Authority and the Church

Introduction

The question of authority and the Church is both extremely complex and yet, fundamentally, simple. Every generation has struggled with the limits, the uses, and the abuses of such authority. In the past, there has been those who have professed a hyper papalism (known as ultramontanism), seeing the pope as having all power, to be exercised essentially in an autocratic manner, with little real communion with, or authority over, the worldwide college of bishops. Then, there are those who would seek to democratize the Church so that bishops and laity are simply reduced to a vote per person in a process by which doctrines have little permanency, but are liable to be determined by a plurality of votes. We have witnessed in our own day great confusion over essential doctrines as highly placed prelates, accepting the mores of the modern era, publicly contradict the constant Magisterium of the Church. In the modern era, we have witnessed a political battle over how truth is to be determined. For example, the reality of synodality is an ancient, ecclesially-confirmed instrument, but some seek to re-define its actual meaning by neutralizing the role of the episcopacy and even the authoritative role of Peter. As no one paper could possibly deal with the many complex dimensions of the relationship of the Church to authority, this essay will attempt to provide the Biblical basis for what is, in fact, the Church’s claim to authority, whence it derives, and to show what happens when this authority is fundamentally rejected. 

In class, I often challenge my students to identify the most important event in the Bible. Of course, the major and most obvious events of both the Old and New Testament are offered. Once the Resurrection of Jesus is eliminated, however, the students start to scramble for other responses. As the responses peter out, the  answer is finally revealed: the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15. This surprising answer is a letdown and is somewhat confusing. The answer is meant to be shocking, but, at a fundamental level, the Council of Jerusalem is, in fact, the correct answer and provides the Biblical key to understanding what authority is, how it is to be exercised, what purpose it has in relationship to truth, and what its relationship to the Church is. 

The Early Church

The Church emerged out of the internal Jewish conflicts over the identity of Jesus. Many Jews followed the itinerant rabbi of Galilee, amazed at what He taught and did. At this point in Judaism, people’s normal experience of religion would be tied to the teachings of the different (and sometimes contradictory) religious leaders active in Israel. For example, the Pharisees rigorously followed the Law and had some conception of a resurrection; the Sadducees, on the other hand, denied any resurrection, as well as the existence of angels. People divided into communities gathered round different rabbis.[1] An additional structure within Judaism was the “oral law,” developed during the Second Temple Period (taking the final written form of the Talmud). This oral law consisted of rabbis commenting on rabbis commenting on rabbis, etc. Thus, the average person was confronted by multitudinous arrays of well-educated opinions but had no certainty beyond that of a charismatic leader acting as the human interpreter whose teachings, in turn, became a further tradition.

The people noticed that Jesus taught in a completely different way. At the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew reports that “the crowds were astonished at his teaching.” While His teaching was profound, the reason they were astonished was because “he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matt 7:28–29). Jesus was not commenting on other rabbis’ commentaries; He did not provide exegetical proposals so Torah texts could be applied to life situations. He taught directly, decisively, making binding decisions concerning the Father’s will. He cut through all the rabbinical minutia and got to the heart of the matter, overturning their basis premises.[2] He shows the limits of Torah law and goes back to creation itself. In one instance, He declared that “whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

As history well shows, only with an authority can unity ever be achieved.

No rabbi would dare teach as Jesus did. To do so would be to arrogate to himself an authority that belonged only to God.[3] Consequently, Jesus was considered by many leaders to be a blasphemer (“We are going to stone you … for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God” [Jn 10:33].) But Jesus did not—and could not—teach in any other way, precisely because He knew the source of His authority. Jesus’ relationship to authority is the key to the Messiah’s identity and mission: “For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak” (Jn 12:49). It is the Father who possesses authority and Jesus who is obedient to Him. But, amazingly, this same authority is extended to Jesus’ disciples. “He who hears you hears me, and he who rejects you rejects me” (Luke 10:16). 

After His resurrection, Jesus sent out the disciples, giving them the Great Commission in terms of His power: “All authority (ἐξουσία) in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:18). Having won the victory over sin and death, the Nazarene was given all authority by the Father. But Paul, in verses 2:8–10 of Colossians, reveals an even deeper level of Jesus’ relationship to authority:

… in him [Christ] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily[4]…who is the head of all rule and authority (ἐξουσία).

A two-fold distinction concerning Jesus’ identity emerges from the NT texts. On the horizontal axis, Jesus of Nazareth existed bodily (σωματικῶ) as the earthly Messiah and, once risen, is given all authority by the Father. On the vertical axis, Paul reveals that Jesus was connaturally disposed to having and exercising this divine prerogative because of His divine nature—in Him “the whole fullness of deity dwells.” This mystery of the God-Man climaxes in Jesus’ self-revelation of His identity with the Father: “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (Jn 14:9). 

In Matthew 16:13–14, Jesus confronts His own disciples with the question of His identity and requires an answer: 

“Who do men say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 

By way of revelation Peter declares: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16). To profess the true identity of the historical Jesus is to accept and come under His authority, thereby experiencing salvation. To reject His identity is to reject the Father and remain in the fallen state of rebellion. 

Why Peter?

It is upon this combination of the historical person of Peter and the revelation of the divinity of the historical Jesus that the Lord builds His Church. To no other disciple does Jesus say, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” As the foundational “rock,” Jesus commissions Peter: “I will give you [singular] the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” 

All the Apostles share in this ministry (Mt 18:18), but Peter (whose name means ‘rock’) is singularly chosen and given “the keys of the kingdom.” In Luke’s gospel (22:32), Jesus again gives a role to Peter before he denies Him: “I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again [repented], strengthen your brothers.” Only to Peter does Jesus give such a command vis-à-vis the other apostles. Always, Peter is given the primacy. He always heads the list of Apostles, even though he was not the first called. At Pentecost, it is Peter who unselfconsciously addresses the crowd automatically on behalf of the Apostles. There is no discussion about who the leader should be. This unconscious assumption flowed automatically from how Jesus treated and prepared Peter for this role. Jesus established a hierarchical order amongst the Apostles for the good of the Church (called the Petrine principle) was this was immediately recognized by the Christian community and has continued throughout history. 

There is a logical necessity for this. When there are multiple points of equal authority, without a single coordinating principle, these authorities can easily dissolve into disputing factions with no mechanism of resolution. Contrariwise, a single point of “confirming” authority, divinely set up, establishes a way by which truth can be established with certainty. The problem is how then this central authority relates to the other legitimate episcopal authorities. While this is an important question and has been particularly pertinent since Vatican I (because of the definition of papal infallibility), it nonetheless does not deny the essential function of unity that the Petrine principle alone establishes. The grave vulnerability of Protestantism is precisely that there is no divinely appointed authority to determine bindingly what is true.[5] 

As history well shows, only with an authority—divinely given and concretized in a single person /office—can unity ever be achieved. This is the unique claim and gift of the Catholic Church. 

The Church Emerges

According to Col 1:3, salvation is the transferring from the state of ontic separation (i.e., the kingdom of darkness) to the plenitude of relationality in Christ’s organic Body (i.e., the kingdom of light). The inherited fallen compulsion of self-centeredness—causing ontic isolation—can only be overcome through one’s ontological identification with Christ’s death and Resurrection in Baptism. It is impossible to experience salvation and then decide to become a member of the Church. To experience salvation is, ipso facto, to be inserted into the integrated relationships of the divine Body. There is no chronological sequencing between salvation, baptism, and the Church. 

Union with the Paschal death in baptism removes us from our solitudinal existence and brings us into a state of dissolution until we are reintegrated into the resurrected Jesus, becoming a member of a body that is not our own, a constituent member of the matrix of horizontal and transcend relationalities that is the Body of Christ. Outside of this, there is no salvation.[6] As Christ is Head, to arrogate to oneself any authority, office, or power not willed by Christ is to usurp the authority of Christ and cause disunity and somatic cancer. As the image of the vine and branches shows, salvation is dependent upon remaining (μένω) as a part of this bodily life. To will separation from Christ’s Body is to cut oneself off from the source of divine life and to enter back into ontic isolation.

This is the essential nature of the ἐκκλησία. The Church is not fundamentally an organization but, rather, a living organism, situated within the paradoxes of historical time. Like the God-man, the Church is bound by time, yet also possesses a transcendent dimension, the actual life of Christ. At His last Paschal meal, speaking to the Apostles, Jesus said, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth” (Jn 16:12–13).

Concretely, the Church is the continuation of the Incarnation in history, a living and active communio by which Jesus’ resurrected life also continues in history. It is this life, incarnated in the Church alone, that is capacitated to authoritatively discern and preserve all truths necessary to salvation, truth already received and truth to be subsequently revealed by the Spirit. 

“The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me.” (Luke 10:16)

Given the frailty of human nature, for Christ to implement such divine authority through the Apostles’ body that is the Church would seem to be a precarious proposition, particularly as it defines salvation. If only a purely human institution, this would be true; but it is the Holy Spirit who indefectibly leads, safeguards, and preserves all truth in Christ’s Body. The truths of salvation are handed on (tradēre) organically and authoritatively from Christ to the Apostles and thence to their successors guaranteed by the Spirit until the eschaton. 

Without such a clear demarcation of the structure of authority, there could be no certainty about the contents of the faith. Like the Jews of Jesus’ time, we would, of necessity, be left with only multitudinous opinions, possessing no ultimate authority, leaving people without certainty. 

Ratzinger explicitly makes this point in Revelation and Tradition when he compares how the Catholic Church and Protestant communions differently understand the nature (essence) of the Church. Using the Confession of Augsburg, Ratzinger shows that for Protestants the church (congregatio sanctorum) is understood as having two constitutive parts: (1) where the gospel is taught purely (evangelium pure docetur) and where the sacraments are properly administered (et recte administrantur sacramenta).[7] The Catholic Church accepts these two criteria as far as they go but uses the more traditional language of fides paralleling pure docēre and communio paralleling sacramenta. Faith (fides) comes from the teaching/preaching of the Christ’s message but also refers to the content itself. The community (communio) of Christ’s Body comes from and is sustained continually by the sacraments (especially Baptism and the Eucharist). What Protestants purposely rejected in their definition of the church, Catholics insist is essential. This is the gift of divine auctoritas (authority). As Ratzinger states, these two views are antithetical. If the Scriptures become the only ground for discerning truth, how are we to determine which interpretation of them is correct. Ironically, the reformers rejected the Church’s interpretation of Scriptures as false, claiming their own inconsistent interpretations were true. But by what authority? 

Recall that the first five centuries of Christianity witnessed perilous controversies concerning the nature of Christ. All sides appealed to Scripture, as all held to the infallibility of God’s Word. Who was right? Did God make a provision to enable the plan and truths of salvation to be known without any error? If not, then we would be left in darkness. 

The Reformers’ predicament can be seen in the following logic: if you have an infallible book with a fallible interpreter, you can only have fallible teaching. If you have an infallible book with an infallible interpreter, only then is infallible teaching possible.

Ironically, it is the Bible itself that shows that the Christian community, from the very first days of its existence, when faced with competing ‘truths,’ resolved the problem through recourse not by prooftexting, but by turning to its own somatic reality by which the Spirit was to lead to all the truth. 

Somatic Life

After Peter’s Pentecostal sermon, three thousand people were baptized and together (i.e., as a community) were “steadfast to the apostles’ teaching, and fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers” (Acts 2:42).

But before the kerygma could be preached, the full complement of Apostles had to be restored after the betrayal of Judas. The choice was limited to those men who had experienced the life of Jesus, starting from His Baptism up until His Ascension (Acts 2:21–22). These alone officially acted as the authoritative witness to the Resurrection. Here, authority meant to give personal witness for the correspondence between the truth-claims of Christ and the actual historical events. In fact, this was the definition of an Apostle: one who “saw” and one who “was sent.” The authority of the kerygma rested on these eyewitnesses, and it was precisely to only these witnesses that Jesus gave the command “go and make disciples of all nations… teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Mt 28:19–20). 

Logically, this required a unified and non-conflictual body of knowledge (truths) passed on directly from Jesus to His apostles, attested to by the Twelve and passed on indefectibly. Without this traceable authority, man would remain hopelessly lost, unable to know with certitude the truths of salvation, and consequently entrapped in ontic alienation. The Lord’s provision is the antithesis of this. He willed the Church to be the sphere within which the alienated souls of men could be personally restored (the horizontal level), and, at the same time, gave the Church a hierarchical structure (vertical level) to secure, without doubt, the fullness of truth necessary for salvation. 

The Council of Jerusalem 

In the apostolic church, the question arose concerning how people were saved. The early Christians were divided into two groups. Those who thought everyone, including Gentiles, had first to become Jewish, follow all 613 laws of the Torah, and then submit to Jesus. The other group thought that all were saved (Jew and Gentile) by the work of Jesus alone on the Cross, believing the Law had been fulfilled by Jesus’ death and a new creation was effected in Him. The question was fundamental, and the ensuing theological battle for the soul of the Church was acrimonious, lasting some 15 years. 

We tend to forget that both sides were composed of Christians, filled with the Holy Spirit, willing to die for Christ. Both had excellent arguments supporting their positions. The “party of the circumcision” could quote Scripture (Gen 17) saying circumcision had been given by God as a continual ordinance. Paul and the “party of grace” understood the work of the Cross as fundamentally fulfilling all the Law: circumcision was now fulfilled in Baptism (Col 2:11–12) and the Passover fulfilled in the Eucharist (Mt 26:26). Accusations of denying the Torah or of being an enemy of the Cross were hurled against each other. But, obviously, only one position could be true.

After years of in-fighting, the appointed leadership of the Church gathered in Jerusalem to bring the confusion to an end by finally discerning the will of God. During this first council of the Church, Peter played a key role and spoke of how God had already chosen the Gentiles, giving them the Holy Spirit (Acts 15).

In its concluding statement the Council said: “It seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us….” Continuing, the Council officially taught that the Gentiles were not required to keep the Torah laws in order to be saved in Christ. Salvation was in Christ alone and not in the Law. 

But note the extraordinary claim of the early Church. They claimed they could know the mind of the Holy Spirit. This is an outrageous claim—unless it is true—and that is precisely the claim of the Catholic Church. To reject the teachings of the Council was to reject Christ and to put oneself outside the Church.

But why is this Council the most important event in Biblical history? Because it shows us how truth can be known. We can gain much knowledge from our senses, from written histories, from media, etc. But how do we determine what is truth and be assured of its validity? 

Take two men walking into Jerusalem on Friday midafternoon during Passover of 30 AD. Seeing three men hanging from crosses, one man asks his friend what was going on. The friend replied, “Oh, the man in the middle is the Son of the living God, the second person of the Trinity, paying for all our sins so we can be redeemed.” 

Of course, that is not possible! These men had the knowledge of their senses and they heard the rumors, but the identity and meaning of it all could only be known as it was revealed by God to His chosen witnesses of the Resurrection, given authority to spread the truth concerning Jesus to all the world. Without this God-given authority, we would be unable to know with certainty the truth of salvation. 

Our salvation hangs on this apostolic witness and their divinely given authority to proclaim the Gospel that Jesus had originally given them. This same hierarchical, apostolic community known as the Catholic Church continues the Incarnation of Christ in history, possessing the Holy Spirit who leads this bodily reality into “all truth.” Only that which possesses the authority of the Son (precisely because it is the Body of the Son and is indwelt by Him) can authoritatively discern, indefectibly preserve, and bindingly proclaim the truth of Christ necessary for salvation. 

The Church is an organism animated by the life of Christ, possessing divine authority not de jure humano but propter naturam suam. As such, Paul declares, the Church is “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15). As Dei Verbum makes clear, the Magisterium is at the service of the Word, but the Church alone can authoritatively affirm the correct interpretation of this Word. The irony of modern man is that in rejecting authority (and especially divine authority) in his attempt to protect his freedom, man ends up in slavery to a false and destructive anthropology; he fears the very thing that could liberate him from his sins and delusions: the gift of authority exercised in the Church. 

[1] Around the time of Jesus, the two great rabbis, Hillel and Shammai, each with his own followers, developed separate and differing interpretations of the Torah. Hillel (very liberal) taught that divorce was allowable if the wife burned her husband’s supper. Shammai more conservatively taught that only gravely evil actions (such as adultery) would provide grounds for a divorce.

[2] On the question of divorce (Matt 19), Jesus undercut the whole rabbinical arguments of Hillel and Shammai by taking his interlocutors back to the order of creation. “It [divorce] was not so in the beginning,” he reminded them, thereby rendering all their analyses and conclusions void. His teachings were actual revelation and, because Jesus possessed authority from the Father, they are cast, accordingly, in the imperative mode.

[3] See Rabbi Jacob Neuser’s A Rabbi Speaks to Jesus (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2000).

[4] The key phrase here is πᾶν τὸ πλήρωμα τῆς Θεότητος σωματικῶ which translates as “all the fullness of the Divinity.”

[5] This is also seen in the recent schism between the Russian and Ukrainian Orthodox Churches. As authority resides within each autocephaly, there is no single authority under which all churches function. This is similar to Anglican dioceses and national churches which go in diametrically opposed direction as seen in the acceptance of antithetical sexual mores.

[6] “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

[7] Joseph Ratzinger, Revelation and Tradition in Quaestiones Disputate #17, trans. W.J. O’Hara (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966), 28–29.