A Photograph of Two Great Christian Adulterers

I was trying to explain to someone the other day that a person's sin is no reason to discount their theology.

These two men were both great Christian thinkers and witnesses, and yes, there is substantial evidence that both of them had mistresses / cheated on their wives.

If only I could find a picture of these two with Fr. Karl Rahner (though apparently he was technically a fornicator, and his mistress was an adulteress), then we'd have all 3 of them.

The great other exception is of course St. Augustine, who had multiple concubines, once for over a decade.

Of course, we are not good, because of our righteousness, but because of Christ. After all, concerning the so-called "free" will, St. Augustine wrote:

"Behold what damage the disobedience of the will has inflicted on man's nature! Let him be permitted to pray that he may be healed! Why need he [Pelagius] presume so much on the capacity of his nature? It is wounded, hurt, damaged, destroyed. It is a true confession of its weakness, not a false defence of its capacity, that it stands in need of." - St. Augustine (On Nature and Grace, 62.)

And as the very traditional Catholic legend goes, the saints rejoice in Heaven over their sins, because they were opportunities for the abundance of God's grace to shine through.

The Strongest Defense of Protestant (Reformed/Barthian/Lutheran) Theology I can come up with

Just out of interest I thought I would try to write the strongest argument in favour of Confessional Protestantism, and see if I couldn't knock it down later. It is not that I am tempted to believe it, I just want to lay it down for my own understanding.

Faith and Reason:

The great Swiss Reformed theologian Karl Barth argued that natural theology and the use of philosophy in Christian faith, was 'where things all went wrong'. As Luther sayeth, 'the Theologian must first put to death the philosopher (Aristotle)', before burning the Summa Theologiae in public. Barth cites the famous unfinished symphonies as examples, surely no one can listen to the first half, and then using natural reason, discover the remainder, given any amount of time. This he proposed is what Roman Catholics do when they enter theology. Genesis 3:15 says there would be enmity between 'the woman' (Virgin Mary) and Satan. Examine that long enough, and you start talking about the Immaculate Conception, humans as Barth noted are "idol factories", and any attempt to add to the word of God with human words, no matter what the phrasing is 'development', 'unwritten traditions', etc, is sin.

Soren Kierkegaard in "Fear and Trembling" describes the divine command for Abraham to kill his son. Nothing in natural reasoning could explain this as logical. God is not a Being to be reasoned about, he is a speaking God who is to be trusted or rejected.

The Canon:

Roman Catholics ask how Protestants know which Scriptures are valid and which are not, as the Bible did not come straight from Heaven. Granted Barth would agree, BUT as the second Helvetic Confession declares:

"The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God"

All throughout the book of Acts, it is the declaration of the Word (invisibly in preaching, visibly in the sacraments) that leads to salvation. As it is written, "faith cometh by hearing" (Rom 10:17). While the succession of Bishops may or may not be valid (Anglicanism v. Presbyterianism), the real succession of the Apostles was their preaching. The church is described as witnesses to the resurrection, to the Christ Event, to something that had happened and was now finished, all that was required now was the preaching of it to others. By this message which was preached since the apostles, did the council fathers know what was canonical and what was not. (I could then develop the argument that the new testament was clearly agreed on, Romans says 'to the Jews were entrusted the oracles of God' as the prooftext for the 39 book proto-canon).

In the same way that Luigi Giussani argued that people today can encounter Christ only through Christ's body as an objective historical reality, so would Barth argue that people today are faced to encounter the preaching of the gospel as an objective historical reality.

Furthermore, God has no need of an institution to tell people what the Word of God is, and what it isn't, for Christ is "the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world." (Jn 1:9), and because the apostle says:

"When God made a promise to Abraham, because he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, ‘I will surely bless you and multiply you.’ And thus Abraham, having patiently endured, obtained the promise. Human beings, of course, swear by someone greater than themselves, and an oath given as confirmation puts an end to all dispute. In the same way, when God desired to show even more clearly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it by an oath" -Hebrews 6:13-17

If God swears Scripture by the Church then he is swearing it by human beings. As God has always done - since Abraham - he swears his covenant by himself. The gospel, as Barth notes, is not modified or evaluated by man, it can only be responded to. It is a message which is preached, it is an existential experience and an encounter.

Conclusion:

Christ says "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed" (Jn 8:31). For "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." (Mt. 24:35), and so by the direct command of God we must "destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ" (2 Cor 10:5). Whatever we can discern through history or tradition must be subject to Christ, for he declares: "the scripture cannot be broken" (Jn 10:35). Scripture makes a clear dichotemy between the Word of God and the words of men, and such a dichotemy allows for tradition to be subjected.

Once they get sola scriptura/prima scriptura, they can then go on to quote Jer. 23:6 "The LORD is our righteousness" and make the imputation of Christ's righteousness argument, add Romans 4:5, and nail down Sola Fide.

Obvious Criticisms:

Philosophical Realism, Appeals to Church History, Claims of Anachronism, Attacks on Fideism, Appeals to Church Unity, etc. Standard Catholic attacks.

For instance, one could say this argument gives me no case against the Quran as the Word of God beyond: I don't feel that it is. It is basically just a fideist argument that defends irrational trust in a source based on the claim that it is from God. If it is from God (which cannot be determined except existentially/experientially) then it works as an argument, but if more than one faith claims true existential religious experience, then this has to be explained away somehow (usually be anti-Islamic attitudes or racism).

The fact that St. Paul also uses philosophy in the Areopagus in Athens to debate the pagans also destroys this nominalist/Lutheran division of faith and reason.

I'm reading a great book by Von Balthasar about the Petrine office, and he has some of the strongest biblical -and unique ones- arguments for the papacy, and once I'm done that book, I'll post the counter arguments to this thesis.

Even one of our Popes declared Karl Barth to be the most important theologians since St. Thomas Aquinas, so I figured I would set up the strongest argument for Reformed Protestantism using his emphasis.

Protestants reading this: let me know where it should be strengthened.

Catholics reading this: let me know problems with the argument.

Barth and Von Balthasar

Today while I was supposed to be studying for my Latin exam, I came accross a limited preview on Google Books (always a disaster) of "The Theology of Karl Barth" by (Cardinal) Hans Urs Von Balthasar. It amazed me the way that they discussed the division between Protestantism and Catholicism and it seems like they proposed the only solution to our disagreements.

Now the Confessional Reformed folks that I know seemed to pronounce Barth's name as anathema or near enough, but as I read Balthasar's synthesis of him, he seemed to propose exactly what they dream of. No ecumenism without serious discussion about a unity of faith, and 'doctrinal maximalism' as one person termed it. But interestingly enough, Barth didn't see issues like the Papacy or Sola Fide as the key to understanding the Protestant - Catholic divide, he focused on the fundamental differences, and linked Liberal Protestantism with Roman Catholicism in their trust in human reason. In this he seems to cut away these two great enemies of the Reformed kirk. Barth summed up as THE doctrine of the Anti-Christ as analogia entis or 'the analogy of being', understood as us speaking of God through analogy using reason and revelation. Barth's counter to this was the 'analogy of faith' using only scripture and not reason (allegedly).

While I think Von Balthasar had a brilliant defense against lots of these claims (Barth gives us too much credit when he describes Catholic thought as essentially unified on the Analogy of Being), it's interesting that he has argued that Protestantism is centred on Jesus Christ and his revelation as the fundamental theology of their movement.

I found it interesting that this seems to be a claim post-Barth made alot by people like Peter Kreeft and Fr. Corapi, etc. Von Balthasar's treatment of Barth (in the part that I read at least) seemed to be brilliant and he accepted alot of his criticism, but sought to make his Catholic theology - like Barth's - nonfoundationalist philosophically and this I enjoyed greatly as in some ways I see this as the only way out of modernism and relativism (though it's kinda relativist but that's a long story).

Anyway, I also found it interesting how Balthasar used Yves Congar's contribution to Patristics and Church History to show how every church schism is a loss, and that in countering Protestantism, perhaps Trent and Post-Tridentine Catholicism focussed unhealthily on works and institutions. While Von Balthasar clearly believes in their divine origins and affirms all of Catholic dogma, he is brutally honest in our need to revisit these issues and try to come up with a 'fair and balanced' (gah Fox News) view of the whole truth, rather than just the emphasis of one side of the truth.

All this is what I'd been talking about since I started my whole ranting about 'emphasis in theology'. So yes, I'm indirectly claiming that all of (post)modern theology got it's ideas magically from my own thoughts decades after the events themselves.

No, I'm not really saying that.

But it seems to me that this book "The Theology of Karl Barth" (which I haven't got yet) as well as the work of Karl Rahner and Von Balthasar's "Love Alone is Credible" (which I'm getting for Christmas) will help me piece together a more contemporary picture of the situation, and allow for more fruitful dialogue from both sides of the Tiber.