Green Baggins in discussion with Roman Catholics

There are some good discussions at Green Baggins; they have begun a review of the Robert Sungenis work, Not By Scripture Alone.

Subsequent posts include:

Sungenis's Preface
A Blueprint for Order
Some Presuppositions and Rules for Protestant/Catholic discussions on GB

Key to these discussions is the way that Rome understands the word "church," and the subtle way it defines itself as "church" while it simultaneously excludes Protestants from being "church".

The key document is the Vatican II document Lumen Gentium, and section 8, which contains this definition:

Christ, the one Mediator, established and continually sustains here on earth His holy [Roman] Church, the community of faith, hope and charity, as an entity with visible delineation through which He communicated truth and grace to all. But, the society structured with hierarchical organs and the Mystical Body of Christ, are not to be considered as two realities, nor are the visible assembly and the spiritual community, nor the earthly Church and the Church enriched with heavenly things; rather they form one complex reality which coalesces from a divine and a human element. For this reason, by no weak analogy, it is compared to the mystery of the incarnate Word. As the assumed nature inseparably united to Him, serves the divine Word as a living organ of salvation, so, in a similar way, does the visible social structure of the Church serve the Spirit of Christ, who vivifies it, in the building up of the body.

This is the one Church of Christ which in the Creed is professed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic, which our Saviour, after His Resurrection, commissioned Peter to shepherd, and him and the other apostles to extend and direct with authority, which He erected for all ages as "the pillar and mainstay of the truth". [Note the abuse of 1 Tim 3:15 as a proof-text here]. This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the [Roman] Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him, although many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure.

The key word from that selection is the word subsists in, which is a change from prior documents, which expressed that "this [Roman Catholic] Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, is the Roman Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him ..." It actually went further than that. The language surrounding "the successor of Peter and the bishops in communion with him" is a scale-back of the language of Vatican I.

But what Rome seems to give, in terms of "good will towards Protestants" with one hand, it takes back with the other. While some theologians understood the word "subsists" as allowing for other Ratzinger, it has been noted that Ratzinger sees the word "subsists in" as meaning "integral existence as a complete, self-contained subject."

See the Avery Dulles article in the February 2006 issue of "First Things," From Ratzinger to Benedict.

It is Ratzinger who is behind the documents that prohibits addressing Protestant churches as "churches," but rather, calls them "ecclesial communities."

Please note this well:

Catholic ecumenism might seem, at first sight, somewhat paradoxical. The Second Vatican Council used the phrase “subsistit in” in order to try to harmonise two doctrinal affirmations: on the one hand, that despite all the divisions between Christians the Church of Christ continues to exist fully only in the Catholic Church, and on the other hand that numerous elements of sanctification and truth do exist outwith the visible boundaries of the Catholic Church whether in the particular Churches or in the ecclesial Communities that are not fully in communion with the Catholic Church. For this reason, the same Decree of Vatican II on ecumenism Unitatis Redintegratio introduced the term fullness (unitatis/catholicitatis) specifically to help better understand this somewhat paradoxical situation. Although the Catholic Church has the fullness of the means of salvation, “nevertheless, the divisions among Christians prevent the Church from effecting the fullness of catholicity proper to her in those of her children who, though joined to her by baptism, are yet separated from full communion with her.”

From the document: "COMMENTARY ON THE DOCUMENT 'RESPONSES TO SOME QUESTIONS REGARDING CERTAIN ASPECTS OF THE DOCTRINE ON THE CHURCH'"

This is the attitude that we are dealing with when you speak with the more informed Roman Catholics here. Some of the luddites merely echo these sentiments in their own bad way.

Good Morning, Pope Starshine, Part 3: Michael Horton’s New Systematic Theology Would Categorize You as a Panentheist.

Here is Ratzinger in 1969, from “Introduction to Christianity”:

...If Jesus is the exemplary man, in whom the true figure of man, God’s intention for him, comes fully to light, then he cannot be destined to be merely an absolute exception, a curiosity, in which God demonstrates to us just what is possible. His existence concerns all mankind. The New Testament makes this perceptible by calling him an “Adam”; in the Bible this word expresses the unity of the whole creature “man”, so that one can speak of the biblical idea of a “corporate personality” [emphasis added]. So if Jesus is called “Adam” this implies that he is intended to gather the whole creature “Adam” in himself. But this means that the reality which Paul calls, in a way that is largely incomprehensible to us today, the “body of Christ” is an intrinsic postulate of this existence, which cannot remain an exception but must “draw to itself” the whole of mankind (cf John 12:32).(176)

It must be regarded as an important service of Teilhard de Chardin’s that he re-thought these ideas from the angle of the modern view of the world and, in spite of a not entirely unobjectionable tendency towards the biological approach, nevertheless on the whole grasped them correctly and in any case made them accessible once again. Let us listen to his own words: the human monad [monad being Ratzinger’s word; Teilhard de Chardin’s words are in “quotes”] “can only be absolutely itself by ceasing to be alone”. In the background is the idea that in the cosmos, alongside the two orders or classes of the infinitely small and the infinitely big, there is a third order, which determines the real drift of evolution, namely the order of the infinitely complex. It is the real goal of the ascending powers of growth or becoming; it reaches a first peak in the genesis of living things and then continues to advance to those highly complex creations which give the cosmos a new centre: [emphasis added] “Imperceptible and accidental as the position which they hold may be in the history of the heavenly bodies, in the last analysis the planets are nothing less than the vital points of the universe. It is through them that the axis now runs, on them henceforth concentrated the main effort of an evolution aiming principally at the production of large molecules.”

The examination of the world by the dynamic criterion of complexity thus signifies “a complete inversion of values. A reversal of the perspective.”

But let us return to man. He is so far the maximum in complexity. But even he as a mere man-monad cannot represent an end; his growth itself demands a further advance in complexity: “At the same time as he represents an individual centred on himself (that is, a ‘person’), does not Man also represent an element in relation to some new and higher synthesis?” That is to say, man is indeed on the one hand already an end that can no longer be reversed, no longer be melted down again; yet in the juxtaposition of individual men he is not yet at the goal but shows himself to be an element, as it were, that longs for a whole which will embrace it without destroying it. Let us look at a further text, in order to see in what direction such ideas lead: “Contrary to the appearances still accepted by Physics, the Great Stability is not below – in the infra-elemental – but above – in the ultra-synthetic.”

So it must be discovered that “If things hold and hold together, it is only by virtue of ‘complexification’, from the top”. I think we are confronted here with a crucial statement; at this point the dynamic view of the world destroys the positivistic conception, so near to all of us, that stability is located only in the “mass”, in hard material. That the world is in the last resort put together and held together “from above” here becomes evident in a way that is particularly striking because we are so little accustomed to it.

Then in July 2009, in an address in Aosta, Italy, Benedict again, as pope, cites Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his pantheistic vision, far beyond what was said in “Introduction to Christianity” and claims that “the cosmos becomes a living host” (From this post.):

“Let Your Church offer herself to You as a living and holy sacrifice”. This request, addressed to God, is made also to ourselves. It is a reference to two passages from the Letter to the Romans. We ourselves, with our whole being, must be adoration and sacrifice, and by transforming our world, give it back to God. The role of the priesthood is to consecrate the world so that it may become a living host, a liturgy: so that the liturgy may not be something alongside the reality of the world, but that the world itself shall become a living host, a liturgy. This is also the great vision of Teilhard de Chardin: in the end we shall achieve a true cosmic liturgy, where the cosmos becomes a living host. And let us pray the Lord to help us become priests in this sense, to aid in the transformation of the world, in adoration of God, beginning with ourselves.

Now, a brief selection from Michael Horton’s new Systematic Theology is online. He provides these definitions for both “Pantheism” and “Panentheism”:

A. Pantheism and Panentheism: Overcoming Estrangement

The first grand narrative erases (or tends to erase) the infinite-qualitative distinction between God and creatures. Narrated in myriad myths across many cultures, this is the story of the ascent of the soul — that divine part of us, which has somehow become trapped in matter and history. Although it originates in dualism — a stark (even violent) opposition between finite and infinite, matter and spirit, time and eternity, humanity and God, the goal is to reestablish the unity of all reality. In some versions, only that which is infinite, spiritual, eternal, and divine is real, so all else perishes or is somehow elevated into the upper world. Nevertheless, the goal is to lose all particularity and diversity in the One, which is Being itself….

Within the history of Western Christianity there have been tendencies among some mystics to move in a pantheistic direction. An extreme example is the fourteenth- century mystic Meister Eckhart, who wrote in a characteristic sermon, “To the inward-turned man all things have an inward divinity. . . . Nothing is so proper to the intellect, nor so present and near as God.” The connection between rationalism and mysticism is as old as Platonism itself. This outer-inner dualism has characterized much of radical mysticism in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as well as in Sufi Islam and Jewish Kabbalism. This trajectory continued in radical Protestantism from the Anabaptists to the early Enlightenment. It is especially evident in the philosophy of Benedict Spinoza (1632-77), which was revived in German Romanticism and American Transcendentalism. Its influence is evident in the dominant forms of theological liberalism and especially today in New Age and neopagan spiritualities.…

Some have tried to blend pantheism (“all is divine”) with belief in a personal God (theism). Often identified as panentheism (“all-within-God”), this view holds that “God” or the divine principle transcends the world, although God and the world exist in mutual dependence. In varying degrees of explicit dependence, panentheism is the working ontology of process theology and the theologies of Teilhard de Chardin, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Jürgen Moltmann among many others, especially those working at the intersection of theology and the philosophy of science. Some panentheists envision the world as the body of God. (Michael Horton, “The Christian Faith,” Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, ©2011, pgs 36-39.)

World Magazine reports mass exodus from Roman Catholicism

World Magazine has picked up on a theme that we've noted here many times: people are leaving the Roman Catholic church in droves.

Tim Pereira was an altar boy and his father played guitar in the church's folk music group. The family often gathered in the church basement after Mass to drink coffee and eat doughnuts with friends in their tight-knit parish. They ate spaghetti dinners with the rest of the church, browsed church bazaars, and went on family retreats. Their priest was a caring man who oversaw a close congregation.

Pereira remembers only community and warmth from his childhood in the Roman Catholic Church. He has no horror stories of cold churches or abusive priests. So why is Tim Pereira, 30, now an evangelical?

Pereira joins the 10 percent of Americans who have left the Catholic faith. While some high-profile Protestant intellectuals, such as Richard John Neuhaus in the 1990s, have converted to Roman Catholicism, the overall trend seems to be in the opposite direction. According to David E. Campbell and Robert D. Putnam in American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, the Roman Catholic Church is "hemorrhaging members." The Pew Forum's 2007 "U.S. Religious Landscape Survey" found that Catholics have experienced the greatest net loss of any American religious tradition....

Pereira, whose grandparents immigrated from Portugal, said his Catholic identity was "almost like a nationality." Chris Castaldo, author of Holy Ground: Walking with Jesus as a Former Catholic, echoes Pereira: "Catholicism is more than propositions that you believe. It's your culture. It's your identity. . . . It's hard to just walk away from that."

As Carl Trueman recently noted, most Roman Catholics are so for cultural reasons.

Norman Geisler put it into perspective:

So, while we are losing a few intellectual egg-heads out the top of evangelicalism to Rome, we are gaining tens of thousands of converts out the bottom from Catholicism. The trade-off highly favors evangelicalism. So, invite a Catholic to your Bible study or church. There is a good possibility that they will get saved! They have a least been pre-evangelized by Roman Catholicism to believe in God, miracles, Christ, His death and resurrection. Once they find that works are not a necessary condition for salvation (Rom. 4:5; Eph. 2:8-9; Titus 3:3-6) but that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone, they will make great evangelical Christians. They will realize that we can’t work for grace but that we do work from grace.

Of course, there are some of us, many of us, who are rejecting Rome because of its ungodly doctrines.

HT: Constantine

Taylor Marshall on "signs of Predestination" and David Meyer on Limited Atonement at Called to Communion

Taylor Marshall has written a short blog article on "Signs of Predestination" at Called to Communion.See, "Signs of Predestination"

David Meyer, a new convert to Roman Catholicism from a Reformed background
also commented in the comboxes on the difficulty of letting go of "Limited Atonement". (Comment # 7; see below)


I wrote two responses, now awaiting moderation. For this article, I corrected some phrases and added a few thoughts, but it is basically the same as what I left in the comboxes. I hope my comments go through.

Taylor, you wrote:
However, it would be wrong to suppose that Catholic deny predestination per se. Rather, the doctrine of predestination is upheld, albeit with a important qualifications.

Arminians, RCs, and EOs, all must confess some kind of doctrine of Predestination, because the word is there in Scripture, along with the concepts of God’s Sovereignty and election. Ephesians 1:4-5; I Peter 1:1-2; Romans 8:28-34; Acts 2:22-23; Acts 4:27-28; Romans chapter 9, and many others.

Is the Roman Catholic view of predestination the “foreknowledge of future faith and perseverance in some, and then God responds to future faith” ? Or is the Roman Catholic view the “chosen in the Chosen One” view? Or what?

How do you get around the fact that foreknowledge is about knowing a person, not about knowing that they will have faith; (although God knows all things infallibly) ? “whom He foreknew” (Romans 8:29); “Before I formed in the womb, I knew you” (Jer. 1:5)

As a Catholic, what is now more important to me is the “signs of predestination.” In other words “faith alone” is by no means a sign that one is among the elect of God.

Taylor, you make it sound like “faith alone” is taught by Protestants as the only sign or evidence of Predestination. “Faith alone” historically refers to the only way in which someone is justified before God. Luther spoke of living faith and the results of true faith. Calvin and the Westminster Confession says, “we are justified by faith alone, but that faith does not stay alone”, that is, it results in good works, fruit, patience, perseverance, love – very close to those first seven things you mention in your article. Number 8, devotion to Mary, is no where in the Scriptures, so that one is wrong. In fact Devotion to Mary is nowhere mentioned in Scripture. So, it seems that you and the Dominican father that you quote do not believe in the material sufficiency view, but the partim partim view of Scripture and tradition. It seems that that really is the view of the RCC, that “God’s word” is found partly in Scripture and partly in tradition, and tradition according to Rome, is the ability of the church to bring out new doctrines and dogmas that did not exist in the Bible or the earliest centuries.


So follow the eight signs of predestination, but especially foster a deep filial love for the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Where is that in Scripture that devotion to Mary is a sign of Predestination? And then, you make it even harder by the word “especially” as if it is more important that the other seven, yet the other seven are in Scripture, at least in principle.

When Jesus gives His mother to the apostle John as the cross, sound exegesis shows that that this is historical narrative and Jesus is giving her specifically to John for John to take care of her. It seems like “adding to the word of God” to then say that Jesus is giving Mary to be the mother of all believers. Even if one wants to say that this shows that Mary is the spiritual mother of all believers, which it doesn’t; beyond that [originally, “then”], Scripture is silent on prayers or praises or devotions to Mary. Praying in front of her picture or statue is wrong and looks like idolatry.

[I add for this article: Taylor, you have added to the word of God, and you do what Jesus condemned the Pharisees and scribes of doing in Matthew 15 and Mark 7. ]

What version of 2 Peter 1:10 are you using? “as long as you practice these things” – these things refers to the things in verses 5-9, and nothing there indicates any Marian devotion, so your argument is defeated.

Taylor, [you called Peter, “that holy pontiff” when quoting 2 Peter 1:10. ] If Peter was the “holy pontiff” or “Pope” or “bishop of Rome” or “bishop of bishops”, he failed to mention it in both of his letters. In I Peter 5:1 he calls himself “fellow – elder”; and in 2 Peter he says that the way he is diligent so that the believers will have a way to stir up their sincere minds in the truth by way of reminder is by his writing this second letter. (2 Peter 1:12-18; 3:1) If there was a such thing as a pope, then he would have mentioned it here, since he knows he is going to die and he is being diligent so that they will have a writing to read and meditate on after he is dead and gone.


David Meyer wrote:
I have always thought that Limited Atonement was really the center of TULIP. . . . It is also one doctrine that I continue to struggle to let go of. (well worn mental paths need some magisterial grass seed thrown on them!)

David,
Thanks for your honesty about having a hard time letting go of the Scriptural teaching of Christ’s particular, powerful, effective Atonement. That is very interesting. Revelation 5:9 and 7:9 show that the people that Christ redeemed by His blood are “out of” (ek ) every tribe, and tongue, and people and nation. It is clear; and that helps us interpret I John 2:2 and II Cor. 5:14-15 properly.

Without that, then you are left with an atonement where Christ died for every individual, but only makes them savable, and does not actually save them. A universal atonement for all individuals does not turn the wrath of God away from anybody. How can it be a saving, powerful, effective atonement? It is up to the person then by the moral power of his own will to chose Christ, which seems like Pelagianism or at least semi-Pelagianism, even if the RCC denies them officially.

“magisterial grass seed” are thorns and thistles that choke out the word of God. The reason why it is so hard to get rid of, is because it is Scriptural and Scripture is more powerful and over all the RCC additions to the word of God. This desire for extra things to crowd out the word of God really speaks volumes, and shows that you have to go outside of Scripture in order to “convince yourself” of the RCC doctrines.

Sola Scriptura As Against Division

We're often told that sola Scriptura is a "blueprint for anarchy." Yet here John Frame utilizes the sola Scriptura principle to produce something of an opposite result:

Remarkably, Scripture itself never says that believers should leave a church organization and form a new one because of false teaching. Israel in the Old Testament was often guilty of idolatry. Revivals of true worship occurred from time to time, but the nation, including the religious establishment, relapsed. After the exile, the Scribes and Pharisees represented movements toward religious purity; but Jesus said they "shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces" (Matt. 23:13) and made each proselyte "twice as much a child of hell as yourselves" (verse 15). They are "full of hypocrisy and lawlessness" (verse 28). Jesus says that God will judge these religious leaders (verses 32-36), a threat fulfilled in the destruction of the temple in 70 AD.

But nowhere in the Old Testament, nor in Jesus' teaching, does God command believers to abandon Israel and to form a new nation, church, or denomination. God himself brings a separation between the followers of Christ and Judaism, when the synagogues expel Christians from their fellowship, and when the temple is destroyed. But there is no exhortation in the New Testament for Jewish Christians voluntarily to leave the synagogues. Rather, it is assumed that believers, like the apostles, will bear witness within the synagogues to God’s grace in Christ, as long as they are able to do so. This was the practice of the apostle Paul, who preached the gospel in the synagogues wherever he traveled.

As we have seen, there is doctrinal and practical corruption in the New Testament church as well. But again, the apostles do not call on believers to leave their churches and form new ones because of corruption. Rather, the churches themselves are to take action against it (as 1 Cor. 5:1-13). Even the church at Laodicaea, which Jesus threatens to spit out of his mouth (Rev. 3:16), is still a church (verse 14), and Jesus does not counsel true believers to leave it. Rather, he tells the whole church to repent.

The apostolic church of the New Testament is not a voluntary association. Every believer is joined to it in the body of Christ. That church is both organism and organization: it is a body, held together by the Spirit, and it is an organization, ruled by apostles, prophets, elders, and deacons. Where disputes exist, there is an orderly pattern for resolving them (Matt. 18:15-20) including provision for excommunication (verse 17, 1 Cor. 5) in extreme cases. Rightly appointed leaders are to be obeyed (Heb. 13:17). So in the first century nobody had the right to leave the apostolic church and start a new denomination (The Doctrine of the Christian Life [P & R Publishing, 2008], 399-400).

Frame has much more to say on this issue, but this suffices for the point at hand.

(Interested readers can request a larger excerpt from this chapter by e-mail. The address is located on my blogger profile.)

Luther allowed marriages between brother and sister & parent and child?

ht: Ben

Luther allowed marriages between brother and sister as well as parent and child? So says Roman Catholic historian Heinrich Denifle. His findings rest on one word from Luther, "dead":

In 1528, all the marriage impediments juris ecclesiastici were declared by him to be dead, i.e., set aside; also even such as are juris naturalis, or nearly akin to it, consanguinitas, affinitas, and publicae honestatis. This follows from Luther's marginal note, "dead," on Spalatin's general paragraph: "What blood-relationship, marriage-relationship, and spiritual affinity hinder marriage." In an incredible but logical manner, he then declares "dead," i.e. set aside, the impedimenta consanguinitatis (969) also consanguinitas in linea recta, at least insofar as it forbids marriage in infinitum (a), and consanguinitas in linea obliqua, even in the first degree between brother and sister (b). Naturally there was less difficulty in the cases of marriage with the daughter of one's brother or sister, and with the sister of one's father or mother (a), or in the degrees of affinitas or marriage relationship (c, d), or in publica honestas (e).

All this was included in Luther's conception of Christian liberty, i.e., unbounded and unbridled licentiousness, not less, indeed, than in his endeavor to do the opposite of the provisions of the laws of the Church. Of the permissibility of marriage in the first degree of blood-relationship, Protestants of that time said nothing, as neither did Luther to my knowledge. But here and there in the circles of his followers, people were scandalized on account of the marriages of persons related in the second or third degree, such marriages being considered contrary to natural decorum.

(969)On Jan. 3, 1528, John, Elector of Saxony, asked Luther to revise and correct Spalatin's memorial on marriage matters. Luther did so. Spalatin's memorial, with Luther's corrections and marginal notes, was printed in Burkhardt's "Martin Luthers Briefwechsel", p. 123-130 (thence taken by Enders, VI, 182-186). The portions that interest us are found on p. 130. The general section in Spalatin's memorial reads : "Welche Sippschaft und Magschaft nach Vermuge und Ordnung die Ehe verhindern." On this Luther wrote the all-annihilating word "tod"—dead, i.e., set aside. In detail: (a) "Zum ersten so ist den Personen, so einander in der aufsteigenden und neidersteigenden Linie verwandt, die Ehe in infinitum durch und durch allenthalben verboten." On this proposition Luther made the marginal annotation, "tod." Spalatin continues: (b) "Zum andern : Bruder und Schwester mogen sich nicht verehelichen, so mag einer auch seines Bruders oder Scliwester Tochter oder Enkel nicht nehmen. Desgleichen ist verboten seines Vaters, Grossvaters, der Mutter, Grossmutter Schwester zu heiraten." Luther wrote on the margin of the first line, and at the same time for the whole proposition, "tod." Propositions on affinitas (c, d) and publica honestas (d) follow. Moreover, the lawfulness of marriage between brother and sister according to Luther is a consequence of his principles, and only the imperial law would have been able to determine him for its unlawfulness. From his "tod" on proposition a, it would also have been possible to prove that, according to him, even marriage between father and daughter, mother and son was lawful [source].

This charge was evaluated by Preserved Smith in his review of Denifle's book:

Luther And Lutherdom. From Original Sources by Heinrich Denifle. Translated from the Second Revised Edition of the German by RayMund Volz. Vol. I, Part 1. Torch Press. Somerset, Ohio. 1917. Pp. lii, 465.

To call, with Gooch, "Denifle's eight hundred pages hurled at the memory of the Reformer among the most repulsive books in historical literature," is not a bit too strong. That the author's feelings were so immensely enlisted would not matter if the man only had a spark of the candor and real desire to be fair that distinguishes the work of scholars like Pastor and Acton. But Denifle's mind was so warped by hatred that, while preternaturally sharp-sighted in detecting the slightest faults of Luther or the most trivial errors of modern Protestant scholars, he was, to the larger aspects of his subject, portentously blind. Luther and Lutherdom is a learned and elaborate libel.

Let us take a single example of its famous " method." The Dominican asserts that Luther set aside all prohibitions of consanguineous marriages, even that of parent and child and of brother and sister (p. 324). Any other scholar, in making so startling a charge, would examine the evidence carefully. In proportion to the vast improbability that the Reformer should here have gone counter not only to all Christian sentiment but to that of the whole world, savage as well as civilized, the historian should have demanded copious proof and have sifted it judicially. One would expect that in a point like this a great stir would have been made and much would be forthcoming. But Denifle bases his assertion on a single word. When Spalatin drew up a table of forbidden degrees for the use of the Saxon Visitors, he wrote: "Bruder und Schwester mugen sich nicht verehelichen; so mag einer auch seines Bruders oder Sch wester Tochter oder Enkel nicht nehmen." In revising the list Luther wrote opposite this section "Todt," which Denifle interprets to mean that he repealed the whole law (Enders: Luthers Briefweciisel, vi, 186). The intrinsic improbability of this interpretation is so enormous, unsupported as it is by a single other passage in all the Reformer's voluminous works, that, even if the document in question stood alone, the careful searcher for truth would be forced to conclude that, whatever "todt" meant, it could not mean this. But the document does not stand alone. With it Luther sent a letter (De Wette: Luthers Briefe, iii, 260), in which the real meaning of the word is clearly shown to be merely "strike out," and the reason is distinctly given, namely that it is better on such points to allow the Visitors to give oral instruction when necessary. In the same letter and paragraph Luther discusses the marriage of uncle and niece, which on Biblical precedent he allows, but he says not one word on the marriage of kinsmen in the first and second degrees, proof positive that he never even so much as contemplated the possibility of it.

Of course Denifle's work is not all as worthless as this. His wide reading in scholastic and patristic literature served to elucidate some of Luther's ideas and to point out the failings of his recent editors and biographers. But though the scholar can still learn something from this work, yet its value has greatly decreased since it was first published fourteen years ago. Luther's commentary on Romans, known to Denifle in manuscript, has since been published in model form, and the researches of Scheel and Ficker and A. V. Miiller and Grisar and many other scholars have left the learned Dominican far in the rear.

The worst that can usually be said of the present translation is that it is extremely inelegant, and the proof poorly read ("Eues" for "Cues," p. xlvii, "Raumburg" for "Naumburg," p. 143). The inelegance is due in part to the desire to be literal, as when Volz renders, "Aurifaber omitted this passage, likely as smutty" (p. 105). In some cases, however, the sense of the original is totally missed. Where Denifle wrote: "Man mtisse meinem Werke gegenüber den Standpunkt Niedriger hangen, einnehmen: Luther und der Protestantismus werde durch dasselbe nicht berührt," Volz translates: " My work is to be offset by the viewpoint of Niedriger — assume that Luther and Protestantism are not touched by it" (p. viii). "Niedriger," of course, is not a proper name, but a common noun meaning "obscure people."

Preserved Smith. Poughkeepsie, N.Y. [source]

Luther: Man is like a horse. Does God or Satan leap into the saddle?

The following is from the web page Luther, Exposing the Myth, under the heading "Free Will":

"Man is like a horse. Does God leap into the saddle? The horse is obedient and accommodates itself to every movement of the rider and goes whither he wills it. Does God throw down the reins? Then Satan leaps upon the back of the animal, which bends, goes and submits to the spurs and caprices of its new rider... Therefore, necessity, not free will, is the controlling principle of our conduct. God is the author of what is evil as well as of what is good, and, as He bestows happiness on those who merit it not, so also does He damn others who deserve not their fate" ['De Servo Arbitrio', 7, 113 seq., quoted by O'Hare, in 'The Facts About Luther, TAN Books, 1987, pp. 266-267].

Luther Exposing the Myth says their stated purpose is to show that "from Luther’s own words we shall see him for what he really was, that is a rebellious apostate, who abandoned the faith and led many into apostasy from God under the guise of “reformation” in order to follow his perverse inclinations." With this quote, they attempt to show Luther denies free will and says God is the author of "what is evil."

Documentation
Luther, Exposing the Myth cites " 'De Servo Arbitrio', 7, 113 seq., quoted by O'Hare, in 'The Facts About Luther, TAN Books, 1987, pp. 266-267." Working backwards in this documentation, Luther, Exposing the Myth cites " O'Hare, in 'The Facts About Luther, TAN Books, 1987, pp. 266-267." This refers to the 1987 TAN reprint this old book from Father Patrick O'Hare. On page 266-267 (or p. 271-272) Father O'Hare states,

"Man," he says, "is like a horse. Does God leap into the saddle? The horse is obedient and accommodates itself to every movement of the rider and goes whither he wills it. Does God throw down the reins? Then Satan leaps upon the back of the animal, which bends, goes and submits to the spurs and caprices of its new rider. The will cannot choose its rider and cannot kick against the spur that pricks it. It must go on and its very docility is a disobedience or a sin. The only struggle possible is between the two riders, who dispute the momentary possession of the steed, and, then, is fulfilled the saying of the Psalmist: I am become like a beast of burden.' Let the Christian, then, know that God foresees nothing contingently, but that he foresees, proposes and acts from His internal and immutable will. This is the thunderbolt that shatters and destroys free-will. Hence it comes to pass that whatever happens, happens according to the irreversible decrees of God. Therefore, necessity, not free-will, is the controlling principle of our conduct. God is the author of what is evil in us as well as of what is good, and, as He bestows happiness on those who merit it not, so also, does He damn others who deserve not their fate." (De Servo Arbitrio, in op. lat. 7, 113 seq.

Father O'Hare cites "De Servo Arbitrio, in op. lat. 7, 113 seq" as does Luther, Exposing the Myth. This is not a coincidence, but rather the result of cut-and-paste because the reference Father O'Hare provided is somewhat spurious, and those utilizing O'Hare never bothered to check it for accuracy.  The reference is not to a specific section of text from Luther. It is actually a reference to where De Servo Arbitrio (The Bondage of the Will) begins in D. Martini Lutheri Opera Latina Volume VII. That is, the treatise, De Servo Arbitrio begins on page 113 in volume 7.

Another major problem with O'Hare's quote is that it appears to have been taken from different pages of De Servo Arbitrio . It doesn't appear to me to be one Luther quote, it's multiple quotes placed together in a paragraph taken from different places in the text. Someone took a few different sentences from the entirety of the book and placed them together into one paragraph. There's a good chance Father O'Hare took the quote from History of the Church, Volume 3 By Johannes Baptist Alzog. Father O'Hare quotes from this Roman Catholic source a few times in his book, and it contains the same Luther quote in almost the exact same form with the exception of two additional words ("he continues").

Without actually having an exact reference for multiple sentences it's very difficult to locate the pages in D. Martini Lutheri Opera Latina Volume VII where the quote occurs. It requires working backward from English to Latin. My speculation is that there are three or four different sentences being cited.

The first part of the quote used by Luther, Exposing the Myth is "Man is like a horse. Does God leap into the saddle? The horse is obedient and accommodates itself to every movement of the rider and goes whither he wills it. Does God throw down the reins? Then Satan leaps upon the back of the animal, which bends, goes and submits to the spurs and caprices of its new rider." The quote can be found in WA 18:635 and on page 157 of D. Martini Lutheri Opera Latina Volume VII:

The second part of the quote is "Therefore, necessity, not free-will, is the controlling principle of our conduct." This solo sentence may possibly be found in WA 18:636 and also on page 158 of D. Martini Lutheri Opera Latina Volume VII:

The third quote used by Luther, Exposing the Myth is "God is the author of what is evil in us as well as of what is good, and, as He bestows happiness on those who merit it not, so also, does He damn others who deserve not their fate" might actually be two separate quotes (connected by "and"). The first part might possibly be found in WA 18:667 and on page 196 of D. Martini Lutheri Opera Latina Volume VII:

The second part of the third quote may possibly be found in WA 18:784 and on page 363 of D. Martini Lutheri Opera Latina Volume VII:

Context

Quote #1: The Horse and Rider Analogy

In short, if we are under the god of this world, away from the work and Spirit of the true God, we are held captive to his will, as Paul says to Timothy [II Tim. 2:26], so that we cannot will anything but what he wills. For he is that strong man armed, who guards his own palace in such a way that those whom he possesses are in peace [Luke 11:21], so as to prevent them from stirring up any thought or feeling against him; otherwise, the kingdom of Satan being divided against itself would not stand [Luke 11:18], whereas Christ affirms that it does stand. And this we do readily and willingly, according to the nature of the will, which would not be a will if it were compelled; for compulsion is rather (so to say) “unwill.” But if a Stronger One comes who overcomes him and takes us as His spoil, then through his Spirit we are again slaves and captives—though this is royal freedom—so that we readily will and do what he wills. Thus the human will is placed between the two like a beast of burden. If God rides it, it wills and goes where God wills, as the psalm says: “I am become as a beast [before thee] and I am always with thee” [Ps. 73:22 f.]. If Satan rides it, it wills and goes where Satan wills; nor can it choose to run to either of the two riders or to seek him out, but the riders themselves contend for the possession and control of it [LW 33:65].

Quote #2: Whatever Happens is by Necessity, not Free Will

It is settled, then, even on your own testimony, that we do everything by necessity, and nothing by free choice, since the power of free choice is nothing and neither does nor can do good in the absence of grace—unless you wish to give “efficacy” a new meaning and understand it as “perfection,” as if free choice might very well make a start and will something, thought it could not carry it through. But that I do not believe, and will say more about it later. It follows now that free choice is plainly a divine term, and can be properly applied to none but the Divine Majesty alone; for he alone can do and does (as the psalmist says [Ps. 115:3]) whatever he pleases in heaven and on earth. If this is attributed to men, it is no more rightly attributed than if divinity itself also were attributed to them, which would be the greatest possible sacrilege. Theologians therefore ought to have avoided this term when they wished to speak of human ability, leaving it to be applied to God alone. They should, moreover, have removed it from the lips and language of men, treating it as a kind of sacred and venerable name for their God. And if they attributed any power at all to men, they should teach that it must be called by another name than free choice, especially as we know and clearly perceive that the common people are miserably deceived and led astray by that term, since they hear and understand it in a very different sense from that which the theologians mean and discuss. [LW 33:67].

Quote #3a: God is the author of what is evil

Out of one opinion on free choice you make three. You regard as hard, though probable enough, the opinion of those who deny that man can will the good without special grace. They deny that he can begin, progress, or reach his goal, etc.; and this you approve because it leaves man to desire and endeavor, but does not leave him with anything to ascribe to his own powers. Harder, you think, is the opinion of those who contend that free choice is of no avail save to sin, that grace alone accomplishes good in us, etc. But hardest is the view of those who say that free choice is a mere empty name, that it is God who works both good and evil in us, and that all things which happen come about by sheer necessity. It is against these last two positions that you profess to be writing. Do you really know what you are saying, my dear Erasmus? You express here three opinions as if they belonged to three different schools, not realizing that they are the same thing variously stated, in different words at different times, by us who remain the same persons and exponents of one school only; but let us draw your attention to this and point out the carelessness or stupidity of your judgment [LW 33:111].

Quote 3b God damns others who deserve not their fate

Now, if you are disturbed by the thought that it is difficult to defend the mercy and justice of God when he damns the undeserving, that is to say, ungodly men who are what they are because they were born in ungodliness and can in no way help being and remaining ungodly and damnable, but are compelled by a necessity of nature to sin and to perish (as Paul says: “We were all children of wrath like the rest,” since they are created so by God himself from seed corrupted by the sin of the one man Adam)—rather must God be honored and revered as supremely merciful toward those whom he justifies and saves, supremely unworthy as they are, and there must be at least some acknowledgement of his divine wisdom so that he may be believed to be righteous where he seems to us to be unjust. For if his righteousness were such that it could be judged to be righteous by human standards, it would clearly not be divine and would in no way differ from human righteousness. But since he is the one true God, and is wholly incomprehensible and inaccessible to human reason, it is proper and indeed necessary that his righteousness also should be incomprehensible, as Paul also says where he exclaims: “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!” But they would not be incomprehensible if we were able in every instance to grasp how they are righteous. What is man, compared with God? How much is there within our power compared with his power? What is our strength in comparison with his resources? What is our knowledge compared with his wisdom? What is our substance over against his substance? In a word, what is our all compared with his?[LW 33:289].

Conclusion
With quote #1, the illustration of the horse and rider isn't Luther's invention, but rather had been used in a variety of ways by others preceding Luther: see Roman Catholic scholar Harry McSorley, Luther Right or Wrong? pp. 337-340. McSorley notes that Trent rejected using the analogy "possibly as a reaction against Luther's use of the image." McSorley rightly points out that several times in De Servo Arbitrio Luther mentions he is not discussing what the will can do with grace, and that "Luther correctly emphasizes the biblical doctrine that the sinner is Satan's captive and is not free to escape" (p. 339). McSorley though sees God's riding the horse as an example of the will being in bondage to God, thus a denial of Roman Catholic views on free will.

If I've got the right context for quote #2, Luther had been arguing that man as slave to sin has no free will (LW 33:64-65). Luther notes Erasmus argued in effect that free choice exists and has some power, but that it is an ineffective power. Luther takes this apart concluding "It is settled, then, even on your own testimony, that we do everything by necessity, and nothing by free choice."

For quote 3 (A), Luther's taking apart Erasmus' views on free will and grace, pointing out the contradictions in his earlier definitions. He notes that Erasmus was troubled by the view which held "free choice is an empty name and all that we do comes about by sheer necessity" (LW 33:113). Luther responds that if Erasmus grants in any sense that man can't will freely without special grace, he is in effect granting necessity.

For quote 3 (B), Luther is arguing that God's righteousness in damning the wicked and choosing a people to save is an incomprehensible righteousness.

Interestingly Harry McSorley argues the views on views on grace and free will put forth by Erasmus are not normative for Roman Catholics, and that Luther "presents the most powerful biblical argument for fallen man's bondage to sin that the Church had heard since St. Augustine"[source].

This was one of the harder quotes to determine the context for, and I'm still not completely satisfied I've nailed the references entirely. The only way to be certain would be to track down the Jenna and Wittenberg editions of Luther's Works. The reason why Father O'Hare cited the first page of De Servo Arbitrio as his reference is he probably couldn't find all the quotes in the text! Whoever originally compiled this quote probably was only intending to put forth a summary statement of Luther's treatise. The quotes were put together to "shock" but rather serve as a caricature of Luther's argumentation.

Addendum (2016)
This blog entry is a revision of an entry I posted back in 2011. The original can be found here. Because so many sources are now available online, I'm revising older entries by adding additional materials and commentary, and also fixing or deleting dead hyperlinks. Nothing of any significant substance has changed in this entry from that presented in the former.

The Mega Churches of Post-Constantinian Rome

If you are repulsed by, or if you have a hard time understanding the phenomenon of TV preachers or mega-churches that seem to be built in the honor of a founder, keep in mind that nothing is new under the sun, and all of this happened at Rome a very long time ago.

Several weeks ago I had been writing about the time period following Constantine, The Murderer Pope Damasus, and the time when Roman Bishops became functionaries of the Roman (government) bureaucracy. Of course, this also became, one might say, a time of “building” for the church at Rome, as successive popes sought to aggrandize themselves by building monuments, er, cathedrals in their own honor. As Eamon Duffy notes:

They [bishops of Rome] set about [creating a Christian Rome] by building churches, converting the modest tituli (community church centres) into something grander, and creating new and more public foundations, though to begin with nothing that rivaled the great basilicas at the Lateran and St. Peter’s. Over the next hundred years their churches advanced into the city – Pope Mark’s (336) San Marco within a stone’s throw of the Capitol, Pope Liberius’ massive basilica on the Esquiline (now Santa Maria Maggiore), Pope Damasus’ Santa Anastasia at the foot of the Palatine, Pope Julius’ foundation on the site of the present Santa Maria in Trastevere, Santa Pudenziana near the Baths of Diocletian under Pope Anastasius (399-401), Santa Sabina among the patrician villas on the Aventine under Pope Celestine (422-32).

These churches were a mark of the upbeat confidence of post-Constantinian Christianity in Rome. The popes were potentates, and began to behave like it. Damasus perfectly embodied this growing grandeur. An urbane career cleric like his predecessor Liberius, at home in the wealthy salons of the city, he was also a ruthless power-broker, and he did not he did not hesitate to mobilize both the city police and [a hired mob of gravediggers with pickaxes] to back up his rule… (Duffy, 37:38).

Roman Catholics today like to tell us that “Christ is the head of the church,” but Pope Siricius (384-399), who was the successor of Damasus, “self-consciously … began to model their actions and style as Christian leaders on the procedures of the Roman state. … [Siricius responded to an inquiry from a neighboring bishop in Spain] in the form of a decretal, modeled directly on an imperial rescript, and like the rescripts, providing authoritative rulings which were designed to establish legal precedents on the issues concerned. Siricius commended the [inquiring] Bishop for consulting Rome ‘as to the head of your body’, and instructed to him to pass on ‘the salutary ordinances we have made’ to the bishops of all the surrounding provinces, for ‘no priest of the Lord is free to be ignorant of the statutes of the Apostolic See’” (Duffy 40).

Shotwell and Loomis go into somewhat greater detail:

We see that Siricius, in taking up, as he says, the responsibilities of Damasus, assumes the right to make ordinances for the metropolitans and clergy of the West and classes the statutes of the Apostolic See and the venerable canons of the councils together as laws of which no priest of the Lord may be ignorant. He is writing, one must note, for western churches only, as far as his explicit directions go, but his West includes Spaniards and Gauls and Carthaginians in provinces far beyond Italy.

The decretal itself is more than the instructions of a senior bishop to his junior colleagues on ways to remedy evils in congregations under their authority. In several of its provisions it goes behind the local bishop and metropolitan altogether and establishes relations by its own authority directly with the lesser clergy, monks and laity of these distant regions. The local bishop is for the moment merely the organ of communication between the chief shepherd and the sheep. All priests are to keep the rules or be “plucked from the solid, apostolic rock upon which Christ built the universal Church.” Offenders are “Deposed by authority of the Apostolic See from every ecclesiastical position which they have abused.” (Shotwell and Loomis, “The See of Peter,” New York: Columbia University Press, ©1927, 1955, 1991, pgs 699-700).

This is perhaps the earliest of these epistolae decretales on record. It was contemprary with the time that all that the Eastern bishops, at the council of Constantinople (381), had decreed that “appeals in the cases of bishops should be heard within the bishop’s own province,” as Duffy had said, “a direct rebuttal of Rome’s claim to be the final court of appeal in all such cases (34). The Eastern bishops had no concept at all that the Roman bishop had the right to interfere with or make laws in their regions.

Duffy notes that “the apostolic stability of Rome, its testimony to ancient truth, would now be imagined not simply as the handing on of the ancient paradosis, the tradition, but specifically in the form of lawgiving. Law became a major preoccupation of the Roman church, and the Pope was seen as the Church’s supreme lawgiver. As Pope Innocent I (401-417) wrote to the bishops of Africa, ‘it has been decreed by a divine, not a human authority, that whatever action is taken in any of the provinces, however distant or remote, it should not be brought to a conclusion before it comes to the knowledge of this see, so that every decision may be affirmed by our authority’” (Duffy 40). And of course, nepotism reigned.

Round the papal household there developed a whole clerical culture, staffed by men drawn often from the Roman aristocracy, intensely self-conscious and intensely proud of their own tradition – Jerome dubbed them ‘the senate’. Damasus himself was a product of this world, the son of a senior Roman priest who had himself founded a titulus church. Pope Boniface was the son of a Roman priest, Innocent I was the son of his predecessor as pope, Anastasius I (399-401), and had served his father as a deacon.

But probably the pinnacle of admixture between Roman imperial law and arrogance and usurpation of the nepotism system came in the person of “Pope Leo the Great," whom I hope to talk about in a future post.

Words mean things (1)

In a recent blog article by the economist Gary Becker, entitled “The Behavior of Catholics and Contraceptive Use,” Becker, an old guy, used the words “rhythm method” and predictably, a Roman Catholic commented that “rhythm method” has been supplanted by “natural family planning” (NFP). I’m guessing that the Roman Catholics who read this are knowledgeable to know the difference between these two terms.

I don’t plan to get into a discussion of those things; but it is interesting that Roman Catholics who would take offense over a usage like this one are oblivious to the misuse of much more serious language (the language of Scripture) when used by their own denomination.

In the comments to my previous post, this quickly became evident. So I want to address “TheDen,” a Roman Catholic writer who finds my work “amusing.” He says, “Reading this blog does not make me want to leave the Church but rather to cleave to her ever the more strongly.” Meanwhile, I think he has said a few things that need to be addressed.

“TheDen” said: Your goal is not to steer people to the Truth. Your goal is to claim that the Church is wrong. Your mission is not to evangelize and lead people to Christ but rather to tear apart and rent asunder. This is shameful.

On the contrary, we do quite extensively point out truths and falsehoods here. We make all kinds of fine distinctions that many people seem not to understand. But if people have falsely become “cleaved” to the Roman church the way a broken bone heals wrongly, then sometimes the better thing to do is to re-break the bone so it can heal properly.

“TheDen” said: As you have pointed out, the Roman Church has not fallen. It has not eroded (albeit some people in it have been and may still be corrupt). The beauty of the Church is that it protects the message of Jesus Christ as it was given to her by Christ Himself. Not a reinvention of Christ by using His Scripture but the actual message that Christ gave.

What I said was, “Roman Catholics ask us all the time, “when did the Roman church fall?” It was not necessarily a “fall,” but more like an erosion. Constant erosion, at greater and lesser rates of erosion. But it was an erosion of the Gospel message. It was the erosion of the core apostolic message, at the expense of the constant aggrandization of the bishops of Rome, and the constant aggrandization of Rome itself.” This is not at all the happy situation you have posited.

“When you say “the actual message that Christ gave,” the actual message that He gave was from the Scriptures. Generations of “oral tradition” had caused the Scriptures to become widely misunderstood; Christ did not give a new message; he reiterated the old message:

He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

In fact, the Roman church did not “protect” the message of Christ but allowed it to be changed and corrupted over time, just in the manner I described, by making its own self greater and making Christ the lesser.

“TheDen” said: Marriage is not a sacrament because of Ephesians 5. Marriage precedes Christ and He elevates it to a sacrament (per Mark 10:9). There are numerous passages that point to the importance of marriage in God’s plan. To believe that marriage is a sacrament only because of the word sacramentum in Ephesians 5 is ignorance of Scripture and Christ’s teachings.

Let’s look at that process of “making a sacrament”, according to Rome:

Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

“What did Moses command you?” he replied.

They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”

“It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”

This is something that, for “TheDen”, qualifies as “elevation to a sacrament”. But in reality, Jesus was reiterating the Scriptures, while clarifying in the face of the way that some “oral traditions” had obscured them. Is the whole Sermon on the Mount elevating things to sacraments?

A Foundational ‘Sacrament’ Built on and Reinforced by a Mistranslation

“TheDen” said: Penance: The Vulgate does not say "Do Penance" it says, “Poenitentiam” which means “Repent” which also means “do penance.” It is not referring to the Sacrament of Penance and it is not a mistranslation.

Actually, “TheDen,” you omitted a very important little word, and in fact, by adding that word, Jerome did change the sense of the entire passage. Here’s a link to A Concise Dictionary to the Vulgate New Testament with an introduction by G.C. Richards who lists, on page 16, some of the same effects on the text that McGrath noted. Specifically, the words paenitentiam agere which “inevitably suggested ‘acts’ and that it no doubt led to the development of the penitential system, by which ‘penance’ became something [to be] done.”

He gives other examples that you can read for yourself, and the inevitable conclusion is: “thus the language of the Vulgate affected in no small degree the life of the Church”.

Diarmaid MacCulloch in his History of the Reformation also summarizes the effects of the Latin Vulgate on the church:

An examination of the New Testament [of Jerome’s mistranslations in the Vulgate] had even more profound consequences [than his mistranslations of the Old Testament]: Jerome had chosen certain Latin words in his translation of the original Greek, which formed a rather shaky foundation for very considerable theological constructions by the later Western Church.

It was not simply that Jerome gave misleading impressions of the Greek text: the mere fact that for a thousand years the Latin Church had based its authority on a translation [with many errors in it] was significant when scholars heard for the first time the unmediated urgency of the angular street-Greek poured out by … Paul of Tarsus as he wrestled with the problem of how Jesus represented God. The struggle sounded so much less decorous in the original than in Latin: the shock was bound to stir up new movements in the Church and suggest that it was not so authoritative or normative an interpreter of Scripture as it claimed.(82-83)

Again, regarding the translation of “metanoiea”:

Most notorious was Erasmus's retranslation of Gospel passages (especially Matthew 3.2 [and and also 4:17]) where John the Baptist [and Jesus] is presented in the Greek as crying out to his listeners in the wilderness: “metanoeite”. Jerome had translated this as “poenitentiam agite,” “do penance”, and the medieval Church had pointed to the Baptist’s cry as biblical support for its theology of the sacrament of penance. Erasmus said that what John had told his listeners to do was to come to their senses, or repent, and he translated the command into Latin as “resipiscite.” Much turned on one word.(99-100)

Craig Keener has provided an excellent study of what the word “repentance” meant in the New Testament-era literature, and says (primary source references omitted):

“Repentance” in the Gospels recalls not the “change of mind” earlier etymological interpreters sometimes supposed, but the biblical concept of “turning” or “returning” to God (Is 31:6; 45:22; 55:7; Jer 3:7, 10, 14, 22; 4:1; 8:5; 18:11; 24:7; 25:5; 26:3; 35:15; 36:7; 44:5; Lam 3:40; Ezek 13:22; 14:6; 18:23, 30; 33:9, 11; Hos 11:5; 12:6; 14:1-2; Joel 2:12-13; Zech 1:3-4; Mal 3:6).

[I’ve listed all these Scriptural citations to show that the idea of “repentance” espoused here did have a great deal of consistency through the OT.]

The idea of repentance as returning to God was pervasive in early Judaism but foreign to Greek religion. Sages extolled repentance, some later rabbis even claiming its preexistence or its association with the Messiah’s mission. It is efficacious, though in rabbinic tradition it merely suspends judgment until the Day of Atonement may remove it (and beyond a certain limit it is not efficacious for the person who premeditates sin in hopes of repenting afterward [Sounds a lot like Roman Catholics who think it’s ok to sin, because you can then just go to confession]).

Yet John’s call is more radical; his “repentance” refers not to a regular turning from sin after a specific act, but to a once-for-all repentance, the kind of turning from an old way of life to a new that Judaism associated with Gentiles converting to Judaism, here in view of the impending day of judgment (cf. MT 4:17; 11:20; 12:41; Acts 17:30-31; Rom 2:4). His call to repentance recalls a familiar summons in the biblical prophets. In various ways John warns his hearers against depending on the special privileges of their heritage. Craig Keener (“The Gospel of Matthew: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary” Grand Rapids, MI, Cambridge, UK, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, ©2009, pg 120)

Since this is already long I’ll break here and pick up some of the other comments in another post.

“Just trust us on this one … wink wink”

There is something fundamentally dishonest with Roman Catholic apologetics. And it comes out in the recent ruckus over the de-conversion of Addison Hart. One of the bigger questions is, ”didn’t you know what you were getting into when you ‘'poped’?”

It’s quite possible that he did not. There is a somewhat famous statement by Archbishop Fulton Sheen, (famous in Roman Catholic circles) to the effect that, “There are not more than 100 people in the world who truly hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they perceive to be the Catholic Church.”

One of the reasons why people misunderstand Roman Catholicism is because, for centuries, the Roman Catholic apologetic has not been one of honesty and clarity, but it’s one of deflection. It’s a classic bait-and switch, which I would argue, is fundamentally dishonest, on a regular basis. Hart allowed in his comment that he had “high ideals.” Roman apologists are constantly these days appealing to “unity” and “antiquity” and even to equate “the Roman Catholic Church” with “the ongoing Incarnation of Christ” [“you will be like God”] – appeals to high ideals. But one thing they don’t lead off with – in fact, they hide from public view what their true doctrines actually are. What the Roman Catholic apologetic appeals to is … “just trust us on this one … wink wink”.

First of all, what is a good apologetic? Francis Turretin described the Reformation method for understanding and instructing “the faith”:

Although an examination of faith and doctrine could not be made without study and labor, it does not follow that it is impossible or dangerous to the ignorant and uninstructed … the doctrines necessary to salvation … are contained in Scripture with sufficient clearness so as to be perceived by any believers furnished with the spirit of discretion. Hence Paul appeals to the judgment of believers and orders them to prove all things and to hold fast what is good (1 Thess 5:21). John wishes believers to try the spirits whether they are of God (1 Jn. 4:1). Surely this could not be said if this examination were either impossible or dangerous to them (Francis Turretin, “Institutes of Elenctic Theology, translated by George Musgrave Giger; edited by James T. Dennison, Jr.: Phillipsburg, NJ, P&R Publishing, ©1997, Vol. 3, pg 5).

So, in Turretin’s method, apologetics means you state your doctrines, openly and honestly; but don’t just rely on that. Allow, no, challenge your disciples to search the Scriptures, “try the spirits,” prove all things, and hold fast to what is good. But even in Turretin’s day, he encountered something different from that:

Thus this day the Romanists (although they are anything but the true church of Christ) still boast of their having alone the name of church and do not blush to display the standard of that which they oppose. In this manner, hiding themselves under the specious title of the antiquity and infallibility of the Catholic church, they think they can, as with one blow, beat down and settle the controversy waged against them concerning the various most destructive errors introduced into the heavenly doctrine. (Vol 3. pg 2)

At the time of the Reformation, Luther was met by assertions of authority. In preparation for his 1519 debate with Luther, Eck asserted, “We deny that before the time of Silvester [I, 314-335] the Roman church was subordinate to the other churches. We have always known that the one who occupies the See of Saint Peter and the faith is the successor of Peter and the universal representative of Christ” (quoted by Bernhard Lohse in “Martin Luther’s Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development,” translated and edited by Roy A. Harrisville, ©1999 Minneapolis: Fortress Press, pg.119). Such assertions had always worked in the past; consider the case of John Huss.

[But even in Eck’s statement, note that he does not properly characterize what Luther had said. Luther did not say, as Eck claimed, “the Roman church was subordinate to the other churches.” Luther only said, in his 95 Theses, that “at the time of Gregory I (590-604) the Roman church was not yet ranked over the other churches.” This is a digression, but an important one.]

Roman apologetics that came out of the Reformation had a certain character that asked (maybe in disbelief) “Where was your religion before the year 1517?” This appeal was characterized by the Roman Catholic claim, “Semper Eadem,” “always the same.” By 1688, this appeal to authority and antiquity was so etched into the public mind that bishop Jacques-Benigne Bossuet (1627-1704) had produced a work, Histoire des Variations des Églises Protestantes (1688) in which he asserted:

The Church’s doctrine is always the same….The Gospel is never different from what it was before. Hence, if at any time someone says that the faith includes something which yesterday was not said to be of the faith, it is always heterodoxy, which is any doctrine different from orthodoxy. There is no difficulty about recognizing false doctrine: there is no argument about it: it is recognized at once, whenever it appears, merely because it is new….

If by such proofs they show us the least unconstancy, or the least variation in the dogmata of the Catholic Church from her first origin down to us, that is from Christianity’s first foundation; readily will I own to them that they are in the right, and I myself will suppress this my whole history (cited by Owen Chadwick, “From Bossuet to Newman,” Second Edition, ©1987 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pgs 17, 20).

But as it turns out, Rome, however, cannot hold itself to that standard. Less than 200 years later, Newman was crafting a “theory of Development” that was necessary to explain away all of the many changes that Rome HAD incorporated.

Which goes back to the high-minded appeal to authority. A prime example of this methodology is provided by Mark Shea in his book, “By What Authority”? Shea’s book is a long look at why “Evangelicalism” cannot adequately respond to such challenges to orthodox Christianity by such efforts as “The Jesus Seminar,” and why we need an infallible authority to properly respond to such challenges.

At the end of his work, Shea posits for himself this dilemma:

According to Catholic belief, the very doctrines which irk most Protestant believers (such as Purgatory, the Assumption of Mary, the infallibility of the Pope, and so forth) are doctrines which cannot be set aside since they are squarely located under the Big “T” heading by the Catholic Church and are therefore immovable features of Sacred Tradition -- the very same Tradition which tells us what is and is not in our Bible and does so in a coherent voice of authority sounding down to the centuries through a line of bishops leading inexorably back to Jesus Christ himself. In other words, I was (and you by extension, good reader, are) obliged to either:

1. Find out if the whole Catholic Tradition was truly coherent; or,

2. Arbitrarily reject the bits I was [and therefore you are] uncomfortable with, but simultaneously exploit Catholic Tradition’s authority (where it was useful against modernism)--all the while hoping that both Evangelicals and modernist (not to mention the Holy Spirit) would not laugh at my [i.e., your] inconsistency. [Mark Shea, By What Authority? An Evangelical Discovers Catholic Tradition Huntington: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, 1996, pgs 174-175.]

But this comes at the end of this work, where Shea declines to say just what that “whole, truly coherent” Big-“T” Tradition actually was. He says, “I discovered (in a journey I will not recount here) that, in the final analysis, there is not a single solitary aspect of Catholic Sacred Tradition that is anti-biblical” (Shea’s emphasis). What the reader is left with is, “Rome has the authority … “just trust me on this one … wink wink”.

It’s really a classic bait-and-switch. I have two thoughts on this: First, there is very much in “Catholic Sacred Tradition” that is quite “anti-biblical”. Beginning with an apologetic that says, “you can’t understand what the Bible is or says without an infallible interpreter.” [In fact, conservative Biblical scholarship is decimating “The Jesus Seminar,” for example.] Second, I know that Shea has written other books, which I haven’t read, which may provide some of that “final analysis.” But these are at a point at which he’s “preaching to the choir,” selling books as a convert-celebrity, to fellow Roman Catholics, and not, as Turretin said, proving his doctrines from the Scriptures. I’m happy to discuss any Roman doctrine on a point-by-point basis – from Scripture AND history – but this post isn’t about individual doctrines, or even the sum total of “Big-‘T’ Tradition”. It’s about the Roman Catholic Apologetic Method.

Michael Liccione puts it this way:

How to locate and identify “the Church,” and what kind of teaching authority she has, are questions to be answered by divine revelation. Following Aquinas, Newman, and others, the thesis I’ve long argued for is that in order to distinguish “the propositional content of divine revelation from mere human opinions about the data taken as sources,” disputes about how Scripture and Tradition answer the above questions [can] only be settled by a living, dominically instituted authority that is divinely protected from error under certain conditions. Otherwise all we’re left with is opinions, such as yours and countless other, different ones.

First find “the Church,” “the Authority,” and all else will fall into place. ”Just trust us on this one … wink wink”

In the last 20 or 30 years, plenty of ecumenically-minded statements have come out that seek to find “unity” not by clarifying issues, but by blurring the differences. It takes not only a theologian, but a lawyer, to understand some of the “Joint Declarations” – and to understand just precisely what is being given away, and by whom.

I’ll reiterate, I don’t know Addison Hart other than that I recognized his name from Touchstone Magazine, and I stopped reading Touchstone because it leaned too far toward Rome. Rome doesn’t sell its own doctrines. It sells an image. And like Hart, too many people buy the image before reading the fine print.

It is quite likely Addison Hart did not know what he was getting into when he "poped". But he knows it better now, and he knows why he must leave. I'm grateful that he has come to his senses, and that he chooses to tell people about it.

Anglican Priest-Turned-Roman Now Exits Rome

HT: Truth Unites ... and Divides

… as an Anglican priest who, with high ideals but considerably lower savvy, “poped” back in 1997, all I can say to those who may be thinking likewise is this: Unless you know in your heart you can believe in such super-added dogmas as papal supremacy and infallibility (very late inventions), that Jesus did not need to possess “faith” during his earthly years (to which I respond, was he or was he not fully human?), and that the bread and wine physically change into his body and blood during the Eucharist without any palpable evidence of it; unless you can believe in Mary’s “Immaculate Conception” (an unnecessary and unverifiable belief, if ever there was one), her bodily assumption, and so on, then I would urge you to stay put. You already have everything you need, and, what Rome would add to you, you not only do not need, but should positively avoid weighing yourselves down with. Anglicanism is doctrinally sound and blessed with great forms of worship. Rome is neither. As for Rome’s claims to a vastly superior moral authority -- well, I would venture to say that after such revelations as clerical sexual abuse on an international scale and their bank’s money-laundering, the lie has been put to that.

No, don’t make my mistake. I wouldn’t make it again myself, and, as it is, I’m making my way out the Roman door.

Just a word to the wise. (Emphasis added but not super-added.)

Addison H. Hart is a [now former] Roman Catholic priest, ordained under the Pastoral Provision for former Anglican Priests. He resides with his wife and two children in DeKalb, Illinois, where he is Associate Pastor at Christ the Teacher University Parish and the Newman Catholic Center for Northern Illinois University. He is a contributing editor for Touchstone.

That brief bio was taken from a 2000 article that Hart had written for Touchstone, Convert Provocateurs. I used to read Touchstone regularly, until they got a Roman Catholic editor; after that the whole enterprise went down hill.

This comment came in response to a post from his brother, Fr. Robert Hart, at a blog called "The Continuum," on the topic of, well, maintaining your Anglican heritage in the face of all the adversity. He, too, thinks little of "the Latin-Romans":

Clean off the ring of doubt around your collar, and learn how to embrace the strength of your own heritage, including the riches you have almost thrown away because the Latin-Romans did not understand them. So, they don’t know valuables from trash; but, what’s your excuse?

Do you know where the story of Saint Veronica [of "Veronica's Veil" fame] comes from, and why she is not known to the Eastern churches? It is because the Romans did not know what the phrase Very Icon (true image, i.e. of Christ’s face) meant. They thought it was a name, and so a legend, pure fiction, developed to the point where you can’t watch a movie about Christ without the scene of some woman with a veil wiping the Lord’s face. Well, it is pretty much the same story when it comes to Roman understanding of English, or Anglicanism.

For those of you who are Roman Catholic, or considering a move in that direction: it genuinely is a bankrupt system.

The moral immaturity of a six year old

There’s a little psychological exam that’s used to determine the relative ethical maturity of a child. The question involves the breaking of cups. One child breaks 10 cups by accident; the other child breaks one cup in a fit of anger. The question is, which child deserves to be punished? Typically, a six-year-old child would say “10 cups,” being unaware of basic principles of moral culpability.

Just sayin’.

In my recent interactions with Scott Windsor, over the forged Donation of Constantine, he actually went through every paragraph of that document to say, “yes, that was a lie,” or “no, that was not a lie.”

After doing so, he made the following bold claim:

To be clear here - I do not "defend" the forgery, I simply proved - quite succinctly, that the document is not "a complete lie" - as Bugay falsely charged. While its origin is not from the Emperor Constantine, many of the statements within the Donation of Constantine are quite true. To be "a complete lie" there could be NO truths within it. Mr. Bugay needs to realize his hyperbole has been called and his next step should be to acknowledge what I have said - there are SOME truths within the Donation of Constantine document. Yes, there are SOME false attributions in it, in fact the whole document is falsely attributed to Emperor Constantine - but to say it is "a complete lie" is not a truthful statement.

Never mind that the mere intention to deceive is what makes the thing a lie. In the words of Augustine: “But the fault of him who lies, is, the desire of deceiving in the uttering of his mind (“De Mendacio”).

As I noted in my previous post, “the so-called Donation of Constantine was a thoroughgoing forgery, made for a specific purpose, at a particular place and time. It was the means chosen to achieve a specific end in a desperate situation.” (from Derek Wilson, “Charlemagne,” New York, London, Doubleday Publishing ©2006, pg 24).

According to Wilson, a secular historian, the forgers were “criminals,” and the individual who delivered it, Pope Stephen II, produced the document, with the intent to deceive, in order to persuade Pepin, King of France to defend himself and indeed Rome against Alstulf, the Lombard king.

J.N.D. Kelly notes that this document was indeed “drafted in the papal chancery.” Perhaps Scott will want to say that perhaps the papal chancery produced this document without any input from the pope. And he may say that “Pope Stephen” really didn’t hand that document to Pepin in the course of his negotiations with him.

But really, I tend to think that such things would be types of things that the six year old would say. In the real world, leaders are responsible for the doings of their underlings. In the real world, a real leader would take responsibility for his actions, instead of shifting the blame somewhere else. And after all, the intention to deceive is what makes a thing a lie, not the fact that there may be some truth imparted for the purpose of making the lie more believable.

Desperately Seeking Certainty on the Canon of Scripture

A recent Called to Communion post states "we would not know, with the certainty of faith, which writings are sacred (in the relevant sense) apart from the supernatural testimony of the Church."

I certainly realize the thrust of CTC's post is not on canon certainty. However, I think it's interesting that whenever this issue is brought up, the entire Old Testament disappears, as if its existence doesn't matter. Here's a snippet I've posted before, but it brings the problem into focus:

Second Question from James White to Patrick Madrid:

White: Mr. Madrid, I've asked you this before. How did the Jewish man 50 years before Jesus Christ know that the books of 2 Chronicles and Isaiah were Scripture? Would you like me to repeat that?

Madrid: No, I think I got that. Thank you. The Jewish man of the 50 year period before Christ knew that that Scripture, 1 and 2 Chronicles, was inspired because the Old Testament church, the Old Testament people of God, regarded it as Scripture. It had the official pedigree of coming from a prophet and it had always been regarded that way. So he would draw not only on what his internal testimony was of what those books say, but he would also base what his position was on what the constant teaching of the Old Testament people was as well. As you remember, they regarded 1 and 2 Chronicles as Scripture. What I'd like to ask you, though, is, and whether we do it now or later, is your choice, later in the debate tonight—is you keep going back to this issue of how does he know, how does he know? Well, that's what I want to throw back at you. How do you know? Let's take it out of the Old Testament, Mr. White, and bring it back to the New Testament. And let's settle once and for all how you know that those 27 books belong in Scripture. How do you know that they are inspired? How do you know Matthew wrote Matthew? What is your authority to know that? If you reject the Catholic Church that's fine, that's your choice. I think you do so at your own peril. But if you reject the Catholic Church you have to furnish us with some other source upon which you base your testimony that those words in that Bible—in that 27 books of the Bible—are God's words.

Now, I don't want to give anyone the false impression as I think you were trying to do earlier that I believe that the Catholic Church rendered the Bible as inspired. You know that that is not the Catholic position. You know Mr. White that the Catholic Church does not claim to have made the Scriptures canonical simply because she chose those books. That is a red herring. It's false. The Catholic Church recognized the canon of Scripture. The Catholic Church received the word that was given to her by her husband, Jesus Christ, and as you well know, the Church hears and recognizes the voice of her husband. So it is the Church, Mr. White, I assert, who recognized [Moderator: "Time."] I have 24 seconds left...the Church recognizes her husband's voice and she preaches that to the world. You, if you reject the Church, have to fall back on something else. What'll it be? The Muratorian Fragment? The Church Fathers? This or that Greek scholar, perhaps? Your own personal interpretation? You have to tell us tonight what your authority is, Mr. White.

White: First of all, in sticking to the actual question that I asked, we are told that the Old Testament Church told the man that Isaiah and 2 Chronicles were Scripture. Now that's interesting, because, does that mean the Old Testament Church was infallible? That is the same Old Testament Church that taught the Korban rule, I think, yes, the same Old Testament Church. Oh, that's the same Old Testament Church that rejected the Apocryphal books and never believed they were Scripture but you say that they are Scripture and place someone under the anathema that doesn't believe those things. So I guess the Old Testament Church was fallible which means that you can have a fallible authority to tell you that something is Scripture, because it's very plain that the Lord Jesus held everyone responsible for reading Scripture. In fact, in Matthew chapter 22, he said to the Sadducees, "But about the resurrection of the dead, have you not read God said to you?" And Mr. Madrid keeps saying, "What's your authority?" Listen to what Jesus says. He says to these men, "Have you not read what God said to you?" If God speaks to you, you do not ask Him for His business card. God's Word is theopneustos, it's His speaking.

So since the ex-Reformers of CTC are working out their epistemological foundations, perhaps they could similarly answer this basic question: How did the Jewish man 50 years before Jesus Christ know that the books of 2 Chronicles and Isaiah were Scripture?''

Addendum
Based on the entirety of the CTC blog entry, perhaps we can speculate an answer. The author appears to be arguing at one point that believing in Romanist infallibility is a basic faith claim:

We are commanded to believe the Gospel. For many converts to the Catholic Church, ecclesial infallibility came to be understood as indispensable to the faith we had while not in full communion with the Catholic Church. Accepting infallibility was not so much a matter of longing for certainty as finally recognizing the grounds for the certainty of faith by which we had already begun to know the truth revealed by God in Christ Jesus.

Later though he also states "the Church that Christ founded, of the Church that comes from Christ and is irrevocably united to him, lends a specific kind of objectivity to the task of identifying her."

I think the only possible solution for the CTC gang would be that the Jewish man 50 years before Jesus Christ knew that the books of 2 Chronicles and Isaiah were Scripture because of his faith relationship to God, but he had this while objectively not being able to identify the church of his day as infallible. If this was so for the Jewish man 50 years before Jesus Christ, why not today as well?