By a kind of mutual bond the Lord has joined together the certainty of his Word and of his Spirit, so that the perfect religion of the Word may abide in our minds when the Spirit, who causes us to contemplate God’s face, shines; and that we in turn may embrace the Spirit with no fear of being deceived when we recognize him in his own image, namely, in the Word.106
Oosterhaven finds Calvin’s concept of order in the background of all Calvin’s theology. Calvin was educated in Stoic philosophy, which identified God with order and held that the unity of the world was maintained by Reason.107 The Spirit is seen in this model of God as the archetype and controller of order through reason. The Spirit is to be understood as active in creation, demonstrating authority in and through his bestowal of “beauty and order.” As a result, Calvin gave Protestant theology and doctrine a hermeneutic that reflects his concept of order and that is derived from his discremin.
If we . . . look only to Calvin, we are forced to take with total seriousness his reiteration that the Word and the Spirit are inseparable in constituting the discremin that must reign over Christian doctrine. It was the development of this second noetic office of the Spirit which gave Protestantism a systematic doctrine of theological authority. . . . It was this same Calvin, who emphasized and re-emphasized, more than any of the other Reformers, that the Word becomes authoritative as, and only as, it is joined with the testimonium Spiritus Sancti.108
The Roman Catholic Magisterium
The authority of the Spirit, according to the counter-Reformation, is evident in the “infallibility” of the Roman Catholic Church. According to Congar,
The Spirit is guaranteed to pastors insofar as they are pastors of the Church, recognized by the Church as having the grace that dwells in it and as appointed or given by God Himself. This guarantee of faithfulness, of which the Spirit is the principle, is given to the Church. It is such a firm guarantee that to admit that the Church is capable of error is to impute a failure on the part of the Spirit.109
The Catholic Church’s faithfulness, according to counter-reformation Catholic theologians, was radically and yet erroneously questioned by the Reformers. John Fisher exemplifies this attitude by arguing that the promise of the Spirit was not made simply to the apostles but to the Church until the end of the age. As a result, the Spirit provides the hermeneutical principle for determining truth.
The universal Church cannot fall into error, being led by the Spirit of truth dwelling in it for ever. Christ will remain with the Church until the end of the world. . . . [The Church] is taught by the same one Spirit to determine what is required by the changing circumstances of the times.110
Such an “interpretive authority” was made an institutional standard via the Council of Trent. Catholic theologians at Trent appealed to the continual activity of the Spirit throughout the Church age as a primary justification for the handing down of the apostolic traditions and for the trust that should be placed in those traditions. This, however, is not distinguished from the trust we are to have in the canonical Scriptures. What the Reformers attributed to the Holy Spirit (that is, the authentic interpretation of the Scriptures) the theologians of Trent ascribed to “the Church,” the body of Christ where the Spirit was living in the form of a living gospel.
This lead to the doctrine of the Church’s “infallibility,”111 by which the Roman Church claims to be the authoritative interpreter of written revelation.112 Since Christ is the Head of the Church and the Church is His body, the authority of the Roman Church becomes the authority of the indwelling Christ. This is witnessed in the statement declared at the Council of Trent (Fourth Session), that all interpretation was to be in accord with the “holy mother Church—whose role is to judge the true sense and interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.” In a sense this seems to amount to an elevation of the Church’s interpretation of the Bible over the Bible itself. This is admitted openly in traditional Catholic doctrine, as seen in the introduction to A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scriptures :
Nevertheless . . . 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