威廉俄坎論教會信仰權柄的憑據

William Ockham on the Foundation of Christian Authority

張聖佳(Sheng-Chia Chang)

《華神期刊》 9期 (2018/12) Pp. 40-72

並列摘要

William Ockham, a fourteenth-century Franciscan friar, turned his attention to church politics after he broke relationship with the papacy of John XXII. Throughout his academic and later political periods, his ideas about the fundamental elements of Christian authority remained consistent. He defined heresy as a pertinacious attitude against Christian truth. His idea about the Christian truth is foremost embodied by the canonical scriptures as well as by the doctrines contained in the ecumenical creeds. In addition, he affirmed the apostolic oral teachings as infallible. Ockham proposed a kind of extraordinary truth revealed by miracles, which in reality are nothing other than presumed unanimity of believers with regard to the established church doctrines. Ockham's concept of truth and heresy is connected with his concept of the universal church, which comprises the transcendent church and its historical counterpart. Whatever is true or false is hence immutable and irreformable in light of the universal nature of the church. All truth necessary for salvation is preserved eternally. What the historical church does is only discover progressively those truth or heresies by the unanimity of the believers in time, a fact which could be confirmed from hindsight. The new truth discovered progressively in history serve to clarify the established truth, and can never overturn the latter. Truth belongs only to the universal church but not to its parts, including apostles, popes, general councils etc. For this reason, laymen are in no way inferior to the church clergymen in terms of their ability of finding truth. The means by which the laymen find the truth, especially when the truth is not yet revealed in the form of church doctrines, is to search the scriptures, using the reason given them in a right way. That means, in face of disputes regarding matters of faith, the deciding factors are the scriptures and the individual believers. Ockham was not only the first one in the medieval times to develop a comprehensive definition of the church tradition, but also a rare champion in his days for the evangelical liberty of individuals. What he envisioned is an environment where each person can contribute to the discovery of truth based on the scriptures through open dialogue and communication without fear or intimidation. Such environment does not permit the attitude of pertinacity as it is the root cause of heresy. For this reason, Ockham valued the scriptures on the one hand, and the personal reason along with individual freedom on the other. On this note, Ockham, though certainly not the forerunner of sixteenth-century 'sola scriptura' movement, has made a significant suggestion for its possibility. This essay concludes that it is fair to describe Ockham's idea as 'sola canonical scriptures, ecumenical creeds and apostolic oral tradition'. It further argues that 'sola ecumenical doctrines' is the viable common factor between the Protestants and the Catholics in agreement with Ockham's theory of extraordinary truth on the basis of the unanimity of believers.