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.

Good Shepherd Iconography

Roman Catholic Jesus (The Good Shepherd)

My commentary here seems to be the way that Western Christian art de-masculinizes Jesus. Sometimes to the extreme. For instance, the Western mystics speak about Christ nursing them at times. (St. Bernard claimed to have nursed from the Blessed Virgin, but I'm not touching that issue). I sometimes enjoy these portrayals of Christ, and I think they were produced to show the approachability(?) of Christ, and his meekness. I like this image a lot, and after spending enough time in the RCC, I have come to identify with it's once foreign iconography and art. It's a very kind Jesus.


East Orthodox Jesus (The Good Shepherd)

There's no one quite like Orthodox Jesus. Half Putin, half Goliath. That sheep is being dragged with Him whether it likes it or not (paradoxically contradictory to the EO view of predestination, but I guess sometimes lex orandi lex credendi non est). Sometimes I feel like I'm looking at Vlad the Impaler, rather that our blessed Lord, but other times I'm impressed by the authority and power of Christ. This icon reminds me of his strong words: "[m]y sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me". If I heard this man shouting at me (with a heavy Russian accent?) I would certainly stop what I was doing, and listen.



Synthesis / Protestant(?) Jesus


This image is a nice rapproachment between the East & West. It's an image from a Lutheran church in my province. I won't say it's the best because of it's denominational affiliation, after all, it might've just been a public domain image that they slapped on their website. However, I think it does a good job of capturing the humanity of Christ (while keeping him masculine), and also the sheep over his shoulders is quite significant to me, and is more reminiscent of Lk 15:5 "when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing."

Christ is my Good Shepherd, who leaves the 99 to find me, a wayward sheep, one which doesn't heed his voice, and wanders my own way, but whom the Lord graciously picks up and carries home himself.

The Authority Question (Again)

The Question:

What is the apostolic office?

The Problem:
We look back using reason at the early church, we see books that will eventually become Scripture, the Church Fathers, councils and synods. The problem is disunity in the accounts here. How do we know Origen was a heretic, or that Tertullian was wrong on Baptism, or that Pelagius was wrong on anthropology/Original Sin.

Answers:
Protestants take into account the fathers, the councils, and the books, and argue that by the very nature of Scripture (God-Breathed, Revelation, etc) it is superior to all other sources. This is an after-the-fact decision in an attempt to make up for difficulties and differences between Christian writers. Ultimate authority must be given to Scripture and it is thus assumed that Scripture is clear in its meaning. People cite inclarity between Protestant traditions as disproof, but one forgets that apostolically succeeding bishops disagree as well (Old Catholics, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Coptics).

Catholics argue that Papal Supremacy is the apostolic office (or Petrine office as they might say). That St. Peter's authority was passed on to his successors and that they exercise his role as supreme among the apostles. This argument is ironically based off of scripture and the nature of the church (Spirit-led) and thus epistemologically it is equal to the after-the-fact system of sola scriptura, as the transfer of Petrine authority is not clearly taught (just like sola scriptura).

There are (paradoxically) three different Catholic answers:

1. Two-Source Method: Some argued that revelation is stored partly in Scripture, partly in oral traditions. In this view St. Paul could have taught the church at Ephesus the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, or Indulgences. This to me seems a little ridiculous, but technically this is not a disproof of this view, it is merely my own incredulity. There are problems here in that many Catholic doctrines like indulgences, or certain Marian doctrines are not taught in the fathers. There might be 'seeds' but there is no fully defined doctrines as such.

2. Magesterium/Development Method: This was Cardinal Newman's solution, namely that as the church thought about these issues, over time, they managed to come up with new implications of each doctrine. I.E. Immaculate Conception from Genesis 3:15. Problematic to this opinion is that the Church declares revelation to be a finished process, this seems to add to the deposit of faith, which we have been told to guard (Jude 3) and presumably not to add to. Pelikan notes that the medievals stated that to add any doctrine was temerity, and so all doctrines must be proved to have been part of the deposit of faith.

3. Vatican II Method: Dei Verbum & Pope Benedict XVI seem to see Tradition as the bounds within which we are to read the bible. The Bible is the materially sufficient deposit of faith, and Tradition helps us interpret it.

Problematic is that each of these 3 views is on equal epistemological footing as Sola Scriptura. They're all after the fact ways of sorting out the problems of historical theology

Predestination & Free Will in Catholicism - Understanding Efficacious Grace

I got asked the question about Predestination as I did a bible study with a fellow Catholic on John 10. Molinism seems to be the easiest explanation, but at the same time, I didn't want to give in because I want to be a Thomist.

So I said I'd get back to him, and I read this and thought that I could be a Thomist or a Congruist.

I made this chart to help place theologies on a spectrum:



Two blog posts I've found quite helpful are these:

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/08/is-the-catholic-church-semi-pelagian/

http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2009/05/predestination-john-calvin-vs-thomas-aquinas/

"All Catholics, as we have seen, believe in the necessity of grace for all supernatural acts, and therefore also, since God desires the salvation of all, they hold that He offers to all grace, really and abundantly sufficient for their salvation. They further maintain that the will always remains free to reject grace or to correspond with it. But when we inquire into the nature of the distinction between efficacious and sufficient grace, Catholic theologians give different answers. We begin with a general definition which may suffice for the understanding of the question in dispute. A sufficient grace is one which merely enables the soul to perform a supernatural act; an efficacious grace is one which does really effect the purposes for which it is given. Thus Judas received sufficient, Peter efficacious, grace for conversion: in other words, grace was given capable of converting Judas, but to Peter grace which actually did convert him. The question is, whence does the effi cacity of grace proceed ?

The Dominican theologians defend what is usually called the Thomist system of grace, because those who hold it allege that it is in substance to be found in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas. This theory may be stated in the following propositions:—

(1) Second causes act only so far as they are determined to act by the first cause—i.e. God. Hence it is not enough to say that the power to work out our salvation comes from God. He also moves to the good action itself, and the existence of two kinds of grace must be admitted—viz. sufficient, which merely enables the recipient to act; and efficient, which is always followed by, and, indeed, produces the action.

(2) God sincerely wishes all men to be saved, and offers to all the means of salvation. But He wishes some to be saved absolutely, and considering all the circumstances ; others, only on certain conditions which are not realised. To the latter He gives sufficient, to the former efficacious, grace.

(3) In either case grace is given without any claim or merit on man's part.

(4) There is an intrinsic ditference between sufficient and efficacious grace— i.e. between the graces in themselves—so that it is always true to say that a man consented to grace given because it was efficacious: never true that the grace was efficacious because the man consented.

(5) Man always remains free and capable of merit under efficacious grace: free and responsible for his demerit with merely sufficient grace. For God as the first cause in no way interferes with the second cause, but, on the contrary, moves each second cause according to it's nature, so that beings with free will do not cease to be free because efficaciously moved by God. Sufficient grace gives full power to act, so that a man is perfectly responsible if he does not exert the power; while efficacious grace leaves perfect power of resistance. The reader will perceive the extreme difficulty, or, as the adversaries of Thoniism would say, the impossibility of reconciling this last with the foregoing propositions; but the fact that the Thomists do honestly hold the last proposition places a wide gulf between Thomism on the one hand, Calvinism and Jansenism on the other.

The three first of the Thomist propositions are admitted by that large number of Jesuit theologians known as Congruists, but they make the efficacity of grace depend, not on anything in the grace itself, but on the fact that it is given under circumstances which, as God foresees, are suitable to the dispositions of the recipient. He foreknows what all creatures would do in all possible circumstances—in what combination of circumstances they would accept or reject grace. If He decrees their predestination absolutely he gives them grace in circumstances under which they will certainly correspond to it; otherwise He confers grace which is in it self perfectly sufficient, but which they will certainly reject. Congruism has the advantage of admitting the full force of scriptural texts which attribute the whole difference between sinner and saint to the grace of God, while at the same time there is no difficulty in reconciling it with belief in the freedom of the will." -Thomas Arnold "A Catholic Dictionary" p 383-384

I now feel I understand this issue much better, and I will tell him that as a Thomist I believe that God gives his elect efficacious grace which they accept (even though they could reject it) and so are preserved by God and he knows them by name. While they can reject his efficacious grace, they don't because it goes against their nature which God is making righteous, in the same way that a person's nature is to sleep after a long day at work, even though theoretically they could stay up all night.

I could also say to him that as a Congruist I believe that God ordains a world in which his elect will accept his efficacious grace and that the choice of their will makes it infallibly efficacious which ultimately was changed by the circumstances of creation which God brought about in the first place.

Monergism and Romans 3:23-28

I was reading my Grandpa's Bible that was given to him in 1946 when he married my Grandma. It's an old King James with all his written notes. I was also listening to Tony Evans tonight who I love, what a great Protestant Preacher. And I've been at the point where I constantly think 'i'm going to hell' so I opened up at Romans. I read this passage:

"For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law." - Romans 3:23-28

The phrase "That he might be just, and the justifier" utterly clashes with all of modern Catholicism. It is complete Monergism. The idea that God does EVERYTHING and humans do NOTHING. This is what St. Paul seems to be making abundantly clear. There is no simpler way of putting it apparently. It would seem that God is just, and that he justifies those who believe in him. They don't justify themselves. It's not that they believe and are justified, it's that God justifies them and they believe. It's almost like he predestined them or something crazy like that, almost as if they had no say in the matter. This doesn't mesh with my Theology

I picked up Calvin again and he echoes this theme well, he quotes St. Boniface saying: "Human beings are the work of God insofar as they are human, but they are under the control of the devil insofar as they are sinners, unless they are rescued from there through Christ" (Bondage and Liberation of the Will pp 40-41)

And then Calvin adds of his own "the godly, being thoroughly emptied of all misplaced confidence in themselves, [an attitude] which is true humility indeed, make room for the grace of God, from which they may draw strength. Therefore in issuing commands and exhortations God does not take account of our strength, since he gives that very thing which he demands and gives it for the reason that by ourselves we are helpless." (Bondage and Liberation of the Will pp 41-42)

Interesting thoughts on the passage. If only they were right. Calvin may claim to be an Augustinian, but his Ecclesiology is entirely un-Augustinian. Thus I shall continue in Catholicism, for as St. Augustine said, "The Church is a whore, but she's my mother". God never gives us the choice of making a new church. So Ecclesiologically I must remain Catholic, but I still enjoy Calvin. He makes me feel redeemed even though I've done nothing Christ-like for probably a year. In my mind sola fide + election = apathy and sin = Calvin/Luther. But I'm glad some folks like Jared and the many Presbyterians I know can get a great deal from it. For me I doubt anything will work.

God bless my friends.

Jansenism Pt 1

I've realized that I like 2 systems of Theology greatly and agree with them. The systems are Catholicism and Calvinism. The problem is that they are contradictory. Blaise Pascal always seemed like a great man and I am reading Pensees right now, so I wikipedia'd him. As I read descriptions of his theology I realized I really agreed with alot of it. It was a form of Catholicism that didn't teach the Semi-Pelagian error of Trent to believe in Resistable Grace.

It seems very good as it blends alot of the truth about the fall, the gospel, predestination, and grace together and presents a truly Augustinian theology. I am planning on reading alot more of it.

Wikipedia says it well here:

"Jansen also insisted on justification by faith, although he did not contest the necessity of revering saints, of confession, and of frequent Communion. Jansen’s opponents (mainly Jesuits) condemned his teachings for their alleged similarities to Calvinism (though, unlike Calvinism, Jansen rejected the doctrine of assurance and taught that even the saved could not be assured that they were saved). Blaise Pascal's Ecrits sur la Grâce, based on what Michel Serres has called his "anamorphotic method," attempted to conciliate the contradictory positions of Molinists and Calvinists by stating that both were partially right: Molinists, who claimed God's choice concerning a person's sin and salvation was a posteriori and contingent, while Calvinists claimed that it was a priori and necessary. Pascal himself claimed that Molinists were correct concerning the state of humanity before the Fall, while Calvinists were correct regarding the state of humanity after the Fall.

The heresy of Jansenism, meaning here its denial of Catholic doctrine, is that it denies the role of free will in the acceptance and use of grace -- that God's role in the infusion of grace is such that it cannot be resisted and does not require human assent. The Catholic teaching is that "God's free initiative demands man's free response" (CCC 2002) [3] that is the gift of grace can be resisted and requires human assent."

Even if one is not allowed to believe in Irresistible Grace and be a Catholic, at least this shows me you can still believe in Total Depravity and Unconditional Election. Augustinian Thomism still offers some hope for me yet.

Free Will & C.S. Lewis

I know of no argument for free-will except the bible and even there it is difficult to prove it. I daresay that Luther won the argument against Erasmus, and I'd held the Reformed view of Free Will, I think Edwards explains it well. I don't know how it can be reckoned to Catholicism or even Arminianism. However aside from this un-endable debate I'd like to address one reason why I was always uneasy about free-will. C.S. Lewis illustrates it here well, and that reason is fear. Even though Reformed theology always pins the blame on the person even if they had no choice, I always fell on the more Modern Philosophical ideas I'd been taught at school, that if you had no control then you had no blame or at least it would be taken into consideration. All I'd have to do to be justified in Protestantism is admit that I am scum and Christ is the opposite, etc. To actually have to choose Jesus every day over myself is really hard, and it shows my level of real commitment. C.S. Lewis wrote this on the subject (which I stole from Criffton's blog):

“Every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And, taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a Heaven creature or into a hellish creature -- either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is Heaven: that is, it is joy, and peace, and knowledge, and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state or the other." - C.S. Lewis

how's that for works-righteousness/works based salvation.

'...and the crowds of angry reformers dropped their rocks, as they looked upon the offender, who incidentally, had written some of their favourite books... to depart in disappointment of the now unmasked Author...oh how the mighty have fallen'.

Corrections to my thoughts on Free Will

Ok, so Jared completely owned me on the debate about free will in his comment on my blog. I was waiting for him to do it again. He explained it in a way that I finally understood in saying that the Calvinist idea is not that we can't choose God as much as it is we don't choose God.

The idea is not that God has blocked the way for people to access him, but rather, all people are in their natural state blocked by their desires to turn to God. My horrible example to explain is this: I am right now able to sell everything I own to go help save the rainforest, but the truth is, I will never do this, to be honest I don't really care about the rainforest and so why would I do something completely against my own thoughts and instincts. It's kind of like that. So as of now I will have to stop baselessly attacking Calvinism and other systems I barely understand. I am still deciding whether I agree with it, but it certainly makes more sense.

And Jared clinched it by quoting St. Augustine, and when you really want to own someone in theology you go to those, because no one can fight with the Fathers. Though I still hold that most reformed thinkers reject many ideas of Augustine, like the inspiration of the Deutero-canon/Apocrypha, but that's another topic.

St. Augustine Refutes Faith Alone

In all of my investigation into Catholicism I don't know if I can believe in Sola Fide or Justification by Faith Alone anymore. It is a constant battle, and Martin Luther said that his religion would be based on Scriptures AND Augustine, so look what St. Augustine says:

"On Grace and Freewill" Ch.18
"Unintelligent persons, however, with regard to the apostle's statement: "We conclude that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law," (Rom 3:28) have thought him to mean that faith suffices to a man, even if he lead a bad life, and has no good works. Impossible is it that such a character should be deemed "a vessel of election" by the apostle, who, after declaring that " in Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision," (Gal 5:6) adds at once, "but faith which works by love." It is such faith which severs God's faithful from unclean demons,—for even these "believe and tremble," (Jms 2:19) as the Apostle James says; but they do not do well. Therefore they possess not the faith by which the just man lives,—the faith which works by love in such wise, that God recompenses it according to its works with eternal life. But inasmuch as we have even our good works from God, from whom likewise comes our faith and our love, therefore the selfsame great teacher of the Gentiles has designated "eternal life" itself as His gracious "gift." (Rom 6:23) "

This is written in 426-427 AD so it is important to understand that this is a historic position of the church. Just some food for thought.