The Holy Catholic Church

A Shame We All Must Bear

The Apostles Creed is arguably the most universal of all Christian creeds and confessions.  It is an organic creed, by which we mean that it was not written or constructed by any ecclesiastical body or one author or group of authors.  Very early in the history of the New Covenant, church congregations, separately and also co-operatively, developed what was called a rule of faith.  A rule was a summary of the salient points of Christian doctrine  and understood to be an accurate reflection of apostolic teaching.

It turned out that the the rules, as developed and used in churches from Italy, to North Africa, to Persia were pretty much all the same.  Over time the rules became the Rule–a commonly held statement of faith,  authenticated not so much by any ecclesiastical body, but by universal acceptance and use.
  And so it has continued to be.  Anyone who believes the Bible to be God’s inerrant and infallible Word–a conviction that can be wrought in the heart and conscience only by the Spirit of God Himself–quickly recognises that virtually all the articles of the Apostles Creed are lifted straight out of Scripture.  To disbelieve the Apostles Creed is to disbelieve God’s holy word.

One of the articles reads thus: “I believe a holy catholic church . . . ”  This is a doctrinal confession eagerly adopted by all professions, including Eastern Orthodox churches and Protestant.  It is not a statement of belief  about the Roman Catholic church.  The word “catholic” means universal: the article in the Creed, then, is a statement of faith about the world-wide, universal domain of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Folk who make statements about the Roman Catholic Church, and who leave out the adjective “Roman” and simply refer to the Catholic Church are either careless or ignorant.  Barney Zwartz is the Religion Editor, for The Age newspaper. Whilst he should know better, he makes this very error.    Speaking about the current inquiry into sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in Australia, Zwartz makes the following statement:

For the Catholic Church – the principal target of witnesses because the extent of abuse by its clergy so completely outweighs every other church, and whose leaders have been deeply resentful of that focus – I am in despair.

He of course means the Roman Catholic Church.  He does not mean the Catholic Church–something altogether different, of which the Roman Church is but one part.  The same basic sloppy error is repeated throughout his piece.   A comparable ignorance would be for the Sports Editor of the Age to refer to football without further specification of whether he was referring to Union, League, or Rules, or the Gaelic Code, for that matter. 

None of the above, of course, is meant in any way to diminish the importance of the topic under discussion in the piece–the sexual abuse of minors under the care of the Roman Catholic Church on the part of some of its office bearers and how particular Church authorities dealt with such cases when they came to light.  These are grave matters indeed and bring shame to all Christians and all churches, not just to those within the Roman Catholic Church.

The shame is universal precisely because we believe a holy, catholic church.

Just-So Stories About the Early Church

 Passing On the Apostolic Faith

One of the myths perpetrated by modern Unbelieving New Testament scholars is that orthodoxy in the early church is a myth.  The thesis is that there was no orthodoxy–only a plethora of different, competing, and contradictory theologies.  “Orthodoxy” only came about with certain factions subsequently winning control of the Church, which then proscribed and repressed competing (earlier) theologies. 

This thesis is yet another case of a good story unsupported by the facts.  The data shows that right from the beginning, the Church operated with a Rule of Faith–which was a summary of the teachings of Scripture.  Andreas J. Kostenberger puts the record straight:

The church fathers saw their role as propagators, or conduits, of this unified and unifying theological standard.  They used the nomenclature of “handing down” to describe their role.  Their self-perceived calling was to take what they had received from the apostles and had it down to their generation and posterity.  This idea of propagating what was received appears as early as Clement of Rome (AD 96) and Ignatius (AD 110) who encouraged their readers to remain in the teachings of Christ and the apostles. . . . Not only did the early Fathers see themselves as proclaiming the gospel, but they also viewed themselves as the guardians of the message. 

The origin of this theological standard that the Fathers passed on was perceived to be the Old Testament.  The Fathers taught that the gospel originated with the Old Testament prophets, whose message was taken up by the apostles who, like the prophets, were sent by God.

This self-understanding stands in marked contrast to second-century sects that sought to strip the gospel of its Old Testament roots.  Rather than being devoted to and dependent on the teaching of the apostles, these groups held that secretly revealed knowledge about Jesus trumped historical and theological continuity. [Dan Brown is a modern exponent of this ideology: the secret is the real.]  The Fathers, on the other hand, taught that the Rule of Faith originated with the Old Testament prophetic message, which was fulfilled in Jesus and proclaimed by the apostles.  The Fathers, in turn, guarded this message and passed it on to others, handing the baton to subsequent generations of believers. 

What happened to the Rule of Faith after the Fathers passed it along?  Its contents, that is, the core gospel message, made its way into the third and fourth-century creeds. 

Andreas J. Kostenberger and Michael J. Kruger, The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity Has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity (Nottingham: Apollos/Inter-varsity Press, 2010), p. 55f.

>Douglas Wilson’s Letter From America

>Ultimate Truth Has Hair on His Arms

Books in the Making – Chrestomathy
Written by Douglas Wilson
Wednesday, November 17, 2010

“Another common objection to the early creeds is their supposed ‘Hellenism.’ The early church was limited by its Greek cultural surroundings, so the argument goes, and so of course it is understandable that they unwittingly imported Hellenistic concepts into the Hebrew world of Scripture. This objection is tiresome because of the ignorance manifested by it, but it is also kind of fun to answer. The early creeds, foremost among them Nicaea and Chalcedon, were to Hellenism what Waterloo was to Napoloeon. It is quite true that the early centuries were a time of pitched battle between Hebraism and Hellenism in the church. It is quite true that this is what was at stake during these councils. But it was the heretics who wanted to make an accommodation with Hellenism, and it was men like Athanasius who maintained that the Eternal Word had ten fingers and ten toes — something unspeakably offensive to the philosophical Greek mind” (“Sola Scriptura, Creeds, and Ecclesiastical Authority” in When Shall These Things Be? pp. 280-281).http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=jtertullian&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0875525520&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr