Selectively Trusting the Church

Two books I read this year made the same argument about selectively trusting the Church for one doctrine while thinking them largely mistaken about other major doctrines. First in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, John Henry Newman, while speaking of the "sustained and steady march of the sacred science from implicitly belief to formal statement," says,

The series of ecclesiastical decisions, in which its progress was ever and anon signified, alternate between the one and the other side of the theological dogma especially in question, as if fashioning it into shape by opposite strokes. The controversy began in Apollinaris, who confused or denied the Two Natures in Christ, and was condemned by Pope Damasus. A reaction followed, and Theodore of Mopsuestia suggested by his teaching the doctrine of Two Persons. After Nestorius had brought that heresy into public view, and had incurred in consequence the anathema of the Third Ecumenical Council, the current of controversy again shifted its direction; for Eutyches appeared, maintained the One Nature, and was condemned at Chalcedon. Something however was still wanting to the overthrow of the Nestorian doctrine of Two Persons, and the Fifth Council was formally directed against the writings of Theodore and his party. Then followed the Monothelite heresy, which was a revival of the Eutychian or Monophysite, and was condemned in the Sixth. Lastly, Nestorianism once more showed itself in the Adoptionists of Spain, and gave occasion to the great Council of Frankfort. Any one false step would have thrown the whole theory of the doctrine into irretrievable confusion; but it was as if some one individual and perspicacious intellect, to speak humanly, ruled the theological discussion from first to last. That in the long course of centuries, and in spite of the failure, in points of detail, of the most gifted Fathers and Saints, the Church thus wrought out the one and only consistent theory which can be taken on the great doctrine in dispute, proves how clear, simple, and exact her vision of that doctrine was. But it proves more than this. Is it not utterly incredible, that with this thorough comprehension of so great a mystery, as far as the human mind can know it, she should be at that very time in the commission of the grossest errors in religious worship, and should be hiding the God and Mediator, whose Incarnation she contemplated with so clear an intellect, behind a crowd of idols? (Part II, Chapter XII, Section 4, emphasis mine)

I think this is a powerful argument, but not one that is unexpected from Newman. As a Catholic (or someone about to become a Catholic), he readily accepts all that his claim implies. The second source was unexpected. In a discussion about the canon, this self-proclaimed evangelical argues that we cannot just gather our canon from references to "Scripture" in the early church. He says,

If we were to make the assumption that Scripture equals canon, we would be forced to adopt a much wider canon that we acknowledge today. No evangelical that I am were of would make this argument.  If we were to argue that the church fathers were wrong to claim scriptural status for these documents or that they belonged to the postapostolic (i.e., corrupt) church, we would be faced with a further difficulty. We would need to explain how the Bible can remain the pure and uncorrupted word when it was canonized in large part by supposedly corrupt church leaders in this church. How could the leaders in this church have been correct about what went into the canon but wrong about the scriptural status of other books? If we trust them for the canon, how can we distrust them on the issue of non canonical documents? Our reliance on the Bible as our guide for faith and life certainly implies that we affirm that those who collected Scripture into the canon did so because they were led by the Spirit in the church. (171)

This is not exactly the same point Newman was making, but it is very close. The quote is from A High View of Scripture? by Craig D. Allert. If Allert's presentation of the history surrounding the formation of the canon is correct, it seems he is correct about our reliance on the church for our the canon. But then it seems we can apply Newman's reasoning to the canon. Evangelicals and Protestants trust the historical church for what constitutes the canon but consider her to be in serious error regarding other central doctrines, including the function of the Scriptures in Christian life. 


If we want to get clear of the implications of this argument, there seem to be three options. First, we could bite the bullet and say the church did get the canon right but not the other stuff. We could then be thankful that God protected the canon so the reformers had something to reform from. Second we could reject Allert's explanation of the history. Maybe he just gets it wrong and the canon did spontaneously arise in the first centuries of the church and impress itself upon the faithful. Third, we could move towards a more individualist operation of the Spirit. Instead of the Church producing the canon, faithful individuals just naturally accepted the right books when presented with them. I think this option actually requires the second option being true as well, since this is not how it actually went. 


I think all of these are problematic. It needs to be clarified then exactly what the arguments of Allert and Newman entail.