Some later Catholic theologians saw Francisco Suarez’s way of defining the members of the Church as those with true faith rather than those who merely professed to have faith as compromising the visibility of the Church. If true faith was the only “qualification” for membership in the Church, then secret heretics were not members and schismatics with true faith were.
So, how does Suarez reconcile his view of Church membership with his conviction that the Church is visible? He takes up the question of the Church’s visibility in his lengthy Defense of the Catholic and Apostolic Faith written against King James VI and I (bk. 1, chs. 7-8), as translated by Peter Simpson. But he also addresses the issue in a more concise and perhaps less polemical way in his Treatise on Faith in the ninth disputation on the Church.
Suarez says that there is agreement between Catholics and “heretics” that church can be taken for a congregation or assembly of men and thus obviously consists of corporeal and visible persons (272). The disagreement is whether there are “any visible properties” which “by a certain judgment” would allow us to distinguish a “true Church” from false ones. Here is where Protestants, according to Suarez, say that the true Church is invisible and where Catholics want the “true Church” to be distinguishable, discernible, visible, etc., “both through the internal judgment of the mind and through the external senses.”
Counter-Reformation theologians are (perhaps understandably) criticized for saying that the Catholic Church is visible like the Republic of Venice (though see some important qualifications here). But Suarez is willing to acknowledge the “invisibility” of certain dimensions of the Church, depending on what one means. Even here at the outset of the discussion, Suarez qualifies that the Church’s form is visible as a soul is “seen” through “external operations” or as a substance is known through visible accidents. In other words, the truth of the Church is not as visible as the colors of a bodily surface are visible.
But this is not just some point about the details of scholastic physics. Suarez’s own view of the Church as constituted by those with true faith–which unites us to Christ’s mystical body–poses challenges from the outset. Suarez says that the “foundations” of the Protestant position about the invisibility of the true Church are both related to the invisibility and interiority of true faith. And, as noted elsewhere, Suarez agrees with some Protestants that true faith is what makes one a member of the Church. The connection is even clearer in his Defense against King James, where Suarez writes,
And, to begin with, in every opinion, including ours, it seems necessary to say that the form is in itself invisible, whether it be predestination (as some of the heretics have said), which is sufficiently invisible, or whether (as others have said) it be charity, or whether faith, as Catholics too teach, because not only charity but faith too is a spiritual form as regards its internal quality and so it is in itself invisible. (emphasis added)
According to Suarez, the Protestants draw out the invisibility of the Church from the interiority of the form of Church membership in two ways: (1) The “form” constituting the Church–whether predestination or faith (without reference to an external form of worship)–is invisible. An external hierarchy and visible head (like a pope) or “animate rule of faith” are thus not directly relevant to this invisible form. (2) Even if Protestants acknowledge that there are visible signs of the true Church, interior faith is required and, once again, this faith is not visible, it can be feigned, etc. If the possibility of a fake Christian is acknowledged, why not an entire assembly or congregation of fake Christians?
Suarez’s reply in defense of the Church’s visibility does seem to be consistent with his view about faith as what makes one a member of the Church. He says, “even though true faith is interior, nonetheless, it can be seen in some way through external signs” (274, emphasis mine). By extension, “although one does not see the very form by which the members of the Church are internally (interius) united with one another, this is seen in signs.” “These signs,” he continues, “are sufficient for seeing the body of the Church and the members which compose it.” The visibility of the form through signs is critical to Suarez’s response to the Protestant view of the Church’s invisibility (as he construes it).
Of course, individuals might be complete hypocrites (like the occult heretics mentioned above) and thus not really members of the Church. They may be able to fake the “signs.” But usually “we can prudently judge that [certain people] are truly members of the Church, although not by an entirely infallible certitude.” Suarez, however, makes a distinction between the merely prudent inference that individuals are members of the Church and the infallibility of our judgment about the “whole body” of the Church:
Of the whole body, we judge not only prudently but also infallibly that it is a true Church because, although one or another member can deceive us, the universal body cannot.
The answer to the question about faith and the Church’s visibility thus seems to be that the existence of some occult heretics who seem to be in the Church and the reality of some true believers outside the ordinary boundaries of the visible Church united to the pope (e.g., those baptized in schismatic or heretical communities, etc.) wouldn’t raise questions about the visibility of the Church as a whole.
True faith does not remain hidden. As he says in his positive case for the visibility of the Church, “it is impossible for the true Church not to retain the true faith. Moreover, it cannot happen that the Church does not profess it externally since the Church ought to be holy and it is not sufficient ‘to believe in one’s heart’ but one must also ‘confess with the mouth,’ as Paul says in Romans 10” (274). So, while some occult heretics might confess or profess the faith with their mouth while not believing it in their hearts, this doesn’t undermine the visibility of the congregation as a whole which both believes and signifies that belief with public professions of faith.
Suarez has two main claims about the visibility of the Church:
- The true Church can be prudently discerned and known in particular through external and visible signs, in which sense it is to be called visible simply and absolutely speaking (273).
- The true Church of Christ is that which perpetually perseveres as visible (274).
In arguing for these two conclusions, Suarez cites passages from Scripture about speaking to the Church or governing the Church or even persecuting the Church as supporting the idea of the Church as a visible congregation. One of Suarez’s favorite passages here and in his defense of the Church against the criticisms of King James VI and I is the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 5 about the “city on a hill” that cannot be hid (273). Suarez also points to the days after Pentecost where the Holy Spirit visibly descended and then thousands of people were added to the Church, a quite visible process that continued in the future “through sensible preaching and miracles” and, “as though delivered (tradita) from hand to hand, has “reached us” (274).
He supports these biblical arguments–along with quite a few passages from the Church Fathers–with reasons like the following:
- Commands to support the Church, obey pastors, share with our brothers in Christ cannot be done unless the true Church is known to us.
- There are visible sacraments, a sensible sacrifice, a hierarchical order, Scripture, preaching, pastors, etc., who can be known by the Church’s members. Otherwise, Suarez says, there would be “the greatest commotion and confusion.”
For Suarez, the perpetuity of this true and visible Church is made manifest in the Petrine office, which he bases on Matthew 16. But the visibility of the pastors throughout the Church, he argues, can be supported by Ephesians 4:11-16. These pastors have a role in governing and shepherding the flock and “building up the body” in a way that manifests the unity of all the members with Christ the Head:
11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood,[e to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
Suarez also thinks that the visibility of the Church, which is the gate of heaven and the way of salvation, should not be invisible and hidden but open, accessible, and well-known. And the presence of hypocrites and evildoers in the midst of the congregation is also a part of the Church’s long history. Suarez cites the parable of the wheat and the tares along with that of the ten virgins to show that the Church until the end of the age will endure with good and evil people within it. It is “mixed” from beginning to end, but this doesn’t undermine its visibility and perpetuity (274).
Suarez concludes this section with a response to the Lutheran theologian, Johann Brenz (d. 1570), who (apparently) argued that, if Roman Catholics insist on the visibility of the true Church, they should change the Creed from “I believe in the one holy Church” to “I see the one holy Church.” In reply, Suarez says that, when doubting Thomas “saw and believed” the risen Christ, he, as Gregory the Great put it, saw one thing and believed another. (Aquinas cites the same passage from Gregory.) The Apostle Thomas saw Christ’s risen humanity that he could see and believed in (and made a profession of) Christ’s divinity that he could not see. Similarly, according to Suarez, “we see the Church by seeing external signs and testimonies of the true Church, but we believe in its internal beauty and form” (275).
Some early modern and nineteenth-century Catholic theologians did not find this account entirely satisfying. They apparently wanted a definition of Church membership that was even less “invisible.” But I hope that this account gives some sense of how Suarez understood the Church’s visibility and its spiritual form (faith) to be compatible truths. Before moving on to other issues, I’ll take a look at what Lutheran theologians were actually saying about the Church’s visibility in my next post.
Good summary of Suarez’s wrestling with visibility/invisibility of the church, Matt. Thank you.
Quick question: say a parishioner struggling with whether he or she is “truly” part of the “body of Christ” where to ask Suarez’s advice on how to discern the answer, would you think Suarez would point to his or her participation in the visible dimensions of the church (eg sacraments, confession, etc), or would he council the person to search the interiority of the soul for the presence of “genuine” faith (hope and love)?
This important article by Eric DeMeuse (p. 157) brought my attention to a helpful discussion of schismatics and visibility in section 1, n. 14. He uses the analogy to a civil polity but roots the whole discussion in the character of Christ’s mystical body (a point that was discussed a bit here):
Because those are members of Christ who retain true faith, for they receive from Him the influence and act of the spiritual life. This is, therefore, [true] of the Church. For just as the head of Christ does not have any other mystical body besides the Church, so He has no other members except those who are members of the Church.
Secondly, [schismatics are members] because indeed they have an essential conjunction with the other members, and this comes to be through faith. … And in the same way, they are united with the head, Christ’s Vicar, for the sort of schismatic of whom we are speaking … does not deny that there ought to be one supreme head in the Church, but denies that this individual man is this sort of head. This denial can sometimes be made without heresy and thus with the preservation of faith and the unity with the Church. … [A schismatic] might confess that this [pope] is the Vicar of Christ … and nonetheless denies obedience to him, but this is not enough to constitute him outside the Church. … For the one who refuses to obey the king in a civil commonwealth or stirs up seditions in a commonwealth does not immediate stop being a member of that commonwealth. Therefore, it is similar in the ecclesiastical commonwealth.
Chad, thanks so much for your comment. The interesting thing is that, because of how Suarez distinguishes supernatural faith and charity, he might engage this point a bit differently. For him, willful schismastics, some in mortal sin, etc., are members of the Church, even though they do not have a habit of supernatural charity. So, they are not in a state of grace, even though they are still members of the Church (by virtue of their participation in Christ’s mystical body through supernatural faith). So, I think that it would be easier to know whether you are a member of the Church for Suarez than whether you are in a state of grace and friendship with God in Christ. In other words, it is easier to know whether you trust in God’s word and that you don’t have pertinacious beliefs that contradict divine revelation than whether you love God above all things, are repentant of your sins, etc.
Does that make sense? This is an older belief, but, in this context, Suarez would have in mind Canon 28 of Trent’s Sixth Session:
“If anyone says that with the loss of grace through sin faith is also lost with it, or that the faith which remains is not a true faith, though it is not a living one, or that he who has faith without charity is not a Christian, let him be anathema.”
But I’m also interested in what Suarez would say about how to achieve greater moral certainty about whether one is in a state of grace. Should one look in or out or both? I’ll try to find the answer, but I looked back to an older post on Bellarmine and perhaps what he says about assurance might be relevant here: http://regensburgforum.com/2016/08/31/ranking-errors-and-the-assurance-of-salvation/
Here is one passage from Bellarmine that seems to relate most directly: “Then, if confidence (fiducia) alone would have been addressed as Chemnitz proposes, there would be no need for a long disputation. For neither do Catholics deny that a certain confidence is placed in God and that one should have certain confidence that sins are remitted after penance legitimately done and the Sacrament of Baptism or Absolution duly received (perceptum). But just as the adversaries confuse faith with confidence, they also confuse the certitude of faith with the certitude of confidence.”
So, Bellarmine’s concern is confusing the certitude of faith with the confidence that one is in a state of grace. And it’s interesting that he points to the sacraments as a sign of the divine promise (in which there should be no doubt whatsoever) and perhaps as a source of confidence about one’s disposition. Of course, some reflection on one’s interior disposition when receiving the sacraments would be necessary. But I’m not sure exactly how these theologians would balance those elements. I’ll keep this in mind as I’m reading these figures in the future. Still, I hope that this is somewhat helpful.
Oh, and when I deal with some of the Lutheran views about the visibility of the Church, I’m hoping to touch on a somewhat related question in Suarez on whether one can know with the certitude of faith that a particular Church is a true Church.
This is very helpful, Matt. You bring out some important distinctions that, as you know, prove controversial in Reformation era polemics, such as that between (1) being a member of the Church and being in a state of grace, and (2) having faith and being in a state of grace. For Suarez, so I hear you saying, you can both (a) have faith [though not “living”] and (b) be a member of the Church but (c) not be in a state of grace and thus ultimately destined for the state of inferno (to use Dante). I also assume you can (a) have faith [though not “living”] but (b) not be a member of the Church as well. Is it possible, so I now wonder, to (a) have “living” faith and (b) not be a member of the Church by virtue of not participating in certain visible features? That is, would Suarez exclude anyone with “living” faith from being counted as a Church member?
On the issue of having certainty of one being in a state of grace, I recall having two prominent Aquinas scholars during my PhD studies pressing upon me that Aquinas does not think one can have certitude of being in a state of grace. At the same time, Aquinas is clear that one should not have to live life questioning it either. (He has much to say about confidence, and this confidence arising from witnessing fruits of the Spirit…very much like Calvin on this score, I argue.) I’m not sure if we’re just parsing the nuances of “certitude” at this point. And I’m not sure where Suarez would be.
Great stuff Matt – working on this question of Suárez on visibility right now in the dissertation. Re: Charles Raith, there’s a good article by Linus Hofmann (Die Zugehörigkeit zur Kirche nach der Lehre des Franz Suarez) that points out that later in Suárez’s career, he begins to emphasize more strongly baptism as the entryway to Church membership. Hofmann argues that this is due to an increased emphasis on the visibility of the Church (citing Op. 20, 465), and Spanedda (L’eclesiologia) sees the influence of Bellarmine here (Suárez’s De ecclesia (1580-ish) was likely written without reference to Bellarmine’s controversies). I think there might be something more going on than just an increased emphasis on visibility (as Matt points out well, the emphasis on visibility is already there in the De ecclesia), but it is notable that in the Defensio (1613), Suárez begins to link “faith” more closely with “baptism,” saying things like the form of the Church is “true faith *with* the baptismal character.” So I think Suárez likely will say that if you’re properly baptized (and thus receive the gift of faith) and haven’t subsequently rejected that faith through apostasy or heresy, you’re “in”. This leads to some interesting stuff that he develops on the baptized children of heretics and schismatics which I’m working on now.
Thank you, Eric. I’ll try to track down that article.
So in light of my comment to Matt above, I’m now wondering if my question above is even valid. Are you arguing that Suarez makes such a tight connection between “living” faith and baptism, and baptism and being a member of the Church, that is it simply impossible for him to conceive of anyone having “living” faith and not being a member of the church, because only a person properly baptized has “living” faith? And thus is by default a member of the Church by virtue of baptism? So baptism becomes the hinge connecting the invisible and visible? I may be reading in too much here. And I’m interested in what you develop on schismatics.
Calov the Lutheran Orthodox theologian actually challenges Catholic ecclesiology on just these points. He thinks that the distinction of true faith and living faith (or faith formed by love) doesn’t work with the Bible or sound theology.
The schema is very helpful, though. Eric can correct me if I misstate any of these points here:
1) Suarez would say that you can have “dead” faith, not be in a state of grace and thus be on one’s way to hell, and still be a member of the Church.
2) Suarez, though, would not say that you can have faith and, at the same time, *not* be a member of the Church. If you have faith, you are basically by definition a member of the Church because you are drawing something from Christ the Head.
3) I think that you could have living faith but not be a full participant in the life of the visible Church inasmuch as that Church in communion with the successor of Peter. For instance, baptized children of Lutherans and Reformed Christians would have faith, hope, and charity–and thus “living faith”–infused in them. But they would not be concretely participating in any particular Churches in communion with the Bishop of Rome.
So, if understand him correctly, Suarez doesn’t exclude anyone with dead faith and especially anyone with dead faith from being a Church member. You can see why some later Catholic theologians want to tighten Church membership to exclude schismastics and catechumens. But, to be honest, I think that Suarez’s position has a lot of advantages, especially for understanding “no salvation outside the Church.”
I think that Suarez might have an even stronger view of moral certainty or confidence than Aquinas, though I may be mistaken. Perhaps it’s not relevant to the subject side of things, but on the objective side Suarez was apparently more “optimistic” about the salvation of those in the Church than most theologians of his day:
https://books.google.com/books?id=fGxyCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT149&dq=Francisco+Suarez+damned&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj_ttmet4zhAhWKON8KHS-LCkAQ6AEINTAC#v=onepage&q=%22relatively%20optimistic%22&f=false
Thanks, Eric! Does Suarez ever modify his position on catechumens being in the Church? I ask because, if I recall, that was another difference between Bellarmine and Suarez.
I haven’t seen him retract his position, but there are places where he will link a catechumen’s membership more closely to baptism (Defensio, bk. 1, ch. 24) and speak of it in terms of membership “in voto” (De religione). I’ll let you know if I find anything else, though.
That seems right, Matt, regarding Suárez and living faith. The “exclusivist” way of reading him is “no living faith outside the Church.” But I think there is a coherent “inclusivist” way of spinning it for Suárez: wherever there is living faith, there, too, is the Church. And yes, this living faith goes hand in hand with baptism, but it is baptism either “in re” or “in voto,” a point he makes in order to permit the ecclesial membership of pagans (see Op. 12, 359A) as well as catechumens.
That’s a great way of framing the possible interpretations. I think that the inclusivist way of reading Suarez is reasonably well-grounded in the texts. Very exciting.