and saw a small babe, and she was astonished.

And after she had been astonished, her womb was found as formerly before she had conceived. . . .

And the story regarding the infant was noised broad in Bethlehem.

Some said: “The Virgin Mary hath borne a child, before she was married two months.”

And many said: “She has not borne a child, nor has a midwife gone up (to her), nor have we heard the cries of (labor) pains” (Ascension of Isaiah 11:7-14).

Here Jesus suddenly appears, without passing through the birth canal, and Mary’s womb is found as it was before, which presumably means that she was no longer large with child (though it also could mean an examination of her hymen was carried out; see Protoevangelium of James 20).

We also have an explicit statement that she did not experience labor pains.

The author of this document appears not to be aware of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. This is not surprising since, by my estimate, Luke was written only eight years earlier and Matthew was written even more recently.

In any event, the author seems to be reporting traditions that were circulating about Jesus’ birth just 34 years after the Crucifixion, which is very early indeed.

 

Conclusion

The late Cardinal Avery Dulles pointed out that there is flexibility in Church teaching regarding the precise way in which Jesus was born an in which Mary’s virginity in giving birth is to be understood:

The Church, Cardinal Dulles said, “has not committed itself to any particular physical theory” of virginity in partu, and therefore the possibility that Mary “could have suffered some pains in birth” may be “compatible with Catholic doctrine.” The cardinal also pointed out that further doctrinal development and magisterial teaching could clarify the question one way or the other (source).

However, before we use that flexibility to adopt the view of Jesus’ birth that is easier from a modern perspective (i.e., a non-miraculous interpretation), we need to bear in mind that we are already standing in the presence of a miracle (a virginal conception!) and we have amazingly early testimony regarding a miraculous birth.

While the details of the three documents differ, they all attest to something extraordinary happening at Jesus’ birth, and in A.D. 67 the Ascension of Isaiah refers both to a lack of birth pains and to Jesus not passing through the birth canal!

Is the Didache the Key to Understanding Paul’s Controversy with the Judaizers?

Didache-660x330The Didache (“Did-ah-KAY”) is a first century manual of Christian instruction, and it provides a fascinating view of life in the early Church. You can read it here.

British scholar Alan Garrow has done a lot of work on the Didache, and he has a fascinating hypothesis linking it to Paul’s controversy with the Judaizers in Acts and Galatians.

You can watch his video presenting the hypothesis here.

Key points of his hypothesis are as follows:

  1. The conference Paul has with the apostles in Galatians 2 is not the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15. Instead, it took place during the famine relief visit of Acts 11.
  2. When the council of Acts 15 occurred, the apostles wrote a lengthy document which was the original version of the Didache (it was later supplemented to form the Didache as we have it today). Luke summarizes the original version as the letter sent to the churches in Acts 15:23-29.
  3. This version of the Didache (and the one we have today) contains ambiguous statements that could be taken as requiring Gentiles to be circumcised before their deaths if they are to be saved.
  4. After Paul evangelized the Galatians, Judaizers pointed to these statements as proof that both Paul and the Jerusalem apostles expected them to be circumcised.
  5. When Paul learned of this, he wrote the epistle to the Galatians and vigorously denounced this interpretation. However, he did not explicitly address the statements in the Didache because the document was too ambiguous and could undermine his case.

I very much enjoyed Garrow’s presentation, though ultimately I do not believe his hypothesis succeeds. Let’s take a brief look at the key points.

 

The Famine Relief Visit

Many recent scholars have been inclined to link the Galatians 2 conference with the famine relief visit of Acts 11 because of the list of Paul’s activities described in Galatians 1:13-2:10:

  • Paul’s former life in Judaism (1:13-14)
  • His conversion and call (1:15-16)
  • His sojourn to Arabia and Damascus (1:17)
  • His visit “after three years” to Peter in Jerusalem (1:18-20)
  • His sojourn in Syria and Cilicia (1:21-24)
  • His visit “after fourteen years” to Jerusalem where circumcision was discussed (2:1-10)

From this catalogue, it is inferred that the two Jerusalem visits Paul mentions here were the only visits he made during this time period.

If so, then the Galatians 2 conference can’t be the Acts 15 conference because of the record of Paul’s Jerusalem visits found in Acts:

  • After Paul’s stay in Damascus, Barnabas takes him to the apostles in Jerusalem (9:27-30)
  • He and Barnabas make the famine relief visit (11:29-30)
  • He and Barnabas go to Jerusalem for the Acts 15 council (15:1-29)

If Paul’s visit “after fourteen years” is his second visit to Jerusalem following his conversion then it must be the famine relief visit.

There is a lot that can be said about this, but it all hinges on the inference that Paul had only two visits to Jerusalem in this period, and this is not clear from Galatians.

Paul does not say that he visited Jerusalem only twice. He does indicate that he was not popularly known in the churches of Judea (Gal. 1:21-24), which implies that he did not spend a lot of time there, but it does not mean that he never made a brief visit.

This is clear from the fact that he had already made a visit lasting two weeks (Gal. 1:18-20) and this did not make him popularly known in Judea.

It’s therefore quite possible that he and Barnabas made an additional, brief visit (described in only a single verse: Acts 11:30) that he doesn’t mention in Galatians because it is not relevant to the subjects he is discussing—i.e., where he got his gospel and how circumcision is not necessary for salvation.

He thus jumps to the next major event that was relevant—the Jerusalem visit that occurred “after fourteen years.”

Identifying this event with the famine relief visit of Acts 11:30 creates multiple problems with the chronology of Acts, and one of them becomes clear beginning what Luke says next:

About that time Herod the king [i.e., Herod Agrippa I] laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He killed James the brother of John with the sword; and when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter (Acts 12:1-3).

Luke then goes on to narrate Peter’s escape and Herod’s death (Acts 12:20-23).

According to Acts 12:1, the famine relief visit of 11:30 took place just before or in proximity to the events of Acts 12, which include Herod’s death.

Herod Agrippa I is commonly reckoned as having died in A.D. 44, though recent studies have indicated it was more probably in late A.D. 43 (see Daniel R. Schwartz, Agrippa I, 107-111).

Either way, this gives us an approximate time frame for the famine relief visit, and if it occurred “after fourteen years” from Paul’s conversion then Paul’s conversion (Acts 9) would have had to occur around A.D. 29 or 30.

This is too early, even on the view that the Crucifixion occurred in A.D. 30, and certainly too early on the better-established view that it took place in A.D. 33.

More could be said about the chronological problems with identifying the Galatians 2 conference with the famine relief visit, but this will suffice.

 

The Didache and the Acts 15 Letter

Garrow proposes that, after the Acts 15 council, the apostles wrote a lengthy document to be sent to the churches and that this document was the original version of the Didache.

On this view, the Didache is, in the most literal sense, what its title presents it as—“The teaching of the Lord to the Gentiles by the twelve apostles”—because the Jerusalem apostles wrote it.

Garrow points out that it would be unreasonable for Luke to repeat the whole of the Didache in his account of the Acts 15 council, so he argues that Luke summarized it as the letter found in Acts 15:23-29:

23b “The brethren, both the apostles and the elders, to the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greeting. 24 Since we have heard that some persons from us have troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions, 25 it has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, 26 men who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. 27 We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth. 28 For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: 29 that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.”

To support his proposal, Garrow notes several themes that this letter and the Didache have in common. He’s also certainly correct that Luke would not have interrupted his narrative to reproduce the whole of the original Didache if it was before him.

But how likely is that the Acts 15 council wrote it?

The Didache is such an early document that it’s not unreasonable to hold that its original edition dates to this time period, but if the controversy was about the role of circumcision—as both Acts and Galatians indicate—would the apostles really have written such a lengthy document in response? The matter could be settled much more concisely.

Further, the content of the proposed first edition of the Didache is basic Christian instruction. As reconstructed by Garrow, it contained treatments of basic Christian morality, sacramental practice, and eschatology. Is that what the Jerusalem authorities would have written in response to a controversy about circumcision?

As Garrow notes, the Didache never mentions circumcision. It’s one thing to see how a brief letter like the one in Acts could omit the word “circumcision,” saying merely, “it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things” and then not name circumcision as a requirement. However, it is very hard to imagine a document that goes on for chapter after chapter of basic Christian instruction without dealing in some clear way with circumcision, given that this was the issue that prompted the document to be written.

It seems much more likely that the Jerusalem authorities would write a more concise document that dealt directly with the issue at hand, which is what we find in Acts 15:23-29.

Lest modern readers of the New Testament be puzzled by the brevity of this letter, its length is entirely what we would expect. Letters in the ancient world—even by famous epistolary authors like Cicero—were typically written on a single sheet of papyrus (E. Randolph Richards, Paul and First-Century Letter Writing; David Trobisch, Paul’s Letter Collection).

The most normal letters in the New Testament are 2 John, 3 John, and Jude—the very letters we tend to overlook because of their brevity.

By ancient standards, Paul’s letters are literary abnormalities. By comparison, they are enormous. And it seems that under Paul’s influence the other authors of the New Testament epistles were led to copy his practice of writing theological-pastoral treatises in letter form.

But this is not what we would expect at the time of the Acts 15 council (A.D. 49), before Paul’s literary career had taken off. Instead, we would expect exactly the kind of short letter that we find in Acts.

It was common, at the time, to write only a brief letter and then have the courier(s) orally fill in any necessary context for the readers, which is precisely what we have here (“We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth”).

Further, since Paul and Barnabas figured heavily in the controversy provoking the council (Acts 15:2), we would expect the letter to make mention of them to clarify their status in the eyes of the Jerusalem authorities, as it does (“it has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ”).

Yet none of these things are in the Didache.

On Garrow’s proposal, Luke has boiled the entire original edition of the Didache down to just two verses—Acts 15:28-29—and freely composed everything else in the letter (five verses).

If Luke had taken such liberties with the apostolic decree, then he would have been subject to charges of falsification. The issue of circumcision remained a live one in Christian circles at this time (and, indeed, for several centuries in Jewish Christian circles), and it would have been much safer for him to simply summarize what the apostles said without casting it in the form of a fundamentally fictitious letter.

We are thus confronted with two hypotheses:

  1. The apostles responded to the Acts 15/Galatians 2 circumcision controversy by writing an astonishingly long treatise on basic Christian instruction that never directly addresses the controversy at hand or mentions the parties involved in it, and Luke summarized this in the form of a fundamentally fictitious letter, opening him to charges of falsification by those who favored circumcision.
  2. In keeping with the epistolary practices of the day, the apostles wrote a brief letter that addressed the central controversy, discussed the status of the participants, and sent couriers who could confirm its authenticity and supply needed context.

The latter is the more likely hypothesis.

 

The Didache’s Ambiguous Statements

Garrow points out that the Didache contains a pair of passages that could be misunderstood as implying that circumcision is necessary for salvation.

First, at the end of its section on basic moral instruction, it says:

For if you are able to bear the whole yoke of the Lord, you will be perfect. But if you are not able, then do what you can.

Now concerning food, bear what you are able, but in any case keep strictly away from meat sacrificed to idols, for it involves the worship of dead gods (Did. 6:2-3).

Second, the end of the document gives an eschatological warning and says:

Gather together frequently, seeking the things that benefit your souls, for all the time you have believed will be of no use to you if you are not found perfect in the last time (Did. 16:2).

Garrow calls attention to the word “perfect” in these passages and argues that the first could be taken as indicating that to perfectly “bear the whole yoke of the Lord” one would need to be circumcised.

Failing to be circumcised might be acceptable at least temporarily, given the concession, “But if you are not able, then do what you can.” However, one could look at the second passage and conclude that, since one must be “found perfect in the last time” for the faith to profit you, one must be circumcised at some point.

It is not plausible to think that this is what the author(s) of the Didache meant the reader to understand. Circumcision has to be injected into the thought of the text at both points, for it is not mentioned in either of them or in their surrounding contexts.

However, Garrow does not claim that this is what the Didachist(s) meant, just that this is what the Judaizers made of the text.

 

Paul and the Judaizers

Garrow’s claim at this point is reasonable. If the Didache was in circulation prior to Galatians, Judaizers could, indeed, point to these passages in an attempt to bolster their claim that faith and baptism may be necessary but that one must go on to embrace circumcision if one wants to be ultimately saved.

They could further point to Paul’s circumcision of Timothy (Acts 16:3), which strikingly occurs in Acts just after the Jerusalem council and the delivery of its letter.

Timothy was from the Galatian city of Lystra and was well known in the neighboring city of Iconium (Acts 16:1-2), and his circumcision by Paul was publicly known. Paul performed the act so that Timothy could accompany him, “because of the Jews that were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek” (16:3).

It therefore would have been easy for the Judaizers to appeal to Paul’s circumcision of Timothy and claim that even the “apostle to the Gentiles” agreed with their view on the ultimate necessity of circumcision.

This would explain passages in Galatians that seem to indicate Paul was being portrayed as a preacher of circumcision:

But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached to you [i.e., if we should preach a gospel of circumcision], let him be accursed (Gal. 1:8).

If I, brethren, still preach circumcision, why am I still persecuted? (Gal. 5:11)

Garrow’s hypothesis thus coheres very well at this point.

But do these passages provide positive evidence that the Judaizers were appealing to the Didache?

It does not seem so.

The passages we have just seen do suggest that the Judaizers were portraying Paul as acknowledging the necessity of circumcision, and they likely appealed to his circumcision of Timothy as evidence for this.

However, we don’t need to suppose that the Didache in particular was in circulation or that they appealed to it. All we need to suppose is that the idea was in the air that one needed to complete one’s conversion to Christ by circumcision, and we have good evidence that this idea was present, whether or not the Didache was in circulation.

 

Paul and the Acts 15 Letter

Paul was apoplectic when he learned what the Judaizers had been telling his Galatian converts, and he wrote his letter to them in a white hot fury.

In this epistle, Paul’s sharp elbows are at their sharpest, and he vigorously denounces the views of the Judaizers, including their own apparent misrepresentation of his own actions.

What, then, are we to make of the fact that he does not mention the document that the Acts 15 council wrote?

For Garrow, Paul does not do so because that document (the original edition of the Didache) was too ambiguous.

It’s true that the Didache contains passages the Judaizers could plausibly exploit. However, it’s not clear that a personality as forceful as Paul would refrain from taking those passages on.

After all, circumcision is nowhere mentioned in either context, and a careful exegesis of the Didache does not support the claim that it is necessary. In context, “the whole yoke of the Lord” for Gentiles is the material under discussion in chapters 1-6 of the document, and circumcision is not among the topics covered.

Paul easily could have pointed this out and insisted that his interpretation—bolstered by the other facts he mentions in Galatians—is the true one and that it authentically represents the view of the Jerusalem authorities.

Once again we must ask whether the Didache needed to be in circulation to explain why Paul doesn’t mention the document the council produced, and the answer again is negative.

If Galatians 2 does refer to Acts 15 (as the bulk of the evidence indicates) then Paul’s summary of it in the epistle makes all the essential points. He does not need to refer to the letter.

Further, he may not have had a copy of the letter with him. We know that Paul was sometimes separated from his personal library (2 Tim. 4:13), and he may have avoided discussing the letter if he couldn’t quote it exactly.

Even if he had the letter with him or was comfortable quoting it from memory, there are serious reasons why he might not want to, because the letter contained pastoral provisions as a concession to Jewish sensibilities. Specifically, it asked that Gentiles “abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity.”

While he may not have had a problem with (or a choice regarding) these items as pastoral concessions, Paul is on record stating that there is nothing wrong in principle with eating idol meat. He discusses this explicitly in 1 Corinthians 8, and he covers the same issue from another perspective in Romans 14.

It is highly probable that he would not have had a problem in principle with eating blood or strangled things in view of his comments regarding becoming all things to all men that he might win some (1 Cor. 9:22), and specifically regarding his comment that “To those outside the law I became as one outside the law . . . that I might win those outside the law” (1 Cor. 9:21).

This is further underscored by his declaration “let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink” (Col. 2:16), and by his excoriation of Peter for breaking table fellowship with Gentiles (Gal. 2:11-14).

Since the pastoral provisions of the Acts 15 letter were inconsistent with views Paul held and openly discussed with his converts, as the other letters just quoted indicate, he had ample reason not to call attention to the letter in his discussion here. Doing so would only raise the question of what status these pastoral provisions had: Were they matters of divine law that were binding on everyone or only accommodations made for the sake of harmony within the Church?

Delving into these concessions to Jewish sensibilities would have undercut Paul’s fundamental point that Gentiles only need to become Christians, not Jewish Christians, to be saved.

Further, raising the subject of the letter in his account of the council (Gal. 2:1-10) would undercut the argument he was about to make regarding Peter (Gal. 2:11-14), because the letter’s pastoral provisions would suggest to the readers that Peter might not have been wrong to withdraw from table fellowship with Gentiles.

Paul was thus incentivized to remain silent on the letter and focus instead on the points he makes about the council in verses 1-10.

 

Conclusion

Garrow has provided a fascinating discussion of the Didache and how it might have influenced first century discussions regarding the need for circumcision.

While it seems very unlikely that the Didache was produced by the Acts 15 council, it is quite possible that early versions of the document were in circulation in the mid-first century.

It also is possible, though not necessarily probable, that—either before Galatians was written or afterwards—Judaizers appealed to the document’s statements regarding perfection to bolster their argument that circumcision is necessary for salvation.

The Didache thus remains an important background document, and the light it may shed on the New Testament and its history needs to be further explored.

Understanding the “Unanimous Consent” of the Church Fathers

In 1546, the Council of Trent issued a decree which prohibited people from interpreting Scripture “contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers.”

The meaning and significance of this concept has been widely misunderstood, so let’s take a look at the subject.

Here are 15 things to know and share . . .

 

1) What was the context of the decree?

The Council of Trent (1545-1563) was called to deal with two subjects: (1) doctrinal errors that were being spread by the Protestant Reformers and (2) internal reforms needed within the Catholic Church. Consequently, historian Hubert Jedin notes:

By the terms of the decision of 22 January [1564], dogma and reform were to be discussed simultaneously and every dogmatic decree was to be matched by a decree on Church reform (A History of the Council of Trent 2:87-88).

Therefore, the decrees of Trent are divided between those of a doctrinal nature and those of a disciplinary nature. Thus the fourth session of the Council thus released two decrees:

  • Decree Concerning Canonical Scriptures
  • Decree Concerning the Edition, and the Use, of the Sacred Books

The first of these decrees was dogmatic (i.e., concerning doctrinal matters), and it dealt with which books the Catholic Church regards as sacred and canonical.

The second decree concerned Church reform (i.e., disciplinary matters), and it’s the one that mentions the unanimous consent of the Fathers.

 

2) What subjects did the second decree cover?

It dealt with several abuses that had been proposed for reform by one of the Council’s committees (Jedin, 70-71). The final, published form of the decree established several disciplinary norms:

  • Of all the Latin editions of Scripture then in circulation, the Vulgate would be used as the standard one “in public lectures, disputations, sermons, and expositions.”
  • No one is to interpret the Scripture contrary to the sense held by the Church or the unanimous consent of the Fathers.
  • Printers are not to publish copies of the Scriptures unless they have been approved by the local bishop; the same applies to books of a theological nature, which also must carry their authors’ names; and the same applies to the circulation of unprinted manuscripts.
  • No one is to use the words of Scripture in superstitious or profane practices (e.g., incantations or defamatory libels).

The second decree also empowered bishops to impose appropriate penalties on those who violated these norms.

 

3) What did the second decree say about the unanimous consent of the Fathers?

The relevant provision says:

Furthermore, in order to restrain petulant spirits, [the Council] decrees, that no one, relying on his own skill, shall—in matters of faith, and of morals pertaining to the edification of Christian doctrine—wresting the sacred Scripture to his own senses, presume to interpret the said sacred Scripture contrary to that sense which holy mother Church—whose it is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy Scriptures—hath held and doth hold; or even contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers; even though such interpretations were never (intended) to be at any time published.

Contraveners shall be made known by their Ordinaries [i.e., bishops], and be punished with the penalties by law established.

The core of this statement is:

No one . . . shall—in matters of faith and of morals . . . —interpret the said sacred Scripture contrary to that sense which holy mother Church . . . hath held and doth hold; or even contrary to the unanimous consent of the Fathers; even though such interpretations were never (intended) to be at any time published.

 

4) What does this mean?

It means that the Council is establishing a law providing that—even in writings not intended for publication—Catholics are not to contradict (1) the teaching of the Church about the meaning of Scripture or (2) the unanimous consent of the Fathers about what it means, and if they do, their bishops can apply appropriate penalties.

 

5) Is this an infallible doctrine?

Here we encounter a major misunderstanding of the text.

Trent’s doctrinal decrees contain infallible teachings. These are found among its canons, which use the formula “If anyone says . . . let him be anathema”—anathema being a type of excommunication that existed at the time (not a condemnation to hell).

However, this is not a doctrinal decree but a reform decree. It does not have canons, and it does not use the requisite anathema formula, as the quotation above indicates.

Consequently, it’s establishing a discipline—a law—that barred Catholics from contradicting Church teaching or the unanimous consent of the Fathers about the meaning of Scripture, even in writings not intended for publication.

This law is based on doctrinal principles—which we will cover below—but it isn’t itself a doctrine. It’s a discipline regulating discourse within the Church (note the context, which deals with the edition of Scripture to be used in public, what book printers must and mustn’t do, how people are to avoid profaning God’s word).

The status of this requirement as a law was underscored by Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903), who referred to it as a “very wise law” (Providentissimus Deus 14) and by Pope Pius XII (1939-1958), who included it among “the rules and laws promulgated by the Church” (Divino Afflante Spiritu 47).

 

6) Does the decree mean that Catholics can’t interpret the Bible and must simply repeat what the Church or the Fathers say it means?

No. The decree doesn’t say anything so restrictive. Catholics are free to read and interpret the Scriptures.

The law merely established that they weren’t to contradict Church teaching or the unanimous consent of the Fathers when these sources had a definitive teaching on the meaning of a passage.

 

7) Are there many such passages?

No. Pope Pius XII pointed out in his encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu:

There are but few texts whose sense has been defined by the authority of the Church, nor are those more numerous about which the teaching of the Holy Fathers is unanimous (n. 47).

Catholic biblical interpreters thus have a broad liberty of interpretation. As Leo XIII stated:

By this very wise law the Church by no means retards or blocks the investigations of biblical science, but rather keeps it free of error, and aids it very much in true progress. For, to every private teacher a large field is open in which along safe paths, by his industry in interpretation, he may labor efficaciously and profitably for the Church (Providentissimus Deus 14).

 

8) What is the status of the law today?

There is more to its legislative history than we can cover here, but the short answer is that it is no longer part of Church law per se.

Trent added the requirement to the body of canon law that existed at the time, which was scattered in many documents. Subsequently, Vatican I (1870) renewed the decree, and when canon law was codified (brought together in a single volume) in 1917, the first edition of the Code of Canon Law contained provisions that gave the requirement ongoing legal force.

However, Vatican II (1962-1965) did not repeat the requirement, and after the Council it was dropped from the legal instruments where it still existed.

When the 1983 Code of Canon Law was released, it abrogated both the 1917 Code and “any universal or particular penal laws whatsoever issued by the Apostolic See unless they are contained in this Code” (see can. 6, §1, 1° and 3°).

Consequently, canon law has been revised in a way that the decree no longer has legal force.

However, this does not mean that we don’t have to honor the doctrinal principles behind it.

 

9) What are the doctrinal principles behind the decree?

In the case of Catholics not contradicting the teaching of the Church regarding the meaning of Scripture, the decree spelled out the underlying doctrinal principle. Catholics aren’t to do this because the Church “is to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy Scriptures.”

That’s just as true today as ever, and Catholics are bound today to honor the teaching of the Church when it intervenes authoritatively on the meaning of a Scripture passage.

However, apart from a handful of cases, the Church presently gives interpreters very broad liberty in how they take particular passages (see my piece, The Limits of Scripture Interpretation).

Trent did not spell out the doctrinal principles underlying the requirement that Catholics not contradict the unanimous consent of the Fathers. However, it was explored by Leo XIII in Providentissimus Deus:

The Holy Fathers, we say, are of supreme authority, whenever they all interpret in one and the same manner any text of the Bible, as pertaining to the doctrine of faith or morals; for their unanimity clearly evinces that such interpretation has come down from the apostles as a matter of Catholic faith. The opinion of the Fathers is also of very great weight when they treat of these matters in their capacity of doctors, unofficially (n. 14).

Here he considers two different situations:

  1. When the Fathers “all interpret in one and the same manner any text of the Bible, as pertaining to the doctrine of faith and morals,” and
  2. “When they treat of these matters in their capacity as doctors [i.e., teachers], unofficially.”

In the first situation, he says that their unanimity shows that “such interpretation has come down from the apostles as a matter of Catholic faith,” while in the second situation he says that their opinion is “of very great weight.”

We thus need to distinguish, in any given case, which of these two applies. If it is the latter then a modern interpreter needs to give the Fathers’ views due weight, but he is not ultimately bound to accept them.

If, however, something they teach is a matter of Catholic faith, then it is binding.

In fact, to say that something is “a matter of Catholic faith” is a term of art in theology that indicates an infallibly defined teaching.

This means that we need to situate Leo XIII’s statement within the doctrinal development that has occurred on when the Church teaches infallibly.

 

10) What doctrinal development has occurred on the Church’s infallibility?

When Leo XIII issued Providentissimus Deus  in 1893, the First Vatican Council (1870) had met and defined papal infallibility.

However, because of the wars going on in Europe at the time, the Council was unable to complete its work, and it fell to Vatican II to formulate other aspects of the Church’s infallibility. This was done in its document Lumen Gentium.

It held that God has given the Church a charism of infallibility. This gift protects the Church as a whole from error in matters of belief (in credendo), and it protects the Church’s Magisterium from error in matters of teaching (in docendo). Infallibility manifests in the following ways:

  • Through the sensus fidelium (the sense of the faithful, “from the bishops down to the last member of the laity”)
  • Through the “ordinary magisterium” of the bishops scattered throughout the world, teaching in union with the pope
  • Through the “extraordinary magisterium” of the bishops meeting in an ecumenical council
  • Through the “extraordinary magisterium” of the pope when he issues an ex cathedra statement

The conditions for the first of these are discussed in Lumen Gentium 12 (cf. CDF, Mysterium Ecclesiae 2) and the others in Lumen Gentium 25.

 

11) How do the Fathers relate to these categories?

The Fathers were a mixed group. Some were bishops (e.g., St. Augustine), some priests (e.g., St. Jerome), some deacons (e.g., St. Ephrem the Syrian), and some lay faithful (e.g., St. Anthony of Egypt).

The Fathers as a whole thus do not represent the Church’s Magisterium, which consists only of the bishops teaching in union with the pope.

They would, however, be representative of the whole people of God in their day, and thus a unanimous consensus among them could be taken as an unerring manifestation of the sensus fidelium.

On the other hand, the Fathers who were bishops would be capable of exercising the Church’s infallibility, and a unanimous consensus among them could be taken as an infallible exercise of the ordinary magisterium.

 

12) How would a consensus of the Fathers as a whole manifest the unerring sensus fidelium?

According to Lumen Gentium 12:

The entire body of the faithful . . . cannot err in matters of belief. They manifest this special property by means of the whole peoples’ supernatural discernment in matters of faith when from the bishops down to the last of the lay faithful they show universal agreement in matters of faith and morals.

One of the keys to understanding this passage is recognizing that the Church’s infallibility applies “in matters of belief” (Latin, in credendo). This is a technical term referring to truths which must be believed as part of the faith, as opposed to mere theological opinions. They therefore represent things which have a definitive character—things that are to be held by the faithful definitively.

The passage then indicates that the unerring sense of the faithful is manifested in these matters when three conditions are met:

  1. “The entire body of the faithful . . . from the bishops down to the last of the lay faithful” is involved
  2. “They show universal agreement”
  3. This agreement concerns “matters of faith and morals”

For the Fathers to fulfill these conditions regarding the interpretation of Scripture, we would need to understand them as representative of the people of God of their time, which is reasonable, thus fulfilling condition (1).

The Fathers then would need to show universal agreement, fulfilling condition (2). The precise nature of this agreement will be discussed below.

Finally, to fulfill condition (3), the matter in question would have to be the interpretation of a particular Scripture text involving “matters of faith and morals.” This is significant because, as Leo XIII noted in Providentissimus Deus:

[The Fathers], in interpreting passages where physical matters are concerned, have made judgments according to the opinions of the age, and thus not always according to truth, so that they have made statements which today are not approved. Therefore, we must carefully discern what they hand down which really pertains to faith or is intimately connected with it . . . for in those matters which are not under the obligation of faith, the saints were free to have different opinions, just as we are (n. 19).

Here the pontiff has in mind matters like the geocentric model of the cosmos, which was one of “the opinions of the age” in which the Fathers lived but which was a “physical matter” that did not “really pertain to faith.”

As noted above, the Fathers would have to be in agreement that this interpretation represents a mandatory belief for all Christians—that it is a belief to be held definitively.

This corresponds to Leo XIII’s distinction between what the Fathers hand on as “a matter of Catholic faith” versus what they teach “in their capacity of doctors, unofficially” (Providentissimus Deus 14).

 

13) How would the bishop Fathers exercise the ordinary magisterium infallibly?

According to Lumen Gentium 25:

[The bishops] proclaim Christ’s doctrine infallibly whenever, even though dispersed through the world, but still maintaining the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter, and authentically teaching matters of faith and morals, they are in agreement on one position as definitively to be held.

The following conditions thus need to be met:

  1. The bishops are “dispersed through the world”
  2. They maintain “the bond of communion among themselves and with the successor of Peter”
  3. They are “authentically [i.e., authoritatively] teaching matters of faith and morals”
  4. They “are in agreement on one position as definitively to be held”

Conditions (1) and (2) represent the normal state of the Fathers.

Condition (3) corresponds to Leo XIII’s distinction between what the Fathers hand on as “a matter of Catholic faith” versus what they teach “in their capacity of doctors, unofficially” (Providentissimus Deus 14).

For it to be fulfilled in our context, the subject of their authoritative teaching would have to be the interpretation of a particular Scripture text regarding “matters of faith and morals”—as opposed, for example, to merely “physical matters” or “the opinions of the age” (Providentissimus Deus 19).

Finally, condition (4) would be fulfilled when they unanimously agree on this particular interpretation of Scripture “as definitively to be held.”

 

14) What kind of unanimity would the Fathers need to display?

The Church has not given us a mathematical way of determining what kind of consensus the Fathers would need to display either for the body as a whole to represent the unerring sense of the faithful or for the bishop Fathers to infallibly exercise the ordinary magisterium.

In fact, the difficulties of verifying when the conditions regarding these two modes of infallibility are met are the main reason we need the extraordinary magisterium (i.e., the infallible definitions issued by ecumenical councils and popes).

However, we can discern the general circumstances that need to occur:

  1. We would need a large number of the Fathers to address the interpretation of a specific passage of Scripture. One could not say that a consensus existed among them—much less a unanimous one—if only a relatively small number address the passage.
  2. They would need to teach a single interpretation of this passage as true. Assessing this could be somewhat complex because the Fathers could see passages as teaching several things, based on the different senses of Scripture. However, they would have to hold at least one of these interpretations in common.
  3. They would need to teach this interpretation as definitive—i.e., not just something they believe to be true but that something all Christians must hold to be true. Otherwise, the conditions needed for the unerring sense of the faithful or the infallible exercise of the ordinary magisterium would not be met.

It is frequently pointed out that absolute unanimity is not needed and that a moral unanimity suffices. This is true. However, the Fathers represent such a small number of individuals that even a few dissenting voices on a question would prevent us from describing their consensus as unanimous.

In fact, even a single, highly influential Father—such as an Augustine—who held a contrary view could be seen as preventing unanimity, though a Father of minor status might not.

In view of the difficulty in verifying that the needed conditions have been met, Pius XII’s judgment that the unanimous consent of the Fathers applies only to a few passages seems justified (Divino Afflante Spiritu 47).

Anyone who has worked with the texts of the Fathers knows that it is difficult to find cases where the above conditions have been fulfilled.

The Fathers are a relatively small group of individuals, often only a few of them comment on a given passage of Scripture, and when they do they frequently make different proposals about its meaning.

When there is a reasonable doubt, one must assume that infallibility has not been engaged, for “no doctrine is understood as defined infallibly unless this is manifestly evident” (Code of Canon Law 749 §3).

 

15) What’s the bottom line?

The concept of the unanimous consent of the Fathers is widely misunderstood.

Trent established a discipline that barred Catholics—even in writings not meant for publication—from contradicting the unanimous consent of the Fathers regarding the interpretation of Scripture.

This law remained in force until the 20th century, but it lost legal force following the Second Vatican Council.

However, the law was undergirded by important theological principles that remain in force and that have been illuminated by doctrinal development.

The unanimous consent of the Fathers as a whole can manifest the unerring sense of the faithful, and the bishops among the Fathers represented the Magisterium of their day and thus could teach infallibly under the usual conditions for the infallible exercise of the ordinary magisterium.

The number of cases where this applies to the interpretation of a particular passage of Scripture is small, but such cases must be taken seriously.

Domitian and the Persecution That Didn’t Happen

DOMITIANIt’s common to encounter claims that the Roman emperor Domitian was a major persecutor of Christians and that he demanded divine worship, insisting on being called “Lord and God.”

It’s even common to hear these “facts” cited as important keys for determining the date and meaning of the book of Revelation, with Domitian serving as its famous “beast.”

But there’s a problem. Here are the real facts . . .

 

The Real Domitian

Domitian reigned between A.D. 81 and 96, and like all of the Roman emperors in this period, he had flaws.

Ancient authors even accuse him of being responsible for the death of his brother, Titus, who had preceded him in office.

He also angered the aristocracy, and he was eventually assassinated by court officials.

However, ancient Roman authors don’t accuse him of being the kind of monster that Caligula or Nero were.

Neither do the earliest Christian sources accuse him of instituting a major persecution of the Faith.

 

A False Narrative Develops

Biblical Archaeology Review recently ran a piece in which biblical scholar Mark Wilson looked at the origin of how the idea of a Domitianic persecution developed. He writes:

Eusebius in his Church History (CH) provides the first reference to Domitian persecuting the church.

Writing over three centuries later in the early fourth century C.E., this ancient Christian historian first quotes Melito of Sardis, who mentioned that Domitian brought slanderous accusations against Christians (CH 4.26.9).

He also cites Tertullian, who claimed that Domitian was cruel like the emperor Nero (r. 54–68 C.E.), but that Domitian was more intelligent, so he ceased his cruelty and recalled the Christians he had exiled (CH 3.20.9).

Eusebius also quotes Irenaeus, who claimed Domitian’s persecution consisted only of John’s banishment to Patmos and the exile of other Christians to the island of Pontia (CH 3.18.1, 5).

Despite these cautious statements by three earlier authors, Eusebius then spun his own alternative fact by claiming that Domitian, like Nero, had “stirred up persecution against us” (“anekinei diōgmon”; CH 3.17).

From here the tradition was enlarged by Orosius (d. 420 C.E.), who, in his History Against the Pagans, wrote that Domitian issued edicts for a general and cruel persecution (7.10.5).

Despite a lack of evidence, [Roman historian Brian] Jones observes that the tradition concerning Domitian’s persecution persists: “From a frail, almost non-existent basis, it gradually developed and grew large.”

Melito of Sardis and Irenaeus of Lyons were individuals who wrote in the late second century, less than a hundred years after Domitian’s reign, and Tertullian wrote at the end of the second and the beginning of the third centuries. They report only that he slandered Christians and exiled some. If they don’t provide evidence of a wide-scale persecution, then it’s very unlikely there was one. Furthermore:

No pagan writer of the time ever accused Domitian, as they had Nero, of persecuting Christians. Pliny [the Younger], for example, served as a lawyer under Domitian and wrote in a letter to Trajan (r. 98–117 C.E.) that he was never present at the trial of a Christian (Letters 10.96.1). This is a strange claim for one of Domitian’s former officials if Christian persecution were so prevalent.

 

“Lord and God”?

What about the claim that Domitian insisted on being worshipped as a god during his lifetime and even demanded the title “Lord and God” (Latin, Dominus et Deus)? Wilson writes:

The poet Statius (Silvae 1.6.83–84) states that Domitian rejected the title Dominus as his predecessor Augustus (the first Roman emperor) had done.

The historian Suetonius (Life of Domitian 13.2) does report that Domitian dictated a letter that began, “Our Lord and Master orders . . . ,” but it was only his sycophantic officials who began to address him in this way.

The story was again embellished by later historians to the point that Domitian is said to have ordered its use.

Jones thinks the story incredible because Domitian was known for his habitual attention to theological detail in traditional Roman worship, so he would not have adopted such inflammatory divine language.

After their deaths, the best that emperors could hope for was to be called Divus (Divine), not Deus (God).

If Domitian were such a megalomaniac who ordered worship to himself, why haven’t any inscriptions been found using this formula?

In fact, no epigraphic evidence exists attesting to Christians being forced to call him “Lord and God.”

 

The Last Refuge of a Failing Hypothesis

Wilson writes:

[Biblical scholar] Leonard Thompson notes that a more critical reading of Eusebius raises doubts about a widespread persecution of Christians under Domitian. He concludes that “most modern commentators no longer accept a Domitianic persecution of Christians.”

However, that hasn’t stopped some from trying to rescue the hypothesis:

Some writers consider Revelation as a source for a persecution by Domitian, although John never identifies a specific emperor. If so, then Revelation would be the only ancient source pointing to such a persecution.

This is a sign of a failing hypothesis: Using the very data that the hypothesis was supposed to illuminate to prop it up instead.

Revelation contains many things that are unclear, and the Domitianic hypothesis was supposed to be a historical certainty that could unlock Revelation and make its meaning clear. Instead, after we realized we don’t have evidence for a Domitianic persecution, the ambiguities in Revelation are now being used to prop up the idea that one occurred.

This is circular reasoning.

 

Breaking out of the Circle

In fact, we have good evidence that Revelation was written well before Domitian’s reign.

First, in Revelation 11:1-2, John is told:

Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, but do not measure the court outside the temple; leave that out, for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample over the holy city for forty-two months.

This is an unambiguous reference to the temple in Jerusalem. It describes the temple as still in operation (“those who worship there”). But the temple was destroyed by Roman forces in August of A.D. 70, indicating that Revelation was written before this date.

Second, in Revelation 13:18, we read:

This calls for wisdom: let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number [lit., “the number of a man”], its number is six hundred and sixty-six.

A few manuscripts give the number as 616 instead of 666.

From elsewhere in Revelation, we learn that the beast is linked to a line of kings that rules the world, that it demands worship, and that it persecutes Christians. This sounds very much like the line of Roman emperors—especially Caligula and Nero, who portrayed themselves as living gods—and it so happens that both 666 and 616 are the numbers you get when you add up the letters in different ways of spelling “Nero Caesar.”

Nero—the fifth Roman emperor—reigned from A.D. 54 to 68, which suggests that he was or had been on the scene, allowing the original readers to calculate his number.

That would put the writing of Revelation sometime between A.D. 54 and 70. But can we be more specific? We can.

Third, in Revelation 17:9-10 we read:

This calls for a mind with wisdom: the seven heads [of the beast] are seven mountains on which the woman is seated; they are also seven kings, five of whom have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come, and when he comes he must remain only a little while.

The most natural reading of this is that the kings are the line of Roman emperors, who reigned from Rome’s famous seven hills. The first five emperors were Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero. These are the five who are fallen.

The “one [who] is” would be the sixth emperor—Galba—who reigned from June of 68 to January of 69.

The “other [who] has not yet come” would be the seventh emperor—Otho—and he did, indeed, reign “only a little while,” from January of 69 to April of 69—just three months.

This would put the writing of Revelation during the reign of Galba, between June of 68 and January of 69.

Once we detach Revelation from the idea of a non-existent, lethal persecution under Domitian, so much falls into place.

God’s Elect in 1 Clement

divine electionCalvinist theology places a great deal of emphasis on the concept of God’s elect.

The term “elect” is taken from the Greek word eklektos, which means “chosen.”

In Calvinist thought, the elect are those that have been chosen by God to be saved on the last day. The Westminster Confession of Faith states, “God hath appointed the elect unto glory” (3:6).

This sense of the term is not unique to Calvinism. It is also the way the term has traditionally been used in Catholic theology, from which Calvinism inherited it.

However, it is important to be careful about the way terms have come to be used in theology, because language changes over time, and sometimes the meaning a term has in later texts does not correspond to the one it has in earlier ones.

A classic example of this is “heresy.” Originally, the Greek term hairesis just meant “opinion” or “sect” (i.e., the group of people who hold a particular opinion), but today it means something very different.

What about “elect”? Can we count on early texts using it in the sense later theologies have?

 

Multiple Senses of “Elect”

It’s easy to show from the Bible that the term isn’t always used in the later, theological sense. When Jesus is described in John 1:34 as the “Chosen One” (eklektos) of God, it does not mean that God has chosen Jesus to be saved on the final day.

Similarly, there are various passages in the Old Testament where God’s people Israel is described as his “chosen” (Heb., bakhir; LXX, eklektos; e.g., 1 Chr. 16:13, Ps. 105:6, Is. 65:9).

However, if we set these aside and look at early Christian texts that speak of a group of people in God’s new dispensation as “the elect,” what do we find?

A striking example of where the term is not used in the later theological sense is found in 1 Clement, and it is worth looking at the way this document uses it.

 

Introducing 1 Clement

1 Clement is a letter written from Rome to Corinth in the first century. It is often dated to around A.D. 96, but it is more plausibly dated to the first half of A.D. 70.

Although written in a corporate manner (1 Clem. 65:2 describes it as “The letter of the Romans to the Corinthians”), its eloquence reveals that it is the product of a single author (not a committee), as was virtually universal for letters at this time.

The extensive knowledge of the Old Testament that its author clearly possesses suggests that he was of Jewish extraction.

Various early Christian sources identify the author as Clement, a bishop of Rome, and there is no good reason to doubt this identification.

It is significant for our purposes is that this Clement was a disciple of both Peter and Paul.

He may be the same Clement mentioned in Philippians 4:3, and 1 Clement describes Peter and Paul as men of “our generation” (5:1-7). Both Peter and Paul are known to have spent significant amounts of time at Rome, and both were martyred there—likely just a handful of years before the letter was written.

Although 1 Clement is not part of the New Testament, the fact it was written so early and by a disciple of Peter and Paul make its discussion of the elect significant, and it may shed light on the way this term is used in New Testament texts.

So how is the concept is handled in 1 Clement?

 

Election in 1 Clement

The first mention of the elect in 1 Clement occurs in its opening passage. Responding to a crisis that has occurred in the church of Corinth—whereby the leaders of that church had been unjustly expelled from office—the author notes that this “unholy rebellion” is “both foreign and strange to the elect of God” (1:1).

From this we may infer that God’s elect are to be characterized by holiness and due order in church affairs.

Clement next comments on how the Corinthians have made great efforts to seek the salvation of others. He writes:

It was your struggle,  both day and night, on behalf of the whole fellowship of believers,  to save the total number of his elect with mercy and conscientiousness (2:4).

This passage uses the term “elect” in a way distinctly different from its later theological use.

Here “the total number of his [God’s] elect” is identified with “the whole fellowship of believers”—a usage reminiscent of the Old Testament passages that speak of the people of Israel collectively as God’s chosen.

We thus need to be alert to the idea that Clement simply envisions the Christian community in the same way: Christians as a whole are God’s new elect or chosen people.

This understanding is strengthened by the fact he here says that the Corinthians have struggled to ensure that “the total number of his elect” be saved, for it suggests that the total number of the elect might not be saved.

This makes better sense if the elect are conceived of as Christians in general rather than those who will be saved on the last day. The former (people who have professed faith in Jesus Christ and been baptized) are not guaranteed salvation, but those who will be saved on the last day—by definition—are.

The natural sense of the passage is thus that the Corinthians have made great efforts to ensure the salvation of all believers, though this salvation is not guaranteed. (Indeed, Clement later warns those who fomented the Corinthian rebellion that they need to repent or they will be “driven out from his [Christ’s] hope,” literal translation; 57:2).

As we will see, this corporate understanding of the elect is consistent with all of the other references Clement makes to the elect.

Clement notes that, to Peter and Paul “a great multitude of the elect was gathered” (6:1).

He also refers to us approaching the Father, “who made us his own chosen [eklogēs] portion” (29:1)—an idea strongly reminiscent of and undoubtedly based on Israel as God’s portion, which he chose (cf. Deut. 7:6, 14:2, 32:9).

It is important to note that here Clement conceives of Roman and Corinthian Christians as a whole—not just certain individuals among them—as being God’s chosen.

Later he quotes from Psalm 118:25-26, writing:

“With the innocent one you [God] will be innocent and with the elect you will be elect and with the perverse you will deal perversely.” 

Therefore let us cling to the innocent and the righteous, as these are the elect of God (46:3-4).

Here he identifies the elect as “the innocent and the righteous”—terms that can characterize Christians in general.

In the same chapter, he writes:

Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, for it says, “Woe to that person, it would be better for him if he had not been born than to cause one of my elect to sin. It would have been better for him to be tied to a millstone and to sink into the sea than to turn away one of my elect” (Matt. 26:24 with Luke 17:1-2). Your schism has turned many away . . . ! (46:7-9).

Here Clement envisions it being possible for the elect to sin and to “turn away”—something he says the Corinthian schism has accomplished.

Clement later writes that “All of the elect of God were made perfect in love. Apart from love, nothing is pleasing to God” (49:5), indicating that the elect are to be characterized by love.

Quoting Psalm 32:1-2 (or perhaps Rom. 4:7-9), he writes:

“Blessed are those whose trespasses are forgiven and whose sins are covered up; blessed is the one the sin of whom the Lord does not take into account, and in his mouth there is no deceit.” 

This blessing was given to those who have been chosen [eklelegmenous] by God through Jesus Christ our Lord (50:6-7).

Thus the elect have been given the blessing of forgiveness.

Clement identifies the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as “both the faith and the hope of the elect” (58:2)—meaning they believe and hope in the Persons of the Trinity.

He says that the Roman church will make “earnest prayer and supplication, that the number of those who are counted among his elect throughout the whole world, the Creator of everything may guard unharmed through his beloved child Jesus Christ” (59:2). The elect thus need to be guarded from harm.

In the same chapter, Clement addresses God directly, noting that he “multiplies the nations upon earth and chose [ekleksamenon] from all of them those who love you through Jesus Christ your beloved child” (59:3).

Here the elect are again identified with “those who love you [God] through Jesus Christ”—i.e., the worldwide Christian community.

The above are the only places where 1 Clement refers to “the elect” or uses the corresponding terms for choosing to refer to a group of people in the Christian age.

He also uses these terms to refer to specific chosen individuals, such as Aaron (43:4-5), David (52:2), and Jesus (64:1), as do various passages in the Old Testament. However, these do not pertain to the subject we are examining.

What, then, can be said about 1 Clement’s understanding of the elect?

 

Synthesis

It appears that 1 Clement’s understanding of “the elect” is based on Old Testament passages (e.g., Deut. 7:6, 14:2, 32:9, 1 Chr. 16:13, Ps. 105:6, Is. 65:9) that conceive of Israel as God’s elect or chosen people.

Clement thus refers to members of the Roman and Corinthian churches as a whole (not just certain individuals) as the subject of God’s election, saying that he “made us his own chosen portion” (29:1).

Today, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are “the faith and the hope of the elect” (58:2), and from among the nations, God “chose . . . those who love you through Jesus Christ your beloved child” (59:3). The elect are thus identified with the worldwide Christian community.

Therefore, “the total number of his elect” is identified with “the whole fellowship of believers” (2:4).

In Rome in particular, “a great multitude of the elect was gathered” around Peter and Paul (6:1).

The elect have been given the blessing of forgiveness. (50:6-7), and thus can be described as “the innocent and the righteous” (46:3-4), for “all of the elect of God were made perfect in love” (49:5). Consequently, they are to be characterized by holiness and due order in church affairs (1:1).

However, it is possible for members of the elect to sin and to “turn away”—something the Corinthian schism has caused to happen (46:7-9).

It is not guaranteed that “the total number of his elect” will be saved, and the Corinthians themselves have struggled to ensure their salvation (2:4). The Roman church likewise prays that God “may guard [them] unharmed through his beloved child Jesus Christ” (59:2).

 

Conclusion

We thus see that Clement—a disciple of Peter and Paul—conceives of “the elect” simply as the Christian people as a whole, not specifically as that group which will be saved on the last day.

His use of the term thus differs from the use it has in later Catholic and Calvinist theologies.

Given the fact his understanding of election closely corresponds to the Old Testament’s treatment of Israel as God’s elect people—not to mention his early date and the fact he was a disciple of Peter and Paul—this may well shed light on the way the term is used in the New Testament.

However, that is a subject for another time.

Pope Francis’s Commission on Women Deacons: 12 things to know and share

popr-francis-teachingPope Francis has agreed to create a commission to study the possibility of women deacons.

Here are 12 things to know and share . . .

 

1) What has happened?

On Thursday, May 12, Pope Francis was meeting with a group of women religious who asked him about the possibility of creating a commission to study the possibility of women deacons, or deaconesses.

Edward Pentin reports:

Speaking to around 900 members of the International Union of Superiors General today, representing half a million religious sisters from 80 countries, the Pope was asked if he would establish “an official commission” to study the question of women deacons.

He replied: “I accept. It would be useful for the Church to clarify this question. I agree.”

 

2) Who would be on this commission, when would it meet, and when would we know its results?

At present, all of these are unknown.

The commission could be run under the auspices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

The International Theological Commission, which is an advisory body run by the CDF, could be tasked with studying the issue.

Alternately, a new commission run by the CDF could be created to study the question.

Or a special, independent commission could be created, though its results would be vetted by the CDF.

Since the pope has only just agreed to the proposal, no timetable has been announced.

The commission could begin meeting within a year, but it likely would be several years before its work would be finished.

Once it is finished, the resulting report(s) would be submitted to the CDF and/or the pope.

They might or might not then be released publicly.

 

3) Why doesn’t the Church presently ordain women to the diaconate?

The Church holds that:

Only a baptized man (Latin, vir) validly receives sacred ordination (CCC 1577).

Although the matter has been debated historically, the Church’s present understanding is that the diaconate belongs to the sacrament of holy orders:

Catholic doctrine teaches that the degrees of priestly participation (episcopate and presbyterate) and the degree of service (diaconate) are all three conferred by a sacramental act called “ordination,” that is, by the sacrament of Holy Orders (CCC 1554).

If the sacrament of holy orders can be validly received only by a baptized man and if the diaconate is a grade of holy orders then only a baptized man can be validly ordained a deacon.

Thus women could not be ordained to the diaconate, understood in its sacramental sense.

 

4) Are there other senses in which the term “deacon” can be used?

The Greek term for deacon is diakonos. Its basic meaning is “servant” or “minister,” and it can be used in a wide variety of senses.

Indeed, Jesus himself says the he came not to be served but to serve (diakonesai) in Matthew 20:28.

Similarly, Paul says he and Apollos are “servants” (diakonoi) in 1 Corinthians 3:5.

And all Christians are called to play this role, for “he who is greatest among you shall be your servant (diakonos)” (Matt. 23:11).

The term thus has a wide variety of meanings besides the one the Church understands as a grade of ordained ministry.

 

5) Were there female deacons—or deaconesses—in the early Church?

Yes. For example, St. Paul’s letter to the Romans was carried from Cenchreae (the port of Corinth, where Paul wrote it) to Rome by a deaconess named Phoebe. St. Paul writes:

I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deaconess of the church at Cenchreae, that you may receive her in the Lord as befits the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a helper of many and of myself as well (Rom. 16:1-2).

In later centuries, deaconesses performed a variety of roles, primarily in ministry to women.

 

6) How could there be female deacons if only a male can be validly ordained?

This would be possible if the term “deaconess” was being used in a different way than to refer to the diaconal grade of ordained ministry.

Thus the canons of the First Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) refer to deaconesses that have not been ordained:

And we mean by deaconesses such as have assumed the habit, but who, since they have no imposition of hands, are to be numbered only among the laity (canon 19).

In other words, these deaconesses were servants or ministers in the Church but did not exercise ordained ministry.

 

7) Does the Church teach infallibly that only men can be ordained?

At present, the Church teaches infallibly that:

[T]he Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful (John Paul II, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis)

This teaching is not regarded as being infallible due to a papal statement but because of the ordinary and universal exercise of the Magisterium (see here).

The Church thus infallibly teaches that that priestly ordination (i.e., ordination to the rank of priest or bishop) cannot be conferred on women, but this teaching has not been extended to diaconal ordination.

As we saw under (3), above, one can deduce that women cannot receive diaconal ordination from the fact that the Church teaches only a baptized man can be ordained and that the diaconate is a grade of holy orders, but the Church has not yet confirmed this inference as an infallible teaching.

 

8) Does that mean that the Church could one day revise this part of its teaching and allow women to be ordained to the diaconate?

That is, presumably, one of the questions the commission would be tasked with clarifying.

 

9) What might the commission recommend?

Assuming it issued a single report (as opposed to a set of reports reflecting the different positions of commission members), it might recommend a number of things, including:

  • No change to present teaching and discipline
  • Ordination of women to the diaconal grade of holy orders
  • Reintroduction of non-ordained deaconesses
  • Further study of the question

 

10) Would the commission’s recommendations change anything?

Commissions are advisory bodies. The Magisterium may take or not take their recommendations.

Any change to the Church’s present teaching and practice in this area would, at a minimum, require the pope’s authorization, and it might well involve a broader consultation of the Magisterium, such as by a synod of bishops.

 

11) What is the best guide to current, orthodox Catholic thought on the subject on women and the diaconate?

In 2002 the International Theological Commission, one of the advisory bodies operated by the CDF, issued a report titled From the Diakonia of Christ to the Diakonia of the Apostles.

Although not a document of the Magisterium, it was approved for release by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and represents orthodox and learned Catholic opinion on the topic.

This document will likely serve as the starting point for the forthcoming commission on the question.

You can read it here.

 

12) What does the document say?

It has an extended section (IV. The Ministry of Deaconesses) dealing with the way deaconesses functioned in the early Church.

On the question of ordination, the document concludes by saying:

With regard to the ordination of women to the diaconate, it should be noted that two important indications emerge from what has been said up to this point:

  1. The deaconesses mentioned in the tradition of the ancient Church—as evidenced by the rite of institution and the functions they exercised—were not purely and simply equivalent to the deacons;
  2. The unity of the sacrament of Holy Orders, in the clear distinction between the ministries of the bishop and the priests on the one hand and the diaconal ministry on the other, is strongly underlined by ecclesial tradition, especially in the teaching of the Magisterium.

In the light of these elements which have been set out in the present historico-theological research document, it pertains to the ministry of discernment which the Lord established in his Church to pronounce authoritatively on this question.

The two points that it makes—that the ancient deaconesses “were not purely and simply equivalent to the deacons” and the support that tradition and the magisterium have given to the diaconal ministry as an element of holy orders—suggest that women could not be ordained to the diaconate. However, the matter was left to the future discernment of the Magisterium.

 

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