To use a line from an old John Denver song . . . Off I go to Nova Scotia and other beautiful wild places, from August 9th-19th. I will be away from my blog, e-mail, and computer, period (I don't have a laptop, and wouldn't take it anyway, if I did). If people want to continue various discussions while I am away, I have left the discussion thread below this one and the present one, which can handle up to 100 comments total in the BlogBack. Perhaps the three Reformed Protestant brothers I have recently challenged (also two others who say they are preparing a reply to former discussions) will have time to do a refutation in the next twelve days. I hope so; then I can enjoy some more good dialogue when I get back.
God bless you all, and if I have any prayer request, it would be (besides safe travel for our 3000 mile + journey) that our four young children (13, 11, 7, 2) do not totally disrupt the solitude, quiet, enjoyment of some beautiful parts of God's creation, and "getting away" mode that my wife and I so desperately need and seek, after constant work and the usual trials of parenthood over the previous year since our last "getaway." Thanks! In any event, she won't have to cook and I won't have to work (both writing and now delivery) for a full eleven days, and that is something we both eagerly look forward to. Hopefully, the kids will be happy with all the fun things we'll be doing (you never know with young 'uns), and be less of a "challenge" as well! :-) Everyone needs a break from the usual routine now and then.
Saturday, August 07, 2004
Dialogue With Tim Gallant on Whether the Mass is Similar to Jeroboam's Idolatry
Pastor Tim Gallant (Presbyterian), was responding to certain comments of mine in my post, Reply to Pastor Steve Schlissel's Reflections on "Romanism." His words (initially written in the thread, "What Thinkest Thou?" on the Reformed Catholicism blog) will be in blue:
If only the Hebrew prophets could have recognized that the really important thing about Jeroboam's calves was that he intended Yahweh to be worshipped through them, they clearly would never have objected. No, sorry, Dave, the issue in question is not "seeing into the heart of the worshipper." I suggest that the parallels of Scripture point to two things:
Of course, I will also add that (1) so does much of modern Protestantism's worship require some pretty radical reformation, as well; and (2) we all have a long way to go in terms of obeying the ninth commandment.
Hi Tim G.,
Again, you (as so many Protestants do) fundamentally misunderstand the crucial distinctions between Catholic eucharistic adoration and ancient idolatry and Baal-worship. You falsely portray the situation with Jeroboam, not even accurately representing what happened there. As a pastor who knows his Bible, you should know far better than this. As it is, a lowly Catholic has to correct you from the Bible. :-)
Ahijah spoke the word of the Lord concerning Jeroboam's sin:
Also:
Note: this is not intending "Yahweh to be worshipped through" the graven images, as you claim, but rather (according to God Himself, Who knows all things) "other gods." Jeroboam himself refers to "gods": a rank polytheism and idolatry indeed. We know that he sacrificed to these stupid molten images. It couldn't be more clear than it is. Yet you represent it as his thinking that he was worshiping Yahweh.
Secondly, this is truly idolatry according to the Commandments, since another God is involved. Anti-Catholics may claim that Catholics are worshiping other gods in the Mass, but no documentation whatever can be produced for this spurious charge. It is produced simply because classic Calvinism is unbiblically iconoclastic, which runs blatantly contrary to the Tradition of ancient Catholicism and Nicaea II.
Thirdly, it was our Lord Jesus Himself who held up bread in His hands and said "this is My body" and told His disciples to do the same in memory of Him. If we merely follow His model for worship, how in the world is that "idolatry", let alone worship of other gods??!! Granted, folks interpret the Eucharist differently, but even Luther held to Real Presence, and Calvin in some sense, too. So how can the adoption of transubstantiation somehow move Catholics into the realm of outright idolatry and "Baal-worship"?
Fourth, if Jesus is "really present" then He ought to be "really worshiped"! If He isn't "really present," then He cannot be worshiped as "really present"! This is not rocket science. But some Protestants want to have it both ways: a "real presence" without a "real worship" which is appropriate if our Lord Jesus is really there. It is a ludicrous contention from beginning to end.
Fifth, if any use of any representation whatsoever of God is to be condemned as idolatrous, then Jesus was an idolater, since He said of ostensible bread, "this is my body." That being absurd, the position collapses in a reductio ad absurdum.
Sixth, all these high places and shrines and altars set up in places other than at the Temple were condemned by God and the Law. So they were in violation of clear divine commandments and will, in addition to being idolatrous already (again, quite different from the celebration of the Eucharist that Jesus commanded as the central act of Christian worship).
The New Bible Dictionary (edited by J.D. Douglas, 1962), in its article on Jeroboam, noted:
I rest my case. See my similar paper, "Is the Mass Equivalent to Golden Calf Worship?"
Baal worship?
Well, yes, at least partially, according to the New Bible Dictionary, which is not exactly an organ of Catholic propaganda. Commentators and ancient near east scholars think it is a mixed bag. You don't accept the reasoning of this reputable Protestant scholarly source, so I will give you another one: The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, revised edition, edited by Allen C. Myers, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987 (from Bibjbelse Encyclopedie, Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1975, edited by W.H. Gispen et al), "Jeroboam," p. 568:
The "pedestals for Yahweh" theme was also mentioned in the New Bible Dictionary, citing the celebrated biblical archaeologist William F. Albright. Moving over to the other article referenced, we find:
Albright, in his discussion of the bulls of Jeroboam (referenced above), noted:
Thus, ironically, in helping to establish your point that it was indeed Yahweh who was consciously being worshiped through images (albeit those closely associated with pagan and heathen idolatry), it is shown that the notion of images "under" God as a pedestal is orthodox and biblical and not contrary to monotheism, for this was the imagery of the temple and the ark of the covenant (the cherubim in proximity to the invisible one and only God, Who is a Spirit). Therefore, it is not image per se which is expressly forbidden, but graven images, which is a sub-class and a particular forbidden manifestation. The Golden Calves and bulls were graven images and idols precisely because they were associated with pagan polytheistic and idolatrous belief-systems, even though they may have been regarded as "pedestals" by some or many. The cherubim of the Temple and the ark, on the other hand, were not so associated, and in fact, were commanded by God.
The brilliant biblical scholar F.F. Bruce draws a similar comparison and contrast (I found this after I wrote the above analysis):
So in the act of condemning Jeroboam's idolatry, we mustn't go too far and condemn all images. This is neither biblical nor the teaching of historic Christianity (Council of II Nicaea in 787). To condemn all such imagery whatsoever would be to eliminate orthodox, divinely-revealed Temple symbology and worship. That proves too much; therefore, this so-called "Reformed" argument collapses even before we get to illogical and absurdly forced comparisons of any of this to the Catholic Mass. It equates any image with graven images. The latter are forbidden in the Commandments, not the first. Jeroboam's imagery and practices were expressly forbidden by God; the Eucharist and the Real Presence were expressly instigated and demonstrated by our Lord Jesus Himself and reiterated in strong terms by the Apostle Paul.
You're the one not making necessary distinctions. I suggest you re-read the narrative of Kings a lot more closely. Jeroboam's "sin" is treated in radically different fashion from Baalism.
Well, sure, there can be differences in degree and nature of sin and disobedience, but that doesn't affect my overall argument, that I have carefully constructed, using all non-Catholic scholarly sources, as is my usual custom. What you neglect to see, however, is the association with Baalism. All the scholars above believe this, but you do not, for some reason. Why do they mention Baal at all if there is no connection at all here?
Joseph P. Free, in his Archaeology and Bible History (Wheaton, IL: Scripture Press Publications, revised edition of 1969, 180-181) is inclined to take an even more negative view towards Jeroboam's idols:
I am more inclined to agree with Albright's and Bruce's and the Bible Dictionaries' explanation myself. I find them to be more plausible, knowing what relatively little I do about the subject.
"Elohim" is plural in form, and thus can be translated either "God" or "gods." Yes, God does treat this as idolatry, because He does not acknowledge that He is worshipped through this. So no surprise that He says that Jeroboam has gone after "other gods." But Jeroboam's own statement that these calves have to do with the Elohim who brought Israel up from Egypt makes it very clear that in his mind, he has not changed gods.
I agree, yet there are associations with pagan polytheism and idolatry that cannot be gotten over.
It is clear that the plural verb is at most dependent upon the fact that he has two calves, not two gods (otherwise, he would have two calves in each place of worship, rather than one); more likely, it is simply due to the plural construction of Elohim, since the plural is also used in Ex 32, and it is clear that Aaron made only one calf.
Jeroboam and all his people knew that it was Yahweh who brought Israel out of Egypt, and indeed he himself knew that it was a prophet of Yahweh who promised the kingdom to him. His employment of the calves was explicitly a cultic-political move (see 1 Kg 12.27), not a self-conscious exchange of deities.
As shown above, I agree in part, but you still have to adequately explain the two passages above that I cited. God Himself stated that Jeroboam made "other gods" (1 Kings 14:9). Why didn't God simply say something like, "you have made images of Me that I do not allow"? What more is needed? If God reveals in Holy Scripture and directly to the person involved that he has made "other gods," then isn't that sufficient? Sure, there are complexities here, but we shouldn't overlook the basic data that we have.
Furthermore, we are informed that he was "sacrificing to the calves that he had made" (1 Ki 12:32). Why doesn't the text say, "sacrificing to Yahweh through the images of Yahweh that he had made"?
Furthermore, on your explanation, it is inexplicable why God treats Baalism in a radically different fashion from Jeroboam's sin. Ahab does "more evil than all before him" - why? because he explicitly adopts another god, Baal. Meanwhile, on your view, Jehu slaughters all the priests of Baal (on Yahweh's orders) and then self-consciously worships gods other than Yahweh, since he maintains the system of worship of Jeroboam (2 Kg 10.28ff). Frankly, I find that very hard to believe. Your handling of the passages has an initial plausibility but simply will not stand up.
But I made no such argument. I know you think this reductio follows from my argument, but it does not, necessarily. Sinful practices develop over time and get worse. Jeroboam's worship was syncretistic, whereas Ahab took it to the next level. So his sin was worse. But that doesn't get Jeroboam off the hook. Nor does any of this prove that the Mass is an instance of the same sort of idolatry: whether pure and gross, or syncretistic. I've backed myself up with scholars (and some of the very best at that). You have simply given your own opinion. It is, I'm sure, based on scholarly interpretations at some point, too, but I don't know what those might be unless and until you present to me the documentation.
The Jeroboam issue (and likely Aaron's calf, as well) has to do with the false worship of the true God. In Deut 12.29ff, God says that Israel is not only not to follow the gods of the Canaanites, but they are not to worship Yahweh in the way the Canaanites worship their gods (Dt 12.31). That is the point at issue with Jeroboam, and because it is so, He does not account Jeroboam's worship as true worship.
I agree again, but there are other factors to consider (that you neglect), as recounted above.
Yes, He calls them other gods - for much the same reason that Protestants have historically identified Roman Catholic worship as idolatrous. Most of us are well aware that RC self-understanding is not that you conceive yourselves as worshipping other gods. The issue (on Protestant and E.O. division of the commandments) is 2nd commandment, not 1st commandment.
The issue is also the nature of idolatry, correctly understood, and what is forvidden by God in terms of images (i.e., what is a graven image). I think I have made a bit of a deeper analysis than you have, here.
As for "this is My body," I'm sure you know that the arguments against your position are much better than you present.
I've dealt with those at length elsewhere. I cannot adequately get into that in this context, as it is ultimately a separate issue.
None of the disciples worshipped the bread.
Of course not; nor do any Catholics. That is not at issue. We are worshiping our Lord Jesus Christ.
It would have been unthinkable for them to suppose that the substance of Jesus' body had moved from the Person speaking to them to the bread that He was holding in His hand. No Jew on earth would have misunderstood what He said, and that is why we [have] no biblical record of worship of the elements.
We do not contend that they could or should have understood everything at that extraordinary moment. But this was merely one of many very difficult things they had to understand -- only made possible by the help of the Holy Spirit (including the Resurrection itself, which no one shows any indication of comprehending, until after it happened, despite repeated predictions from Jesus).
As for "worship of the elements" in Scripture (or what we would call eucharistic adoration), there is indeed explicit biblical warrant, from St. Paul:
James Cardinal Gibbons comments on these passages:
Commenting on 1 Corinthians 10:16. Luther writes, forcefully:
Finally, St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:14-22, in an explicitly eucharistic passage, uses language suggesting that he sees the eucharist as a sacrifice involving an altar (hence priesthood, hence the Sacrifice of the Mass): He mentions the "altar" of the Old Covenant in 10:18 and makes a direct analogy with the altar of the New Covenant in 10:21:
If only the Hebrew prophets could have recognized that the really important thing about Jeroboam's calves was that he intended Yahweh to be worshipped through them, they clearly would never have objected. No, sorry, Dave, the issue in question is not "seeing into the heart of the worshipper." I suggest that the parallels of Scripture point to two things:
(1) Rome, like the northern kingdom, is in many fundamental respects, one people of God with Protestants; and
(2) Rome's worship needs serious reformation at a very fundamental level, and sharing in those aspects of worship peculiar to it (and I am thinking specifically of the idolatry issue here) would
be sinful -- just as the children of Judah were not to worship before Jeroboam's calves.
Of course, I will also add that (1) so does much of modern Protestantism's worship require some pretty radical reformation, as well; and (2) we all have a long way to go in terms of obeying the ninth commandment.
Hi Tim G.,
Again, you (as so many Protestants do) fundamentally misunderstand the crucial distinctions between Catholic eucharistic adoration and ancient idolatry and Baal-worship. You falsely portray the situation with Jeroboam, not even accurately representing what happened there. As a pastor who knows his Bible, you should know far better than this. As it is, a lowly Catholic has to correct you from the Bible. :-)
Ahijah spoke the word of the Lord concerning Jeroboam's sin:
. . . you have done evil above all that were before you and have gone and made for yourself other gods, and molten images, provoking me to anger, and have cast me behind your back.
(1 Kings 14:9; RSV)
Also:
So the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold. And he said to the people, "You have gone up to Jerusalem long enough. Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt." . . .
. . . and he offered sacrifices upon the altar; so he did in Bethel, sacrificing to the calves that he had made.
(1 Kings 12:28,32)
Note: this is not intending "Yahweh to be worshipped through" the graven images, as you claim, but rather (according to God Himself, Who knows all things) "other gods." Jeroboam himself refers to "gods": a rank polytheism and idolatry indeed. We know that he sacrificed to these stupid molten images. It couldn't be more clear than it is. Yet you represent it as his thinking that he was worshiping Yahweh.
Secondly, this is truly idolatry according to the Commandments, since another God is involved. Anti-Catholics may claim that Catholics are worshiping other gods in the Mass, but no documentation whatever can be produced for this spurious charge. It is produced simply because classic Calvinism is unbiblically iconoclastic, which runs blatantly contrary to the Tradition of ancient Catholicism and Nicaea II.
Thirdly, it was our Lord Jesus Himself who held up bread in His hands and said "this is My body" and told His disciples to do the same in memory of Him. If we merely follow His model for worship, how in the world is that "idolatry", let alone worship of other gods??!! Granted, folks interpret the Eucharist differently, but even Luther held to Real Presence, and Calvin in some sense, too. So how can the adoption of transubstantiation somehow move Catholics into the realm of outright idolatry and "Baal-worship"?
Fourth, if Jesus is "really present" then He ought to be "really worshiped"! If He isn't "really present," then He cannot be worshiped as "really present"! This is not rocket science. But some Protestants want to have it both ways: a "real presence" without a "real worship" which is appropriate if our Lord Jesus is really there. It is a ludicrous contention from beginning to end.
Fifth, if any use of any representation whatsoever of God is to be condemned as idolatrous, then Jesus was an idolater, since He said of ostensible bread, "this is my body." That being absurd, the position collapses in a reductio ad absurdum.
Sixth, all these high places and shrines and altars set up in places other than at the Temple were condemned by God and the Law. So they were in violation of clear divine commandments and will, in addition to being idolatrous already (again, quite different from the celebration of the Eucharist that Jesus commanded as the central act of Christian worship).
The New Bible Dictionary (edited by J.D. Douglas, 1962), in its article on Jeroboam, noted:
They threatened true religion by encouraging a syncretism of Yahweh worship with the fertility cult of Baal and thus drew a prophetic rebuke.
(p. 614)
Likewise, in its article on "Idolatry":
[I]t is a most significant thing that when Israel turned to idolatry it was always necessary to borrow the outward trappings from the pagan environment . . . The golden calves made by Jeroboam (1 Ki 12:28) were well-known Canaanite symbols, and in the same way, whenever the kings of Israel and Judah lapsed into idolatry, it was by means of borrowing and syncretism.
(p. 552)
I rest my case. See my similar paper, "Is the Mass Equivalent to Golden Calf Worship?"
Baal worship?
Well, yes, at least partially, according to the New Bible Dictionary, which is not exactly an organ of Catholic propaganda. Commentators and ancient near east scholars think it is a mixed bag. You don't accept the reasoning of this reputable Protestant scholarly source, so I will give you another one: The Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, revised edition, edited by Allen C. Myers, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987 (from Bibjbelse Encyclopedie, Kampen: J.H. Kok, 1975, edited by W.H. Gispen et al), "Jeroboam," p. 568:
. . . Jeroboam erected golden calves at Bethel and Dan for Israel's worship ([1 Ki] 12:26-30); although not meant as idols but as pedestals for Yahweh, the calves were soon enmeshed in a syncretistic blend with Baalism, the symbol of which was the bull (cf. Hos. 8:5-6; 13:2; see GOLDEN CALF).
The "pedestals for Yahweh" theme was also mentioned in the New Bible Dictionary, citing the celebrated biblical archaeologist William F. Albright. Moving over to the other article referenced, we find:
The text [i.e., regarding Aaron and the Golden Calf] does not state whether the intent was to make an image of Yahweh . . . The people proclaimed it to be the god who brought Israel out of Egypt (cf. Neh. 9:18; Ps. 106:19-23) . . .
During the divided monarchy Jeroboam I of Israel (ca. 922-901 B.C.) placed a calf in each of the traditional sanctuaries of Dan and Bethel (1 Kgs. 12:26-33) as part of the plan to legitimize his rule. While he may actually have intended to foster worship of Yahweh, Jeroboam's actions were denounced as pagan (v. 30; 2 Kgs. 10:29; 17:16; 2 Chr. 13:8 . . . The calf worship mentioned in the mid-eighth century oracles of the prophet Hosea (Hos. 8:5-6; 10:5-6; 13:2) may allude to these or similar abuses or may refer more generally to increased syncretism in Israelite religion.
(p. 430)
Albright, in his discussion of the bulls of Jeroboam (referenced above), noted:
So Jeroboam may well have been harking back to early Israelite traditional practice when he made the "golden calves." It is hardly necessary to point out that it was a dangerous revival, since the taurine associations of Baal, lord of heaven, were too closely bound up with the fertility cult in its more insidious aspects to be safe. The cherubim, being mythical animals, served to enhance the majesty of Yahweh, "who rides on a cherub" (II Sam. 22:11) or "who thrones on the cherubim" (II Kings 19:15, etc.), but the young bulls of Bethel and Dan could only debase His cult.
(From the Stone Age to Christianity, 2nd edition, Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor, 1957, 301)
Thus, ironically, in helping to establish your point that it was indeed Yahweh who was consciously being worshiped through images (albeit those closely associated with pagan and heathen idolatry), it is shown that the notion of images "under" God as a pedestal is orthodox and biblical and not contrary to monotheism, for this was the imagery of the temple and the ark of the covenant (the cherubim in proximity to the invisible one and only God, Who is a Spirit). Therefore, it is not image per se which is expressly forbidden, but graven images, which is a sub-class and a particular forbidden manifestation. The Golden Calves and bulls were graven images and idols precisely because they were associated with pagan polytheistic and idolatrous belief-systems, even though they may have been regarded as "pedestals" by some or many. The cherubim of the Temple and the ark, on the other hand, were not so associated, and in fact, were commanded by God.
The brilliant biblical scholar F.F. Bruce draws a similar comparison and contrast (I found this after I wrote the above analysis):
. . . golden images of bull-calves were installed, to serve as the visible pedestal for the invisible throne of Yahweh. This . . . represented a dangerous assimilation to Canaanite religious practice (although among the Canaanites a visible representation of the divinity was supported by the animal).
It may be asked whether there was any difference in principle between the use of bull-calf images to support Yahweh's invisible presence and the use of cherubs for the same purpose in the holy of holies at Jerusalem. The answer probably is that the cherubs were symbolical beings (representing originally the storm-winds) and their images were therefore not "any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth" [note: Ex. 20:4; Deut. 5:8], whereas the bull-calf images were all too closely associated with Canaanite fertility ritual. It appears from the ritual texts of Ugarit that El, the supreme God of the Canaanite pantheon, was on occasion actually hypostatized as a bull (shor), and known as
Shor-El.
(Israel and the Nations, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1963; reprinted 1981, 40-41)
So in the act of condemning Jeroboam's idolatry, we mustn't go too far and condemn all images. This is neither biblical nor the teaching of historic Christianity (Council of II Nicaea in 787). To condemn all such imagery whatsoever would be to eliminate orthodox, divinely-revealed Temple symbology and worship. That proves too much; therefore, this so-called "Reformed" argument collapses even before we get to illogical and absurdly forced comparisons of any of this to the Catholic Mass. It equates any image with graven images. The latter are forbidden in the Commandments, not the first. Jeroboam's imagery and practices were expressly forbidden by God; the Eucharist and the Real Presence were expressly instigated and demonstrated by our Lord Jesus Himself and reiterated in strong terms by the Apostle Paul.
You're the one not making necessary distinctions. I suggest you re-read the narrative of Kings a lot more closely. Jeroboam's "sin" is treated in radically different fashion from Baalism.
Well, sure, there can be differences in degree and nature of sin and disobedience, but that doesn't affect my overall argument, that I have carefully constructed, using all non-Catholic scholarly sources, as is my usual custom. What you neglect to see, however, is the association with Baalism. All the scholars above believe this, but you do not, for some reason. Why do they mention Baal at all if there is no connection at all here?
Joseph P. Free, in his Archaeology and Bible History (Wheaton, IL: Scripture Press Publications, revised edition of 1969, 180-181) is inclined to take an even more negative view towards Jeroboam's idols:
The archaeological discoveries in Egypt, however, show the presence of bovine worship there. The sacred bull was an object of worship in Egypt, its tomb being found at Memphis during the last century. The sacred cow was the symbol of the goddess Hathor. In the light of this evidence, it is more likely that Jeroboam became acquainted with bovine worship when he fled to Egypt while Solomon was yet alive (1 Kings 11:40, 12:2), and upon his return to Palestine introduced the worship of that which he had observed in Egypt. The German Egyptologist, Steindorff, as well as the American Old Testament scholar, George L. Robinson, both reflect what we believe to be the correct view, that is, that Jeroboam was inclined toward setting up bovine worship from what he observed in Egypt.
I am more inclined to agree with Albright's and Bruce's and the Bible Dictionaries' explanation myself. I find them to be more plausible, knowing what relatively little I do about the subject.
"Elohim" is plural in form, and thus can be translated either "God" or "gods." Yes, God does treat this as idolatry, because He does not acknowledge that He is worshipped through this. So no surprise that He says that Jeroboam has gone after "other gods." But Jeroboam's own statement that these calves have to do with the Elohim who brought Israel up from Egypt makes it very clear that in his mind, he has not changed gods.
I agree, yet there are associations with pagan polytheism and idolatry that cannot be gotten over.
It is clear that the plural verb is at most dependent upon the fact that he has two calves, not two gods (otherwise, he would have two calves in each place of worship, rather than one); more likely, it is simply due to the plural construction of Elohim, since the plural is also used in Ex 32, and it is clear that Aaron made only one calf.
Jeroboam and all his people knew that it was Yahweh who brought Israel out of Egypt, and indeed he himself knew that it was a prophet of Yahweh who promised the kingdom to him. His employment of the calves was explicitly a cultic-political move (see 1 Kg 12.27), not a self-conscious exchange of deities.
As shown above, I agree in part, but you still have to adequately explain the two passages above that I cited. God Himself stated that Jeroboam made "other gods" (1 Kings 14:9). Why didn't God simply say something like, "you have made images of Me that I do not allow"? What more is needed? If God reveals in Holy Scripture and directly to the person involved that he has made "other gods," then isn't that sufficient? Sure, there are complexities here, but we shouldn't overlook the basic data that we have.
Furthermore, we are informed that he was "sacrificing to the calves that he had made" (1 Ki 12:32). Why doesn't the text say, "sacrificing to Yahweh through the images of Yahweh that he had made"?
Furthermore, on your explanation, it is inexplicable why God treats Baalism in a radically different fashion from Jeroboam's sin. Ahab does "more evil than all before him" - why? because he explicitly adopts another god, Baal. Meanwhile, on your view, Jehu slaughters all the priests of Baal (on Yahweh's orders) and then self-consciously worships gods other than Yahweh, since he maintains the system of worship of Jeroboam (2 Kg 10.28ff). Frankly, I find that very hard to believe. Your handling of the passages has an initial plausibility but simply will not stand up.
But I made no such argument. I know you think this reductio follows from my argument, but it does not, necessarily. Sinful practices develop over time and get worse. Jeroboam's worship was syncretistic, whereas Ahab took it to the next level. So his sin was worse. But that doesn't get Jeroboam off the hook. Nor does any of this prove that the Mass is an instance of the same sort of idolatry: whether pure and gross, or syncretistic. I've backed myself up with scholars (and some of the very best at that). You have simply given your own opinion. It is, I'm sure, based on scholarly interpretations at some point, too, but I don't know what those might be unless and until you present to me the documentation.
The Jeroboam issue (and likely Aaron's calf, as well) has to do with the false worship of the true God. In Deut 12.29ff, God says that Israel is not only not to follow the gods of the Canaanites, but they are not to worship Yahweh in the way the Canaanites worship their gods (Dt 12.31). That is the point at issue with Jeroboam, and because it is so, He does not account Jeroboam's worship as true worship.
I agree again, but there are other factors to consider (that you neglect), as recounted above.
Yes, He calls them other gods - for much the same reason that Protestants have historically identified Roman Catholic worship as idolatrous. Most of us are well aware that RC self-understanding is not that you conceive yourselves as worshipping other gods. The issue (on Protestant and E.O. division of the commandments) is 2nd commandment, not 1st commandment.
The issue is also the nature of idolatry, correctly understood, and what is forvidden by God in terms of images (i.e., what is a graven image). I think I have made a bit of a deeper analysis than you have, here.
As for "this is My body," I'm sure you know that the arguments against your position are much better than you present.
I've dealt with those at length elsewhere. I cannot adequately get into that in this context, as it is ultimately a separate issue.
None of the disciples worshipped the bread.
Of course not; nor do any Catholics. That is not at issue. We are worshiping our Lord Jesus Christ.
It would have been unthinkable for them to suppose that the substance of Jesus' body had moved from the Person speaking to them to the bread that He was holding in His hand. No Jew on earth would have misunderstood what He said, and that is why we [have] no biblical record of worship of the elements.
We do not contend that they could or should have understood everything at that extraordinary moment. But this was merely one of many very difficult things they had to understand -- only made possible by the help of the Holy Spirit (including the Resurrection itself, which no one shows any indication of comprehending, until after it happened, despite repeated predictions from Jesus).
As for "worship of the elements" in Scripture (or what we would call eucharistic adoration), there is indeed explicit biblical warrant, from St. Paul:
1 Corinthians 10:16 (RSV) The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?
(Read 10:14-22 for the context)
1 Corinthians 11: 27-30 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord. Let a man examine himself, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For any one who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself. That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.
(Read 11:23-26 for the context)
James Cardinal Gibbons comments on these passages:
Could St. Paul express more clearly his belief in the Real Presence than he has done here? . . . He who receives a Sacrament unworthily shall be guilty of the sin of high treason, and of shedding the blood of his Lord in vain. But how could he be guilty of a crime so enormous if he had taken in the Eucharist only a particle of bread and wine? Would a man be accused of homicide . . . if he were to offer violence to the statue or painting of the governor? Certainly not. In like manner, St. Paul would not . . . declare a man guilty of trampling on the blood of his Savior by drinking in an unworthy manner a little wine in memory of him.Martin Luther explains the Real Presence very well, yet fails to realize that if Jesus is really present, then it follows straightforwardly that He can be really worshiped. It's not rocket science. If He is truly there, he can be worshiped, just as He was when He walked the earth as a man. And that is all there is to eucharistic adoration. But be that as it may, Luther is brilliant, as far as he is willing to go, regarding this topic:
(The Faith of Our Fathers, New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, rev. ed., 1917, 242-243)
[T]his word of Luke and Paul is clearer than sunlight and more overpowering than thunder. First, no one can deny that he speaks of the cup, since he says, “This is the cup.” Secondly, he calls it the cup of the new testament. This is overwhelming, for it could not be a new testament by means and on account of wine alone.
(Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacraments, 1525; LW, 40, 217)
He thinks one does not see that out of the word of Christ he makes a pure commandment and law which accomplishes nothing more than to tell and bid us to remember and acknowledge him. Furthermore, he makes this acknowledgment nothing else than a work that we do, while we receive nothing else than bread and wine.
(Ibid., LW, 40, 206)
Commenting on 1 Corinthians 10:16. Luther writes, forcefully:
. . . The bread which is broken or distributed piece by piece is the participation in the body of Christ. It is, it is, it is, he says, the participation in the body of Christ. Wherein does the participation in the body of Christ consist? It cannot be anything else than that as each takes a part of the broken bread he takes therewith the body of Christ . . .
(Ibid.; LW, 40, 178)
Finally, St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:14-22, in an explicitly eucharistic passage, uses language suggesting that he sees the eucharist as a sacrifice involving an altar (hence priesthood, hence the Sacrifice of the Mass): He mentions the "altar" of the Old Covenant in 10:18 and makes a direct analogy with the altar of the New Covenant in 10:21:
You cannot drink of the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.In my opinion, all of this suggests explicit New testament reference to eucharistic adoration, because that notion cannot be separated from Real (or, Substantial) Presence, which is clearly taught in the New Testament.
Thursday, August 05, 2004
Dialogue With Dr. Paul Owen on John Calvin's Anti-Catholicism (Greatly Expanded)
His piece, "On Historical Context," was posted on the Reformed Catholicism blog: "
Dr. Owen's words (presented here in their entirety) will be in blue. Calvin's will be in red, Luther's in green, and Melanchthon's in purple.
Hi Paul,
Now, I've said very nice things about you in another thread, so remember that when you are reading this. :-) I think much of your writing is very good. My problem has been extreme difficulty in trying to get you (and any other Reformed Catholic) to interact with any of the critiques of your position that I offer. Is that because of presuppositionalist methodology (as I increasingly suspect) or something else?
So here goes. You can respond if you wish. I sincerely hope that you do, so the discussion can advance instead of being stymied by refusal to go to the necessary next step in a discussion. As a scholar, it is clear that you understand the place of critique in discussion of vexed and controversial issues. I need not belabor that point. You've bumped heads with your Protestant nemeses, why not with a Catholic once in a while? With that stated, I proceed where angels fear to tread . . .
One of the problems with many pastors in our day in age, is they simply do not understand the historically conditioned nature of all written texts, biblical or otherwise. They simply look at the Bible, or Reformational commentaries on the Bible, as a phone directory of prooftexts, from which they are free to choose at random. This is how they preach, and this is how they conduct their ugly polemics on the internet.
That may be, but with regard to Calvin's and Luther's anti-Catholicism, I, too, would stand guilty of the same thing, by deduction, because I think I have demonstrated conclusively from their own words that both were anti-Catholics. I agree even with the anti-Catholics about that. That school and myself and many other Catholics are on one side of this question; you and your fellow reformed Catholics on the other.
Strange bedfellows, but there you have it. Truth is what it is. The anti-Catholics may stumble upon it or believe it for all the wrong reasons, and with (possibly) the basest of motives, but it is still historical truth nonetheless.
Minor "loopholes" and anomalies exist, yes, I agree, but in the main Luther and Calvin (and virtually all the other so-called "reformers" I have seen) virulently opposed that institution (the historical Catholic Church) of which I am a member. They can try to come up with a mythical proto-Protestant early "catholic" Church all they want, but many facts have to be squarely faced, and they are not being faced. As I proceed, I will offer at least one highly-important crystal-clear example of this.
Recently, a Presbyterian pastor, who has shown himself to be particularly prone to melting down when confronted with facts that conflict with the canned, simplistic presentations of theology which were spoon-fed to him in seminary,
I agree with this, if the person is who I think it is, because he has done this in encounters with me as well.
has taken to posting little snippets from Calvin on the internet, which allegedly promote his own ugly and just downright ignorant view of the Roman Catholic Church.
I guess I am "ignorant" of my own Church that I defend for a living, too, then, since I have lots of similar quotes from Calvin and Luther that you guys simply dismiss with the wave of a hand and a sneer as all (without exception) taken out of context. It has almost become the be-all, end-all, reformed Catholic mantra. "Defeat" any argument with the "c" word: "context."
This enables one to not actually deal directly with the quote(s) in question, but rather, to readily dismiss it by appealing to the answer to everything: the "c" word. This will not do, because (again, as a scholar I assume you must know this) for a charge of botched context to be plausibly made, obviously it must be substantiated with some minimum of proof besides merely stating the charge, which is no rational proof at all, but rather, a bald appeal to authority (in this case, your own).
The reason this pastor can quote such comments with glee is because he is not conversant in any serious way with the historical context of the Reformation.
Here we go. He may indeed be ignorant in this way (I wouldn't be surprised, frankly), but you would have to substantiate that as well. Just saying it is not impressive at all.
When reading polemical statements which were made by Calvin and other Reformers against the Roman Catholic Church, it is important to place these statements in the broader historical context.
More of the same boilerplate, but let's see what you have:
The following points summarize that context.
1. Calvin's polemics were aimed primarily at the hierarchy of the RCC, not the Church as a whole. As Calvin said to Cardinal Sadoleto: "We indeed, Sadoleto, deny not that those over which you preside are Churches of Christ, but we maintain that the Roman Pontiff, with his whole herd of pseudo-bishops, who have seized upon the pastor's office, are ravening wolves, whose only study has hitherto been to scatter and trample upon the kingdom of Christ."
I agree that the hierarchy and corruption therein was Calvin's primary target; however, that doesn't get you or him "off the hook" at all, for the simple reason that Calvin's charges were far more sweeping than just the leadership of the Church, and in fact, extended to every orthodox, practicing Catholic, then and now. This is quite easy to establish and prove. How? Well, by examining what he said about the Mass, which is no less than the central act of worship and the center of every Catholic's Sunday activities at church. If the Mass is what Calvin said it was, then his criticisms affect every one of us equally: to the extent that we all attend Mass and believe in transubstantiation and the Sacrifice of the Mass. And what did Calvin think of that? I have already documented it.
The great man and sage Calvin writes in his all-knowing Institutes:
I asked Tim Enloe straight out if he thought the Mass was a Christian form of worship. He said (after several refusals to answer and much profoundly ridiculous ranting) "I don't know." He doesn't know! Do YOU know? Maybe you have figured out what he hasn't. If not, then how can we be Christians if our worship every week is such that it is abominable blasphemy and sacrilege, etc. and y'all "don't know" if it is Christian or not? You can't figure it out. But you are sure we are Christian because Calvin said our baptisms are valid? Give me (us) a break! In a certain limited sense this is even more condescending tripe than what the anti-Catholics dish out.
In the same Reply to Sadoleto that you cite, Calvin called transubstantiation a "gross dogma" and a "vile superstition." Elsewhere he calls it a "fiction." He calls adoration of the consecrated Host "abominable idolatry" and as sinful as "the worship of the Statue at Babylon" and a "sink of pollution and sacrilege." Again in the Reply to Sadoleto he writes about this:
Likewise, Calvin wrote about the Sacrifice of the Mass:
And from the Institutes:
(See more in my paper on the subject: "John Calvin & St. Cyril of Jerusalem: Comparative Eucharistic Theology")
So which is it, Paul? Do you accept Calvin's estimation of the Sacrifice of the Mass, transubstantiation, and eucharistic adoration or not? If so, how can we be Christians in any sensible form of the word and concept? If not, then come right out and say that Calvin was dead-wrong about this, and contradicts himself when he says we are minimally Christian -- insofar as we are at all -- because of baptism.
2. Calvin's polemics were given in a context of unprecedented resistance to reforms which were widely recognized as necessary, even within the Church; reforms which would have brought the Church back into line with Scripture and Catholic consensus. Just read Calvin's description of the state of the Church in Institutes 4.5.1-19. Thus, the resistance to these reforms was interpreted as reflecting an obsession with maintaining the status quo, and the wealth, luxury, licentiousness and privileges of the Catholic leadership, rather than a concern for the health of the Church. In such a context, polemics can get very heated.
Fine; but I consider this (beyond the non sequitur of moral corruption, which everyone admits on all sides) another diversion from the issue at hand (which is stuff like the above: direct; right between the eyes; where the rubber meets the road; brass tacks: do Catholics worship Jesus every Sunday as their Lord or commit these unspeakably blasphemous acts of idolatry, routinely, regularly, by definition?).
The fact remains that Calvin threw all this out. And it is equally obvious that the medieval Church and people like Bernard and Aquinas all believed in these things, as Catholics do today. You can't avoid this. It has to be squarely faced. You can't play games and close your eyes and put your head in the sand and ignore the Mass. It simply can't be done: not if you are serious about considering the Christian status of Catholics and the [Roman] Catholic Church -- that entity historically headed by a pope.
3. Protestants were being horribly persecuted in some sections of Europe. This tends to put a bitter edge on theological exchanges.
That works both ways, too, and so resolves nothing. It is a wash, broadly-speaking. But I'll play your game for a minute. Okay, suppose persecution and the need for some kind of reform (not the revolution that Calvin and Luther brought) can explain these sorts of "anti-Catholic" utterances. Let's assume that for the sake of argument. Are you saying, then, that Calvin didn't really mean all that I have cited him saying above? That was all in a passionate moment when he was distraught over the state of the Church? He had a bad day or was suffering from a bout of verbal diarrhea? If so, then he must have suffered from these maladies frequently, or refused to re-read his manuscripts before they went to press. I find the position ludicrous . . .
4. In spite of his polemics, and in spite of the fact that he insisted that the RCC was so corrupted as to call for separation from her practices (4.2.10), in Institutes 4.2.11 he insists that "certain peculiar prerogatives" still remained with the RCC. He maintains that the Roman Catholics are still God's "children," even in the midst of corruption, just as was the case in the time of Ezekiel. Calvin insists that Roman Catholic baptisms are still a valid "witness" to God's covenant with them, and that "other vestiges" remain, so that "the church" within (though not identical to) the RCC remains. In 4.2.12 he again maintains the "existence of churches" within the RCC, though they have no right to call themselves "THE" Church. Calvin insists that the name of Christ and the church has not been wiped out by the tyrrany of the Pope over the papal communion.
I know all this, but so what? It doesn't change the fact that we are scarcely Christian at all, if Calvin's most gracious comparison is to ancient Babylon, or "Israel under Jeroboam," etc. C'mon! You think we are supposed to receive this "ecumenical" news with gleefulness and joy, because old man Calvin thinks we are as Christian as the grossest idolaters in ancient history were observant Jews? I think you are laboring under tremendous misconceptions.
5. Calvin signed the ecumenically minded Augsburg Confession, and approved of the ecumenical dialogue between Protestants and Catholics which took place at the Conference of Regensburg. How many evangelical Presbyterian pastors today could give full approval to that Confession and that Conference? That should show you the GULF in attitude which separates Calvin from his combative theological step-children.
There is some difference, but one must remember that in those days the revolution was still young, and there was still some chance (however remote) of it being a reform and not merely separatist and sectarian. The Diet of Augsburg and the Augsburg Confession as a supposed effort of unification with the Catholic Church is a joke.
Catholic historian Warren Carroll described the proceedings and the lack of tolerance in the Lutheran party:
Note how Luther's inane and vacuous ramblings (just like Calvin's) do not affect merely the pope and the hierarchy, but EVERY Catholic who observes the Mass.
Melanchthon's own pitiful waffling on various issues illustrates that this attempt at "unity" was a sham from the beginning (or doomed to failure, at the very least, due to stupidity and utter inflexibility). He once advocated the death penalty for anyone who denied the Real Presence in the Eucharist. At length he adopted that very position himself! And that is supposedly the "Catholic position"? This was the primary author of the Augsburg Confession: notoriously wimpy on doctrine (Calvin himself often chastised him over this, in personal letters).
Note again how the Mass was regarded by the Protestants: even to the extent that they felt wholly within their rights to steal church buildings and forbid Catholic worship. But of course Catholics are good ole Christians right next to the godly, holy Lutherans and Calvinists! The Anabaptists were not so fortunate, and were drowned by the hundreds, with the express consent of Luther and Melanchthon. But of course Protestants have always been far more tolerant than Catholics. Everyone knows that.
Keep these FACTS in mind
Facts? I'm the one who has been providing copious documentation, not you, so I hope folks will remember the facts I have presented, too.
the next time some internet wonderboy tries to quote some out-of-context statement of Calvin to justify his own ugly attitude towards our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters.
I'm "ugly" towards myself and my Catholic brethren?Talk about a severe self-image disorder! LOL I'm not trying to "justify" anything (let alone sin). Your other friends may have that motive, but my only concern here is historical truth and a sensible, workable ecumenism that isn't blind to historical and theological realities and mired in some sort of silly pretense. The liberals have excelled at that for years. Those of us who are orthodox Protestants and Catholics gain nothing by adopting their postmodernist, relativistic methodology. Facts is facts, and we have to work with those, whatever they may be.
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Hi Paul,
Thanks for your comments. Below are my random thoughts.
Likewise . . .
1. I have no desire to "bump heads" with you Dave. I don't look at you as a nemesis.
Well, this shows, I think, that you are maybe a bit overly-sensitive about serious, issues-oriented discussion with your Catholic brothers and sisters. I come as "family" precisely because you (unlike our anti-Catholic friends) have included me and my faith tradition in the circle of Christianity. So to me it is simply a discussion (in this case, on historical matters of what Calvin believed about Catholicism) and a dialogue (a thing I greatly advocate across the board, as you know). I'm not here to quarrel or wrangle, but to dialogue and learn and clarify. This is my Socratic method.
"Nemesis" means, "anyone or anything by which, it seems, one must inevitably be defeated or frustrated." I don't see myself vis-a-vis you or other Reformed Catholics (or even Protestants in general) in that light at all. Christians discuss theology and Christian history. Period. We can all learn from one another.
I could probably get along with you, and worship God alongside you, much more easily than with James White or David King. That's just a subjective impression, so take it for what it is worth.
I'm sure you would and could, not because I am anything, but because these men would not allow normal, mutually-respectful Christian fellowship to take place (and I surely would). That is the sad thing. In their eyes, I'm a heretic and an apostate, and you are not much better (maybe even worse) as a kind of "traitor to the cause" who "cavorts with the 'enemy'" and who should know better. I find the whole thing very sad where anti-Catholicism is concerned.
2. Of course Luther and Calvin were opposed to the Roman Catholic Church. Where did I ever say otherwise?
Then why the constant recourse by reformed Catholics to "context" and the insinuation that they were really quite neutral or had mixed feelings (hence the strong objection to citations by men like White and King -- and indirectly, myself -- when we emphasize anti-Catholic elements of Luther and Calvin)?
Clearly you guys wish to play down their anti-Catholicism (because it runs contrary to your "program" of a continuity with historic generic "Catholicism"), and some of you have flatly denied it. My position is that they were against it; that (indeed) I can scarcely imagine that they could have said anything else beyond what they did say to suggest that they were any more against it than they were. I agree that they do throw out a few minimalistic concessions (baptism and so forth). In my mind, however, those contradict the other nonsense which is their normative response. I am glad to see the few positive things, but I don't see how they can be totally reconciled with the negative apprisals. In my opinion, they either contradict the other strain or are, at best, highly paradoxical in the overall thrust of their thinking.
The Roman Catholic hierarchy was resisting needed reforms, and slaughtering Protestants in sectors of Europe. Of course they were going to oppose the machinery of such an institution.
It is more than the persecution (on both sides) and moral corruption (on both sides), and institutional malaise. You know as well as I do that these discussions eventually come down to doctrine. We can trade horror stories all day long, but I don't see that that accomplishes much. The only reason I have written about the "Protestant Inquisition" is because of the common double standard of Protestants always pointing out Catholic historical shortcomings but being blind to their own. I come around to "even the score" a bit and give the other side of the story (somewhat like Rush Limbaugh giving the politically conservative take in light of overwhelming cultural liberalism).
Nobody continues to put their money into a company that has gone bankrupt!
But that's just it: the language of "bankrupt" implies defectibility of the Church, and that is precisely what cannot happen, biblically ("the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church"), and in terms of the organic historical continuity that reformed Catholicism wishes to maintain. If there was a total breakdown of the institutional Catholic Church, then does it not follow that Protestantism was a revolution and not a reform?
But you have to distinguish schism from protest and reform.
I just did. :-)
The goal of the Reformers was not to cause an open split in the church, but to heal the sicknesses within the church.
I am willing to grant that to some extent; however, my basic outlook is that these men were at heart revolutionaries and insufficiently reflective of what they were doing, and how it was a radical departure in many respects from historical precedent. They were theologically and sociologically naive (some might say essentially arrogant, but I don't go that far myself, generally-speaking).
This is a fundamental dilemma for those of you who wish to pursue the course of organic continuity, per the above. I do not believe the difficulty has been gotten over at all, and thus I continue to make these kinds of inconvenient points. Once in a while I manage to get a Protestant to interact with them (I thank you profusely for the opportunity!) -- and even then usually quite reluctantly or half-heartedly.
As Calvin said to Sadoleto, there is a great difference between "schism from the Church, and studying to correct the faults by which the Church herself was contaminated."
But that, of course, is a circular argument, and the crux of the issue. Calvin needs to establish that certain things that he rejects are in fact, "contaminations." This he routinely fails to do. Like all revolutionaries, he simply assumes the inherent rightness and self-evident nature of his cause, and proceeds thusly. But from a (comparative) logical or theological perspective, this is quite unimpressive. Once Calvin and Luther try to play the "historical game" and co-opt the Fathers for their distinctive innovations, they can easily be shot down every time.
The Reformers protested against an arrogant, affluent, morally corrupt hierarchy which would not listen to calls for reform; that doesn't mean they opposed the RCC as such.
That is by no means clear to me. And given the state of their own collective and individual morality, it is more than a little bit hypocritical and sanctimonious to pose as "moral reformers." I would even say it is an outright joke, knowing what I know about the history.
Again, Calvin told Sadoleto that he did NOT intend to deny that "those OVER WHICH YOU PRESIDE are Churches of Christ."
Calvin said a lot of things, and they are difficult to synthesize in a coherent whole. I am trying to grapple with one side of what he said; you need to do the same.
You are free to dismiss such comments as anomalies, which merely offer momentary exceptions to the rule.
That's basically what I believe, yes, based on the copious evidence of his various remarks on the subject.
I prefer to see them as qualifications of Calvin's more polemical rhetoric.
Those must be (I think you would agree) logically consistent in order to truly be qualifications.
The difference here Dave is that it appears that you want to read Luther and Calvin in the worst possible light
Not really; I would love to be able to read them in a more positive light concerning this question, but I am constrained by the facts of the matter, as I see it. Of course I don't desire for them to be anti-Catholic (as the present-day anti-Catholics do), but that is different from whether they in fact were. I agree with the anti-Catholics that they were, as a factual matter (and I regard this as a fact as obvious as the sun at high noon on a clear day). I don't want this; they do, but we agree on the fact of the matter.
you are acting like a prosecuting attorney.
I'm not the one who formed their opinions. They did that. I am merely reporting them as they were.
I am trying to put them in a more positive light, as far as they offer resources for modern theological discussion; I am acting like a defense attorney.
Then you should be straightforward about the other strain of their thought. You shouldn't act like a lawyer so much as a private investigator, seeking to determine the facts wherever they lead. The lawyer analogy suggests to me that you want to follow the facts only in one direction. But that ain't how facts and truth work! They are what they are.
Surely you would admit that the same data is capable of more than one possible reading, in light of the total picture?
Not in this case. Like I said, I fail to see how their anti-Catholicism could be any more clear than it is. They have made almost every conceivable negative judgment about Catholicism that can be imagined.
If not, why do we bother to have trials in our legal system? After all, the truth should be plain as day, right?
When it is as profusely documented in the "defendant's" own words it is indeed plain as day. Most murderers do not leave scores of tracts and books detailing their opinions and activities. So the analogy is quite a poor one and not all that applicable.
3. I didn't make a bald appeal to my own authority. I would hardly do that in this arena. I think the points of historical context I listed in my last post are pretty uncontroversial. I would expect you to agree with that.
I have stated my opinion as to Calvin's "minimalistic" acknowledgement of historical continuity. He was in the boat you are in: he had to come up with some sense of continuity with what came before so the pretense of being a "reformer" of former things (by definition) could be maintained with a straight face. But it is a losing cause. Protestantism as a whole simply cannot be synthesized with what came before. It can't be done. It is a clean break in many respects, any way you slice the cake. It is, at bottom, a revolution, not a reform (i.e., in those areas where it departed from precedent, which are not ALL areas, of course, because it remains Christian).
I mean, which of the points do you contest?
I've written about those. Your job is to make a reply, not ask me again what I have already stated.
Do you deny that Calvin said what he said to Sadoleto?
No; I cited that work quite a bit, too.
Do you deny that Calvin's main antagonist was the Catholic hierarchy?
No, as well they should have been.
Do you deny that the RCC was resisting reforms which were widely regarded as necessary, even among those within the RCC?
On an individual and/or moral level, no. But we, of course, differ on what needed reform. Protestants often threw out the baby with the bath water. Catholicism underwent a true reform and clarification proces at Trent. Protestantism was a revolt, not a reform (sorry to ruffle feathers, but that is what I believe, and am very far from being convinced otherwise).
Do you deny that Protestants were getting martyred?
No, Do you deny that Catholics were, too?
Do you deny that such factors might heat up the rhetoric a bit?
Of course not, but we have to determine a person's position, despite the rhetorical and polemical excesses that one would expect in such an environment.
Do you deny that Calvin signed the Augsburg Confession?
No; I assumed that but went on to make further observations about the fundamentally-flawed nature of that enterprise.
Do you deny that it had a conciliatory intent?
I think that if the Protestants could get what they wanted and have it covered with a thin layer of cultural acceptance from Catholic sources like the Emperor, then they would do that in their self-interest (because they were the new kids on the block). I am quite cynical about their overall intent and motivations, because -- like I have shown -- the Protestants were dead-set against allowing the Mass at all. They wouldn't even return the hundreds of churches and monasteries that they stole and plundered (this was directly brought up at Augsburg by the Emperor himself). Do you honestly expect Catholics (then or now) to interpret those things as good faith, conciliatory efforts to get along?
So it is quite easy for you to sit there and make these summary, general remarks; much more difficult to grapple with the facts of history in its more crass, obvious aspects. Protestantism has always played this game, I'm afraid.
Do you deny that Calvin played a role in the Regensburg Conference?
No, but so what? He has a record of things that he believed about the Catholic Church.
Do you deny that the stated purpose of that conference was to heal the breach within the Church?
On the surface, yes. But let's be realistic: Calvin couldn't even get along with Lutherans. I have a quote (that I can dig up if someone doubts it -- it is in the Dillenberger collection of Calvin primary material), where he referred to Lutheranism as an "evil" that had to be checked. Really ecumenical . . .
If you don't contest any of these points, then why accuse me of appealing to my own authority, as though I were making some outlandish claims without adequate foundation?
Because you and other comrades of yours continually make this charge that those who disagree with you are qouting Calvin and Luther out of context. I have provided tons of context.
I don't waste my time documenting things that anyone who is familiar with the basics of the discussion (as you certainly are, and then some) should know.
That assumes what it is trying to prove. If you think it is that obvious, then you wouldn't discuss it at all. But as your own ultimately flawed analogy to a legal trial suggests, even you think there is some conflicting data to be grappled with. You can't argue out of both sides of your mouth.
4. I wouldn't call the mass an idolatrous abomination. I am much more of a Melanchthon than a Calvin in my tone towards you Catholics! I don't doubt that you are offering genuine worship to God when you participate in the Eucharist.
Thanks for virtually conceding and granting my case! This is it! Now we are getting somewhere. YOU grant that we are legitimately worshiping as Christians. Calvin does not. And you have yet to explain how in the world he can say what he does about the Mass, yet somehow accept those who commit such blasphemous, idolatrous acts every Sunday as "Christians."
Thanks for finally making very clear how this is completely relevant to the discussion. Calvin is an anti-Catholic; you are not (praise God, and I commend you). But you are trying to make out that he is more on your side in this respect, than on the side of the anti-Catholics who are, in my opinion, correctly citing him in this regard. That's no credit to them; it is simply historically obvious and can't be denied.
You imply that Melanchthon would have had a different opinion on the Catholic Mass; perhaps like your own? This is, of course, untrue also, and I think you could have figured that out with a minimum of work (just as I now did, in documenting what I do, below).
Remember, Melanchthon claimed at the Diet of Augsburg that Protestants were in more or less complete agreement with Catholics. Well, that is poppycock, and we need look no further than his own opinions to demonstrate this. What does he think about the traditional Catholic Mass? In the Apology for the Augsburg Confession, which he wrote in 1531, he stated:
Likewise, Martin Luther wrote in his Smalcald Articles of 1537 -- also confessionally normative for Lutherans:
Did the notoriously waffling Philip Melanchthon change his tune later? Hardly. In the 1555 edition of his Loci communes, he wrote:
Frankly, to be quite honest, I don't think I really understand the theology of the Mass well enough to say much about it in any kind of a dogmatic way. It's not really one of my issues.
I fail to see how it cannot be, since you have taken an ecumenical stance towards Catholics, accepted their worship as fully Christian (indeed even more so than Baptist worship). C'mon, Paul. If you want to claim that you are a "Catholic" in continuity with historic Catholic worship (medieval and patristic) then you have to grapple with this issue. Is that not obvious?
But you (and/or your comrades) even go beyond that and make out that Luther, Calvin, and Melanchthon think of Catholics as brothers in Christ, given what they all said about our worship. You can't have it both ways. If all the founders of Protestantism got this wrong, then simply say so, but don't try to pretend that they were not profoundly anti-Catholic. This becomes a crucial issue in your endeavor to make Reformed Protestantism somehow "Reformed Catholic." I don't think the overall project works at all, but I do admire the historically-and ecumenically-minded effort in the right direction, at any rate.
The Council of Trent said: "For the victim is one and the same, the same now offering by the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross, the manner alone of offering being different. The fruits indeed of which oblation, of that bloody one to wit, are received most plentifully through this unbloody one; so far is this [latter] from derogating in any way from that [former oblation]." That seems to say that the fruits of Christ's bloody oblation are received by the unbloody offering of Christ through the priests; but the fruits thereof stem from the bloody oblation, they are only "received" by the manner of unbloody oblation. Now, it seems to me that the whole tenor of the book of Hebrews speaks against the idea of going back to the ministry of "priests" (plural) offering a propitiatory sacrifice, even if it is conceded that this sacrifice is not other than the bloody sacrifice which was once for all offered on the cross. To be honest, the whole notion gives me a headache and makes the room spin around me.
Time to do more study, then. :-) Whatever you may think of this, it is the historical Christian position, which your movement must either accept and espouse, or reject (in which case that is yet another break with consistent Catholic development through the centuries and millennia).
But I have no intention of getting into that. I have no doubt that Catholic theologians could wrap me into a pretzel on this issue.
We can't all be experts on everything (I am an expert on nothing LOL), but all I'm saying is that it is a crucial issue to be dealt with. You can't just take a pass. Tim Enloe said he "didn't know." You are confused (but you would worship with me). Kevin Johnson said he wanted to further study the patristic notion of "sacrifice." This is good. If you want to be "Catholic" in any sense, this is all absolutely necessary. Come on in; the water's warm!
I am just saying that it doesn't ring true to me on that basis.
Of course not; you are a Protestant. I would have felt the same way prior to 1990.
Nevertheless, what I am not sure of is the extent to which this doctrine has been clarified in post-Reformation theological discourse, in a manner analagous to Lutheran-Catholic discussions over the doctrine of justification.
Not much, as far as I know. But hopefully, Protestants can get it through their heads that the Mass -- whatever they personally think of it -- is not the equivalent of Baal-worship, gross idolatry, etc.
According to R.T. Beckwith (an outstanding Anglican scholar), in the New Dictionary of Theology ("Eucharist"): "In the last hundred years or so, strenuous efforts have been made both by Roman Catholic and by Anglo-Catholic theologians to restate the Tridentine teaching without basically departing from it." He goes on to describe these developments, some of which involve rather complex issues regarding the very nature of time. My question would be: What if Calvin were here to hear these "restatements"? Would he still object to the doctrine in the same strenuous terms?
Yes. Nothing I've seen in him leads me to believe that he correctly understood Catholic theology. He distorts it at every turn. I have shown this a few times now (in my latest book, several times), and hope to do much more in the future. Calvin is not some impenetrable fortress, who annihilates every Catholic attempt to refute him. Quite the contrary; he often shows himself quite ignorant of particular issues in theology.
I don't know. But I do know that we are in a different historical situation than Calvin was, and therefore, we should not be expected to mindlessly repeat his harsher rhetoric.
The issues go beyond mere rhetoric. You claim to be "Catholic." The so-called "reformers" certainly were NOT so with regard to this issue of the Mass. That's my only point, if you remember nothing else I have written here. And how can we be regarded as fellow Christians if we participate in abominable blasphemy, sacrilege, and idolatry at every worship service we attend? If we are no better than ancient Baal-worshipers or the Babylonians, in what sense are we Christian brothers? You can't have it both ways. Most Protestants would not take such a stance about another Protestant denomination. It is only with us Catholics (and to some extent, the Orthodox) that this comes up at all.
5. So yes, Catholics worship Jesus every Sunday as their Lord.
And Luther, Calvin, Melanchthon, and other "reformers" all got this wrong . . .
6. It is not at all clear to me why you seem intent on brushing aside Institutes 4.2.11-12. Yes, Calvin thought that the RCC was in a dreadful state. But he still recognized the validity of God's name, covenant, and presence within the papal communion. Luther said much the same in his polemic against the Anabaptists. I don't see why you can't acknowledge that this puts them in a different light than folks like James White and David King.
It does, but it is not all that heartening or earth-shattering. I've already written about all that.
7. I certainly don't contest that Luther and Calvin were less conciliatory towards Rome than folks like Melanchthon and Bucer. If you are wanting me to grant that point, you have it.
Those guys had their own serious flaws, including advocating the death penalty for various theological "errors."
That is about all I can say within my time constraints this morning.
Thanks for your input. I appreciate it.
I hope that I have at least touched upon some of your concerns.
Yes, but I think you have a LONG way to go to establish your overall point and to show that either your anti-Catholic buddies or Catholics like me have cited the Protestant founders out of context with regard to their fundamental anti-Catholicism.
I am not asking you to give up your calling and ministry as an apologist within the Catholic Church.
Who thought that you were doing so? Not I!
Indeed, until the breach between us is healed, both sides are obligated to contend for the truth as it is understood within our respective communions, in the hopes of bringing one or the other into a greater exposure to the true teaching of Christ, and the grace of the gospel.
I agree. That's all that honest, committed Christians can do, according to their sincere, heartfelt beliefs.
But what I would resist is a winner take all mentality. If you are unable to persuade me to embrace the Roman Catholic faith and way of life, you can still regard me as a separated brother, and vice versa I can do likewise.
I've done that consistently for 27 years now, on both sides of the fence. But that doesn't mean that I won't vigorously make my case for what I believe, until shown otherwise. Respect, admiration, and acknowledgement of fellow Christians and their good faith is not inconsistent with intense disagreement. That's where efforts such as this between us are quite different from the anti-Catholics coming after either one of us. They have to read us out of the faith or create otherwise unnecessary and tragic divisions among Christians. I can make these arguments but within a context of respect, brotherhood, and fellowship. And I will continue to do so.
Again, thanks for your time, and God bless you. I think you are doing a marvelous job defending Catholic soteriology from the tons of misinformation and distortions of it in many Protestant circles. I wish to personally express my appreciation for that, and no criticism of mine here detracts from that gratefulness.
Dr. Owen's words (presented here in their entirety) will be in blue. Calvin's will be in red, Luther's in green, and Melanchthon's in purple.
Hi Paul,
Now, I've said very nice things about you in another thread, so remember that when you are reading this. :-) I think much of your writing is very good. My problem has been extreme difficulty in trying to get you (and any other Reformed Catholic) to interact with any of the critiques of your position that I offer. Is that because of presuppositionalist methodology (as I increasingly suspect) or something else?
So here goes. You can respond if you wish. I sincerely hope that you do, so the discussion can advance instead of being stymied by refusal to go to the necessary next step in a discussion. As a scholar, it is clear that you understand the place of critique in discussion of vexed and controversial issues. I need not belabor that point. You've bumped heads with your Protestant nemeses, why not with a Catholic once in a while? With that stated, I proceed where angels fear to tread . . .
One of the problems with many pastors in our day in age, is they simply do not understand the historically conditioned nature of all written texts, biblical or otherwise. They simply look at the Bible, or Reformational commentaries on the Bible, as a phone directory of prooftexts, from which they are free to choose at random. This is how they preach, and this is how they conduct their ugly polemics on the internet.
That may be, but with regard to Calvin's and Luther's anti-Catholicism, I, too, would stand guilty of the same thing, by deduction, because I think I have demonstrated conclusively from their own words that both were anti-Catholics. I agree even with the anti-Catholics about that. That school and myself and many other Catholics are on one side of this question; you and your fellow reformed Catholics on the other.
Strange bedfellows, but there you have it. Truth is what it is. The anti-Catholics may stumble upon it or believe it for all the wrong reasons, and with (possibly) the basest of motives, but it is still historical truth nonetheless.
Minor "loopholes" and anomalies exist, yes, I agree, but in the main Luther and Calvin (and virtually all the other so-called "reformers" I have seen) virulently opposed that institution (the historical Catholic Church) of which I am a member. They can try to come up with a mythical proto-Protestant early "catholic" Church all they want, but many facts have to be squarely faced, and they are not being faced. As I proceed, I will offer at least one highly-important crystal-clear example of this.
Recently, a Presbyterian pastor, who has shown himself to be particularly prone to melting down when confronted with facts that conflict with the canned, simplistic presentations of theology which were spoon-fed to him in seminary,
I agree with this, if the person is who I think it is, because he has done this in encounters with me as well.
has taken to posting little snippets from Calvin on the internet, which allegedly promote his own ugly and just downright ignorant view of the Roman Catholic Church.
I guess I am "ignorant" of my own Church that I defend for a living, too, then, since I have lots of similar quotes from Calvin and Luther that you guys simply dismiss with the wave of a hand and a sneer as all (without exception) taken out of context. It has almost become the be-all, end-all, reformed Catholic mantra. "Defeat" any argument with the "c" word: "context."
This enables one to not actually deal directly with the quote(s) in question, but rather, to readily dismiss it by appealing to the answer to everything: the "c" word. This will not do, because (again, as a scholar I assume you must know this) for a charge of botched context to be plausibly made, obviously it must be substantiated with some minimum of proof besides merely stating the charge, which is no rational proof at all, but rather, a bald appeal to authority (in this case, your own).
The reason this pastor can quote such comments with glee is because he is not conversant in any serious way with the historical context of the Reformation.
Here we go. He may indeed be ignorant in this way (I wouldn't be surprised, frankly), but you would have to substantiate that as well. Just saying it is not impressive at all.
When reading polemical statements which were made by Calvin and other Reformers against the Roman Catholic Church, it is important to place these statements in the broader historical context.
More of the same boilerplate, but let's see what you have:
The following points summarize that context.
1. Calvin's polemics were aimed primarily at the hierarchy of the RCC, not the Church as a whole. As Calvin said to Cardinal Sadoleto: "We indeed, Sadoleto, deny not that those over which you preside are Churches of Christ, but we maintain that the Roman Pontiff, with his whole herd of pseudo-bishops, who have seized upon the pastor's office, are ravening wolves, whose only study has hitherto been to scatter and trample upon the kingdom of Christ."
I agree that the hierarchy and corruption therein was Calvin's primary target; however, that doesn't get you or him "off the hook" at all, for the simple reason that Calvin's charges were far more sweeping than just the leadership of the Church, and in fact, extended to every orthodox, practicing Catholic, then and now. This is quite easy to establish and prove. How? Well, by examining what he said about the Mass, which is no less than the central act of worship and the center of every Catholic's Sunday activities at church. If the Mass is what Calvin said it was, then his criticisms affect every one of us equally: to the extent that we all attend Mass and believe in transubstantiation and the Sacrifice of the Mass. And what did Calvin think of that? I have already documented it.
The great man and sage Calvin writes in his all-knowing Institutes:
Hence the Papists act unjustly when they would compel us to communion with their Church. Their two demands. Answer to the first. Sum of the question. Why we cannot take part in the external worship of the Papists.
Now then let the Papists, in order to extenuate their vices as much as possible, deny, if they can, that the state of religion is as much vitiated and corrupted with them as it was in the kingdom of Israel under Jeroboam. They have a grosser idolatry, and in doctrine are not one whit more pure; rather, perhaps, they are even still more impure . . . But in these men, I mean the Papists, where is the resemblance? Scarcely can we hold any meeting with them without polluting ourselves with open idolatry. Their principal bond of communion is undoubtedly in the Mass, which we abominate as the greatest sacrilege.
(IV, 2, 9)
I asked Tim Enloe straight out if he thought the Mass was a Christian form of worship. He said (after several refusals to answer and much profoundly ridiculous ranting) "I don't know." He doesn't know! Do YOU know? Maybe you have figured out what he hasn't. If not, then how can we be Christians if our worship every week is such that it is abominable blasphemy and sacrilege, etc. and y'all "don't know" if it is Christian or not? You can't figure it out. But you are sure we are Christian because Calvin said our baptisms are valid? Give me (us) a break! In a certain limited sense this is even more condescending tripe than what the anti-Catholics dish out.
In the same Reply to Sadoleto that you cite, Calvin called transubstantiation a "gross dogma" and a "vile superstition." Elsewhere he calls it a "fiction." He calls adoration of the consecrated Host "abominable idolatry" and as sinful as "the worship of the Statue at Babylon" and a "sink of pollution and sacrilege." Again in the Reply to Sadoleto he writes about this:
In . . . declaring that stupid adoration which detains the minds of men among the elements, and permits them not to rise to Christ, to be perverse and impious, we have not acted without the concurrence of the ancient Church, under whose shadow you endeavor in vain to hide the very vile superstitions to which you are here addicted.
Likewise, Calvin wrote about the Sacrifice of the Mass:
. . . the mere name of Sacrifice (as the priests of the Mass understand it) both utterly abolishes the cross of Christ, and overturns his sacred Supper which he consecrated as a memorial of his death. For both, as we know, is the death of Christ utterly despoiled of its glory, unless it is held to be the one only and eternal Sacrifice; and if any other Sacrifice still remains, the Supper of Christ falls at once, and is completely torn up by the roots . . .
Will it still be denied to me that he who listens to the Mass with a semblance of Religion, every time these acts are perpetrated, professes before men to be a partner in sacrilege, whatever his mind may inwardly declare to God?
. . . In the Mass Christ is traduced, his death is mocked, an execrable idol is substituted for God -- shall we hesitate, then, to call it the table of demons? Or shall we not rather, in order justly to designate its monstrous impiety, try, if possible, to devise some new term still more expressive of detestation? Indeed, I exceedingly wonder how men, not utterly blind, can hesitate for a moment to apply the name "Table of Demons" to the Mass, seeing they plainly behold in the erection and arrangement of it the tricks, engines, and troops of devils all combined . . . I have long been maintaining on the strongest grounds that Christian men ought not even to be present at it!
From: On Shunning the Unlawful Rites of the Ungodly, and Preserving the Purity of the Christian Religion.
(1537; translated by Henry Beveridge, 1851; reprinted in Selected Works of John Calvin: Tracts and Letters, Vol. 3: Tracts, Part 3, edited by Henry Beveridge and Jules Bonnet, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1983; citations from pp. 383, 386-388)
And from the Institutes:
Scarcely can we hold any meeting with them without polluting ourselves with open idolatry. Their principal bond of communion is undoubtedly in the Mass, which we abominate as the greatest sacrilege.
(IV, 2, 9)
What remains but that the blind may see, the deaf hear, and even children understand this abomination of the Mass? . . . it . . . has so stricken them with drowsiness and dizziness, that, more stupid than brute beasts, they have steered the whole vessel of their salvation into this one deadly whirlpool. Surely, Satan never prepared a stronger engine to besiege and capture Christ's Kingdom . . . they so defile themselves in spiritual fornication, the most abominable of all . . . The Mass . . . from root to top, swarms with every sort of impiety, blasphemy, idolatry, and sacrilege.
(IV, 18, 18)
(See more in my paper on the subject: "John Calvin & St. Cyril of Jerusalem: Comparative Eucharistic Theology")
So which is it, Paul? Do you accept Calvin's estimation of the Sacrifice of the Mass, transubstantiation, and eucharistic adoration or not? If so, how can we be Christians in any sensible form of the word and concept? If not, then come right out and say that Calvin was dead-wrong about this, and contradicts himself when he says we are minimally Christian -- insofar as we are at all -- because of baptism.
2. Calvin's polemics were given in a context of unprecedented resistance to reforms which were widely recognized as necessary, even within the Church; reforms which would have brought the Church back into line with Scripture and Catholic consensus. Just read Calvin's description of the state of the Church in Institutes 4.5.1-19. Thus, the resistance to these reforms was interpreted as reflecting an obsession with maintaining the status quo, and the wealth, luxury, licentiousness and privileges of the Catholic leadership, rather than a concern for the health of the Church. In such a context, polemics can get very heated.
Fine; but I consider this (beyond the non sequitur of moral corruption, which everyone admits on all sides) another diversion from the issue at hand (which is stuff like the above: direct; right between the eyes; where the rubber meets the road; brass tacks: do Catholics worship Jesus every Sunday as their Lord or commit these unspeakably blasphemous acts of idolatry, routinely, regularly, by definition?).
The fact remains that Calvin threw all this out. And it is equally obvious that the medieval Church and people like Bernard and Aquinas all believed in these things, as Catholics do today. You can't avoid this. It has to be squarely faced. You can't play games and close your eyes and put your head in the sand and ignore the Mass. It simply can't be done: not if you are serious about considering the Christian status of Catholics and the [Roman] Catholic Church -- that entity historically headed by a pope.
3. Protestants were being horribly persecuted in some sections of Europe. This tends to put a bitter edge on theological exchanges.
That works both ways, too, and so resolves nothing. It is a wash, broadly-speaking. But I'll play your game for a minute. Okay, suppose persecution and the need for some kind of reform (not the revolution that Calvin and Luther brought) can explain these sorts of "anti-Catholic" utterances. Let's assume that for the sake of argument. Are you saying, then, that Calvin didn't really mean all that I have cited him saying above? That was all in a passionate moment when he was distraught over the state of the Church? He had a bad day or was suffering from a bout of verbal diarrhea? If so, then he must have suffered from these maladies frequently, or refused to re-read his manuscripts before they went to press. I find the position ludicrous . . .
4. In spite of his polemics, and in spite of the fact that he insisted that the RCC was so corrupted as to call for separation from her practices (4.2.10), in Institutes 4.2.11 he insists that "certain peculiar prerogatives" still remained with the RCC. He maintains that the Roman Catholics are still God's "children," even in the midst of corruption, just as was the case in the time of Ezekiel. Calvin insists that Roman Catholic baptisms are still a valid "witness" to God's covenant with them, and that "other vestiges" remain, so that "the church" within (though not identical to) the RCC remains. In 4.2.12 he again maintains the "existence of churches" within the RCC, though they have no right to call themselves "THE" Church. Calvin insists that the name of Christ and the church has not been wiped out by the tyrrany of the Pope over the papal communion.
I know all this, but so what? It doesn't change the fact that we are scarcely Christian at all, if Calvin's most gracious comparison is to ancient Babylon, or "Israel under Jeroboam," etc. C'mon! You think we are supposed to receive this "ecumenical" news with gleefulness and joy, because old man Calvin thinks we are as Christian as the grossest idolaters in ancient history were observant Jews? I think you are laboring under tremendous misconceptions.
5. Calvin signed the ecumenically minded Augsburg Confession, and approved of the ecumenical dialogue between Protestants and Catholics which took place at the Conference of Regensburg. How many evangelical Presbyterian pastors today could give full approval to that Confession and that Conference? That should show you the GULF in attitude which separates Calvin from his combative theological step-children.
There is some difference, but one must remember that in those days the revolution was still young, and there was still some chance (however remote) of it being a reform and not merely separatist and sectarian. The Diet of Augsburg and the Augsburg Confession as a supposed effort of unification with the Catholic Church is a joke.
Catholic historian Warren Carroll described the proceedings and the lack of tolerance in the Lutheran party:
Early in July the bishops presented their complaints to the Diet of the plundering and destruction of churches, seizure of monasteries and hospitals, prohibition of Masses, and attacks on religious procesions by the Protestants. When Charles called upon the Protestants to restore the property they had seized, they said that to do so would be against their consciences. Charles responded crushingly: 'The Word of God, the Gospel, and every law civil and canonical, forbid a man to appropriate to himself the property of another.' He said that as Emperor he had the duty of guarding the rights of all, especially those Catholics unwilling to accept Protestantism or go into exile, who should at least be allowed to remain in their homes and practice their ancestral faith, specifically the Mass; the Protestants replied that they would not tolerate the Mass . . .
By July it was clear that on matters of doctrine the Lutherans at Augsburg were dissimulating, concealing their real beliefs in the hope of avoiding a final breach without making genuine concessions. On July 6 Melanchthon made the incredible statement:
'We have no dogmas which differ from the Roman Church . . . We reverence the authority of the Pope of Rome, and are prepared to remain in allegiance to the Church if only the Pope does not repudiate us.'
As it happened, on the very same day Luther, in an exposition on the Second Psalm addressed to Archbishop Albert of Mainz, declared:
Remember that you are not dealing with human beings when you have affairs with the Pope and his crew, but with veritable devils! . . .
On the 13th [of July] Luther announced from Coburg that the Protestants would never tolerate the Mass, which he called blasphemous, and said of the Emperor:
'We know that he is in error and that he is striving against the Gospel . . . He does not conform to God's Word and we do' . . .
Luther stated in a letter to Melanchthon August 26:
'This talk of compromise . . . is a scandal to God . . . I am thoroughly displeased with this negotiating concerning union in doctrine, since it is utterly impossible unless the Pope wishes to take away his power.'
In subsequent letters he declared that no religious settlement was possible as long as the Pope remained and the Mass was unchanged . . .
Luther prepared the final Protestant answer:
'The Augsburg Confession must endure, as the true and unadulterated Word of God, until the great Judgment Day . . . Not even an angel from Heaven could alter a syllable of it, and any angel who dared to do so must be accursed and damned . . . The stipulations made that monks and nuns still dwelling in their cloisters should not be expelled, and that the Mass should not be abolished, could not be accepted; for whoever acts against his conscience simply paves his way to Hell. The monastic life and the Mass covered with infamous ignominy the merit and suffering of Christ. Of all the horrors and abominations that could be mentioned, the Mass was the greatest.'
. . . no Catholic of spirit and courage could be expected, let alone morally required, to give up all his religious rights without a struggle; and few Protestants, at this point, would allow Catholics to exercise those rights if the Protestants were strong enough to deny them. These were the irreconcilable positions taken by the two sides at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, which made those long and bloody years of conflict inevitable.
(The Cleaving of Christendom; from the series, A History of Christendom, Volume 4, Front Royal, VA: Christendom Press, 2000, 103-107)
Note how Luther's inane and vacuous ramblings (just like Calvin's) do not affect merely the pope and the hierarchy, but EVERY Catholic who observes the Mass.
Melanchthon's own pitiful waffling on various issues illustrates that this attempt at "unity" was a sham from the beginning (or doomed to failure, at the very least, due to stupidity and utter inflexibility). He once advocated the death penalty for anyone who denied the Real Presence in the Eucharist. At length he adopted that very position himself! And that is supposedly the "Catholic position"? This was the primary author of the Augsburg Confession: notoriously wimpy on doctrine (Calvin himself often chastised him over this, in personal letters).
Note again how the Mass was regarded by the Protestants: even to the extent that they felt wholly within their rights to steal church buildings and forbid Catholic worship. But of course Catholics are good ole Christians right next to the godly, holy Lutherans and Calvinists! The Anabaptists were not so fortunate, and were drowned by the hundreds, with the express consent of Luther and Melanchthon. But of course Protestants have always been far more tolerant than Catholics. Everyone knows that.
Keep these FACTS in mind
Facts? I'm the one who has been providing copious documentation, not you, so I hope folks will remember the facts I have presented, too.
the next time some internet wonderboy tries to quote some out-of-context statement of Calvin to justify his own ugly attitude towards our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters.
I'm "ugly" towards myself and my Catholic brethren?Talk about a severe self-image disorder! LOL I'm not trying to "justify" anything (let alone sin). Your other friends may have that motive, but my only concern here is historical truth and a sensible, workable ecumenism that isn't blind to historical and theological realities and mired in some sort of silly pretense. The liberals have excelled at that for years. Those of us who are orthodox Protestants and Catholics gain nothing by adopting their postmodernist, relativistic methodology. Facts is facts, and we have to work with those, whatever they may be.
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Hi Paul,
Thanks for your comments. Below are my random thoughts.
Likewise . . .
1. I have no desire to "bump heads" with you Dave. I don't look at you as a nemesis.
Well, this shows, I think, that you are maybe a bit overly-sensitive about serious, issues-oriented discussion with your Catholic brothers and sisters. I come as "family" precisely because you (unlike our anti-Catholic friends) have included me and my faith tradition in the circle of Christianity. So to me it is simply a discussion (in this case, on historical matters of what Calvin believed about Catholicism) and a dialogue (a thing I greatly advocate across the board, as you know). I'm not here to quarrel or wrangle, but to dialogue and learn and clarify. This is my Socratic method.
"Nemesis" means, "anyone or anything by which, it seems, one must inevitably be defeated or frustrated." I don't see myself vis-a-vis you or other Reformed Catholics (or even Protestants in general) in that light at all. Christians discuss theology and Christian history. Period. We can all learn from one another.
I could probably get along with you, and worship God alongside you, much more easily than with James White or David King. That's just a subjective impression, so take it for what it is worth.
I'm sure you would and could, not because I am anything, but because these men would not allow normal, mutually-respectful Christian fellowship to take place (and I surely would). That is the sad thing. In their eyes, I'm a heretic and an apostate, and you are not much better (maybe even worse) as a kind of "traitor to the cause" who "cavorts with the 'enemy'" and who should know better. I find the whole thing very sad where anti-Catholicism is concerned.
2. Of course Luther and Calvin were opposed to the Roman Catholic Church. Where did I ever say otherwise?
Then why the constant recourse by reformed Catholics to "context" and the insinuation that they were really quite neutral or had mixed feelings (hence the strong objection to citations by men like White and King -- and indirectly, myself -- when we emphasize anti-Catholic elements of Luther and Calvin)?
Clearly you guys wish to play down their anti-Catholicism (because it runs contrary to your "program" of a continuity with historic generic "Catholicism"), and some of you have flatly denied it. My position is that they were against it; that (indeed) I can scarcely imagine that they could have said anything else beyond what they did say to suggest that they were any more against it than they were. I agree that they do throw out a few minimalistic concessions (baptism and so forth). In my mind, however, those contradict the other nonsense which is their normative response. I am glad to see the few positive things, but I don't see how they can be totally reconciled with the negative apprisals. In my opinion, they either contradict the other strain or are, at best, highly paradoxical in the overall thrust of their thinking.
The Roman Catholic hierarchy was resisting needed reforms, and slaughtering Protestants in sectors of Europe. Of course they were going to oppose the machinery of such an institution.
It is more than the persecution (on both sides) and moral corruption (on both sides), and institutional malaise. You know as well as I do that these discussions eventually come down to doctrine. We can trade horror stories all day long, but I don't see that that accomplishes much. The only reason I have written about the "Protestant Inquisition" is because of the common double standard of Protestants always pointing out Catholic historical shortcomings but being blind to their own. I come around to "even the score" a bit and give the other side of the story (somewhat like Rush Limbaugh giving the politically conservative take in light of overwhelming cultural liberalism).
Nobody continues to put their money into a company that has gone bankrupt!
But that's just it: the language of "bankrupt" implies defectibility of the Church, and that is precisely what cannot happen, biblically ("the gates of hell will not prevail against the Church"), and in terms of the organic historical continuity that reformed Catholicism wishes to maintain. If there was a total breakdown of the institutional Catholic Church, then does it not follow that Protestantism was a revolution and not a reform?
But you have to distinguish schism from protest and reform.
I just did. :-)
The goal of the Reformers was not to cause an open split in the church, but to heal the sicknesses within the church.
I am willing to grant that to some extent; however, my basic outlook is that these men were at heart revolutionaries and insufficiently reflective of what they were doing, and how it was a radical departure in many respects from historical precedent. They were theologically and sociologically naive (some might say essentially arrogant, but I don't go that far myself, generally-speaking).
This is a fundamental dilemma for those of you who wish to pursue the course of organic continuity, per the above. I do not believe the difficulty has been gotten over at all, and thus I continue to make these kinds of inconvenient points. Once in a while I manage to get a Protestant to interact with them (I thank you profusely for the opportunity!) -- and even then usually quite reluctantly or half-heartedly.
As Calvin said to Sadoleto, there is a great difference between "schism from the Church, and studying to correct the faults by which the Church herself was contaminated."
But that, of course, is a circular argument, and the crux of the issue. Calvin needs to establish that certain things that he rejects are in fact, "contaminations." This he routinely fails to do. Like all revolutionaries, he simply assumes the inherent rightness and self-evident nature of his cause, and proceeds thusly. But from a (comparative) logical or theological perspective, this is quite unimpressive. Once Calvin and Luther try to play the "historical game" and co-opt the Fathers for their distinctive innovations, they can easily be shot down every time.
The Reformers protested against an arrogant, affluent, morally corrupt hierarchy which would not listen to calls for reform; that doesn't mean they opposed the RCC as such.
That is by no means clear to me. And given the state of their own collective and individual morality, it is more than a little bit hypocritical and sanctimonious to pose as "moral reformers." I would even say it is an outright joke, knowing what I know about the history.
Again, Calvin told Sadoleto that he did NOT intend to deny that "those OVER WHICH YOU PRESIDE are Churches of Christ."
Calvin said a lot of things, and they are difficult to synthesize in a coherent whole. I am trying to grapple with one side of what he said; you need to do the same.
You are free to dismiss such comments as anomalies, which merely offer momentary exceptions to the rule.
That's basically what I believe, yes, based on the copious evidence of his various remarks on the subject.
I prefer to see them as qualifications of Calvin's more polemical rhetoric.
Those must be (I think you would agree) logically consistent in order to truly be qualifications.
The difference here Dave is that it appears that you want to read Luther and Calvin in the worst possible light
Not really; I would love to be able to read them in a more positive light concerning this question, but I am constrained by the facts of the matter, as I see it. Of course I don't desire for them to be anti-Catholic (as the present-day anti-Catholics do), but that is different from whether they in fact were. I agree with the anti-Catholics that they were, as a factual matter (and I regard this as a fact as obvious as the sun at high noon on a clear day). I don't want this; they do, but we agree on the fact of the matter.
you are acting like a prosecuting attorney.
I'm not the one who formed their opinions. They did that. I am merely reporting them as they were.
I am trying to put them in a more positive light, as far as they offer resources for modern theological discussion; I am acting like a defense attorney.
Then you should be straightforward about the other strain of their thought. You shouldn't act like a lawyer so much as a private investigator, seeking to determine the facts wherever they lead. The lawyer analogy suggests to me that you want to follow the facts only in one direction. But that ain't how facts and truth work! They are what they are.
Surely you would admit that the same data is capable of more than one possible reading, in light of the total picture?
Not in this case. Like I said, I fail to see how their anti-Catholicism could be any more clear than it is. They have made almost every conceivable negative judgment about Catholicism that can be imagined.
If not, why do we bother to have trials in our legal system? After all, the truth should be plain as day, right?
When it is as profusely documented in the "defendant's" own words it is indeed plain as day. Most murderers do not leave scores of tracts and books detailing their opinions and activities. So the analogy is quite a poor one and not all that applicable.
3. I didn't make a bald appeal to my own authority. I would hardly do that in this arena. I think the points of historical context I listed in my last post are pretty uncontroversial. I would expect you to agree with that.
I have stated my opinion as to Calvin's "minimalistic" acknowledgement of historical continuity. He was in the boat you are in: he had to come up with some sense of continuity with what came before so the pretense of being a "reformer" of former things (by definition) could be maintained with a straight face. But it is a losing cause. Protestantism as a whole simply cannot be synthesized with what came before. It can't be done. It is a clean break in many respects, any way you slice the cake. It is, at bottom, a revolution, not a reform (i.e., in those areas where it departed from precedent, which are not ALL areas, of course, because it remains Christian).
I mean, which of the points do you contest?
I've written about those. Your job is to make a reply, not ask me again what I have already stated.
Do you deny that Calvin said what he said to Sadoleto?
No; I cited that work quite a bit, too.
Do you deny that Calvin's main antagonist was the Catholic hierarchy?
No, as well they should have been.
Do you deny that the RCC was resisting reforms which were widely regarded as necessary, even among those within the RCC?
On an individual and/or moral level, no. But we, of course, differ on what needed reform. Protestants often threw out the baby with the bath water. Catholicism underwent a true reform and clarification proces at Trent. Protestantism was a revolt, not a reform (sorry to ruffle feathers, but that is what I believe, and am very far from being convinced otherwise).
Do you deny that Protestants were getting martyred?
No, Do you deny that Catholics were, too?
Do you deny that such factors might heat up the rhetoric a bit?
Of course not, but we have to determine a person's position, despite the rhetorical and polemical excesses that one would expect in such an environment.
Do you deny that Calvin signed the Augsburg Confession?
No; I assumed that but went on to make further observations about the fundamentally-flawed nature of that enterprise.
Do you deny that it had a conciliatory intent?
I think that if the Protestants could get what they wanted and have it covered with a thin layer of cultural acceptance from Catholic sources like the Emperor, then they would do that in their self-interest (because they were the new kids on the block). I am quite cynical about their overall intent and motivations, because -- like I have shown -- the Protestants were dead-set against allowing the Mass at all. They wouldn't even return the hundreds of churches and monasteries that they stole and plundered (this was directly brought up at Augsburg by the Emperor himself). Do you honestly expect Catholics (then or now) to interpret those things as good faith, conciliatory efforts to get along?
So it is quite easy for you to sit there and make these summary, general remarks; much more difficult to grapple with the facts of history in its more crass, obvious aspects. Protestantism has always played this game, I'm afraid.
Do you deny that Calvin played a role in the Regensburg Conference?
No, but so what? He has a record of things that he believed about the Catholic Church.
Do you deny that the stated purpose of that conference was to heal the breach within the Church?
On the surface, yes. But let's be realistic: Calvin couldn't even get along with Lutherans. I have a quote (that I can dig up if someone doubts it -- it is in the Dillenberger collection of Calvin primary material), where he referred to Lutheranism as an "evil" that had to be checked. Really ecumenical . . .
If you don't contest any of these points, then why accuse me of appealing to my own authority, as though I were making some outlandish claims without adequate foundation?
Because you and other comrades of yours continually make this charge that those who disagree with you are qouting Calvin and Luther out of context. I have provided tons of context.
I don't waste my time documenting things that anyone who is familiar with the basics of the discussion (as you certainly are, and then some) should know.
That assumes what it is trying to prove. If you think it is that obvious, then you wouldn't discuss it at all. But as your own ultimately flawed analogy to a legal trial suggests, even you think there is some conflicting data to be grappled with. You can't argue out of both sides of your mouth.
4. I wouldn't call the mass an idolatrous abomination. I am much more of a Melanchthon than a Calvin in my tone towards you Catholics! I don't doubt that you are offering genuine worship to God when you participate in the Eucharist.
Thanks for virtually conceding and granting my case! This is it! Now we are getting somewhere. YOU grant that we are legitimately worshiping as Christians. Calvin does not. And you have yet to explain how in the world he can say what he does about the Mass, yet somehow accept those who commit such blasphemous, idolatrous acts every Sunday as "Christians."
Thanks for finally making very clear how this is completely relevant to the discussion. Calvin is an anti-Catholic; you are not (praise God, and I commend you). But you are trying to make out that he is more on your side in this respect, than on the side of the anti-Catholics who are, in my opinion, correctly citing him in this regard. That's no credit to them; it is simply historically obvious and can't be denied.
You imply that Melanchthon would have had a different opinion on the Catholic Mass; perhaps like your own? This is, of course, untrue also, and I think you could have figured that out with a minimum of work (just as I now did, in documenting what I do, below).
Remember, Melanchthon claimed at the Diet of Augsburg that Protestants were in more or less complete agreement with Catholics. Well, that is poppycock, and we need look no further than his own opinions to demonstrate this. What does he think about the traditional Catholic Mass? In the Apology for the Augsburg Confession, which he wrote in 1531, he stated:
[I]n the papal realm the worship of Baal clings -- namely, the abuse of the Mass . . . And it seems that this worship of Baal will endure together with the papal realm until Christ comes to judge and by the glory of his coming destroys the Kingdom of Antichrist. Meanwhile all those who truly believe the Gospel should reject those wicked services invented against God's command to obscure the glory of Christ and the righteousness of faith.
(Article XXIV, "The Mass" -- p. 268 in The Book of Concord, translated by Theodore G. Tappert, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1959)
Likewise, Martin Luther wrote in his Smalcald Articles of 1537 -- also confessionally normative for Lutherans:
The Mass in the papacy must be regarded as the greatest and most horrible abomination . . . it has been the supreme and most precious of the papal idolatries . . .
They are a purely human invention . . .
Let the people be told openly that the Mass, as a trumpery, can be omitted without sin, that no one will be damned for not observing it, and that one can be saved in a better way without the Mass. Will the Mass not then collapse of itself -- not only for the rude rabble, but also for all godly, Christian, sensible, God-fearing people -- especially if they hear that it is a dangerous thing which was fabricated and invented without God's Word and will?
(Article II, "The Mass" -- in Tappert, ibid., p. 293)
Did the notoriously waffling Philip Melanchthon change his tune later? Hardly. In the 1555 edition of his Loci communes, he wrote:
Like the blind heathen, they have invented their sacrifices. The Mohammedans, godless Jews, papists, and monks are still stuck fast in this blindness . . . This frightful blindness and idolatrous sin are often rebuked by the prophets.
(In Melanchthon on Christian Doctrine: Loci Communes 1555, translated and edited by Clyde L. Manschreck, Grabd Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1965; reprinted in 1982, XVI: "On the Difference Between the Old and the New Testaments," p. 194)
These are all devised works, undertaken by clerics partly out of error and partly as a deliberate fraud. In such misuse, when the sacrament is perverted, there is no sacrament, only frightful idolatry . . . there is no doubt that the cruel raging of the Turks is inflicted now as a punishment for the idolatry in the Mass . . . the papal Mass should be shunned and abolished.
(XXII: "On the Supper of Christ the Lord," ibid., p. 221)
Now consider some episcopal laws which compel sin, such as the commands to keep the idolatrous Mass and to invoke dead men.
(XXXIV: "Of Human Precepts in the Church," ibid., p. 307)
Frankly, to be quite honest, I don't think I really understand the theology of the Mass well enough to say much about it in any kind of a dogmatic way. It's not really one of my issues.
I fail to see how it cannot be, since you have taken an ecumenical stance towards Catholics, accepted their worship as fully Christian (indeed even more so than Baptist worship). C'mon, Paul. If you want to claim that you are a "Catholic" in continuity with historic Catholic worship (medieval and patristic) then you have to grapple with this issue. Is that not obvious?
But you (and/or your comrades) even go beyond that and make out that Luther, Calvin, and Melanchthon think of Catholics as brothers in Christ, given what they all said about our worship. You can't have it both ways. If all the founders of Protestantism got this wrong, then simply say so, but don't try to pretend that they were not profoundly anti-Catholic. This becomes a crucial issue in your endeavor to make Reformed Protestantism somehow "Reformed Catholic." I don't think the overall project works at all, but I do admire the historically-and ecumenically-minded effort in the right direction, at any rate.
The Council of Trent said: "For the victim is one and the same, the same now offering by the ministry of priests, who then offered himself on the cross, the manner alone of offering being different. The fruits indeed of which oblation, of that bloody one to wit, are received most plentifully through this unbloody one; so far is this [latter] from derogating in any way from that [former oblation]." That seems to say that the fruits of Christ's bloody oblation are received by the unbloody offering of Christ through the priests; but the fruits thereof stem from the bloody oblation, they are only "received" by the manner of unbloody oblation. Now, it seems to me that the whole tenor of the book of Hebrews speaks against the idea of going back to the ministry of "priests" (plural) offering a propitiatory sacrifice, even if it is conceded that this sacrifice is not other than the bloody sacrifice which was once for all offered on the cross. To be honest, the whole notion gives me a headache and makes the room spin around me.
Time to do more study, then. :-) Whatever you may think of this, it is the historical Christian position, which your movement must either accept and espouse, or reject (in which case that is yet another break with consistent Catholic development through the centuries and millennia).
But I have no intention of getting into that. I have no doubt that Catholic theologians could wrap me into a pretzel on this issue.
We can't all be experts on everything (I am an expert on nothing LOL), but all I'm saying is that it is a crucial issue to be dealt with. You can't just take a pass. Tim Enloe said he "didn't know." You are confused (but you would worship with me). Kevin Johnson said he wanted to further study the patristic notion of "sacrifice." This is good. If you want to be "Catholic" in any sense, this is all absolutely necessary. Come on in; the water's warm!
I am just saying that it doesn't ring true to me on that basis.
Of course not; you are a Protestant. I would have felt the same way prior to 1990.
Nevertheless, what I am not sure of is the extent to which this doctrine has been clarified in post-Reformation theological discourse, in a manner analagous to Lutheran-Catholic discussions over the doctrine of justification.
Not much, as far as I know. But hopefully, Protestants can get it through their heads that the Mass -- whatever they personally think of it -- is not the equivalent of Baal-worship, gross idolatry, etc.
According to R.T. Beckwith (an outstanding Anglican scholar), in the New Dictionary of Theology ("Eucharist"): "In the last hundred years or so, strenuous efforts have been made both by Roman Catholic and by Anglo-Catholic theologians to restate the Tridentine teaching without basically departing from it." He goes on to describe these developments, some of which involve rather complex issues regarding the very nature of time. My question would be: What if Calvin were here to hear these "restatements"? Would he still object to the doctrine in the same strenuous terms?
Yes. Nothing I've seen in him leads me to believe that he correctly understood Catholic theology. He distorts it at every turn. I have shown this a few times now (in my latest book, several times), and hope to do much more in the future. Calvin is not some impenetrable fortress, who annihilates every Catholic attempt to refute him. Quite the contrary; he often shows himself quite ignorant of particular issues in theology.
I don't know. But I do know that we are in a different historical situation than Calvin was, and therefore, we should not be expected to mindlessly repeat his harsher rhetoric.
The issues go beyond mere rhetoric. You claim to be "Catholic." The so-called "reformers" certainly were NOT so with regard to this issue of the Mass. That's my only point, if you remember nothing else I have written here. And how can we be regarded as fellow Christians if we participate in abominable blasphemy, sacrilege, and idolatry at every worship service we attend? If we are no better than ancient Baal-worshipers or the Babylonians, in what sense are we Christian brothers? You can't have it both ways. Most Protestants would not take such a stance about another Protestant denomination. It is only with us Catholics (and to some extent, the Orthodox) that this comes up at all.
5. So yes, Catholics worship Jesus every Sunday as their Lord.
And Luther, Calvin, Melanchthon, and other "reformers" all got this wrong . . .
6. It is not at all clear to me why you seem intent on brushing aside Institutes 4.2.11-12. Yes, Calvin thought that the RCC was in a dreadful state. But he still recognized the validity of God's name, covenant, and presence within the papal communion. Luther said much the same in his polemic against the Anabaptists. I don't see why you can't acknowledge that this puts them in a different light than folks like James White and David King.
It does, but it is not all that heartening or earth-shattering. I've already written about all that.
7. I certainly don't contest that Luther and Calvin were less conciliatory towards Rome than folks like Melanchthon and Bucer. If you are wanting me to grant that point, you have it.
Those guys had their own serious flaws, including advocating the death penalty for various theological "errors."
That is about all I can say within my time constraints this morning.
Thanks for your input. I appreciate it.
I hope that I have at least touched upon some of your concerns.
Yes, but I think you have a LONG way to go to establish your overall point and to show that either your anti-Catholic buddies or Catholics like me have cited the Protestant founders out of context with regard to their fundamental anti-Catholicism.
I am not asking you to give up your calling and ministry as an apologist within the Catholic Church.
Who thought that you were doing so? Not I!
Indeed, until the breach between us is healed, both sides are obligated to contend for the truth as it is understood within our respective communions, in the hopes of bringing one or the other into a greater exposure to the true teaching of Christ, and the grace of the gospel.
I agree. That's all that honest, committed Christians can do, according to their sincere, heartfelt beliefs.
But what I would resist is a winner take all mentality. If you are unable to persuade me to embrace the Roman Catholic faith and way of life, you can still regard me as a separated brother, and vice versa I can do likewise.
I've done that consistently for 27 years now, on both sides of the fence. But that doesn't mean that I won't vigorously make my case for what I believe, until shown otherwise. Respect, admiration, and acknowledgement of fellow Christians and their good faith is not inconsistent with intense disagreement. That's where efforts such as this between us are quite different from the anti-Catholics coming after either one of us. They have to read us out of the faith or create otherwise unnecessary and tragic divisions among Christians. I can make these arguments but within a context of respect, brotherhood, and fellowship. And I will continue to do so.
Again, thanks for your time, and God bless you. I think you are doing a marvelous job defending Catholic soteriology from the tons of misinformation and distortions of it in many Protestant circles. I wish to personally express my appreciation for that, and no criticism of mine here detracts from that gratefulness.
Scotland in North America?
In four days my family will be heading for Cape Breton Highlands National Park, which is the northern section of Nova Scotia, said to be uncannily similar to the coastal regions of Scotland. Rumor has it that the 185-mile Cabot Trail, a road which winds around the outer edges of the sometimes 1200-foot cliffs (many of them rocky) on the Atlantic Ocean coast, is one of the most spectacular drives in North America, and indeed, in all the world. In places it resembles the drive in the Big Sur region of California.
This is the trip with everything (for nature-lovers and romantics like my wife Judy and I). On the way we visit Niagara Falls, then drive through the Adirondacks of New York (we climbed the second-highest mountain in New York: 4900-foot Algonquin, in 1990), Green Mountains of Vermont, White Mountains of New Hampshire, and through Maine. On the return journey we will watch the highest tides in the world come in, at the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick.
The park offers world class hiking, whale- and bald-eagle watching, mature forests, barrens and bogs and coves and glens, highland plateaus, canyons, breathtaking panoramic lookouts, waterfalls, lighthouses, and Scottish and Acadian / French cultural attractions, with a tremendous local folk music heritage. We visited Acadia National Park in Maine in 1992. That was a gorgeous place, similar to this wondrous land, but Cape Breton looks to be even more beautiful. Who says you always gotta go west to see spectacular stuff? I'm half-Canadian, and roughly a quarter Scottish, and my wife is one-quarter French, so that makes it even more cool.
Perhaps some of you who have my kind of interests in nature-oriented travel haven't heard of Cape Breton. I think it is one of those lesser-known destinations and treasures waiting to be explored. My previous picture of Nova Scotia was a flat land with charming fishing villages. But it is much more than that.
This is the trip with everything (for nature-lovers and romantics like my wife Judy and I). On the way we visit Niagara Falls, then drive through the Adirondacks of New York (we climbed the second-highest mountain in New York: 4900-foot Algonquin, in 1990), Green Mountains of Vermont, White Mountains of New Hampshire, and through Maine. On the return journey we will watch the highest tides in the world come in, at the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick.
The park offers world class hiking, whale- and bald-eagle watching, mature forests, barrens and bogs and coves and glens, highland plateaus, canyons, breathtaking panoramic lookouts, waterfalls, lighthouses, and Scottish and Acadian / French cultural attractions, with a tremendous local folk music heritage. We visited Acadia National Park in Maine in 1992. That was a gorgeous place, similar to this wondrous land, but Cape Breton looks to be even more beautiful. Who says you always gotta go west to see spectacular stuff? I'm half-Canadian, and roughly a quarter Scottish, and my wife is one-quarter French, so that makes it even more cool.
Perhaps some of you who have my kind of interests in nature-oriented travel haven't heard of Cape Breton. I think it is one of those lesser-known destinations and treasures waiting to be explored. My previous picture of Nova Scotia was a flat land with charming fishing villages. But it is much more than that.
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
Reply to Pastor Steve Schlissel's Reflections on "Romanism"
See his article: What Thinkest Thou? I initially replied:
Pastor Schlissel might do even better in his ecumenical maturation process if he would drop the antiquated and baggage-laden terms "Romanism" and "Romanists" (much beloved of anti-Catholics; all we need is "Romish" too) Even James White can agree to that much.
I know it is too much to ask to refer to us as simply "Catholics," but the Anglican-originated "Roman Catholic" would be acceptable (even though it excludes those members of the Catholic Church in 21 or so non-Latin rites; aka Eastern Catholics).
Why the unneccesary annoyance of terminology, in an effort to build bridges? Or is it just remnants of a previous anti-Catholicism undergoing a change for the better?
The last time I saw someone use "Romish" when he knew better, I immediately wrote and asked if I could use the descriptives "Genevish" or "Wittenbergish." The point was readily, graciously acknowledged, and he (a Presbyterian pastor) issued a disclaimer. :-)
My friend Kevin Johnson asked me to reply in full. Here is his comment:
I agree Dave that we don't always use the right vocabulary but I would love to hear your actual thoughts on the substance of Pastor Schlissel's article. I would think it would be very encouraging on your side to see much of what Pastor Schlissel is saying become more popular in the Reformed world even though he and others might retain some sort of cultural affinity towards their forefathers in regards to issues like terminology. But I am very interested in your thoughts regarding the actual substance of what Pastor Schlissel said in his article.
And so I did (Steve's words will be in blue):
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, Kevin; thanks for asking. Here goes:
[omitting things I have no comment on one way or the other]
Speaking personally, my attitude has undergone major changes over the last 25 years. Speaking plainly, I’m still confused, sometimes changing my attitude day to day. For example, since coming to serve at the hospital I’ve become reacquainted with some of the worst Rome has to offer. My office is connected to the chapel which serves both Catholic and Protestant populations at Coney. While plans are (gratefully) underway to make physical alterations and improvements to this shared set-up, for now the statues upon which so many Romanists depend stand in plain view. And observation confirms that the behavior of many of Rome’s children cannot be properly described without use of the word “idolatrous.”
This is the same old ludicrous charge of automatic idolatry, simply based on the presence of a statue. I think you (Kevin) might agree with me that idolatry is determined in the end by the state and condition of one's heart and intent in worship, not by religious images as a supposed universal violation of one of the Ten Commandments. But hey, this is the original predominant Calvinist position (iconoclasm), so Pastor Schlissel can claim to be in the "mainstream" on this one.
I have seen the See of Rome’s subjects enter quickly into the chapel, apply the so-called “holy water,” hasten over to their favorite idol (most often Mary),
Again, how does he know it is an "idol" without the power to see into one's heart and know what is going on in their heart, mind, and soul at that moment? I am amazed at the haughty presumption here; it's breathtaking (but I know from whence it is derived).
. . . kneel before it, utter adoration of some kind,
How does he know it is "adoration," for heaven's sake?
then scurry out, utterly convinced that they have just rendered some sort of service before God which He finds acceptable, even creating in them that assurance so commonly joined to superstitious ritual, that the act just performed will be repaid by the deity with some bonus oversight and protection, perhaps a couple of extra angels dispatched to keep guard until their next idolatrous moment.
Condescending hogwash, uttered in obvious ignorance . . . certainly not worthy of a response, but let me say that I find such a comment ironic and amusing, particularly in the mocking of "assurance" (coming from a Calvinist, of all people?!). The tables can easily be turned on this one . . .
If I sound a tad too cynical, add another apology.
Not so much cynical as misguided and wrongheaded . . . (with all due -- sincere -- respect). I'm sure the pastor is a fine man, and a great servant of God, but he is simply ignorant of (at least some aspects of) Catholic theology; a strange phenomenon on the blog which has featured the fine work of Paul Owen, who shows an extraordinary grasp of Catholic theology, though he disagrees with it. It IS possible! The contention of Dr. Owen that Catholics are not Pelagians was by itself enough to make me jump for joy and renew my hope in Protestant mankind . . . :-) I can say something for years and most Protestants who see it pass right over it, but it is a joy to see an articulate Reformed spokesman say the same thing. Now maybe it'll get through . . .
Kudos!
It just rankles a man to see such self-deception.
I know the feeling; I am rankled viewing such correctable ignorance and seeming inability to grasp basic distinctions (again, agree or disagree).
Witnessing such flat out ignorance in action, I become inflamed and grieved, turning over and over in my mind the question of responsibility: how did these poor souls become so religiously abased, deprived, misled?
Indeed; I can TOTALLY relate, reading this piece . . . so see, common ground is being achieved after all! We can relate to each others' feelings!
At other times, seeking the larger picture, I remember that Rome hardly enjoys a corner on self-deception.
Good (though a self-evident truism).
And I remember that no Protestant could, no Protestant should think of his religious history as one completely severable from Rome. We Protestants are Western Christians, and our line does not go back from us to Calvin with a leap from there clean back to Paul.
Also self-evident, but nice to see stated in these circles.
Calvin, for example, appealed without shame or qualification to Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), a bona fide saint of Rome—and Geneva!
But of course. The question is whether Calvin was consistent in doing so. How did he interpret the simultaneous "acceptable" piety or theology in St. Bernard alongside the so-called "idolatry"? How can this be? How can one be so right on one topic and yet be deluded and sunk into a slimy pit of idolatry?
It reminds me of R.C. Sproul's semi-amusing "co-option" of St. Thomas Aquinas, as if he wasn't every bit as Catholic as Pope John Paul II, and would have been a good Protestant had he lived 300 years later. And of course, this can become a general question to be asked of Protestants trying to understand Catholics who seem to be halfway decent Christians, yet inexplicably accept all Catholic teachings.
In fact, Bernard is a fine example to keep in mind when discussing our topic, for he represents in a man the inextricable and inexplicable contradictions one will encounter in any effort to understand, absorb, or own (i.e., appropriate as ours) Christian history. In Bernard we find a seriously devout follower of Mary, the author of a complete treatise on Mariology, “Praises of the Virgin Mother.” He is also the author of that matchless hymn of devotion, “O Sacred Head , Now Wounded,” sung to this day with tears by Christians of every stripe, and found in the Reformed Psalter Hymnal, as well as in every significant Presbyterian Hymnal. What Christian could fail to affirm that Bernard has expressed for him the love and awe of his own Christian heart when he penned, “What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered was all for sinners’ gain. Mine, mine was the transgression, but Thine the deadly pain. Lo, here I fall, my Savior, ‘tis I deserve Thy place; look on me with Thy favor, vouchsafe to me Thy grace.” Who can even quote this, let alone sing it, without tears? Yet Bernard, championed by Calvin, was a champion of Mary.
That should tell the good pastor something, but the chances of that happening are, I suspect, slim. I hope I am wrong. But I thank him for this observation, because it is something all Protestants who seek to be ecumenical, have to grapple with. Mary is always a "biggie."
At the same time, no one could doubt that he was, above all, a champion of Christ.
How can this be? Idolatry, by definition, is replacing God and substituting something else. If Mariology is always Mariolatry, then Bernard could not possibly have been a "champion of Christ" (due to the extreme seriousness and wrongness of idolatry). But if he was that champion, then maybe, just maybe, Mary can be regarded and venerated in a fashion that is not idolatrous?
And he was a monk.
Oh my! Heaven forbid that anyone deny themselves sex for the sake of the Kingdom!!!! Why is that so rare in Protestantism, despite the very clear teaching of our Lord Jesus about certain eunuchs, and St. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 7?
Yet, here again, to even approach the subject of monasticism brings us square in the face of the complexity of our history.
Why, pray tell? -- it being explicitly biblical?
I am a Christian who unabashedly promotes the cause of covenant, with a special emphasis on the fact that Christianity is only fully lived if lived in covenant community.
Monks do live in comunity. They merely separate themselves from the society-at-large for the sake of prayer and spiritual betterment. Is prayer now suspect? One can devote themselves to making shoes or donuts and be a good ole Reformed Christian, but not exclusively to prayer and other such directly spiritual endeavors? I've always been amazed at the opposition to such things. It was never an issue for me at any time before I converted.
Further, I see in Scripture the ideal set forth for our emulation of a strategy of missions that is city-centered. To go one step further, it is a religion provided for the redemption of life lived in the world, not one encouraging flight from the world.
I fail to see why some cannot devote themselves to the monastic lifestyle. There are more than enough of us out in the world. What we need is to get those people off their butts (and they are legion in both Protestantism and Catholicism: a pastor surely is well aware of this) and seriously doing something for the Kingdom, not go after monks because they are supposedly anti-worldly or anti-cultural. That is simply more of the incessant Protestant false dichotomizing.
It would be difficult to imagine a lifestyle more radically opposite to all this than anchorite monasticism! But in Bernard we have a monk. What am I to do?
Stop making false dichotomies!
Love him. Of course, loving him keeps me not from evaluating him and his doctrines, but love requires that I recognize his contributions.
Same with me and Pastor Schlissel. We agree on that. I would love to get together and talk all night. I would love to talk on the phone (I have unlimited calling). I would love to discuss the many things where we agree. But will it actually happen? It is up to Pastor Schlissel.
Similarly, love requires us to recognize the contributions of monks to Western, that is, to our history. After the fall of the Western Empire in 476, the pope was left “as the only effective force for order in the West.” In the centuries which followed, the papacy aligned with the Carolingian dynasty and, “with the assistance of a remarkably vital and active monastic community, Christianized the barbarian invaders…” (Encyclopedia of World Religions, p. 938). Have we given adequate recognition to the monastic movement, which did more than preserve Christianity and civilization itself, but which advanced both through the incredibly courageous and Herculean mission which resulted in the conversion of the barbarian hordes to Christianity? It is passing belief that anyone would do anything but boast in such a magnificent legacy. Would we, in sheer stubbornness, hand this over to Rome, or may we not properly lay claim to it as ours?
Good, but again, personally, I have thought all this was self-evident (before I converted, and now), so it is not, in my opinion, some amazing thing to make such an admission. Good (again), even great and necessary, but not especially praiseworthy to simply acknowledge the historically- and ecclesiologically-obvious.
No, this question of attitude toward Rome is no easy one.
I think it is very easy: "Rome" is a variation of Christianity not different at bottom from denominational differences within Protestantism. But we are always placed in a unique category (one can hardly imagine, e.g., an article like this being written about, say, Lutherans or Methodists -- it is always Catholics; oops, "Romanists").
Obviously there are more differences to work through, but once the Christian status is granted, then I don't see how it is all that different (in the sense of acknowledging a fellow Christian group) from a Reformed looking at a Methodist or Lutheran or Baptist. It is very different in the Protestant mind, in my opinion, because of the historical baggage of centuries of anti-Catholicism and misguided polemics (some of which I deal with in my new, just-released book: The Catholic Verses: 95 Bible Passages That Confound Protestants, and mountains of ignorance and lack of acquaintance with Catholic thought.
I want Calvin and Bernard. I want it all. That means I have to take the good and the bad and the mixed and say, “Yes, this is my heritage. But my task lies not in the past, but rather in the present and in the future. My task is to be Biblically faithful in the generation and in the world where God has placed me.”
Good, as far as it goes . . .
But the part of her book which pertains to the subject of this newsletter in your hands right now is how bile-filled (and, I’d add, folly-filled) was my attitude toward all things Roman Catholic, and how that irrational and ignorant hatred nearly cost us at least one conversion in our service to Christ
. . . But I know a little now that I did not know then—and Patty was neither the first nor the only friend to tell me. I’m indebted to several friends who confronted me about the severe downside of my once public rantings against Rome. I thank them all for helping me to grow.
Acknowledgement of one's own shortcomings is the first step to recovery, so I admire this confession; I really do (despite all my usual criticisms, as an apologist). It's more than most people will do. I'm even touched by it. But I think there is still a bit of work to be done yet, in the areas noted above.
. . . The point of this paragraph is a simple one: Rome is often spoken of as if it were completely monolithic, but it is not.
The overall theology is indeed one. Individuals differ, because individuals vary in how willing they are to accept the whole Catholic dogmatic ball of wax. It is like that for any Christian body: we can only examione what their "books" say. I have stressed this for 23 years now, as an apologist who started out doing extensive critiques of Jehovah's Witnesses, and I will continue to say it, because people don't seem to get this seemingly elementary point.
And Protestants often think of themselves as preservers of the true and only faith, but Protestant history has as many quacks per square inch as the looniest fringes of Romanism.
Indeed . . . (how well I know, having been in both camps, and the non-denom, charismatic part of Protestantism, where fools are quite prevalent (I was critiquing excess in charismatic circles in writing as far back as 1982).
If Christ is thought of as the center, many differences between Romanists and Protestants lose significance as the center is approached, just as things in both camps get uncontrollably wild as the movement flows away from center. (C.S. Lewis observed the same thing, and said it better.)
Yes, I love that quote from him.
We have sought in this issue of Messiah’s Update only to introduce some of the inescapable difficulties inherent in assessing our attitude toward Rome and Romanism. We can hardly expect to reach maturity in our posture if we refuse to engage in careful reflection, choosing instead the easier, cheaper path of sloganeering.
How about dialogue with Catholics, too? Pastor Schlissel did not reply to my previous critique of his reflections on Catholic conversions (for whatever reasoin; just stating the fact; and I informed him of it). I hope he will decide to do so this time. If he is serious about better understanding and appreciating Catholicism, he will have to get with some Catholics who know their faith, sooner or later. I have no problem with Jewish converts. I used to attend a church which was predominantly Jewish converts, and loved it. I loved the people dearly, and always thought they were special. But we all seem to fear those we don't know very well on a personal level.
There’s no need to be blind to Rome’s flaws. But neither is there warrant to say that flaws are all that’s there. The tough thing about growing up is that things seem to happen much faster, but answers come much slower.
Overall, I like this article. But again, I reiterate that if Pastor Schlissel is truly serious about becoming more ecumenical, then he should:
1. Start talking seriously TO Catholics (priests, religious, apologists, academics, deacons, etc.), in addition to talking ABOUT them.
2. Work through vexing and (for him) troublesome issues such as iconoclasm and supposed idolatry, Mariology, etc. and seek to correctly understand the Catholic perspective. Elimination of straw men is crucial for further growth (and I believe he is perfectly sincere in seeking that). If he then disagrees, fine, but at least he will comprehend what he disagrees with, in the terms of those who believe and practice them.
I think the leading models along those lines that I have observed within the Reformed Catholic community are Paul Owen and Joel Garver (both academics, as it were). To my mind, they have scarcely distorted anything. They present Catholic belief accurately (and quite respectfully, which is equally important from an ecumenical perspective) and candidly dissent where they must as Protestants. This is the bare minimum of respectful discourse: to correctly portray an opponents' belief-system and not to caricature or misrepresent it (and of course not mock it).
The models are there. If anyone besides Kevin (also a pretty good model, I think) cares about my opinion on this, as a published Catholic apologist and advocate of serious Catholic-Protestant dialogue, there it is, for what it's worth. If not, that's fine too. God bless you, and thanks for reading.
Thanks to Kevin (and others here) for the opportunity to render my opinion on this. Of course, I will want to post it on my blog, too, as always . . . And as always, I hope further discussion is generated. Dialogue can do wonders . . .
Kerry Steps Up Cornball Campaign: "If I am elected, you'll be dished up corn every night!" (an appeal which works -- or is thought to work -- particularly well in Iowa)
These are my surroundings when I worship my Lord on Sunday and receive Him through the miracle of the Blessed Eucharist. Bauhaus architecture? Yuck! Maybe fit for Bingo, but not worship . . .
St. Joseph's: My German Gothic Parish
Check out the brand-new website for the church I have attended for over 13 years now. It is a marvelous building, built in 1873, near downtown Detroit, with some of the most gorgeous stained glass in America, and a great tradition of liturgical music. The website provides several fascinating pages about the history of the parish, lots of photographs, and information about the German community in Detroit. St. Joseph's is a wonderful, holy place, and the worship is just as reverential as the surroundings.
Sure a long way from my old non-denominational, Jesus Freak church meeting in a boring hall in the YMCA . . . I always loved the traditional cathedrals and medieval architecture, though. Some aspects of me have always been Catholic, whether I knew it or not.
Sure a long way from my old non-denominational, Jesus Freak church meeting in a boring hall in the YMCA . . . I always loved the traditional cathedrals and medieval architecture, though. Some aspects of me have always been Catholic, whether I knew it or not.
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
"The Catholic Verses" is Now Published
My latest paperback book, The Catholic Verses: 95 Bible Passages That Confound Protestants, has been published by Sophia Institute Press. Check out their information page, where it can be ordered. It is not yet listed on amazon.com. It should be there within 7-10 days, I think.
I already had a page for the book on my website, which includes the Introduction in its entirety. Here is an excerpt from that which I would like to highlight:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[W]hen it comes to Scripture, Protestantism is not without its own serious internal inconsistencies, shortcomings, and problems. Since Protestants almost casually assume that the Bible is “their” book – that they have a virtual monopoly on correct Bible interpretation -- and that it always supports their positions and disproves Catholic ones, it is good once in a while to “turn the tables” and closely examine and scrutinize Protestant traditions.
No one comes to the Bible as a completely impartial and objective “observer” or reader. We all approach it, whether consciously or unconsciously, with some sort of preexisting theology, or at least a disposition towards a certain viewpoint. It is impossible not to do this. It is part of the very nature of the thinking process.
Protestants are no exception. They claim that the Bible is clear (“perspicuous”) for almost anyone to understand in its main outlines (and indeed, Catholics agree that it is in many important respects), yet they have been unable -– in nearly 500 years – to come to agreement in many significant areas of theology, and remain institutionally divided (something repeatedly condemned in no uncertain terms by the Bible).
I shall contend throughout this book that – far too often -- Protestants do not take all of Scripture into account, and that they are guilty of eisegesis (reading into Scripture one’s own presuppositions), or seriously erroneous exegesis, at least as often as Catholics are, if not more frequently. Protestants (especially on a popular level) often emphasize relatively few “proof texts” to the exclusion of a great deal of relevant biblical data.
Moreover, only rarely do they seriously engage the biblical texts utilized by Catholics to support their positions through the centuries. In probably most cases, they are not even aware of any passages that a Catholic might use to prove anything that would be contrary to Protestantism. Habitually, they do not even entertain the possibility. For many Protestants, such a state of affairs is literally impossible. It isn’t supposed to happen. When Catholics and Protestants grapple over the Bible and its interpretation, Protestants must always win (so they casually assume).
I hasten to add -– and emphasize to the greatest degree -- that these tendencies of bias and subjectivism and subconscious influence of denominational traditions do not necessarily entail a deliberate attempt to ignore or to twist Scripture. Every serious student of the Bible comes to the biblical text with a theological framework, in order to interpret it and make sense of it in its entirety. This is proper and right, and no one should have any objection to it.
. . . without questioning (at all) the sincerity or integrity of Protestants, I shall now proceed to offer a critique of common Protestant attempts to ignore, explain away, rationalize, wish away, over-polemicize, minimize, de-emphasize, evade clear consequences of, or special plead with regard to “the Catholic Verses”: 95 biblical passages.
. . . My main purpose is to show that Catholics need not “yield” Scripture to Protestants, as if the Bible is a “Protestant book.” It is not; it is (if we must speak in this fashion) a “Catholic book”: produced and preserved by Catholics for nearly 1500 years before Protestantism even appeared.
We can support our views and doctrines (overall) just as strongly from Holy Scripture, and Protestants have many biblical “difficulties” (seeming or actual inconsistencies between the biblical text and their theology) to work through, as indicated, I think, in the analyses contained herein.
I already had a page for the book on my website, which includes the Introduction in its entirety. Here is an excerpt from that which I would like to highlight:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[W]hen it comes to Scripture, Protestantism is not without its own serious internal inconsistencies, shortcomings, and problems. Since Protestants almost casually assume that the Bible is “their” book – that they have a virtual monopoly on correct Bible interpretation -- and that it always supports their positions and disproves Catholic ones, it is good once in a while to “turn the tables” and closely examine and scrutinize Protestant traditions.
No one comes to the Bible as a completely impartial and objective “observer” or reader. We all approach it, whether consciously or unconsciously, with some sort of preexisting theology, or at least a disposition towards a certain viewpoint. It is impossible not to do this. It is part of the very nature of the thinking process.
Protestants are no exception. They claim that the Bible is clear (“perspicuous”) for almost anyone to understand in its main outlines (and indeed, Catholics agree that it is in many important respects), yet they have been unable -– in nearly 500 years – to come to agreement in many significant areas of theology, and remain institutionally divided (something repeatedly condemned in no uncertain terms by the Bible).
I shall contend throughout this book that – far too often -- Protestants do not take all of Scripture into account, and that they are guilty of eisegesis (reading into Scripture one’s own presuppositions), or seriously erroneous exegesis, at least as often as Catholics are, if not more frequently. Protestants (especially on a popular level) often emphasize relatively few “proof texts” to the exclusion of a great deal of relevant biblical data.
Moreover, only rarely do they seriously engage the biblical texts utilized by Catholics to support their positions through the centuries. In probably most cases, they are not even aware of any passages that a Catholic might use to prove anything that would be contrary to Protestantism. Habitually, they do not even entertain the possibility. For many Protestants, such a state of affairs is literally impossible. It isn’t supposed to happen. When Catholics and Protestants grapple over the Bible and its interpretation, Protestants must always win (so they casually assume).
I hasten to add -– and emphasize to the greatest degree -- that these tendencies of bias and subjectivism and subconscious influence of denominational traditions do not necessarily entail a deliberate attempt to ignore or to twist Scripture. Every serious student of the Bible comes to the biblical text with a theological framework, in order to interpret it and make sense of it in its entirety. This is proper and right, and no one should have any objection to it.
. . . without questioning (at all) the sincerity or integrity of Protestants, I shall now proceed to offer a critique of common Protestant attempts to ignore, explain away, rationalize, wish away, over-polemicize, minimize, de-emphasize, evade clear consequences of, or special plead with regard to “the Catholic Verses”: 95 biblical passages.
. . . My main purpose is to show that Catholics need not “yield” Scripture to Protestants, as if the Bible is a “Protestant book.” It is not; it is (if we must speak in this fashion) a “Catholic book”: produced and preserved by Catholics for nearly 1500 years before Protestantism even appeared.
We can support our views and doctrines (overall) just as strongly from Holy Scripture, and Protestants have many biblical “difficulties” (seeming or actual inconsistencies between the biblical text and their theology) to work through, as indicated, I think, in the analyses contained herein.
Why Catholics Don't Often Witness (Steve Kellmeyer)
The Fifth Column -- Orthodox Catholic commentary on current events
Tuesday, August 3, 2004
The May 24th issue of America contains an article by Fr. John C. Haughey,
professor of theology at Loyola University in Chicago, who laments the
Catholic unwillingness to talk about their personal relationship with
Jesus. Whether it be a theology student or a theology professor,
Catholics don't talk much about themselves and Christ. Instead,
Catholics, even Catholic professors, talk about books: ". . . these
seasoned Catholic scholars could hardly be described as lacking a
personal relationship with Christ. What is it about Catholicism that
makes personal sharing about one's relationship with Jesus less likely?"
John Paul II has already answered this question. How many men and women
begin a conversation by talking about their love for their spouse? Most
married people, especially men, simply don't engage in that kind of
conversation. We don't start a conversation with "Good heavens, I love my
wife! And I just wanted to come before you to say that she's the best
little woman in the world."
Evangelicals emphasize the Lordship of Christ or the fact that Jesus is
their friend. But you never hear them talk about Jesus as their lover.
For Catholics, that is all there IS to talk about.
We can talk about how we got married to our Spouse, Jesus Christ, in
baptism. We can talk about how God grows our marriage relationship from
baptismal newlywed status to full maturity in Confirmation. We can talk
about how He establishes His Son within our spiritual family through Holy
Orders. We can talk about how we cheated on our Spouse but repented and
renewed our marriage vows in Reconciliation. We can talk about the Flesh
of the Bridegroom entering the Flesh of the Bride at the Nuptial Feast in
Eucharist and the Mass. We can talk about all the sweet nothings we
whisper into our Lover's ear through sacramentals and the sacramental
life. We can talk about how the Bridegroom takes us home to the Father's
House after our honeymoon here on earth.
But we don't. We don't talk about it much because spouses don't tend to
talk about these things in public. Good spouses don't thrust their
private married life on strangers. Married life is about intimacy. It is
something that only our family sees, that only spouses really share and
understand. I cannot speak for wives, but I can say this: two husbands
may talk about this very quietly in the backyard over a beer when the
rest of the family is otherwise occupied, but even then, they speak in
hushed tones and indirect comments, and even those are kept to a bare
minimum. This is the nature of married life. It is the entrance into the
sanctuary. It is the holiness of the tabernacle. Men recognize this
holiness by doing all that a man can do: he falls silent before it in
order to witness to it the better, in order to see it more clearly.
There is good Scriptural precedent for this. Mary, the first person to
proclaim the full Gospel, did so in absolute silence, as her spouse,
Joseph, silently stood guard over her and the Child. She and Joseph
remained silent, leaving to the angels the task of telling the shepherds
of the event. If Fr. Haughey had bothered to read John Paul II's Theology
of the Body, or even bothered with one of the popular summaries (of which
my Sex and the Sacred City is but one example), if he had spent some time
absorbing this teaching and making it his own, he would know this.
Evangelicals are the chipper young lads and lasses out on their first or
second or twenty-first date, ready to talk about their relationship with
anyone who has a ready ear. Like anyone who is not fully committed, they
are not entirely sure of themselves, so they constantly bring forward
their relationship for others to examine and advise them. "Is this the
one?" they ask. "I really love her. I think she is the one. Is she? Am I
doing the right thing? I think I am. I can't imagine being happier. What
do you think? I think she's GREAT! Oh, if you only had the chance to meet
her, if you only had the chance to know her like I do, you would think
she is great too! She is you know. Don't you think so? Come with me, I'll
introduce you. You'll really like her." How many times have we who are
older had this conversation with an eager young adult?
But Catholic life is different.
Catholic life is about being married to Jesus.
Not dating.
Not friends.
Married.
And Fr. Haughey, that's a whole different level of conversation.
Tuesday, August 3, 2004
The May 24th issue of America contains an article by Fr. John C. Haughey,
professor of theology at Loyola University in Chicago, who laments the
Catholic unwillingness to talk about their personal relationship with
Jesus. Whether it be a theology student or a theology professor,
Catholics don't talk much about themselves and Christ. Instead,
Catholics, even Catholic professors, talk about books: ". . . these
seasoned Catholic scholars could hardly be described as lacking a
personal relationship with Christ. What is it about Catholicism that
makes personal sharing about one's relationship with Jesus less likely?"
John Paul II has already answered this question. How many men and women
begin a conversation by talking about their love for their spouse? Most
married people, especially men, simply don't engage in that kind of
conversation. We don't start a conversation with "Good heavens, I love my
wife! And I just wanted to come before you to say that she's the best
little woman in the world."
Evangelicals emphasize the Lordship of Christ or the fact that Jesus is
their friend. But you never hear them talk about Jesus as their lover.
For Catholics, that is all there IS to talk about.
We can talk about how we got married to our Spouse, Jesus Christ, in
baptism. We can talk about how God grows our marriage relationship from
baptismal newlywed status to full maturity in Confirmation. We can talk
about how He establishes His Son within our spiritual family through Holy
Orders. We can talk about how we cheated on our Spouse but repented and
renewed our marriage vows in Reconciliation. We can talk about the Flesh
of the Bridegroom entering the Flesh of the Bride at the Nuptial Feast in
Eucharist and the Mass. We can talk about all the sweet nothings we
whisper into our Lover's ear through sacramentals and the sacramental
life. We can talk about how the Bridegroom takes us home to the Father's
House after our honeymoon here on earth.
But we don't. We don't talk about it much because spouses don't tend to
talk about these things in public. Good spouses don't thrust their
private married life on strangers. Married life is about intimacy. It is
something that only our family sees, that only spouses really share and
understand. I cannot speak for wives, but I can say this: two husbands
may talk about this very quietly in the backyard over a beer when the
rest of the family is otherwise occupied, but even then, they speak in
hushed tones and indirect comments, and even those are kept to a bare
minimum. This is the nature of married life. It is the entrance into the
sanctuary. It is the holiness of the tabernacle. Men recognize this
holiness by doing all that a man can do: he falls silent before it in
order to witness to it the better, in order to see it more clearly.
There is good Scriptural precedent for this. Mary, the first person to
proclaim the full Gospel, did so in absolute silence, as her spouse,
Joseph, silently stood guard over her and the Child. She and Joseph
remained silent, leaving to the angels the task of telling the shepherds
of the event. If Fr. Haughey had bothered to read John Paul II's Theology
of the Body, or even bothered with one of the popular summaries (of which
my Sex and the Sacred City is but one example), if he had spent some time
absorbing this teaching and making it his own, he would know this.
Evangelicals are the chipper young lads and lasses out on their first or
second or twenty-first date, ready to talk about their relationship with
anyone who has a ready ear. Like anyone who is not fully committed, they
are not entirely sure of themselves, so they constantly bring forward
their relationship for others to examine and advise them. "Is this the
one?" they ask. "I really love her. I think she is the one. Is she? Am I
doing the right thing? I think I am. I can't imagine being happier. What
do you think? I think she's GREAT! Oh, if you only had the chance to meet
her, if you only had the chance to know her like I do, you would think
she is great too! She is you know. Don't you think so? Come with me, I'll
introduce you. You'll really like her." How many times have we who are
older had this conversation with an eager young adult?
But Catholic life is different.
Catholic life is about being married to Jesus.
Not dating.
Not friends.
Married.
And Fr. Haughey, that's a whole different level of conversation.
Saturday, July 31, 2004
Ah, to weigh 150 again and have a 31-inch waist (now I am 190 with a 34"-35" waist; 6' 0")!! Me at a wedding, all decked out, in July 1988 (age 30). I just turned 46 yesterday. My gift was a Sony Walkman with the attachments to play it in the car, too. I'm having a ball burning CD's, as of late; my latest new hobby.
Private Judgment and "Reformed Catholicism"
Response to a post on the Reformed Catholicism blog: "Americanized Protestantism's Egalitarianism," by Derrick Olliff:
Hi Derrick,
Fascinating post. I must say that I am unable to resist pointing out a rather amusing irony. I was criticizing the extremity in Pink's arguments for private judgment over three years ago (Nov. 2000).
Thus I find it a bit personally "vindicating" to see you making a lot of the same criticisms that I made as a Catholic long before the recent Reformed Catholic movement seems to have gotten off the ground. Not to say, "I told you so." I merely see some irony and humor in that, given the multitude of charges thrown my way from some quarters about how I am supposedly so in the dark about the nature of true "Reformational" Protestantism.
You wrote:
This is a great observation. I was trying to do much of the same, way back when, in, e.g., my paper: "Response to Tim Enloe's Counter-Reply on the Matter of Private Judgment" .
The discussion is very complex, but my own critique of Protestantism on this score has been radicaly misunderstood by many. In another of my papers on this topic (Dialogue: Catholic vs. Protestant Conceptions of the Meaning and Consequences of Private Judgment) I wrote:
That being the case, it is still a separate issue as to the nature of private judgment, and how it is understood within magisterial Protestantism. I'm one with you guys in criticizing the individualistic and sectarian excesses. Where we differ fundamentally is with regard to my critique of private judgment as applied to the very roots and founding principles of Protestantism: Martin Luther himself.
My argument is that his own point of view (expressed in no uncertain terms, of course!) leads inexorably to the excesses found in Pink and other more individualistic, Americanized" Protestants.
You guys can deny this all day long, till you're blue in the face, but I have not been convinced at all that Luther's thought does not inevitably lead to such an individualism as we observe all around us. In other words, what I have never been shown (hardly anyone has even tried) is a convincing argument that Luther's principles do not and cannot lead to an individualism of the sort Reformed Catholics have been excoriating as of late. If anyone wants to try to do so now, I would be delighted to interact with that.
All I've gotten thus far in these kinds of discussions are charges that I am equating the different schools of Protestantism (noted above) with each other, and confusing categories, or collapsing one school into the other (painting with too broad a brush).
This is absolutely untrue, of course. I am merely following the logic through to what I believe is its conclusion: constructing a reductio ad absurdum argument, just as you and others of your comrades have done to some extent.
What I was trying to grapple with were the implications and principles which flow from a certain type of statement from Martin Luther such as the following:
[Against the Spiritual Estate of the Pope and the Bishops Falsely So-Called, July 1522; from: Martin Luther, Luther's Works, edited by Jaroslav Pelikan (vols. 1-30) and Helmut T. Lehmann (vols. 31-55), St. Louis: Concordia Pub. House (vols. 1-30); Philadelphia: Fortress Press (vols. 31-55), 1955. This work from Vol. 39: Church and Ministry I (edited by J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald, and H. T. Lehmann); pages 239-299; translated by Eric W. and Ruth C. Gritsch; citations from pp. 248-249]
Further Remarks from Luther's Tract Against Henry VIII, King of England (1522)
[From: Martin Luther: His Life and Work, Hartmann Grisar, Adapted from the 2nd German ed. by Frank J. Eble, edited by Arthur Preuss, Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1950 [orig. 1930], 261 / from Werke [Weimar], Vol X, II, pp. 180 sqq., 227 sq. Opp. Lat. Var., pp. 385 sqq., and Werke, Erlangen ed., Vol. XXVIII, pp. 343 sqq.]
-------------------------
(From: Luther, Hartmann Grisar, tr. E.M. Lamond, ed. Luigi Cappadelta, 6 vols., London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1915; volume 4, 391 / from Werke [Weimar], Vol X, II, p. 256 f.)
Elsewhere, in the same year, Luther wrote:
(From: Luther, Hartmann Grisar, tr. E.M. Lamond, ed. Luigi Cappadelta, 6 vols., London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1915; volume 4, 391 / from Werke [Weimar], Vol X, II, p. 90; Von Menschen leren tzu meyden, 1522)
From: An Argument in Defense of All the Articles of Dr. Martin Luther Wrongly Condemned in the Roman Bull (1521):
(From: Works of Martin Luther, Philadelphia: A.J. Holman Co. and the Castle Press, 1930; rep. by Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI, 1982 , Volume 3, 12-14,17; translated by C.M. Jacobs)
----------------------
Also:
(From: Luther, Hartmann Grisar, tr. E.M. Lamond, ed. Luigi Cappadelta, 6 vols., London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1915; volume 4, 309)
Now, I'm sorry; maybe I am dense and obtuse, maybe my logic is flawed, or I am blinded by my "Roman" bias and tunnel vision, but for the life of me I swear that I can't see any essential distinction between the extreme individualism and "sectarianism" of these remarks by Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, and the less extreme views of folks like James White: folks whom Reformed Catholics have excoriated as of late.
It seems to me, again, that White and his compatriots and sycophants can draw at least as much support from Luther and Calvin as you guys can. This is true both with regard to the question of the status of the [Roman} Catholic Church and the present consideration of private judgment.
If you say that Pink, White, and scores of other individualized, atomistic, "Americanized" Protestants have departed from the measuring rod of "magisterial Protestantism" (which presumably includes Luther among its number), then please, PLEASE (I BEG YOU) show me where the distinction lies. I don't get it. How do they depart from what Luther said above?
Most of what I've gotten so far is abuse, misrepresentation, name-calling, false charges, and a lot of yelling and running from my Protestant friends when I dare to bring up such uncomfortable considerations as these. They clearly don't like it. But obviously their discomfort and rage at my abominable behavior in actually citing Luther's words are not arguments, and provide me with no reason to change my opinion.
If, on the other hand, you concede that Luther (and also Calvin, I suspect -- properly scrutinized) believes at bottom, the same things about private judgment (at least in some key respects, over against Catholicism and the previous tradition and rule of faith), then the distinction upon which "Reformed Catholicism" is based, largely collapses -- at least in this respect.
My view, again, is that there are VERY major distinctions to be drawn between various Protestant camps on the authority issue. I recognize these, and have for the entire 13 + years since I have converted. But that doesn't prove that Luther's and Calvin's original positions do not suffer from grave defects, nor that they can be totally distanced or disconnected from the excesses in subsequent Protestant history that we all dislike and detest.
If you disagree, please show me how and why, particularly regarding Luther's statements above (with a minimum of polemical and merely "party" rhetoric, if possible). How is one to interpret those? Luther had a bad day, and raved like a madman? Literary style? We simply discount them, or take them with a grain of salt, knowing of Luther's uncontrollable tongue, etc.?
Thanks for reading and may God abundantly bless you.
[See my post on the other blog, along with subsequent comments from others]
Hi Derrick,
Fascinating post. I must say that I am unable to resist pointing out a rather amusing irony. I was criticizing the extremity in Pink's arguments for private judgment over three years ago (Nov. 2000).
Thus I find it a bit personally "vindicating" to see you making a lot of the same criticisms that I made as a Catholic long before the recent Reformed Catholic movement seems to have gotten off the ground. Not to say, "I told you so." I merely see some irony and humor in that, given the multitude of charges thrown my way from some quarters about how I am supposedly so in the dark about the nature of true "Reformational" Protestantism.
You wrote:
Institutions can and do err, and the solution to this is the RPJ. But this presupposes, whether Pink likes it or not, the infallibility of the individual. Pink directly says, 'God has given me that precious Book for the very purpose of making known to me what I am to believe and do, and if I read and search it with a sincere desire to understand its meaning and be regulated by its precepts, I shall not be left in the dark.' Either 'sincere' individuals are infallible or Pink has made a major mistake here. Obviously individuals are not infallible, so this whole line of argumentation is self-refuting. Individuals can make small, medium, and large theological errors just like institutions can, so the RPJ does not solve the problem of institutional error or insure that the individual will be 'in the light' as Pink says.
This is a great observation. I was trying to do much of the same, way back when, in, e.g., my paper: "Response to Tim Enloe's Counter-Reply on the Matter of Private Judgment" .
The discussion is very complex, but my own critique of Protestantism on this score has been radicaly misunderstood by many. In another of my papers on this topic (Dialogue: Catholic vs. Protestant Conceptions of the Meaning and Consequences of Private Judgment) I wrote:
Private judgment - again, in its standard meaning, defined below - inevitably tends to lead individuals and groups down the primrose path of separatism and an undue influence of the traditions of men (oftentimes that of the founder of the group) - despite the obligatory warnings of the more sophisticated and nuanced expounders that such division is evil, etc. The principle (like so many heretical ideas, in their incoherence and ultimate falsity) has its own inner dynamic and logic, and people consistently follow it. Pink's own 'blot' or 'blemish' of refusal to affiliate with church groups at all later in his life, is a clear and classic example of a dynamic and a corruption or degeneration that has been repeated countless times. He says the 'right things' about the teaching; he acts differently, and a bit more self-consistently (though not entirely so). He says one thing and does another, because the teaching is self-defeating in the first place.I fully understand the distinction between sola Scriptura and solo Scriptura. I always have. I was writing about that as early as 1991, right after I converted to Catholicism, citing Bernard Ramm and R.C. Sproul and G.C. Berkouwer. I am quite aware of the difference between "magisterial Reformation" and the radical Reformation, or covenental Reformed vs. "Reformed Baptists" (my severest critics have never understood this about my position).
One cannot assert private judgment and pretend that this does not and will not have many negative ramificiations for ecclesiology. Luther and Calvin never understood this, and it seems that a great many Protestants to this day do not, either. As is so often the case, the most penetrating insight, analyses, and criticism of sola Scriptura and its corollaries of private judgment and perspicuity (clearness) of Scripture come from those who have self-consciously rejected these false notions as unbiblical, illogical, and unhistorical, as well as absurdly impractical. This is no novel concept. People who reject Darwinian evolution can see its faults and flaws more clearly than most proponents of the theory. Those who oppose the pathetic system of American public education, see its glaring (and obvious) failures much better than the National Educational Association, who must say it is a good and successful system, simply because it is their system, and they do not wish to change it (don't upset the apple cart; let the sleeping dog lie).
That being the case, it is still a separate issue as to the nature of private judgment, and how it is understood within magisterial Protestantism. I'm one with you guys in criticizing the individualistic and sectarian excesses. Where we differ fundamentally is with regard to my critique of private judgment as applied to the very roots and founding principles of Protestantism: Martin Luther himself.
My argument is that his own point of view (expressed in no uncertain terms, of course!) leads inexorably to the excesses found in Pink and other more individualistic, Americanized" Protestants.
You guys can deny this all day long, till you're blue in the face, but I have not been convinced at all that Luther's thought does not inevitably lead to such an individualism as we observe all around us. In other words, what I have never been shown (hardly anyone has even tried) is a convincing argument that Luther's principles do not and cannot lead to an individualism of the sort Reformed Catholics have been excoriating as of late. If anyone wants to try to do so now, I would be delighted to interact with that.
All I've gotten thus far in these kinds of discussions are charges that I am equating the different schools of Protestantism (noted above) with each other, and confusing categories, or collapsing one school into the other (painting with too broad a brush).
This is absolutely untrue, of course. I am merely following the logic through to what I believe is its conclusion: constructing a reductio ad absurdum argument, just as you and others of your comrades have done to some extent.
What I was trying to grapple with were the implications and principles which flow from a certain type of statement from Martin Luther such as the following:
Therefore, I now let you know that from now on I shall no longer do you the honor of allowing you—or even an angel from heaven—to judge my teaching or to examine it. For there has been enough foolish humility now for the third time at Worms, and it has not helped. Instead, I shall let myself be heard and, as St. Peter teaches, give an explanation and defense of my teaching to all the world -- I Pet. 3:15. I shall not have it judged by any man, not even by any angel. For since I am certain of it, I shall be your judge and even the angels’ judge through this teaching (as St. Paul says [I Cor. 6:3 ]) so that whoever does not accept my teaching may not be saved — for it is God’s and not mine. Therefore, my judgment is also not mine but God’s.
[Against the Spiritual Estate of the Pope and the Bishops Falsely So-Called, July 1522; from: Martin Luther, Luther's Works, edited by Jaroslav Pelikan (vols. 1-30) and Helmut T. Lehmann (vols. 31-55), St. Louis: Concordia Pub. House (vols. 1-30); Philadelphia: Fortress Press (vols. 31-55), 1955. This work from Vol. 39: Church and Ministry I (edited by J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald, and H. T. Lehmann); pages 239-299; translated by Eric W. and Ruth C. Gritsch; citations from pp. 248-249]
Further Remarks from Luther's Tract Against Henry VIII, King of England (1522)
Through me Christ has commenced His revelations concerning the abominations in the holy place.
I am certain that I have my dogmas from heaven, . . .
[From: Martin Luther: His Life and Work, Hartmann Grisar, Adapted from the 2nd German ed. by Frank J. Eble, edited by Arthur Preuss, Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1950 [orig. 1930], 261 / from Werke [Weimar], Vol X, II, pp. 180 sqq., 227 sq. Opp. Lat. Var., pp. 385 sqq., and Werke, Erlangen ed., Vol. XXVIII, pp. 343 sqq.]
-------------------------
Against all the sayings of the Fathers, against all the arts and words of angels, men and devils I set the Scriptures and the Gospel . . . Here I stand and here I defy them . . . The Word of God I count above all else and the Divine Majesty supports me; hence I should not turn a hair were a thousand Augustines against me, and am certain that the true Church adheres with me to God's Word.
(From: Luther, Hartmann Grisar, tr. E.M. Lamond, ed. Luigi Cappadelta, 6 vols., London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1915; volume 4, 391 / from Werke [Weimar], Vol X, II, p. 256 f.)
Elsewhere, in the same year, Luther wrote:
Each man must believe solely because it is the word of God and because he feels within that it is true, even though an angel from heaven and all the world should preach against it.
(From: Luther, Hartmann Grisar, tr. E.M. Lamond, ed. Luigi Cappadelta, 6 vols., London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1915; volume 4, 391 / from Werke [Weimar], Vol X, II, p. 90; Von Menschen leren tzu meyden, 1522)
From: An Argument in Defense of All the Articles of Dr. Martin Luther Wrongly Condemned in the Roman Bull (1521):
I say not that I am a prophet, but I do say that the more they despise me and esteem themselves, the more reason they have to fear that I may be a prophet . . . If I am not a prophet, yet for my own self I am certain that the Word of God is with me and not with them, for I have the Scriptures on my side, and they have only their own doctrine. This gives me courage, so that the more they despise and persecute me, the less I fear them. There were many asses in the world in the days of Balaam, but God spake by none of them save only by Balaam's ass . . .
(From: Works of Martin Luther, Philadelphia: A.J. Holman Co. and the Castle Press, 1930; rep. by Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI, 1982 , Volume 3, 12-14,17; translated by C.M. Jacobs)
----------------------
Also:
All who shun us and attack us secretly have departed from the faith . . . Just like Zwingli . . . It pains me that Zwingli and his followers take offence at my saying that 'what I write must be true.'
(From: Luther, Hartmann Grisar, tr. E.M. Lamond, ed. Luigi Cappadelta, 6 vols., London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1915; volume 4, 309)
Now, I'm sorry; maybe I am dense and obtuse, maybe my logic is flawed, or I am blinded by my "Roman" bias and tunnel vision, but for the life of me I swear that I can't see any essential distinction between the extreme individualism and "sectarianism" of these remarks by Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism, and the less extreme views of folks like James White: folks whom Reformed Catholics have excoriated as of late.
It seems to me, again, that White and his compatriots and sycophants can draw at least as much support from Luther and Calvin as you guys can. This is true both with regard to the question of the status of the [Roman} Catholic Church and the present consideration of private judgment.
If you say that Pink, White, and scores of other individualized, atomistic, "Americanized" Protestants have departed from the measuring rod of "magisterial Protestantism" (which presumably includes Luther among its number), then please, PLEASE (I BEG YOU) show me where the distinction lies. I don't get it. How do they depart from what Luther said above?
Most of what I've gotten so far is abuse, misrepresentation, name-calling, false charges, and a lot of yelling and running from my Protestant friends when I dare to bring up such uncomfortable considerations as these. They clearly don't like it. But obviously their discomfort and rage at my abominable behavior in actually citing Luther's words are not arguments, and provide me with no reason to change my opinion.
If, on the other hand, you concede that Luther (and also Calvin, I suspect -- properly scrutinized) believes at bottom, the same things about private judgment (at least in some key respects, over against Catholicism and the previous tradition and rule of faith), then the distinction upon which "Reformed Catholicism" is based, largely collapses -- at least in this respect.
My view, again, is that there are VERY major distinctions to be drawn between various Protestant camps on the authority issue. I recognize these, and have for the entire 13 + years since I have converted. But that doesn't prove that Luther's and Calvin's original positions do not suffer from grave defects, nor that they can be totally distanced or disconnected from the excesses in subsequent Protestant history that we all dislike and detest.
If you disagree, please show me how and why, particularly regarding Luther's statements above (with a minimum of polemical and merely "party" rhetoric, if possible). How is one to interpret those? Luther had a bad day, and raved like a madman? Literary style? We simply discount them, or take them with a grain of salt, knowing of Luther's uncontrollable tongue, etc.?
Thanks for reading and may God abundantly bless you.
[See my post on the other blog, along with subsequent comments from others]
Friday, July 30, 2004
Intercession and Invocation of the Saints: How is it Different From Magic?
Lutheran sociologist Peter Berger has stated that "Protestantism cut off the umbilical cord between heaven and earth." How true. Of course, the issue is whether there should be such a cord in the first place. I contend that there clearly should be, and I will proceed to give biblical evidences for same (as is my wont).
A Protestant friend asked the question that always comes up in any discussion of the Catholic view on the communion of saints:
One simple reason: because we are informed in the Bible that the prayers of certain people have more efficacy than those of others:
One immediately thinks of other powerful intercessors such as Abraham and Moses. God sometimes did not destroy entire cities or peoples as a result of their pleas. Of course God cannot change and knew what He was going to do all along, but the point is that He involved His creatures in the process in a lesser, secondary fashion. They participated, just as Paul states that we "work out our own salvation" (Philippians 2:12).
The Apostle John writes: "if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him" (1 Jn 5:14-15). Similar themes are common in Scripture. I need not document further. The principle is already established.
Catholics don't disagree with Protestants that prayer is supremely important, and is God's will. The disagreement is over whether this applies to those who have died and gone to be with Jesus in the afterlife. Most Protestants believe that we shouldn't ask for their intercession, usually stating that we should go right to God, but some recognize that they can't take that principle too far, else all prayers for each other would be eliminated. So the standard Protestant position is to accept the prayers among those on earth, but not from those (saved saints) who have departed from the earth as a result of physical death.
It's really quite simple. Either these folks are alive or they are not. Clearly, they are alive (more than we are). Jesus alludes to this fact when He speaks of "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacb," stating that "He is not God of the dead, but of the living" (Mt 22:32). Hebrews 12:1 mentions that we are surrounded by a "cloud of witnesses" -- which commentators have compared to a picture of spectators in a sports arena observing. Further proof is unnecessary. All Christians who are not annihilationists or believers in "soul-sleep" (like, e.g., the 7th-Day Adventists or heretics like Jehovah;s Witnesses) believe that souls are conscious after death.
So, no doubt many Protestants would reply that "okay, they are alive, but that doesn't prove that they can pray for us or hear our prayers." At that point, the Catholic appeals to a combination of direct scriptural proofs and pretty solid indirect ones. I wrote in my first book, A Biblical Defense of Catholicism:
The saints in heaven are clearly aware of earthly happenings. If they have such awareness, it isn't that much of a leap to deduce that they can hear our requests for prayer. But is there any biblical evidence of that? I think there certainly is.
In Jeremiah 15:1, we read: Then the Lord said to me, "Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn toward this people." Here it appears that God receives the prayers of the dead saints as a matter of course. Moses and Samuel were both known as intercessors, and Jeremiah lived centuries after both men (cf. 2 Maccabees 15:13-14, which reveals that Jeremiah was praying for the Jews after his death).
In my chapter on Purgatory in A Biblical Defense of Catholicism, I also showed how the inverse can be shown in the Bible: our prayers for the dead, rather than asking their prayers for us. Paul prayed for a dead man:
My Protestant friend defined magic as "the use or invocation of spiritual powers, forces, or beings to effect changes in the material world." I stated that this definition would also encompass prayers to God ("invocation" of a "spiritual power" to "effect changes in the material world" -- healings, changes in monetary situations, material goods to be provided -- food for the hungry, etc.).
King Saul and the Witch of Endor (1 Sam 28) are often brought up as an example of how not to go about relating to dead people. This is a good example, and I dealt with it in my first book. Saul's motive was wrong, and the witchcraft and mediumship were wrong, yet many Protestant commentators (e.g., New Bible Commentary, Wycliffe Bible Commentary) believe that Samuel himself (i.e., not an impersonating or occultic spirit) actually chose to appear and rebuke Saul, thus proving once again that dead saints are involved in earthly affairs, just as in the Transfiguration, the Two Witnesses in Revelation, etc.
Asking saints in heaven or angels or the Blessed Virgin Mary to pray for us is not different in essence from asking each other (those of us on earth) to pray. Mary is a lot more righteous than we are, and more alive, and with God. Angels never did sin, so they are untainted with that stain. Therefore, we can ask them to pray for us, according to the clear dictum in James.
I don't see that this is all that difficult to comprehend, or why it is so immediately objectionable to many non-Catholic Christians. Perhaps the confusion is the usual equation of such requests for intercession with seances and the like. That doesn't follow. We are not relying on the power of some "medium" (many of whom are fake to begin with, as Houdini, the Amazing Randi, and others have shown), but on the power of God. The saints can see us, hear us, and pray for us, because they are with God, out of time, and accorded the remarkable abilities that those in such situations receive as a matter of course.
The invocation and intercession of the saints is an essentially different practice. Necromancy, divination and various occultic practices were strongly condemned in the Old Testament Law, yet the Jews prayed for the dead. They saw no contradiction because there was none. 2 Maccabees 12:39-45 presents prayers for the dead in most unquestionable terms. Of course, Protestants will reply that this is from the "Apocrypha," which is another discussion, but whether it is Scripture or not (the early Church thought so), the passage still shows that this was the practice of the Jews and that they saw no conflict between that and the forbidden practices. Christianity develops Judaism. Many things in late Judaism, such as eschatology and angelology and notions of bodily resurrection, were continued and developed by the early Church. Praying for the dead was just one of many instances of that.
Prayer doesn't interfere with the centrality of Christ at all, or else He wouldn't have taught us to pray! So if the "prayer of a righteous man availeth much" then the Catholic goes right to Mary, since she is the most righteous human being, and is active in her love for mankind, not sitting on a cloud playing a harp.
It's almost as if Protestantism adopts the silly cultural stereotypes of what heaven is supposedly like, as if it is the Norse Valhalla, rather than the intensely spiritual place (or state) that it is, with souls longing and burning in their desire for human beings to be saved and not damned. The saints who have died know what it is all about. They are in a place where they can devote themselves to prayer for us (because they are perfected in love), knowing full well what the stakes are. They no longer have to play all the games that we play in order to ignore the spiritual dimension and forget the world to come. And so we can and should certainly ask for their intercession: Mary most of all.
As for asking an angel to pray for us or help us, the Bible implies that men are of a higher order than angels (1 Cor 6:3, 1 Pet 1:12), at least in some sense. A guardian angel is a servant of man, not vice versa. So we need not feel that we are doing something improper in addressing them.
A Protestant friend asked the question that always comes up in any discussion of the Catholic view on the communion of saints:
Why WOULD anyone content themselves with seeking the intercession of a manager, even at the highest level (where Mary undoubtedly is) when one can go to the CEO Himself?
One simple reason: because we are informed in the Bible that the prayers of certain people have more efficacy than those of others:
. . . The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects. Elijah was a man of like nature with ourselves and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again and the heaven gave rain, and the earth brought forth its fruit. (James 5:16-18; RSV)
One immediately thinks of other powerful intercessors such as Abraham and Moses. God sometimes did not destroy entire cities or peoples as a result of their pleas. Of course God cannot change and knew what He was going to do all along, but the point is that He involved His creatures in the process in a lesser, secondary fashion. They participated, just as Paul states that we "work out our own salvation" (Philippians 2:12).
The Apostle John writes: "if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him" (1 Jn 5:14-15). Similar themes are common in Scripture. I need not document further. The principle is already established.
Following this line of thought, then, if Mary is indeed sinless (I am still within the Catholic paradigm, for the sake of argument), then it follows inexorably (right from Scripture) that her prayers would have the greatest power and efficacy, and not only because of her sinlessness but because of her status as the Theotokos and Spiritual Mother, for which God appointed her.
We pray for each other because we are to love one another, and prayer is an obvious aspect of love, for if we love someone, and know of a way that they can be aided, we pursue that avenue on their behalf. That's what intercession is. God grants us that great privilege, and we do it because we love others and wish to show forth Christ's love. Jesus told us to pray. That settles it.
Catholics don't disagree with Protestants that prayer is supremely important, and is God's will. The disagreement is over whether this applies to those who have died and gone to be with Jesus in the afterlife. Most Protestants believe that we shouldn't ask for their intercession, usually stating that we should go right to God, but some recognize that they can't take that principle too far, else all prayers for each other would be eliminated. So the standard Protestant position is to accept the prayers among those on earth, but not from those (saved saints) who have departed from the earth as a result of physical death.
It's really quite simple. Either these folks are alive or they are not. Clearly, they are alive (more than we are). Jesus alludes to this fact when He speaks of "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacb," stating that "He is not God of the dead, but of the living" (Mt 22:32). Hebrews 12:1 mentions that we are surrounded by a "cloud of witnesses" -- which commentators have compared to a picture of spectators in a sports arena observing. Further proof is unnecessary. All Christians who are not annihilationists or believers in "soul-sleep" (like, e.g., the 7th-Day Adventists or heretics like Jehovah;s Witnesses) believe that souls are conscious after death.
So, no doubt many Protestants would reply that "okay, they are alive, but that doesn't prove that they can pray for us or hear our prayers." At that point, the Catholic appeals to a combination of direct scriptural proofs and pretty solid indirect ones. I wrote in my first book, A Biblical Defense of Catholicism:
The saints are not only still alive, but much more vibrantly and intensely alive than we are, thoroughly able to influence and assist us, as the book of Revelation clearly testifies. (They are not preoccupied with sitting on clouds and strumming harps, as our culture's ridiculous caricatures would have it! They still think, feel, will, love, and remember -- all of our attributes are theirs (and many more: see Matthew 22:30, Romans 8:29-30,38-39, 1 Corinthians 13:9-12, 15:42-43, Philippians 3:20-21, 1 John 3:2). The invocation of saints entails much more than merely mental inspiration, though that aspect is included as well . .
.
Concerning the Church Fathers' views . . . renowned Protestant church historian Philip Schaff -– no friend at all of these practices -- concludes forlornly: . . .
"In the numerous memorial discourses of the fathers, the martyrs
are loaded with eulogies, addressed as present, and besought for
their protection. The universal tone of those productions is offensive
to the Protestant taste, and can hardly be reconciled with
evangelical ideas of the exclusive and all-sufficient mediation of
Christ and of justification by pure grace without the merit of works.
But . . . the best church fathers, too, never separated the merits of the saints from the merits of Christ, but considered the former as flowing out of the latter."
(History of the Christian Church, Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 1976 [orig. 5th ed., 1889], vol. 3, chapter 7, section 84,
438; emphasis added).
The saints in heaven are clearly aware of earthly happenings. If they have such awareness, it isn't that much of a leap to deduce that they can hear our requests for prayer. But is there any biblical evidence of that? I think there certainly is.
In Jeremiah 15:1, we read: Then the Lord said to me, "Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my heart would not turn toward this people." Here it appears that God receives the prayers of the dead saints as a matter of course. Moses and Samuel were both known as intercessors, and Jeremiah lived centuries after both men (cf. 2 Maccabees 15:13-14, which reveals that Jeremiah was praying for the Jews after his death).
In my chapter on Purgatory in A Biblical Defense of Catholicism, I also showed how the inverse can be shown in the Bible: our prayers for the dead, rather than asking their prayers for us. Paul prayed for a dead man:
2 Timothy 1:16-18 May the Lord grant mercy to the household of Onesiphorus, for he often refreshed me; he was not ashamed of my chains, but when he arrived in Rome he searched for me eagerly and found me -- may the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that Day -- and you well know all the service he rendered at Ephesus.
My Protestant friend defined magic as "the use or invocation of spiritual powers, forces, or beings to effect changes in the material world." I stated that this definition would also encompass prayers to God ("invocation" of a "spiritual power" to "effect changes in the material world" -- healings, changes in monetary situations, material goods to be provided -- food for the hungry, etc.).
King Saul and the Witch of Endor (1 Sam 28) are often brought up as an example of how not to go about relating to dead people. This is a good example, and I dealt with it in my first book. Saul's motive was wrong, and the witchcraft and mediumship were wrong, yet many Protestant commentators (e.g., New Bible Commentary, Wycliffe Bible Commentary) believe that Samuel himself (i.e., not an impersonating or occultic spirit) actually chose to appear and rebuke Saul, thus proving once again that dead saints are involved in earthly affairs, just as in the Transfiguration, the Two Witnesses in Revelation, etc.
Asking saints in heaven or angels or the Blessed Virgin Mary to pray for us is not different in essence from asking each other (those of us on earth) to pray. Mary is a lot more righteous than we are, and more alive, and with God. Angels never did sin, so they are untainted with that stain. Therefore, we can ask them to pray for us, according to the clear dictum in James.
I don't see that this is all that difficult to comprehend, or why it is so immediately objectionable to many non-Catholic Christians. Perhaps the confusion is the usual equation of such requests for intercession with seances and the like. That doesn't follow. We are not relying on the power of some "medium" (many of whom are fake to begin with, as Houdini, the Amazing Randi, and others have shown), but on the power of God. The saints can see us, hear us, and pray for us, because they are with God, out of time, and accorded the remarkable abilities that those in such situations receive as a matter of course.
The invocation and intercession of the saints is an essentially different practice. Necromancy, divination and various occultic practices were strongly condemned in the Old Testament Law, yet the Jews prayed for the dead. They saw no contradiction because there was none. 2 Maccabees 12:39-45 presents prayers for the dead in most unquestionable terms. Of course, Protestants will reply that this is from the "Apocrypha," which is another discussion, but whether it is Scripture or not (the early Church thought so), the passage still shows that this was the practice of the Jews and that they saw no conflict between that and the forbidden practices. Christianity develops Judaism. Many things in late Judaism, such as eschatology and angelology and notions of bodily resurrection, were continued and developed by the early Church. Praying for the dead was just one of many instances of that.
Prayer doesn't interfere with the centrality of Christ at all, or else He wouldn't have taught us to pray! So if the "prayer of a righteous man availeth much" then the Catholic goes right to Mary, since she is the most righteous human being, and is active in her love for mankind, not sitting on a cloud playing a harp.
It's almost as if Protestantism adopts the silly cultural stereotypes of what heaven is supposedly like, as if it is the Norse Valhalla, rather than the intensely spiritual place (or state) that it is, with souls longing and burning in their desire for human beings to be saved and not damned. The saints who have died know what it is all about. They are in a place where they can devote themselves to prayer for us (because they are perfected in love), knowing full well what the stakes are. They no longer have to play all the games that we play in order to ignore the spiritual dimension and forget the world to come. And so we can and should certainly ask for their intercession: Mary most of all.
As for asking an angel to pray for us or help us, the Bible implies that men are of a higher order than angels (1 Cor 6:3, 1 Pet 1:12), at least in some sense. A guardian angel is a servant of man, not vice versa. So we need not feel that we are doing something improper in addressing them.
ALIEN LIFE FOUND AT LAST! A curious-looking creature, prone to empty polemics and Bush-bashing (though few understand the incoherent, inexplicable nature of much of what it is saying) emerged from its space capsule after landing in (of all places) Boston harbor yesterday. It will be kept in isolated detention until after the November Presidential election, due to its scary abilities to control the minds of, and implant illogical thoughts into those (particularly Democratic voters) who find themselves wanting to follow this weird thing. Sort of an extraterrestrial pied piper . . .
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
My Latest Book: "Orthodoxy and Catholicism: A Comparison"
Hot off the press. I completed it (my 12th book) about ten minutes ago, and you are the first to know. It is 222 pages long, 66,730 words, 548K, and in Times New Roman 12 font. It's available in Microsoft Word 2000 format, at a price of $6.00, and can be sent right to your e-mail address. I will also now be offering eleven books (instead of ten) for $50.00 -- excluding my newest published book: "The Catholic Verses: 95 Bible Passages That Confound Protestants," which is about to be released by Sophia Institute Press any time now.
Another Orthodox I encountered on the Internet objected to my comparison of the anti-ecumenical school of Orthodoxy to the ancient Donatist schismatics. The non-Catholic "Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church" (2nd edition, edited by F.A. Cross and E.A. Livingstone, Oxford Univ. Press, 1983, pp. 419, 1389), defines Donatism as follows:
2) These groups often claim that the Catholic Church is (in essence) different now than it was before Vatican II. Presumably before that time, the Catholic Church possessed apostolic succession (or at least a measure of "institutional" grace in some fashion), but somehow lost it, and changed in essence (so we are told).
6) The very notion of Christ's Church "going off the rails" is nonsensical and unbiblical, whether it be in the 7th century or the 11th, the 16th, or in 1965. The Church is indefectible (Matthew 16:18, 28:20, Jn 14:16-17, 1 Tim 3:15, Ps 89:33-37, Is 55:3, 61:8, Jer 32:40, many other indirect proofs). It simply can't happen that the Church, which is apostolic and which possesses true Tradition and valid sacraments by its very nature, can somehow lose them. Even the Jews of the Old Covenant, with all their rebellion, idolatry, and wickedness, were not rejected by God, since He had made an eternal covenant with them. Certainly the Church cannot be less secure. Most Orthodox will admit that Rome was the center (or at the very least a center) of orthodoxy for the first 1000 years of the Church. How is it that this could be the case, -- and the papacy existed, and was broadly acknowledged by both East and West --, then suddenly the faith of Rome is shipwrecked, and Rome and the papacy cease to be an essential part of the Church?
7) The historical argument against anti-ecumenical Orthodoxy runs as follows: Clearly the orthodox Christian Church (wherever else it may have been present) resided at, and was centered at, Rome throughout these many centuries when the East was in frequent schism and weighed down by various heresies (even Christological ones). We can't reasonably say that it resided in Constantinople, or Alexandria, or Antioch in the years when those sees were formally heretical. Therefore it is without doubt that Rome was the center of the Church: ergo: it possessed apostolic succession and valid sacraments.
8) These considerations also demolish the historically tenuous claim that the Catholic Church "departed" from the Orthodox Church, rather than vice versa. Now the more rigorist Orthodox claim that Rome has lost apostolic succession, and the sacraments. But this can't happen, according to the explicit biblical principle of the indefectibility of the Church. If Rome once possessed the essential marks of the Church (which must be the case up through the ninth century, or else no continuous institutional Church existed and apostolic succession would be broken), it could not have lost them, because God the Holy Spirit -- the Guardian and Teacher of the Church -- wouldn't allow that to happen.
9) So to contend that Orthodoxy or a part of Orthodoxy possesses apostolic succession and sacraments, while Catholicism does not is impossible, based on the triple criteria of history, the Bible, and reason. Like the Donatist heresy (which it resembles), it is a self-defeating position. One possible way out of the dilemma would be to deny the concept and/or actuality of indefectibility, but Orthodox believe that about themselves, so this is hardly a viable option. They could deny that Rome ever had apostolic succession, but that would be very difficult, in the face of the contrasting situation in the East and West during those early centuries vis-a-vis orthodox Christian theology.
10) Therefore, the only solution is to adopt a position in which both Catholicism and Orthodoxy possess apostolic succession and valid sacraments (in other words, the ecumenical outlook). Error exists on one or both sides in the instances where they disagree, but these are not sufficient enough to annihilate apostolic succession, since the principle of indefectibility will not allow it.
11) To assert an ecclesiological and historical position whereby the Catholic Church headed by the pope in Rome was the standard and guardian of orthodoxy for 1000 years, but then passed the "apostolic ball" over to Constantinople (and thereafter lost it) is an absurd position to take -- just as ludicrous as the anti-ecumenical Protestant position which holds that the Catholic Church forsook Christianity right after the apostolic age, or with Constantine in the 4th century, or with the advent of the "reformers" Luther and Calvin in the 16th century (who were actually revolutionaries -- overthrowing much of unbroken Church Tradition).
Here is an excerpt:
Indefectibility and the Claim of Various Anti-Ecumenical
Orthodox to Exclusive Apostolic Succession
Another Orthodox I encountered on the Internet objected to my comparison of the anti-ecumenical school of Orthodoxy to the ancient Donatist schismatics. The non-Catholic "Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church" (2nd edition, edited by F.A. Cross and E.A. Livingstone, Oxford Univ. Press, 1983, pp. 419, 1389), defines Donatism as follows:
Theologically, the Donatists were rigorists, holding that the Church of the saints must remain 'holy,' and that sacraments conferred by traditores were invalid . . . The Church maintained that the unworthiness of the minister did not affect the validity of sacraments, since, as Augustine insisted, their true minister was Christ. The Donatists, on the other hand, went so far as to assert that all those who communicated with traditores were infected, and that, since the Church is one and holy, the Donatists alone formed the Church. Converts to Donatism were rebaptized, a proceeding repeatedly condemned by orthodox synods.
Traditores: The name given in Africa in early times to Christians who surrendered the Scriptures when their possession was forbidden in the persecution of Diocletian. The controversy between Catholics and Donatists which followed the persecution was centred chiefly in the refusal of the Donatists to recognize Caecilian, Bishop of Carthage, on the ground that he had been consecrated by traditores.
My analogy applies in the following manner:
1) Anti-ecumenical or anti-Catholic Orthodox groups also rebaptize converts from Catholicism and Protestantism, thus following the Donatist practice and defying the Tradition of the unified early Church with regard to converts from Donatism, and even the mainstream Tradition of Orthodoxy.
2) These groups often claim that the Catholic Church is (in essence) different now than it was before Vatican II. Presumably before that time, the Catholic Church possessed apostolic succession (or at least a measure of "institutional" grace in some fashion), but somehow lost it, and changed in essence (so we are told).
3) Yet no dogma of the Catholic Church was changed at Vatican II. Therefore, the objection has to be on the basis of schism or on rigorous grounds -- precisely as with the Donatists. Thus we see much outcry from Orthodox polemicists (often former Catholics) about the crisis of liberalism in the Catholic Church -- as if that has any relevance as to whether the Catholic Church is apostolic or not (since liberal heterodoxy has not been enshrined in Catholic dogma at all). The Donatists did the same thing: they looked at sin and sinners in the Church (which Christ already predicted would be the case) and concluded that therefore, the Church was not the Church (and claimed that title for themselves -- as if they were not sinners).
4) Like the Donatists, the rigorous, anti-ecumenical Orthodox now say they are "the Church," to the more-or-less complete institutional (and even informal?) exclusion of Catholicism. Archbishop Kallistos Ware, however, speaks an altogether different language (quite similar to the Catholic position):
There is first a more moderate group . . . This group holds that, while it is true to say that Orthodoxy is the Church, it is false to conclude from this that those who are not Orthodox cannot possibly belong to the Church. Many people may be members of the Church who are not visibly so; invisible bonds may exist despite an outward separation. The Spirit of God blows where it chooses and, as Irenaeus said, where the Spirit is, there is the Church. We know where the Church is but we cannot be sure where it is not . . .There is only one Church, but there are many different ways of being related to this one Church . . . there are other Christian communions which possess to a greater or lesser degree a genuine measure of Orthodoxy. All these facts must be taken into account: one cannot simply say that all non-Orthodox are outside the Church, and leave it at that; one cannot treat other Christians as if they stood on the same level as unbelievers.
Such is the view of the more moderate party. But there also exists in the Orthodox Church a more rigorous group, who hold that since Orthodoxy is the Church, anyone who is not Orthodox cannot be a member of the Church . . .
Of course (so this stricter group add) divine grace may well be active among many non-Orthodox, and if they are sincere in their love of God, then we may be sure that God will have mercy upon them; but they cannot, in their present state, be termed members of the Church . . .(The Orthodox Church, New York: Penguin Books, revised edition, 1993, 308-309)
Also, far from pointing to Vatican II as the demise of the Catholic Church (or whatever was left of it, from a critical Orthodox standpoint), Ware takes a completely opposite view:
The changes brought about in the Roman Catholic Church at the Second Vatican Council (1962-5) have made possible a gradual rapprochement between Rome and Orthodoxy at the official level.
(Ware, ibid., 315)
5) Even with regard to heresy, the anti-ecumenical Orthodox faction is inconsistent, since it condemns Orthodox ecumenism as "heresy" and accuses fellow Orthodox brethren of adopting relativistic indifferentism. Yet the more rigorist factions of Orthodoxy (with the exception of some extremely separatist groups such as HOCNA) do not assert that ecumenical Orthodox have lost the sacraments and apostolic succession. But the Catholic Church has -- according to them -- at least partially, for the very same reason (the emphasis on ecumenism and religious freedom of Vatican II). If, on the other hand, Vatican II was in fact irrelevant to the ecclesiological status of the Catholic Church, then why discuss it at all? If a horse is dead, it can't become more dead. If the filioque, Scholasticism, and the papacy didn't make us heretics in Orthodox eyes, then why would mere ecumenism?
6) The very notion of Christ's Church "going off the rails" is nonsensical and unbiblical, whether it be in the 7th century or the 11th, the 16th, or in 1965. The Church is indefectible (Matthew 16:18, 28:20, Jn 14:16-17, 1 Tim 3:15, Ps 89:33-37, Is 55:3, 61:8, Jer 32:40, many other indirect proofs). It simply can't happen that the Church, which is apostolic and which possesses true Tradition and valid sacraments by its very nature, can somehow lose them. Even the Jews of the Old Covenant, with all their rebellion, idolatry, and wickedness, were not rejected by God, since He had made an eternal covenant with them. Certainly the Church cannot be less secure. Most Orthodox will admit that Rome was the center (or at the very least a center) of orthodoxy for the first 1000 years of the Church. How is it that this could be the case, -- and the papacy existed, and was broadly acknowledged by both East and West --, then suddenly the faith of Rome is shipwrecked, and Rome and the papacy cease to be an essential part of the Church?
7) The historical argument against anti-ecumenical Orthodoxy runs as follows: Clearly the orthodox Christian Church (wherever else it may have been present) resided at, and was centered at, Rome throughout these many centuries when the East was in frequent schism and weighed down by various heresies (even Christological ones). We can't reasonably say that it resided in Constantinople, or Alexandria, or Antioch in the years when those sees were formally heretical. Therefore it is without doubt that Rome was the center of the Church: ergo: it possessed apostolic succession and valid sacraments.
8) These considerations also demolish the historically tenuous claim that the Catholic Church "departed" from the Orthodox Church, rather than vice versa. Now the more rigorist Orthodox claim that Rome has lost apostolic succession, and the sacraments. But this can't happen, according to the explicit biblical principle of the indefectibility of the Church. If Rome once possessed the essential marks of the Church (which must be the case up through the ninth century, or else no continuous institutional Church existed and apostolic succession would be broken), it could not have lost them, because God the Holy Spirit -- the Guardian and Teacher of the Church -- wouldn't allow that to happen.
9) So to contend that Orthodoxy or a part of Orthodoxy possesses apostolic succession and sacraments, while Catholicism does not is impossible, based on the triple criteria of history, the Bible, and reason. Like the Donatist heresy (which it resembles), it is a self-defeating position. One possible way out of the dilemma would be to deny the concept and/or actuality of indefectibility, but Orthodox believe that about themselves, so this is hardly a viable option. They could deny that Rome ever had apostolic succession, but that would be very difficult, in the face of the contrasting situation in the East and West during those early centuries vis-a-vis orthodox Christian theology.
10) Therefore, the only solution is to adopt a position in which both Catholicism and Orthodoxy possess apostolic succession and valid sacraments (in other words, the ecumenical outlook). Error exists on one or both sides in the instances where they disagree, but these are not sufficient enough to annihilate apostolic succession, since the principle of indefectibility will not allow it.
11) To assert an ecclesiological and historical position whereby the Catholic Church headed by the pope in Rome was the standard and guardian of orthodoxy for 1000 years, but then passed the "apostolic ball" over to Constantinople (and thereafter lost it) is an absurd position to take -- just as ludicrous as the anti-ecumenical Protestant position which holds that the Catholic Church forsook Christianity right after the apostolic age, or with Constantine in the 4th century, or with the advent of the "reformers" Luther and Calvin in the 16th century (who were actually revolutionaries -- overthrowing much of unbroken Church Tradition).
12) A stream cannot rise above its source, and both Orthodoxy and Protestantism could never hope to be remotely as they are today without the necessary historical and ecclesiological "groundwork" laid down by Rome. Without the unwaveringly orthodox Roman See and its infallible popes, arguably Christianity would not be here at all, let alone being theoretically centered in Geneva or Constantinople. In my opinion, the facts of Church history and the biblical descriptions of the nature of the Church and God's protection of it will not permit any other interpretation. I didn't determine this history, or what God intended to convey in His Revelation, the Bible. But in the face of that history, one must adopt a non-contradictory interpretation. Catholics do not exclude Orthodox or Catholics altogether from the Church. We are applying a standard no different than does Archbishop Kallistos Ware in the citation above: "We know where the Church is but we cannot be sure where it is not . . . "
13) The Catholic Church is now what it has always been. We have maintained continuity and the same principle all along. So my argument is, essentially:
Catholicism and Western Christianity hasn't changed in essence at all, while Eastern Christianity and Orthodoxy went through all sorts of heresies, split from the West again and again, and finally split off altogether. Therefore, the Orthodox cannot argue that they possess apostolic succession and the sacraments while Catholicism does not, according to the biblical principle of indefectibility.
Monday, July 26, 2004
Peter Kreeft: that rarest of creatures: a Catholic apologist (which is what he is, after all, at least in his public, popular writings) who is not arrogant and triumphalistic and incorrigibly closed to Any Contrary Ideas?
Peter Kreeft as the "Non-Triumphalistic" Great Catholic Hope???
[My reply to a post and subsequent comments over at the Reformed Catholicism blog, from the pen of the inimitable Polemicist]
Lest Peter Kreeft be canonized as The One Catholic Who Finally Gets it and Who Got Over Stupid Catholic Apologetic Triumphalism and Hubris, let's not forget that in the same book, Fundamentals of the Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), that The Polemicist is almost ecstatically excited about, Kreeft (one of my very favorite apologists and an extremely gifted man) also wrote:
Lest Peter Kreeft be canonized as The One Catholic Who Finally Gets it and Who Got Over Stupid Catholic Apologetic Triumphalism and Hubris, let's not forget that in the same book, Fundamentals of the Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), that The Polemicist is almost ecstatically excited about, Kreeft (one of my very favorite apologists and an extremely gifted man) also wrote:
Saint Paul was utterly scandalized at the beginnings of denominationalism in Corinth . . .Even the dogmas not explicitly found in Scripture, like papal infallibility and Mary's Assumption, are not new but old. The Church merely defined the doctrines that had been believed and lived from the beginning.Papal infallibility certainly seems to be a specifically Catholic dogma that Protestants cannot accept. But they often misunderstand it . . .Scripture thinks of the Church along organic lines, and no organic body is a democracy.(p. 270)
Of course, if I had stated the same, or the notorious Cardinal Newman, then The Polemicist would have thrown a fit and launched into one of his volcanic tirades about how ignorant and stupid and emptyheaded it was. But now Peter Kreeft is the Great Catholic Hope?! LOL I hate to burst people's bubbles (life is hard enough as it is), but how about the following statement, as well?:
I knew, from logic and common sense, that a cause can never be less than its effect. You can't give what you don't have. If the Church has no divine inspiration and no infallibility, no divine authority, then neither can the New Testament. Protestantism logically entails Modernism. I had to either be a Catholic or a Modernist . . .I seemed to sense my heroes Augustine and Aquinas and thousands of other saints and sages calling out to me from the great ark, "Come aboard! We are really here. We still live. Join us. Here is the Body of Christ." . . .I was also dissatisfied with Luther's teaching that justification was a legal fiction on God's part rather than a real event in us . . . I thought it had to be as Catholicism says, that God actually imparts Christ to us, in baptism and through faith . . . Here I found the fundamentalists, especially the Baptists, more philosophically sound than the Calvinists and Lutherans.(Kreeft's conversion story, "Hauled Aboard the Ark," from Spiritual Journeys, edited by Robert Baram, Boston: Daughters of St. Paul / St. Paul Books & Media, 1988, citations from 175, 177)
The Polemicist writes:
No matter where I go, for instance, there is a Catholic apologist or ten hawking perfectionistic wares about "unbroken truth" and "coming home" and so forth.
What a shame Kreeft must be listed among these apologetic dolts, since he wrote that "The Church merely defined the doctrines that had been believed and lived from the beginning" and speaks in triumphalistic, crass terms about being "hauled aboard the ark." The Polemicist opines: "It is up to Roman Catholics to meet us half way," but Peter Kreeft says (in the very same year he wrote the chapter so beloved by The Polemicist): "Protestantism logically entails Modernism. I had to either be a Catholic or a Modernist."
How the mighty have fallen! What a shame that Kreeft has rapidly descended into "one-sided and falsely dichotomized 'all or nothing' polemicizing." Doesn't he know that he ain't sposed to speak like that?! At least not in mixed company, and not when a certain someone has pinned so many of his hopes and dreams on him to be different from the rest of us boorish, ne'er-do-well obnoxious, arrogant Catholic "apologists" . . .
Sunday, July 25, 2004
Aw, Shucks (Nice Stuff Written About One of My Papers: "150 Reasons Why I am a Catholic")
Catholic Answers Forum
Thread: 150 Reasons Why I am a Catholic
[2
July 22, 2004, 03:27 PM
Della
Posts: 43
Dave Armstrong has got a great website! He tackles many issues like this one. I suggest to those new to apologetics that they go to his main index, as well.
#3
July 22, 2004, 03:31 PM
Annunciata
Posts: 359
Wow! Tremendous site! I'm printing it out now...what a great tool this is going to be! Thanks!
#4
July 22, 2004, 08:15 PM
sparkle
Posts: 86
ABSOLUTELY UNBELIEVABLY AWESOME!!!!!! THIS SHOULD COME FIRST IN THIS ENTIRE WEBSITE!!!!! EVERYONE NEEDS TO SEE THIS!!!!! NOW I CAN SO MUCH MORE EFFECTIVELY ANSWER MY PROTESTANT FRIENDS' QUESTIONS!!!!
#5
July 23, 2004, 05:05 PM
MGEISING
Posts: 276
Sparkle: I think it is a superb resource ... not too many people seem to be interested though ... proves ... you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make it drink!thanks for the accolades! I just think this is an incredible resource!
[In other posts: "I find this link UNBELIEVABLE!" . . . "I am so excited that so many people are looking at this information .... it is so exciting!"]
#9
July 23, 2004, 07:29 PM
Mjohn1453
Posts: 94
What a great resource. Thanks for posting the link!
#13
July 23, 2004, 08:10 PM
elgom
Posts: 96
Excellent resourse, I will recommend it to everyone! Thank you! God Bless!
#14
July 23, 2004, 08:20 PM
luckyirishguy14
Posts: 34
This is a really great resource. Thanks again. I'm gonna read this over and hopefully learn a thing or two I never knew (Gah! A rhyme! ).
#17
Yesterday, 06:36 PM
ShamHy89
Posts: 34
This is an excellent site indeed. It makes me smile when I think of those out there that truly care to understand and spread the truth. The amount of Biblical references in this comprehensive list is the most attractive aspect to me.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
See another very similar thread about me on the same forum (I love the title!): Has anyone ever heard of Dave Armstrong?
I appreciate the kind remarks very much. All glory to God. This paper is one of many many free resources that I offer on my website. I would only ask that those who find such writings helpful prayerfully consider financially supporting my apostolate. I do have to make a living, after all, and the Bible teaches that "the laborer is worthy of his wage." These papers take time to research and write, and time is money, as everyone knows.
Nuff said about that . . .
Thread: 150 Reasons Why I am a Catholic
[2
July 22, 2004, 03:27 PM
Della
Posts: 43
Dave Armstrong has got a great website! He tackles many issues like this one. I suggest to those new to apologetics that they go to his main index, as well.
#3
July 22, 2004, 03:31 PM
Annunciata
Posts: 359
Wow! Tremendous site! I'm printing it out now...what a great tool this is going to be! Thanks!
#4
July 22, 2004, 08:15 PM
sparkle
Posts: 86
ABSOLUTELY UNBELIEVABLY AWESOME!!!!!! THIS SHOULD COME FIRST IN THIS ENTIRE WEBSITE!!!!! EVERYONE NEEDS TO SEE THIS!!!!! NOW I CAN SO MUCH MORE EFFECTIVELY ANSWER MY PROTESTANT FRIENDS' QUESTIONS!!!!
#5
July 23, 2004, 05:05 PM
MGEISING
Posts: 276
Sparkle: I think it is a superb resource ... not too many people seem to be interested though ... proves ... you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make it drink!thanks for the accolades! I just think this is an incredible resource!
[In other posts: "I find this link UNBELIEVABLE!" . . . "I am so excited that so many people are looking at this information .... it is so exciting!"]
#9
July 23, 2004, 07:29 PM
Mjohn1453
Posts: 94
What a great resource. Thanks for posting the link!
#13
July 23, 2004, 08:10 PM
elgom
Posts: 96
Excellent resourse, I will recommend it to everyone! Thank you! God Bless!
#14
July 23, 2004, 08:20 PM
luckyirishguy14
Posts: 34
This is a really great resource. Thanks again. I'm gonna read this over and hopefully learn a thing or two I never knew (Gah! A rhyme! ).
#17
Yesterday, 06:36 PM
ShamHy89
Posts: 34
This is an excellent site indeed. It makes me smile when I think of those out there that truly care to understand and spread the truth. The amount of Biblical references in this comprehensive list is the most attractive aspect to me.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
See another very similar thread about me on the same forum (I love the title!): Has anyone ever heard of Dave Armstrong?
I appreciate the kind remarks very much. All glory to God. This paper is one of many many free resources that I offer on my website. I would only ask that those who find such writings helpful prayerfully consider financially supporting my apostolate. I do have to make a living, after all, and the Bible teaches that "the laborer is worthy of his wage." These papers take time to research and write, and time is money, as everyone knows.
Nuff said about that . . .
The Canon of Scripture: Did the Catholic Church Create It Or Merely Authoritatively Acknowledge It? (with Kevin Johnson)
[From a thread below, originally unrelated to this particular topic; Kevin's words will be in blue; Jason's (Catholic) will be in red. I agreed with Reformed Protestant Kevin in this instance, and disagreed with Jason]
We don't have a problem admitting the Church's role of recognizing the canon of Scripture. To say otherwise is to misrepresent our position. Certain fundamentalists may have a problem, but Reformed Catholics or classical Protestants never have.
What we do have a problem saying is that somehow the Church determined the canon and Scripture is what it is because the Church has determined it to be so. Most Roman Catholics I know wouldn't agree with that particular understanding of the canon either.
God's Word is Scripture because He has made it such. The Church, by the providential hand of God, has recognized this through canonizing the relevant books, but that determination by the Church only served to make plain what was already true. That is the Protestant position and I would venture to guess that Dave and others wouldn't disagree with it.
How could the inspiration of the biblical books be plainly true? They don't even claim inspiration, let alone inerrancy. That is an absolutely non-biblical doctrine.
No one (here) is disputing the Church's role from the Protestant side. Of course the Church had a role in writing and faithfully transmitting the text over the centuries and the canon is an important development in the history of the Church by the Church. What needs to remain clear though is that God's Word is what it is because by nature God made it to be so. I don't really think we disagree here.
The error that I think can creep in is to think that because the Church had a hand in producing Scripture as well as canonizing it that those facts somehow make it clear that the Church is a more ultimate authority than Scripture. I don't see Catholics here necessarily making that argument but I have seen Catholics do it elsewhere. It's an obvious non sequitur. Hopefully your arguments for an ultimate authority in the Magisterium lay elsewhere.
. . . Many of the books do claim inspiration—but that aside, not all biblical arguments require explicit warrant from the text. You know this if you are Catholic because you are trinitarian. The doctrine of the trinity is inherently biblical but it is not necessarily as plain say as the humanity of Christ in the Scriptures.
It is only the Baptist that requires explicit biblical warrant and it actually puzzles me how similar Baptist thinking is compared to standard Catholic fundamentalist thinking. We have no need in Protestantism to see things explicitly stated in the text…God gave us brains and the ability to use reason and the idea that somehow we must find directions for the canon in the appendix of our Bible is just absurd.
In other words, you are not attacking classic Protestantism when you attack the idea of a closed canon not being found in the text of Scripture. That may work with fundamentalist Baptists but it won't work with those who have a better handle on the authority of the Church and the Scriptures as Reformed Catholics do.
Sorry to disappoint. :)
You [Kevin] are absolutely correct. You want common ground; this is one. The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum) from Vatican II, makes this clear:
We don't have a problem admitting the Church's role of recognizing the canon of Scripture. To say otherwise is to misrepresent our position. Certain fundamentalists may have a problem, but Reformed Catholics or classical Protestants never have.
What we do have a problem saying is that somehow the Church determined the canon and Scripture is what it is because the Church has determined it to be so. Most Roman Catholics I know wouldn't agree with that particular understanding of the canon either.
God's Word is Scripture because He has made it such. The Church, by the providential hand of God, has recognized this through canonizing the relevant books, but that determination by the Church only served to make plain what was already true. That is the Protestant position and I would venture to guess that Dave and others wouldn't disagree with it.
How could the inspiration of the biblical books be plainly true? They don't even claim inspiration, let alone inerrancy. That is an absolutely non-biblical doctrine.
No one (here) is disputing the Church's role from the Protestant side. Of course the Church had a role in writing and faithfully transmitting the text over the centuries and the canon is an important development in the history of the Church by the Church. What needs to remain clear though is that God's Word is what it is because by nature God made it to be so. I don't really think we disagree here.
The error that I think can creep in is to think that because the Church had a hand in producing Scripture as well as canonizing it that those facts somehow make it clear that the Church is a more ultimate authority than Scripture. I don't see Catholics here necessarily making that argument but I have seen Catholics do it elsewhere. It's an obvious non sequitur. Hopefully your arguments for an ultimate authority in the Magisterium lay elsewhere.
. . . Many of the books do claim inspiration—but that aside, not all biblical arguments require explicit warrant from the text. You know this if you are Catholic because you are trinitarian. The doctrine of the trinity is inherently biblical but it is not necessarily as plain say as the humanity of Christ in the Scriptures.
It is only the Baptist that requires explicit biblical warrant and it actually puzzles me how similar Baptist thinking is compared to standard Catholic fundamentalist thinking. We have no need in Protestantism to see things explicitly stated in the text…God gave us brains and the ability to use reason and the idea that somehow we must find directions for the canon in the appendix of our Bible is just absurd.
In other words, you are not attacking classic Protestantism when you attack the idea of a closed canon not being found in the text of Scripture. That may work with fundamentalist Baptists but it won't work with those who have a better handle on the authority of the Church and the Scriptures as Reformed Catholics do.
Sorry to disappoint. :)
You [Kevin] are absolutely correct. You want common ground; this is one. The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum) from Vatican II, makes this clear:
For Holy Mother Church relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that they were written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (cf. Jn. 20:31; 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:19-21; 3:15-16), they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the Church herself.
Was this something "new" in Vatican II? Hardly. It merely echoes an earlier statement from Vatican I (1870) — which in turn was not far from similar expressions in Trent —: Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith, chapter II:
These the Church holds to be sacred and canonical; not because . . . they were afterward approved by her authority . . . but because, having been written by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, they have God for their author, and have been delivered as such to the Church herself.
Seems to me, Kevin, that this is quite sufficient to establish that we agree on this point. Any Catholic or Protestant who states otherwise simply doesn't understand Catholic dogmatic teaching on the nature of the canon of Holy Scripture.
Thus, in my opinion, the real discussion here lies in the area of defining "Church" and figuring out the peculiar Protestant relationship to it, taking into account sola Scriptura and private judgment, etc., not the nature of the canon itself, or the relationship of the Bible to the authority of the Church, which was necessary to have a once-and-for-all canon, setting the parameters of said Holy Scripture (because eminent Fathers disagreed on various particulars of canonicity).
Thus, in my opinion, the real discussion here lies in the area of defining "Church" and figuring out the peculiar Protestant relationship to it, taking into account sola Scriptura and private judgment, etc., not the nature of the canon itself, or the relationship of the Bible to the authority of the Church, which was necessary to have a once-and-for-all canon, setting the parameters of said Holy Scripture (because eminent Fathers disagreed on various particulars of canonicity).
In general, I agree, Dave. Thank you for the clarification. The issue in regards to differences between our position from our side of the fence is one of ultimate authorities— sola scriptura obviously taking center stage here.
The doctrine of inspiration/inerrancy is neither implicit nor explicit in the biblical texts. The only reason a person would believe it were if they accepted non-biblical doctrines as part of Divine Revelation.
While I will agree that modern fundamentalist attempts to pigeon-hole these concepts in the light of Enlightenment based modernity is not a part of the record of Scripture, I do think the Scriptures clearly teach inspiration and that the text is without error. A simple read of 2 Timothy 3:16 makes it obvious that inspiration is a part of the biblical doctrine:
2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness;
Likewise, there are many passages in the Bible that speak to the fact that the Bible is without error—Psalm 119 comes to mind as one clear place to find such statements. Not only that but the perfection of God's Word can be inferred from the fact that it is God's Word—something which I don't think you may have taken into account.
So, I'm not sure where you are getting the idea that the inspiration and inerrancy of the text are somehow outside the text of Scripture. Nor do I understand how it has anything to do with discussions back and forth between Protestants and Catholics on these issues. But perhaps you can explain it to me.
I agree with Kevin's comments directly above this post. Scripture does teach that Scripture is inspired and infallible and inerrant, in many places, both explicitly and implicitly. What it doesn't teach is its own canon, or sola Scriptura.
Kevin,
You cite 2Timothy as proof that Scripture teaches its own inspiration and inerrancy. But to cite 1Timothy, you first have to accept it as inspired and inerrant Scripture, something it does not claim to be. To claim it is requires belief in a non-biblical doctrine.
My point in all this is that, obviously, I believe the Bible is inspired and inerrant. But this belief is a non-biblical doctrine. I must first accept the validity of non-biblical doctrines before I can accept biblical inspiration.
Jason,
I don't follow your logic here. Scripture is what it is. 1 Timothy and other passages clearly teach inerrancy and inspiration. Therefore, they are biblical doctrines, because they are books in the Bible. Period. The canon is a separate issue. I think you are unnecessarily confusing the two areas.
The Catholic Church simply acknowledges what is intrinsically Scripture; it doesn't make it so (as my citations from VI and VII proved). At best you can only demonstrate a certain epistemological disconnect at some point in Protestantism vis-a-vis the Bible and Tradition and sola Scriptura (I've made that argument a hundred times myself), but you haven't shown that Scripture itself doesn't teach that Scripture is inspired and infallible and inerrant.
If you followed your logic consistently, you would end up with the absurdity of saying that no doctrine taught in the Bible is a biblical doctrine, because we can't know for sure that any biblical book is in fact part of the Bible without non-biblical Tradition. Thus, by a reductio ad absurdum, this particular argument of yours collapses. It "proves too much."
Thursday, July 22, 2004
For our "Luther said it, not me" department: Martin Luther thinks folks like His Eminence, the Right Reverend Bishop Dr. James White [Reformed Baptist] are "rebellious spirits," who "murder" Christendom, cause souls to "likely be lost;" "unholy heretics and blasphemers of Christ," guilty of sacrilege; messengers of the devil, to be shunned by Christians. See the paper, The Pro-Catholic Side of Martin Luther.
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Lotsa folks are unaware that I wrote all the "apologetics insert" notes for this Bible (22 inserts and 44 one-page capsule summaries)since my name is never listed in the Bible! Good for humility, I reckon . . .
My Radio Interviews and Books on CD
One Audio Compact Disc
($10.00 postpaid for about 62 minutes of material):
($10.00 postpaid for about 62 minutes of material):
From the radio show: Kresta in the Afternoon (host Al Kresta),
WDEO, 990 AM, Ann Arbor, Michigan
30 April 2002: my conversion story and my first book,
30 April 2002: my conversion story and my first book,
2 April 2004: general apologetics and my notes for
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I also can now offer my ten books in Microsoft Word 2000 or PDF format on one CD, for those whose e-mail cannot handle the amount of data for the books (at the same price; postpaid):
1) A Biblical Defense of Catholicism
(Foreword by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.)
2) More Biblical Evidence for Catholicism
(Foreword by Dr. Scott Hahn)
3) Bible Conversations:
Catholic-Protestant Dialogues on the Bible, Tradition, and Salvation
4) Development of Catholic Doctrine:
Evolution, Revolution, or an Organic Process?
5) Mere Christian Apologetics
6) Christian Worldview vs. Postmodernism
7) Catholic Theology of the Family
Abortion Contraception Extramarital Sex
Divorce Homosexuality Radical Feminism
8) Pensées on Catholic “Traditionalism”
9) Protestantism:
Critical Reflections of an Ecumenical Catholic
10) Twin Scourges:
Thoughts on Anti-Catholicism and Theological Liberalism
1) A Biblical Defense of Catholicism
(Foreword by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.)
2) More Biblical Evidence for Catholicism
(Foreword by Dr. Scott Hahn)
3) Bible Conversations:
Catholic-Protestant Dialogues on the Bible, Tradition, and Salvation
4) Development of Catholic Doctrine:
Evolution, Revolution, or an Organic Process?
5) Mere Christian Apologetics
6) Christian Worldview vs. Postmodernism
7) Catholic Theology of the Family
Abortion Contraception Extramarital Sex
Divorce Homosexuality Radical Feminism
8) Pensées on Catholic “Traditionalism”
9) Protestantism:
Critical Reflections of an Ecumenical Catholic
10) Twin Scourges:
Thoughts on Anti-Catholicism and Theological Liberalism
The price for the books on CD is $50, which is a $13 savings, since I offer them individually for $6.00 each, and the offer includes the deluxe hyper-linked version of A Biblical Defense of Catholicism, which is $9.00 by itself.
This collection offers over 2000 pages and almost 5 MB total of educational material: a virtual encyclopedia of popular lay Catholic and Christian apologetics.
To order the audio CD or Books on CD, you can send a check to my post office box:
Dave Armstrong
PO Box 3262
Melvindale, MI 48122
This collection offers over 2000 pages and almost 5 MB total of educational material: a virtual encyclopedia of popular lay Catholic and Christian apologetics.
To order the audio CD or Books on CD, you can send a check to my post office box:
Dave Armstrong
PO Box 3262
Melvindale, MI 48122
Or you can use the convenience of online payment through PayPal (to my e-mail address: erasmus@ic.net).
For more information on individual books (introductions, excerpts, etc.), see my Books Page.
Happy reading and listening!
For more information on individual books (introductions, excerpts, etc.), see my Books Page.
Happy reading and listening!
Critique of Orthodoxy (John McAlpine)
I'm new, so pardon me for jumping in. I couldn't resist, however, adding my own two cents' worth, since I too have so often been struck by the obvious incompleteness of the Eastern Orthodox position and its apologists' failure to recognize this incompleteness.
Quite rightly one of you has noted that it is insufficient to point to the first seven ecumenical councils as the criterion of Eastern Orthodoxy, as these councils can better be adduced in proof of the Catholic position. In fact, a real consideration of what constitutes an ecumenical council is not helpful at all to today's Eastern Orthodoxy, it seems to me. Are there not disagreements even among among Eastern Orthodox as to which councils are ecumenical? Why are there only seven for some EO's, but more for others? Who finally decides whether a given council is ecumenical or not? What about the Robber Council of Ephesus? Why has the separated East failed to have any more ecumenical councils, if (1) she says they alone are the highest authority, and (2) she had them formerly at the rate of one per century? What happened, are there no more threats to the faith? Can it be that without Rome Eastern Orthodoxy is not the same church that she was before the separation from Rome? Answering any of these questions is child's play for a Catholic, but a real contortion for an EO.
It seems to me that the real criterion of Eastern Orthodoxy, i.e., what sets it apart from Catholicism (though this also makes it kindred with Protestants), is something over and beyond the ("first seven"?) ecumenical councils. The root of it is what I'll call here the "anti-Roman animus", a reflexive refusal to admit any Roman teaching, and this despite the fact that no witness of ecumenical councils against Roman teaching can be found. Indeed no such witness can be found since the early ecumenical councils are better witnesses to Roman teaching than they are to the modern EO denial of it.
So what the EO are stuck with is this popular anti-Roman animus founded ultimately on Eastern nationalism and ethnocentrism and fed by lurid claims of Western injustices or heresies. But justifications for the EO denial of Catholic doctrine seem to me always to be insufficient even by an EO yardstick: for the EO's with no ecumenical councils for the past 13 centuries there is no definitive infallible EO judgement in this matter, only individual rejections and private theories and local catechisms that even by EO principles might logically be wrong or heretical and are even assailed as such be some Eastern Orthodox, so that, quite logically by EO principles, Rome's teaching (or anyone else's) might indeed be the correct one. I have been told by some EO's that an EO could accept the Catholic doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Roman Primacy (!) without being a formal heretic, and we know that the EO hierarchy at the Council of Florence accepted the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory before they went back on their word later after they had returned home, all this yet another illustration that the EO's without Rome cannot be sure of the correctness of their own doctrinal teaching.
Once in 1968 just before the issuance of Humanae Vitae I asked a Greek friend, "Georgia, what does your church teach about contraception?" I was surprised when she told me that her youth group had just asked her priest that question, and that he had said, "We're not sure. We're waiting to hear what Rome says." I'm told, by the way, that the three successive editions of Kallistos Ware's book on Orthodoxy betray the recent decades' change in EO teaching on contraception (paralleling the earlier Protestant collapse on the same issue); one may say that Ware is not authoritative, but he is an EO bishop, and what more authoritative source is one likely to have? A Russian Orthodox priest I know who is also a professor of history and classics, even told me privately that he as an EO priest was ashamed of the EO practice of remarrying divorced people, since even the muted way it is done among today's EO's testifies to their failure to uphold the apostolic teaching. So, anyway, EO claims that Eastern Orthodoxy does not teach this or that have to be taken with a grain of salt. Is it their doctrine, or just dyspepsia in the face of Rome's teaching?
Are these tough comments? You bet! I have said them, however, not because I dislike the East or the Eastern Orthodox or non-Catholics in general, nor because I am a Western "legalist" who can't understand "the spirit of the East". No, I've said these things because true regard for the Eastern Orthodox means I have to tell them the truth, viz., that they need Rome today just as much as their ancestors of the first millenium needed Rome then. Rome, in the words of the great Vladimir Soloviev, a "Russian Orthodox in union with the Apostolic See of Rome," is that "miraculous icon of universal Christianity." With Rome the Eastern Orthodox would again be complete and Catholic, and one with the same Undivided Church to which they once belonged.
Thanks for your attention to this post, and regards to all.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
C.S. Lewis believed in development of doctrine too: "The very possibility of progress demands that there should be an unchanging element . . . the positive historical statements made by Christianity have the power . . . of receiving, without intrinsic change, the increasing complexity of meaning which increasing knowledge puts into them." (GOD IN THE DOCK, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, 1970, 44-47)
Reflections on the Development of Doctrine
John A. Hardon, S.J.
Growth in the Church's understanding of the truths of divine revelation. Also called dogmatic progress or dogmatic development, it is the gradual unfolding of the meaning of what God has revealed. Always presumed is that the substantial truth of a revealed mystery remains unchanged. What changes is the subjective grasp of the revealed truth.
The source of this progressive understanding is the prayerful reflection of the faithful, notably of the Church's saints and mystics; the study and research by scholars and theologians; the practical experience of living the faith among the faithful; and the collective wisdom and teaching of the Church's hierarchy under the Bishop of Rome.Implicit in the development of doctrine is the will of God that the faithful not only assent to what he revealed but also grow in the depth, clarity, and certitude of their appropriation of divine faith.(Pocket Catholic Dictionary, New York: Doubleday Image, 1980, 109)
John Michael Talbot
Is not the development of church teaching much like that stream which runs smoothly and clearly until it reaches an obstacle? . . . The water was always at-one-ment with the stream, but it was never made obvious to all until it met with the opposition of a rock . . . Dogma is the same. It is not usually clarified by the Church until someone, or some group, challenges its existence. By this threat to unity, the Church is sometimes forced to fully define what she has always held to be integral to the whole. This is the way the Scriptures were first canonized for all Christians, and it is the way all major dogmas of the faith have been defined for Catholics and Protestants alike . . . Some of these issues were not met by the early apostolic Church because there was no challenge, no obstacle. So in order to meet the issue, the Church defines a dogma built with, and consistent with, the materials constructed by the early Church . . . Certain Catholic beliefs took on a more sophisticated shapethan were manifested by the early Church. The stream and the water are one. There is no contradiction.(Changes: A Spiritual Journal, New York: Crossroad, 1984, 97-98)John L. McKenzie, S.J.
The historic response of the Church to heresy has been to fight the battle on the heretic's ground, because if it is not fought there it is not won . . . Its responses to heresy keep the faith from dissolving into completely bland and ambiguous formulas.(The Roman Catholic Church, Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image, 1969, 275)John A. Hardon, S.J.
Development of dogma since the Council of Trent . . . reveals hidden depths in the Mystical Body of Christ. The Church is not only the guardian of a faith once and for all given to the apostles, but expositor of that faith in every age to the end of time. In August of the same year that he defined the Assumption, the Pope [Pope Pius XII, in 1950] laid down the principles that guided the Marian definition. The Church's teaching authority, he said in Humani Generis, is not confined to reflecting or consolidating the past. It is also, and especially, the vital present-day function of an organism animated by the Spirit of God: . . . "God has given to his Church a living magisterium to elucidate and explain what is contained in the deposit of faith only obscurely and as it were, by implication" [Humani Generis, 21, 16] . . . Given this faculty by her founder, Whose Spirit of truth abides with her at all times, the Church can infallibly discern what belongs to revelation no matter how cryptic the contents may be. Consequently, when Pius XII defined the Assumption . . . he indicated the Church's right to authorize a legitimate development of doctrine and piety that scandalizes Protestants and may even surprise believing Catholics . . . Without the premises inherent in Munificentissimus Deus [the papal pronouncement on the dogma of the Assumption of Mary, 1950], the Second Vatican Council could not have done its monumental work of updating the Church in modern times.(The Catholic Catechism, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975, 161-162)
Robert Hugh Benson
Life is the principle of growth, and growth the evidence of life. A statue may be more perfect than a body in grace and proportion, yet it does not grow, and therefore is not alive . . . To compare the Church to a body or a seed, and to deny it the power of growth and expansion, is to utter a contradiction in terms . . . to rob the metaphors of Christ and His apostles of their essential meaning . . .
For them the Church of Christ is a statue carved by the hand of God, polished possibly by workmen of the subapostolic age, which it is their duty to keep undefiled. Lichens encroach upon it by lapse of time . . . and these must continually be removed . . . .
As for the theory that the Church is alive, but reached its full growth about the end of the first, 2nd, 4th, or 6th century . . . these are purely arbitrary points . . . It is ridiculous to say that St. Paul looked forward to the end of the 6th century as the culmination of the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ . . . Any such view is indeed to make null the word of God by human traditions that have not even common sense to recommend them . . . It is as arbitrary as to say that the perfection of a child's growth is reached at the age of 14 . . .Yet . . . there is another serious accusation brought against the Roman Church. What of all those foreign bodies that she has incorporated into her system? What of incense . . . Transubstantiation . . . canonization . . . and all the rest? . . . "Exactly", cries the Catholic voice . . . We confess frankly that we assimilate exterior things; but so do the acorn and the child . . . Arius complained that a new phrase was added to the old Creed when Christ was called "of one substance with the Father." "You are adding to the faith," he cried, . . . "it is I, then, who am the old Catholic, it is you who are innovators and heretics." "It is not so," answered the Church. "I incorporate the Greek word to express myself more fully; as an acorn incorporates earth to declare the glorious life that is hid within itself; as one day I may declare Mary immaculate, and the Pope infallible. First the seed, then the fibre, then the sapling, then the tree."(The Religion of the Plain Man, Long Prairie, MN: Neumann Press, 1906, 56-57, 60-62)
James Cardinal Gibbons
To show that this kind of progress is to be admitted only two things are to be proved: l. That some divinely revealed truths should be contained in the Apostolic teaching implicitly, less clearly explained, less urgently pressed. And this can be denied only by those who hold that the Bible . . . is clear in every part, and could be readily understood by all from the beginning . . . 2. That the Church can, in process of time, as occasions arise, declare, explain, urge. This is proved not only from the Scriptures and the Fathers, but even from the conduct of Protestants themselves, who often boast of the care and assiduity with which they "search the Scriptures " and study out their meaning . . . And why? To obtain more light; to understand better what is revealed . . . The only question which could arise on this point is . . . about the authority of the Church to propose and to determine that sense. So that, after all, we are always brought back to the only real point of division and dispute . . . namely, to the authority of the Church.(The Faith of Our Fathers, New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, revised edition, 1917, 11-12)
John Stoddard
Even the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ was not formally defined till the first Council of Nicea, A.D. 325, the object being then to refute the Arian heresy; nor was the dogma of the Divinity of the Holy Ghost . . . until the Council of Constantinople, A.D. 381, to meet the heresy of Macedonius . . . If Protestants object to this unfolding of certain dogmas . . . like seeds . . . they should remember that the same is true of dogmas, which they themselves hold in common with Catholics. There was, for example, a progressive development of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the Atonement, no less than of the dogmas of Purgatory and the Immaculate Conception.(Rebuilding a Lost Faith, New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1922, 179)Karl AdamRegarded from the outside Catholicism has the appearance of a confused mass of conflicting forces, of an unnatural synthesis, of a mixture of foreign, nay contradictory, elements . . . The student of comparative religion . . . supposes that he must at the outset discard the notion of an organic development of a primitive Christianity which was planted by Christ Himself, and must regard Catholicism as the coalescence of evangelical and nonevangelical elements, of Jewish and heathen and primitive constituents, as a vast syncretism . . .Catholicism cannot be identified simply and wholly with primitive Christianity . . . There is no mechanical identity, but an organic identity . . . Catholicism is a union of contraries. But contraries are not contradictories. Wherever there is life, there you must have conflict and contrary . . . For only so is there growth and the continual emergence of new forms . . . The Gospel of Christ would have been no living Gospel . . . if it had remained ever the tiny seed of A.D. 33 . . . and had not assimilated foreign matter, and had not . . . grown up into a tree, so that the birds of the air dwell in its branches.(The Spirit of Catholicism, translated by JustinMcCann, revised edition, Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image, 1954 [orig. 1924], 1-3)
William ReichertEvangelicals badly misunderstand Catholicism in all areas: history, theology, practice . . . Often their views of the Roman Church are quite distorted . . . The Church today should not necessarily be expected to look like the primitive apostolic Church (as many Evangelicals believe it should), but rather . . . its validity must be judged by history. Has it in fact sprung from the mustard seed of the primitive Church? . . . No one would know merely from its appearance that the tree derived from a seed unless he had observed the seed develop into a tree . . .The Catholic Church did stray at times from proclaiming the gospel as it ought to have . . . But corruption in doctrine cannot be shown merely by pointing to corrupt members. We evangelicals would claim that one need only compare the Bible to the teachings of the Catholic Church to see how far the latter has strayed . . .I had to see how the tree in fact developed . . . The earliest picture of Church doctrine I saw did indeed look like a small Catholic tree! (It certainly does not resemble a Protestant seed) . . . The Catholic tree appeared early. If it were not the original apostolic teaching, then the Church somehow defected very quickly . . . all of the Church, everywhere, until the Reformation, when, finally, Evangelical Protestants managed to "rediscover" the true gospel . . . If the Church in fact defected from the truth so early, I thought, surely there would have been a great protest . . . But there was not . . . Why is it that Bible reading Christians did not "reform" the early Church? If these early Christians could not comprehend the true gospel . . . how is it that Protestants were suddenly able to do so some fifteen centuries later . . . in a culture remote in time and space from the apostolic age? Do Evangelicals today possess some infallible understanding that early Christians lacked? . . . The early Church was quite weak, scattered, and despised. What accounted for . . . its Catholic uniformity?("I Will Be Where Peter Is," This Rock, January 1990, cover, 6-13; quote from 11-12)Completed February 17, 1991Slightly revised January 14, 1994
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