A Great Gulf Fixed

"Whosoever, therefore, knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved." - Second Vatican Council "Lumen Gentium" (14)

If Roman Catholicism is true, I'm an apostate who has rejected God's love and fellowship. I've refused the means of grace to eradicate my mortal sins, and I've torn the Church asunder by schism and heresy.

***

"But when Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned... when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel...I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing."- Galatians 2 (various)

The witness of the Reformation is to do once more what St. Paul did before St. Peter, to force the Roman Catholic (and Eastern Orthodox) Church to listen to the message of the Gospel (sola gratia ; sola fide ; solo Christo).

As the Protestant observers should have replied to the council fathers of Vatican II: 'whosoever hears and rejects the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, could not be saved'

Why Protestantism? (or rather, why the Lutheran Church-Canada)

Devin Rose - a friend who has helped me in so many ways over the years, asked me a fair question.

If Roman Catholicism is not the true religion, how do you know your 'brand' of Protestantism is correct?

1. Rationalist Assumptions of Roman Catholicism

Like every argument for Roman Catholicism, this one begins with pure reason (which Kant despised so much). It assumes that divine revelation devolves naturally to arguments about divine revelation. It assumes that Aristotle's account of logic is the only account of logic, and that human nature is essentially Aristotelian.

What if Aristotle was wrong (as the Church Fathers thought he was)?

How would you disprove Roman Catholicism in a way that was satisfactory to them? Admittedly, you'd have to use Aristotelian logic.

For instance, Kant and (Lord) Russell, both ripped apart the 5 'proofs' for God's existence using empirical epistemology / analytic philosophy. What is RC's reply? Wrong logic. You started with the wrong rules. I might ask, who says we have to start with your rules?

So what I did, and what the Church Fathers did, was use the logic of a system against itself. With my concupiscence/consubstantiation argument, I used Thomism to show the why Trent was wrong.

Were I to then come up with a system based on the same epistemology, I'd have contradicted myself! Because the Roman Catholic claim is circular reasoning: logic is what we say it is, and this is logically demonstrable.

Protestantism says something quite different in it's epistemology.

Protestantism begins with God. God (as St. Anselm and Descartes understood him) was: that Being, a greater than which, cannot be conceived.

So we are presented with the Revelation of God's Word to Moses, through Jesus. How do we decide if this Word is true or not? If we require a rational argument to demonstrate it's truth (which Aristotelianism would have us do), then we aren't actually saying there is truth inherent in the Word. It's just a really good human philosophy, using allegedly divine sources.

By contrast God's Word is a pre-rational revelation that is necessarily self-referential, and circular. God says it, and it's authoritative because God says it. It can only be accepted or rejected. In any case, there's no way to falsify the claims of God about Himself, we can't know. We either trust, or reason.

In short: the epistemological authority of God's Word is greater than the epistemological authority of any argument about his Word.

2. Only Two Traditions

Again, retaining their rationalism, Roman Catholicism asserts that there are 22 000 Christian 'churches' all claiming to have 'the true religion', let alone Islam and Hinduism. Without reason, how can we judge which claims are best.

First of all, when we're judging claims outside of Christianity, we can certainly use philosophy and reason to undermine these things. (That's why Tertullian used Stoic philosophy to undermine the Stoics, but didn't adopt it in his theology.)

Secondly, there are hardly 22 or 25 k denominations. Likewise, Protestantism follows none of the rules Roman Catholicism does, regarding a communion. For RCs, a church is a communion. For Protestants a church is a confession. There are only really two confessions or Traditions in what I would identify historically as 'catholic Protestantism'. These are Reformed Theology and Lutheran Theology.

Also, it's important to note that both of these confessions acknowledge that the other teaches the saving gospel of justification by faith alone, which in the end is -at least existentially/salvifically- all that matters. So it's not even a necessary issue of 'which is right' (without being too latitudinarian), as any Christian who trusts in God's grace will be saved.

Furthermore as we've seen via Protestant epistemology, the only way to 'internally undermine' things (as I did for Roman Catholicism), as by making Scriptural arguments against them.

In the same way that Roman Catholics are fine having the Pope alone know the true interpretation of Scripture, they seem quite upset that Protestant confessions ultimately confess that their church has the most correct doctrine.

It must also be remembered the numbers have nothing to do with who has 'the true church', as at many times (Noah, Judah, St. Paul, St. Athanasius) the true church was a minority faction.

3. Inherently Humanist Implications in the Question

Next the RC apologist would revert to their argument that God didn't reveal himself properly in his Word, as it's easy if not obligatory to misunderstand it without the Pope (Magisterium and Church can easily be conflated to the Petrine office).

In the same way we saw Papal Infallibility as a de facto denial of the Inspiration of Scripture, we see here the de facto denial of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in two ways. First, it denies that the individual can actually be inspired by the Holy Spirit to be led into the truth. Secondly it denies that there is truly any difference which the Holy Spirit makes when reading the bible. (This is the rationalistic and pelagian understanding, coupled with an intellectually centred faith, that rejects grace alone or even de facto grace in the believer operating at all)

The individual Christian reading God's revelation with the illumination of the Holy Spirit and the rest of scripture to compare a passage to? Rubbish they say.

Conclusion:
How do I know that the Lutheran Church-Canada is either: the, or a, true church? First of all, it doesn't matter, because ecclesiastical membership is not a salvific issue. Salvation is the work of the regenerating Spirit of Christ, not church bodies. Secondly, when I accept God's Revelation as true (because he could swear by no one greater than himself Hb. 6:13), and am illuminated by the Holy Spirit, I conclude that the gospel of the Augsburg Confession, was the gospel of Christ.


In short, to require any extra-revelatory verification of either God's existence or the validity of his Revelation would be blasphemy.

*note* This is the primary reasoning and epistemological defense of Protestantism/Confessional Lutheranism. There are other arguments in its defense, such as an argument from Patristics or Church History, but these are not what establishes the fundamental truth. They are secondary arguments in both the general apologetic discourse, and importance generally.

How The Roman Church Masters the Scriptures

As a previous commenter jcrng (I think I know who this is, my old Deli co-worker) made the point, any Catholic (*read Roman Catholic) would agree that Scripture is inspired and authoritative in and of itself without the Church's approval.

Here's how that breaks down in practice if not in theory.

Let's look at St. Paul's famous exposition of the struggle of the Christian life in Romans 7:20 "Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me."

How should this be interpretted?

Well in Tradition, both St. Jerome (letter 2) and St. Augustine (Nature and Grace) agree in many places that the will of the baptized Christian is not free to do good. It is free to sin or not to sin, but any good work is directly attributable to the Holy Spirit. This is because, as any plain reading of the text will tell you, St. Paul says: "sin ... dwells within me". Not concupiscence or the opportunity to sin (as the Scholastics will say), but sin. Aquinas argues in III. Q. 75, A. 2, that to use a proper noun is to signify it substantially (this is how he 'proves' transubstantiation). If this interpretive principle is applied to Rom. 7:20, this means that (Original) Sin, formally and substantially, dwells in the baptized Christian.

Simple enough, this interpretation, popular enough before Trent, suddenly leads Martin Luther et al, to say that the Christian is simul iust et peccator / at the same time righteous and a sinner.

This utterly undermines the entire system of Purgatory, Indulgences, etc., and St. Peter's still has to be built. Enter the 22 Spanish and Portugeuse bishops who somehow equal an ecumenical/universl Church council, and the Roman Church declares in Trent that: even though the apostle saith sin, the Church has never understood it to be sin proper, but concupiscence (material original sin/opportunity to sin).

...

So you have Scripture and Tradition in unity on the matter, and the Magisterium saying "wrong".

How is this justified.

First of all, the interpretation of the Bible is made impossible. The Church denies (in a logically circle argument referencing St. Peter's epistle) that Scripture is clear for the laity to understand. Likewise tradition (which had always been public tradition, ie. knowable and written down) suddenly becomes secret unwritten tradition passed on esoterically through the Church. In the end, the only person who can infallibly judge the matter is the Pope.

So Scripture (and less importantly Tradition) are both declared to be fundamentally incomprehensible, and only knowable through the Pope.

This means in practice that it is not the text or Scripture, or the proclaimed message it records, which holds the Truth, but the Papacy. God's revelation is thus only understandable by a secret (gnostic?) special revelation made clear by the Magisterium (presumably Magisterial pronouncements are clear and comprehensible?).

In the end this amounts to saying de facto, that Scripture is not inspired. It also amounts to saying that Tradition is not a valid way of interpretting Scripture either, because this can be confusing, and not all the sources are public or written down, some are secret - knowable and interpretable only by the Pope. In the end, this amounts to something like the inspiration of the Papacy, rather than the inspiration of Scripture, or even a reliance on Scripture interpretted by Tradition.

The Distinction Between The Word Proclaimed and the Word Recorded

"While the Church is scattered throughout all the world, and the pillar and ground of the Church is the Gospel and the spirit of life" - St. Irenaeus of Lyons (I stole this quote from Jared's blog)

"For in the first place the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God." - Romans 3:2

The central argument that Roman Catholicism (hereafter referred to simply as RC) bases its epistemology upon is the claim that Sola Scriptura cannot be true because the Church wrote the Bible. Thus, where the Reformers (and as aforequoted, St. Irenaeus) said that the Gospel made the Church, Tridentine RC taught the opposite. After all, how could we know the gospel if we didn't even have the New Testament canon?

1. Ontological Pre-eminance of the Word
The problem with this state of affairs is that it immediately assumes. First of all, the New Testament is a record of the teachings of Christ, his proclaimed word, through his apostles and messengers. The epistemological point must be stressed that the written record of Scripture is true and authoritative, because it faithfully represents objective events. In other words, the authority of the scriptural passage "whoever believes and is baptized will be saved" (Mk.16:16) rests upon the fact that Christ historically and objectively said this in history first, and that the Bible records it secondly. It is not St. Mark's authority that we trust in when we read this, it is the authority of Christ. It is not the case that St. Mark wrote these words and authored these ideas, it is the fact that they are Christ's words and ideas. In modern terms, if St. Mark wrote this phrase in an essay submitted to me, he would have had to cite it, because it wasn't his idea (and he'd better do it Chicago Style!)

This is summed up nicely in the Belgic Confession, which states: "the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God". I.E. Even if no one wrote it down, the preaching of the apostles was the Word of God in oral form. In the same way that I can hum Bach's music without reading a music note, the Gospel was known in the Church even before the canon was decided, Nay! even before the Scripture was written.

This argument may sound familiar as it was used in a different form by St. Paul against the judaizers: "the law, which came four hundred and thirty years later, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise." (Gal. 3:17). The "promise" or the gospel which Abraham believed in, justified him (Rm 4) and existed long before a New Testament, which leads us to the next point.

2. The Gospel According To Abraham.
The Old Testament, which St. Paul reminds us, was intrusted to the Jews, is the story of Israel. Christians since the 1st century argued after St. Paul, that the Christian Church, was the True Israel. The Old Testament was a Christian book, as the apostle reminds us that all scripture speaks of Him (Christ). Isaiah 53 is a clear example of the gospel in the Old Testament. Genesis 18 was a proof-text for the Trinity.

The idea that Christians needed the Magesterium to know the Gospel or that they needed the New Testament to know the Gospel, flies in the face of all this.

Conclusion:

For these reasons, it is wrong to say that the Church makes the Gospel. The fact that Pope Damasus oversaw a Council in Rome (382) which declared the canon of scripture, no more creates the Scripture/Gospel, than me telling my friend what I read in class, creates the book I read. It's a subversive argument that makes man the master of God's Word. The Church is ministerial, it is the servant of the Gospel, not magisterial, the master of the Gospel.

Return to Protestantism

Just when you thought I'd quietly acquiesced to papaldom, the evangelischegeist suddenly came flowing back into me. The shackles of the Law fell off, and I found myself awash once more in the unmerited grace of Christ.

I've come up with new arguments for Protestantism/against Roman Catholicism, as well as a new Barthian (tremble at the name!) epistemological argument against Thomism, or rather certain understandings of Thomism.

They are as follows:
1. The proper distinction between the proclaimed word, and the written word of Scripture.

2. An argument that Papal Infallibility and the Magesterium of the Church necessarily result in textual relativism, and a de facto denial of Scriptural Inspiration, and commit a form of gnosticism.

3. A defense of Heiko Oberman's understanding of the complex historical theology of scripture and tradition. (tradition 0, tradition 1, tradition 2, etc)

4. My old argument about how the Thomistic philosophy of language employed in III. Q. 75, A. 2 flatly contradicts the Council of Trent's doctrine of Concupiscence as Material Original Sin, AND (interestingly enough) can be used to verify Consubstantiation rather than Transubstantiation.

5. This one has to come last, because it is a rejection of the Aristotelian logic I employ in arguments 1-4., that not only does the tradition of the Church (ex. Tertullian) require us to reject Greek Philosophy as leading us to heresy, but also the Ontological Primacy of the Word, demands us to reject any theoretical basis for legitimizing Revelation. Ultimately, Revelation is necessarily self-referential and cannot be reasoned about but only either accepted or rejected.

More on Sin and Grace

"Christ grants justification to those who believe in him, simply because they have faith and not because they serve the law. The blessing granted to Abraham for his exemplary faith is extended to the Gentiles, so that we may receive the promised Spirit through faith.

In other words, the promised gift to believers is not a spirit of outward observance but one of inward devotion inspired by love." - St. Augustine's commentary on Galatians

I've been reading Bl. Cardinal Newman's daily devotional book and it is painstakingly Pelagian in its assertions and all the worst sections are from his Anglican days. Moralism is a Protestant disease that Catholics seem to love. This year, I am reading daily devotions from St. Augustine. He writes some extraordinary things about salvation and is very careful in his writings to speak alot about sin and alot about grace.

I was in the chaplaincy office yesterday and a Presbyterian who is becoming Catholic said to me that his professor described Christianity's view of the world as marred by sin, and he thought that sounded Protestant to him.

...

I don't think he'll ever ask my opinion again on that matter, as I thoroughly thrashed any attempts to remove Original Sin and Concupiscence from our theology. To fight Pelagianism and Total Depravity you don't try to find a middle ground between sin and grace, this is the mistake of some Jesuits and Newman (late Anglican period), rather you multiply sin and you multiply grace.

The more terribly you paint sin, the more wonderful you paint grace. The more Adam the more Christ I think. Or as the Lutherans say, the more law, the more gospel.

I've seen three different perspectives on justification in Catholic life:

1. Universalism / acceptance / Liberalism

2. "Semi-Pelagianism"(for my Reformed audience) which basically makes it sound like God brings 50% to the table and we bring 50% to the table and this synergism somehow solves the problem.

3. Augustinianism (Thank God for Pope Benedict XVI) - God gives 100%, he gives us every ounce of grace that we need for salvation. Every prayer, work, or even the desire for these things, is motivated by God, as the council of Orange declares. "What have you that you did not receive" as the apostle saith. The difference between Augustinianism and Protestantism or rather the divergence between Catholic and Protestant Augustinianism, is twofold.

Does God formally (Aristotelian Category) work this salvation, justification, and sanctification in us, or outside of us. Catholics say in, Protestants say out.

Does faith mean fiducia or fide, is it personal trust in God (will) or assent to his promises (intellect), or both.

Finally, Protestants radically diverge from Augustine on the issue of love (as we do from him on the issue of reprobation). St. Augustine clearly believed that humans do love God through the power of the Holy Spirit and that this love was tied to their faith, in a holistic turn to God and regeneration, rather than just a trust without love or without any interior transformation necessary.

Aquinas solves the Contrition Debate

SO. I haven't blogged in a long time, mostly on here because apparently chinese pornographers keep leaving large amounts of comments to my posts, and so I've been at Recusant Corner.

However, I stumbled across something tonight that I thought I'd post as it was very relevant to a longstanding debate that has occured on this blog for the last year (or more).

Contrition vs. Perfect Contrition vs. Imperfect Contrition.

My scruples surrounded the idea of perfect contrition and the term 'perfect love for God'. As is the case with most post-Tridentine Catholic theology, the grounds are a mess. There are so many qualifiers and hastily thrown together documents and a rebuttle of a misunderstood Protestantism, that it left me without much hope.

So for some reason, after all this, I went back to St. Thomas, and read these words which shocked me:

"we must say that sorrow, however slight it be, provided it suffice for true contrition, blots out all sin." - http://www.newadvent.org/summa/5005.htm

Now as far as I exegeted this chapter of the summa, St. Thomas seems to be arguing that any sorrow for sins is a divine and therefore infinite sort of thing. Thus sorrow for sins possesses the infinite and gracious efficacy that sanctifying grace has, and where one is the next will follow. Basically resulting in a theology where, sorrow for sins with any kind of conviction, is a sign of efficacious grace, and necessarily entails a desire for confession, and necessarily gives one the ability to hope for their own redemption.

(which is good as I haven't been to confession in a month, and can't go until Saturday).

Things are always simpler with Aquinas.