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Catholics can use to Scripture to defend the fact that Jesus empowered the Church with a permanent magisterium, but our guest, Suan Sonna, says we should also just use some common sense when we explain the magisterium to Protestant Christians.
Cy Kellett:
Does the church actually have the authority to speak for Jesus? Suan Sonna is next.
Cy Kellett:
Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. And one of the things that we Catholics have to defend is the idea that Jesus left a teaching church, a church with the authority to teach. It’s not just me and my Bible and Jesus, but there is a church that has the authority to tell me how to behave, what to do, in some cases, at least in general, what to do, and how to interpret the scriptures, how to live them out in a way that is faithful to Jesus.
Cy Kellett:
So we can defend all of that by turning to scripture itself. There certainly are scriptural defenses of that. But we don’t end there. There’s also a common sense defense of why Jesus would do it this way, why God would establish a church that carries on with his authority to teach. We asked Suan Sonna to tell us about that, and here’s what he said.
Cy Kellett:
Suan Sonna from the Intellectual Conservatism Podcast, thanks for being with us.
Suan Sonna:
Thank you.
Cy Kellett:
It’s our first time we get to speak with you as an associate of Catholic Answers, as an affiliate of Catholic Answers. And it’s very exciting for us that we have you as a member of the family. I’m looking forward to working with you on things.
Suan Sonna:
Yeah. And I’m very honored to be here.
Cy Kellett:
Well, we decided we’d start with a tough one for you. And apologetically, it’s interesting that a lot of times we have to defend that the Catholic church is, in fact, hasn’t rejected biblical teaching. It’s consistent with the Bible. We have to defend the traditions of the church. But I haven’t seen too many people defending the magisterium itself, just the idea that there is a divinely instituted magisterium. So why do we have to defend that idea?
Suan Sonna:
Well, I think it’s one of the distinctive markers of Catholicism. So first, when it comes to the issue between Protestants and Catholics, the first thing that always is brought up is sola scriptura.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Suan Sonna:
And it’s fundamentally an issue of authority on doctrine and concerning faith and morals. And even with our Orthodox brothers and sisters, the fundamental question there is whether or not the Pope is supreme and infallible. And so the question of authority, to me, I think is really the central question. Justification is surely also important, but if you get the things right with the magisterium, then whatever that institution says definitively, that’s what Christ wills for us to believe.
Cy Kellett:
Yes. Okay. I see your point. But if you said, even to ask a question like, to whom did Christ give this authority? Among many Christians, that wouldn’t even be the right questions. They would say, where did, or in what did Christ invest this authority?
Suan Sonna:
Sure, you can put it that way as well, because we would recognize that scripture, of course, has authority as the sacred tradition. But, of course, with the magisterium, it’s this idea of whether or not there is this living, enduring authority that can continue to tell us and give us that answer, even in our day and age.
Cy Kellett:
So you’re going to give us some pointers on why it makes sense that the church has a magisterium.
Suan Sonna:
Yeah. And I just want to explain, too, the kinds of arguments that I’m going to give. In the past, I’ve given arguments straight from scripture, very detailed arguments on where the magisterium is in the Bible. But I think also a lot of Catholics that I’ve encountered, they use these a priori arguments to defend the magisterium. And the idea there is simply, “Hey, it makes a lot of sense that there would be something like a magisterium.”
Cy Kellett:
Oh yeah.
Suan Sonna:
So just to give you an example, when I used to be a Wednesday night teacher at my Baptist Church, I remember once there was a girl that I was talking to, I was teaching and she said, “Hey Suan, does God want us to have a mother and father?” And I said yes. And she said, “God is our Father, right?” And I said yes. And then she said, “Who is our mother?” And it was at that moment that I started thinking about, wow, maybe I’m missing something or [crosstalk 00:04:08].
Cy Kellett:
How interesting.
Suan Sonna:
… even when I talk to-.
Cy Kellett:
What a fascinating question.
Suan Sonna:
Yeah, or as Baptist kids, we would ask questions like, “Hey, if God wants us to all be one,” we read passages like John 17:21, “then why are there so many different denominations?” And we’d give our typical answers. But then that question lingered for, at least a lot of us. And so it’s interesting that even the children could pick up that there’s something not quite right here. And so we’re talking about what we’d expect even before we do the deep dive, or at least what makes the most sense given the character of God or things like that.
Cy Kellett:
So you’re not going to give us a bunch of this passage in Matthew’s Gospel or here’s how the way problems were handled in the Acts of the Apostles. We’re going to step back a little bit and say just why, in a basic way, does it make sense that the church would have a magisterium?
Suan Sonna:
Yeah, that’s correct. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Cy Kellett:
All right. Well, so let’s start by a simple definition. What do you mean by a magisterium? Someone’s listening who’s not a Catholic or maybe was raised Catholic but doesn’t know what does that word mean?
Suan Sonna:
So magisterium in simple terms just means teacher, magister. When we look at the magisterium, we’re talking about the successional and infallible apostolic teaching institution. And this institution can teach on doctrines concerning faith and morals, and it can give final definitive judgements should the Holy Spirit will it.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. And let’s maybe start, let’s start with one. Give me a reason why it makes sense that the church has a magisterium.
Suan Sonna:
So the first argument I would consider is something like justice, or maybe just simply right worship. The questions that we are talking about when we’re interpreting scripture, these are the most important questions that we can ask ourselves, the nature of God, the nature of Jesus Christ, or even questions concerning providence and predestination. So all these questions are fundamentally important in our relationship with God. And so, for instance, we would all agree that God is owed proper worship. So if we profess to love God, then we also want to love him by knowing who he is.
Suan Sonna:
So just to give an example, if you have a husband and a wife who are living together and the husband says one time a joke that’s a little inappropriate, and the wife chuckles and she thinks it’s okay. But then let’s say he misinterprets that as her being okay with that kind of humor, and he continues with his misunderstanding, it ends up ultimately damaging the relationship, or it doesn’t cancel out the relationship, but it’s not as strong as he would want it to be, because he wants to know, if he loves her, what she really thinks, or what she really wants him to believe about her.
Suan Sonna:
And so the same is true that I’d argue in our case with our relationship with God, we want to know what God wants us to believe about him. We want to know what God wants us to think about his own mother. We want to know every single little detail precisely because we are motivated by love. All right. And so this is the beginning of the arguments.
Cy Kellett:
But you call it, you said justice or right worship. So those two are related in what way? That it’s just that we have someone who can tell us the proper way to interact with God like that husband needed with his wife?
Suan Sonna:
Well, the reason that I call it justice is because if we are acting out of love towards God, then we recognize that there are certain things that are owed to God.
Cy Kellett:
I got you. Okay.
Suan Sonna:
And so it’s justice in that sense.
Cy Kellett:
Yes. And so if we have an obligation that is, we owe God something in the way we relate to God, we need someone who can reliably tell us what that is.
Suan Sonna:
Yes, or we would at least want a way in which we can know on these really important central questions, we want to be able to hear a voice of some sort, or some guidance to help us really understand our beloved.
Cy Kellett:
All right. So, we’re working our way through some arguments for the, why the magisterium of the church makes sense? Why God would do it that way? So give me another one.
Suan Sonna:
All right. So the second one is the argument from evangelism. And so the thing is people see unity as a marker of the divine. And so let me give you an example. So in John 17:21, Jesus says, I’m using the New Living Translation just for the purposes here. It says, Jesus says, I pray that they will all be one just as you and I are one, as you are in me, father, and I’m in you. And may they be in us so that the world will believe you sent me. And so the unity between Jesus and the father between the son and the father is emblematic of the unity that God wants in believers.
Suan Sonna:
And it is through this kind of unity that people see, okay, does this institution, does this group of people, does it make it different from other groups? So think about any other human institution or any other human group, there’s factions, there’s divisions, people disagree on fundamental values, look at the United States for instance. But surely what would make God’s community different is that there would be unity. And so, for instance [crosstalk 00:09:25].
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. That would make it much more believable that it belong to God. Yeah. Okay. I got you. Yeah.
Suan Sonna:
Yeah, and even in my apologetics work with, even my Muslim friends, my Muslim friends will joke like, hey, you say that your religion was created by God, but you guys disagree on the most basic things, or you disagree here and there. And it’s interesting because my friends who are more from an Eastern background, they will point out, why don’t you have unity? Whereas my Western friends, for the most part, they won’t use this kind of argument against Christianity. And the reason why my Western friends won’t use this argument against Christianity is because they expect for there to be disunity, for there to be fundamental irreconcilable differences.
Suan Sonna:
And so we have already accepted that in our Western culture. But in the East, or even when you look at the early church fathers, like Ignatius of Antioch, talking about how we have to avoid all divisions and maintain unity, there was this idea that unity is a perfection. And so if God is going to build a perfect community, or if God is going to uniquely make his presence known in the world, then he would do so through unity and order, not chaos.
Cy Kellett:
All right. So are there more arguments for why it makes sense that God would have a church with a magisterium?
Suan Sonna:
And so building off of the evangelism argument, there would now be the argument from unity. So let’s look at the unity point in more detail. So look, the best way to secure unity is through institutions. So for instance, if you have something that you love, that you find precious or valuable, what you’re probably going to do is you’re probably going to make rules or agreements to ensure that this thing is cherished properly and protected. You might have traditions that help you remember and practice the thing that you care about. Now it’s important to understand that, look, institutions are natural and needed. So, take the United States, for example, originally the founding fathers started off with the Articles to Confederation. And so you had all these different factions, so to speak, in federations that were there, but they couldn’t live peacefully together. They didn’t have a universal currency, they couldn’t establish anything universally. And so there was chaos and disorder.
Suan Sonna:
And so in order to actually preserve the values of, let’s say the declaration of independence at the constitution convention, they create the constitution, they create the system of federalism. And so the point that I’m making here is that, look, we naturally form institutions, especially institutions of authority to protect the very things that we care about, to ensure that we can have a final judgment and we are all in agreement. And so to give you an example, I remember I was having dinner once with a Baptist pastor and he didn’t know that I was Catholic, but I don’t know, the topic of authority came up and he said, you know what, Suan? I would really like it if I had a Bishop, because if I had a Bishop and I could have this final authority, this appeal to him to settle all the issues down below. And so there’s that idea then that, look, institutions are natural. They’re needed to settle some issues for the whole community. And so we gravitate towards authority to help us do that.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. And, God, it is in the nature of the way God relates to us too, that he uses the most natural, I guess Thomas Aquinas and probably others said, grace builds on nature. So it’s a perfectly reasonable argument to say, there’s this natural way that human beings are unified. And that is through institutions.
Suan Sonna:
And to use another argument, so this is from Robert C. Koons in his book, A Lutheran’s Case for Roman Catholicism, he says that if you’re going to will the end or a certain goal, then you have to also effectively will the means. So for instance, if I say I want to be present today on Catholic Answers Focus, but I don’t actually open up my Skype app. Then I have not actually willed the end in question. And so if God wills the end, the end of unity in his people, and even Ephesians chapter four versus 11 to 13 talk about unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the son of God, then what’s the best way to do that?
Suan Sonna:
Well, because God’s omnipotent, he can do it any other way that he wants to. But when we look at how God has made us, how God has formed us, and we recognize that God is wise, God’s going to govern us in a way that is fitting to our nature. All right. And what I mean by nature is not our sin nature, or the sin that we struggle with or even [inaudible 00:14:07] after baptism. Rather, what I’m talking about are the ways in which God has designed us towards flourishing. And so, for instance, God made us for friendship. God made us for worship and devotion to him. These aren’t bad things in our nature. And God also made us to be social and Aristotle calls us political animals. And so God would want, I would argue, or God would, if he wills the end of unity, then the way in which does that is through something that he’s put within us, which is this capacity to build institutions and have authority structures living and breathing among us.
Cy Kellett:
All right. I’m convinced, I want a church with a magisterium, but I think you have more.
Suan Sonna:
Yeah. And so we can think about other things too, like what are the features of this institution? So think about apostolic succession. Some people believe that, okay, look, I’ll agree with you that the apostles were infallible, after all they wrote the sacred scriptures. And so they are inherent. But beyond that their apostolic authority just died with them. But all of us recognize that there’s at least something wrong with that at face value, which is that, wait, no, we still need the authority of the apostles. We still need their apostolic authority and guidance to help us when we face these critical issues. So for instance, with the early heresies in the church that endured long after the apostles died, are we going to say that the apostles didn’t leave any of their authority behind, or any way to settle these issues? Or think about when it comes to settling the canon.
Suan Sonna:
You had all these different groups making their own canons, deciding what’s scripture, what’s not, but there needed to be finally in the Councils of Carthage, the magisterium, the voice of the church saying these are the approved texts from which we will ground ourselves in. And so if it wasn’t for the canon of scripture, if we left it up to just democratic vote, then it would be chaotic. And even when we think about our own constitution. We think about how the bill of rights sets limits on government. And these things are things that are irreformable. The reason why that’s a good thing, at least I would argue, is because if the United States is actually going to have non-negotiables, if it’s actually going to protect rights, then it needs to have something that is beyond amending or what have you.
Suan Sonna:
And so when it comes to the things that are most important about our faith, the things that give Christianity its identity, there also have to be non-negotiables or else, then we can just sift and change every generation.
Cy Kellett:
It’s a pretty persuasive argument. Now, again, to go back to the idea of what you’re presenting here is the sense of it, why it makes sense, but it’s not the full argument for the magisterium, that would require a totally different kind of conversation. Much more elaborate.
Suan Sonna:
Yeah. That is true. My last argument for a magisterium gets into some of the nitty gritty, but I’ve done more stuff on the New Testament elsewhere.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. Okay. Explain that to me, how the last one gets into that nitty gritty.
Suan Sonna:
Right. So the last argument is the argument from divine precedent. And so the Old Testament is just as much scripture as the New Testament. And what we see in the Old Testament in Deuteronomy 17, eight to 13, is that God established the courts of Israel to interpret the Torah, even when Moses was alive. And so Moses, the prophet, he’s getting ready to die, and so he is giving his last parting homily to Israel. And he reiterates based on, we know in Exodus 18:26, Moses used to judge all the cases of Israel by himself and interpret the Torah and the dictates of the law. Eventually Jethro, his father-in-law ,tells him, hey, Moses, this isn’t a good thing. You need to train the men of Israel so they can carry the burden with you. And then in Deuteronomy 17, eight to 13, Moses lays out the principle once again.
Suan Sonna:
And so notice that in the Old Testament, the same God in the old, the same God in the new, to protect the Torah, to protect the sacred scriptures, there was an institution established alongside it to ensure that God’s people could be guided along. Now, was this institution infallible? I had argue, maybe not, although we don’t know. So I’ve done a lot of research in this area, but the point here is that even by Jesus’s time, people were talking about how the court system in Israel, at least they would say it was inspired by God, or it had a divine authorization, or it was the final Supreme Court, so to speak. And so we can use further arguments to get to infallibility. For instance, take one argument, like in the book of Hebrews, where it talks about how Jesus is greater than Moses. And so we know that if Jesus is greater than Moses, he’s going to do things greater than Moses. And one of the things that Moses had done was to built a court system to protect the scriptures, to protect the traditions of Israel.
Suan Sonna:
And so if Jesus is the greater Moses, then he’s going to give something even greater to the church, which is an infallible magisterium, or once again, consider the argument from evangelism, for why we need an infallible institution. If the church is fallible, then it’s just an institution like any other human institution to some extent. We could get some things fundamentally, critically wrong. We would just be almost looking like we’re just making it up as we go along, so to speak. Whereas if we have a divine institution where the Holy Spirit consistently preaches and protects the church from error, then we have something that would also facilitate, inspire people to think, I think this institution was made by God, or even take the argument from justice once again, for why we need an infallible institution. Given how important the questions are that we’re tackling, we really need to know if the church puts its foot down, then it’s right. And so these are just four arguments that I consider for why a magisterium makes sense.
Cy Kellett:
But there is a certain way in which it defends, and maybe this is because the modern world is essentially a world with a tremendous authority problem. If you had to psychoanalyze what it is to be modern, you’d say, doesn’t like authority, but there’s something in us that rebels against men, how can men speak for God? So could you just address that just very quickly? You can see that this is a reasonable thing having to do with the nature of what God is doing and establishing the church and providing salvation and working with our nature and all of that. But we still, there’s something in us that says, I don’t believe men can speak for God.
Suan Sonna:
I would say that the greatest counter to that point would be the incarnation. So in the one person of Jesus Christ, you have these two natures, the human nature and the divine nature. And so what Jesus does is as God incarnate, he perfects the human nature. And he shows us through his own life by sharing his authority with his apostles. So think about how in the book of Mark and Matthew, he authorizes the apostles to cast out demons in his name, to baptize. He gives them the power in Matthew 16:19, and 18:18 to bind and loose, and whatever they bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, whatever they loose on earth, shall be loosed in heaven. In Luke’s gospel when Jesus says, whoever hears you hears me, the whole point of the New Testament is that it’s through Jesus Christ, that we can finally return home in God, himself.
Suan Sonna:
And so part of the mission of the church is to show that we are participating in the divine life of God. And so the reason why Jesus gives this kind of authority to men, for instance, take John 20:23, when Jesus says, whatever sins you retain shall be retained, whatever sins you forgive shall be forgiven. This is an incredible authority that could only be given of God, but now God shares it with men. And the reason why is because God is truly inviting us into his divine life as second Peter talks about. And so what I would say here is that this distrust of institutions, and this despising of even human beings speaking the place of God, and what have you in a magisterium, it almost conveys to me a kind of, well, overlooking what the incarnation had actually done, and what Jesus had done in his own life of sharing himself to the world and sharing himself with the apostles, his own authority
Cy Kellett:
Suan Sonna, thanks. I really appreciate you taking this time to just walk us through the reasonableness of the belief in the magisterium of the church.
Suan Sonna:
Yeah. I appreciate coming on.
Cy Kellett:
All right. So while I’ve got you though, because you’re in this new relationship with us here at Catholic Answers, one, as I said, we’re very, very, very grateful. Tell us what you do at Intellectual Conservatism, at the podcast and the website.
Suan Sonna:
Yeah. So Intellectual Conservatism is dedicated to defending ancient Christian traditions. And so it’s dedicated to questions concerning the philosophy of God, or even ethics and morality. And we do cover politics from time to time, or I cover it from time to time Intellectual Conservatism. And so the point with that is not necessarily to defend conservatism in America, conservatism in Europe, but it’s more like the idea of conserving the things that we love and cherish, like the tradition from the apostles or what we receive from the church.
Cy Kellett:
And you can find that on Apple Podcast, you can just search for Intellectual Conservatism. You have a YouTube.
Suan Sonna:
Yep.
Cy Kellett:
And then people can always search Suan Sonna for more of your materials.
Suan Sonna:
Yep. That sounds right to me.
Cy Kellett:
Well, thanks again. I’m looking forward to more of these conversations.
Suan Sonna:
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. I really appreciate it.
Cy Kellett:
The richness of what Christ left us in the scripture and in the church is really overwhelming. He didn’t do the minimum for us, he didn’t leave us just barely what we need to be saved, but all that we need in our order to be fully brought to life in him, Jesus Christ. He left us all of that. And the teaching authority of the church is among those things. We’re very grateful to Suan Sonna for taking the time with us. It’s fun to get to work with him. I hope we’ll get to do it many more times. You can certainly find him, just look up Suan Sonna online and you’ll find his work. And he’s doing lots of great work defending the faith.
Cy Kellett:
If you like the work we do here, you can support us by going to givecatholic.com. You can communicate with us by sending an email to focus@catholic.com. And you can help us grow by subscribing, maybe you’re watching on YouTube. You can subscribe and you can hit that little bell there. And then you’ll be notified when new episodes are available, or maybe you listen on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or one of the other podcast services. If you subscribe there, you also will be notified when new episodes are available. And if you give us that five star review, maybe a few nice words, it helps to grow the podcast. And that makes all of us happier. Thanks for all your support. Thanks for being with us. And a special thanks again to Suan Sonna. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. We’ll see you next time right here on Catholic Answers Focus.