Your Word Is Truth
Copyright
(c) 2002 First Things 125 (August/September 2002):
38-42.
In the spring of 1994, a group of Roman Catholics and
evangelical Protestants issued a much-discussed statement,
“Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in
the Third Millennium” (FT, May 1994). That statement, commonly
referred to as “ECT,” noted a growing “convergence and
cooperation” between Evangelicals and Catholics in many public
tasks, and affirmed agreement in basic articles of Christian
faith while also underscoring the continuing existence of
important differences. The signers promised to engage those
differences in continuing conversations, and this has been
done in meetings of noted theologians convened by Mr. Charles
Colson and Father Richard John Neuhaus. At a meeting in the
fall of 1996, it was determined that further progress depended
upon firm agreement on the meaning of salvation, and
especially the doctrine of justification. After much
discussion, study, and prayer over the course of a year, the
statement “The Gift of Salvation” was agreed to at a meeting
in New York City in October 1997, and published in the January
1998 issue of this journal. The next question taken up by ECT
participants was the relationship between Scripture and
tradition. The following statement, “Your Word Is Truth,” is
the product of intense and extended deliberation and was first
published this summer by Eerdmans in a book by the same title.
The participants express the hope that those responding with
critical evaluations of the statement will consult the
scholarly papers prepared for their deliberation and to be
found in the book. The ECT project continues and is currently
studying Roman Catholic and evangelical Protestant
understandings of “the communion of saints” (communio
sanctorum). — The Editors
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ prayed for his disciples:
“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. . . . I do
not pray for these only, but also for those who believe in me
through their word, that they may all be one; even as you,
Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us,
so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John
17:17,20-21).
We thank God for the years of prayer, study, and
conversation in the project known as “Evangelicals and
Catholics Together.” Among the many blessings resulting from
this cooperative effort, we note especially our common
affirmation of the most central truths of Christian faith,
including justification by faith, in the 1997 statement, “The
Gift of Salvation.” From the beginning of this venture, and at
each step along the way, we have insisted that the only unity
among Christians that can be pleasing to God is unity in
truth. Therefore, we have understood it to be our duty to
note, carefully and clearly, matters both of agreement and of
disagreement between Evangelicals and Catholics.
Among matters of utmost importance, and involving both
agreements and disagreements, is the question traditionally
framed as the relationship between Scripture and tradition. As
we have together explored this question, we have prayed for
the guidance ofýthe Holy Spirit, and we believe that prayer
has been answered. We respectfully submit the following
considerations and conclusions to the ecclesial communities
and transdenominational fellowships of which we are part, with
the hope that they will be received and examined as possible
contributions to our better understanding of one another and
our greater unity in Christ’s truth.
From before the foundation of the world, God has desired a
people to share forever in His life and love (Ephesians 1:4).
To that end, God disclosed Himself and His loving intention by
a sequence of revelatory and redemptive acts that involved the
uttering of verbal messages and the producing of written
records (Hebrews 1:1). He created a world that bears witness
to His glory (Psalm 19:1-6), and when humanity sinfully
rebelled against His purpose, He chose Israel to be instructed
by word and deed in the ways of covenant fidelity in order to
become a light to all the nations (Genesis 12:1-3, Deuteronomy
4:1-8). To this people He promised a Savior, who is Jesus the
Christ, the very Word of God who was in the beginning with
God, and who is to be recognized and confessed as the Son of
God (John 1:1-14). The God of Israel is the One whom Jesus
calls Father and teaches us to call Father (John 17:1-5,
Matthew 6:6-13). To Jesus’ disciples, and to those who would
become disciples through their word, he promised the Spirit to
guide them into all truth. Thus the new Israel worshiped,
obeyed, and proclaimed the one true God—Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit—in faith-filled anticipation of participating in the
divine life forever (Hebrews 12:18-24, John 16:3, Acts 1:8).
Already now, God’s promised redemption is fulfilled in the
mediatorial ministry of Jesus Christ that is centered in his
cross, resurrection, ascension, present reign, and assured
return in glory to establish his eternal kingdom (2
Corinthians 1:19-20).
God gives His people full and final knowledge of His plan
of salvation through Jesus Christ. “In many and various ways
God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these
last days He has spoken to us by a Son, whom He appointed the
heir of all things, through whom also He created the world”
(Hebrews 1:1-2). The Son sent and sends the Holy Spirit who,
bestowing the gift of faith, creates the community of faith
for whose unity Jesus prayed. Christ himself is the head and
cornerstone of his Church, which is built on the foundation of
apostles and prophets. In its understanding, believing,
celebrating, living, and proclaiming the gospel of Jesus
Christ, the Church is guided by the Holy Spirit (Ephesians
2:19-22).
Both Evangelicals and Catholics affirm the one, holy,
catholic, and apostolic Church, as set forth in the
Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, but they define the Church
and its attributes in distinctive ways. Evangelicals stress
the priority of the gospel over the Church whose primary
mission is to herald the good news of God’s salvation in
Christ. For Evangelicals, the Church as the one body of Christ
extending through space and time includes all the redeemed of
all the ages and all on earth in every era who have come to
living faith in the body’s living Head. Everyone who is
personally united to Christ, having been justified by faith
alone through his atoning death, belongs to his body and by
the Spirit is united with every other true believer in Jesus.
Evangelicals maintain that the one Church becomes visible on
earth in all local congregations that meet to do together the
things that, according to Scripture, the Church does.
Catholics hold that the Church is the body of Christ, a
sacramental and mystical communion in which Christ is truly
and effectually present and through which his justifying and
sanctifying grace is mediated. While Christ is the unique
mediator of salvation for all humanity, the Church of Jesus
Christ “subsists in” and is most fully and rightly ordered in
the Catholic Church, meaning the Church governed by the
bishops in communion with the Bishop of Rome, the successor of
Peter. Although there have been variations through history in
the exercise of that governance, and may be further variations
in order to accommodate a fuller expression of Christian
unity, Catholics believe that Christ has endowed the Church
with a permanent apostolic structure and an infallible
teaching office that will remain until the Kingdom is fully
consummated.
While Catholics and Evangelicals have not been able to
reconcile these different views of the Church, with both
communities finding serious aberrations in the ecclesial
understanding of the other, as individual believers we do
recognize in one another, when and where God so permits it,
the evident reality of God’s grace expressed by our trust in
Jesus himself as Master and divine Savior. All who truly
believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord are brothers and
sisters in the Lord even though they are not in full ecclesial
fellowship.
In communion with the body of faithful Christians through
the ages, we also affirm together that the entire teaching,
worship, ministry, life, and mission of Christ’s Church is to
be held accountable to the final authority of Holy Scripture,
which, for Evangelicals and Catholics alike, constitutes the
word of God in written form (2 Timothy 3:15-17; 2 Peter 1:21).
We agree that the phrase “word of God” refers preeminently to
Jesus Christ (John 1:1,14). It is also rightly said that the
gospel of Jesus Christ is the word of God, as is the faithful
preaching of the gospel (Acts 6:7; 8:4). Then the canon, the
listed set of writings making up the Bible, is recognized by
the community of faith as the written word of God, possessing
final authority for faith and life. On the extent of the canon
we do not entirely agree, though the sixty-six books of the
Protestant canon are not in dispute. In every form—the gospel,
the preaching of the gospel, and the Scriptures of the Old and
New Testaments—the word of God is in service to Jesus Christ,
the Word of God preeminent.
The divinely inspired writings of the New Testament convey
the apostolic teaching, which is the authoritative
interpretation of God’s revelation in Christ. The early
Christian community recognized the authority of the first
apostles who planted local churches and urged them to be
faithful to the teaching they had received. Still today we
possess that apostolic teaching in the New Testament, which,
together with the Old Testament of which the New is the
authoritative interpretation, is the written word of God. This
entire process of the reception and transmission of God’s
revelation is the work of the Holy Spirit (John 14:26, 2
Timothy 3:15-17, 2 Peter 1:20-21).
Evangelicals and Catholics alike recognize the promised
guidance of the Spirit in the elucidation and unfolding of
apostolic teaching that took place as historic Christian
orthodoxy emerged. This continuing work of the Spirit is
evident in, for instance, the formulation of the Apostles’,
Nicene, and Athanasian creeds, and in the conciliar resolution
of disputes regarding the two natures of Christ and the triune
life of God. Such development of doctrine, typically in
response to grave error and deviant traditions built upon such
error, is to be understood not as an addition to the apostolic
teaching contained in Holy Scripture but as Spirit-guided
insight into the fullness of that teaching. In this way, the
Lord has enabled faithful believers both to counter error and
to make explicit what is implicit in the written Word of God.
In the course of that same history, and in the context of
crises posed by philosophical and cultural changes as well as
manifest ecclesiastical corruptions, the question of how to
determine authentic apostolic teaching came into intense
dispute. The mainline Reformers of the sixteenth century
posited what is called the “formal principle,” which holds
that the Scriptures are (in the words of the 2000 Amsterdam
Declaration) “the inspired revelation of God . . . totally
true and trustworthy, and the only infallible rule of faith
and practice.” The Reformers vigorously protested what they
viewed as deviations from biblical teaching, but they never
used Scripture to undermine the Trinitarian and Christological
consensus of the early Church embodied in the historic creeds
that had come down from patristic times. The Reformers stoutly
resisted the charge of innovation: they did not seek to found
new churches but sought simply to reform the one, holy,
catholic, and apostolic Church on the basis of the word of
God.
We who are Evangelicals recognize the need to address the
widespread misunderstanding in our community that sola
scriptura (Scripture alone) means nuda scriptura
(literally, Scripture unclothed; i.e., denuded of and
abstracted from its churchly context). The phrase sola
scriptura refers to the primacy and sufficiency of
Scripture as the theological norm—the only infallible rule of
faith and practice—over all tradition rather than the mere
rejection of tradition itself. The isolation of Scripture
study from the believing community of faith (nuda
scriptura) disregards the Holy Spirit’s work in guiding
the witness of the people of God to scriptural truths, and
leaves the interpretation of that truth vulnerable to
unfettered subjectivism. At the same time, we insist that all
Christians should have open access to the Bible, and should be
encouraged to read and study the Scriptures, for in them all
that is necessary for salvation is set forth so clearly that
the simplest believer, no less than the wisest theologian, may
arrive at a sufficient understanding of them.
We who are Catholics must likewise address the widespread
misunderstanding in our community that tradition is an
addition to Holy Scripture or a parallel and independent
source of authoritative teaching. When Catholics say
“Scripture and tradition,” they intend to affirm that the
lived experience (tradition) of the community of faith through
time includes the ministry of faithful interpreters guided by
the Holy Spirit in discerning and explicating the revealed
truth contained in the written Word of God, namely, Holy
Scripture.
Together we affirm that Scripture is the divinely inspired
and uniquely authoritative written revelation of God; as such
it is normative for the teaching and life of the Church. We
also affirm that tradition, rightly understood as the proper
reflection of biblical teaching, is the faithful transmission
of the truth of the gospel from generation to generation
through the power of the Holy Spirit. As Evangelicals and
Catholics fully committed to our respective heritages, we
affirm together the coinherence of Scripture and tradition:
tradition is not a second source of revelation alongside the
Bible but must ever be corrected and informed by it, and
Scripture itself is not understood in a vacuum apart from the
historical existence and life of the community of faith.
Faithful believers in every generation live by the memories
and hopes of the actus tradendi of the Holy Spirit:
this is true whenever and wherever the word of God is
faithfully translated, sincerely believed, and truly
preached.
We recognize that confessing a high doctrine of the nature
and place of Scripture is insufficient without a firm
commitment to the intense devotional, disciplined, and
prayerful engagement with Scripture. We rejoice to note that
in our communities, and in joint study involving people from
both communities, such engagement is increasingly common. In
this engagement with Scripture, Evangelicals and Catholics are
learning from one another: Catholics from the Evangelical
emphasis on group Bible study and commitment to the majestic
and final authority of the written word of God; and
Evangelicals from the Catholic emphasis on Scripture in the
liturgical and devotional life, informed by the lived
experience of Christ’s Church through the ages.
There always have been, and likely will be until our Lord
returns in glory, disputes and disagreements about how rightly
to discern the teaching of the Word of God in Holy Scripture.
We affirm that Scripture is to be read in company with the
community of faith past and present. Individual ideas of what
the Bible means must be brought to the bar of discussion and
assessment by the wider fellowship.
“The church of the living God is the pillar and bulwark of
the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). Because Christ’s Church is the
pillar and bulwark of truth, in disputes over conflicting
interpretations of the Word of God the Church must be capable
of discerning true teaching and setting it forth with clarity.
This is necessary both in order to identify and reject
heretical deviations from the truth of the gospel and also to
provide sound instruction for passing on the faith intact to
the rising generation.
Evangelicals and Catholics alike are concerned with these
questions—What does the Bible authoritatively teach? And how
does Christ’s Church apply this teaching authoritatively
today? Catholics believe that this teaching authority is
invested in the Magisterium, namely, the Bishop of Rome, who
is the successor of Peter, and the bishops in communion with
him. Some Evangelicals see the communal office of discerning
and teaching the truth in the covenanted congregation of
baptized believers, while others see it in a wider synodical
or episcopal connection. In either case, however, Evangelicals
believe that a true understanding of the Bible is achieved
only through the illuminating action of the Holy Spirit. For
this reason, all attempts at discernment and teaching must
rely on prayerful attentiveness to the guidance of the Spirit
in the study of Scripture.
While Catholics agree that the entire community of the
faithful is engaged in the discernment of the truth (sensus
fidelium), they also believe that Evangelicals have an
inadequate appreciation of certain elements of truth that,
from the earliest centuries, Christians have understood Christ
to have intended for his Church; in particular, the Petrine
and other apostolic ministries. While Evangelicals greatly
respect the way in which the Catholic Church has defended many
historic Christian teachings against relativizing and
secularizing trends, and recognize the role of the present
pontiff in that important task today, they believe that some
aspects of Catholic doctrine are not biblically warranted, and
they do not accept any claims of infallibility made for the
magisterial teachings of popes or church councils.
With specific reference to the subject of the present
statement, we are not agreed on the exercise of teaching
authority in the life of Christ’s Church. To Evangelicals it
appears that, in practice if not in theory, the Catholic
understanding of Magisterium, including infallibility, results
in the Roman Catholic Church standing in judgment over
Scripture, instead of vice versa. Catholics, in turn, teach
that the Magisterium exercised by the successors of the
apostles—which they believe is intended by Christ, is guided
by the Holy Spirit, and is in clear continuity with the
orthodox tradition—enables the Church to explicate the truth
of Holy Scripture obediently and accurately. We both recognize
that judgments must be made in the life of Christ’s Church as
to what is and what is not scriptural truth. We are not agreed
on how such judgments are to be made, nor can either group
accept all the decisions that have resulted from what they
regard as a flawed way of deciding.
Among the Catholic teachings that Evangelicals believe are
not biblically warranted are the eucharistic sacrifice and
transubstantiation of the elements, the doctrine of purgatory,
the immaculate conception and bodily assumption of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, and the claimed authority of the Magisterium,
including papal infallibility. Catholics, on the other hand,
believe that Evangelicals are deficient in their understanding
of, for instance, apostolically ordered ministry, the number
and nature of the sacraments, the company and intercession of
the saints, the Spirit-guided development of doctrine, and the
continuing ministry of the Petrine office in the life of the
Church. On these and other questions of great importance, we
are not agreed. Nor do we agree on how we view our
differences. Catholics view Evangelicalism as an ecclesially
deficient community that needs to be strengthened by the full
complement of gifts that they believe Christ intends for his
Church. Evangelicals see Catholicism as centering upon an idea
of the Church that clouds the New Testament gospel, and so
needs to be brought into greater conformity with biblical
teaching. The contrast here is far-reaching, and goes
deep.
ýAt the same time, we recognize that, during the past five
hundred years, the Holy Spirit, the Supreme Magisterium of
God, has been faithfully at work among theologians and
exegetes in both Catholic and Evangelical communities,
bringing to light and enriching our understanding of important
biblical truths in such matters as individual spiritual growth
and development, the mission of Christ’s Church, Christian
worldview thinking, and moral and social issues in today’s
world. We praise God for His faithful work within each
community as He has provided instruction and guidance in these
and other important areas of Christian faith and life.
As Evangelicals and Catholics we are agreed on what we have
said together in the statement “The Gift of Salvation” and on
what we have been able to say together in the present
statement on Scripture and tradition. The theological
disagreements that still separate us are serious and require
prayerful reflection and sustained mutual engagement. But in
the face of a society marked by unbelieving ideologies and the
culture of death, we deem it all the more important to affirm
together those foundational truths of historic Christian
orthodoxy that we do hold in common.
We are confident that the Lord is watching over His gospel
and over those who have been called by the gospel, and we are
sure that the forces of hell will not be able to thwart His
divine purpose. By God’s grace, we will continue to pray for
one another, to seek greater mutual understanding in
continuing conversations, and, in accordance with our deeply
held convictions, to work together to bring the love and light
of Christ to all persons everywhere. We earnestly invoke the
Holy Spirit’s continuing guidance in further establishing and
making manifest our unity in the truth of Jesus Christ, so
that the world may come to believe (John 17:21). In union with
our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we together pray, “Sanctify
us in the truth; Your word is truth” (John 17:17).
Evangelical Protestants
Dr. Harold O. J. Brown Reformed Theological Seminary
Mr. Charles Colson Prison Fellowship
Dr. Timothy George Beeson Divinity School
Dr. Kent R. Hill Eastern Nazarene College
Dr. Frank A. James Reformed Theological Seminary
Dr. Cheryl Bridges Johns Church of God School of
Theology
Dr. T. M. Moore Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church
Dr. Thomas Oden Drew University
Dr. James J. I. Packer Regent College, British
Columbia
Dr. Timothy R. Phillips Wheaton Graduate School of
Theology
Dr. John Woodbridge Trinity Evangelical Divinity
School
Roman Catholics
Dr. James J. Buckley Loyola College of Maryland
Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J. Fordham University
Father Thomas Guarino Seton Hall University
Father Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J. Fordham University
Father Francis Martin John Paul II Institute for Studies
on Marriage and Family
Father Richard John Neuhaus Institute on Religion and
Public Life
Father Edward T. Oakes, S.J. Regis University
Dr. Robert Louis Wilken University of Virginia

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