I almost never post on Friday nights, but our ongoing discussion about the merits (no pun intended) of Sola Scriptura is showing no signs of dying down.In the spirit of fairness, I would like to play the devil's advocate (well, more accurately the "bishop's advocate") and ask a question of my fellow-Protestant readers.
In the days of the infant church, theological controversies were settled in the context of the ecclesiastical council. The most obvious example is found in Acts 15, where the leaders of the Jerusalem and Antioch churches gathered together to decide what to do with all the uncircumcised, pigs-in-a-blanket-eating Gentiles pouring into Christ's church. The conclusion that was reached was then written in epistolary form and sent to the churches throughout the region. And, of course, it was to be taken as God's Word and therefore obeyed.
Now in the intervening years between the closing of the canon of Scripture and the ability of laypeople to procure their own personal copies of those canonical Scriptures, how were theological controversies solved? Does not history demonstrate that they were solved in the same way that the Jewish/Gentile controversy was solved in Acts 15, i.e., by conciliar decrees?
For a Protestant to counter the Catholic argument, then, must he (1) show that all post-apostolic, extra-canonical conciliar statements were to be considered suggestive rather than legislative (as in, qualitatively different from the conclusions of the Jerusalem Council); or (2) show that the conclusions of the Jerusalem Council were mere suggestions to be considered and ratified by individual church sessions; or (3) show that once the Scriptures were in the hands of the people, church councils were no longer necessary?
And if none of the above are incumbent upon the Protestant to demonstrate, then how else do we account for the rules of the game changing once the last apostle died?
I'm glad you've reached this point in the problem -- these are the questions I've been thinking about lately.
ReplyDeleteMy opinion has a cessationist flavor to it: post-apostolic councils do not have universally binding authority in the same way that post-apostolic church officers do not have universal binding authority. The reason neither post-apostolic church councils, nor post-apostolic pastors, elders, prophets, apostles or whatevers don't have universally binding authority is because the revelatory gifts have ceased.
Allowing the decrees of councils to have universally binding authority is tantamount to claiming that revelation has not ceased. Rather than new prophets or apostles telling us God's nonnegotiable, universally binding truth, we have councils who deliver to the people of God new things that everyone has to believe -- in effect, they are bringing new revelation to the people.
It seems that councils play a role in orthodox circles that prophets play in other Christian subdivisions: Islam, Mormonism, SDA, Pentecostals, etc. All these subdivisions, including the Orthodox, have some sort of secondary standard (councils, prophets, apostles) that have universally binding authority: their word is tantamount to God's word, even if they say otherwise (derivative, secondary, subordinate).
One counterargument might say something like, "the authority of councils is derivative." I think such an argument doesn't answer the question -- it addresses how the religious authority determined the new content being delivered to the world. But the real question isn't how the council determined its content; the question is: do councils have universally binding authority?
I would say no, they don't. The apostolic church had universally binding authority in a unique way, and that universally binding authority ceased when that special dispensation ended. In our post-apostolic era of history, we are without any religious authority that is universally binding because the age of new revelation has ceased.
This line of thinking would not consider Acts 15 normative for post-apostolic councils in the same way as Paul's instructions about using the special revelatory gifts isn't normative for post-apostolic believers.