Systematic Theology and Catholic Converts

Originally posted on the aomin blog, 9/16/07

I've been reading Van Til's An Introduction To Systematic Theology. Van Til notes systematic theology seeks to offer an ordered presentation of what the Bible teaches about God. He says "the study of systematic theology will help men to preach theologically. It will help to make men proclaim the whole counsel of God. Many ministers never touch the greater part of the wealth of the revelation of God to man contained in Scripture. But systematics helps ministers to preach the whole counsel of God, and thus to make God central in their work."

Here was the point that I found most interesting:

"It is but natural to expect that, if the church is strong because its ministry understands and preaches the whole counsel of God, then the church will be able to protect itself best against false teaching of every sort. Non-indoctrinated Christians will easily fall prey to the peddlers of Russellism, spiritualism and all of the other fifty-seven varieties of heresies with which our country abounds. One-text Christians simply have no weapons of defense against these people. They may be able to quote many Scripture texts which speak, for instance, of eternal punishment, but the Russellite will be able to quote texts which, by the sound of them and taken individually, seem to teach annihilation. The net result is, at best, a loss of spiritual power because of loss of conviction. Many times, such one-text Christians themselves fall prey to the seducers voice."

Of course, I had the converts to Roman Catholicism in mind, rather than Russellites. I wonder how many of these Catholic converts actually attended churches that proclaimed the whole council of God? A question I would ask is how many Catholic converts previously went to churches with strong systematic confessions of faith, like the Westminster Confession, and how often were they taught the confession, like in a Sunday School class, and how well did their minister cover all the doctrines in the confession of faith? I would expect some rather weak answers.

Van Til states, "We have already indicated that the best apologetic defense will invariably be made by him who knows the system of truth of Scripture best." I would modify this a bit and make it a negative: "the best converts to false gospels will invariably be made by those who know the system of the truth of Scripture least."

Addendum 9/20/11
I don't recall writing the above post, but I still find it to be true for a number of garden variety converts.  There have been times I've dealt with people who are quite biblically knowledgeable, yet a serious heresy is being entertained. As I've considered what would lead these people to embrace such deviant theological positions, Van Til's words certainly ring true: there was a lack of a strong systematic theology.

There will of course be those that were previously catechized (or even had theological training) who convert to this or that. In fact, now we have the CTC blog which props up people from my own tradition that have made their way across the Tiber. CTC appears to be primarily picking people that were more than simply pew sitters in Reformed churches. As I've read through (or listened to) Roman Catholic conversion stories though, more often than not, one can usually sense a lack of systematic theology.

The Nature and Character of God and “Apostolic Succession”

God the Father passed His authority on to Jesus (cf. Matthew 28:18), Who passed it on to the apostles (cf. Luke 10:16 and Matthew 28:19), who passed it on to their successors.

That’s the shorthand view that a fairly knowledgeable (and formerly Reformed) Roman Catholic cited to me on a discussion board. But is the God of the universe, the “Covenant Lord,” our “jealous God” One who would wind up giving “His” authority to someone like Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI?

Calvin famously began his work, Institutes of the Christian Religion , with these words:

Nearly all the wisdom we posses, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves (1.1.1). … It is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and the descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself. For we always seem to ourselves righteous and upright and wise and holy—this pride is innate in all of us—unless by clear proofs we stand convinced of our own unrighteousness, foulness, folly, and impurity. Moreover, we are not thus convinced if we look merely to ourselves and not also to the Lord, who is the sole standard by which this judgment must be measured … So it happens in estimating our spiritual goods. As long as we do not look beyond the earth, being quite content with our own righteousness, wisdom, and virtue, we flatter ourselves most sweetly, and fancy ourselves all but demigods … As a consequence, we must infer that man is never sufficiently touched and affected by the awareness of his lowly state until he has compared himself with God’s majesty (1.1.2).

Just as a personal note, I have handwritten in the margin of my copy of Institutes, “This is the main problem I see with the RCC.” The Roman Catholic Church does not truly consider its own state in comparison with God’s majesty. Oh, to be sure, they say plenty of good things about God.

Others have written about Aquinas and his “Platonism/Plotininianism/Dionysianism (the notion that there is a sort of chain of being in the universe on which God is at the top and we at the bottom and we climb it by grace and cooperation with grace).” Without going too deeply into this topic, we see that our old friend Pseudo-Dionysius (and his NeoPlatonism) made it into Aquinas’s theology in a big way. Pseudo-Dionysius is one of those works of fiction that was viewed as authentic during the Medieval era, and which subsequently was adopted virtually wholesale into Roman dogma. And there was no shortage of popes who waxed at length about how wonderfully close to God that they were.

More properly, the Reformers, following a Scriptural investigation of God, came to understand the absolute gulf between God and man.

Just to illustrate this, let’s look at a simple mental exercise. On one side of an equation, you have one. On the other side, you have infinity.

One / Infinity

That’s a pretty big gulf.

Then consider how you might, on the numerical side, come closer to “infinity”.

One / Infinity
Two / Infinity
Three / Infinity
Ten / Infinity
One Hundred / Infinity
One Thousand / Infinity
One Million / Infinity

In this “great chain of ratios,” do you ever, on the left hand side, come closer to reaching the limits of the right hand side? No, you can’t. This is a “category” error. And so is the “great chain of being” theology that posits God not as “wholly other,” but merely at the top of some kind of “great chain of being”.

The Roman Catholic Faith, with its emphasis on “the Church” as “the Ongoing Incarnation of Christ,” has succumbed to the error of those who tried to build the Tower of Babel. They said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves” (Gen 11:2-4). What a tragedy.

Here’s a selection from the works of A.A. Hodge that I have, for years, used as my personal signature on discussion boards:

And the sphere of a creature's knowledge, be it that of an infant, or of a man, or of a philosopher, or of a prophet, or of saint or archangel in heaven, will float as a point of light athwart the bosom of that God who is the infinite Abyss for ever; From A.A. Hodge, Evangelical Theology, God-His Nature And Relation to the Universe, pg 16.

In the first place in the Roman Catholic chain of succession, a misunderstanding of God and His nature are fundamental to its whole system of authority.

Some nuance on the use of images

Paul Manata put up a post at Triablogue, using the following illustration with the title, "Cornelius Van Til Violates the Second Commandment."

But I think he is just asking for some nuance.

* * *

I think Van Til is on safe ground.