Sola Scriptura..."norma normans"

Deaver said:

I respect your point of view. However, the only problem with that, IMO, is that who you ask will determine the answer. Look at CF - a Roman Catholic will give one answer, Eastern Orthodox perhaps another, Baptists one, Calvinist another...I think you see my point.

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I feel like screaming "That's ARBITRATION, get BACK ON TOPIC!!!" but I won't

(Deaver, that snarky comment was just me being overly sarcastic and has nothing whatsoever to do with your posts...if you've read the now six pages of responses I think you'll see why I'm being sarcastic).

At any rate, honestly this really is moving into the field of arbitration, and I agree with CJ (I think...honestly I'm not sure... ) that in a sense, one can only ask your above question after agreeing that "Yes, the Bible is the standard by which we will attempt to answer questions and judge doctrines and practices."

You are absolutely correct in identifying the problem with "asking somebody." Which is why I don't (as in, I no longer) draw such a sharp academic distinction between the "norm" and the "application of the norm," because both are intertwined with "the community that accepts the norm and then applies it." The conviction that God's pure, 100% infallible revealed truth should be our norm is of course necessary...the belief that this revealed truth is exists only in written Scripture is a philosophical matter that must be embraced before one even goes to said Scripture looking for answers. For that matter, the method by which one will interpret Scripture must be accepted a priori before one can even search the Scripture for the answer to a question such as "In what way does Scripture serve as the norm for our doctrine?"

This whole matter of having a pristine, wholly-other norm that is above us and judges us is well-intentioned, but in the real world in which we live, it's rather like trying to determine the position and momentum of an electron within an atom. The very act of approaching the thing changes the conditions and therefore the answer.

I think things get even more intertwined when we understand that Scripture was not something that came to us unmediated, or in a bound volume or engraved on tablets of stone by the finger of God (well, maybe 10 verses of it were ) that we then discovered. Scripture came to the Church, through the Church, to be received by and within the Church...to serve as the norm for the Church. I have come to believe that this matter is holistic, and drawing sharp distinctions between the two introduces (very loosely speaking) a sort of "Nestorianism" with regard to the Word and the Body. Christ is the Word, and the Church is his Body, which is indwelt by the Holy Spirit...who worked through the agency of humans in the Church to inspire them to record the revelations of the Word as Scripture. In my mind it almost chases its tail...it's a process in which all components must be simultaneously present in order for the system to work at all.

The principal reason why (in my 5+ years in very conservative Calvinist circles, anyway) Protestants draw such a sharp distinction between Scripture (as the Norm) and the Church (that which arbitrates but is normed by the norm) is in continuing response to the medieval Catholic Church (and still today) in which the norm essentially was the magisterium of the church...which further was basically the Pope. They wanted to call the leadership of the church back to accountability to the Word of God, something transcendent, which no man can be above. And it's commendable, and in my opinion reform truly was needed (and still is). But Protestantism came to define the "Church" differently than it ever had been defined, and that by necessity, having either severed or entirely rejected apostolic succession. And the question of "who do you ask"...your question...was quite primary. The Reformers emphatically did NOT approve of an every-man-for-himself, "me and my Bible" approach, everyone doing what is right in his own eyes so long as he first consults his copy of the Bible (which most people still didn't have). They still believed in accountability to leadership. The thing is, in each case of a new Protestant group forming, you essentially had whichever group had initially founded that new sect, being the ones to recognize and confirm new leaders for itself...after that, often the leadership continued in what you could almost call "apostolic succession," but each new group began with a discontinuity in history. A "jump discontinuity," like you have in mathematics when a point on a graph suddenly reappears instantaneously at some other value...after that the curve may be smooth again...but how did it get there?

Quite unintentionally, I believe, this approach effectively changed a distinction between "norm" and "arbitration" into a separation of them. And it's been trying to put them back together again ever since.

Someone earlier answered the "who do you ask" question, in Orthodoxy, as "the elders...the fathers...those who came before." And that's very true. For centuries, those whose counsel and interpretation were most sought after often weren't those who had the longest lists of academic accolades, or who were most proficient in the most ancient languages...often the criteria today. They were those who'd denied themselves, who struggled against sin and overcame, through whom God worked signs among the people. The history of Christianity is filled with both those who were titanic scholars, and those who were humble servants who simply lived holy lives among people they served. Each could provide a sort of counterbalance to the other. And we should remember that the earliest Christians, those who were mocked and scorned and ridiculed by both Jews and Greeks, were mocked because they were nothing more than "simple" and "unlearned" fishermen, tax collectors, and even household slaves. The scholars, philosophers and statesmen really didn't get heavily into the act until a century (or more) later.

Anyway, at this point I'm simply rambling. Partly it's because, as I said, these topics of norms and arbitration and application are so intertwined and irreducibly complex (to steal a term from Intelligent Design) that speaking about one inevitably leads to speaking about the others.

In my case, after years of searching from within Protestantism for the answer of "who do you ask" found that largely answered within the early fathers, who had very definite sense...of something admittedly vague...eventually summed up as the "rule of faith" or "that which has been believed always, everywhere and by all." The true church was to be marked by humility, holiness of life, right worship, true doctrine, submission to the Scriptures...and also, in "institutional" terms...by a succession of ordination among the bishops. I could not get away from that last point because it was so heavily employed against the heretical groups, at times saying basically "You have our book! How nice...if you want to join the debate, you need a seat at the family table...now...who were your parents again?" Of course, the church is human as well as divine...and all too often it's only the human element that's visible to us, and often those marks of holiness and humility seemed almost wholly absent (which is partly why the monks, nuns, desert fathers, etc. were so revered by the people).

If historic succession of elders/bishops is an essential mark of the church, then only those bodies that possess it were on the table for consideration. It still doesn't resolve the question of which of the competing groups who have succession is right...and I am quite fallible and may be wrong in all of this. But a lot of study into history just seemed to keep pointing back to Orthodoxy as having both a succession of bishops and greater continuity in both doctrine and worship with the majority of the early church. If that's right, then it was the Roman Church that broke away from the original path in the 11th Century...historically it's without question that it diverged rapidly from the East afterwards, solidifying many of the doctrines that Protestantism eventually rejected in the 16th Century. The conclusion for me was that, as well intended and necessary as Reformation was in the West, it was a reformation of (and in actuality a separation from) a branch that had already fallen off the tree. On the one side of Rome there were a few, then dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of groups trying to "get back to the Bible and the original Church," before all the doctrines of Papal supremacy and purgatory and indulgences, and the forbidding of common languages in the church, ever arose. On the other side of Rome there were ancient churches with apostolic succession and mutual intercommunion, who never developed those doctrines and practices to begin with.

If it ain't broke...

Anyway, that question of "who do you ask" that arises immediately upon establishing that Scripture is God's Word, is extremely important and not secondary to deciding upon a norm...after all in some sense we have to ask someone which norm is to be used...they are complementary and inseparable questions.

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Deaver said:

While I understand what you are saying, the problem I have is that when I turn to the Bible and begin to look at who to ask I am confronted with Paul’s letter to address the problems and to clear up confusion about right and wrong in Corinth. The Corinthian people had a reputation for jumping from fad to fad; Paul wanted to keep Christianity from degenerating into just another fad.

The Aramaic Bible in Plain English tells in 1 Corinthians 1:10, “But I request of you, my brethren, in the name of our Lord Yeshua The Messiah, that all of you would have one speech, and that there would be no divisions among you, that you would be perfected in one mind and in one conscience.”

Paul saw the danger of divisions and arguments. These divisions between Christians can undermine the effectiveness of the message that we as believers are to proclaim. Focus on Jesus Christ, and the purpose He has for you.

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I'm a bit confused as to what you're saying here...

Yes, the apostles preached unity in doctrine and faith and practice...unity in sound and correct doctrine and faith and practice. Certainly they warned against any kinds of factions ("I am of Peter, I am of Paul, I am of Apollos," etc.). I can't think of any Christians who are actually happy that people have fragmented into so many groups.

Divisions absolutely weaken the effectiveness of the gospel message and the Church's mission in the world. However, the splinter-cell world of modern denominationalism is a very modern phenomenon...even within Protestantism, most denominations emerged in the last 200 years (and probably all in the southern United States...KIDDING! ).

Christianity isn't, and never was, an individual affair on the other hand. The idea (not saying YOU hold this, but it is common) that "the Church" is a collection of individuals who all have personal, individual faith in Christ and therefore gather together into spontaneous assemblies is quite the opposite of the ancient view, which was that the Church was the Body of Christ, into which individuals are brought. It isn't the Church that "saves people," but people are being saved within the Church. And that Church is not an institution that tries to be like what it reads about in the Bible...it is a human/divine mystery in which believers participate.

Of course that doesn't mean what I just described is right...but it is how the Church viewed itself.

Your example of the Corinthians is a good one. The Corinthian church was sort of the problem child of the early Christian world as clearly seen in Paul's letters...and they continued to be problematic beyond his ministry. In fact one of the earliest surviving post-apostolic letters known to us, written by Clement, a presbyter/bishop in Rome in the late 1st Century, was written to the Corinthians to admonish them to get their act straight. The problem that time? They had rejected their leadership in favor of men more to their own liking, and Clement rebuked them throughout his epistle. Especially prominent is the 44th chapter:

CHAPTER 44
Our apostles also knew, through our Lord Jesus Christ, and there would be strife on account of the office of the episcopate. For this reason, therefore, inasmuch as they had obtained a perfect fore-knowledge of this, they appointed those [ministers] already mentioned, and afterwards gave instructions, that when these should fall asleep, other approved men should succeed them in their ministry. We are of opinion, therefore, that those appointed by them, or afterwards by other eminent men, with the consent of the whole Church, and who have blame-lessly served the flock of Christ in a humble, peaceable, and disinterested spirit, and have for a long time possessed the good opinion of all, cannot be justly dismissed from the ministry. For our sin will not be small, if we eject from the episcopate those who have blamelessly and holily fulfilled its duties. Blessed are those presbyters who, having finished their course before now, have obtained a fruitful and perfect departure [from this world]; for they have no fear lest any one deprive them of the place now appointed them. But we see that you have removed some men of excellent behaviour from the ministry, which they fulfilled blamelessly and with honour.

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He is appealing, though he doesn't use the exact phrase (honestly I'm not sure when it became a phrase in its own right), to apostolic succession in the Christian ministry. The Corinthians wanted to know who to listen to. They already knew...to those who were fulfilling their ministry blamelessly and who had succeeded their predecessors in succession, as the apostles had intended. They just didn't like it.

Certainly succession by itself does not mean that a given person or group should be listened to...after all, some of the biggest heresies in the first 1,000 years were named for men who had been presbyters and bishops...but it does mean that whichever group should be listened to, that group will also have a valid succession.

And, all this bears directly upon the matter of "just using Scripture," since those bishops and apologists who defended Scripture, and its use as a rule of faith, appealed also to apostolic succession and the validity of their own ministries over against other groups who wanted to misuse Scripture, or add their own books, or remove the Old Testament, or turn it into a Gnostic flight-of-fantasy. They were clear...the life of the Church is to be ruled by Holy Scripture, whose canon is agreed upon within the true Church, and it is to be used within the true Church to resolve matters of doctrine. The concepts can be distinguished, perhaps, but not separated.