[PleaseReadBeforeJudging] Why Only Catholicism Can Make Protestantism Work: Bouyer on Reformation

Why Only Catholicism Can Make Protestantism Work: Louis Bouyer on the Reformation MARK BRUMLEY

Many Protestants see the Catholic/Protestant split as a tragic necessity, although the staunchly anti-Catholic kind of Protestant often sees nothing tragic about it. Or if he does, the tragedy is that there ever was such a thing as the Roman Catholic Church that the Reformers had to separate from. His motto is "Come out from among them" and five centuries of Christian disunity has done nothing to cool his anti-Roman fervor.

Yet for most Protestants, even for most conservative Protestants, this is not so. They believe God "raised up" Luther and the other Reformers to restore the Gospel in its purity. They regret that this required a break with Roman Catholics (hence the tragedy) but fidelity to Christ, on their view, demanded it (hence the necessity).

Catholics agree with their more agreeable Protestant brethren that the sixteenth century division among Christians was tragic. But most Catholics who think about it also see it as unnecessary. At least unnecessary in the sense that what Catholics might regard as genuine issues raised by the Reformers could, on the Catholic view, have been addressed without the tragedy of dividing Christendom.

Yet we can go further than decrying the Reformation as unnecessary. In his ground-breaking work, The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, Louis Bouyer argued that the Catholic Church herself is necessary for the full flowering of the Reformation principles. In other words, you need Catholicism to make Protestantism work - for Protestantism's principles fully to develop. Thus, the Reformation was not only unnecessary; it was impossible. What the Reformers sought, argues Bouyer, could not be achieved without the Catholic Church.

From Bouyer's conclusion we can infer at least two things. First, Protestantism can't be all wrong, otherwise how could the Catholic Church bring about the "full flowering of the principles of the Reformation"? Second, left to itself, Protestantism will go astray and be untrue to some of its central principles. It's these two points, as Bouyer articulates them, I would like to consider here. One thing should be said up-front: although a convert from French Protestantism, Bouyer is no anti-Protestant polemicist. His Spirit and Forms of Protestantism was written a half-century ago, a decade before Vatican II's decree on ecumenism, Unitatis Redintegratio, yet it avoids the bitter anti-Protestantism that sometimes afflicted pre-conciliar Catholic works on Protestantism. That's one reason the book remains useful, even after decades of post-conciliar ecumenism.

Bouyer, then, addresses both Protestants and Catholics. To the Protestants, he says, in effect, "It is fidelity to our Protestant principles, properly understood, that has led me into the Catholic Church." To the Catholics, he says, "Protestantism isn't as antithetical to the Catholic Faith as you suppose. It has positive principles, as well as negative ones. Its positive principles, properly understood, belong to the Catholic Tradition, which we Catholics can see if we approach Protestantism with a bit of understanding and openness."

The Reformation was Right

Bouyer's argument is that the Reformation's main principle was essentially Catholic: "Luther's basic intuition, on which Protestantism continuously draws for its abiding vitality, so far from being hard to reconcile with Catholic tradition, or inconsistent with the teaching of the Apostles, was a return to the clearest elements of their teaching, and in the most direct line of that tradition."

1. Sola Gratia. What was the Reformation's main principle? Not, as many Catholics and even some Protestants think, "private judgment" in religion. According to Bouyer, "the true fundamental principle of Protestantism is the gratuitousness of salvation" - sola gratia. He writes, "In the view of Luther, as well as of all those faithful to his essential teaching, man without grace can, strictly speaking, do nothing of the slightest value for salvation. He can neither dispose himself for it, nor work for it in any independent fashion. Even his acceptance of grace is the work of grace. To Luther and his authentic followers, justifying faith . . . is quite certainly, the first and most fundamental grace."

Bouyer then shows how, contrary to what many Protestants and some Catholics think, salvation sola gratia is also Catholic teaching. He underscores the point to any Catholics who might think otherwise:

"If, then, any Catholic - and there would seem to be many such these days - whose first impulse is to reject the idea that man, without grace, can do nothing towards his salvation, that he cannot even accept the grace offered except by a previous grace, that the very faith which acknowledges the need of grace is a purely gratuitous gift, he would do well to attend closely to the texts we are about to quote."

Bouyer quotes, at length, from the Second Council of Orange (529), the teaching of which was confirmed by Pope Boniface II as de fide or part of the Church's faith. The Council asserted that salvation is the work of God's grace and that even the beginning of faith or the consent to saving grace is itself the result of grace. By our natural powers, we can neither think as we ought nor choose any good pertaining to salvation. We can only do so by the illumination and impulse of the Holy Spirit.

Nor is it merely that man is limited in doing good. The Council affirmed that, as a result of the Fall, man is inclined to will evil. His freedom is gravely impaired and can only be repaired by God's grace. Following a number of biblical quotations, the Council states, "[W]e are obliged, in the mercy of God, to preach and believe that, through sin of the first man, the free will is so weakened and warped, that no one thereafter can either love God as he ought, or believe in God, or do good for the sake of God, unless moved, previously, by the grace of the divine mercy . . . . Our salvation requires that we assert and believe that, in every good work we do, it is not we who have the initiative, aided, subsequently, by the mercy of God, but that he begins by inspiring faith and love towards him, without any prior merit of ours."

The Council of Trent, writes Bouyer, repeated that teaching, ruling out "a parallel action on the part of God and man, a sort of 'synergism', where man contributes, in the work of salvation, something, however slight, independent of grace." Even where Trent insists that man is not saved passively, notes Bouyer, it doesn't assert some independent, human contribution to salvation. Man freely cooperates in salvation, but his free cooperation is itself the result of grace. Precisely how this is so is mysterious, and the Church has not settled on a particular theological explanation. But that it is so, insist Bouyer, is Catholic teaching. Thus, concludes Bouyer, "the Catholic not only may, but must in virtue of his own faith, give a full and unreserved adherence to the sola gratia, understood in the positive sense we have seen upheld by Protestants."

2. Sola Fide. So much for sola gratia. But what about the other half of the Reformation principle regarding salvation, the claim that justification by grace comes through faith alone (sola fide) ?

According to Bouyer, the main thrust of the doctrine of sola fide was to affirm that justification was wholly the work of God and to deny any positive human contribution apart from grace. Faith was understood as man's grace-enabled, grace-inspired, grace-completed response to God's saving initiative in Jesus Christ. What the Reformation initially sought to affirm, says Bouyer, was that such a response is purely God's gift to man, with man contributing nothing of his own to receive salvation.

In other words, it isn't as if God does his part and man cooperates by doing his part, even if that part is minuscule. The Reformation insisted that God does his part, which includes enabling and moving man to receive salvation in Christ. Man's "part" is to believe, properly understood, but faith too is the work of God, so man contributes nothing positively of his own. As Bouyer points out, this central concern of the Reformation also happened to be defined Catholic teaching, reaffirmed by the Council of Trent.

In a sense, the Reformation debate was over the nature of saving faith, not over whether faith saves. St. Thomas Aquinas, following St. Augustine and the patristic understanding of faith and salvation, said that saving faith was faith "formed by charity." In other words, saving faith involves at least the beginnings of the love of God. In this way, Catholics could speak of "justification by grace alone, through faith alone," if the "alone" was meant to distinguish the gift of God (faith) from any purely human contribution apart from grace; but not if "alone" was meant to offset faith from grace-enabled, grace-inspired, grace-accomplished love of God or charity.

For Catholic theologians of the time, the term "faith" was generally used in the highly refined sense of the gracious work of God in us by which we assent to God's Word on the authority of God who reveals. In this sense, faith is distinct from entrusting oneself to God in hope and love, though obviously faith is, in a way, naturally ordered to doing so: God gives man faith so that man can entrust himself to God in hope and love. But faith, understood as mere assent (albeit graced assent), is only the beginning of salvation. It needs to be "informed" or completed by charity, also the work of grace.

Luther and his followers, though, rejected the Catholic view that "saving faith" was "faith formed by charity" and therefore not "faith alone", where "faith" is understood as mere assent to God's Word, apart from trust and love. In large part, this was due to a misunderstanding by Luther. "We must not be misled on this point," writes Bouyer, "by Luther's later assertions opposed to the fides caritate formata [faith informed by charity]. His object in disowning this formula was to reject the idea that faith justified man only if there were added to it a love proceeding from a natural disposition, not coming as a gift of God, the whole being the gift of God." Yet Luther's view of faith, contents Bouyer, seems to imply an element of love, at least in the sense of a total self-commitment to God. And, of course, this love must be both the response to God's loving initiative and the effect of that initiative by which man is enabled and moved to respond. But once again, this is Catholic doctrine, for the charity that "informs" faith so that it becomes saving faith is not a natural disposition, but is as much the work of God as the assent of faith.

Thus, Bouyer's point is that the doctrine of justification by faith alone (sola fide) was initially seen by the Reformers as a way of upholding justification by grace alone (sola gratia), which is also a fundamental Catholic truth. Only later, as a result of controversy, did the Reformers insist on identifying justification by faith alone with a negative principle that denied any form of cooperation, even grace-enabled cooperation.

3. Sola Scriptura. Melanchthon, the colleague of Luther, called justification sola gratia, sola fide the "Material Principle" of the Reformation. But there was also the Formal Principle, the doctrine of sola Scriptura or what Bouyer calls the sovereign authority of Scripture. What of that?

Here, too, says Bouyer, the Reformation's core positive principle is correct. The Word of God, rather than a human word, must govern the life of the Christian and of the Church. And the Word of God is found in a unique and supreme form in the Bible, the inspired Word of God. The inspiration of the Bible means that God is the primary author of Scripture. Since we can say that about no other writing or formal expression of the Church's Faith, not even conciliar or papal definitions of faith, the Bible alone is the Word of God in this sense and therefore it possesses a unique authority.

Yet the supremacy of the Bible does not imply an opposition between it and the authority of the Church or Tradition, as certain negative principles adopted by the Reformers implied. Furthermore, the biblical spirituality of Protestantism, properly understood, is in keeping with the best traditions of Catholic spirituality, especially those of the Fathers and the great medieval theologians. Through Scripture, God speaks to us today, offering a living Word to guide our lives in Christ.

Thus, writes Bouyer, "the supreme authority of Scripture, taken in its positive sense, as gradually drawn out and systematized by Protestants themselves, far from setting the Church and Protestantism in opposition, should be the best possible warrant for their return to understanding and unity."

The Reformation was Wrong

Where does this leave us? If the Reformation was right about sola gratia and sola Scriptura, its two key principles, how was it wrong? Bouyer holds that only the positive elements of these Reformation principles are correct.

Unfortunately, these principles were unnecessarily linked by the Reformers to certain negative elements, which the Catholic Church had to reject. Here we consider two of those elements: 1) the doctrine of extrinsic justification and the nature of justifying faith and 2) the authority of the Bible.

1. Extrinsic Justification. Regarding justification by grace alone, it was the doctrine of extrinsic justification and the rejection of the Catholic view of faith formed by charity as "saving faith." Bouyer writes, "The further Luther advanced in his conflict with other theologians, then with Rome, then with the whole of contemporary Catholicism and finally with the Catholicism of every age, the more closely we see him identifying affirmation about sola gratia with a particular theory, known as extrinsic justification."

Extrinsic justification is the idea that justification occurs outside of man, rather than within him. Catholicism, as we have seen, holds that justification is by grace alone. In that sense, it originates outside of man, with God's grace. But, according to Catholic teaching, God justifies man by effecting a change within him, by making him just or righteous, not merely by saying he is just or righteous or treating him as if he were. Justification imparts the righteousness of Christ to man, transforming him by grace into a child of God.

The Reformation view was different. The Reformers, like the Catholic Church, insisted that justification is by grace and therefore originates outside of man, with God. But they also insisted that when God justifies man, man is not changed but merely declared just or righteous. God treats man as if he were just or righteous, imputing to man the righteousness of Christ, rather than imparting it to him.

The Reformers held this view for two reasons. First, because they came to think it necessary in order to uphold the gratuitousness of justification. Second, because they thought the Bible taught it. On both points, argues Bouyer, the Reformers were mistaken. There is neither a logical nor a biblical reason why God cannot effect a change in man without undercutting justification by grace alone. Whatever righteousness comes to be in man as a result of justification is a gift, as much any other gift God bestows on man. Nor does the Bible's treatment of "imputed" righteousness imply that justification is not imparted. On these points, the Reformers were simply wrong:

"Without the least doubt, grace, for St. Paul, however freely given, involves what he calls 'the new creation', the appearance in us of a 'new man', created in justice and holiness. So far from suppressing the efforts of man, or making them a matter of indifference, or at least irrelevant to salvation, he himself tells us to 'work out your salvation with fear and trembling', at the very moment when he affirms that '. . . knowing that it is God who works in you both to will and to accomplish.' These two expressions say better than any other that all is grace in our salvation, but at the same time grace is not opposed to human acts and endeavor in order to attain salvation, but arouses them and exacts their performance."

Calvin, notes Bouyer, tried to circumvent the biblical problems of the extrinsic justification theory by positing a systematic distinction between justification, which puts us in right relation to God but which, on the Protestant view, doesn't involve a change in man; and sanctification, which transforms us. Yet, argues Bouyer, this systematic distinction isn't biblical. In the Bible, justification and sanctification - as many modern Protestant exegetes admit - are two different terms for the same process. Both occur by grace through faith and both involve a faith "informed by charity" or completed by love. As Bouyer contends, faith in the Pauline sense, "supposes the total abandonment of man to the gift of God" - which amounts to love of God. He argues that it is absurd to think that the man justified by faith, who calls God "Abba, Father," doesn't love God or doesn't have to love him in order to be justified.

2. Sola Scriptura vs. Church and Tradition. Bouyer also sees a negative principle that the Reformation unnecessarily associated with sola Scriptura or the sovereignty of the Bible. Yes, the Bible alone is the Word of God in the sense that only the Bible is divinely inspired. And yes the Bible's authority is supreme in the sense that neither the Church nor the Church's Tradition "trumps" Scripture. But that doesn't mean that the Word of God in an authoritative form is found only in the Bible, for the Word of God can be communicated in a non-inspired, yet authoritative form as well. Nor does it mean that there can be no authoritative interpreter of the Bible (the Magisterium) or authoritative interpretation of biblical doctrine (Tradition). Repudiation of the Church's authority and Tradition simply doesn't follow from the premise of Scripture's supremacy as the inspired Word of God. Furthermore, the Tradition and authority of the Church are required to determine the canon of the Bible.

Luther and Calvin did not follow the Radical Reformation in rejecting any role for Church authority or Tradition altogether. But they radically truncated such a role. Furthermore, they provided no means by which the Church, as a community of believers, could determine when the Bible was being authentically interpreted or who within the community had the right to make such a determination for the community. In this way, they ultimately undercut the supremacy of the Bible, for they provided no means by which the supreme authority of the Bible could, in fact, be exercised in the Church as a whole. The Bible's authority extended only so far as the individual believer's interpretation of it allowed.

The Catholic Church and Reformation Principles

As we have seen, Bouyer argues for the Reformation's "positive principles" and against its "negative principles." But how did what was right from one point of view in the Reformation go so wrong from another point of view? Bouyer argues that the under the influence of decadent scholasticism, mainly Nominalism, the Reformers unnecessarily inserted the negative elements into their ideas along with the positive principles. "Brought up on these lines of thought, identified with them so closely they could not see beyond them," he writes, "the Reformers could only systematize their very valuable insights in a vitiated framework."

The irony is profound. The Reformation sought to recover "genuine Christianity" by hacking through what it regarded as the vast overgrowth of medieval theology. Yet to do so, the Reformers wielded swords forged in the fires of the worst of medieval theology - the decadent scholasticism of Nominalism.

The negative principles of the Reformation necessarily led the Catholic Church to reject the movement - though not, in fact, its fundamental positive principles, which were essentially Catholic. Eventually, argues Bouyer, through a complex historical process, these negative elements ate away at the positive principles as well. The result was liberal Protestantism, which wound up affirming the very things Protestantism set out to deny (man's ability to save himself) and denying things Protestantism began by affirming (sola gratia).

Bouyer contends that the only way to safeguard the positive principles of the Reformation is through the Catholic Church. For only in the Catholic Church are the positive principles the Reformation affirmed found without the negative elements the Reformers mistakenly affixed to them. But how to bring this about?

Bouyer says that both Protestants and Catholics have responsibilities here. Protestants must investigate their roots and consider whether the negative elements of the Reformation, such as extrinsic justification and the rejection of a definitive Church teaching authority and Tradition, are necessary to uphold the positive principles of sola gratia and the supremacy of Scripture. If not, then how is continued separation from the Catholic Church justified? Furthermore, if, as Bouyer contends, the negative elements of the Reformation were drawn from a decadent theology and philosophy of the Middle Ages and not Christian antiquity, then it is the Catholic Church that has upheld the true faith and has maintained a balance regarding the positive principles of the Reformation that Protestantism lacks. In this way, the Catholic Church is needed for Protestantism to live up to its own positive principles.

Catholics have responsibilities as well. One major responsibility is to be sure they have fully embraced their own Church's teaching on the gratuitousness of salvation and the supremacy of the Bible. As Bouyer writes, "Catholics are in fact too prone to forget that, if the Church bears within herself, and cannot ever lose, the fullness of Gospel truth, its members, at any given time and place, are always in need of a renewed effort to apprehend this truth really and not just, as Newman would say, 'notionally'." "To Catholics, lukewarm and unaware of their responsibilities," he adds, the Reformation, properly understood, "recalls the existence of many of their own treasures which they overlook."

Only if Catholics are fully Catholic - which includes fully embracing the positive principles of the Reformation that Bouyer insists are essentially Catholic - can they "legitimately aspire to show and prepare their separated brethren the way to a return which would be for them not a denial but a fulfillment."

Today, as in the sixteenth century, the burden rests with us Catholics. We must live, by God's abundant grace, up to our high calling in Christ Jesus. And in this way, show our Protestant brethren that their own positive principles are properly expressed only in the Catholic Church.

Mark Brumley. "Why Only Catholicism Can Make Protestantism Work: Louis Bouyer on the Reformation." Catholic Dossier 7 no. 5 (September-October 2001): 30-35.

This article is reprinted with permission from Catholic Dossier. To subscribe to Catholic Dossier call 1-800-651-1531.

Mark Brumley is managing editor of Catholic Dossier. A convert from Evangelical Protestantism, he was greatly influenced by Bouyer's book The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, when he first read it over twenty years ago. Recently, Scepter Books has republished The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, which can be obtained online at www.scepterpub.org or by calling 1-800-322-8773.

Your allusion to John 3:5 in your post #433 opens up an interesting study of the danger of overstating the significance of baptism. And I definitely think you are overstating it. This is not just my position as a Baptist; almost all Protestants agree with me that baptism has no role whatsoever in regenerating a sinner, i.e., in bringing about the "new birth" described in Scripture. And we Protestants are already aware of John 3:5. It is obvious to us that your don't understand the verse.

[Lurkers are invited to read your #433 and my #1006 and your #1018 for background.]

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In John 3, the Lord Jesus was engaging Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhedrin and a rabbi of what was at that time the true religion of the True Jehovah (Judaism!). He was telling Nicodemus things which Nicodemus should have already figured out from the OLD Testament.

This is seen in the fact that in v.10, the Lord literally said to Nicodemus "Are you the teacher of Israel, and do not understand these things?"

Very few people in the Old Testament economy were direct recipients of special revelation from God. The prophets were, but Nicodemus was no prophet. That being the case, the Lord has to be saying in John 3 that Nicodemus has misunderstood something which the Old Testament itself somehow covered in regard to water and spirit (Spirit).

If we are to understand John 3:5, it is important for us to figure out what it is that Nicodemus didn't understand. And since the reference in v.10 to Nicodemus's confusion actually includes the idea mentioned all the way back in v.3, we need to start out in v.3 if we want to figure out what it is that Nicodemus should have known about water and spirit in v.5.

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In v.3, the Lord made the first statement which Nicodemus should have understood--but didn't.

Nicodemus did not understand the sinner's need to be supernaturally re-born. Why didn’t he understand this? It's because he lacked the very thing which he needed for understanding his desperate need. (Hmmmm….)

The whole exchange between Nicodemus and Jesus is almost funny in this regard, especially when we consider what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 2:14 about the odd situation the unregenerate sinner is in: "The natural man receiveth not the things of God. They are foolishness to him, neither can he know them, for they are spiritually discerned."

The point here is that Nicodemus could not understand what he had never experienced anyway.

(As an important aside, this may very well explain the impasse in the typical discussions on FR between RCs and Protestants. One side doesn't have the faintest idea what the other side is talking about in regard to being born again.)

The fact that Nicodemus was unregenerate is revealed in the way the Lord raised the issue of regeneration out of nowhere. Why did He do this? It is because Nicodemus came up to the Lord Jesus uttering respectful but woefully inadequate acknowledgments that Jesus is "surely a teacher from God" and God is somehow "with Him." The inadequacy of Nicodemus's words to the Lord Jesus consisted in the fact Nicodemus was completely missing the most important point in the universe. The Lord Jesus was not merely from God and with God but GOD ALMIGHTY.

What I am saying about Nicodemus is that it did not take a spiritual genius to figure out what Nicodemus had figured out by this point. Even the natural (unregenerate) man can grasp what Nicodemus had grasped by this point in the story. Nicodemus's confession of Christ as a great teacher, as a miracle worker who had God with Him, was not greatly different from that of hundreds, perhaps even thousands of people who associated with Him on earth and went to hell anyway. The Lord was, in effect, going on record about that when He made his strange comment that a sinner needs to be spiritually re-born.

In other words, the Lord was confronting Nicodemus for what he really was--a completely lost Jew. Nicodemus's physical lineage and associated family religion proved nothing. His identification with the true religion of that day--i.e., Judaism--meant nothing. He lacked the regeneration which the saved Jews had experienced even in the Old Testament.

At the bottom line, he was unspiritual. According to 1 Corinthians 2:14, quoted above, he was incompetent to be a teacher in Israel. The Lord Jesus alluded to this very mess in John 3:10.

***

John 3 is one of the most important chapters in the Bible. Besides containing John 3:16, it warns us that it is possible to be a dogmatic professing member of the religion of the True and Living God and be completely lost. It warns us that it is even possible to be regarded as a Bible teacher and still be lost.

The reason why this happens, of course, has to do with sin and associated Satanic blinding of the sinner. Sin is infinitely more serious than most people realize. Satan is inordinately more dangerous as a Word-abusing liar than most people realize. (The Lord Jesus Himself said that if it were possible for the elect to be fatally deceived, then even they would be ruined in the nasty mess which would arise in the professing Church during the gospel era. If we claim to be following God the Word, we'd better pay attention to these words.)

My point is that sin and Satan make people self-righteous fools. They do not properly fear God at any point in their lives. They secretly hate Him and His Truth. Because of the deceitfulness of the fallen sinner's heart, the whole thing is profoundly self-deceptive. Sinners can and often will go through self-assuring motions of pseudo-Christian religiosity, and they will assume that this self-assurance is faith. But it is not faith at all. It's just self-righteous, Bible-oriented PMA. Like Nicodemus, they have nothing more than a confusing mess of motions and notions. And like Nicodemus, they can even be Bible-oriented in their confusing motions and notions.

The complaint against a Bible-oriented religiosity of silly motions and notions was the complaint the Reformers made against Rome. Many, many Nicodemuses came out of RCism under the spiritual influence of the Reformers. But most never escaped RCism and the profound bias which it instilled in its devotees against Protestant upstarts!

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Speaking of bias, I am going to have say again that you have an anti-Protestant bias. I am not trying to be cruel in saying that. But it needs to be said. It is inappropriate for you to insinuate, as you did in your #1018, that my observations about your bias amount to nothing more than awful "ad hominem" stuff. Gosh, the idea of bias is the central issue in the discussion!

(It is also the central idea in John 3:3-8. The unregenerate sinner is Satanically biased--whether "religious" or not! When he reads v.5, about water and spirit, he will get the sense of the verse wrong!)

We Reformed believers do flatly maintain that all RCs have an anti-Protestant bias. Gosh, this anti-Protestant bias is inherent in RCism. The bias is deeply ingrained in RCs. The anti-Protestant bias by RCs is one of the best known facts in the universe. You are taught that Rome speaks for God in our day--which automatically means to you that Protestants are opposing God.

If that doesn't constitute an anti-Protestant bias, then there is no such thing as bias anywhere in the universe! So, please don't pretend to be openminded. The very idea is ludicrous.

I will even go so far as to say that your remarks to me in your most recent post to me are typical of the "argumentative" style of bigots, i.e., folks who simply spurn real enlightenment (by doggedly presuming they already have it!). I really don't intend that statement to be inflammatory; I am just trying to be forthright about what I am seeing in your posts.

For example, you felt it was appropriate to style me as "wordy" and a "double-talker." (Hey, is that ad hominem stuff on your part? Of course it is. But I will carefully leave off calling you a hypocrite [grin].)

I honestly fear that the reason why you are forced to label me as "wordy" and "double-talking" is because you are way over your head in this discussion. (Hey, it happens.) Lacking anything better to say, you are forced to cast me in a distinctly bad light for daring to be careful and patient and thorough (as well as spiritually respectful of the theological ironies which the two different apostles are covering in their two different discussions of faith and works.)

I notice that you also made a disparaging ad hominem reference to me as being seemingly out of touch with reality. Was it not childish for to disparage my earlier post by saying it sounded like I wrote it at 3:00 a.m. rather than at 7:00 p.m.? Of course it was childish. But I think you needed to say it to sound like you were holding your own in the argument. You didn’t have anything better to say, so you became at least mildly abusive. (It's one thing to be critical, but another thing to be unfairly critical. We Protestants run into this all the time from RCs. We attack your doctrine, and you attack us personally. As I said earlier, I am not trying to be inflammatory in telling you this, but you ought to start noticing the way most RCs behave on these threads.)

I also notice that you tried to deflect some of my comments in an earlier post by disparaging them as unfair. You insinuated that my reference to Bill O'Reilly was unfair in that his shallow, works-righteous theology is not pretty widespread among RCs. The problem is, O'Reilly's bad theology of salvation definitely is widespread among RCs. So my charge stands, not merely against O'Reilly, but against RCism. Your people are profoundly confused. There is a reason for that.

You especially resented my reference to Mafia and IRA murderers as though it was unfair, but it was a valid case in a larger point. You just didn't like the larger point. (More on this later.)

And you continued to evade everything I said in explaining James 2 in the light of Romans 3 and 4. I demonstrated that Calvin's position, also my position, is not one whit inferior to yours in the arena of spiritual necessities--which is James's arena, of course. And my overall explanation of James 2 was completely plausible. Ah, but since my Protestant statement of the doctrine of justification winds up different from Rome's, you refused even to entertain my explanation. You felt duty-bound as a loyal RC to accuse me again of "sloughing off James." This was your way of ignoring everything I said.

(Well, your accusation that I am "sloughing off James" is the spirit of the Papacy speaking through you, not the Spirit of Christ. They are different spirits. You haven't noticed this. We Calvinists would say you are submitting to the wrong spirit. And we Calvinists would even point out that apart from supernatural intervention, you have no way of correcting this in yourself. It's a predestinarian thing. [BTW, RCs ought to read Augustine on this topic, not Rome's "interpretations" of Augustine. It's actually rather funny to see the difference here, too!])

Even if you do not like my explanation of James 2, my doctrinal charge against RCism is serious in that you RCs definitely can't explain Romans 3 and 4. As a matter of fact, you don't even try. You make no attempt to fit James and Paul together. You just say "Paul talks about faith and James talks about works; therefore, faith and works are both necessary to justify a sinner before God." But Paul's statements explicitly overrule your simplistic "add-'em-up" reading of James-plus-Paul.

I am forced to say that you are not being thoughtful enough yet. You are just presenting Rome's party line, not thinking at the depth which is necessary for working through the issues of high doctrine. In my honest opinion, Rome's (blustering/false) claim of absolute spiritual authority actually incapacitates your thinking. Parto of the problem is the fact that you haven't figured out how pervasive Rome's fraud is. (I am persuaded that it is worse than your worst nightmare.)

So, let me offer a little more in the way of theologically careful explanation of justification. Call it double-talk if you must, but it really is a careful statement of the interesting and even profound doctrinal intersection of two different apostles (see below).

Paul tells us in Romans 3:20 and 3:28 and Romans 4 that legal obedience is not part of a sinner's justification in God's sight. This statement by Paul flatly rules out the RC doctrine of justification. It warns us that the RCs are misreading James. (The RCs say we Protestants are misreading Paul. But we aren’t misreading Paul.)

Never mind that an obedient spirit, producing good works, is necessarily a consequence of the only kind of professed "faith" which really justifies. Paul will leave it to James to point that out and thereby block the spiritual fraud of antinomian gnosticism masquerading as faith. James is telling us that if we can't see your faith, it ain't clearly real faith in the first place.

There are important areas of overlaps between James and Paul in their respective discussions, but we will never be able to characterize the overlaps correctly if we don't see that the two apostles have two different objectives in mind.

James is trying to safeguard the Lord's professing Church against antinomian gnosticism, which is why he says that we'd better be careful to attend to good works. Paul actually makes that very point in a number of places, but his doctrinal treatises (e.g., Romans 3 and 4) are more profound than the RCs have been willing to notice. As deadly as antinomianism is, Paul recognizes an even more dangerous, even more common trap for smug religionists.

What I am saying is that Paul is trying to safeguard the Lord's professing Church against legalistic gnosticism--which ultimately thinks that intellectual assent to certain doctrines plus works equals faith. This is a deadly error. It seals a lot of people in damnation. In effect, the legalistic gnostic has no real vital union with God in the regenerating Spirit of Christ--and hence, no real faith--so he tries to create some faith by his legal doings. He tries to turn his assensus into salvation, but all he is doing is offering works in lieu of faith. This was the error of Cain. And the New Testament warns us about the Cains in professing Christianity.

The Cains of this world need to repent, not do "penance" which just worsens their obstinate non-repentance in goody-feely self-righteousness. The Cains of this world need to repent, not become enraged at the Abels who are justified by real faith. The Cains of this world need to repent of their doctrinal foolishness, not murder the Protestants whose very testimonies of the grace of God constitute an unctuous warning from heaven.

The Cains of this world need to notice that Paul and the Calvinists who stand with him are warning them about a God Who is infinitely more holy than they have realized. God demands works, and He takes note of works (a fact I have repeatedly stipulated), but works are not part of justification in His sight. If they are, then sinners have something whereof to boast, Paul says in Romans 4. And Paul warns us that God will not tolerate that boastful sinner--at all--since he is devoid of the abject repentance which accompanies justifying faith.

God is far too holy to forgive someone who persists in offering works of penance in lieu of the repentance which is integral to real faith. The most basic idea of repentance is the fear of God, without which one has not even the beginning of wisdom. (I marvel at the foolish stuff which has been posted on this thread by RCs complaining about the Calvinistic position concerning the crucial role of the fear of God. I honestly think a lot of RCs have a completely idolatrous notion as to Who Jesus Christ really is. He is not a porcelain doll in a nativity scene. Read Romans 1:18-32 to learn about the God Who is Jesus Christ. Then read Isaiah 63, in which we do find the Lord trampling on the wicked and splattering their blood on His garments. When the RCs try to suppress the post in which CCWoody alluded to this, they are guilty of the Truth-suppressing wickedness which infuriates our holy Creator. Read Romans 18 again. CCWoody was telling the Truth, and many of our RCs hated him for it.)

If you bypass the really profound fear of God, you will altogether miss the perfect love into which the saving fear of God resolves. And if you are so perversely fearless concerning God's holiness as to offer Him your works as though these are surely the stuff of saving faith, you don't even know God in the first place. (IF that is the case, then you need to meet Him Whom you do not really know in the staggering supernatural experience which the Protestants have repeatedly described for you--i.e. the new birth.)

So, even if James is stating and solving a riddle as to what saving faith is, we must respect Paul's statements if we are to claim to have a proper, saving respect for God's Word. We need to notice that the very works which we need to see as the consequence of faith are not part of justification before God. The correct theological terminology for this is precisely the terminology which you are inclined, because of your anti-Protestant bias, to regard as "double-talk." Works are a necessity (as John Calvin points out from the writings of the Apostle James), but only a consequential necessity (as Calvin points out from the writings of the Apostle Paul). They are not an antecedent necessity in justification before God. They are therefore not even part of justification before God. (And that is what Paul explicitly tells us in Romans 3 and 4. James, in other words, was not trying to present high doctrine. Paul was. That's something Rome has never been willing to grasp. And this is obvious to everyone except the RCs.)

I realize that this sort of discussion does enrage lost professing Christians. It disturbs them to realize at some level of their deceitful souls that they are faking Christianity by their do-goodism, by trying to fabricate faith through works. It disturbs them to realize that they really do have a depraved determination to try to make a cart of works pull a completely dead horse of Adamic, even manifestly pagan unbelief.

And in the specific case of today's RCs, it disturbs (irks!) them to realize that if the Calvinists are correct about this, then RCism is a Satanic deception which has damned millions of people. And make no mistake about this one thing: RCs do understand what we Calvinists are ultimately asserting. That's why there is so much turmoil on these threads. That's why RCs so often hit the abuse button when we Calvinists are merely making a deadly serious case against Rome, a case which they can't stand and can't handle. Many RCs would like to see us get the FR death penalty of banishment from the Forum. Interestingly, I am not aware of Protestants doing this to RCs on FR.

(It has always been more or less okay on FR for unbelievers of various stripes to trash Protestants. I expect this to continue. But criticizing RCism on FreeRepublic may eventually get to the point where it is not tolerated any more than liberals will tolerate any really serious criticism of Islam. It may get to the point where serious criticism of RCism is regarded as counterproductive and even injurious to FR--just as some fools think it is counterproductive and injurious to our nation to tell folks the truth about Islam. Well, I do understand the evil downside to pointlessly inflammatory statements which will probably get our fellow citizens hurt just because they happen to be Muslim. But there will always be KKK-style redneck terrorists who will firebomb Mosques. We Calvinists think we'd better be honest about Islam even as we defend to the death the Muslim's rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in our nation. Being politically correct about Islam may seem shrewd, but it is disastrously stupid.

By the same token, FR's Calvinists will defend the fundamental RCs to the death, but we feel it is important to sound the more ominous spiritual warning to them. You have no right to avoid Scripturally serious criticism, even if Rome would love to stop our mouths in the name of political correctness. Our determination to tell RCs what we know about Christ and the new birth of regeneration is actually a central part of our faith. It's part of our evangelistic ministry to people who evidently don't know the God of the Bible in spite of their gnostic religiosity. The fact that this work is a thankless job changes nothing for us Protestants. It's still our job. And if we Protestants get squelched on FR, then thoughtful Protestants will leave this forum in droves. You may be personally pleased with the result, but this will just intensify your problem. The problem is, we are correct. And that is the one thing you have refused to entertain honestly. You can't entertain it. And you are irked at being confronted about that.)

Besides, if RCism is a Satanic deception, that would certainly explain the Inquisition, wouldn't it? See John 16:2-3. The Inquisitors and murdering thugs of St. Bartholomew's Day were just plain lost. They are in hell right now. They didn't know God. (And the Inquisition was an official organ of RCism. [Hmmmm...])

Of course, if today's RCism is ultimately antichristian in some peculiar way of hypocrisy, it would also explain something else which you loathe to see me bring up. I am referring to the fact that I evidently struck a nerve by my reference to the hypocrisy of Mafia and IRA murderers who go to confession and do penance and receive "absolution" which is not even authorized for the unrepentant--not ever. I realize that you consider it unfair to suggest that these murderers are typical RCs, but I am not saying that. (Almost, but not quite.)

What I am saying is that the Mafia and IRA murderers are the worst-case fruit of pervasively bad RC doctrine. The RC doctrine of "auricular confession" and the associated error of Rome's doctrine of the "priesthood" are just pulling the whole mess of zillions of spiritual misunderstandings together. The net effect is the institutionalizing of religious wickedness as a charade of Christianity--in which a Scripturally illegal "priesthood" grants "absolution" to people who are going to burn in hell forever.

And you don't have to be a Mafia or IRA murderer to burn in hell. Thus, even if the average RC is more God-conscious, more moral than the Mafia and IRA murderers, the very fact that the RC "priesthood's" doctrine of absolution is so screwy in the Mafia and IRA cases is a warning that we are just seeing the tip of a very strange iceberg of doctrinal deceptions. In short, I fear that there are fatally serious problems in the more moral, God-conscious RCs. They really do seem to be trusting an illegal priesthood rather than Christ.

As an important aside, I will concede that there are self-deceived rascals within the nominal Protestant movement. But most of the problems that one could cite in this regard are attributable to the departure of modern Protestantism from the distinctives of the Reformation. Bill Clinton, for example, is a nominal Baptist--but he is no Calvinist. He is quite evidently a Semi-Pelagian--which oddly enough, aligns him with Rome against the Reformers! (Besides, there is no Protestant "priesthood" formally and "authoritatively" pronouncing Clinton "absolved" with respect to his sins. Most Protestants, in fact, do not regard him as a real Christian and would be willing to tell him so. Therefore, we Calvinists still have every right to object to the systematic blunder which shows up most conspicuously in the "absolution" of Mafia and IRA murderers. Rome's "priests" really don't know what they are doing.)

I fully realize that these criticisms sting RCs pretty badly. I don't delight to be unpleasant. But I would not be doing you any favors by avoiding the unpleasant facts which you need to face.

This is the way most evangelicals feel about RC priests and all of their priestcraft, especially things like their "holy water" rituals. And I am telling you why I feel this way. I am applying Scriptural principles to show you that there are monstrously serious problems with your RC "doctrine."

In short, I will stipulate that I am biased against RCism. But my bias happens to be rooted in the Scriptures themselves. Your bias against Protestantism, on the other hand, is rooted only in the pseudo-Scriptural pronouncements of what we flatly regard as an illegal priesthood--all the way up to an illegal pope.

I recommend that you look again at my remarks about spiritual malpractice in my #1006. Also, please see Richard Bennett's website at www.bereanbeacon.org. Let him tell you what it's like to be in the Dominican Order for 30 years before realizing that the Protestants were correct about the nature and necessity of the new birth, before realizing that he was just a Rome-oriented religionist and self-assured hypocrite--i.e., not a true believer and hence not a real Christian. It finally dawned on him why the Reformers regarded the office of the Pope as the office of the Antichrist. It finally dawned on him that RCism is a religion which substitutes the Papacy and its illegal, homosexual-riddled "priesthood" for Christ--and sees nothing at all wrong with this switch! [Oops.])

***

This has been a lengthy post because I felt the need to cover several important ideas in a careful spirit of confrontation--and this does take a lot of words. I did not feel that it was appropriate to address all of your comments from your earlier post to me, since that would have made a long post even longer. I have merely sampled your comments to demonstrate what I think is fundamentally wrong about your attitude toward God's Word.

In my next post, I will explain the reference to water and spirit in John 3:5. But please be forewarned about this one thing: the water of baptism does not communicate the Spirit to the sinner. Period. You RCs haven't understood John 3:5 anymore than you have understood the overall nature and necessity of the new birth. You haven't understood it any better than Nicodemus did.

And your "priests" don't understand it, either. They shouldn't even be trying to teach the Bible.

What will you do to correct this mess IF you are just an unregenerate religionist, someone who knows about the Lord Jesus Christ rather than knowing Him personally in real salvation? The answer is, you will do nothing to correct this mess--even though God definitely does hold you responsible. By the very nature of sin, you are in a terrible mess. None of your works will help you. Only God can correct the problem. And He doesn't ever bother to correct the problem for most people. He leaves most people in their foolishness, including most of the churchgoers of our day.

In other words, God is sovereign in ways which you have not dared to understand.

Do not marvel that I said to you, "You must be born again. The WIND blows where it WISHES and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the SPIRIT.

Until you understand that statement, you will not understand the new birth, much less the Lord's allusion to Old Testament water-washing rituals. On the contrary, you will just get madder and madder at me for my trouble in laying the Truth out for you.

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