dans la tradition

2011-12-04T10:39:00.000-08:00

We have to take into account the hostility of our age and get down deep into the currents that pull it into its position, if we are not going to swim with them without realizing it. And one of the most powerful among these current of thought is that of immanentism, which attacks the realities of faith not so much by a frontal denial as by an interior undermining. It claims to deepen them and to discover the real meaning of them by a process of interiorization; its guiding principles are those of a sacramentalism turned inside out. In its essentials, this system of thought stems equally from Hegel and Comte, and it is at present widespread. According to it, God is not "dead"; he is assimilated.... It is one step farther in the long process of immanentizing.... Thus man will acquire the disposition to enter into himself and prepare for his apotheosis, and thus, perhaps, "finally the religion of God made man will end up, by an inevitable dialectic, in an anthropology." ...

It is of course nonsense that an evolutionary system of this type should claim to reveal to us the inner depths of our own beliefs. Yet we should not be too quick to cry out in protest, as if there were never any danger of anything like that in ourselves. There are quite a few things of a kind to give the lie to any pretension of that sort; perhaps a certain almost exclusive emphasis on the Church's capacity to bring about social order and temporal well-being, or certain cloudy ideas concerning the "mystical body," or a kind of confused mysticism dazzled by the idea of a Body without the Head.... At any rate, we should not think that in order to avoid the danger it is always enough to cultivate the habit of putting forward the affirmations of the faith word for word unchanged; a shift in the center of interest can sometimes be the symptom of a doctrinal debilitation and hollowness more serious than far more obvious errors, which may be no more than innocent mistakes of vocabulary. No sincere Christian will go so far as to profess a "sociological pantheism"; but that is not to say that everyone will always, both in his emotional reactions and his practical conduct, be effectively strengthened in advance against the present tendency to absorb God into the human community. There is no call to exaggerate the danger, but it is as well to beon guard against it. So we must be careful always to manifest the Church and, first of all, always to understand her, inher total truth. We must make it our constant preoccupation, through her and inher, to listen to him whom she proclaims and to rise toward him for whom, solely, she exists.

Each of us is a member of the unique body, and each one of us, in his own small way, "is" the Church. The Church is meant to proclaim the Gospel through each one of us and to announce it to "every creature." She is meant to make its light enlighten the eyes of every man who comes into this world, like the candlestick, which is, simply, a flame-bearer. In each one of us she is meant to efface herself before her Lord, to be no more than a finger that points toward him, a voice that transmits his. Each of us, in his own way and his own degree, is meant to be a "servant of the Word." The priest's words before he reads the Gospel at Mass--"Dominus sit in corde meo et in labiis meis, ut digne et competentur annuntiem Evangelium suum!--should not be merely a ritual formula. If that desire does not inspire both our preaching and our church work at all times, we deserve the verdict wrongly passed by the Israelites whom Jeremiah denounced: "The prophets have spoken in the wind, and there was no word of God in them."

And if we are to announce the Gospel "worthily and in a seemly manner," the one thing above all others we must bear in mind is that we are unworthy of it and do not understand it--that the Gospel always condemns us.

--Henri de Lubac, The Splendor of the Church

on the hidden glory of mere paperwork

2011-11-16T04:27:00.000-08:00

I love being a Catholic; we moved, recently, and I was finally able yesterday to register with the parish--a simple matter, hardly worth a blog post, but I've felt sort of electrically charged since.

Merely a single two-sided form, the parish registration sheet requests basic information to help staff at the new parish fetch your records from the other parish. There's no 'doctrinal statement' to review and sign off on--none of the denominational peculiarities I remember from all my years as a protestant ecclesial consumer.

Instead, I used to be at St. James' parish; now I am at Holy Trinity... the same church. We have the same Catechism, we are led by the same bishop, we are unified with all the other apostolic successors throughout the world who are in communion with the Bishop of Rome. We share the same Eucharist. Whatever parish, we are part of a single organism characterized by St. Paul as the very pillar and ground of truth. What grace, impossible to fathom:

One Church, one Faith, one Hope.

In so many ways, becoming and being Catholic has been and is the most difficult experience of my life... a gift I treasure more than I can adequately express. Parish registration may be a clerical matter, but what matter--what exceptional matter!

Now and then

2011-11-05T02:14:00.000-07:00

It seems increasingly clear to me that later generations, looking back on the Protestant phenomenon, will wonder how it was that so many strong minds and well-intentioned hearts could fail to see the devastating Gnosticism inherent in their project.

We do this now when we can't imagine how so many members of the Church could have been deceived by Arianism. Such a thing seemed inconceivable to me as a Protestant.

Generations from now, they will ask the same question of us--how could we have been so blind?

Open our eyes, Lord

subject of affection

2011-03-23T18:26:00.000-07:00

Then it was that Hosea understood what had never been understood before him, the secret motives of God's jealousy. This jealousy was in fact the very reverse; it was the touchstone of a sentiment that one could never have imagined the Creator could have for his creature: God is in love with his creature, in love with something that draws its very life from him, was made by him, but has nothing to give him. However, it is not merely a matter of pity, compassion, or an inclination to save, but rather of loving.

— Dominique Barthélemy, OP, God and His Image

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Keith Mathison responds...

2011-02-16T06:28:00.000-08:00

In November 2009, Called to Communion posted a response to Keith Mathison's book titled The Shape of Sola Scriptura. That post can be read here [link], Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and the Question of Interpretive Authority.

Yesterday, Mathison made his response, as announced here [link]. I have not yet finished reading Mathison's response, but right out of the box there's a very serious problem:

I will argue that there is in fact a real principled difference between sola scriptura and solo scriptura with respect to the holder of ultimate interpretive authority. I will suggest that the difference becomes invisible only when one begins by assuming the correctness of the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Church.

It is not true that the only people who fail to recognize a real principled difference between sola and solo scriptura are Latin-rite Catholics (or Catholics of any rite whatsoever). As David Meyer points out here [link], a number of people who fail to see any real principled difference between sola and solo scriptura are, in fact, Protestants who reject without hesitation Catholic teaching.

I was a Protestant (raised in an anti-Catholic environment, fully assuming that Catholicism was both false and nefarious) when I saw quite clearly that the Protestant claims backing sola over solo scriptura fail. They don't fail for lack of nuance, either. They simply fail, as the Called to Communion post very carefully details. Sola scriptura is an article of faith with no principled difference from solo scriptura.

There's more to say, obviously, but let's finish reading Mathison first.

Listening

2011-01-27T18:36:00.000-08:00

"Freedom requires keen listening, awareness of the limits of individual methods, and the full seriousness of ratio." —Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church

Does God see things truly as they are?

2011-01-24T06:33:00.000-08:00

I dug that out of the comments (no. 115) under the Called to Communion blog post titled Does the Bible Teach Sola Fide? Here's what Bryan says about the video:

Here’s an example that, from a Catholic point of view, is a deeply flawed conception of Final Judgment... “Union with Christ,” in this view, amounts to a certain pre-arranged deal in which Christ steps in for you at the Judgment Seat, and takes your place. (In this way, grace does not build on nature but displaces nature, making nature irrelevant.) Jesus essentially does what cheating students do during an exam. He takes the test for you. God the Father looks at you as if you were Jesus, even though you are not, and looks at Jesus as if He were you, even though He is not. In the nominalistic imputation model, the gospel turns into a cosmic loophole, because there is no point in Christ taking your place before the Judge (who is Christ). We already know that Christ is perfect. And we know that you are not Christ. (Otherwise, you yourself could ‘step on the scale’, and satisfy the requirement for heaven.) So what is really going on (in this theology) is that Christians are bypassing the Final Judgment. The more honest approach is just to say, “All Christians don’t have to go through Judgment; you simply go on in.” (Again, in such a case, grace would destroy nature.) So union with Christ, in this view, amounts to a pre-arranged deal regarding how God is going to treat us; it does not need to posit any change within the individual, ever. If during this present life God can treat sinful people as though they are righteous, and at the Judgment He can treat sinful people as though they are righteous, then He can do so for eternity. Therefore, given this notion, people in heaven don’t need to be righteous; God could, in principle, eternally keep treating them as though they are Jesus, while they remain sinful. Union with Christ is thus a kind of divine self-deception in which God agrees to treat the elect as if they were Christ, even though they are not righteous. This is still, nonetheless, legal fiction. For this reason, merely replacing the term ‘imputation’ with the term ‘union with Christ’, so long as both are conceived of nominalistically, don’t solve the problem. It just puts a different label on it.

Unity Octave: 18-25 January

2011-01-17T10:50:00.000-08:00

The importance of the number seven is somewhat famous in Christianity. But 18-25 January, we're all celebrating eight—ie, the Unity Octave, or the Chair of Unity Octave, approved as a Catholic devotion by Pope Benedict XV in 1916 and adopted by the Catholic hierarchy of the United States for all dioceses in 1921. You can read more about it at the following link: [link]

What's it for, this 'Unity Octave'?

In short, it's eight days of prayer for Christian unity—that Christians on planet earth will realize, truly, the unity of the one Church founded by Jesus Christ. "Christ did not found her as a party," wrote Heinrich Denifle in 1904, "but as a unity, as the one true Church destined to bring all nations to unity in the one faith, the one doctrine, the one divine service, the one religion of Christ."

But I'm not Catholic—this obviously isn't for me.

But it wasn't a Catholic who came up with the Unity Octave in the first place; it was an Episcopal priest, the Rev. Lewis Thomas Wattson, who inaugurated the octave in 1908, after having been profoundly affected by John 17.

There, Jesus prays that they [ie, believers, Christians] all may be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us... that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one.

For compelling testimony to the Church's essential unity and visibility within the Catholic Communion, please set aside some time to read the following articles at Called to Communion (and feel free to discuss them here):

Christ Founded a Visible Church

Ecclesial Deism (which has a companion podcast here [link])

Luther: in his own words

2010-12-20T14:15:00.000-08:00

Here's an ongoing compilation of quotations from Luther, organized by topic and updated as time permits.

Unless otherwise noted, all quotations can be found in the Cornell digital reproduction of Luther and Lutherdom by Heinrich Seuse Denifle (1844–1905).

The book is available (with free shipping) from Amazon here [link]. To understand Denifle's place in Luther studies, see the Catholic Encyclopedia entry here [link].

I'll link to sources, provide commentary, and grow the quotation list over time.

Luther on the Catholic Church and Catholics...

"All Popedom is fallen into hell and condemned to the same."

"Everything [is] permissible against the insidiousness and wickedness of Popedom, for the salvation of one's soul."

...on Faith
1522 "No work is evil enough to be able to damn a man (only) disbelief damns us."

...on Marriage
1522 "Now as I may eat, drink, sleep, walk, ride, buy, speak, and traffic with a heathen, Jew, Turk, or heretic, so likewise may I marry one and stay married with him. And give no heed to the fool-laws which forbid the like." [323]

1523 "Though it happened that one, two, a hundred, and thousand and even more councils decreed that the clergy might marry, ... I would look through my fingers and entrust God’s grace to him who all his life had one, two, or three whores, rather than to him who would take a woman to wife after such a council decree and otherwise, apart from this decree, dared not take any. And (if I were) in God’s place, I would command and council all, that no one should take a wife in virtue of such a decree on pain of losing his soul’s salvation..." [318]

1523 "[A]ll outer things are free before God and a Christian can use them as he will; he may accept them or let them pass. And Paul adds: ‘with God,’ i.e., as much as matters between you and God. For you render no service to God because you marry or stay single, become a servant, free, this or that, or eat this or that; again, you do Him no annoyance nor sin if you omit or put off one of those things. Finally, you do not owe it to God to do anything but to believe and confess (Him). In all other things he sets you unbound and free, so that you may do as you will, without any peril to conscience; nay, more, so that, on His own account, He asked no questions whether you let your wife go, ran from the Lord, and kept no covenant. For what is it to Him that you do or do not do such things... But because you are thereby bound to your neighbor, to whom you have come to belong, God does not wish through anyone’s liberty to take what is his, but He wants it to be kept for your neighbor. For, although God does not consider it on His own behalf, He does consider it on behalf of your neighbor. That is what He means in saying: ‘with God,’ just as though he wanted to say: ‘with man or with your neighbor I do not set you free; for I do not wish to take from him what is his, until he himself also sets you free. But with me you are free (and) unbound and you cannot in anything ruin that, whether you leave or keep what is external.’ ... It is nothing to God that a man leaves his wife, for the body is not bound to God, but is set free by Him in all external things, and belongs to God only interiorly by faith..." [321-22]

...on Temptation
1530 "As soon as the devil vexes you with those [melancholy] thoughts, seek immediately the company of people, or drink harder, joke, make fun or get jolly. At times one has to drink more copiously, jest, play the fool, and commit some sin or another out of hatred or contempt of the devil, so that we leave him no room to create a conscience in us on the least things, otherwise we are beaten, if we wish too anxiously to make provision lest we sin. Therefore, if the devil says: ‘drink not,’ answer him: ‘precisely because you forbid it, will I particularly drink, yes, and all the more copiously.’ Thus must one always do the opposite of what the devil forbids... What else do you think were the reason why I drink so much harder, prate the more loosely, gormandize the more frequently, if not to mock and vex the devil who set about mocking and vexing me? Oh, if only I could point out something particular about sin, merely to mock the devil, so that he might be aware that I recognize no sin and am not conscious of any! The entire decalogue is wholly to be dismissed from sight and mind by us, whom the devil so threatens and vexes." [317-18]

...on Priests and Nuns
1537 "Nuns are so called from a Germanism*: for that is what castrated sows are denominated, as monks from horses (i.e., castrated ones). But they are not yet healed, have just as much to wear breeches as other folks." [330; cf note 982]

[*In fact, the term ‘monk’, ‘monachus’, comes from the Greek monachos, ‘living alone’; Denifle traces ‘nun’ to convent on the island of Tabennae in the Nile, Egypt, founded in the fourth century, saying “'nonna' in the language of the land meant 'lady', just as 'nonnus' meant 'sir'.” (p331)

Unabridged Merriam-Webster confirms the word ‘nun’ is in no way a Germanism but is Late Latin understood to mean ‘nun’ or ‘child’s nurse’ with a similar origin as ‘nanna’ or ‘nenna’, ie ‘a female relative’, and variations of the word appear in Welsh, Albanian, Russian; Sanskrit = ‘nana’, meaning ‘mother’ or ‘little mother’.]

For love of pomp

2010-12-16T10:59:00.000-08:00

The very fact that pompous is now used only in a bad sense measures the degree to which we have lost the old idea of 'solemnity'. To recover it you must think of a court ball, or a coronation, or a victory march, as these things appear to people who enjoy them; in an age when every one puts on his oldest clothes to be happy in, you must re-awake the simpler state of mind in which people put on gold and scarlet to be happy in. Above all, you must be rid of the hideous idea, fruit of a wide-spread inferiority complex, that pomp, on the proper occasions, has any connection with vanity or self-conceit. A celebrant approaching the altar, a princess led out by a king to dance a minuet, a general officer on a ceremonial parade, a major-domo preceding the boar's head at a Christmas feast—all these wear unusual clothes and move with calculated dignity. This does not mean that they are vain, but that they are obedient; they are obeying the hoc age which presides over every solemnity. The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for everyone else the proper pleasure of ritual.

— CS Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost

Authoritarian subjectivism

2010-12-13T18:38:00.000-08:00

Les confessions de foi réformées sont extrêmement caractéristiques déjà de ce subjectivisme autoritaire substitué dès le début, en fait, à l'autorité de Dieu qu'on prétendait restaurer... ces confessions, qui étaient autant d'efforts pour imposer dans tout son détail une vue de plus en plus particularisée du christianisme, ont eu comme conséquence prévisible l'éclatement même de l'Église réformée qu'elles vasaient à unifier.

So writes Louis Bouyer in his very personal work titled Du Protestantisme À L'Église translated in the mid 1950s as The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism.

I'm meditating on his phrase authoritarian subjectivism: He's saying that Protestantism understands itself to have restored the authority of God to men's lives (and thus, to their Christian ministries), and he's deeply sympathetic. After all, he was himself a Lutheran minister. In the final analysis, however, what comes to play such a powerful role in such ministries is not the authority of God but the authority of selves, of individuals; hence, authoritarian subjectivism.

That was hard for me to accept when I first read it, but the weight of its truth eventually collapsed on me. The paragraph ends with a painful recognition of the fracture and dislocation that defines Protestantism: Had the authority of God been, as it were, restored to men, we would expect to see unity. Instead, Protestantism imposes an increasingly more particularized view of Christianity—the Christianity of James White, for example, or Rod Parsley, Joseph Prince, Andy Stanley, Brian McLaren, Joyce Meyer, NT Wright, or Doug Wilson—each view claiming as strengths of their ministry what others list among the challenges or weaknesses they themselves have overcome (always by God's grace).

In a recent post linked [here], inspired by the Church's celebration of the Immaculate Conception, James White would have you believe that Taylor Marshall is a prideful, lying idolater and apostate who is ignorant both of the Protestantism he quit and the false Romanism he now embraces. Leave aside the studied acerbity of Dr White's personal attack and reason with me, instead, about the basis of Dr White's supposed authority.

It would seem from reading Bouyer that no such basis exists—that, in fact, Dr White's blog is authoritarian subjectivism in action. Dr White, on the contrary, believes himself to be speaking on behalf of "the authors of Scripture," "Biblical Truth," and "historical reality"—his posture is magisterial. But do you really believe that Dr White's interpretations of Scripture, history, and the Church Fathers are true? Do you believe that Dr White's interpretations constitute authentic Christianity?

I don't either. Protestants know instinctively that they have no magisterial authority by which theological questions are infallibly resolved. Instead, Protestantism posits an infallible source, then resists (often subconsciously) a thorough working out of the logical conclusions. Dr White insists that his interpretations carry the awesome weight of "Biblical Truth," but we have to face the facts: No theological question has been infallibly resolved in Protestant theology. An infallible source must necessarily be interpreted fallibly by human beings; otherwise, a list of infallible interpretations (ie, Dogmas, Truths) would exist alongside the infallible source.

Why would that matter? Well, it would mean that interpretations of men like James White, once elevated or otherwise invested with magisterial authority, could not be challenged by the Scripture from which they were derived—a net loss in Scripture's strength. You'll think, perhaps, I'm only saying that because I'm Catholic. But in fact, I'm paraphrasing John Frame. You can read his larger quotation (from which I'm borrowing) by following this link [here]. In order to safeguard the ultimate authority of the Book, the Scripture, Protestants must never presume to define an irreformable doctrine. Of course, the more straightforward way to say that is all Protestant doctrine is reformable.

David Anders: Journey Home

2010-12-10T10:34:00.000-08:00

The Bible and the Church

2010-12-10T08:16:00.000-08:00

Immaculate Conception, December 8

2010-12-08T09:01:00.000-08:00

Celebrating the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, we're asking for Mary's intercession on behalf of friends and family.

I grew up believing that veneration of Mary diminishes worship of Christ: I understood veneration to be subtraction. In his book titled The Catholic Perspective on Paul, Taylor Marshall puts it this way,

Let me boldly suggest that all theological misunderstandings regarding the Catholic Faith can be attributed to the adoption of "zero-sum theology." By "zero-sum theology," I mean that theological framework that views salvation, grace, life, and love as a pie with only so many pieces. Christ either gets all pieces or loses the remaining pieces to Mary, saints, sacraments, priests, popes, etc. Naturally, Christ as God should receive all the pieces—not merely some of the pieces. He is the whole salvation, right?

He is indeed the whole of salvation, as Taylor goes on to explain. But it simply doesn't follow that because Christ is himself the whole of salvation everything else is, necessarily, a threat and potential distraction. Notice that the Protestant critique is a negative formulation: "Christocentric" is understood in terms of exclusion so that Christ is magnified only in proportion to the number of things he is allowed to displace. You're taught that Mary, saints, popes—even wives, husbands, children, occupations—in short, everything is in competition with Christ.

But this is wrong. Nothing can compete with Christ.

I recently listened to Christopher West speak about the Theology of the Body, and his lecture was a beautiful demonstration of why the negative (subtraction, exclusion) model impoverishes Christianity. God, though He was quite able to reveal Himself to humanity in any way He pleased, chose not to reveal Himself merely to spirits or minds like a kind of enlightenment but, instead, with Mary's Fiat, was conceived in the person of the Woman, taking on flesh.

This is the key, I think, to healing the often bitter misunderstandings of the Catholic Faith, especially the dogmas of the Church that deal with contraception, divorce, and abortion. I'm saying the key is right in front of us in this season of Advent, particularly in today's solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary: the Mother of God is the key, Holy Seat of Wisdom within whose body Wisdom was conceived in faith, by grace, "Let it be done to me according to thy word."

That's the gospel, right there, and not in spite of the Woman—as if the reality of the gospel is found essentially in the idea or concept of "incarnation" apart from any Jewish girl who might accidentally have been close by—no, but in her, in her very body, in her flesh, her whole person. That's also a brilliant reflection of the hope we have been promised, the hope for which we long—God I believe you; I confess my faith in you; I open my heart to receive you into my whole person.

Protestantism harbors a deep and beautiful desire for "incarnational" living, but that desire is continually frustrated by Protestantism's deep-seated suspicion of nature, of bodies, another of its purely negative formulations, seeing in Mary's flesh a threat to Christ. But in reality, nothing could be further from the truth: God chose to redeem humanity not in spite of Mary but in the Second Person of the Trinity conceived precisely in her, in the womb of her body.

In the Protestant rejection of Immaculate Conception, the Gnostic and Docetic temptations reemerge and, though cloaked in the well-intentioned language of zero-sum Christocentrism, threaten to reduce Christianity to spiritualism. By confessing Immaculate Conception, the Church continues to affirm the Faith once for all delivered to the saints.

"Let it be done to me according to thy word": May Jesus Christ be praised!

David Anders on The Journey Home, Tonight

2010-12-06T10:52:00.000-08:00

Tonight, 8 pm EST, Dr. David Anders will be a guest on Marcus Grodi's The Journey Home! Check your cable/Dish, but even if you miss the live show, you can still get the interview via the audio/video online library linked [here].

Who is David Anders?

You can read his article titled How John Calvin made me a Catholic at CalledToCommunion.com for more information. In addition, watch this outstanding interview conducted by Fr. Mitch Pacwa:

The Catholic Perspective on Paul

2010-11-24T15:38:00.000-08:00

Thank you, Taylor.

You can buy the book here, at Amazon.

Sola Scriptura: More Dialogue

2010-11-15T11:43:00.000-08:00

In a special issue of Modern Reformation [here], Bryan Cross interacts with Michael Horton on the subject of sola scriptura. Today Bryan published what Modern Reformation failed to allow, namely, Bryan's response to Michael Horton's final say in the exchange.

As always, Bryan's response is spot on deft, systematically outlining essential components of the disagreement and tactfully illuminating the crucial Protestant errors. I'll summarize when time allows. In the meantime, you can read Michael Horton's final exchange and Bryan's response at Called to Communion [here].

Thank you, Bryan.

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc

2010-10-25T09:44:00.000-07:00

The Online Books Page for Belloc can be found here:
[Linkout]

Here's the text of The Catholic Church and History, c.1929:
[linkout]

No pope, no thank you, no way, no how, just no

2010-10-20T11:41:00.000-07:00

K. Doran on anti-pope strategy:

When in doubt, say the papacy is not found in antiquity. But then we find the papacy in antiquity. When in further doubt, say the “medieval” papacy is not found in antiquity. But then we find arrogant popes wielding worldwide doctrinal authority in antiquity. When in even further doubt, say that the “infallible” “medieval” “renaissance” or “RCC” papacy is not found in antiquity. But then we find people announcing that they will not believe a doctrine unless the pope rules that they can, and other people stopping believing in a doctrine when the pope rules that they can’t, and the doctrines never being changed because of the restriction of prior papal precedent, which are exactly the relevant outcomes of infallbility even if the word doesn’t get used. Thus, when in final doubt, say that the majority of these pro-papal quotes are from western sources, so this means that they were wrong. And yet, in spite of the fact that the conclusion doesn’t follow, it is still useful to meet that argument where it is, and therefore we point out that there are so many pro-papal eastern quotes as well.

I think that captures very well the frustration many of us feel when it comes to pope-denial. You want to say, Look, it's obvious your problem's not with the pope because you're positively committed to denial. Can we talk about that instead—your committed philosophical skepticism?

Doran concludes,

There were popes in antiquity. They wielded worldwide doctrinal authority. Bishops who didn’t sign their decrees were removed from their sees and replaced. Papal precedent was considered binding on later popes. People spoke of popes as divine oracles. There was a whole lotta pope going on in antiquity. So if you want do what the ancients did, get yourself into a conversation with the current Pope, whose name is Benedict XVI. He doesn’t bite, and neither does being Catholic. In fact its great, and it doesn’t involve hating anyone else, and its full of joy.

[Source]

Is Scripture Sufficient?

2010-10-16T07:14:00.000-07:00

Here's the recent Called to Communion post on the material/formal sufficiency of Scripture: [linkout]

The Bible itself demonstrates that Scripture is not formally sufficient.

Consider Acts 15: here are two positions, mutually exclusive, between which people have to choose.

According to the believers “from Judea,” converts to the Faith must be “circumcised according to the custom of Moses.” On the contrary, Paul and Barnabas maintain that no such “custom of Moses” is required of converts. Which is it?

We have disagreements among Christians today which reflect the same dilemma: Do converts have to be baptized or is baptism just surplus symbolism? Is the gospel properly defined as the good news that in Christ all are free of any obligation to be righteous, or is it instead that we have available in Christ both the power to please God and the forgiveness needed for our failures? There are many such crucial questions dividing Christians today, just as there was in Paul's era.

Note in Acts 15 that Paul and Barnabas had much “dissension and debate” with these believers “from Judea” with whom they profoundly disagreed. You can imagine both sides digging earnestly through the Scripture, grounding their arguments in various proof texts. You can imagine them appealing then, as Christians still do today, to what they’ve learned from the interior testimony of the Holy Spirit—their intimate, personal relationship with God.

But in the final analysis, no matter how Scriptural, no matter how cogent, the dissension and debate put up by Paul and Barnabas was insufficient to settle the matter. As most people are willing today to admit, Scripture can be used to support opposite though perfectly reasonable claims. So how should we resolve crucial matters of disagreement?

Today, Christians in opposing camps can simply ‘break’ with their church and start a new church. Whatever the disagreement—whether paedobaptism, Federal Vision, and so on—Christians on both sides of any issue assume that a final, authoritative decision about such matters can only come from spiritual insight or illumination that comes to the individual consciousness primarily from Bible study and prayer. Hence, your church splits, so you pray about which group you should follow.

But in the Acts 15 episode, Scripture and its interpretation, prayer and private illumination, only help clarify differences between the two groups. For all their dissension and debate, both the “men from Judea” and Paul and Barnabas agree to go where they can get a definitive answer, that is, they agree to ask the Church at Jerusalem. Everyone understood then what many Christians today no longer believe, that there is an authority to whom Christians should appeal—there is a pillar and foundation of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15)—namely, the Church (see the article titled Why Protestantism has no "visible catholic Church" [linkout]).

In the case of Acts 15, we know what that decision was and how it was reached; the more interesting thing for me to note, especially when I was Protestant, was verse 4 of chapter 16:

As they [ie, Paul, Silas, and Timothy] went on their way through the cities, they delivered to them [ie, the people of those cities] for observance the decisions which had been reached by the apostles and elders who were at Jerusalem.

For Paul, the decisions of those men of the Church at Jerusalem was not in competition with Scripture; nor did Paul believe himself to be slighting Scripture by teaching people to order their faith by the decisions of mere men. Those men, after all, had been chosen by Jesus, who gave them authority in his own name to make decisions that carried the force of law, as it were.

In other words, because those men were so appointed as leaders of Christ’s Church, and because they would themselves be led and directed by the Holy Spirit, their interpretations of Scripture (upon which their decisions were based) do truly reflect the Revelation intended by God in Scripture. This, of course, is exactly what the Catholic Faith continues to teach to this day.

God has provided humankind with holy and infallible Scripture and He has provided, along with that Scripture, a commensurate interpretive authority, one capable of definitively interpreting that infallible Scripture. As it was in Paul's day so it is today: Christianity is not essentially a faith split apart by opinions in competition with one another.

There is plenty of room for opinion; however, when it comes to crucial questions about the content of the faith—questions like whether baptism is real or circumcision necessary—we deliberately eschew opinion and seek, instead, the definitive Revelation of God to His Church. Like Paul, we seek the one mouth of the Church as that source of truth by which we should order our faith.

Of course you could, in Paul’s day, say something similar to what’s said today against the Church: you could have responded to Paul, “Oh sure, you tell me to follow what mere men say in Jerusalem, and that’s well and good, but I have a personal relationship with God through Christ, and I have the Scripture, and I think your men in Jerusalem have misinterpreted the verses they cite.”

But the error in that position is the same today as it was in Paul’s day: Scripture + prayer + interpretation yields an honest opinion, and personal opinion, no matter how honest, is incapable of settling the most important disputes about God’s intended Revelation, as Acts 15 clearly shows. Despite his honest Scripture-based debate, Paul is unable to close the crucial question about circumcision: he needed then what we still need today: the decisions of the one, holy, and apostolic Church. After those are given, Paul goes about teaching the decisions (of the Church) for what they still are today—accurate, truthful reflections of God’s intended Revelation for all men.

God and science

2010-09-15T13:49:00.000-07:00

And [this linkout]: William Carroll discusses Stephen Hawking's Creation Confusion via The Witherspoon Institute Public Disclosure website.

Hannity vs. The Church

2010-09-10T23:00:00.000-07:00

It's years old now, but for the first time I bumped into this FOX News exchange between Sean Hannity and Fr Euteneuer:

FOX News contributor Fr Jonathan Morris saw the broadcast and intervened with an Open Letter to Sean Hannity [linkout] that strikes me as, well, poorly focused (if well intentioned). Fr Jonathan writes,

"As I watched a fellow Catholic priest [ie, Fr Euteneuer] spar with you... I hung my head in shame and sadness. My colleague in religion [ie, Fr Euteneuer]... used the public airways and Internet to call you a heretic and hypocrite [...]. I want you and your viewers to know, publicly, that [...] I believe this good priest [...] exercised, on this occasion, shockingly poor judgment [....] his willingness to give his personal opinion about your status within the Church [was] inappropriate and ill-considered, to say the least."

On the contrary, Fr Euteneuer makes a number of crucial points to which Sean Hannity responds, weakly, with platitude and heresy. For example, Fr Euteneuer contrasts the Church's clear teaching against the culture of death with Hannity's "superficial presentation" of the abortion issue. Then, as if to confirm the charge of superficiality, Hannity responds by quoting Matthew 7:1, Judge not, that you be not judged:

"Judge not lest you be judged, Reverend, uh, maybe you oughta spend a little bit more time on the fact that our Church covered up one of the wuh—excuse me—that covered up one of the worst sex scandals... and, you know, the fact that public people after that are willing to still be Catholic is something you oughta be applauding considering the level of corruption at the highest levels of the Church which was frankly embarrassing to every person."

Once you're able finally (and with God's grace) to move past the shock (horror and scandal) of a self-identified Catholic speaking like that to one of the Church's reverend fathers, you can see that Hannity's misunderstanding (at least in 2007) both of the Church and the issues cited is quite deep, almost certainly fatal. I don't know how someone could think, simultaneously, that

The Church, at every institutional level, is corrupt.
The Church, at once our mother and the mystical body of our Lord, truly presents Christ (his real presence, "This is Jesus") in the Eucharist validly consecrated by a real priest.
The Church is truly lucky to have me and would do well to stroke me.

Unless, of course, one were to posit an invisible or otherwise abstract "church" not necessarily present in an institutional hierarchy; but that "church" already has a name: Protestantism.

Setting aside the fact that the so-called "sex scandals" have nothing to do with the topic he's supposed to be discussing; setting aside also Hannity's rather notorious talent for passing judgment on the actions and motivations of political opponents; the fact is that Matthew 7:1 can't possibly mean what Hannity seems to believe, that Christ forbids his followers (his sheep, to say nothing of his very shepherds) to exercise critical discernment and hold one another accountable to the truth.

Read the rest of chapter 7; indeed, read the whole book and note the number of times critical discernment is modeled, encouraged, or explicitly commanded. The New Testament is not unclear about our responsibility to our brothers and sisters, which entails that we not oppose witnessing to the truth of the Church or correction with regard to dogma to fraternity or charity. Correction is charity.

Consider this homily:

Also, analysis at Sancte Pater [linkout] has it right, I think:

"The internecine battle within our own Church is between those who believe in objective right and wrong and those who believe that they, individually, are the arbiters of right and wrong."

Nor is the Church refuted by Hannity's false dilemma: We do not have to choose between contraception and abortion. Human beings have another way, the same way to which the Church has been calling us from the beginning. It's evident from his frustration that Hannity (at least in 2007) can't imagine a third way; for him there are only two unfortunate possibilities that the Church, and this Fr Euteneuer, refuse to face.

It's profoundly sad, Catholics thinking the Church should thank them for their willingness to be Catholic by giving them the freedom to decide for themselves what Catholicism will mean, what it should look like. Buried deep in that outlook is the seed of skepticism, the hope of ambiguity, and the law thou shalt not judge me.

In his Open Letter to Sean Hannity, Fr Jonathan closed, in part, with this:

"When we believe we have discovered truth and, therefore, we believe others are wrong—a sign of cultivated intelligence, not pride—we must reject the temptation to throw civility to the wind. Being right always didn't ever inspire Jesus to jeopardize people's reputation or dignity. It went against his very nature, and it should go against ours too. Sometimes he spoke harshly, but he always spoke in love, and he made sure people knew it."

I believe that's profound, and I want to hear truly what Fr Jonathan is saying. On the other hand, I can't help wondering why the Open Letter fails to address any of the actual issues discussed and claims made. Fr Jonathan's Open Letter to Sean Hannity leaves me with the distinct impression that Hannity was abused (though he wasn't) and Fr Euteneuer was too passionate about his own personal opinions (though he isn't). Love can sometimes be presented as if it were independent of the facts (truth, or dogma); I don't think that's right, though. I suspect that the facts (truth, or dogma) provide the conditions necessary for love.

I think the immediate danger evinced by this exchange between Fr Euteneuer and Sean Hannity is not that religious leaders (and religious people like Fr Euteneuer) are too harsh in their defense of what they believe to be Church dogma; that the Fr Euteneuers of the world might—unless they're more careful—damage someone's reputation and dignity by taking too bold a stand for the Church against this culture that assails her.

Perhaps I'm too old fashioned. Or just too old. But I suspect the immediate danger runs in the opposite direction—that people, having absorbed the lie that "infallibility" and "magisterium" are only eloquent substitutes for petty "dictatorship," will refuse correction precisely because they value their ideas, reputations, and dignity more than truth.

Lord, open our ears.

God in a box

2010-09-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

Recently, a self-professed Protestant 'teaparty activist' who has always believed in objective truth—has always been skeptical of anything that might tempt 'orthodox' Protestants to nuance or otherwise compromise their fundamentals—told me that Glenn Beck's Mormonism is problematic only for those Christians "who put God in a box." The broader point was something like this:

Believers need to wake up to the liberal agenda that's hell-bent on transforming America into a Godless, socialist dictatorship; we must unite in our faith and build on that foundation a political movement that will return our country to the sound principles upon which it was founded.

Setting aside the politics, I was interested to know what it means for Mormons and Presbyterians to unite in their faith since... well... the doctrines of their respective faiths appear to be mutually exclusive. That's when the crucial thing emerged in our conversation: Glen Beck's Mormonism is problematic only for those Christians who put God in a box.

What does it mean to put God in a box? Apparently it means that some Christians either fail to recognize or manage to forget the essential (the incomprehensibly huge) difference between God the Creator and mere creatures who presume to speak on His behalf. When Christians set about the ugly business of judging Beck and concluding that his Mormonism makes his 'Christianity' illegitimate, they pretend to be God (or act as if they're authorized to speak infallibly on His behalf). God, you see, is Reality; we Christians must never think our creaturely theological speculation = Reality.

GOD | [what mere men think about Him]

She doesn't (yet) intend to deny the basic idea that theological thoughts of mere men can align truly with their Object. She still believes in 'objective truth'—that the term 'orthodoxy', for example, faithfully refers to theological content or propositional truth that we can certainly know. But it's unclear, for now, how she can defend 'objective truth' after affirming the radical difference between the Reality of the Creator God and the mere speculation of created men. At the very least, wouldn't we have to say that 'objective truth' among men doesn't follow from a principle of radical separation?

After all, once you've embraced the principle that God, precisely because he is God, is always already beyond or above or outside the theological reflections of mere men, you really have thrown a cloud of suspicion over anything claiming to be 'doctrine' (or 'objective truth' or 'orthodoxy'). Whatever your intentions, you've just committed yourself to a 'Christianity' predicated on 'objective truth' that isn't really objective, after all, and is true only in the sense that it's the best we (totally depraved) creatures can muster this side of heaven. Truth in this 'Christianity' must be affirmed as truly human, which is to say contingent on our total depravity, contaminated by it—compromised.

And that's a pretty serious problem, I think, because truth, in that scenario, simply means opinion.

Of course, as Catholics we don't believe that, and Louis Bouyer writes brilliantly about this problem in his book titled The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism (cf. Chapter VII). If Catholic or Protestant is uncomfortable with what seems to be a growing 'Christian' retreat from a firm (and coherent) stand on truth as the Church has always understood it, then I highly recommend reading Bouyer [linkout to publisher].

St Lawrence, ora pro nobis

2010-08-10T10:04:00.001-07:00

Today, in the year 2010, I'm celebrating with the Church St Lawrence, Deacon and Martyr.

The Office of Readings (from the Hours) includes an excerpt from a sermon (Sermo 304, 1-4: PL 38, 1395-1397) by St Augustine that, as Father Z reports, was probably delivered in Hippo Regius in 417.

From Hippo to Atlanta, that's almost 1,600 years.

Here's the excerpt from St Augustine:

The Roman Church commends to us today the anniversary of the triumph of Saint Lawrence. For on this day he trod the furious pagan world underfoot and flung aside its allurements, and so gained victory over Satan’s attack on his faith.

As you have often heard, Lawrence was a deacon of the Church at Rome. There he ministered the sacred blood of Christ; there for the sake of Christ’s name he poured out his own blood. Saint John the apostle was evidently teaching us about the mystery of the Lord’s supper when he wrote: “Just as Christ laid down his life for us, so we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” My brethren, Lawrence understood this and, understanding, he acted on it. Just as he had partaken of a gift of self at the table of the Lord, so he prepared to offer such a gift. In his life he loved Christ; in his death he followed in his footsteps.

Brethren, we too must imitate Christ if we truly love him. We shall not be able to render better return on that love than by modeling our lives on his. “Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow in his steps.” In saying this the apostle Peter seems to have understood that Christ suffered only for those who follow in his steps, in the sense that Christ’s passion is of no avail to those who do not. The holy martyrs followed Christ even to shedding their life’s blood, even to reproducing the very likeness of his passion. They followed him, but not they alone. It is not true that the bridge was broken after the martyrs crossed; nor is it true that after they had drunk from it, the fountain of eternal life dried up.

I tell you again and again my brethren, that in the Lord’s gardenare to be found not only the roses of his martyrs. In it there are also the lilies of the virgins, the ivy of the wedded couples, and the violets of the widows. On no account may any class of people despair, thinking that God has not called them. Christ suffered for all. What the Scriptures say of him is true: “He desires all men to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth.”

Let us understand, then, how a Christian must follow Christ even though he does not shed his blood for him, and his faith is not called upon to undergo the great test of the martyr’s sufferings. The apostle Paul says of Christ our Lord: “Though he was in the form of God he did not consider equality with God a prize to be clung to.” How unrivaled his majesty! “But he emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave, made in the likeness of men, and presenting himself in human form.” How deep his humility!

Christ humbled himself. Christian, that is what you must make your own. Christ became obedient. How is it that you are proud? When this humbling experience was completed and death itself lay conquered, Christ ascended into heaven. Let us follow him there, for we hear Paul saying: “If you have been raised with Christ, you must lift your thoughts on high, where Christ now sits at the right hand of God.”

And the Responsory:

Blessed Lawrence cried out:
I worship my God
and serve only him.
—So I do not fear your torture.

God is my rock; I take refuge in him.
—So I do not fear your torture.

Praised be Jesus Christ!

Derrida: nihilism?

2010-08-09T08:00:00.000-07:00

The new theory asserts that man lives in a prison house of language that has no relation to reality. It seems to be suggested, or at least buttressed, by a few passages in Nietzche where, for example, he speaks of truth as a "mobile marching army of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms..., illusions of which one has forgotten that they are illusions," and by an interpretation of the Cours de linguistique générale of Ferdinand de Saussure, who considered the referential function of language irrelevant for a science of linguistics but who did not doubt language's relation to experience and reality. In its extreme formulation, which looks for the abolition of man, denies the self, and sees language as a free-floating system of signs, the theory leads to total skepticism and ultimately to nihilism. This accusation is not simply an invention of the detractors of "deconstructionism," as it is called. It has been expressly confirmed by its practitioners: by J. Hillis Miller writing in Critical Inquiry in 1977; by Paul de Man, who in Blindness and Insight elaborates in gloomy existentialist terms the view that poetry names the void, asserts itself as "pure nothingness"; and by Jacques Derrida, who describes the new theory as a "Neitzschean affirmation, that is, the joyous affirmation of the play of the world, ... a world of signs without fault, without truth, and without origin... beyond man and humanism."

The view that there is "nothing outside of text," that every text refers or defers only to another text, ignores that texts... have actually shaped the lives of men and thus the course of history. Denying the self and minimizing the perceptual life of man, the theory deliberately refuses to acknowledge that the relation of mind and world is more basic than language.
—René Wellek, "Destroying Literary Studies" in Theory's Empire

I bumped into some items of interest while mulling over Eugene Peterson's citation of Derrida in Eat This Book, and I want to address, over time, as many of them as I can (if only in passing).

First up is James K.A. Smith's eulogy of Derrida from October 2004, available at Christianity Today [here], wherein he chastises those critics who "conclude from Derrida's preoccupation with death that deconstruction is simply the next nihilism."

I generally agree with Smith's sentiment—but I've quoted Wellek above to demonstrate that the association of Derrida with nihilism can't be waved off with a rhetorical gesture. Smith appears to count the nihilism charge among "lies—yes,lies—about Derrida," claiming that "this is a picture of Derrida and deconstruction that one could maintain only by failing to read him."

So... is René Wellek one of those liars who hasn't bothered to read Derrida? (Short answer: no.) Smith's defense of Derrida, here, is weak.

I should point out my deep suspicion that many of the more outspoken momi of "postmodernism"—for example, Chuck Colson—probably haven't read (or haven't understood) key postmodern texts. But so what? Even if specific denunciations of postmodernism appear ignorant of primary reading, we can't conclude that denunciation of postmodernism is, therefore, ignorant. We can't, in other words, defend postmodernism by pointing to the (poorest) arguments of its weakest critics.

So... sure, on the one hand, we have to say Smith is right: the argument that deconstructionism is nihilism because Derrida wrote books preoccupied with death is, as we say in Henry County, 'bout dumb. On the other hand, serious critics of Derrida—like Wellek, conveniently anthologized in Theory's Empire—don't rely on that argument and, thus, can't be waved off.

Read those critics and Smith's defense of Derrida feels like nostalgia.

Derrida and Eat This Book

2010-08-08T05:40:00.000-07:00

[...] The African theologian Kwame Bediako further loosens the grip of literalese on our presuppositions by showing how translation in the African context, instead of taking responsibility for preserving the unique particularities of the biblical Hebrew and Greek, takes delight in releasing it in a new and fresh form. George Steiner...affirms the soundness of Bediako's position when he insists that translation gives "the original a new resonance, a longer life, a wider readership, a more substantial place in history and culture." Writing out of the context of the many African languages into which Scripture has been translated, Bediako notes that each of these African mother tongues has its own unique syntax and character, and so its own way of making its contribution to a fuller hearing of the inexhaustible riches of the word of God. Rather than diluting the pure word of God, each new translation elaborates it, provides fresh settings or contexts, offers metaphors that provide yet another access to transcendence; each translation creates refractions of the "immortal, invisible, God only wise" in words that add to the store of insight and adoration that provides us with fresh annunciations of the gospel in our common lives as the communion of saints worldwide. Bediako notes that the ease and frequency with which the Christian Scriptures have been translated into so many "mother tongues" can be accounted for by the refusal of the original biblical writers to use a "sacred" language. Christianity in the course of its expansion developed generally as a "vernacular religion." He uses the African experience as documentation: "how fully at home we Africans have become in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Each one of us, with access to the Bible in our mother-tongue, can truly claim to hear God speaking to us in our own language!" Jacques Derrida from a very different perspective supports Bediako's position when he writes that "the translation will truly be a moment in the growth of the original, which will complete itself in enlarging itself." He refers to translation as a marriage contract with the promise "to produce a child whose seed will give rise to history and growth."

—Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book, Eerdmans 2006 [emphasis added]

And there it is, somewhat contextualized, the citation of Derrida on page 173 of Eat This Book (ETB). That ETB should cite him isn't, of itself, scandalous or especially remarkable, except that in this case Derrida is cited as an authority on language. Peterson is saying, in so many words, Look, this is what Bediako says about language and translation, and (albeit from a different perspective) Derrida himself agrees. What does this reference to Derrida do? I mean, what is it meant to affect? Answer: we're to recognize in Derrida's supposed agreement evidence that Bediako's (and Peterson's) view is right.

It is especially ironic (and not a little bit frustrating) to see a line like "Jacques Derrida... supports Bediako's position" come immediately after the assertion that "each...can truly claim to hear God speaking to us in our own language." Ironic and frustrating because Derrida's philosophy isn't merely secular but deeply atheistic (at best, insidiously agnostic) and thus anti-Christian. The reader has no way of knowing what Peterson means by the phrase "from a very different perspective," but one suspects that he's more or less acknowledging the implicit atheism of Derrida's philosophy. But then evangelical readers should be scratching their heads, wondering, Who cares if an atheist agrees with Bediako? Some of us are inclined to think, in fact, that such an endorsement is highly suggestive of error on Bediako's (and Peterson's) part.

I can't adequately express in words the extent to which this kind of citation practice in evangelical books heaps and irks me. It should heap and irk you too because if you're evangelical, chances are you haven't read Jacques Derrida and don't realize the extent to which his philosophy undermines (renders impossible) theism, especially Christianity. After reading ETB, you've been led to believe that Jacques Derrida's endorsement of an idea matters, signals its strength; and insofar as Peterson's citation practice helps you to think that, the practice misinforms you—this from an author convinced of his magnificent teaching skill.

In fact, Peterson approaches something sublime in ETB, namely spiritual reading; but his Protestant (and post-structural) assumptions blind him to the reality he's aiming at. This deserves a post of its own, and I hope to write it.

Happy birthday, Derrida

2010-07-15T18:01:00.000-07:00

Today is Jacques Derrida's birthday, so for the next minireview of Peterson's Eat This Book, I focus on Peterson's noxious citation of Derrida on page 173... will not be able to complete the minireview until tomorrow, though, so in the meantime, do pray for JD and for those who mourn him, including me.

Tomorrow, then.

Imaginative constructs:

2010-07-09T23:07:00.000-07:00

I'm writing a series of minireviews of a book I've been reading: this is the first in the series. Let's begin with a quotation:

Trinity is an imaginative construct for enabling us to keep the diversity of the revelation coherent and whole... ["the early Christian community" (24)] came up with this concept, "trinity," in the process of reading these same Scriptures that we are reading, in order to maintain the sense of a single, personal voice, in the midst of all the voices (26).

That's Eugene Peterson in Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading. He's limning a theory of rupture—claiming that the earliest believers faced a considerable challenge (he says "considerable adjustment of the imagination," which he also describes as "a tall order") when they tried to read NT Gospels and letters alongside Hebrew Scripture (25). Early Christians, in other words, just didn't have a conceptual basis sufficient for recognizing in the two Testaments a single Bible by a single Author.

How does he know this? He doesn't say. Trust him.

Only gradually did it "become obvious to them [ie, "the early Christian community"] that there was an 'authorial' continuity between" the two orders of Scripture, Old and New (25), "a single, personal voice" in all Scripture (26). What's more, they didn't think it up right away, this concept of "trinity." Indeed, it took hundreds of years (26) for "the best minds of the church" to devise the "formulation" that Peterson describes as "an incredible work of genius" (26), that is, human genius.

Is that what "Holy Trinity" primarily refers to—the fertile imaginations of men?

Peterson's claim that the Holy Trinity is "imaginative construct" is not, of course, compatible with the Holy Trinity preached in the Catholic Church. For Catholics, the dogma that God is Most Holy, that his being is Trinitarian, refers us not to human imaginative ingenuity but to Revelation, to Reality; in other words, we know these things about God because he has revealed them to his Church.

It's true that Peterson also acknowledges revelation as such, saying for example that "God reveals himself in various ways" throughout the text of Scripture (26). But what can it mean to say, as he does, that "Holy Trinity" is an imaginative construct formulated by men on the one hand while also saying, on the other, that God reveals himself has Father, Son, and Spirit in Scripture (27)? Why would Peterson, or anyone else for that matter, feel a need to insist that although "Holy Trinity" is revealed by God in Scripture, it's nevertheless an "imaginative construct" of men's minds?

If you're a Protestant and you disagree with Peterson, is your disagreement founded on something more than your own opinion? If so, what?

Undivided, full of splendor

2010-06-26T19:34:00.000-07:00

...the Church's children can boldly borrow the words of the Bridegroom in the Song of Songs (Which, St Bernard says, is "the Holy Spirit's masterpiece") and say to their Mother, with a depth of feeling born of ever-increasing conviction: "Thy voice is sweet and they face is beautiful."

—Henri de Lubac, The Splendor of the Church

Protestant Theology

2010-06-25T06:18:00.000-07:00

Also, see Dr Anders' recent post at Called to Communion: How John Calvin Made me a Catholic.

What fourth century portraits tell us

2010-06-23T19:29:00.000-07:00

23 June – CNN reports on the Vatican's archaeological discovery of the oldest known portraits of Andrew and John. Along with a portrait of St. Peter, they surround a central image of Jesus and date to the fourth century AD.
At least one Lutheran finds the story "interesting," his eye having been caught by the fact that there is "no indication of Petrine supremacy" since "St. Peter is portrayed as being simply one of the four apostles"; Rev. McCain finds, thus, "no indication of Peter being supreme or chief of the apostles" [source link].

This suggestion—that the simplicity of Peter's portrait must necessarily be counted as evidence against the "unique mission" and "specific authority" of St. Peter—is a bit of a stretch. A very long one, I think.

Couldn't we, by the same method of inquiry, just as easily find in these portraits a denial of the supremacy of Scripture?

After all, as anyone can plainly see, the apostles are gathered around the image of Jesus and thus testify to the Living Word instead of the Scriptural letter. Living Word, here, follows the Catholic pattern: Jesus is centered, surrounded by the authoritative witnesses to his Revelation; we participate in this Revelation, to be sure, but as ones who receive from others who have been authorized and are sustained (to this very day) by Christ himself.

If Protestantism has it right—if, in fact, the Revelation of God in Christ is guaranteed only insofar as it is understood to be a textual reality, a set of Scriptural propositions, or simply sola scriptura—then why isn't this ancient painting of Jesus surrounded by portraits of (or excerpts from) the Bible?

I'm reminded of something written by Joseph Ratzinger (in 1961) about the Catholic concept of succession:

In a discussion of this kind... it is going to be important to avoid problems that are merely apparent and not to make things that are irrelevant or clear in any case the subject of ill-advised profundities, but rather to set out those questions that are genuinely open, the discussion of which will bring more than a merely verbal improvement in our knowledge of the nature of the Church, and that thus also offer the hope of doing a real service to Christendom in its divided state. [Amazon Link] [Google Books Link]

It's clearly impossible to say that the fourth century Christians responsible for these portraits intended to deny, through these portraits, the unique mission and specific authority of St. Peter. It is perfectly unremarkable that St. Peter should be depicted simply as an apostle of the visible Church that Jesus Christ founded: nowhere in Catholic dogma is the Petrine office (or the concept of succession) conceived in terms of an evil dictatorship or some other perversion whereby the apostles should be understood as servants of St. Peter, so we'd expect fourth century art to communicate what the Church teaches, as this art does, namely, that the apostles were servants of the Word (just as their successors are), and none of them, to a man, look by virtue of their office to be served.

Soon, Called to Communion [Link] will have an article addressing this issue: I'll update with a link when it's available.

Sproul's conceptual entity: the abstract Protestant "church"

2010-06-18T12:04:00.000-07:00

I'm reading the Ligonier Ministries book titled Sola Scriptura: The Protestant Position on the Bible. I've read the chapters by Sproul and White and recommend them.

By way of disclaimer, this book is a little disappointing and not because I'm Catholic; I catch myself hoping the authors will be able to clarify the differences between their own religious choices and the Catholicism they reject—and, in truth, I'm almost cheering for them because I used to be 'reformed' Protestant—but the chapters by Sproul and White just don't go very far in those terms. There's plenty of rejection here—on every page so far—but it's a rejection that consistently assumes precisely those things in question.

So in Sproul's chapter, for example, no less than 59 times in 19 pages he refers to "the church" without ever explaining what this word means to him, or what is means in any given context. Others have already detailed why it is that Sproul necessarily believes in an invisible abstraction he's calling "the church" (cf. HERE1, HERE2, HERE3, and HERE4 for starters), and this is a problem—perhaps, admittedly, not for Sproul and many others, but it's a problem for regular folk like me.

To illustrate at least a tiny portion of the problem, consider what Sproul's abstract "church" accomplishes, at least grammatically, when it

"confesses her faith" (p39)
"receives" the Bible (p40)
"rules" on the contents of the Bible (p41)
"seeks to identify"—or engages in an "election process" to name—the books of the Bible (p42)
is (or has) "a Founder and a foundation" (p43)
is given the "body of truth" (p44)
possesses "a functional canon" (p45)
is identifiable in "periods" of history (p46)
"rejected... spurious books" (p47)
"excludes" certain books, namely the Apocrypha (p48)
possesses "authority" (p49)
"is obliged to acknowledge" the authority of Scripture (p50)

...and so on. Sproul's "church" does things, accepts things, forges things, submits to things, chooses things: but can an abstract "Church" (mere 'conceptual entity' and as such not real) actually do any of this? And if it can't, then who (or what) did?

Bryan Cross alludes to the problem here (for 'conceptual entity', scroll to "B. Evaluations" and read the five paragraphs); the claim Cross makes about 'reformed' ecclesiology—that it in fact precludes any real, visible "church"—is devastating. I'm not trying to say it's clever or interesting or even challenging: I'm saying it's a game-changer.

Now, obviously that Sproul's "church" functions grammatically as subject to so many action verbs (or in passive constructions is acted upon directly as if it were a real object) makes the average person in the pew (like me) confident in 'reformed' Protestant ecclesiology—We believe in a real, actual church, right? The common answer, the one I too would have given as a Protestant, is Obviously.

Bryan Cross understands this, and so do I; no one needs to insist that Sproul's "church" is a real, actual composite whole because everyone involved agrees that Sproul and others write (and speak) as if it is. What is needed is a dispassionate explanation of how exactly this Protestant "church" is not, in fact, merely a conceptual entity. If it is merely a mental construct, a short-hand "church" deployed with all the semantic possibility of any noun, then Sproul's chapter has a lot of explaining to do.

Sproul says, for example, that the canon of Old and New Testament books "was received by the church" (p40), and that canon, that complete list, is "a fallible collection of infallible books" (p41). All by itself, the idea of a "fallible collection of infallible books" is, as Matt Yonke has said (here), baffling. If by "church" Sproul means a mental construct, this baffling statement about a fallible list of books being received by an abstraction becomes utterly incomprehensible.

Sproul and de Lubac on "tradition"

2010-06-10T04:19:00.000-07:00

The canon of the New Testament rests upon a "tradition." The term tradition is often viewed with a jaundiced eye by evangelicals, It suffers from the problem of guilt by association. In order to distance themselves from the role played by tradition in Rome, zealous evangelicals face the danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Thus, RC Sproul in the 2009 Ligonier publication titled Sola Scriptura: The Protestant Position on the Bible.

For a study in contrast, here's Henri de Lubac in The Splendor of the Church:

[Tradition]... for my ambition is simply to be its echo—that is all. I want to share with others the recurrent thrill that comes from recognizing that impressive and undivided voice in all its modulations and all its harmonics.

That voice of Tradition has continually called on me to look up into the 'Heavenly Jerusalem', whose beauty has taken a daily firmer hold upon me. But for all that I have not looked to the heavenly city as one does to a dream; for I have not been looking for a sort of refuge from everyday monotony and the burden of existence, in some airy mirage or other. On the contrary; to me, that mother-country of freedom, with all its royal majesty and heavenly splendor, is something to be seen at the very heart of earthly reality, right at the core of all the confusion and all the mischances that are, inevitably, involved in its mission to men. My love is for the Holy City not only as it is ideally, but also as it appears in history, and particularly as it appears to us at present; and I love it with an ever-growing affection.

Catholicism doesn't conceive of "tradition" as a source of proof texts that support or contradict claims. This is an incredibly important distinction between Protestantism and Catholicism: both can and do cite authors and texts within "tradition" in order to support various claims. For the principled difference, look again at what de Lubac means by "tradition." Not merely a collection of historical texts more or less useful depending on whether they can be cited in defense of propositions, "tradition" for de Lubac is a voice. And like any voice, this one, too, comes from One who speaks.

Lord, help us to hear.

St Christopher Magallanes and Companions

2010-05-21T07:10:00.000-07:00

Above taken from Catholic Culture (link).

Come, let us worship Christ, the King of martyrs, alleluia.

Hadley Arkes on coming into the Church

2010-04-27T19:07:00.000-07:00

As Fr. Jim Burtchaell used to say, the Church draws on vast experience and lifts a mirror to put in one’s face: it shows you what you are going to look like if you proceed along this path. The Church has become the main enclave to preserve the sobriety of moral reasoning, natural law reasoning, when the currents of relativism have inundated and corroded the academy and other institutions.

You can read the whole thing here (which I lifted from Principium Unitatis, who also points to Beckwith's post).

Vatican v. 'do-it-yourself'

2010-04-21T18:19:00.000-07:00

(hat tip, the great Hermeneuticon)

In a small book originally published in 2001, translated and published in English in 2003, then Cardinal Ratzinger nowBenedict XVI wrote

Like all the great creeds of the early Church, the Nicene Creed has the basic structure of a profession of faith in the triune God. Its essential character is that of saying Yes to the living God as our Lord, the God from whom we have life and to whom our life returns. It is a declaration of faith in God. But what does it mean when we call this God a living God? It means that this God is not a conclusion we have reached by thinking, which we now offer to others in the certainty of their own perception and understanding; if it were just a matter of that, then this God would never be more than a human idea, and any attempt to turn to him could well be a reaching out in hope and expectation but would still lead us into vagueness. When we talk of the living God, it means: This God shows himself to us; he looks out from eternity into time and puts himself into relationship with us. We cannot define him in whatever way we like. He has "defined" himself and stands now before us as our Lord, over us and in our midst.

God Is Near Us is one of the initial books I read when I began my first sincere look into Catholicism in 2007. It's on the brain today, that magnificent opening, because of something I read over at iMonk: Jeff Dunn's (non)review of the Sara Miles book entitled Jesus Freak, which he describes with the phrase "Jesus-shaped spirituality." Says Dunn,

Sara Miles has a wife, Martha. Sara Miles is in a same-sex relationship. (I knew this before I read the book, but it was actually reading those words in print that made me realize there would be trouble in River City.) And because of those three words, I knew that anything good that we could discuss from Jesus Freak would be buried in the avalanche of comments about the author’s homosexuality. And that is a real shame.

The comments to the (non)review are especially revealing. Here is a great deal of reaching out in hope and expectation leading, nevertheless, into vagueness. Here's Dunn, trying to focus our attention on the ideas—it's the ideas that matter, the Jesus-shaped spirituality of Protestant making. I'm with the Vatican, head in my hands, praying for unity.

these cadaverous morsels: Relics and the Church

2010-04-17T14:13:00.000-07:00

Matt Yonke has an excellent post up at Called to Communion entitled Relics: A Reply to Trueman.

Trueman says,

This is what is so difficult to connect with Catholicism of the von Balthasar or Yves Congar or De Lubac variety. Great and brilliant as these men were, at ground level Catholicism looks like benighted old biddies doing homage before an amputated and pickled tongue.

And here is Yonke:

Catholics don’t have a blind spot when it comes to relics: Catholic theology simply reads and accepts what Sacred Scripture teaches, what the evidence of history bears out and the obvious implications of the incarnation.

Truly, the implications of the incarnation are what the Church’s teaching about relics really point to. The fact is that God uses physical matter to transmit his power and to do his work in the world. We live in a world shot through with magic. God has become man, and in doing so has charged the world with spiritual power. Even shadows can perform miracles! What wondrous enchantment is that?

I think the Protestant position has a much bigger, or deeper, problem here than many individual Protestants are willing to own. Even as a card-carrying Protestant I couldn't shake the suspicion that the implications of the verses we quoted or theology we discussed were very often (systematically in some cases) cut off or denied.

It wasn't until I started studying Catholicism—including the Congar and de Lubac whom Trueman cites (and especially Ratzinger)—that I realized how deep the knife had gone since the Reformation, how radically nominal, notional, noumenal Christian faith had become for us.

When, as a Protestant, I first realized the true vogue of so many terms current in Protestant discussions, terms like incarnational, I couldn't help thinking (almost reflexively, and not without a little depression at that time) of Catholicism's Real Presence. You want incarnational? Come to church with me tomorrow.

Yonke's solid Catholic use of Acts 5 and 19, especially 2 Kings 13, is yet another demonstration that the Bible—however cherished, however foundational—when plucked out from the divinely-guided Tradition of the Church—can be made to teach anything, and all such anythings thus taught have equal claim to being "Bible-based." Here's Trueman, whom I don't known but am confident nevertheless in his knowledge and love of the Bible, arguing (with some derision) against the very plain implications of the texts in his Bible.

Bitter irony.

Yonke concludes (and I wholeheartedly concur)

...time, experience and the Biblical and theological evidence have all played a role in helping me embrace what the Church teaches about relics. That relic [of St Ambrose in Yonke's parish church] in particular has since become a real touchstone in my interaction with the saints in heaven and my son’s patron.

I invite our Protestant brothers to truly consider the nature of the world we live in, the implications of the incarnation and the weight of the words of Scripture on the subject before tossing relics into the dustbin with all the other perceived superstitions and Romish aberrations.

sola scriptura and the crisis at the heart of Protestantism

2010-04-17T12:40:00.000-07:00

Prosperity

Trinity

Tertullian, On Prescription Against the Heretics,

Our appeal [in debating with the heretics], therefore, must not be made to the Scriptures; nor must controversy be admitted on points in which victory will either be impossible, or uncertain, or not certain enough. For a resort to the Scriptures would but result in placing both parties on equal footing, whereas the natural order of procedure requires one question to be asked first, which is the only one now that should be discussed: “With whom lies that very faith to which the Scriptures belong? From what and through whom, and when, and to whom, has been handed down that rule by which men become Christians? For wherever it shall be manifest that the true Christian rule and faith shall be, there will likewise be the true Scriptures and expositions thereof, and all the Christian traditions.

Since this is the case, in order that the truth may be adjudged to belong to us, ‘as many as walk according to the rule,’ which the church has handed down from the apostles, the apostles from Christ, and Christ from God, the reason of our position is clear, when it determines that heretics ought not to be allowed to challenge an appeal to the Scriptures, since we, without the scriptures, prove that they have nothing to do with the Scriptures. For as they are heretics, they cannot be true Christians, because it is not from Christ that they get that which they pursue of their own mere choice, and from the pursuit incur and admit the name of heretics. Thus not being Christians, they have acquired no right to the Christian Scriptures; and it may be very fairly said to them, ‘Who are you?’”

innocens manibus et mundo corde

2010-04-07T08:53:00.000-07:00

Yet more about Maciel: Hermeneutic of Continuity has a must-read post on the Jason Berry piece published in National Catholic Reporter—more filth that shames us and, perhaps more importantly, breaks the heart. Says the Hermeneuticon (aka Fr. Tim Finigan):

Still today, as ever, and probably until the end of time, the Church is in need of reform. We should not make the mistake of thinking that it is only the reform of other people that is necessary. Any crisis in the Church is a call for all of us to return to the standards given us by Christ.

Here, again, Fr. Finigan discerns in this otherwise depressing news more opportunity for renewal, for conversion, and here's one humble hermeneutian profoundly encouraged by the call. Thank you, Fr. Finigan.

In this whole sordid story... Pope Benedict stands out as the man who is innocens manibus et mundo corde (Ps 23.4): his hands are innocent of bribes and his heart is pure. The reform of the Church in response to the scandals of the day include reform at every level... The world is essentially saying to us that we should live according to the moral teaching that is contained in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Pope Benedict, throughout his time as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and now as the Supreme Pontiff, has pursued reform in all of these areas and, as the NCR story shows clearly, he has exercised determination to rid the Church of the filth which shames us. He deserves our wholehearted support, our fervent prayers, our penances offered in solidarity, and our loyal acceptance of any necessary reforms in liturgy, doctrine, morals, and asceticism that he judges fit to impose.

Count me in by God's grace.

Praised be Jesus Christ

Lazarus our friend is sleeping

2010-04-06T21:54:00.000-07:00

Michael Spencer died yesterday from the cancer he was fighting. I never met him but stumbled across his internet tavern in 2005 and instantly loved him.

Pray for the Spencer family, pray also for your own family, your friends and their children, even your parish.

Almighty and merciful God, may our brother Michael Spencer share the victory of Christ who loved us so much that he died and rose again to bring us new life. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

See the In Memoriam at InternetMonk.com.

From the earth you formed me, with flesh you clothed me; Lord, my Redeemer, raise me up again at the last day.

I waited, I waited for the Lord
and he stooped down to me;
he heard my cry.

He drew me from the deadly pit,
from the miry clay.
He set me feet upon a rock
and made my footsteps firm.

He put a new song into my mouth,
praise of our God.
Many shall see and fear
and shall trust in the Lord...

From the earth you formed me, with flesh you clothed me; Lord, my Redeemer, raise me up again at the last day.

She is...

2010-04-06T15:38:00.000-07:00

via Thomas Peters

Indeed, pray for Benedict XVI

2010-04-01T20:05:00.000-07:00

Lutheran Journal, Logia, has an especially encouraging contribution up, written by John Stephenson [link].

Ecclesiology without skepticism?

2010-03-27T20:10:00.000-07:00

Here's Bryan Cross at Called to Communion,

When I study Church history, I’m still surprised at how throughout her history there have always been saints and sinners within her. Always. But where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more. The Church remains holy, even when her members sin, even when it is scandalous and shameful. The eye of man looks at the Church and sees sinful men. But the eye of faith looks at the Church and sees the sinful men within the holy Church. If the Church were a merely human institution, I wouldn’t trust it any more than I’d trust any other merely human institution. But this thing we speak of in the Creed, i.e. this “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church” is a divine institution, not only founded by the God-man, but animated by His Spirit is the mystical continuation of His supernatural incarnate Life. And that’s why I trust the Church, because I believe that it is Christ, His Body, of which He is the Head.

That's so well said, and so true; read the entire thread of comments for context and you'll see that Bryan is throwing light on a skepticism–pessimism that runs deep in many Protestant circles and sounds (more or less) like this:

So, as a Protestant, I've got an invisible-church ecclesiology that's at odds with historic Christianity and the Bible? So what. Haven't you heard? The Catholic Church is all hubris and oppression.

As Bryan points out, a skeptical caution makes good sense for merely human ecclesial institutions...but it's precisely Protestant ecclesiology (ie, not Catholic) that says the Church is a human institution, where we make the best of what we have (eg, an infallible Bible) given the unfortunate circumstances of life (eg, fallible interpretation).

O Lord, open our eyes to the incredible truth: one God, one Christ, one Bread, one Church.

RealCatholicTV.com on the healthcare bill

2010-03-23T10:29:00.000-07:00

Hmmmm....

Catholic Paganism: No

2010-03-15T07:17:00.000-07:00

Channel-surfing for sports over the weekend, I watched several minutes of Walter Veith giving a presentation to expose the otherwise hidden truth of Catholicism—in short, it's pure paganism and will certainly damn you to hell.

The part I saw was sincere and really engaging, complete with slide projection handled with some expertise; the content, however, was a tissue of suggestion and inference and non sequitur. Veith presents, for example, a picture of the entrance gate of a mosque, points out what he believes is sun imagery, and talks for two or three minutes about the importance of the sun in paganism; he then presents a similar picture of an entrance gate to a Catholic church and concludes, in so many words, therefore we see the deep root in paganism that Muslims and Catholics share. He goes on to describe Islam and Catholicism as indistinguishable. Camera pans to audience where we see furrowed brows nodding gravely in shared conviction.

This morning I came to prayer and here was Origen discussing Leviticus (cf. 16:1-28),

There is a deeper meaning in the fact that the high priest sprinkles the blood toward the east. Atonement comes to you from the east. From the east comes the one whose name is Dayspring, he who is mediator between God and men. You are invited then to look always to the east: it is there that the sun of righteousness rises for you, it is there that the light is always being born for you. You are never to walk in darkness; the great and final day is not to enfold you in darkness. Do not let the night and mist of ignorance steal upon you. So that you may always enjoy the light of knowledge, keep always in the daylight of faith, hold fast always to the light of love and peace.

Having cut himself off from Christian Tradition, Veith has minimized his perspective. Sun imagery = evil paganism. But in fact sun imagery is unavoidable because of the sheer genius of the sun itself. If you call to mind the sun and think to yourself, ho-hum, then I think it's safe to say that your imagination is a little underproductive.

Humans understand sun-worship: we are all ordered to the sun in profound ways, both consciously (day-light hours) and subconsciously (circadian rhythms). As Origen understood, such a thing isn't by accident. Our design in nature provides us imagery of our Designer and his plan. People have missed that, sure, and they've often worshipped nature instead; but it doesn't follow that we must, therefore, erase from our lives or our faith any imagery inherent in nature.

May God open our eyes to all his works so that we see, as he intended, everywhere his Word.

Eucharist

2010-03-05T15:40:00.000-08:00

Louis Bouyer's book Eucharist is essential reading for Catholics and Protestants; I'm not yet out of the third chapter and it's already clear. I'm reading Eucharist as background prep for an Old Testament exegesis paper I've got to write.

In Eucharist, Bouyer follows the progressive unfolding of the Christian reality sometimes referred to as Communion, detailing key connections between Jewish and Christian liturgy. As usual, he does so with much affection, which makes the reading feel devotional rather than intellectual. Reading Bouyer so often feels like prayer. Lord, we give you all glory and honor.

Right now I'm following his discussion of berakoth in synagogal liturgy [JewishEncyclopedia]—a Hebrew word first translated into Greek by... you guessed it, eucharistia. In the process, I've gone and reviewed our Eucharistic Prayer or Canon [USCCB link Catholic Encyclopedia], anaphora in the Greek Rite.

More later, I hope.

Simply Beautiful

2010-03-04T06:33:00.000-08:00

Archbishop Charles Chaput speaking at Houston Baptist University.

[via Whispers]

Authority

2010-02-17T10:54:00.000-08:00

Imagine that the Apostles are preaching in AD 35, and you walk up and say, “Is the message that you all are preaching protected from error?”

St. Peter replies, “Yes, the message we are teaching is what was given to us by Christ; His Holy Spirit is guiding us into all truth, and protecting us from teaching falsehood. Would you like to hear more?”

“No thanks,” you reply, “my friends and I are looking for a fallible explication of God’s infallible Word.”
[Link]

That truly reflects the core (the very beating heart) of the "Catholic problem" (or Catholic challenge) for Protestantism. The Protest embraces what Catholicism has always taught about the divine quality of Scripture, its inerrancy, its God-breathed character. What Protestantism rejects is infallible interpretation. In short, what non-Catholic church offers (more or less conspicuously) is a divinely inerrant Scripture only accessible through fallible means—an inerrant Scripture only fallibly expounded.

...non-Catholic church offers (more or less conspicuously) a divinely inerrant revelation only accessible through fallible means.

Famously, the term fallible does not mean false, and that distinction does provide some consolation in the wake of so many troubling implications. Furthermore, Protestant strategies for accessing Scripture are sometimes very strong and can help pastors produce encouraging and enlightening sermons—can serve as a catalyst for dramatic Christian growth.

Still, at the end of any and all Protestant explanations, it's not altogether clear to me how interpretation thus broken off the tree of living apostolic authority is supposed to be any different than mere opinion. Study, again, the explanations and you arrive, each time, at the same asphyxiating bottom line: Scripture is inerrant, but human beings are fallible, and that's just the facts on the ground.

Really?

Adoro te devote

2010-01-30T19:41:00.000-08:00

Beautiful.

For the Latin and English translation, see Bryan Cross' post at Principium Unitatis [link].

Thank you, Bryan.

Catholicism and works, merit

2010-01-29T20:11:00.000-08:00

In the comments to this article (link), Catholics are told that our Church teaches a works-based hope. It's further suggested that when Catholics deny our Church's alleged pelagianism, especially to Protestants, we're hoping to dupe or otherwise deceive them.

Below is a worthwhile quotation taken from Heinrich Denifle discussing merit. The quotation comes from pages 458-460 of Denifle's book Luther and Lutherdom, originally published in 1904. I'm using the Cornell University digital monograph, and the emphasis you see below appears in the original.

The Church hopes all from God, hopes for it through the merits of Jesus Christ, and in virtue of His passion. Hence she does not address a single prayer in the missal or breviary to any saint whatever, not even to the Mother of God, a fact that Luther still recognized in the year 1518. The Church hopes to receive everything in virtue of the merits of “Jesus Christ our Lord,” a fact that Luther must have known from a statute of the Order. Never does the Church put the Mother of God or the saints in the place of God, who gives, or in the place of Christ, through whom and whose merits we receive. She puts them in our place, on our side, that they may second our prayer, make it more efficacious with God. In all this the Church gives expression to her belief that neither our achievements nor the saints, but only Jesus Christ is our savior; that we can do good, be heard and saved only in virtue of His merits, acquired for us in His life, passion, and death. Hence the Church prays that “we may merit, in the name of the beloved Son, to abound in good works.” Therefore in the Litany of All Saints, familiar to the one-time Luther, does she lift her pleading to God, to the three persons of the Godhead, and to Jesus Christ: “Have mercy on us” or “hear us,” but to the saints she says: “Pray for us.” Therefore it is that she does not beg God to vouchsafe to save us on the ground of our achievements, of our works of penance, or of the religious life, etc, (as the later Luther charged against the Church), but “through the mystery of Thy holy Incarnation, O Lord, deliver us; through Thy coming, birth, baptism and holy fasting, O Lord, deliver us; through thy death and burial, O Lord, deliver us! etc.” The later Luther was still aware of this, for these invocations were retained by him....
[W]e are not our own redeemer, as the later Luther makes the Church to teach.... [P]recisely in the confession of the Church, that on the Cross redemption, reconciliation with God, and forgiveness of our sins fell to our lot, do we find the reason that she everywhere presents the image of the Cross to the faithful... The picture of the Crucified, together with Mary and John under the Cross, is never wanting in any missal... Wherever he might be, the priest was to remember that, in the mass, there was repeated in an unbloody manner that which had taken place on the Cross, that on which all his hope of here and hereafter is fixed.

May Jesus Christ be praised!

Haiti

2010-01-15T18:09:00.000-08:00

Christe exaudi nos: for the people of Haiti, pray.

the issue of the 2nd and the 21st century

2009-11-04T18:41:00.001-08:00

Bryan Cross and Neal Judisch, at Called to Communion, have written an article entitled Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura and the Question of Interpretive Authority. It's worth breaking silence over:

Reducing authority to truth conceptually eliminates authority. That is because such a reduction would imply that we need only submit to authority when the authority speaks what we already believe, or can independently verify, to be the truth. Hence, the result would eliminate authority, because "When I submit (so long as I agree), the one to whom I submit is me."

Thank you Bryan, and thank you Neal.