To Whom Shall We Listen?
Hans Boersma on the Synod on Synodality’s Misleading Directive
Language is the womb of reality. After all, Christ is the eternal Word of God; it is in and from this Word that creation proceeds. To change language, therefore, is never an innocent thing. Tampering with linguistic conventions was a hallmark of the Reign of Terror after the French Revolution. New rules of discourse are also at the forefront of today’s woke ideologies.
None of this is news to Christians, who know that in the beginning was the Word, that the Word was with God, and that the Word was God (John 1:1). In and through Christ, God utters the world into being. Human speech is an analogical participation in the eternal Word of God. We use our words either to deepen participation in God or to separate ourselves from him.
Generalities & Buzzwords
It is noteworthy, therefore, that the concluding paragraph of the Instrumentum Laboris (IL), the working document for last October’s Roman Catholic synod, asks for a renewal of language, a renewal that would make the gospel “accessible and attractive” to the people of our time. This final paragraph, like much of the rest of IL, is awash in generalities. It offers no theological reflection of note on the nature of human language, on its Christological anchor, or on its grounding within the triune God.
To be sure, the IL celebrates the “diversity” of languages and cultures (cf. Rev. 7:7–9). It notes that words (such as “authority” and “leadership”) can “have very different resonances and connotations in different linguistic and cultural areas.” The IL strives, therefore, to “avoid divisive language” and encourages silence, listening, and prayer, so that we may recognize the voice of the Spirit (cf. John 10:14,27). This way, it suggests, we may find “consensus” on how to walk together.
The October synod on synodality was to be about process: how we walk together. Delegates were to talk about how we should talk. The IL is unambiguous about what constitutes a “synodal church.” It is primarily a “listening church,” which involves listening to those “whose voice is most often ignored.” (Here, it appears that the IL has in mind especially “remarried divorcees, people in polygamous marriages, LGBTQ+ people, etc.”) A synodal church is also a humble and forgiving church, a church of encounter and dialogue, a church unafraid of variety and diversity, and a church that welcomes and embraces all.
These buzzwords of diversity, listening, dialogue, and boundary-less embrace do not bode well for the future. To be sure, it is not that the characteristics of a synodal church are entirely alien to the gospel (though I would dearly like to know what it might mean that the church welcomes and embraces all—without qualifier—and that there is “no border” that should not be crossed). Generally, the IL does not simply toss out the old vocabulary, substituting altogether new discourse. Rather, it asks for a “renewal” of language.
The Flawed “Listening” Strategy
The problem is this: the emperor has no clothes. The process of synodality itself has been flawed from the outset. Based on the conviction that the church’s primary mark is that of “listening,” the process began with a “listening phase,” in which the voices of all (including those usually ignored) could be heard and so could help decide what might constitute a truly “listening” church.
Listening as a strategy is nothing new. Leaders and lay activists among Protestant mainline churches have used it widely ever since the 1970s, typically to introduce topics such as the ordination of women, acceptance of homosexual practice, blessings of “same-sex unions,” and so on. Such calls for listening are invariably the first stage leading to the intolerant imposition of false teaching and practice.
Surely, this is not a way in which the church receives or passes on the teaching of our Lord. Jesus insists, “All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him” (Matt. 11:27). The Father delivers (or “traditions,” if neologisms are permitted) all things to the Son, and the Son reveals the Father to the apostles and so to the church. St. Paul insists that he “delivers” (or “traditions”) to the Corinthians what he, in turn, has “received” from the Lord (1 Cor. 11:23).
We arrive at truth, not by ensuring that everyone is listened to but by faithfully listening to the Word that is eternally begotten of the Father. Again, it is not as though the IL simply tosses out the old language. Several times it mentions “listening to” or “meditating on” the Word. The problem is that these phrases are malleable. Beginning with the Arian heresy, sola scriptura has often been used to change and subvert the sacred deposit of faith.
This deposit is not the result of polling the church’s various constituencies. Those entrusted with the teaching office of the church (magisterium) have a sacred duty to teach the Word both in season and out of season (2 Tim. 4:2)—regardless, in other words, of “accessibility” or “attractiveness.” The apostle warns that a time will come when people will not endure sound doctrine: “After their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables” (4:3–4). Since the acceptance and celebration of sexual depravity has gained traction even within the church, the strategy of starting out with listening (rather than teaching) cannot but set us on a dead-end road.
The Whole of Dogma
I write as an Anglican theologian who has learnt much over the years from Catholic theology—most notably from the ressourcement theologians of the twentieth century. Henri de Lubac, probably my favorite among them, reflected deeply on what distinguishes true from false development. He was convinced that development is more than mere syllogistic argumentation—as if revelation were a series of propositions, which we simply need to rationally grasp so as to remain faithful to the truth. No doubt, up to this point the advocates of synodality will nod in agreement. But de Lubac said more than just this, for he was keenly aware that the danger of relativism is right around the corner when we abandon a logical theory of doctrinal development.
How, then, did de Lubac try to remain true to the gospel while also recognizing that it develops? Key, for de Lubac, was God’s self-revelation in Christ:
That from which we must start without ever leaving it—what is first and last—is the redemptive Action; it is the gift that God makes us of himself in his Son. . . . It is all that which, at first undivided, forms the total Object (l’Objet global), the incredibly rich Object of revelation. We can call it, to use an equivalent expression, “the Whole of Dogma”(le Tout du Dogme). And this “Whole of Dogma” is, as its name indicates, not susceptible to any increase. It, too, like the Whole of the redemptive Action, is at once first and last. It is un-surpassable.
De Lubac insisted that God’s self-giving in Christ is “the Whole of Dogma” (le Tout du Dogme). As such, it is unalterable and unsurpassable. De Lubac understood doctrinal development as monnayer Jésus—cashing in Jesus. In other words, the only thing the church can come up with is cash (monnayage), cash that’s always already there in the treasure itself—the person of Jesus. The church doesn’t change doctrine; nor can the church insert new teaching. The treasure is always already there, full and complete (le Tout du Dogme). All we do is take the cash of Jesus the treasure, guard it, protect it, and work with it.
I don’t mean to sweep under the carpet the difficult issues that arise when we ask what, concretely, monnayer Jésus looks like in our own day and age. But we dare not replace the deposit of faith—Christ the treasure, the eternal Word of the Father, traditioned to the church—with some kind of process. When it is no longer the divine Word itself but instead the renewal of language (talk about talk, synod of synodality) that takes center stage, we cannot but note with sad confidence that the treasure itself is now up for grabs.
Hans Boersma is the Saint Benedict Servants of Christ Professor in Ascetical Theology at Nashotah House Theological Seminary.
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