Where is the Magisterium in the Bible? Part 1: Is the Church an Invisible Collection of Believers?
What if Jesus said, “I am going back to heaven so I am setting up a teaching office that has the authority to speak for me. I came down from heaven with the authority to speak for my Father and since I am going back, I am giving my authority to this office to guide you while I am gone. When you have questions know that if you hear their teaching, you are hearing me”. Would you believe him?
Well, Jesus did say that. But during the Reformation, the reformers rejected the idea of a visible church with teaching authority. They redefined the church as an invisible collection of believers. Were they right to do so?
Jesus gave his authority to his apostles and said, “whoever hears you, hears me”. He didn’t give that authority to all Christians. In fact, Jesus instructed believers to take disputes to “the Church”. That’s because church could speak with the authority of the Holy Spirit. That authority wasn’t given to every believer. We see this all through the New Testament where the Apostles corrected believers. When Peter stood up at the Council of Jerusalem and said, “Listen to my words. Brothers, you know that in the early days, God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe” he was speaking with the authority he had been given by Christ to declare the Holy Spirit’s final answer. -Was James or Peter the Leader of the Early Church?
Jesus established an office. When Judas died, “another filled his office” People just didn't appoint themselves to fill it. There was and still is a process. But that’s a post for another day.
Martin Luther rejected that teaching office and touted his own intellectual ability put him above their authority. So he changed the bible to match what he believed
Oh, Luther. Did you really think that man’s intellect trumps the authority of Christ? Did you forget that God used a stutterer to speak for him? Did you forget that he gave the keys to the guy who denied him three times? God doesn’t call the equipped, he equips the called.
Yep, that’s right. Martin Luther changed the bible to say what he thought is should say. He was convinced that the word “alone” belonged in Romans 3:28 so he added it. His opinion was “The text itself, and Saint Paul’s meaning, urgently require and demand it”. So he changed it on no authority other than his own. He wrote:
“I know very well that in Romans 3 the word solum is not in the Greek or Latin text — the papists did not have to teach me that. It is fact that the letters s-o-l-a are not there. And these blockheads stare at them like cows at a new gate, while at the same time they do not recognize that it conveys the sense of the text — if the translation is to be clear and vigorous [klar und gewaltiglich], it belongs there.
If your papist wishes to make a great fuss about the word sola (alone), say this to him: “Dr. Martin Luther will have it so, and he says that a papist and a donkey are the same thing.
“I will go even further with my boasting: I can expound the psalms and the prophets, and they cannot. I can translate, and they cannot. I can read the Holy Scriptures, and they cannot. I can pray, they cannot. Coming down to their level, “I can use their rhetoric and philosophy better than all of them put together. — -Martin Luther
Luther’s pride reminds me of of the first question in the garden. “Did God really say?”
Calvin rejected the authority of the church and set himself up as the authority
What most Evangelicals today don’t realize is that Calvin never endorsed private or lay interpretation of the Bible. While he rejected Rome’s claim to authority, he made striking claims for his own authority. He taught that the “Reformed” pastors were successors to the prophets and apostles, entrusted with the task of authoritative interpretation of the Scriptures. He insisted that laypeople should suspend judgment on difficult matters and “hold unity with the Church.”3
Calvin took very seriously the obligation of the laity to submit and obey. “Contradicting the ministers” was one of the most common reasons to be called before the Consistory and penalties could be severe. One image in particular sticks in my mind. April, 1546. Pierre Ameaux, a citizen of Geneva, was forced to crawl to the door of the Bishop’s residence, with his head uncovered and a torch in his hand. He begged the forgiveness of God, of the ministers and of the city council. His crime? He contradicted the preaching of Calvin. The council, at Calvin’s urging, had decreed Ameaux’s public humiliation as punishment. -How John Calvin Made Me a Catholic
Protestants often cite Jesus’ analogy of sheep and shepherd (John 10:1-16; cf. 2 Timothy 2:19, 1 John 2:19), who know each other (10:14), as evidence that the Church consists of the elect only.
Yet the analogy breaks down when we find that Scripture also applies the term sheep to the unsaved reprobate (Psalm 74:1), the straying (Psalm 119:176), Israel as a nation (Ezekiel 34:2-3,13,23,30), and, indeed, all men (Isaiah 53:6). -Visible, Hierarchical, Apostolic Church
According to Jesus the church is made up of believers and unbelievers
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net which was thrown into the sea and gathered fish of every kind; when it was full, men drew it ashore and sat down and sorted the good into vessels but threw away the bad. So it will be at the close of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous, and throw them into the furnace of fire; there men will weep and gnash their teeth. (Matthew 13:47-50):
In Heaven, the Church will only contain the saved. On earth, that’s not the case. Here, the Church contains both good fish and bad fish. Or to use another of Christ’s images, it contains both wheat and weeds. And in response to the question, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” He says, “No; lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” (Matthew 13:28-30).
So, there is a visible church that is made up of both believers and unbelievers.
Jesus’ description of Christians and the Church as a city set on a hill (Matthew 5:14; cf. 5:15-16), is an obvious reference to the visibility of the Church. In no way can this city be regarded as invisible.-Why You Can’t Have Jesus Without His Church
Judas Creates an Insurmountable problem for Protestant Ecclesiology.
Each of the four Gospels points out that Christ’s betrayer was “one of the Twelve” (Matthew 26:14; Mark 14:10; Mark 14:43; Luke 22:3; Luke 22:47; John 6:71). Judas possessed a share of the Apostolic “ministry and apostleship” (Acts 1:25), and Matthew 10:1-4 describes how Christ gave “authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity” to all of the Twelve, including Judas. As Jesus said, “Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?” (John 6:70).
Judas held an office and when he died, another was chosen to take his place. An office is part of the visible kingdom.
You have to savage the plain language of Scripture to say that one of Jesus’ Twelve Apostles wasn’t part of the Church, or was never part of the Body of Christ. He was, and he was given both visible authority (the highest office, apart from Christ Himself) and even the spiritual authority to drive out demons.
Why does this matter? To put it simply:
If Wyclif and Calvin and modern Protestants are right about the nature of the true Church, then Judas wasn’t an Apostle.
Judas was an Apostle.
Therefore, Wyclif and Calvin and modern Protestants aren’t right about the nature of the true Church.
This issue of Judas creates an insurmountable problem for Protestant ecclesiology, since the Apostles possessed the highest office possible within the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27-28). -Where is the Papacy in the Bible?
A Simple Case For the Visibility of the Church
The Church that Jesus builds is visible and organized. In Matthew 18:15-18, Jesus says:
If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
So the Church established by Christ is able to act as a judicial body, and able to make infallible judgments in particular context. That’s the point of the binding and loosening – the Church isn’t going to do something here contrary to God, binding something He loosens, or loosing something He binds.
So that certainly sounds like a visible Church. And we see the Church acting in a visible, structured way in Acts 15. -A Simple Case for the Visibility of Christ’s Church
All through the New Testament we see a visible church with authority teaching, correcting, exhorting believers and even excommunicating those who rejected their teaching from the visible church . The Church functioned as a visible, hierarchical and Apostolic Church since it began.
Yes, we Christians are part of the mystical body of believers. But we are also called to be part of the visible church that Jesus established.
It is clear that Jesus established a church with a teaching office and gave it his authority.
The reformers rejected that authority and redefined the church as just a collection of the elect. Who will you follow? The teaching office Christ set up or men who declared themselves as the authority?
All Christians agree that Jesus Christ is the ultimate authority. During his earthly ministry, He was the Final Authority. His authority superseded the Old Testament, human reason, Jewish Tradition, and the power of the state. But after His ascension, He did not leave us without direction. Before He ascended, He made provisions for a continuing doctrinal authority. Sola Scripture vs. the Magisterium: What Did Jesus Teach?
More Information!
Where is the Papacy in the Bible?
Visible, Hierarchical, Apostolic Church
Why You Can’t Have Jesus Without His Church
A Simple Case for the Visibility of Christ’s Church
4 Things We Can Learn From the Apostle Judas