Yesterday, we asked if there is a more balanced picture that reverences both Unam Sanctam and Lumen Gentium as authentic magisterial teaching? Yes. To find it, let’s begin with an imperfect analogy.
There is a priest I know (call him Fr. Smith) whom I have come to regard as a second father. I came to do so because, as an Evangelical, I first loved Christ and the things of Christ and was doing so for years before I met this man. As I sought to draw closer to the things of Christ, I then happened to meet Fr. Smith and to discover that he loved and understood far more deeply than me the things that I myself sought, for he is a disciple of our Lord too. When I recognized this, I realized our Lord had put into my life a man who could disciple me and to whom my life was inextricably linked in Christ and by Christ. In short, I had been a disciple of Fr. Smith for years before I met him–because I was first a disciple of Jesus.
Thus, in spirit, Fr. Smith became my father and I am, so to speak, subject to him in Christ precisely because I desire what he desires–union with Christ.
If this seems difficult to grasp, it should be noted that it’s a concept as old as the New Testament. For when we look there we discover Jesus saying exactly the same thing:
John said to him, “Teacher, we saw a man casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not forbid him; for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon after to speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is for us. (Mark 9:38-40)
Jesus’ point is that, in following Him, both the man casting out demons and the apostles were, whether the man or the apostles realized it or not, brought into some kind of union with one another through Him. It didn’t matter whether the apostles or the man were conscious of it. Their mutual obedience to Him put them in relationship to each other, just as the right alignment of spokes to a hub necessarily put the spokes in right alignment to one another. The fact is, it is His Spirit, not us, who is the principle of unity holding His Body together and drawing its members into ever more perfect union with each other. But that does not mean (as I had long believed as an Evangelical) that unity with the Body of Christ doesn’t matter so long as one is “spiritual”. For to be brought into union with the Body of Christ at all is to brought into the order that Christ has established for that Body since
his gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:11-13).
Or, to put it into the simplest form, if A=B, then B=A. That is, if one is a Christian at all, one is, as Lumen Gentium says, in some kind of union with the Church, the Body of Christ. This is why the Church teaches and has always taught that “outside the Church, there is no salvation”. For the Church is the company of the saved. To talk about salvation “outside the Church” is like talking about swimming outside the water. It is the logical consequence of Jesus’ statement, “He who is not with me is against me” (Matthew 12:30).
It therefore follows that to be subject to the gospel to any degree is to be in union, to that degree, with the office of Peter since the office of Peter was created by Christ for one purpose only, to help bring people into subjection to Christ. It is therefore impossible to accept Christ without accepting the authority of Peter’s office to some degree or other. If you say to Jesus, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” you are submitting to the judgment of Peter, who said it first (Matthew 16:16). If you declare that salvation is by grace through Christ, you are again subjecting yourself to Peter, who was the first to say that by the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:11). If you teach that Jesus is the second person of the Blessed Trinity, God from God, light from Light, true God from true God, you are simply agreeing with what the Church in council and in union with the office of Peter has always taught. If you acknowledge the canonicity of the New Testament books, you are likewise submitting to the judgment of the Petrine office, which made that call in the fourth century and ratified it in the sixteenth. In short, it is not possible to be a Christian at all without already submitting (whether you realize it or not and whether you like it or not) to Peter in precisely the sense that Unam Sanctam speaks of.
Of which more tomorrow.
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