- Canon Law and the Magisterium
a. Jesus announced that he had come
not to abolish the Torah but to fulfill it,
and the Gospels portray him as a typi-
cally observant Jew of his day.
b. But Paul was soon arguing that in this
new Messianic Age the redemption of
humankind through Jesus had ren-
dered the Torah unnecessary.
c. As the expected End Time began to
recede into the indefinite future, there
came the need for some guidelines to
behavior.
d. Councils of churches began to produce
not only statements of belief, “creeds,”
whereby doctrine or teaching was
defined as dogma, but also behavioral
norms and canons regulating the life of
clergy and laity alike.
DOCTRINE AND DOGMA
In the present context, doctrine is
the teaching of the religious com-
munity. The implication is that it is
standardteaching, but who sets the
standard? Doctrine becomes stan-
dard or normative in either of two
ways, when the community agrees
on it, in short, by consensus, or if it
is defined or promulgated by a
competent authority. Jewish and
Sunni Muslim doctrines are gener-
ally of the first type and, like all
products of consensus, grow
extremely fuzzy around the edges.
Both the Jewish and the Sunni
communities lack the authorities
competent simply to pronounce
what constitutes the “true teaching”
(orthodoxy). Christians and Shi’ite
Muslims do, however, possess
such authorities, the first in person
of its bishops, either singly or
assembled in synods and ecumeni-
cal or general councils, whose pro-
nouncements become dogma; in
the Western Church, the bishop of
Rome or pope claimed this prerog-
ative uniquely for himself. This
authority is paralleled among Shi’ite
Muslims in the Imams, who can
also pronounce dogmatically (and
infallibly), whether in person
or through his latter-day surrogates.LECTURELECTURE NINE