Ecclesial Deism

June 20, 2007

A number of years ago, I met with some Mormon missionaries on a weekly basis over the summer to discuss Mormonism. At that time I was a Protestant. In fact, I had just graduated from a Presbyterian seminary. In the course of my discussion with these Mormon missionaries, I tried to argue that their teachings were contrary to Scripture and traditional Christianity. The Mormons replied that very shortly after the death of the Apostles the Church fell into utter apostasy, but the true Church had been preserved in North America where Jesus had come to preach to the Native Americans at that time. The Scripture had to be interpreted and understood, they argued, in light of this additional revelation to the true Church.

The difficulty for me, which I realized at that time (but didn't know how to fix), was that I too, as a Protestant, could not appeal to the fathers or the Ecumenical Councils to support my position. I too believed at that time that the Church had fallen into error very shortly after the death of the Apostles. The Mormons believed that the true gospel was restored in the early 1800s. I believed that the true gospel was restored in the early 1500s. But we both agreed (to my frustration) that the early church fathers and the Councils were suspect and therefore not authoritative.

I came to understand later that my error was what I now call "ecclesial deism". This is the notion that the Church was not protected from apostasy and defectibility. It is a 'hermeneutic of suspicion'. Fundamentally, it is a form of unbelief. It was taught by various heresies early on, including the Montanists. It was also taught by the Reformers. It was also taught by the Modernists. Ecclesial deism was made much more possible, in my case, by my implicit gnosticism regarding the nature of the Church. I simply had no awareness that Christ founded an institution. I thought that the Church Christ founded was spiritual in nature, and that it was visible only in the sense that one could see and touch the Christians (and their children) who were presently members of it. My non-institutional view of the visible Church allowed me to believe that even when the institution of the Catholic Church had become [from my point of view] guilty of heresy and apostasy and perversion of the gospel, the gates of hell had not prevailed over the visible Church because there was always (I assumed) some remnant of believers who believed the true faith, the true faith that was rediscovered by Martin Luther 1,500 years later.

Given my gnostic view of the visible Church, none of the biblical promises concerning the Church, in my mind, applied to the institution of the Catholic Church. I'm referring to the following promises: Christ's promise that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church (Matt 16:18), that He would be with her even to the end of the age (Matt 28:20; Matt 13:24-30, 36-43, 47-50), and that the Holy Spirit would guide her into all truth (John 16:13), that the Church is built upon a rock and cannot be washed away (Matt 7:24-25), that the Church enjoys an everlasting covenant that cannot be revoked (Is. 55:3; 61:8; Jer. 32:40), that the Church is everlasting and indestructable (Is. 9:7; Dan 2:44; 7:14), and that David's throne will exist for all time (Psalm 88:37 [which is Psalm 89:37 in Protestant Bibles]).

Every heresy, in order to justify itself, must teach a gnostic view of the Church, claiming that the Church is essentially invisible (granting that only its members are visible). Only in that way can the heresy claim that it is the true Church, or that it is "part" of the true Church. This is why sacramental Apostolic succession is one of the essential marks of the Church, because the Church is one institution, extending through time and space. Heresies reduce the Church to Knowledge (Gnosis), doctrine of some sort. They remove the matter of sacramental succession from the Apostles. The true Church, they claim, is the one that teaches what we teach. But as the fathers pointed out repeatedly, the true Church is the one whose bishops possess sacramental succession from the Apostles. That is the true Church, because that is the institution against which the gates of hell shall not prevail.

If you want to see some video clips of a recent ordination I attended, one in which the bishop has sacramental Apostolic succession, see here and here.