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KARL KEATING'S E-LETTER
TOPICS:
AN EVANGELICAL SCHOLAR SCOOTS AROUND THE FATHERS
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THE FATHERS STILL KNOW BEST
John Henry Newman became a Catholic, in large part, because he took the
Fathers of the Church seriously. The more he became familiar with them as an
Anglican, the less Anglican he became.
By the time he wrote "An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine"
(1845), he knew that the Fathers understood themselves to be in one Church,
and it was not the church that Newman had been brought up in.
Newman realized that, if those early Christian writers had been transported
to nineteenth-century England, they would have had little trouble finding
the modern descendant of the Church they belonged to. It would not have been
the established Anglican Church nor any of the other Protestant churches.
They would have recognized only the Catholic Church as the body that had
full continuity with the Church of their own times.
When I read the Church Fathers, I know I am reading Catholics. They write
like Catholics about Catholic things. They write about a Church structured
pretty much like today's Church, except for incidentals. (There were no
cardinals back then, for instance, but the office of cardinal is a construct
of honor; it does not denote a higher degree of ordination.)
Given Newman's reaction to reading the Fathers, given my own reaction, I
find it hard to understand how intelligent and wide-minded people can study
the Fathers and not come away convicted that the Catholic Church is the one
the Fathers would identify with.
Yet there are such people. They study the Fathers, profit from them, even
revere them, yet they remain Protestants. One example is Christopher Hall,
who was interviewed in the November issue of "Christianity Today." Hall is
the author of "Reading Scripture with the Church Fathers," "Learning
Theology with the Church Fathers," and the forthcoming "Praying with the
Church Fathers." He teaches at Eastern University.
Hall notes that David Mills, a convert who has written for "This Rock" and
who is the editor of "Touchstone," an ecumenical journal, says that if you
are going to embrace what the Fathers taught, you need to embrace all of it,
including the Tradition that has come down from their time to ours. As Hall
paraphrases Mills, "you just can't pick and choose."
But "pick and choose" is exactly what Hall does, and he admits it. He says
he differs from Mills in that he is "convinced that it's possible for the
church to err as it looks at Scripture. ... Roman theologians would say that
decisions made by the magisterium of the church are infallibly guided by the
Holy Spirit. And because key decisions by church councils and the
magisterium are made under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, those decisions
are infallible. I remain unconvinced that this is always the case."
You might see a bit of confusion here. It's true that in their separate
writings the Fathers of the Church could err. Many of them did. The Catholic
Church never has claimed their writings to be infallible. It has claimed
that the doctrinal decisions of ecumenical councils are infallible, and some
of the Fathers participated in the early ecumenical councils.
Hall seems to conflate the decisions of the councils with the writings of
the Fathers. He finds some error in some of the latter (so do I, on
occasion) and concludes that the councils were not really infallible. This
is a lapse in logic.
Back to his wider argument, though. He says he works by "the Protestant
principle," which is to say "sola scriptura." He looks, say, at the Marian
dogmas and finds insufficient scriptural warrant for them. He finds the
Fathers writing in favor of them. The Fathers must have erred.
"The problem that I and all Protestant theologians face is trusting that my
understanding of Scripture is more valid than that of the Roman theologians
who met in the nineteenth century" to promulgate Marian dogmas. He says,
"I'm not making my decision autonomously but in community with other
Protestant exegetes and theologians" who think such dogmas are "an outgrowth
that we're unwilling to acknowledge to be valid."
Hall says this makes it "a communal decision" and that he would "take a step
back and feel I had to think this through again" if those other Protestant
scholars ended up agreeing with the Catholic understanding. I'll take him at
his word on that, but his is a cheaply given promise because he knows those
other Protestants are not going to jettison their Protestantism. They, too,
operate by the Protestant principle.
Hall notes that Luther, Calvin, and Wesley warned early Protestants "against
an uncritical acceptance of patristic teaching." Well, yes, but Catholics
scholars had been cautious in their reading of the Fathers for centuries,
knowing that any one Father might commit a blooper. Some early writers
committed bloopers large enough (even going into heresy) that they are not
even counted as Fathers of the Church, the most famous being Tertullian and
Origen.
What it reduces to, I'd say, is that Christopher Hall, for all his erudition
and good will, gives uncritical preeminence to the Protestant principle.
Perhaps "uncritical" is not the right word, but it does seem that the
principle trumps all else.
The Fathers of the Church, who never heard of "sola scriptura," are judged
by that sixteenth-century principle. Did they write consistently in favor of
a certain Marian privilege, such as her sinlessness? Is the scriptural
evidence for that privilege "insufficient" in Protestant eyes? Then the
Fathers' testimony can be laid aside as just another error.
I'm glad that Hall is producing books that share some of the teachings of
the Fathers, and I hope that many Evangelicals read his books. My
expectation is that some readers will want to go to the sources.
If they do, they will be disappointed, if they begin reading with the
Protestant principle as their guide. They will find that the unexpurgated
Fathers don't sound much like Evangelicals, and they sure didn't seem to
operate like Evangelicals. (Many of the Fathers were bishops and some even
were popes!)
Evangelicals who read the Fathers undertake a dangerous task. They may, like
David Mills and John Henry Newman, find themselves going where they had no
desire to go: first to a rejection of the Protestant principle and then to
an acceptance of the Catholic faith.
May you have a blessed Christmas!
(If you live in a rough part of town, amend that to read: May you have a
blessed Christmas--or else!)
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