GENERAL CONSENT OF THE LAITY AS THE PRINCIPLE OF LEGITIMACY
Three Conclusions on Why Historic Consensus Is Vital to Doctrinal Definition
I offer three conclusions drawn from all that we have been through. Each deserves a brief explanation of why we have been engaged in this effort. They are:
These conclusions are testable by any lay believer.
Consensual Teachings Are Readily Identifiable Textually
This summary of classic Christian teaching has sought to identify a viable consensus of what Christians have always believed. It is based on respected texts known to have continuous authority for the worshiping community. Even on points where multiple voices have competed for legitimacy, there has been a discernible consensus.
Through it all, Scripture has remained the primary source, ground, and criterion of Christian teaching. The consensual interpreters of Scripture we have examined in this exploration all have intended help the reader of scripture integrate its wisdom into a cohesive pattern of convictions. They do not intend to coerce belief, but to point to a believing community.
Those quoted have sought to communicate the scripture narrative as a whole as the saving Word of God. Skeptical or exotic interpreters who have presumed themselves to be the judges of the authenticity of canonical scripture have been far less pertinent to this study, since their views have not found consent generally in historic Christian teaching. These challenges may be clever but they are not proved to be always wise according to scripture as viewed by the ecumenical consensus.
What follows is a reflection for both lay and professional readers on how consensual Christian teaching has been formed and corroborated. My task is to plainly set forth the most common way that classic Christianity has sought to understand the integral wisdom of sacred scripture as a cohesive interpretation of Christian truth. This cohesion has often been called “systematic theology,” a discipline that functioned adequately before its exponents insisted that they could improve upon the classic tradition from stem to stern.
This epilogue is not meant only for professionals as a defense of this method or ploy to fashion a new method. Rather it is the oldest method in Christian reasoning. And it is a practical summary for lay Christians who want to examine the classic texts themselves for their truthfulness. This is for the laity who wonder how they might assess the extent to which spokespersons are faithfully representing Christian truth.
The Work of Listening: On Assessing Proximate Consensus
The first task has been to listen carefully to the ecumenical councils themselves. They mark the boundaries of the broadest and deepest ocean of Christian consensus. This is where contested questions on prophetic and apostolic testimony have been most thoroughly debated and for most settled biblically and consensually.
The second task has been listening to the decisions of those regional councils that have gained widest intergenerational consent.
Third, beyond these council decisions, we have been listening to those few most widely revered teachers who have through the most generations and widest variety of cultures been most commonly received as able to express accurately the mind of the believing church. While difficult, this task has not proved impossible.
Among these there are eight widely recognized “great doctors of the church” that rise to the top of anybody’s list—anybody, that is, who knows the original texts. They are the acknowledged master teachers of historic Christianity who have warranted the reputation of speaking reliably for classic Christianity: Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great.
These voices have been tested by laity for over fifteen hundred years of Christian worship and critical thought. If we are thinking sociologically of an example of a longitudinal study of the vetting extensive of an authoritative voice, there is none to match this extensive vetting process. It has been rigorous and selective for most of two millennia. That it has proven to be a reliable process is evident from the fact that it has been so frequently and ceaselessly been relied upon.
These are the voices that are featured here most often. These writers are highly accessible. Much of their work has been adequately translated into dozens of languages.
In addition to these eight doctors of the church, we have been listening to those consensual interpreters of scripture who have shown relatively more cultural openness, more awareness of the varied interpretations of scripture text configurations in different cultural-historical situations (notably, Clement, Origen, Eusebius, Lactantius, Ephrem, Cyril of Alexandria, John of Damascus and others). These we commonly valued among the classic exegetes. As a result, we have witnessed the enormous cultural flexibility and variability of classical Christian teaching. We have beheld the unique ability of orthodoxy to enter into various cultural settings and speak in different languages without losing its apostolic identity.
These consensual exegetes have only formative, not normative value. They themselves never cease to remind their readers that scripture is to be received as normative authority, and that the consensual tradition of exegesis derives from scripture. The salient question has been throughout: “what does the text of canonical scripture actually say?” The consensual exegetes have no reason to pit tradition against scripture, as we so often do in the modern period. Rather their work is invariably offered as servants of the truth declared in scripture.
The Irenic Intent
Classic Christianity has the peacemaking intent of uniting the body of Christ in the truth of Christian teaching. This unity is truth-driven. Its passion is always conciliatory, unless it is asked to distort the whole scriptural narrative. The task of the consensus bearer is modest and humbling: Just keep your own opinions and preferences in the background. Listen for consensus that lasts intergenerationally.
The aim of consensus-bearing is to state the widest agreement possible that derives strictly from the voices of the apostolic tradition in their beautiful two millennia of varieties—East-West, African-Asian, Roman and Antiochene and Genevan—of cultural experience, exegesis, and pastoral care.
The Danger of Hypertolerance
The irenic task is best accompanied by a realistic, calm, reasoned critical effort—a discerning spirit, a constant vigilance for recognizing points at which faith is misshapen, where false teachers, “feigning faith,” offer “something like a deadly drug” steeped in “honeyed wine” (Ignatius, Trallians 6). These drugs are rampant in religious communities desperate to accommodate to popular cultural assumptions.
A no-boundaries absolute toleration advocate could not expect to be taken seriously by lay Christian consent over any long term. When classic Christian teaching loses the capacity to discern the difference between false and true teaching (between orthodoxy and aberations), it looses its credibility with the worshiping community. Those who too quickly concede an implicit orthodox intent for any and all the historic heresies, whether Arian, Pelagian, atheist or Epicurean, have forfeited their ability to speak for classic Christian truth.
Unblemished and polluted fish are caught in the same net in the call to decision. As long as the church remains a corpus mixtum, we will find persons who come to church, partake of its sacraments, hear its word, and even are paid salaries to provide its leadership, being duly ordained to preach its word and administer its baptism and communion, who yet have not learned its most simple and widely received consensual teachings, such as triunity, incarnation, atonement, resurrection, and the indwelling of the Spirit. Thus it behooves those committed to the apostolic faith to remain attentive to where the true word is being made false by twisted interpretations, however well intended (Hippolytus, Refutation of All Her.; Simon Patrick, A Brief Account of the New Sect of Latitudinarians). Given the persistence of human self-deception, the faithful are seldom surprised to find heresy mixed inconspicuously with orthodoxy, false with true teaching side by side in the same pew singing the same hymns. This makes the irenic and critical tasks all the more urgent and imperative.
Core Consensual Teachers
Those teachers who deserve our closest attention are those who have been most widely recognized over long periods of time. They have proven to be able wisely to grasp the truth of Christian teaching for many different generations. They have been most attentive to the Spirit’s address through the written word of the sacred texts. They best represent the broadest consent of the Christian laity of all times and cultures. This is why we have listened most often to these eight designated voices most widely received by the whole church for the longest period of time as consensual interpreters of the apostles—persons with well-known names and recognized gifts—the four great doctors of the East: Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Chrysostom; and of the West: Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great.
There are many others that are cited as reliable consensual teachers, but these eight are known to seldom lead one astray. Known to whom? Twenty centuries of believers of all continents. Hence they are remembered everywhere as useful and truthful teachers of classic Christianity. What I have found is what so many others have found: these eight are with few exceptions consensually reliable clarifiers of the mind of the believing church.
That does not mean that the “eight great” never made mistakes or misjudgments. One may occasionally find in Augustine an idea that has not been consensually received, such as the fixed number of the elect or a traducian view of the transmission of the human soul by parents to children. At times one may find in these eight a testy spirit, such as in Athanasius and Jerome, to whom we owe so much even amid their testiness. But the history of lay consent is more indebted to these eight exegetes than any since the apostles. All assumed those prior church council decisions that have been repeatedly accepted as received teaching concerning the truth of God’s revelation. The extensive tradition of recognition of these and several other figures established itself early through conciliar decisions themselves. By AD 495, the Gelasian decretal universally commended as consensual teaching not only the canons of Nicaea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon “to be received after those of the Old or New Testament, which we regularly accept…. and in the same way the works of Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil, Athanasius, Chrysostom, Theophilus, Cyril of Alexandria, Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome and Prosper. Also the epistle of the blessed Leo” and “the decretal epistles” (SCD 165). That early list included all the then extant ecumenical councils and the great doctors of the church, plus several others whom we have most quoted often.
Vincent of Lérins noted that the Council of Ephesus (AD 431) had specifically cited as ecumenically reliable witnesses the four leading bishops of Alexandria: Peter, Athanasius, Theophilus, and Cyril, plus the “stars of Cappadocia”—Basil, and the two Gregorys (Nazianzus and Nyssa), and among Western bishops Cyprian, Felix I, Julius I, and Ambrose (Comm. 30). Amid doctrinal challenges, the faithful were to be fortified by “the public reading aloud of quotations from the Fathers” such as Athanasius, Theophilus, and Cyril. “Let the standard of antiquity be maintained throughout” (Leo, Letters 129). It is no secret. The church knows the voices of those who are her greatest teachers of the sacred text over the longest period of time.
The fifth ecumenical council (Constantinople II, AD 553) determined to “hold fast to the decrees of the four councils, and in every way follow the holy Fathers, Athanasius, Hilary, Basil, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, Theophilus, Chrysostom of Constantinople, Cyril, Augustine, Proclus, Leo and the writings on the true faith.” These are among the teachers most often referenced in orthodox teaching. “The Church is taught indeed by the Life-giving Spirit, but through the medium of the holy Fathers and Doctors whose rule is acknowledged to be the Holy and Oecumenical Synods” (Conf. of Dositheus 12).
Testing Consensuality
Their own firmest intention is neglected when their own creativity or imagination is preferred to the revealed word of sacred scripture. What characterized them all was steady attentiveness to the written word. Many of the core consensual teachers had memorized large portions of scripture (notably Didymus the Blind, Jerome, Augustine and Cyril of Alexandria). When Augustine is preferred to Paul, Augustine himself is being abused.
I have personally tested these voices again and again, sometimes against each other and more often with each other. This has required years of study and comparative analysis. There is no other way to make such a test. Those who doubt that such a consensus can exist must go through something like this lengthy learning process before an informed judgment can be made.
Legitimate authority needs to be tested repeatedly to retain its legitimacy. It is always proper to ask the toughest questions to presumed authorities. But when these voices repeatedly radiate the spirit that comes from the center of the worshiping community, the faithful learn anew to trust them on most points and become surprised only when they occasionally misstep, as they sometimes do (and when they do, they are assessed by the wider consensus).
Each of these consensual teachers understood themselves to be strongly guided by the previous prevailing ecumenical consensus. They assumed that the Spirit was guiding the church into all truth (John 16:13; Didymus the Blind, On the Holy Spirit 22). Such guidance was occurring not merely individualistically, immediately, privately, or directly, but rather through the media of the written word and the consensual teaching tradition, reasonably assessed, corporately celebrated, and experientially tested (Augustine, Tractates on John 96.4).
I do not ask readers to trust me on my own authority, but rather on the plausible wisdom found in scripture tested by centuries of consensus. Constantly assess the alleged consensual judgments reported here by means of the whole narrative of scripture. There may be some readers who will trust me less if I trust sacred texts of any kind. That is called intolerance. Regarding them, I pray that they will listen to the arguments carefully and assess them fairly and reasonably. I am willing to see these arguments tested according to conscience and reason and common sense. Arguments from scripture cannot be tested if the sacred text is already presupposed to be of no avail.
Am I forever fallible in my studied judgment of this supposed consensuality? Of course. This is precisely why I have written this book: I am asking my reader to test my own fallibility. I solicit your admonition as to where I may have misperceived the gist of the broadest classic consensus. I hope others will admonish me to see more clearly where my own cultural assumptions or historical myopias or class biases may have misguided me.
We need each other to balance and amend private judgment, hoping that those to whom are given the treasured guardianship tasks of teaching and testimony in the church do not lead the church astray. The punitive promises here are tough on offenders. Those who fail to be specific in undertaking this admonition, who too readily dismiss consensual teaching, tend to rule themselves out of the arena of trustability within the believing community.
Systematic theology began in the tradition of the catena, the stringing of chains of authoritative comments of the most widely consensual early Christian writers on a given theme or text. The earliest forms of systematic theology were tested by their correspondence to the ecumenical consensus.
Regrettably the steady preoccupation of modern historical theology has instead focused on how Christian teaching has constantly been modifying, always shifting, rather than the many ways it has remained stable and centered. Hence much more is known by modern historians of the alternatives to consensus than of the continuities within those developments. A huge literature exists on the varieties of competitive Christian teachings, and a very small literature on centrist orthodox consent.
The Unity Sought in Christian Teaching
I want to speak primarily of the deep continuities embracing apostolic Christian teaching of all periods and cultures. Consensual teaching is less about how Christian teaching has changed than how it has steadily remained the same. To fail to search for that which unifies the variety is just as egregious an error as to fail to acknowledge differences within the developing traditions. By the many references in the embedded notes I have tried to show that a core unity is actually there textually and not merely an imagined projection. Each one of the references remains open to challenge as to its context and alleged consensuality.
The unity of classic Christian teaching is not that of any one teacher’s invention. It is the unity known at the Lord’s Table. It is the unity shared in baptism, the unity embodied by those who receive exceedingly varied gifts of the one Spirit. This unity is being made visible in fragmented ways, and refracted in beautiful multicolored forms and cultures, through brilliant examples of consensual definition of Christian teaching of all ages. Baptized into this one baptism, confessing one faith in the one Lord, these attestors are being brought into one company of the faithful of all ages to confess the apostolic faith and to break the one bread (Eph. 4:3–5).
To summarize my first conclusion: The texts documenting the classic consensus are accessible, well known, and exhaustively vetted for orthodoxy. Classic Christian teaching prefers to reference only those texts most obviously consensual and least subject to quibbling as to their orthodoxy, and most pertinent to the subject being discussed. This implies a respectful resistance to texts that do not meet the criteria of consensuality and orthodoxy. This especially requires listening carefully to the councils, ecumenical and regional, then to the great doctors of the church, and finally to the key teachers that have survived many centuries of the vetting process. This is what we have done.
Consensual Authority Is Grounded in General Lay Consent
The jury is the faithful laity over the whole two-millennia stretch of the time of the church. The jury is the communion of saints.
The principle of general lay consent does not ignore or circumvent cultural differences. Rather it celebrates those differences and the unity of the body of Christ that embraces them.
The Apostolic Consensus in the First Generation
The apostles themselves had a fully formed and sufficient vision of the Lord’s teaching. But that did not prevent Peter and Paul from earnest debate on Jewish legal practices which led directly to a further refined consensus. There were tensions of culture and language between the proclamations of Mark and John and between James and Paul that have required all subsequent adherents of apostolic teaching to search for their common ground. But were these styles constitutive of fundamental doctrinal differences? The apostles were firmly convinced that the Spirit was leading them into a common faith, not divergent doctrines (John 17:20–26; Cyprian, The Lord’s Prayer 30; Simon Patrick, A Discourse About Tradition, 1683).
It was not the unique or peculiar features of any one apostle’s teaching—such as the justification teaching of Paul or the logos Christology of John—that defined the consensus, but rather the consensus emerged out of the Spirit-led recollections of the eyewitness apostles as their teachings were embraced in a convergence. Apostolic consensus did not develop out of a democratic groupthink process groping after the best available humanistic solutions to problems or feelings. Rather it lived out of the worshiping community that wholeheartedly consented to the Lord’s teaching under the guidance of the Spirit.
By the end of the first century there was a remarkably unified consensual testimony to God’s saving activity based upon the leading apostolic witness (Peter, Paul, and the four Gospel writers). Key points commonly shared by second-century interpreters of the apostolic teaching were summarized by C.H. Dodd:
the Old Testament canon was essential to the interpretation of the New;
the words of Christ were accurately recalled by the Apostles by the power of the Spirit and had binding authority;
faith was attached to the Son, who being of the very nature of God, became flesh, sharing our human condition even unto death, was raised from the dead and ascended into heaven to intercede for sinners in the presence of the Father;
the indwelling Spirit was enabling the mission of the Son, distributing gifts for the upbuilding of the community of faith;
and the Son would come again in the last days.
(CC; COC 2; Dodd, The Apostolic Teaching and Its Developments)
The Primitive Rule of Faith
By the end of the first century the baptismal formula (Matt. 28:19b) was taken to be an established summary of the essence of faith (Ignatius, Philadelphians 7–9, Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 3.17). It drew together common points of consent in a brief way that could be memorized and confessed from the heart by any believer. By this simple confession the mass of material in sacred scripture was by common assent tightened, unified, its complexity organized, and reliably transmitted.
The Apostles’ Creed is the western form of the received text of the consensual memory of the earliest baptismal confession, which developed as a summary exposition of the baptismal formula of Matthew 28:19 (Didache 7.1; Justin Martyr, Apology 1.61). Irenaeus regarded the rule of faith as the “canon of truth which he received in his baptism” (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 1.9.4; 1.10:1; Tertullian, On Baptism 11; Prescription Ag. Her. 14; Clement of Alex., Stromata 8.15; Cyprian, Epistles 69.7; 70.2).
As early as Ignatius (Magnesians 11; Eph. 7; Trallians 9) and Justin (Apology 1.13, 31, 46; Dialogue with Trypho 85), and even earlier in Matthew and Paul, there is a fixed formula for baptismal confession. By the middle of the second century a fixed form of the rule of faith or creed appears to have been in use at Rome. The twelve spare phrases of the Old Roman Symbol appear to be direct descendants of the easily memorizable original baptismal confession that derives from the earliest Pauline and Petrine decades of the Roman church. The Old Roman Symbol, whose earliest extant text is that of Marcellus (AD 337), understood itself to be apostolic in origin and already for many generations (perhaps two and a half centuries) received as such by general consent, hence antedating Marcellus by faithful memory that harks back through ten momentous generations stretching back toward Peter and Paul. If something might have been slightly misremembered, it seems unlikely that it would have been the concise strictly memorized baptismal formula assumed to be the core of the apostolic tradition, the central rule of faith.
The burden of proof reasonably remains on the shoulders of critics who imagine that vast or substantive changes occurred in the baptismal formula. They have the duty of offering plausible reasons why such changes would have been so necessary as to revise the revered apostolic teaching (Hippolytus, The Apostolic Tradition; Tertullian, Prescription Ag. Her. 12–23). Such arguments have not been forthcoming.
The Conciliar Tradition of General Consent to the Rule of Faith
Though a competitive apocryphal literature later emerged, it was thought especially heinous to lie about the authorship of pseudoapostolic writings such as in the case of The Gospel of Thomas, or pretend that they were actually written by the apostles (Council of Braga II, SCD 245; Duns Scotus, Sentences, Prologue Q1.6 ff.; Q2.14). The original apostolic testimony was ecumenically considered to have been reliably delivered through the guidance of the Spirit to the church and consensually received as true, and sufficient for salvation (Second Antiochean Formula; Creed of the 150 Fathers, Orthodox Confession of 1643; Conf. of Dositheus, 2).
It is this baptismal rule of faith that was constantly referred to as the standard by which other questions were clarified by the ecumenical councils. The Creed of Caesarea of AD 325 showed that the faith confessed then was regarded as the same as that of the apostles, since it concluded with the striking assertion that “we have thought all this in heart and soul ever since we knew ourselves, and we now so think and speak in truth, being able to show by evidence and to convince you that we in past times so believed and preached accordingly” (Eusebius, in Socrates, CH 1.8, italics added). By AD 431 it was consensually defined that no one within orthodox teaching has acquired the right “to declare or at any rate to compose or devise a faith other than [heteran] that defined by the holy fathers who with the Holy Spirit came together at Nicaea” (Ecumenical Council, Ephesus, SCD 125). All of these variants referred to the same essential triune confession embedded in Matthew 28:19. On this point of continuity, media favorites like John Dominic Crossan and Marvin Meyer and Bart D. Ehrman have tendentiously represented the formation of orthodoxy to millions.
Seven ancient ecumenical councils are generally recognized by Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and most Protestant traditions as representing the mind of the believing church: Nicaea, AD 325; Constantinople I, 381; Ephesus, 431; Chalcedon, 451; Constantinople II, 553; Constantinople III, 680–681; Nicaea II, 787. In addition to these seven the Western medieval consensual tradition regarded as ecumenical five Lateran councils (1123, 1139, 1179, 1215, 1512–17), Lyons I and II (1245, 1274), Vienne (1311–12), Constance (1414–18), and Ferrara-Florence (1438–39), and the post-Reformation Roman tradition recognizes Trent (1545–63), Vatican I (1870), and Vatican II (1962–66). Coptic, Syriac, and Armenian traditions recognize the first three.
With few exceptions believers today agree: “If it be asked who is to decide whether the decrees of a Council can be proved from Scripture, we can only reply that this is for the whole Church, clergy and laity, throughout the world, to decide; and that in the case of the first six Councils, the whole Church has decided.
The Ecumenical Council’s Authority Grounded in General Lay Consent
The authority of the ecumenical councils is grounded in general lay consent under the guidance of the Spirit based on the written word. What makes the general councils reliable is the presence of the Holy Spirit assisting in the interpretation of the apostolic witness.
The ecumenical council that gathered at Chalcedon declared its intention to “make no new exposition” but merely to take away all ambiguity by the consent of the whole church in a “united exposition and doctrine.” “This is the orthodox faith; this we all believe; into this we were baptized, into this we baptize,” (Chalcedon, Session 2, italics added; this formula was widely received in both eastern and western traditions). The councils were pledged to “not move an ancient boundary stone set up by forefathers” (Prov. 22:28). For it was not merely human ingenuity that spoke in the councils but “the Spirit himself of God” confirmed by general lay consent (Ecumenical Councils, Ephesus, Letter of Cyril to John of Antioch).
Since the ancient ecumenical councils were “constituted by universal consent, one who rejects them does not overthrow them but himself” (Gregory I, Letters 1.25, italics added). At the time of Gregory’s writing, there had been only four synods of general lay consent, which he summarized so concisely that it has become a standard formula: “The Nicene, in which Arius, the Constantinopolitan, in which Macedonius, the First Ephesian, in which Nestorius, and the Chalcedonian, in which Eutyches and Dioscorus, were condemned” (Gregory I, Letters 4.28).
How the Patristic Conciliar Tradition Was Received in the Reformation
This tradition of general lay consent continued and was received in the Reformation by the repeated acceptance of the three creeds (Apostles’, Nicene, and Athanasian [Quicunque vult]) as evidenced in the Augsburg Apology, the Smalcald Articles, Melanchthon’s Thesis of 1551 (The Three Chief Symbols, BOC: 17–23, and the Thirty-nine Articles). “The three creeds, Nicene Creed, Athanasian Creed, and that which is commonly called the Apostles’ Creed, ought thoroughly to be received and believed; for they may be proved by most certain warrants of holy scripture” (Thirty-nine Articles 3).
Melanchthon followed the earlier Reformers in arguing that Protestant teaching was grounded in a genuinely “Catholic association, which embraces the common consensus of prophetic and apostolic doctrine, together with the belief of the true church. Thus in our Confession we profess to embrace the whole doctrine of the word of God, to which the church bears testimony, and that in the sense which the symbols show” (CR 24.398, italics added). He condemned as novel whatever might clash with the most ancient consensual symbols of the church (symbola accepta; Loci, LCC 19.19–20).
The Whole Laity Through Extensive Time Is the Consenting Community
When a consensual council or regional synod seeks to clarify or better articulate the faith once for all delivered to the saints, in effect it is proposing an interpretation to the remembering church and humbly asking the church of subsequent generations for steady confirmation of that interpretation, not as if it were new, but on the assumption that it is apostolic.
A local or regional body may contribute to the attempt to define the larger consensual ecumenical teaching, but not without the subsequent intergenerational consent of the whole church.
Yet no one should assume that absolute unanimity is required for ecumenical consent; otherwise no question would ever be closed, and a single heretic or tiny cadre of objectors would be an absolute obstacle to ecumenical teaching and unity in Christ.
Some symbols have been so widely and repeatedly reaffirmed (such as the Apostles’, Nicene, and Quicunque Creeds) that they have gained renowned prestige as truly expressing the mind of the believing church for all times and places. They cannot be overturned by an alleged future consensus without a radical denial of the faith of ancient Christianity and an absurd claim that the ancient church was irreversibly apostate.
The spiritually well-formed Christian believer does not act without the consent of the community of faith. Nothing is done on private cognizance or autonomous judgment. Cyprian promised “to do nothing on my own private opinion, without your advice and without the consent of the people” (Cyprian, Epistle 4, 5). The supervising guardians of the church (episkopoi) were pledged not to “do anything without the consent of all” (Apostolic Canons 34, Synod of Trullo, italics added; cf. Council of Constance).
The Laity as Jury
The check against the abuse of councils is the laity. The whole laity (not theologians or bishops alone) remain in effect the jury for the councils. Their verdict may take decades or even centuries to render and reaffirm.
The assessment of this ministry of the Spirit, says Paul, must “not use deception,” nor “distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God” (2 Cor. 4:2, 3, italics added). This Pauline appeal to conscience lies “open unto all that they may test our actions” (Chrysostom, Hom. on 2 Cor. 8). “By doing all things in the light, we become the light itself, so that it ‘shines’ before others, which is the particular quality of light” (Gregory of Nyssa, On Perfection, FC 58:103).
The “subsequent consent” of the church reserves for the whole body of Christ the right and duty critically to review a controverted Christian teaching as to its apostolicity. If the freedom of the church to criticize is limited, the Spirit grieves. A modern council claiming to be ecumenical must stand under this critical judgment. This is why no teaching is catholic unless at the same time apostolic.
The second conclusion in summary: consensual authority is grounded in general lay consent to apostolic teaching. The apostles themselves had a fully formed and sufficient vision of the Lord’s teaching. They were not in continuing competitive disagreement on the core of Christian teaching. Their shared encounter with Jesus drew them toward unity of witness from the outset. From this was derived the primitive rule of faith that was aptly summarized in the baptismal confession. The authority of the ecumenical councils is grounded in general lay consent under the guidance of the Spirit based on the written word. The tradition of general lay consent established in the patristic period continued and was largely received in the confessional and liturgical practices of the Reformation. The check against the abuse of councils is the whole laity over the whole of time. They remain in effect the jury for the councils, even if their decisions may have taken decades or even centuries to become ecumenically confirmed. This is the democratic and populist aspect of the formation of classic Christian teaching.
Consensus Clarification Is Feasible
Consensus is not intrinsically unattainable, because it has a long history of being attained. The records of that history are found in the texts of the councils and consensual teachers. Though neglected, consensus clarification is entirely feasible, but more accurately recognized only within long time frames. Classic Christian teaching appeals to consensual exegesis.
Consensus Is Recognized Only Within Long Time Frames
The apostolic teaching does not change with time. It is a fixed canon. No one adds or subtracts from it (Rev. 22:18–19). Jesus Christ is “the same yesterday, today, and forever.” So “Do not be led away by divers and strange teachings” (Heb. 13:8). The deposit is rock hard, like Peter (petros, the Rock), who was called to guard apostolic teaching.
The risen Lord who is always the same meets us within changing time. It is not he who time changes, but he who changes time.
The laity is stretched out over twenty centuries and is still growing. It seems at first glance that this longevity encompasses too many cultures to pretend that there is any viable consensus among believers. But this is the unmistakable miracle: there is a consensus. It can only seen through large portions of time. So those who see only small hunks of time, like the present, are likely to miss it altogether. It is a picture that can only be seen through a wide-frame historical lens.
Meanwhile general consensus is often misunderstood as absolute unanimity. Whatever occurs in history is imperfect. The church occurs in history, so its consent is always imperfect. Perfectionistic views of absolute consensus always fail to grasp the need for daily repentance. Exaggerated hopes prevent the recognition of roughhewn durable forms of working consensus that have been articulated repeatedly and lived out culturally.
These consensual achievements are known because they have a conspicuous textual history of authority in the worshiping community. Consensus is already a fact. What we have not adequately explained is why that fact is so persistent, yet so ignored by historians. It is a datum hard to see if you have blinders on or glasses that filter out the brilliance of its radiance.
Lay Consent a Protestant Principle
The principle of general lay consent is firmly embedded in the confessions of the Protestant Reformation. According to the Augsburg Confession, “nothing is taught in our churches concerning articles of faith that is contrary to the Holy Scriptures or what is common to the Christian church” (CC: 79). Augsburg cautioned against ecclesial burdens “introduced contrary to the custom of the universal Christian church” (Augsburg, BOC: 105, italics added).
The objection of the Reformers to medieval Catholicism was not that it had grown too old, but that it was much too new and mistakenly innovative. It had invented “an unprecedented novelty” in relation to apostolic testimony. Sadly, the novelty was introduced precisely through leaders appointed to guard the tradition, who “under pretext of the power given them by Christ, have not only introduced new forms of worship and burdened consciences with reserved cases and violent use of the ban, but have also presumed to set up and depose kings” (Augsburg Conf., CC: 98).
The congregational tradition more directly assumed a due process of lay consent that is entered into “not only expressly by word of mouth, but by sacrifice; by hand writing, and seal; and also sometimes by silent consent, without any writing, or expression of words at all” (Cambridge Platform, CC 391).
Ecumenical consent is intrinsically multigenerational. That differs from the modern notions of experiential consent stemming from Schleiermacher, where consent depends primarily upon contemporary feelings of individuals. This tends to block out reasoned voices of the past generations. Classic Christian consent runs at times against the streams of both pietistic and liberal theology, both of which are in search of a contemporary constructive theology on the basis either of personal experience or social context.
The Apostolic Faith Does Not Change Through Time
The notion finally must be rejected that there is a substantive change of Christian teaching through time by which the apostolic teaching changes from one meaning to an entirely different meaning contradictory to that offered by the apostles. The church remains guardian of the Word made flesh in Jesus Christ as handed down to each succeeding generation with the same sense and meaning throughout the apostolic tradition, beheld through its movement into and through varied cultural experiences.
The work of the Spirit through changing history has brought the church to a more complete perception of the truth of the gospel. But this does not change the truth being perceived. The gains of one generation can be lost by the neglect of another. The principle of lay consent hinges not on the consent of a single generation but the general consent of all generations of Christian laity of all times and place.
Greater light may yet be shed by the written word upon present and future generations, but the light shed will come from the gospel, not so as to revise its truth. Clearer conceptions of its truth are always possible. But the light and truth that will thereby come will not be shining directly from the historical situation but from the truth of the revealed Word. The revealed Word is itself the crucial event to be investigated (Cyril of Alex, On the Incarnation 709; Easter Homily 1.6). The event concerns a person, truly human, truly God. That Word does not change or improve.
Meanwhile the ancient Adversary is always appearing as an angel of light, seeming to bear the truth while advancing human illusions. The true faith is “defended with the best results, when a false opinion is condemned even by those who have followed it” (Tome of Leo). This means: Those who have come through and beyond the temptations of the heterodoxies are those best able to defend against them. Paul, Cyprian, Jerome, and Augustine are examples.
Paul instructed Timothy to guard what had been committed to him (1 Tim. 6:20). Vincent commented that Christian teaching consists in “what you have received, not what you have thought up; a matter not of ingenuity, but of doctrine; not of private acquisition, but of public Tradition; a matter brought to you, not put forth by you, in which you must be not the author but the guardian, not the founder but the sharer, not the leader, but the follower.” The ekklēsia is not seeking to discover a new word for each culture but proclaim the truth of the most primitive gospel ever anew, so that “by your expounding it, may that now be understood more clearly which formerly was believed even in its obscurity” (Vincent of Lérins, Comm. 22.27). It is tampering with the evidence to pretend to improve upon apostolic testimony itself, although our perceptions of the apostolic witness may improve or worsen.
This does not imply that there can be no progress in church teaching. Vincent argued that there is progress, but true progress is not change. True progress is an advance in understanding of that which has been given fully in the deposit of faith (Comm., 23.28).
The great doctors of the church stood as daily overseers of the church’s liturgy and pastoral care and preaching at a particularly crucial time of its early formation—just after the martyr church had winnowed away much dross. We listen to them because the more we know scripture, we realize that they understood how the consenting community reads and compares the interconnected sense of the varied texts of scripture.
The Spirit is Quietly Helping the Formation of General Ecumenical Consent
The classic exegetes view the Spirit as working within the process of the recollection, accurate transmission, and fit interpretation of scripture, not above it. The Spirit does not abandon each reader to his own private self-assertive preference or egocentric interpretation. Scripture is read with prayer for illumination and humility.
This is fairly analogous to the method of science, in which the general consent of the community of experimenters is more reliable than the particular judgment of one experimenter. Similarly in democratic theory, the consensus of the body politic is less likely to be tilted, hence closer to truth, accuracy, and consistency, than is individual or autocratic leadership (Vincent of Lérins, Comm. 27–33).
Some cannot get it out of their minds that the appeal to consensus seems like merely an abandonment of truth claims. Consensus formation seems like “just counting votes.” What if a bad candidate is elected? Sadly, many bad doctrinal candidates have been elected for short periods of time. But in longer time frames the winnowing process has shown the weaknesses of the bad candidates, and given a new opportunity for the worshiping community to do better.
The consensus sought is not an agreement of human voices on God. It is a work of the Spirit creating the unity of the body of Christ. The Spirit and the written word are constantly resisting ill effects which may be left as residues of unwise teachers. Admittedly some periods of church history have adhered inordinately to temporarily imbalanced views. Yet such imbalances are in the long run always being constantly tested by general lay consent.
How the Holy Spirit Has Used and Constructively Transmuted Heterodoxies
The problem of heresy is precisely this: the testimony of scripture may be skewed by the sophistries of human wisdom and the deceptiveness of sin. If there is no corrective effort accurately to identify the apostolic witness as classically and consensually interpreted, then any person on any day might presume to be tempted to hold entirely different and even contradictory senses of scripture as true.
Within the orthodox consensus it was remembered with gratitude that the Holy Spirit has a cheerful history of working through and beyond heterodoxies to clarify consensual teaching. This is why heresy should be studied as carefully as orthodoxy. Classic Christian teaching cannot be studied without the examination of heresy. In order to answer heterodoxy, orthodoxy must read their texts, understand them, study them more carefully and critically than do the advocates of heterodoxy themselves.
Some who falsely claim to have a right to the apostolic witness while distorting it must be answered patiently and confidently. They can be shown how they themselves may have undermined that very right (Tertullian, Prescription Ag. Her. 19–32).
It is the nature of heresy to exaggerate some ancillary aspect of the truth into false proportion so as to neglect the appropriate balance of apostolic teaching. Hence there is by definition always some fragment of truth even in the most noxious heresies. Heretics are not beyond the range of providence. But to become tolerant of these imbalances is imprudent.
The African and Asian Contributions to Pre-European Christianity
To say that everyone equally lacks sufficient experience to search for irenic ecumenical wisdom may become an excuse to evade the task altogether. I am a male trying to write for both women and men in the faith, a North American attempting to articulate a consensus of Christian teaching that accurately embraces believers of all continents, races, classes, and nations. I would cease being catholic and evangelical if that were not my aim. That calls for genuine, not false, humility.
That means that I have been called to listen all the more empathically for the lost accents, trying especially to hear the neglected and silenced voices of the Christian past and present. If I wrote an alleged compendium of classic Christianity without listening to Phoebe Palmer or Sister Macrina or Clare of Assisi or Teresa of Avila, I would be more likely to mislead than if I had listened to them as carefully as I actually have over many years. So with the great African tradition of Christian teaching from the Markan tradition to Origen and Cyprian through Athanasius and Augustine. So with the great early Eastern tradition from Polycarp to John of Damascus.
The classic Christian consensus would have been immeasurably impoverished without very early and very influential African and Asian voices. From my own self-perception, I feel myself to be a tough minded critic of my own Euro-American culture based on the ground of values that I have learned from Africans and Asians that predate the West. The durable consensus is far more indebted to classic African and Asian texts of the first millennium than to later European teachers. The pyramid of sources (see Introduction) shows that. The classic ecumenical consensus was maturely formed well before the formation of Europe. There was not even anything recognizable or looking like a cohesive “Europe” in any meaningful literary or cultural sense when Athanasius was writing in Egypt or Cyprian in North Africa or Chrysostom was teaching in Antioch or Ephrem writing poetry in Syria.
It is worth noting that the majority of the eight doctors of the church were from Africa and Asia: Athanasius likely came from a family in middle Egypt. Augustine was African (from inland Numidia), not European. Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Chrysostom were all from the ancient Near East, not Europe. That leaves Jerome, who though born at Strido, spent much of his adult life in the Near East, and Gregory the Great, who as a Roman diplomat was more of a world Christian than any of the other seven, having served for an extended time in Byzantium and earnestly desired to go as a missionary to England, and Ambrose, who spent most of his life in political leadership, first as governor, then bishop. Only the credulous can imagine that these eight teachers were primarily or consciously “European” when a cohesive literate Europe had not even yet emerged, and would not palpably be defined until after Charlemagne.
The seven ecumenical councils were held in the East, not Europe. They were held in Constantinople, Nicaea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon—all beyond the pale or on the far edge of what we today call Europe.
If so, it cannot be claimed without qualification that early ecumenical Christianity was predominantly Western or European. The “West” was its belated outcome, not its premise or reality. This is no small point. It is pursued further in my 2008 book on How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind (InterVarsity Press). Classic Christian teaching was clearly influenced more by Africa in scriptural interpretation and the East in dogmatic definition than by texts from Europe or “the West.” This study commends a further democratization, internationalization, demas-culinization, and cultural pluralization of the process of ecumenical consensus. These correctives are already occurring, however slowly.
Minority Voices in Ecumenical Consent
The early ecumenical councils did not ignore the voices of the poor and the marginalized Cretans or Persians and certainly not of many women of faith who were making their witness in the church of the persecution and in desert asceticism. Such councils could not have gained wide lay consent or been received without the concurrence of the poor or without women or without the dispossessed or without the slaves, bond servants, and second-class citizens of the world. These beloved believers were at the same time becoming through baptism citizens of the emergent international community of faith manifesting itself through Word and Sacrament.
The ordained leaders were often confirmed by the consenting laity without whose agreement they had no power to oversee apostolic teaching. Hence it was never a sure bet whether a particular council would be accepted or not. Some were not. It often took a century or more for a firm consensus to be established by general lay consent. Sometimes local synods made questionable judgments that had to be appealed and rescinded. In those cases the larger laos was saying to the leaders of those regional councils: “Sorry, you got it wrong—that was not the shared mind of the believing church.”
It seems fatuous to argue that women were so powerless or immobilized or despairing or lacking in identity and influence that they failed wholly to affect that general consensus. This would be to neglect the decisive role of women in the domestic order, in serving ministries, and in the life of prayer. Those who think that way are thinking almost exclusively of political power, as distinguished from the many other forms of power. Note the steady influence of Monica upon Augustine, of Paula upon Jerome, of his mother Nonna upon Gregory of Nazianzus, and of his sister Macrina upon Gregory of Nyssa. Note also as a crucial case in point the decisive influence of the empress Irene in the iconoclastic controversy leading to the judgment of the seventh Ecumenical Council of Nicaea. Note also that the witness of women was especially poignant during the periods of persecutions, as seen in the intrepid history of women saints from Perpetua following.
It is the Spirit who finally guarantees the valid transmission of the apostolic tradition through the general consent of the laity. Both women and men of the laity found that they could count on the Spirit over time to bring the gospel to light and to remember rightly and guide the church into all truth.
The people (laos) must finally give or not give consent to the views of the theologians and councils. They do this with their feet and bodies, by general lay consent. It is hardly a perfect instrument of political expression, but it works steadily and surely over time. There is no received apostolic tradition without an intergenerational community of recipients: female and male, of all continents.
Herein lies the power of the people in the Christian structure of authority. It is not a formal vote taken at particular intervals. But it is a vote, even if by the pocketbook or by the silent withholding of consent. Thus there remains a resilient populist element in the Christian structure of authority that, though it must not be overstated, should not be neglected.
Summary of the third conclusion: Though neglected, consensus clarification is entirely feasible, but more easily recognized only within long time frames. Consensus is not intrinsically unreachable, because it has a long history of being reached. The records of that history are found in the texts of the councils and consensual teachers. These achievements are known because they have a conspicuous textual history of authority in the worshiping community. This community has learned that heterodoxy may serve the truth by having the unexpected effect of further refining rough and incomplete orthodox consensual exegesis. Less well known, but increasingly recognized is the fact that the most durable consensus is far more indebted to minority and neglected voices, such as classic African and Asian texts of the first millennium, than to later European ideas.