The Gift of Authority

Ecumenical Review, The, Jan, 2000 by Michael Root

Friedrich Schleiermacher, in one of the first attempts to specify a comprehensive or fundamental difference between Protestantism and Catholicism, focussed on just this question of the relation between individual and church:

   The antithesis [Gegensatz] between Protestantism and Catholicism may
   provisionally be conceived thus: the former makes the individual's relation
   to the church dependent on his relation to Christ, while the latter
   contrariwise makes the individual's relation to Christ dependent on his
   relation to the church.(18)

This typology, often simplified and misunderstood, has had considerable influence. Cardinal Ratzinger has used language reminiscent of GA to describe the Lutheran-Catholic divide in terms of the individual-church relation:

   In Luther's view faith is no longer, as it is for Catholics, of its essence
   a sharing in faith with the entire church ... For Catholics on the contrary
   the church itself is contained in the inmost principle of the act of faith;
   it is only by sharing in faith with the church that I have a part in that
   certainty on which I can base my life.(19)

The double Amen analysis of GA avoids these dichotomies, though not by merely trying to find some neutral ground between the poles. On the one hand, GA clearly asserts the essentially ecclesial character of individual faith. This assertion should not be ecumenically problematic.(20) Even GA's assertion that "the faith of the community precedes the faith of the individual" (GA [sections] 23) should not itself be problematic. The faith of every individual is subordinate to "the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints" (Jude 3).

On the other hand, GA does not subordinate the faith of the individual to that of the church as to a foreign body. The faith of the church is realized in the ongoing process of tradition in which every Christian participates (or at least can and should participate):

   The people of God as a whole is the bearer of the living Tradition. In
   changing situations producing fresh challenges to the gospel, the
   discernment, actualization and communication of the word of God is the
   responsibility of the whole people of God. The Holy Spirit works through
   all members of the community, using the gifts he gives to each for the good
   of all (GA [sections] 28).

The faith of the church is not simply the sum of the faith of all individual Christians, but it is realized in and inseparable from the ongoing process in which the faith of individuals, each with his or her own charism, encounters both the faith of other individuals of the present and the faith of the past. There is thus a sense, even if a subordinate one, in which the faith of individuals has a certain sort of priority to the faith of the community: the faith of individuals is ontologically foundational for the faith of the church; the faith of the church exists only in and through the faith of individuals. GA does not make such an affirmation, but the grounds for making it are present in what it says.