AUTHORITY OF THE HOLY SPIRIT: THE "MISSING LINK" IN OUR CONTEMPORARY UNDERSTANDING OF DIVINE AUTHORITY?, THE

Trinity Journal, Fall 2004 by Studebaker, John A Jr

Counter-Reformation pneumatology, however, regarded the "authority" of the Spirit to be evident in the "infallibility" of the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholic Church's "faithfulness,"54 according to Counter-Reformation Catholic theologians, was radically and yet erroneously questioned by the Reformers. Fisher argues that the promise of the Spirit was not made simply to the apostles but to the church until the end of the age. As a result, the Spirit in the church provides the hermeneutical principle for determining truth.

The universal Church cannot fall into error, being led by the Spirit of truth dwelling in it forever. Christ will remain with the Church until the end of the world. . . . [The Church] is taught by the same one Spirit to determine what is required by the changing circumstances of the times.55

Such an "interpretive authority" was made an institutional standard via the Council of Trent (1545-63). Catholic theologians at Trent appealed to the continual activity of the Spirit throughout the church age as a primary justification for the handing down of the apostolic traditions and for the trust that should be placed in those traditions. This, however, is not distinguished from the trust we are to have in the canonical Scriptures. What the Reformers attributed to the Holy Spirit (that is, the authentic interpretation of the Scriptures), the theologians of Trent ascribed to "the church," the body of Christ where the Spirit was living in the form of a living gospel. The doctrine of the church's "infallibility"56 is therefore essentially the Roman Church's claim to be the authoritative interpreter of written revelation.

Nevertheless . . . the Church is superior to the Bible in the sense that she is the Living Voice of Christ and therefore the sole infallible interpreter of the inspired Word, whenever an authoritative interpretation is required.57

Wright attempts to clarify that the authority transferred from the Holy Spirit to Roman Church leaders is not exercised above the church but from within the church by respecting the rights conferred by the Spirit to each believer.58 Congar, a Roman Catholic theologian, admits however that the tendency of the Counter-Reformation was to "give an absolute value to the church as an institution by endowing its magisterium with an almost unconditional guarantee of guidance by the Holy Spirit."59 Biblical references in some of its decisions (i.e., the Mariological dogmas of 1854 and 1950) have been "quite remote," and such decisions were essentially based on faith in the Church itself, "animated by the Spirit."60

B. Scriptural Evaluation

In John 14:16-17, 26, Jesus draws a vital relationship between the Spirit and divine teaching:

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, that he may be with you forever; that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold him or know him, but you know him because he abides with you, and will be in you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.