Posted on 09/11/2019 10:52:15 AM PDT by Gamecock
Like all accounts of God’s faithfulness, mine begins with a genealogy. In the late seventeenth century, my mother’s Congregationalist ancestors journeyed to the New World to escape what they saw as England’s deadly compromise with Romanism. Centuries later, American Presbyterians converted my father’s great-grandmother from Coptic Orthodoxy to Protestantism. Her son became a Presbyterian minister in the Evangelical Coptic Church. By the time my parents were living in twenty-first-century Illinois, their families’ historic Reformed commitments had been replaced by non-denominational, Baptistic evangelicalism.
This form of Christianity dominated my Midwestern hometown. My parents taught me to love God, revere the Scriptures, and seek truth through reason. In middle school, my father introduced me to theology, and as a present for my sixteenth birthday he arranged a meeting between me and a Catholic philosopher, Dr. B—. From high school into college, Dr. B— introduced me to Catholic thought and graciously helped me work through my doubts about Christianity. How could a just and loving God not reveal himself equally to everyone? What are we to make of the Bible’s creation stories and flood narrative? Did Calvinism make God the author of evil? My acquaintance with Dr. B— set my intellectual trajectory for several years.
The causes of any conversion (or near conversion) are many and confused. Should I foreground psychological and social factors or my theological reasoning? Certain elements of my attraction to Catholicism were adolescent, like a sixties radical’s attraction to Marx or a contemporary activist’s to intersectionality: I aimed to preserve the core beliefs of my upbringing while fleeing their bourgeois expressions. When I arrived at the University of Chicago, I knew just enough about Calvinism to hold it in contempt—which is to say, I knew very little. Reacting against the middle-aged leaders of the inaptly named “Young, Restless, and Reformed Movement,” I sought refuge in that other great Western theological tradition: Roman Catholicism.
During my first year of college, I became involved in campus Catholic life. Through the influence of the Catholic student group and the Lumen Christi Institute, which hosts lectures by Catholic intellectuals, my theologically inclined college friends began converting to Catholicism, one after another. These friends were devout, intelligent, and schooled in Christian history. I met faithful and holy Catholic priests—one of whom has valiantly defended the faith for years, drawing punitive opposition from his own religious superiors, as well as the ire of Chicago’s archbishop. This priest was and is to me the very model of a holy, righteous, and courageous man.
I loved Catholicism because Catholics taught me to love the Church. At Lumen Christi events, I heard about saints and mystics, stylites and monastics, desert fathers and late-antique theologians. I was captivated by the holy martyrs, relics, Mary, and the Mass. I found in the Church a spiritual mother and the mother of all the faithful. Through Catholicism, I came into an inheritance: a past of saints and redeemed sinners from all corners of the earth, theologians who illuminated the deep things of God, music and art that summon men to worship God “in the beauty of holiness,” and a tradition to ground me in a world of flux.
Catholicism, which I took to be the Christianity of history, was a world waiting to be discovered. I set about exploring, and I tried to bring others along. I debated tradition with my mother, sola Scriptura with my then fiancée (now wife), and the meaning of the Eucharist with my father. On one occasion, a Reformed professor dispensed with my arguments for transubstantiation in a matter of minutes.
Not long after this, I began to notice discrepancies between Catholic apologists’ map of the tradition and the terrain I encountered in the tradition itself. St. Ambrose’s doctrine of justification sounded a great deal more like Luther’s sola fide than like Trent. St. John Chrysostom’s teaching on repentance and absolution—“Mourn and you annul the sin”—would have been more at home in Geneva than Paris. St. Thomas’s doctrine of predestination, much to my horror, was nearly identical to the Synod of Dordt’s. The Anglican divine Richard Hooker quoted Irenaeus, Chrysostom, Augustine, and Pope Leo I as he rejected doctrines and practices because they were not grounded in Scripture. He cited Pope Gregory the Great on the “ungodly” title of universal bishop. The Council of Nicaea assumed that Alexandria was on a par with Rome, and Chalcedon declared that the Roman patriarchate was privileged only “because [Rome] was the royal city.” In short, I began to wonder whether the Reformers had a legitimate claim to the Fathers. The Church of Rome could not be straightforwardly identified as catholic.
John Henry Newman became my crucial interlocutor: More than in Ratzinger, Wojtyła, or Congar, in Newman I found a kindred spirit. Here was a man obsessed with the same questions that ate at me, questions of tradition and authority. With Newman, I agonized over conversion. I devoured his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine and his Apologia pro Vita Sua. Two of his ideas were pivotal for me: his theory of doctrinal development and his articulation of the problem of private judgment. On these two ideas hung all the claims of Rome.
In retrospect, I see that Newman’s need to construct a theory of doctrinal development tells against Rome’s claims of continuity with the ancient Church. And at the time, though I wished to accept Newman’s proposal that “the early condition, and the evidence, of each doctrine . . . ought consistently to be interpreted by means of that development which was ultimately attained,” I could not. One could only justify such assumptions if one were already committed to Roman Catholic doctrine and Rome’s meaningful continuity with what came before. Without either of these commitments, I simply could not find a plausible reason to speak of “development” rather than “disjuncture,” especially because what came before so often contradicted what followed.
The issue of ecclesiastical authority was trickier for me. I recognized the absurdity of a twenty-year-old presuming to adjudicate claims about the Scriptures and two thousand years of history. Newman’s arguments against private judgment therefore had a prima facie plausibility for me. In his Apologia, Newman argues that man’s rebellion against God introduced an “anarchical condition of things,” leading human thought toward “suicidal excesses.” Hence, the fittingness of a divinely established living voice infallibly proclaiming supernatural truths. In his discourse on “Faith and Private Judgment,” Newman castigates Protestants for refusing to “surrender” reason in matters religious. The implication is that reason is unreliable in matters of revelation. Faith is assent to the incontestable, self-evident truth of God’s revelation, and reasoning becomes an excuse to refuse to bend the knee.
The more I internalized Newman’s claims about private judgment, however, the more I descended into skepticism. I could not reliably interpret the Scriptures, history, or God’s Word preached and given in the sacraments. But if I could not do these things, if my reason was unfit in matters religious, how was I to assess Newman’s arguments for Roman Catholicism? Newman himself had once recognized this dilemma, writing in a pre-conversion letter, “We have too great a horror of the principle of private judgment to trust it in so immense a matter as that of changing from one communion to another.” Did he expect me to forfeit the faculty by which I adjudicate truth claims, because that faculty is fallible? My conversion would have to be rooted in my private judgment—but, because of Rome’s claim of infallibility, conversion would forbid me from exercising that faculty ever again on doctrinal questions.
Finally, the infighting among traditionalist, conservative, and liberal Catholics made plain that Catholics did not gain by their magisterium a clear, living voice of divine authority. They received from the past a set of magisterial documents that had to be weighed and interpreted, often over against living prelates. The magisterium of prior ages only multiplied the texts one had to interpret for oneself, for living bishops, it turns out, are as bad at reading as the rest of us.
But I did not remain a Protestant merely because I could not become a Catholic. While I was discovering that Roman Catholicism could not be straightforwardly identified with the catholicism of the first six centuries (nor, in certain respects, with that of the seventh century through the twelfth), and as I was wrestling with Newman, I finally began reading the Reformers. What I found shocked me. Catholicism had, by this time, reoriented my theological concerns around the concerns of the Church catholic. My assumptions, and the issues that animated me, were those of the Church of history. My evangelical upbringing had led me to believe that Protestantism entailed the rejection of these concerns. But this notion exploded upon contact with the Protestantism of history.
Martin Luther, John Calvin, Richard Hooker, Herman Bavinck, Karl Barth—they wrestled with the concerns of the Church catholic and provided answers to the questions Catholicism had taught me to pose. Richard Hooker interpreted the Church’s traditions; Calvin followed Luther’s Augustinianism, proclaimed the visible Church the mother of the faithful, and claimed for the Reformation the Church’s exegetical tradition; Barth convinced me that God’s Word could speak, certainly and surely, from beyond all created realities, to me.
Catholicism had taught me to think like a Protestant, because, as it turned out, the Reformers had thought like catholics. Like their pope-aligned opponents, they had asked questions about justification, the authority of tradition, the mode of Christ’s self-gift in the Eucharist, the nature of apostolic succession, and the Church’s wielding of the keys. Like their opponents, Protestants had appealed to Scripture and tradition. In time, I came to find their answers not only plausible, but more faithful to Scripture than the Catholic answers, and at least as well-represented in the traditions of the Church.
The Protestants did more than out-catholic the Catholics. They also spoke to the deepest needs of sinful souls. I will never forget the moment when, like Luther five hundred years earlier, I discovered justification by faith alone through union with Christ. I was sitting in my dorm room by myself. I had been assigned Luther’s Explanations of the Ninety-Five Theses, and I expected to find it facile. A year or two prior, I had decided that Trent was right about justification: It was entirely a gift of grace consisting of the gradual perfecting of the soul by faith and works—God instigating and me cooperating. For years, I had attempted to live out this model of justification. I had gone to Mass regularly, prayed the rosary with friends, fasted frequently, read the Scriptures daily, prayed earnestly, and sought advice from spiritual directors. I had begun this arduous cooperation with God’s grace full of hope; by the time I sat in that dorm room alone, I was distraught and demoralized. I had learned just how wretched a sinner I was: No good work was unsullied by pride, no repentance unaccompanied by expectations of future sin, no love free from selfishness.
In this state, I picked up my copy of that arch-heretic Luther and read his explanation of Thesis 37: “Any true Christian, whether living or dead, participates in all the blessings of Christ and the church; and this is granted him by God, even without indulgence letters.” With these words, Luther transformed my understanding of justification: Every Christian possesses Christ, and to possess Christ is to possess all of Christ’s righteousness, life, and merits. Christ had joined me to himself.
I had “put on Christ” in baptism and, by faith through the work of the Spirit, all things were mine, and I was Christ’s, and Christ was God’s (Gal. 3:27; 1 Cor. 3:21–23). His was not an uncertain mercy; his was not a grace of parts, which one hoped would become a whole; his was not a salvation to be attained, as though it were not already also a present possession. At that moment, the joy of my salvation poured into my soul. I wept and showed forth God’s praise. I had finally discovered the true ground and power of Protestantism: “My beloved is mine, and I am his” (Song 2:16).
Rome had brought me to Reformation.
I don’t have two other sisters.
Indoctrination.
Much the same reason many people still think that socialism HAS to work despite the fact that it’s failed so many times before, because all their teachers said so.
The old Catholic Encyclopedia (on Justification) states,
Until quite recently, it was almost universally accepted that the epistle of St. James was written against the unwarranted conclusions drawn from the writings of St. Paul. Of late, however, Catholic exegetes have become more and more convinced that the Epistle in question, so remarkable for its insisting on the necessity of good works, neither aimed at correcting the false interpretations of St. Paul's doctrine, nor had any relation to the teaching of the Apostle of the Gentiles.
On the contrary, they believe that St. James had no other object than to emphasize the fact — already emphasized by St. Paul — that only such faith as is active in charity and good works (fides formata) possesses any power to justify man (cf. Galatians 5:6; 1 Corinthians 13:2), whilst faith devoid of charity and good works (fides informis) is a dead faith and in the eyes of God insufficient for justification (cf. James 2:17 sqq.). According to this apparently correct opinion, the Epistles of both Apostles treat of different subjects, neither with direct relation to the other. For St. James insists on the necessity of works of Christian charity, while St. Paul intends to show that neither the observance of the Jewish Law nor the merely natural good works of the pagans are of any value for obtaining the grace of justification (cf. Bartmann, "St. Paulus u. St. Jacobus und die Rechtertigung", Freiburg, 1897). — Catholic Encyclopedia>Justification; http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08573a.htm
As said, it is effectual, (1 Thessalonians 1:6) expressive, (Rm. 10:9-13) heart-purifying (Ats 15:9) Abrahamic faith that is counted for righteousness, versus works meriting justification, though they "justify" the believer as being one, (Heb. 6:9) and fit to be rewarded under grace. (Mt. 25:32-40)
Actually that is only done by some kooky non-c’s.
We Catholics know that Jesus set up His Church, the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, at the Pentecost. it’s all to Jesus that His Church survives 2000 years.
Metmom: Adding works to intellectual assent is not going to save anyone.
Saving faith is one that produces works as the natural outflow of the work of the Holy Spirit in the person’s life.
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fortes fortuna juvat: Both of these statement are plausible in my view EXCEPT that the latter one appears to overlook the role of the will which must voluntarily and consciously conform to the work of the Spirit. Otherwise the works produced have no human attribution at all and the human person is reduced to the level of an automaton, hardly what God intends.
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It’s the faith, though, Christ living within a person, which does the works. Anything that isn’t of faith is sin:
Romans 14:23, “Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.”
Faith acts. If you say “faith AND works” are needed for salvation, then you’re saying faith AND not faith/unbelief are necessary for salvation. On the other hand, with saving faith, works will be present, though, because true faith naturally produces fruit. If there’s no fruit, there’s no faith.
The real issue here is one of how something is perceived and interpreted, and it’s no small matter because it goes to define our relationship with God. The actions a Christian takes to please God and obey Him — are they done by the faith of one who is saved by Christ, or are at least some done by the raw will power of the human being apart from Christ, the unregenerate sinner?
Here is another way of looking at it, too. This is a little story that I’ve seen African Christians post online:
Two guys were drinking in a bar.
As they were drinking, they started arguing, one guy pounce on his friend and started
beating him.
After a long beating he realised that his friend was no longer breathing, he already died instantly.
Then the guy started running with his
shirt full of blood.Those who were
watching the fight started chasing him.
He ran to the house of a Christian man, knocked and said,
“Can u please hide me, i have killed a person and people are chasing me.”
The Christian man replied ,
“Where am i going to hide you in my one room
apartment?”
The muderer said “There is no time to
waste here, just think of anywhere you
can hide me.”
After a long thinking, the Christian man
said to the murderer,
“Give me your shirt and take my shirt but remember to keep my shirt clean”
They exchanged their shirts.Then as
soon as the Christian man opened the
door, people started beating him and
was badly injured that he was taken to
the police station.
From police station, the case was taken
to court and the man was found guilty of
murder and was sentenced to death.
The real murderer was safe at home but
was feeling so guilty that he ran to the
Court and said,
“Can you please release that innocent man, am the real murderer”.
The judge replied “unfortunately it’s too
late, the man is already hanged at last”.
He ran to the police where the man was
hanged and for sure he
found him dead hanging.
He knelt down and cried his eyes out and said to himself, “ You paid for my crime”
He remembered the Christian’s last
words:
“KEEP MY SHIRT CLEAN !!!”
That’s how the murderer repented and
became a christian!
MORAL OF THE STORY ;
This is what Jesus did for us. He died for
the crime he did not commit on the cross of Calvary.
Now if you are thankful with what Jesus did for you, please keep his shirt clean. Please share with as many people as you can. God bless you. (END of quote). Cont’d....
Our sin did put Christ, God’s only begotten Son, on the Cross. We did kill Him. Jesus is also God’s Word, and we similarly killed Him through the sin of disobeying God’s Word. And whoever violates one part of the law is guilty of violating the entire law. We even hate, which is murder. All in all, we are all murderers in many ways before Holy God. So what “work” can atone for a murder? Isn’t it illustrative that no matter what “good work” a murderer may do in this life, that not a single thing can ever do anything to bring back the murder victim?
Then, too, in this story, Jesus exchanges shirts with the murderer and says to keep His clean. That message is conveyed in a number of places in the Bible. We’re given a clean shirt by God, through Jesus. It’s not our own. Our own is dirty. And, it’s wholly given to us, not partly.
Also consider the parable of the prodigal son. His motivation to return to his father was selfish — self-interest eventually woke him up, not love for his father or remorse. God’s Word says our righteousness is like filthy rags.
So the problem with the claim that we’re partly saved by our works, like there’s some goodness in ourselves that we can claim credit for, is that it always implies something noble on our part, something admirable that we can take pride in, which is Satanic on its face.
Now, it does make sense to believe that in there, somewhere, we do have an amount of free will that has just the right quality and quantity for God to judge us, and either choose to save us through His Son or to reject us eternally. But we can’t really identify it or put our own finger on it. In psalm 139, David asked God to search his heart. In psalm 19, he wrote, “Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me from secret faults.” And Jeremiah 17:9-10 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.”
Isn’t it the case, too, that so often what we think are our good works aren’t so good at all, and might even be, according to what’s going on in our hearts, more evil than good?
We’re fallible, fallen creatures who aren’t capable of judging others or even ourselves. We need to depend on God, including for receiving any praise from Him. If we’re truly
do it, He’ll provide it. What we can safely do is praise the Lord and credit the Son of God for our salvation.
More on the “faith versus faith plus works” matter.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3778053/posts?page=785#785
http://freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3778053/posts?page=786#786
The Holy Spirit works through the Church. That is a miracle of God!
...and Catholics believe in the inerrancy of scripture. The poo pooing is in your head.
What’s the alternative? A fallible canon put together by fallible scholars. You can’t get infallible scripture from a fallible canon.
The Holy Spirit, working through the Church, gave us the Bible.
Just like the Holy Spirit, working through Paul, gave us Galatians.
Paul did not inspire the epistles, and the Church did not inspire the Bible.
We know that Faith alone, without works, is dead. Only faith, working through Love, means anything to Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit, working through the Church, gave us the Bible.
Just like the Holy Spirit, working through Paul, gave us Galatians.
Paul did not inspire the epistles, and the Church did not inspire the Bible.
We know that Faith alone, without works, is dead. Only faith, working through Love, means anything to Jesus Christ.
We know that Faith alone, without works, is dead. Only faith, working through Love, means anything to Jesus Christ.
There is a subtle change in what you're quoting. "Only faith, working through Love" is not the same as "faith without works". You are implying that we "work through Love" to accomplish our good works. I would say we have faith, and God gives us our good works as evidence of our faith. Anything that we might accomplish isn't because of us but because of Him. He is the vine, we are the branches.
Ephesians 2:10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
I didn’t mean to imply anything, but I am glad that you agree that Faith without Works is dead.
We both agree that you need Faith. And we both agree that Faith without works is dead.
Catholics would also agree with you that works alone are insufficient.
I don’t entirely know what you mean when you say “God gives us our good works as evidence of our faith.” I hope you are not implying that we somehow lose our free will - seems like you are trying to say Faith alone. Certainly God gives us grace, but are the ones running the race, obeying His commandments, and otherwise walking worthy.
“Free will” is never mentioned in scripture except in one (maybe two) verses in regards to an offering. There is God’s will and there is man’s will. They are at odds with each other.
Man is evil and will never do the things of God. John 2:25 tells us Christ did not trust Himself to man because He knew man was evil. Ezekiel 11:19 tells us God has to give us a new heart and spirt. Ephesians 2 tells us that we are created (reborn) for good works. John 15 tells us Christ is the vine and without Him we cannot do anything pleasing to God.
Anything good that we might do comes from the Father because of Christ working through His Spirit. Someday we will cast our crowns down before His feet because we will realize that without Him we are nothing. Anything that is not pleasing to God is the result that we are wretched sinners.
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