. . . 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.113
The teaching magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church refers to the Holy Spirit as the guarantor of its teachings and decisions. The magisterium is not the same as the theologian, who has an inherent pastoral dimension and aims to build up ecclesiastical communities. The magisterium, however, “teaches in light of a gift of the Holy Spirit and passes authoritative judgment on ‘new teachings and on considerations proposed by theology.’”114 The World Council of Churches has given a very positive definition of the nature and role of the magisterium:
[The magisterium] is the guarantee that the salvific Word of Christ will be really addressed to the concrete situation of the given age. Hence it does not replace the work and rule of the Spirit. In fact, the “magisterium” lives through the Spirit and is always subject to its guidance. The “magisterium” is the concert form in which the guidance of the Spirit maintains historical continuity with Jesus Christ. . . . The charismatic structure of the Church ensures that the Holy Spirit imparts impulses to the Church in other ways besides through official hierarchical organs of the Church. This means also when it is applied to the relationship between the Pope and the Bishops, that individual bishops can be channels for the impulses of the Holy Spirit.115
The vital connection of the magisterium with the authority of the Spirit is examined in John Wright’s article, “Authority in the Church today: A Theological Reflection.”116 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.117 According to Wright,
[I]t is the Holy Spirit vivifying the whole Church who is the source of their authority, not simply the will and consent of the members of the Church; for all parts of the Church receive the Holy Spirit for their particular tasks as a gift given by the risen Lord to the whole Church and through the whole Church, especially through the Word and Sacrament. This interrelationship of the Holy Spirit, the whole Church, and authorities within the Church solidifies both the mode in which authority is to be exercised in the Church and also the scope of its exercise.118
This structure, however, reflects the inner reality of the Church, which is essentially the Spirit. There is therefore a direct correlation between the “magisterium” and the Holy Spirit—the One who provides the internal reality of authority. According to Inch, “This stance [held by the Roman Church] likened the structural and pneumatic aspects of the Church to body and soul, so that one might not be viewed apart from the other.”119
Congar, however, admits 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.”120 Biblical references in some of its decisions (i.e., the Mariological dogmas of 1854 and 1950) have been “quite remote,” and basis for such decisions was essentially based on faith in the Church itself, “animated by the Spirit.”121
The “Interpretive Authority” of the Spirit—Definition and Storyline
The central debate within this theological period has to do with the relationship between the authority of the Spirit and the authority of Scripture. As an integral part of the Pattern of divine authority, the nature of this relationship is crucial for both Protestant and Roman Catholic theologies in their respective understandings of the Spirit’s interpretive authority.
The Catholic version of “interpretive authority” essentially reduces to their understanding of “Tradition,” which Congar refers to as a single apostolic tradition handed down in the Church through written Scripture as well as through teaching, discipline, and rites.122 Vatican II described Scripture and Tradition as forming a unity through which the faithful are brought to a full knowledge of God’s truth.123 Such understandings of Tradition place the Spirit-inspired writings and decrees of the teaching magisterium (i.e., councils and bishops) essentially on par with Scripture. One indeed wonders whether the Spirit is actually placed over the magisterium, is replaced by the magisterium, or is conjoined with the magisterium. Eno admits that, “in practice, a juridical criterion like Roman approval, while secondary, becomes the operative norm.”124 While the Spirit has “interpretive authority” to speak “through” the Word as interpreter of the Word, the Roman magisterium, in essence, assumes the role of “mediator” between the Spirit and the Word.
Protestants, on the other hand, claim that the recognition of this Spirit/Word relationship, as stated in terms of their theological discremin, is probably the reason for the success of the Protestant Reformation. Davison traces the roots of Reformation theology back to medieval theology in order to show how earlier attention to this relationship laid the necessary groundwork.
During the long night of the Middle Ages the teaching of the New Testament was obscured by the huge shadow of the Church, a building which, intending to point men heavenwards, gradually blocked out from view the sun in its splendour and the azure of the sky. Reformers before the Reformation and the great leaders in the sixteenth century did much to clear the air and bring men face to face with God in Christ. . . . In vindication the authority of the Scriptures against the encroachments of the Churches were [sic] helping to prepare the way for the complete supremacy of the Spirit.125
Bolich points out that the genius of the Reformation was not that the doctrine of the Spirit’s witness provides a “principal thesis from which other doctrines were to be systematically deduced,” but rather that the Reformers began with the text of Holy Scripture and made the witness of the Spirit integral to their entire doctrinal system, so that the witness of the Holy Spirit was inextricably bound up with the Scriptures.126
In Luther’s theology, the Spirit is not to be seen as some “doctrine” creating an unquestionable rational theory but as a living presence over the world, one that reveals Christ in the world.127 Christ is revealed through the Spirit, who is ultimately the interpreter of the Word, so that the written Word becomes a “living Word” through the Spirit. The crux of the Spirit’s “executorial authority” in Luther is thus the contemporaniety of the Word. The “Word of the Spirit” becomes an “inward Word” when the outward (written or preached) Word penetrates the heart. In this action the Spirit is authoritative with respect to the believer or the one who is being saved. Luther, however, refuses to bind the Spirit in the Word, allowing his theology (unlike many theologians who followed him) to retain the authority of the Spirit over the Word. In opposition to Roman theology, Luther’s model does not allow for a delegation of the Spirit’s own infallibility to any human person or institution, but only to the Scriptures. In this way, “interpretive authority” is retained as a property of the Spirit.
Calvin’s pneumatology and particularly his “internal testimony of the
