The Lord makes promises to His Church of the new dispensation that differ in some respects from previous promises made to Israel but at the same time the essence of the relationship between the two is similar. It is an essence however that is miserably misunderstood by almost all Christians regardless of affiliation. Perhaps the reason why so many strange sects have arisen over the centuries each with their own unique spin on the Gospel has been ignorance of the core principles of the covenant relationship between God and man. Intimately tied into this understanding is the principle of God working through His creation: a concept that achieved its zenith with the Incarnation itself. From the earliest heretics such as the Gnostics (who possessed a profound antipathy towards matter) and Marcion (who postulated separate Deities of the two Testaments) all the way up to today's modern Dispensationalists, the pattern is the same. It involves a profound misunderstanding of the relationship God has with His creation. The relationship between God and man is in the form of covenant. As the crown of God's creation, man has been an instrument through which God works in the world today. These principles (covenantal and incarnational) are the two foundational pillars of God's relation to man and both are miserably misunderstood by almost all Protestants (except some Anglicans and the David Chiltons/James Jordans of the Reformed camp). In this section the covenental principle will be touched on briefly by some of the work of former Reformed Protestant Edward A. Hara who has written on this subject:

Part of the problem which continues to separate the various denominations and hinder the unity of the church, which Christ prayed for, is a lost understanding of the covenant of salvation for which Christ died to inaugurate…Since there are those who would completely deny that God's dealings are in any way dependant upon a covenant between God and man, it is incumbent upon me to prove that the covenant of God has been established from the beginning of God's earthly creation.

Ho 6:7 But they like men have transgressed the covenant: there have they dealt treacherously against me.

Note that the word "men" in the Hebrew is "Adam", and KJV footnotes even admit to this. Therefore, we may accurately change this verse to read as follows:

Ho 6:7 But they like Adam have transgressed the covenant: there have they dealt treacherously against me.

God, in describing the perfidy of the nation of Israel, against whom he was bringing a case of covenantal disobedience and judgement, compares their breaking of the covenant as being like to Adam's. We seem to have the beginnings of a strong argument for the covenant's being established from the creation of Adam. However, for the sake of those who would argue that I am pulling verses out of context, without reference to other verses, allow me to introduce further evidence for my case.

Ge 6:18 But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee.

Notice that God does not tell Noah that He will establish a covenant or even explain to Noah what a covenant is. The pronunciation from God to Noah is done in such a way as to indicate that the covenant was a known fact among the antediluvian peoples. The knowledge of the covenant was apparently, as was the knowledge of animal sacrifice for sin, passed down from Adam to his progeny by oral tradition. The men of Noah’s day knew what the terms were and were not innocent of their violations of the covenant.

Furthermore, upon what principle did God even punish those who were drowned in the Great Flood? One of the principle tenants of a covenant is that it has terms, which are agreed to under the conditions of a self-maledictory oath. If the men of Noah's day had no covenant that they violated unto their own destruction, then upon what principle did a just and holy God punish them? To say that there was no covenantal violation, just because it hadn't been inscribed upon stone as was later in Genesis, is to ascribe to God a capriciousness and a cruelty which is totally out of character with His just nature.

Ge 2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Here is the first presentation of covenant and terms to the newly created son of God (Luke 3:38). That this is a covenant is manifest by the presence of oaths and sanctions. Without oaths (promises from both sides) and sanctions (rewards and punishments for obedience and disobedience) you do not have a covenant because there is nothing which has been agreed upon. This is a covenant, and it is, by the presentation of the sanction, a conditional covenant.

But this is more than just a mere legal device. It is God presenting to His new son the conditions of family blessing and the warnings of disinheritance. Included in the family blessings of verse 16 is the right to eat freely of the Tree of Life. This suggests, by pictures of this Tree in Revelation and the Tree upon which our Lord hung, that some manner of intimacy with Christ Himself was in view, an intimacy which gave unto Adam and potentially, all who would spring from him, life. Adam and Eve were not, despite all theological protestations otherwise, immortal beings in and of themselves. To say that they were is to say that they were the same as the transcendent God.

1Ti 6:15 Which in his times he shall shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of Lords; 16 Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honour and power everlasting. Amen.

Adam and Eve were created beings, they were not intrinsically immortal. Therefore they needed the Tree of Life for their lives to continue. Perhaps they ate daily or possibly monthly. We have no way of knowing; therefore we cannot make a definitive statement. But knowing that God alone is the only immortal being in the universe, we know that they had to partake in some manner of this immortality for their mortal lives to continue. They were posse non morte, that is, possible not to die, by their intimate union with Christ as the Tree of Life.

Also please notice that they had to EAT. It was not mere faith which would sustain them, not an intellectual assent to the fact that the Tree of Life gave life, but an actual partaking of the substance of the Tree itself which conferred most intimately to them the Life within that Tree. This is no small picture of the Blessed Eucharist and our union with God through it. [1]

And you, son of man, say to your people, The righteousness of the righteous shall not deliver him when he transgresses; and as for the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not fall by it when he turns from his wickedness; and the righteous shall not be able to live by his righteousness when he sins. Though I say to the righteous that he shall surely live, yet if he trusts in his righteousness and commits iniquity, none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered; but in the iniquity that he has committed he shall die.  Again, though I say to the wicked, `You shall surely die,' yet if he turns from his sin and does what is lawful and right, if the wicked restores the pledge, gives back what he has taken by robbery, and walks in the statutes of life, committing no iniquity; he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of the sins that he has committed shall be remembered against him; he has done what is lawful and right, he shall surely live. "Yet your people say, `The way of the Lord is not just'; when it is their own way that is not just. When the righteous turns from his righteousness, and commits iniquity, he shall die for it. And when the wicked turns from his wickedness, and does what is lawful and right, he shall live by it. Yet you say, `The way of the Lord is not just.'O house of Israel, I will judge each of you according to his ways. [2]

The Kingdom of God will not be physically restored in the manner that most premillennialists and many amillennialists insist will happen. In fact, such a claim could only be made because of the woeful misunderstanding of the covenantal relationship between God and man. There is no "separate dispensation" for the Jews and Christians. Salvation is by the Jews but not those who are Jews by birth but who are Jews by promise (Romans 2:25ff). Have the Protestants who insist on this kind of physical restoration forgotten about the parable of the Wicked Husbandman (Matt. 21:33-46) and failed to grasp its significance??? A small hint: the Wicked Husbandman was the nation of Israel. Note carefully the words of the parable: "Therefore I say to you, that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and will be given to a people yielding its fruits". It speaks of a translation of the kingdom from Israel to the Church. What it boils down to is misunderstanding the concept of the covenant. Or to again cite Edward Hara on the matter:

Let us start with the idea of being born-again. Evangelicals totally misunderstand and misuse this word. Evangelicals have made up something called ‘making a decision for Jesus’ and have that as their sacrament of initiation into the Christian life, despite the fact that the Bible NOWHERE calls for such an action. Furthermore, to do so denies that there is a specific covenantal entrance of baptism, which is clearly continued from the old covenant entrance of circumcision. But of course, this is what you get when you practice dispensationalism and rip the old covenant completely away from the new, claiming falsely that they are two different covenants. To be a dispensationalist, one must ignore all the Scriptural proofs, which establish the fact that the covenant is one and the Church has taken place of Israel as God's kingdom on earth. It really comes from terribly lazy exegesis and no desire to study the Bible other than to reinforce one's prejudices. [3]

Protestantism, in fact, started out upon its career nursing two massive errors, each of them sufficient to ruin it. One was the error of assuming that all Christians were really Christians, and the other was the error of assuming that they were intelligent enough to ascertain and embrace the truth. Both were found out very quickly, but not soon enough to get rid of them. Their collision with the veriest elements of human nature has produced an immense proliferation of fantastic sects and a long series of anti-papal popes, beginning with Luther and Calvin.

Today Protestantism is either a banal imitation of Catholicism or a cruel burlesque upon it. It is almost too incoherent to be discussed seriously. I could invent new forms of it almost ad infinitum, as a mathematician invents new algebras…[the result is that] bibliolatry turns upon and devours itself. Any half-wit, searching Holy Writ, is free to found a sect of his own - and if not upon the actual text, then upon the interpolations, mistranslations and typographical errors. Thousands of such half-wits, as everyone knows, have made use of that franchise, and the result is chaos.

The Roman church has escaped the same disaster by keeping the Bible in its place. What the Bible says, however it may clash with common knowledge and common sense, is inspired and infallible --but Holy Church reserves the right to determine precisely what it says. In that reservation there is a wisdom beyond the highest flight of philosophers. Once a Frenchman announced to an American friend that he was leaving the [Catholic] church of his fathers. The American asked what variety of Protestantism he proposed to patronize. 'I have lost my faith,' answered the Frenchman icily, 'but not my reason’…

Protestantism, in truth, save in those borderlands where Roman altar-fires perfume and denature it, is endurable only to hinds. It spoils the most lovely poetry in the world by reducing it to harsh and illiterate prose…In Fundamentalism it reaches the nadir of theology. What is worst in Fundamentalism is common, perhaps, to all forms of Christianity, but it is only in the imprecations of the backwoods Wesleys that it is stated plainly. No more shocking nonsense has ever been put into words by theoretically civilized men. [4]

X —Development of Doctrine and Church Authority:

Perhaps a mathematical analogy can be used in explaining the differences between the Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant paradigms. The Catholic speaks of "calculus" and the Protestant wants to know why the supposedly "advanced formulas" espoused by the Catholic are not found in his "algebra book" (the Bible). Meanwhile the Orthodox says the same thing in eying Catholic "calculus". The Orthodox disagree with Protestants on most areas of Catholic-Protestant division (almost always agreeing with Catholics). However, there are a few areas where the Orthodox's "advanced algebra" and "trigonometry" do not reveal formulas that are in complete accordance with Catholic "calculus". Meanwhile the Protestant eyes both parties and exclaims that many of their "formulas" are not in the "algebra book" that all three claim to follow. In referring to the Bible as an algebra book, no disrespect is intended. What is sought is to explain this difference in outlook in an analogy that comes close but is admittedly incomplete in and of itself. However, the analogy works because the difference between Orthodox, Catholics, and Protestants is the concept of development.

The Eastern Churches do not accept the precise claims of the Roman Church on this matter (well not explicitly anyway). This is a point that is at times brought up by Protestant controversialists when they try to use the distinction in views between the Catholic Church and the Eastern Churches as an argument against an appeal to Tradition. The problem of course is that Protestants undercut their own arguments by appealing themselves to Tradition and the authority of the Universal Church. They do this on several points where they need to in order to sustain certain beliefs that they hold in common with the Apostolic Churches. Or as the author noted in his treatise A Prescription Against 'Traditionalism' in critiquing the errors of Catholic self-styled 'traditionalists' who likewise do not understand this concept very well: 

Catholics believe that the truth has been revealed once for all in the Divine Deposit of Faith (Jude 1:3). However, our understanding of those truths will constantly become more refined through the passing of time and years (John 16:13) not as additions to the Deposit but instead in a greater understanding of the manifold mysteries revealed to us once for all time. The example of a human person serves as an excellent illustration of this very principle at work.

A fertilized human egg has forty-six chromosomes, all of which contain the unique genetic blueprint of a human being. These chromosomes will never change but the human egg will undergo development and quite rapid development during the nine month gestation period. The development will not cease when the baby is born, and the embryo and fetus does not look completely the same as a new-born baby. The new-born baby, the child it grows into, the subsequent teenager phase, and the subsequent adult are all manifestations of the same human being in phases of development. These are not "corruptions" of the human baby but a natural growth or progress of the human person setting forth explicitly what was once held potentially or implicitly in the one "deposit" formulated at conception. Consider for a moment how this principle applies to recently defined teachings which all Catholics are bound to accept with the assent of faith.

The theorem of development as a principle explains the process whereby dogmas such as the Immaculate Conception, the Assumption, and Papal Infallibility can be defined so late yet not be in contradiction with the beliefs that the Church has either always held. In the case of the Marian dogmas they were held in an accepted partially nebulous form from earlier times. Papal infallibility was acted upon throughout history without fully understanding the exact magnitude or parameters of the belief until later on. All are contained in the deposit handed down "once delivered to the saints" (Jude 1:3) to be revealed in time as Our Lord said in the Gospels (John 16:12-13). This is merely an outline of the concept of course and others far more capable than this present author have covered in great detail the concept of development. (One which is paramount to understanding the primary difference between Catholics and other Christians.) The most notable work on this topic is that of Ven. Cardinal John Henry Newman whose Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine should be mandatory reading for every Christian. [5]

Why were General Councils necessary to formulate these doctrines to begin with if not because of heretics denying them??? Nicaea defined that Jesus Christ is the Divine Son of God, that He is co-equal, co-eternal, and consubstantial (Gr. homoousion, Lat. unius substantiae: meaning "in union with or the same substance/being") with the Father. Constantinople I re-affirmed the teachings of Nicaea as well as solemnly defining the Divinity of the Holy Spirit and the dogma that God is 1 Godhead composed of 3 co-equal, co-eternal Persons. Can you to find these teachings either explicitly taught in Scripture or in a consensus of the Church Fathers before Nicaea??? No you cannot. Yet all Christians accept the rulings of Nicaea and Constantinople I on Trinitarian matters. However, the doctrines have little explicit Patristic testimony prior to Nicaea except in one or two elements sparsely outlined and even less support from Scripture when the texts are read without a pre-supposing Trinitarian bias. How do we know that this bias is correct when the same Tradition that witnesses to it is called into question by Protestants on countless other doctrines which are in almost every case better attested to in the early Church than the doctrine of the Trinity which Protestants for the most part accept???

In reality, the Trinity is only ascertained if one comes to the Scriptures with a bias towards a Tradition of Trinitarian interpretation. In doing this the doctrine will be read into the Scriptures in spots where it is not stated explicitly. Anyone who doubts this assertion should spend some time debating a modern day Arian, a Mormon, or a Oneness Pentecostal (to name a few examples of groups that deny this doctrine). The anti-Trinitarians make the same claims against the Trinity doctrine that Trinitarian Protestants make against doctrines professed by Apostolic Christians that they do not care for. Revelation was complete with the Apostles in much the same manner that the genetic traits of a human person are complete at conception. Or as Catholic writer Dave Armstrong has noted on the matter:

'Development of doctrine' is defined by Catholics as the increase in understanding - by means of the teaching of the Holy Spirit, prayer, theological study, and the reflection of the Body of Christ as a whole - of Christian doctrines which originated from the Lord Jesus Himself and which have been passed down through the Apostles, Fathers, Councils, and the Catholic Church in general. The meaning of doctrines unfolds over time, but the essence or substance of any particular doctrine remains unchanged. Our extent of knowledge or subjective grasp of any given dogma is what changes. Doctrines thus achieve more clarity and depth as well as certitude in the minds and hearts of believers…The description of the Christian Church as the ‘Body of Christ’ in the Bible (for example, Ephesians 1:22-23) presupposes the ability to actively grow. The Church, according to many Protestants, resembles a statue more than a living organism. Once the biblical metaphor is consistently applied, it also makes no sense to say that growth (development) stopped in the third, fourth or fifth century or some other arbitrary point. [6]

[W]hen some great enunciation, whether true or false, about human nature, or present good, or government, or duty, or religion, is carried forward into the public throng of men and draws attention, then it is not merely received passively in this or that form into many minds, but it becomes an active principle within them, leading them to an ever-new contemplation of itself, to an application of it in various directions, and a propagation of it on every side…Let one such idea get possession of the popular mind, or the mind of any portion of the community, and it is not difficult to understand what will be the result. At first men will not fully realize what it is that moves them, and will express and explain themselves inadequately. There will be a general agitation of thought, and an action of mind upon mind. There will be a time of confusion, when conceptions and misconceptions are in conflict, and it is uncertain whether anything is to come of the idea at all, or which view of it is to get the start of the others. New lights will be brought to bear upon the original statements of the doctrine put forward; judgments and aspects will accumulate. After a while some definite teaching emerges; and, as time proceeds, one view will be modified or expanded by another, and then combined with a third; till the idea to which these various aspects belong, will be to each mind separately what at first it was only to all together.

It will be surveyed too in its relation to other doctrines or facts, to other natural laws or established customs, to the varying circumstances of times and places, to other religions, polities, philosophies, as the case may be. How it stands affected towards other systems, how it affects them, how far it may be made to combine with them, how far it tolerates them, when it interferes with them, will be gradually wrought out…Thus in time it will have grown into an ethical code, or into a system of government, or into a theology, or into a ritual, according to its capabilities: and this body of thought, thus laboriously gained, will after all be little more than the proper representative of one idea, being in substance what that idea meant from the first, its complete image as seen in a combination of diversified aspects, with the suggestions and corrections of many minds, and the illustration of many experiences.

This process, whether it be longer or shorter in point of time, by which the aspects of an idea are brought into consistency and form, I call its development, being the germination and maturation of some truth or apparent truth on a large mental field. On the other hand this process will not be a development, unless the assemblage of aspects, which constitute its ultimate shape, really belongs to the idea from which they start. [7]

Bibliography:

[1] Edward A. Hara: From his essay "Covenantal Salvation" (c. 2000)

[2] Ezekiel 33:12-20

[3] Edward A. Hara: From his essay "Covenantal Salvation" (c. 2000)

[4] H L Mencken: Excerpt from his work "Treatise on the Gods" (c. 1930)

[5] I. Shawn McElhinney: "A Prescription Against 'Traditionalism'"  (c. 2000)

[6] Dave Armstrong: Excerpt from his essay "Development of Doctrine" (c. 1996)

[7] John Henry Newman: "Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine", pgs. 36-38 (c. 1845)
 

Additional Notes:

The citations from Edward A. Hara's essay "Covenantal Salvation" were obtained at the following link: http://matt1618.freeyellow.com/covenant.html

The biblical citation was originally taken from an online Douay-Rheims Bible no longer available on the Internet. However, the Douay Rheims Bible located at the following site is similar in many ways to the one originally used: http://www.scriptours.com/bible/

The citation from the treatise "A Prescription Against 'Traditionalism'" was obtained at the following link: http://matt1618.freeyellow.com/shawn.html

The citation from Dave Armstrong's essay "Development of Doctrine: He Will Teach You" was obtained at the following link: http://ic.net/~erasmus/RAZ58.HTM

The citation from John Henry Newman's book "Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine" was obtained at the following link: http://www.newmanreader.org/works/development/index.html
 

©2001, "Christian Unity and the Role of Authority", written by I. Shawn McElhinney. This text may be downloaded or printed out for private reading, but it may not be uploaded to another Internet site or published, electronically or otherwise, without express written permission from the author.

Page created by: Matt1618. Send email with questions to Shawn McElhinney at ismac@lycos.com
 
 

---

Go to Next Section of "Christian Unity and the Role of Authority" Essay

Return to Index Page of "Christian Unity and the Role of Authority" Essay

---

Return to Authority Page

---

Return to Matt's Catholic Apologetics Page