The digital age is nothing if not cacophonic. We are inundated with words to the point that, in order to be heard over the din, hyperbole becomes the norm. Our Lord and the Apostles, on the other hand, were neither cacophonic nor hyperbolic. When He said something, the Word made Flesh was economical and precise in what He said and what He meant. That is why when He promises the Apostles that the Holy Spirit “guide you to all truth” (John 16:13), he really means all truth. The Apostles would be given full and perfect knowledge of God’s Revelation so that the Barque of Peter would never be steered off course.
One might be justified if his initial reaction to such a statement, even if true, is to conclude that, in the end, it has no practical bearing. But as we shall see it is an especially important point that has practical implications. So important in fact that when St. Irenæus, the second-degree disciple of the Apostle John through St. Polycarp, wrote his treatise Against Heresies, he included a proof of it in order to refute the Gnostics who claimed to have hidden knowledge. Irenæus tells the would-be heretics that “after our Lord rose from the dead, [the apostles] were invested with power from on high when the Holy Spirit came down [upon them], were filled from all [His gifts], and had perfect knowledge…”(St. Irenæus, Against Heresies, III-I, emphasis added).
The Amen of the Church
We look to early Church Fathers such as Irenæus because they tell us how Divine Revelation was received. God speaks and the people, in receiving His message, say “Amen”. If someone like Irenæus interpreted Jesus’ words during His farewell discourse literally, then we can rest assured that it is the authentic interpretation. This becomes even more obvious when we consider that it has to be true or else the Deposit of Faith will eventually decay. And this is why he wrote what and when he did. The Gnostics professed that the Apostles merely got the ball rolling and that men (especially men like them) would come along and add to it: “For it is unlawful to assert that they preached before they possessed perfect knowledge, as some do even venture to say, boasting themselves as improvers of the apostles” (ibid). If the Apostles did not have full and perfect knowledge then it necessarily allows for addition to it the deposit of faith, the position that Irenæus found “unlawful”.
The practical implication that follows from this is the absolute necessity for the development of doctrine and the authoritative Church. Development is not the same thing as addition, as we have discussed previously, but a result of the Word of God being living and active. But the distinction between development and addition necessitates the presence of an authoritative Church. But just because the Apostles had full and complete knowledge, it does not mean that they articulated all of it. To grasp this we can turn to the Apostle of Development, Blessed John Henry Newman.
Newman on the Full Knowledge of the Apostles
Like Irenæus, Newman also took Our Lord at His word. But he was more interested in how that could be, than that it could be. In his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (EDCD), Newman concludes that “Thus, the holy Apostles would without words know all the truths concerning the high doctrines of theology, which controversialists after them have piously and charitably reduced to formula, and developed through argument. Thus, St. Justin or St. Irenæus might be without any digested ideas of Purgatory or Original Sin, yet have an intense feeling, which they had not defined or located, both of the fault of our first nature and the responsibilities of our nature regenerate…Thus St. Athanasius himself is more powerful in statement and exposition than in proof; while in Bellarmine we find the whole series of doctrines carefully drawn out, duly adjusted with one another, and exactly analyzed one by one.” (Blessed John Henry Newman, EDCD, Ch.5, Section 4).
The knowledge “without words” meant that the “Apostles had the fullness of revealed knowledge, a fullness which they could as little realize to themselves, as the human mind, as such, can have all its thoughts present before it at once. They are elicited according to occasion. A man of genius cannot go about with his genius in his hand: in an Apostle’s mind great part of his knowledge if from the nature of case latent or implicit…”
In essence, the Apostles were infused with all knowledge of divine Revelation. It was always in their mind. But the communication of knowledge on a human level is always deficient. No word necessarily encompasses a complete idea. Development allows the idea to be looked at from multiple angles so that it can be fully articulated. Instead then of fully articulating what they knew, they were guided by the Holy Spirit to have all of their knowledge spread implicitly. It would then unfold over time, under the divine authority bestowed upon the Church.
Newman gives a good example when he asks whether St. Paul would have known about the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. While he might not have initially grasped what the term Immaculate Conception meant, “if he had been asked whether our Lady had the grace of the Spirit anticipating all sin whatever, including Adam’s imputed sin I think he would have replied in the affirmative.” The explication may have been foreign but as soon as he knew what you meant he would have found it among the deposit of faith that he was given.
The practical implication then is that either way, the Protestant argument against the Church’s authority fails and ultimately is self-defeating. If they take a reductive, rather than a literal meaning of Christ’s words, namely that the Apostles did not know all things, then there is no reason why the deposit of faith must be closed or must be included solely in the Bible. In fact, if this is true then an authoritative Church is absolutely necessary as the guardian of divine revelation. Likewise, if the Apostles did know all things and did not communicate them explicitly, then there must be an authoritative Church that guides the articulation of that knowledge. There is a third option, namely that the Apostles were simply bragging about what they were given and were unwilling to hand it on, although that leads to an absurd conclusion. Either way then, the existence of an authoritative Church is implicit in Christ’s promise that the Apostles would be led to all truth by the Holy Spirit.