Let me be frank. I find it very annoying when Roman apologists badly overreach in order to advance their claims about the Church of Rome. It is especially annoying when done by former Evangelicals who seem bent on discrediting the churches that first taught them to love Jesus and nurtured them in the faith, in order to legitimize their decision to join a church that entails breaking communion with their previous churches.

Tell It To the Church

Here is the sort of thing I have in mind. Recently on my Facebook page, a friend argued that Protestants have no honest or truthful interpretation of the phrase “tell it to the church” (Matthew 18:17). I was astounded by such a claim. The text is pretty straightforward and deals with the practical matter of church discipline. Jesus is giving instruction on how to handle matters of conflict within the church when one member sins against another.

The first step is a one-on-one confrontation, to be followed by bringing in two or three witnesses for a follow up conversation if the matter cannot be resolved one-on-one. As a last resort, Jesus instructs his disciples to “tell it to the church” and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, the offender should be dismissed from the church.

All this text requires is a larger body of believers who join together to enforce church discipline. There is nothing here even remotely decisive about any particular ecclesiology, let alone anything that supports the claim that the Church of Rome is the one true Church. The claim that Protestants cannot follow the directive or that their ecclesiology is somehow inconsistent with this passage is simply baffling.

I called a friend who is an internationally known New Testament scholar to see if I was overlooking something here. He commented that the word “church” here does not have the formal institutional meaning many want to give it, but refers simply to a gathering of believers. “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20).

It is undeniable that lots of Protestants have, and do, follow the directive of this text, and in fact, if we go by empirical evidence, they have been at least as good at church discipline as have Roman Catholics.

The Whole Church's Consent

In the same Facebook conversation, another Roman Catholic claimed that Acts 15 was a problem text for the Protestant doctrine of the authority of Scripture and showed the authority of Peter, because after Peter spoke, the controversy was settled. Again I shook my head in astonishment.

What the text clearly shows is that James was the acknowledged leader of the Jerusalem church, and he sums up the deliberations by saying “I [not Peter] have reached the decision that we should not trouble those Gentiles who are turning to God” (Acts 15:19). James reaches this decision only after hearing the testimony of Barnabas and Paul, as well as Peter. More importantly, he appeals to the authority of Scripture when points out that Peter’s argument “agrees with the words of the prophets” after which he cites the Old Testament (vv 15-17). Later, the text comments that the apostles and elders, “with the consent of the whole church,” decided to send a delegation to represent them.

The text appeals to the unanimity of the decision, and to the leadership of the Holy Spirit 9 (vv 25, 28), but never is Peter’s testimony singled out as having settled the matter or as the decisive factor in the decision. (For a thoughtful discussion of Acts 15 in the context of a defense of “sola scriptura” see chapter 3 of Reformed Catholicity by Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain). 

This is not to suggest that everything about this text is easy to resolve.   There are complicated issues pertaining to the relationship between the events reported in Acts 15, and those described in Galatians, and which happened first.   But what is clear is that there is nothing here remotely problematic for Protestant ecclesiology.  While it is clear that Peter was a prominent leader in the early church, it is another matter altogether to insist that this text supports Roman papal theology.  Indeed, the New Testament scholar I mentioned above, who is a specialist on Luke-Acts, was as astonished as I was that anyone could take this text to claim such special authority for Peter.

Overreaching Claims

Again, the point here is about overreaching claims. Many Roman Catholics acknowledge that the distinctive claims of their church are not clearly supported by Scripture or early church history. That is why Newman is a hero to so many, since his doctrine of “development” claims to solve this problem by arguing that those distinctive Roman claims were present in seed form from the beginning of the Christian revelation. Newman’s argument is deeply confused and fails badly in my view (which I have attempted to show in a forthcoming book) but his argument would not even be necessary if things were as clear as many Roman apologists appear to think.

In any case, the attempt to find support for Roman claims in the New Testament is one Roman Catholics are obliged to make by their ecclesiology, but to claim their case is decisive or that Protestants have no viable interpretations of the contested texts is overreaching of the worst sort. In fact, the only thing that comes close to this sort of overreaching is the same kind of exaggerated claims one sometimes sees in Protestant fundamentalists who simply equate their theology with “what the Bible says.”

Perhaps Roman Catholics have no choice here. Perhaps the claims they want to advance on behalf of “the one true church” require them to try to discredit and trivialize the Reformation traditions of Christianity, just as Newman did throughout his book on doctrinal development. If so, they should at least be aware that many of us find their claims and the attitudes that accompany them to be destructive of Christian fellowship. Indeed, such attitudes only enlarge the walls already created by the choice of “converts” to join a church that entails breaking communion with your Evangelical friends.

Let me be clear. I am hardly criticizing honest critique and disagreement. I am, after all, currently co-authoring a book entitled Why I am not a Roman Catholic. We have some big disagreements, no doubt, and ignoring them does nothing to advance true unity. But it is worth emphasizing that overreaching on either side advances neither clarity nor charity.

Jerry L. Walls is professor of philosophy and scholar-in-residence at Houston Baptist University. Among his many books are Heaven, Hell and Purgatory: Rethinking the Things that Matter Most and Tarantino and Theology (co-edited with Jonathan L. Walls).  Forthcoming books include God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning (with David Baggett) and Why I am not a Roman Catholic (with Kenneth J. Collins). Here is his website.

Other articles in the series

David Mills’ What We Want from Protestants (Catholic)

Bruce Ashford’s Save the Drowning (Southern Baptist)

Carl Trueman’s Be True, Not Paper, Roman Catholics (Presbyterian)

Christopher Jackson’s More Good Bishops, and Better Eschatology (Lutheran)

Susannah Black’s Occupy the Public Space (Anglican)

Peter J. Leithart’s Become Protestant (Evangelical)

John Wilson’s Keep Doing What All Faithful Christians Have Done (Evangelical)

Bob Hartman’s Read the Bible More (Churches of Christ)