Lessons from the Catechism: Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit, and the Teaching Authority of the Church

by William Carroll

Two questions from the Catechism teach us a great deal about the approach to the Holy Scriptures in normative Anglicanism.

First, in the section on the Holy Spirit: How do we recognize the truths taught by the Holy Spirit? We recognize truths to be taught by the Holy Spirit when they are in accord with the Scriptures. (BCP, p 853)

Second, in the section on the Holy Scriptures: How do we understand the meaning of the Bible? We understand the meaning of the Bible by the help of the Holy Spirit, who guides the Church in the true interpretation of the Scriptures (BCP, pp 853f).

This reasoning is circular, but is the circle vicious or virtuous? Depending on which of these questions one emphasizes, one can come to quite different conclusions about how to read the Bible. The Church is not above the Scriptures, but the Church teaches us what they mean.

The first question gives priority to an evangelical, reformation principle of sola scriptura, by Scripture alone. Every new development of doctrine (there have been many over the centuries) must be authorized and tested by Scripture’s witness to God’s self-revelation. No new "revelation" can contradict the saving truth of the Gospel, which abides unchanged for all time. Even though God can speak through the voice of any creature, no other speaker stands on equal footing with God’s revealed Word.

The second principle gives priority to a Catholic principle of corporate discernment. It challenges our individualistic propensity to justify our own opinions by appealing to the Scriptures. Often, we misread this rather difficult and self-contradictory collection of books. This is due to their sublime subject matter, as well as our own finite intellectual capacity, personal bias, and self-serving, ideological distortions. As one biblical writer puts it, "no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one's own interpretation" (2 Pet 1:20). In general, Anglican theology has been suspicious of "private judgment." Instead, we have insisted that "the Holy Spirit guides the Church in the true interpretation of the Scriptures." All the baptized bear responsibility in this regard. In their own ways, biblical scholars, theologians, and clergy have important contributions to make, as well.

There is no point shouting about the authority of the Bible. We all agree that it has authority. The real issues almost always concern how to read it and what it means. The proper place to read the Scriptures is in the Body of Christ, which, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, continues the incarnate presence and universal mission of Jesus in the world. The Scriptures are a sacramental object, a means of grace by which the living Lord Jesus Christ gives himself to us for our salvation. Furthermore, the entire Bible is a missionary document, meant to equip God’s People for our mission.

What’s that? "The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ" (BCP, p. 855). We read the Scriptures together as a missionary community of the Gospel, most often in the context of the Eucharist, where the preacher breaks open and proclaims the Word, which we then consume in the form of Christ’s body and blood, before we are sent into the world in his Name.

The two questions from the Catechism are clearly in tension, but it has been a fruitful tension, at least in ordinary times. As tempting as it may be now, we must ask ourselves whether we can really afford to eliminate either side of it. If we are tempted to overemphasize Catholic discernment, we should ask ourselves what we would do if the Church’s discernment challenged our most cherished Scripture-shaped convictions.

Must the minority always sacrifice its conscience on the altar of unity? What, for example, do we make of Martin Luther’s "Here I stand. I can do no other."? The Catholic opponents of "justification by grace through faith" loved to taunt him by asking, "Are you alone wise?"

In Luther's day, the majority opinion was quite different. It was held to be prideful and sinful for anyone confidently to assert that he or she had personally been saved by Christ's mercy. It was also heresy. The Council of Trent entitled its anti-evangelical decrees on justification, "On the vain presumption of heretics." Christians were supposed to live in fear that they might be damned, in order that they might strive to live a righteous life. In this light, the evangelical preaching of the reformers is Good News. Because of Jesus, we can be absolutely certain that we have "a gracious God." God loves us in spite of the many ways in which we are unworthy. At Trent, by contrast, the council fathers (they were all fathers back then) cited Ecclesiastes 9.1, "No one knows whether he or she is worthy of love or hatred." Thank God the Lutherans, the Calvinists, and the Anglicans resisted, even though they were at first a very small minority in the Christian world. There has never been a reformation of any kind, including the Anglican Reformation, without a minority’s appeal to the plain sense of Scripture. At the same time, there has never been total agreement among Christians about what it means.

If we are tempted to overemphasize sola scriptura, we must ask ourselves whether we can really permit private judgment to go unchecked by our life together as "one body with one mission, changing lives." What kind of chaos would reign in the Church if every believer claimed the Spirit's direct inspiration and followed God in his or her own way? As Paul observed to the antinomian charismatics in Corinth, "God is not a God of disorder but of peace" (1 Cor 14.32). Different Christian traditions -- evangelical, Catholic, and liberal -- have had their own ways of living with this tension, but no Christian tradition can escape it. Even the most charismatic churches cannot evade the tension between our liberty in the Holy Spirit and the discipline of God’s revealed Word. Those that try to do so often descend into self-destructive behavior or authoritarian cults of personality.

For all my severe criticisms of the Windsor Report, I must say that I find its effects on our conversation generally helpful, insofar as it has shifted the debate away from the presenting issues of human sexuality to the deeper issues about what kind of Communion we want to become. Instead of staying deadlocked in endless arguments over the fine points of biblical interpretation, we are now discussing the process by which the whole Church exercises its God-given authority to interpret the Scriptures.

The fundamental disagreement right now is between 1) those who advocate a massive centralization of power and clearer lines of authority, in order to keep the perceived threat of disunity at bay and 2) those who favor a more polycentric, postcolonial form of Anglicanism, where our embrace of ambiguity, pluralism, and local option is seen not as the lesser of two evils but as a good to be celebrated and a distinctive missionary advantage. In both approaches, the Church interprets the Scriptures under the Spirit's guidance. In my view, the first approach is attempting to secure an unrealizable, unjust, and enforced conformity. Even if it would work, which it wouldn’t, it would involve far too much "Lording it over each other."

By contrast, the second approach represents a more faithful and flexible engagement of God’s mission in our pluralistic global culture, which is far more sensitive to Gospel-based critiques of hierarchical authority, the many insights of Christian feminism, and normative Anglicanism’s respect for liberty of conscience. But the most important point is that most of us are now seeking ways to live in community despite our differences, for the sake of the one mission to which God calls us all.

My own firmest conviction is that God is good. None of us will be damned for getting it wrong. Our decisions have important implications, but the boundless grace of Christ cannot be annulled. At the end of the day, it may be that some of us need to say, "I can’t go there. 'Here I stand.' If that’s what Anglicanism is going to become, then count me out!" Schism is a sin, but so is injustice, faithlessness, or living a lie. "Walking apart" is not nearly so bad as it’s sometimes made out to be.

I pray that the Anglican Communion will find a way to hold together. But please note that we have not yet faced any of the tough questions in sexual ethics. Whatever compromise is reached will be unstable at best. These issues will not go away. Nor, God willing, will Christ’s beloved LGBT disciples, who will continue to seek to have their unions blessed and to serve in the full spectrum of the Church’s ministries, lay and ordained.

We are trying to find a way to "bear with one another in love" in the meantime (Eph 4.2). As we do so, I pray that the voices of LGBT Christians will not be silenced or marginalized in our conversations as they have been for far too long. If they are (and, if some of the Windsor Report's more extreme proposals are adopted, I believe they will be), I don’t see how I can remain loyal both to the Anglican Communion and their faithful witness in my own life. Unity at the price of dishonesty or injustice is what St Benedict calls a "false peace."

There is hope, however. "With God, all things are possible." This much I know: the way forward will involve some combination of evangelical principle and Catholic discernment. May we always use these to discover Jesus Christ, our gracious God and Savior, who is himself the Way, as well as the Truth, and the Life.

[COVENANT, Number 21, September 2005]

The Revd Dr William Carroll is professor of theology, School of Theology, University of the South