Transcription
Another major point of strain is the metaphysical order as an effect cannot nullify its formal cause. Metaphysically the church is the formal cause of scripture as canon not of inspiration but of the recognition, delimitation and public promulgation of the inspired books. Scripture in turn is a principal material cause of the church's articulation and worship. Using scripture as canon to negate the church's authority in principle asks the effect to destroy its cause. That's an inversion of order. A painting can be used to critique the painter's technique. It cannot demonstrate that no real painter ever existed. The very existence of the canon as a cannon presupposes a community competent to say these books, not those.
Another major logical strain is ontological unity. You can't sever the word from his body. Ontologically, the church is not a religious NGO, but Christ's body, a visible, spirit animated people with real offices. Scripture is the inscribed mode of the one divine word, the speech of God set down in writing and thus the church's highest written norm. These are not rivals but two modes of the same word's presence. The word that begats the church through preaching also governs her through the canon she has received delimited and publicly promulgated. To oppose Bible to church is a category error.
As a public rule, the canon presupposes a public authority competent to receive, guard, and authentically interpret it. Just as a constitution governs only within a polity that has ratified it and a court able to render binding judgments. Think of a corporation. The charter has public force because shareholders adopted it and a board exists to interpret, apply, and enforce it. When disputes arise, like what counts as a conflict of interest, how section 4.3 is read, the board issues binding decisions. Without it, every department becomes its own company, each citing the same charter. The charter can discipline directors, call elections, or even amend procedures. But it cannot abolish the board without abolishing its own capacity to rule. Likewise, scripture is the church's charter. The baptized are the people who receive it. The magisterium is the board Christ instituted to render authoritative judgments. You can use the charter to purify governance, not to deny the governance that makes it a public rule. Opposing scripture to the church tears what God joined, the written word and the living body. A covenant document makes sense inside a covenant people. A marriage contract does not replace the marriage. It presupposes it. To pit the covenant document against the bride with the claim that the document proves the bride is illegitimate rewrites the logic of covenant itself.
And some may claim that the church was merely the historical scaffolding or midwife for the birth of the Bible. Once the apostolic age closed and the canon was delivered, this argument runs. The scaffolding was removed and the church as a teaching authority became subject to the final written word. This analogy may be compelling at face value and it certainly fits the Protestant narrative, but it's deeply unbiblical. The church is never described in scripture as a temporary vehicle, a scaffolding, or a mere midwife. She's described in permanent, organic, and familial terms. She is the body of Christ. Ephesians 1:22 and 23 says, "God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything. For the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way." The church is also described as the household of God, and most critically, the pillar and bull work of truth. 1 Timothy 3:14-15 says, "Although I hope to come to you soon, I am writing you these instructions so that if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth." Pillars are not mere scaffolding. They uphold the building permanently. A mother does not cease to be a mother after her child is born. She remains to nurture, protect, and teach the child its own identity. The scaffolding analogy reduces the incarnational reality of the body of Christ to a mere delivery service. It fails to account for Christ's promise to be with his church to the end of the age. Matthew 28:20. And to send the spirit to guide her into all truth. John 16:13. This promise was not given to a document, but to a living fellowship of apostles and their successors. The norm is not a document in a vacuum, but the word of God as it is proclaimed and guarded by the spirit-led body of God.
To illustrate this point further, think of a song. What is music? You can say music is sound. And in one sense, you're right. Sound is the material of music. But you can't say music is just sound to the exclusion of rhythm, melody, harmony, meter, dynamics, and form. If you deny these other aspects of music as unnecessary or illegitimate, and just keep to mere sound as music, you don't get more pure or better music. You get noise, not music. And if in the sea of static, you begin sneaking rhythm or melody back in just just to help, you've inadvertently conceded that form is necessary for sound to be music. Likewise, scripture is the material, the God- breathed content. The church and her apostolic rule of faith are part of the form that makes this material a cannon in the life of a people. Insist on scripture alone, and you drift towards hermeneutical white noise. Quietly reintroduce confessions, councils, and pastors to restore order, and you've reintroduced the principle you denied. just fragmented and infallible. The argument for the necessity of the three-fold structure of scripture, tradition, and the magisterium does not in any way denigrate scripture. In the same way that to insist on the necessity of sound, rhythm, melody, harmony, meter, dynamics, and form working together to make music does not denigrate sound itself.