Resting in Changelessness

Anyone who earnestly desires both right knowledge of and right relationship with the Lord will confront the questions of where the truth about him and his will for the world is to be found, and whether that truth is universal – that is, stable in every place and time. The answers to these questions are rooted in who God is and how he has chosen to reveal himself to us.

Proper Sourcing of Theological Truth 

A basic refutation of the Protestant idea of sola scriptura (that is, the idea that the Bible is to be the only source of theological principles) has become somewhat well known among Catholics. Namely, that the principle of sola scriptura itself is never stated in the Bible, and thus, by invoking it, one is already bringing in an extrabiblical rule of theology. If that were not enough, there is the reality that the Bible, written as it was by many hands, over many years, did not compile itself. Some sort of adjudication had to take place to determine what the Bible would consist of, and what writings would be excluded from it. Therefore, the very contents of the Bible point towards some additional, prior source of authority. 

Also, there is the practical inadequacy of sola scriptura to resolve many questions, since the Bible does not directly address every topic of universal human importance (such as the finer details of medical ethics), nor does it explicitly anticipate new developments in the world since it was written (such as, for instance, nuclear weapons, genetic science, and artificial intelligence). There are a significant number of questions about how best to approach matters such as these that are never answered within the pages of scripture. To be sure, there are biblical principles that can be applied in any case, but the right way to apply them is neither universally nor immediately evident, which can be seen by the lack of consensus among those who claim Christian identity, even on subjects of major importance. From this can be inferred the practical need of an authoritative interpreter and expounder of Holy Scripture who (or which) is living and ongoing, and can take up the work of answering questions as they come.

A Protestant might reply (not incorrectly) that this source of authority would, of course, be the Holy Spirit. What would remain is the question of how one knows what is the authentic prompting of the Holy Spirit, and the customary Protestant response of “by the Bible” would, in this case, produce a circular argument. So, then, the promptings of the Holy Spirit must be verifiable through the means of something more specific.

Conveniently, the Bible does contain hints pointing back to its antecedent authority. Most notably, there is 1 Timothy 3:15, which refers to “the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.” This states plainly that the Church – and not the Bible, which did not exist as such at the time those words were written – is the basic source of truth. This does not mean that anything in the Bible may be disregarded or contradicted because it is not itself the foundation of truth, but rather, that there can be other authoritative teachings that are not overtly spelled out in the Bible, and that the reason that the Bible is to be relied upon is that the Church has pronounced it worthy of that trust.

Having established that the Church is the general answer to the question of how to identify the authentic work of the Holy Spirit, the particular question remains of how the Church is to do this. In practice, even Protestants who profess sola scriptura often believe that they need the guidance of the Christian community, and perhaps more senior believers, such as a pastor or teacher of some sort, to reliably and consistently make sense of and apply biblical concepts. In a broad sense, this could seem to fulfill the logical necessity of the Church in knowing truth. However, as was referenced earlier, the contradictory conclusions that have been arrived at by those using this model of church authority indicate that this is inadequate. There is also the Eastern Orthodox and Anglican idea of conciliarity, which is much like applying the previously described model writ large across geography and time – making it rely on a wider concurrence of authorities. Even this, however, leaves questions of how to know whether a concurrence is wide enough – in particular, how to know if enough bishops are present at a council to make it universally binding, and how to know what is a sufficient margin of agreement to come to a decision. We are left with the necessity of having someone with whom the buck can stop (to paraphrase the old saying) – someone who can conclusively resolve questions as they arise, either directly or by ratifying the decision of others (such as a council). It is difficult to imagine how the Church could ever get very far into the mode of fulfilling the Great Commission of making disciples of all nations and teaching them to observe all that Christ commanded, if it were perpetually stuck in the mode of determining what, precisely, the commands of Christ consisted of (considering that we have no records of all of them, nor complete detail on the meaning and application of those we do have), and we would indeed be stuck in that mode if our Lord did not provide us a final arbiter. In short, if he did not give us someone with final jurisdiction over what the Church is to teach, he would not be entirely fulfilling his promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church (Matthew 16:18), because the Church would be severely hindered in fulfilling its mission.

The identity of this individual is the reasonable next question, and the answer can be inferred from the passage referenced directly above. Specifically, if the traditional claim that the person in question is the Apostle Peter, and his successors, the popes, were not true, then this would itself be evidence that the gates of hell had prevailed against the Church, since if the great majority of Christians throughout history had not and the great majority of current Christians have not correctly identified who this is, we would then be impeded on a vast scale from fulfilling accurately our entrusted task of teaching the faith, since we would be looking to the wrong source for decisions on questions about the faith. It is worth noting that the integrity of this argument does not either stand or fall based on the identity of the “rock” mentioned just before the passage in question, despite the volumes of ink that have been spilled over that issue.

Some have disputed the idea that a pope -- or a council of bishops -- could teach infallibly, on the basis that these are fallible, sinful men. However, these same people generally affirm in a different context that the Holy Spirit can enable fallible men to teach infallibly, because they affirm the inspiration and innerancy of Scripture, while acknowledging that it was written by ordinary, human authors. It can hardly be called inconsistent to affirm that the same God who performed the miracle of inspiring human authors in the writing of inerrant scripture could perform the same type of miracle of infallible teaching via fallible men on other occasions, and furthermore, it is also reasonable to assume he would do so, so that we could have clarity in the changing circumstances of every age.

Stability of Theological Truth

Because the Magisterium – the teaching authority of the Church, under the leadership of the Pope – can be used to address new topics and resolve new disputes as they arise, along with elucidating earlier Magisterial rulings, rather than being an unchanging collection like Holy Scripture is, there is a sense in which we can speak of changes in the teachings of the Church. However, when it comes to the highest levels of teaching, this change is in the sense of growth and enrichment, rather than retraction. It always has, in the words of St. John Henry Newman, “preservation of type” (An Essay on the Development of Doctrine, Ch. 5), which means that it stays of the same kind as before, just as a cat would not grow into a duck. This is not a matter of a lack of openness to being wrong; rather, it is a logically necessary conclusion, based on the nature of God. The reality that he is the uncaused cause of all things indicates that he is eternal and timeless, and thus, he is immutable – changeless. We are promised in Scripture that the Holy Spirit will “guide [the Apostles, and by extension, the Church] into all truth” (John 16:13). In combination with the knowledge that the Holy Spirit is God, this indicates that it would be impossible for teaching that came from the Holy Spirit to change in the sense of retraction, because that would mean God changing his mind about the truth of something, and if he is changeless, such a thing could not happen. To be sure, there are scriptural references to God changing his mind – in particular, in the form of commuting punishments –, but these can be readily understood as anthropomorphic figures of speech, because what – more precisely speaking – is happening in these cases is that God is providentially making (or allowing) a change in the progression of events within time, rather than undergoing a change within himself. 

If everything within the Church’s teaching were subject to the potential of future retraction, we would ultimately end up with the concept of an unstable God. As desirable as a fully malleable Magisterium might appear, in order that we might get out from under teachings that are difficult either to comprehend or to practice, I do not think that a God who was inconsistent would be a God any of us would want to serve or worship, for then he would be too much like us, which, in turn, would imperil our hope for redemption from our own worst tendencies. 

Conclusion

However, we can rejoice that he is not just like us – that he is immutable and always consistent, and not only that, but that through the structure of his Church, he has provided us a reliable means to come to know everything we need to understand about the permanent, enduring reality of who he is. Secure in that knowledge, we can make our own the prayer of the hymn “Abide With Me:”

Change and decay in all around I see;

O thou who changest not, abide with me.