The Semi-Permeable Membranes of the Various Protestantisms [Ecumenical]

ic ^ | July 21, 2009 | Mark Shea

[NYer]

One basic rule of thumb to understand in Catholic/Protestant conversations is that it is not the case that Catholics rely on Sacred Tradition and Protestants don't. Rather, Catholics (and by this I mean "educated Catholics speaking out of the Magisterial teaching of the Church") rely on Sacred Tradition and know they do, while Protestants rely on (parts) of Sacred Tradition and (usually) don't know they do.

So, for instance, despite Paul's prescriptions (directed only at clergy of his day) that a man must be the husband of but one wife, nowhere in the text of Scripture is it made clear that Christian marriage must be monogamous for all (a fact that did not escape Luther or John Milton). Nowhere does Scripture spell out that the Holy Spirit is a person, much less the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, consubstantial with the Father and the Son. Similarly, you will look in vain for instructions in Scripture on how to contract a valid marriage (unless you buy this list of "Top 10 Ways to Find a Wife, According to the Bible"):

 

10. Find an attractive prisoner of war, bring her home, shave her head, trim her nails, and give her new clothes. Then she's yours (Dt 21:11-13).
9. Find a prostitute and marry her (Hos 1:1-3).
8. Find a man with seven daughters, and impress him by watering his flock (Moses, Ex 2:16-21).
7. Purchase a piece of property, and get a woman as part of the deal (Boaz, Ru 4:5-10).
6. Go to a party and hide. When the women come out to dance, grab one and carry her off to be your wife (Benjaminites, Jgs 21:19-25).
5. Have God create a wife for you while you sleep (Adam, Gn 2:19-24).
4. Kill any husband and take his wife (David, 2 Sm 11).
3. Cut 200 foreskins off of your future father-in-law's enemies and get his daughter for a wife (David, 1 Sm 18:27).
2. Even if no one is out there, just wander around a bit and you'll definitely find someone (Cain, Gn 4:16-17).
1. Don't be so picky. Make up for quality with quantity (Solomon, 1 Kgs 11:1-3).

Of course, this doesn't really help much. The fact is, the Bible says "marriage is good" but gives us not one word of instruction on how to do it. That's because Scripture is not and never was intended to be the Big Book of Everything. And yet, of course, Protestants all over the world get married, believe in God the Holy Spirit, and have but one spouse because, as James Dobson says, God's plan is one man and one woman. How do they do this when Scripture is so unclear?

 

Whether they realize it or not, they do it by accepting Sacred Tradition percolated to them from the Catholic Church through the Protestant tradition. It's the same way they know that the books of the Bible they accept are supposed to be books of the Bible. It's the same way they know that public revelation closed with the death of the apostles, even though Scripture is completely silent on the matter (Revelation 22:18-19 doesn't count since that passage refers to the Book of Revelation, not to the Bible, which was not fully collated -- and from which Revelation was sometimes excluded -- before the late fourth century).

 

 

Retention of Catholic Sacred Tradition fragments has kept Protestantism in such sanity as it still possesses. So when the Bible Answer Man appeals to "historic Christianity" in understanding what the Bible means, that's typically a good thing. He's appealing to Sacred Tradition and agreeing with the Church. It's Eupocrisy in action!

However, in those places where Protestantism attempts to reject Catholic Sacred Tradition, the narrative suddenly and wrenchingly changes. Suddenly, the demand is made for nothing less than an explicit proof text from the Bible. It works like this:

 

1. If a thing is condemned by the Church but permitted by the Protestant (say, gay marriage), the demand is for an explicit text forbidding it. ("Show me where Jesus said one word about not allowing gay marriage! That's just the Church imposing its purely human ideas on what Jesus came to say.") 

2. Conversely, if a thing is allowed by the Church but condemned by the Protestant, the demand is for an explicit text commanding it. ("Where in the Bible do you find anyone asking us to pray to dead people? That's just the Church imposing it's purely human ideas on what Jesus came to say.")

Note how the terms of the argument shift to suit the "Heads I win, tails the Church loses" agenda. It's no longer good enough to say (as the Protestant generally does when, for instance, arguing for the divinity of the Holy Spirit), "Here are biblical passages which, taken together, point to the reality that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person even though there is no text that says 'The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity.'"

No, arguing from such obvious implication is out the window. In many circles, even a nearly algebraic piece of logic like

 

1. Jesus is God.
2. Mary is His Mother.
3. Therefore, Mary is the Mother of God.

 . . . gets rejected as "inbred reasoning" since Catholics can't produce the Bible verse that says explicitly, "Mary is the Mother of God." Suddenly, only direct, explicit testimony and instruction in legally watertight language will do.

 

How this works on the ground can be seen everywhere. The Protestant who wants to permit abortion points out that there is no unequivocal commandment in either the Old or New Testament saying, "You shall not have an abortion," and evinces absolutely no interest in how the texts we do have ("You shall not murder," for instance) have been universally read by the Church from the earliest times. Likewise, the Protestant who dogmatically rejects, say, prayer to the saints simply ignores you if you point to the fact that Scripture shows us that the dead (like Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration) are aware of what's happening on earth, that we are told that "we shall be like Christ" (who intercedes for us), that the Body of Christ is One (not split in two by death), and that the early Church understood all this to imply that we can ask prayers of the dead just as we ask them of the living.

As remote as the flaky pro-choice Episcopalian and the starchy Bible-thumping Fundamentalist preacher may seem to be from each other, they share a deep commonality in the way they reject whatever aspect of Catholic teaching they dislike. From liberal to conservative, the argument proceeds: "Unless the Bible explicitly commands what I forbid or forbids what I want to do, then the Catholic teaching I dislike is 'unbiblical.'" (Of course, the word "Bible" is not unbiblical -- even though it also never appears in Scripture -- because the word "Bible" is a fragment of extra-biblical Christian tradition generally acceptable to Protestants.)

Indeed all the various forms of Protestantism have this (and only this) one feature in common. They may differ on Mary or baptism or the divinity of Jesus or even the existence of God (if you include Unitarians as a particularly robust form of Protestantism that has jettisoned more of Catholic teaching than its predecessors). But they all agree on erecting semi-permeable membranes in which some (but not all) elements of Sacred Tradition are allowed through (different bits for different groups).

 

Those elements that are allowed through are called "the witness of historic Christianity" or "the clear implication of Scripture" or "the obviously reasonable position." Those not allowed through are called "human tradition" or "myths" or "the unbiblical teachings of Rome" or "relics of patriarchy" or "ancient superstition" (even when they are the obvious testimony and practice of all the apostolic communions in the world since the beginning of the Church.) Finally, to the filtered-in elements of real apostolic theological and moral teaching are stapled sundry human traditions like sola scriptura or some theory about predestinarianism or the "perspicuity of Scripture" or the need to speak in tongues or (in the past) the curse on Canaan as a biblical basis for American chattel slavery or (more recently) the glories of homosexuality or abortion.

Of course, as history goes on and at least some sectors in Protestantism allow the centrifugal force of Private Judgment to move them further and further from both Sacred Tradition and (inevitably, given the logic) Sacred Scripture as well, you reach a point where appeals to Scripture as an authority in debate don't matter, since Scripture is, after all, simply the written aspect of Tradition. Sooner or later, it occurs to people trending away from acceptance of Apostolic Tradition to ask, "If I've rejected everything else the Church says, why should I care about its 'holy' writings? I can find a hundred German theologians who say of the supposed 'word of God' what I've been saying of 'Sacred Tradition' all along."

For the present, many (graying) Evangelicals still retain a deep reverence for the sacred writings of Holy Church (though there are some signs that the itch to deconstruct Scripture will wreak enormous damage among those who come to clearly face the choice between the pole in Protestantism that seeks the Apostolic Tradition and the pole that seeks to keep deconstructing until nothing, including Scripture, is left).

For those still in this betwixt-and-between stage, who reverence Scripture and have this conflicted grasp of an Apostolic Tradition coming to them through a semi-permeable membrane, what is needed is a paradigm shift: the realization first of the shell game that is played in order to filter out Catholic traditions according to the preferences of the particular Protestant tradition one adheres to and, second, a willingness to acknowledge the possibility that when this is honestly done, it will be found that no Catholic doctrine -- none whatsoever --actually contradicts Scripture and that all that is essential in Scripture is also essential in Catholic teaching.

 

That's a terrifying prospect if one has accepted any of the various myths by which the sundry Protestantisms justify the rejection of whichever bits of Catholic teaching they reject. All the myths -- ranging from "I listen only to the Bible alone and not to the traditions of men!" to "I accept Tradition within reason, except that church tradition is never accepted as equal in authority to canonical Scripture; it is always subject to revision provided a scriptural basis can be found" -- are equally doomed if that turns out to be so, which is why those committed to the sundry Protestant schemas require not new information but an alteration of the will: a willingness to consider the possibility that there is no conflict between Catholic Tradition and Scripture and that every apparent conflict is just that -- apparent and not real.

 

Once that possibility is squarely faced and accepted, the argument for receiving all of Sacred Tradition rather than simply the bits you like can naturally follow in a rather reasonable way. But first, the membrane(s) must go.

[chesley]

The mother of the Lord, yes. The mother of God, no. Can’t buy it; can’t say it.

[Cronos]

As a saved Christian, Christ is the mediator between God and me

Christ IS God. He is not a created being, not an "avatar", not a "lesser god".

Mary is just another sinner who has been redeemed as far as any relationship between me and God is concerned, although you have to admire her faith, far greater than I think that I can claim.

Yes, she had a great faith that we all can emulate and admire.

However, enlighten my ignorance here. As I have said, I know little about the Catholic Church, other than what I have read, including their own literature. What is all this “Hail, Mary” stuff if not worship? What is the point?

Ah, no wonder -- a lot of what is written about The Church by those outside it is just plain hearsay.

Take the "Hail, Mary" being worship.

What is the full wording of the Hail Mary?

Hail Mary, full of grace.
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

Is this worship? No. The Lord was/is with her. She was/is blessed to have borne Jesus, correct? Finally, we ask her to pray for us, we don't ask her to save us (something she can't do as she's not divine).

[Cronos]

The Hail Mary is called the Angelic Salutation, because it begins with the salutation addressed by the Archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary. The words of the Hail Mary are partly the Archangel Gabriel's, partly St. Elizabeth's, and partly the Church's. The angel said these words (Hail, full of grace, The Lord is with thee.) to Mary when he went to announce to her, on the part of God, the mystery of the Incarnation that was to be wrought in her.

We are meditating on the life of Jesus. So the repetitions of the Hail Mary are used as a form of meditation. We are honoring Mary's role in Jesus's life and asking her to bring us closer to Jesus.

Yes, God is omnipotent and can very easily handle everyone's prayers. He handles all prayer, including the Hail Mary. He's God. But it's nice to have a personal relationship with Jesus's mother, too

[Cronos]

As God the Son pre-existed Mary, she COULD NOT BE His Mother in the sense that she pre-existed Him, as do most mothers

She WAS His mother, in the sense that she BORE Him, He was borne by her. Is that not true?

She did not pre-exist Him. The Church implicitly says that Mary was a created being, created by God. She did not create or pre-exist Him (she could not have).

He was just passing through, so to speak. She bore the body of Jesus, no doubt, but the Person was the pre-existing Son.

You seem to think that a mother creates a child, NO, God creates the child. The parents are not the creators. in the same way Mary did not create God.

Besides, even assuming that you are correct so far, she was not the mother of the Father or the Holy Spirit. So at most she could be only the mother of 1/3 of God.

Careful -- you're treading on dangerous waters by separating out the Trinity. God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are ONE God, we worship not 3 gods, we do not worship 3 aspects or 3 images, we worship ONE God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

You seem to think that just by calling Mary Theotokos we grant her divinity. That is WRONG. And The Church says Mary is not in any way divine.

[Cronos]

The mother of the Lord, yes. The mother of God, no. Can’t buy it; can’t say it.

You do realise WHY we call her that, right? As we found during the Nestorian heresy (Nestorius was on the same page as you -- he was a holy man who wanted to defend The Church against the heresy of Arius. Your question comes from a real place, from a person really trying to know God.) to deny Mary the title of Theotokos means either that:

1. The Trinity is made of 3 separate Gods, or
2. There were two separate "persons" in Christ -- distinct from each other, so God did not experience life as a human or
3. Christ was NOT God or
4. He was a created being, a lesser god.


Do you believe in any of those points? I don't think you do. But the denying of the title Theotokos opens up those points as the only alternatives.

Reiterating again -- The Church believes that Mary was / is NOT God, she is a created being, she is inferior to God.

[Cronos]

Here is a good post explaining this

[chesley]

I do not understand that passage in the same way that you do. As I see it, the Rock is that Christ is the Son of the Living God, not Simon Barjona. As for the power to bind and loose, I see no scriptural reference to Peter passing this on to another person. So no, I don’t agree. Also, I’m not sure what it means. The power to work miracles? Peter had that, do any recent Popes or other ministers? naturally, I cannot believe it had anything to do with power over men’s souls, which is God’s perogative.

As for the right to excommunicate in the sense of expelling people from the Church’s society, I have absolutely no problem with that. Baptists do it too (not so much anymore) They call it “disfellowshiping”. Still, if one Baptist Church disfellowships you, you can always join another, if they’ll have you.

But the power of it in medival times was that people believed their souls were in peril because they didn’t get the sacraments. Or so I have been given to understand.

Anyway, I appreciate you taking the time to address my questions. AS long as we are in Christ, the other thoelogical matters are of secondary importance, IMO.

god bless you

[chesley]

Thank you, I will take a look at it later and get back to you when I have a little more time

[chesley]

OK, I follow your logic. I still don’t like, or agree with, the terminology.

I DO know that while I was living in the Phillipines I heard one person explain the Trinity as the Father, the Mother, and the Son, so I think there is room for the more uneducated of Catholics to fall into error here, and I think the “Mother of God” phrase can contribute to it.

[chesley]

Careful -- you're treading on dangerous waters by separating out the Trinity. God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are ONE God, we worship not 3 gods, we do not worship 3 aspects or 3 images, we worship ONE God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

That was exactly my point. And if you want to call Mary the "Mother of God", that is certainly your right. I prefer to call her the mother of Jesus. Semantics? Maybe, but that's how I think about it.

[chesley]

Thank you for your explanation

[chesley]

My bad, Christ mediates between me and the Father.

I have also read a lot of literature printed by the Church or affliated organizations. Including a lot from the on-line Catholic Encyclopedia.

Still, I admit I have a lot to learn, which is why I enjoy asking.

cheers.

[chesley]

No, sorry, I just can’t take that last step for the simple reason that regardless of how you believe and what you believe it means, taken at face value it DOES impute superiority to Mary.

[Cronos]

OK, I follow your logic. I still don’t like, or agree with, the terminology.

I can understand -- like most things about God and Christianity, it's not easy for a mortal like you or me to comprehend. However, you then do agree that any other term or understanding can deny the wholly human and wholly divine nature of Christ.

[Cronos]

I DO know that while I was living in the Phillipines I heard one person explain the Trinity as the Father, the Mother, and the Son, so I think there is room for the more uneducated of Catholics to fall into error here, and I think the “Mother of God” phrase can contribute to it.

Yes, no one ever said that the concept of Mary's role as the human mother of Christ was easy -- forget about the extremely complicated concept of the Trinity.

however, you raised a good point -- remember that that belief is NOT the teachings of The Church. Uneducated and simple Christians can fall into error, yes, but they will also be hard pressed to explain the Trinity too, right? That doesn't mean that we dumb down the complexities of God and fall into theological error.

For people who just believe and forget about the explanations, that's very good, but there are more complex theological concepts for us.

[Cronos]

And if you want to call Mary the "Mother of God", that is certainly your right. I prefer to call her the mother of Jesus. Semantics? Maybe, but that's how I think about it.

Semantics, perhaps, do read the link I sent you when you have some time.

[Cronos]

And if you want to call Mary the "Mother of God", that is certainly your right. I prefer to call her the mother of Jesus. Semantics? Maybe, but that's how I think about it.

Semantics, perhaps, please do read the link I sent you when you have some time.

[Cronos]

No, sorry, I just can’t take that last step for the simple reason that regardless of how you believe and what you believe it means, taken at face value it DOES impute superiority to Mary.

you're entitled to that.

Do also note that even the word "Trinity" can impute 3 gods, not a triune god -- even Hindus have a Trinity of three separate gods: Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. So, while words can, at face value, mean something else, there are deeper reasons for the words.

[Mr. Lucky]

On what part of the Athenesian Creed do you think orthodox Lutherans and Catholics disagree?

[chesley]

yeah, I agree. But I can only work with my own understanding. I’m willling to admit that I may be wrong. Heck, we could both be wrong. maybe the atheists are right. But I don’t believe that and neither do you.

I certainly can’t prove the existence of God to another person, although I can testify to Hisworking in my own life. But that’s just anecdotal to a non-believer. Unless the Holy Spirit convicts them, they will not be convinced.