From Calvinist Prosecutor to Catholic Apologist

Catholic World Report ^ | July 26, 2013 | David Paul Deavel

[NYer]

Sunday, June 21, marked the 90^th anniversary of the Scopes Monkey Trial decision. The questions surrounding evolution—meaning, in particular, the origins of humans—still raise large and important questions for how we understand human nature and the doctrine of original sin. But Jason Stellman thinks that the obsession with our physical origins, though understandable, is perhaps theologically off-kilter. Where we've come from biologically is not as important as where we're heading. It's not the beginning of the journey, man—it's the destination. Stellman's The Destiny of the Species (Wipf and Stock, 2013) is a brief, rollicking, and readable apologetic, notable not just for turning the question of origins on its head, but also for pioneering a slightly different route from the path taken by many Catholic converts in their first books.

From Prosecutor to Papist Stellman's own personal story is compelling. Born and raised in Orange County, California, Stellman came to serious faith in the context of the Evangelicalism of the California preacher Chuck Smith's Calvary Chapel ministries. He served as a Protestant missionary in both Hungary and Uganda before turning to a more theologically rigorous form of Protestantism: Calvinism. Stellman attended Westminster Seminary in Escondido, California and began ministering in the Presbyterian Church in America, the largest conservative Presbyterian denomination in the U.S., planting Exile Presbyterian Church in Woodinville, WA in 2004. Stellman's name came into the limelight when he was chosen to serve as the chief prosecutor in the 2011 heresy trial of fellow Presbyterian minister Peter Leithart, a Calvinist writer and scholar known to readers of journals including First Things and Touchstone. Leithart's views were accused of being in line with a school of Presbyterian thought known as the “Federal Vision,” and he was tried for, among other charges, allegedly failing to distinguish justification and sanctification, divine law and divine grace, and teaching that baptism confers grace and divine adoption. In short, Leithart was on trial for being too Catholic.

Although Stellman's work as prosecutor was acknowledged as solid at the time, Leithart was acquitted by the Northwest Presbytery. In the time after this trial, however, Stellman himself began to question certain historic Protestant beliefs like sola scriptura and sola fide. Through a number of contacts, including the group of formerly Calvinist Catholic apologists centered around the “Called to Communion” (calledtocommunion.com) website, which was founded to foster dialogue with and provide apologetics precisely for Calvinists who suspected the Catholic Church of being right or at least having something to say, Stellman began the journey that ended with his own entrance into the Church on September 23, 2012. Over the last year Stellman has been doing catechesis in a Seattle-area parish, and he now works at Logos Bible Software, developing resource material that will provide an easy way to look at the Scriptures in the light of Patristic and Medieval sources as well as the teachings of the Magisterium.

Apologetics for Everyone Much of Catholic apologetics in English-speaking countries, and increasingly in Latin America, has focused on the differences between Catholics and Protestants. This is not surprising given that large swaths of Evangelical Protestants were baptized as Catholics and left the Church due to the catechetical and spiritual failures of post-conciliar American Catholicism. Sherry Wedell of the Catherine of Siena Institute has written extensively of this phenomenon, which continues to this day—many Catholics who hunger for solid biblical teaching and help in living a life of Christian discipleship seek out elsewhere what they should find in Catholic faith. They find it in the Protestant world where large parts of the Catholic faith have been conserved, especially devotion to Scripture, a serious search for divine intimacy, and the main outlines of Christian morality. Thus Catholic apologetics has been naturally geared toward showing lapsed Catholics and the Protestants they have joined that Catholic faith actually fulfills what they are looking for in a more coherent and comprehensive way. This is an important task—and the importance of it has born great fruit over the last thirty years, not only bringing many serious Protestant pastors, academics, and laity into full communion, but changing the dynamic of Catholic-Protestant relations. During the last two papal conclaves, I have been asked a number of times by Evangelical Protestants about the candidates and what they have to offer. In 2005 one Evangelical Presbyterian friend asked me, “Are we going to get a really good Pope?” I was tempted to answer after the fashion of Tonto when the Lone Ranger asked what chance there was of the duo escaping a wrathful Indian tribe: “Who is this 'we,' white man?” But I didn't, because such a recognition shows how much anti-Catholicism has been tamed in the age of John Paul II, Catholic Answers, Evangelicals and Catholics Together, and all the other efforts of apologetics and dialogue.

Stellman certainly has done his part in explaining his own move, writing an essay titled “I Fought the Church, and the Church Won” and giving an in-depth interview on “Called to Communion” as well as engaging in various interesting questions about the real differences between Catholics and Calvinists on his personal blog, “Creed Code Cult”. But refreshingly, Stellman's Destiny of the Species is actually not geared toward Protestants interested in or annoyed by Mary, the Pope, Purgatory, and Indulgences. It is an apologetic for Christianity as a whole after the fashion of Chesterton's Orthodoxy or Lewis's Mere Christianity, geared toward those who might be “spiritual but not religious,” “nones,” lapsed Catholics who have left Christian faith behind altogether or are already practicing some other sort of faith, and Christians of all sorts, whether Catholic or not. What he has produced is an old-fashioned apologetic for everyone.

Back to the Future Stellman's book, written around the time of the 150^th anniversary of Darwin's Origin of the Species, arrived not only in time for the 90^th anniversary of the Scopes Monkey Trial, but also Pope Francis's first encyclical, Lumen Fidei, with which it bears some striking similarities. Destiny of the Species begins with the premise that while our biological origins are of interest to us, Darwin ultimately “doesn't scratch where we truly itch.” We certainly eat, drink, defecate, breathe, and move in ways that remind us we are animals. But unlike other animals, whose existence is instinctual, man “is not pushed but pulled, not driven but drawn.” Your dog may appreciate a good nap, a beef, and a burgundy, but we have desires for glory, love, and life that has no end. We are, says Stellman, “hard-wired for heaven.” All of the frantic search for someplace else and something new that Tocqueville found in so pure a form in America (and that more recent writers like David Brooks and Wendell Berry have wryly observed or excoriated) is the sign not simply of biological urge, but spiritual need. Stellman uses Chesterton's fine phrase to describe it: divine discontent. We all hunger for a future that is more than we can experience now.

Like Lumen Fidei, Stellman is proposing that human discontent and restlessness should be answered not by quelling them, but by seeking answers to them. Francis answers Nietzsche's dictum that “if you want peace of soul and happiness, then believe, but if you want to be a follower of truth, then seek,” noting that “autonomous reason is not enough to illumine the future”. Stellman observes that for the vast bulk of people, the way to apparent peace and happiness is not belief, but “worldliness”—simply following our biological needs and various emotional passions for things, fame, revenge, and pharmacologically-induced good feelings. The way of belief, according to Stellman, is actually the path to truth and the only way to real peace and happiness. The rest of his book is dedicated to illuminating the truth that, as Pope Francis puts it, “the light of faith is unique, since it is capable of illuminating every aspect of human existence.” It is “a light coming from the future and opening before us vast horizons which guide us beyond our isolated selves towards the breadth of communion.”

The seeker with a pure heart will not choose between belief and truth, but between competing beliefs. Again, like Pope Francis, Stellman emphasizes that our choice is really between true belief and idolatry. Stellman's middle chapters survey the various false gods that humans encounter, offering treatments of the five vanities surveyed in the book of Ecclesiastes, the temptations of a technologically advanced and affluent society, and how the universal acknowledgment of sin's reality usually issues in our identification of it in someone else's life. We all love to confess others' sins while staying silent about our own. Stellman's treatment is generally good in this section, though it must be said that his treatment of the dangers of life in a consumer society tend toward a sort of stereotyped vision of business and markets that might have been better left out or at least balanced by a recognition of the dangers of modern do-gooderism present in non-profit and government work, too. Stellman, whose views are probably left-of-center, occasionally seems as if he's making a brief against politically conservative Christians and not a brief for Christianity. Jibes at those who watch FOX News or take different views on political issues detract from what is solid and permanent in his exposition. This leads to a second difficulty in the book. Stellman uses a variety of pop-culture references to make his points. Many of them, such as his use of The Matrix to illuminate the choice we have to make between simply distracting ourselves and offering ourselves to seek the truth, hit home. Not all of them do. Rock music fans, especially U2 fans, sometimes need to be reminded that song lyrics seldom stand well on their own.

Stellman really excels when he is bringing out the great riches present in Scripture. Again, mirroring Lumen Fidei, Stellman shows how the Decalogue is meant not simply as a veto on naughty human actions, but as a liberation of humans from the passions and idolatries he's been describing and toward a life of spiritual abundance. (I would complain that he describes the Commandments using the Protestant rather than the Catholic numbering, but my own contribution to ecumenical outreach is to say let's do it the way Protestants and Jews do.) Using Job, Stellman shows how the real objection to God's existence, the problem of evil, is met by God's presence, ultimately in the form of Jesus Christ, whose Resurrection and Ascension show us, in a limited way, what we will be. Stellman's final pop-culture flourish is to use the movie Memento, which tells its story alternating between scenes starting in the beginning and moving forward and the end moving backward, as an analogy to the way in which the light of faith works. We know the destiny of the species is assured, but the light of faith, while illuminating all of life, doesn't usually show us more than we need for our own personal immediate steps ahead. “One step enough for me,” in Newman's famous words. Stellman's vision of Christianity answers exactly to the two primary aspects of Chesterton's personal philosophy in Orthodoxy. In the light of the future prepared for us, life is both familiar and unfamiliar, marvelous and unsatisfactory. It is not merely a biological process, but a high adventure. The Destiny of the Species: Man and the Future that Pulls Him
by Jason J. Stellman
Wipf & Stock, 2013 
128 pages

 

[Revolting cat!]

I once asked my co-worker, a Jew married to an Irish Catholic, about some strain of Judaismn that just happened to bounce against my ears, and he said, hey, I’m not up on all the American branches of Judaism, but those are the California Jews in a state of war with such-and-such Jewish school, who are in a state of war with Jewish so-and-sos.

[ronnietherocket3]

11 When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. 12 For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. 13 The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.

It says here that Paul rebuked him because Peter was afraid of eating with the Gentiles. This is not a point of doctrine.

[Salvation]

Big difference between impeccability and infallible.

[ronnietherocket3]

You do know what the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception says? Mary was free from the stain of Adam. Ergo, she is outside of Adam and does not die because of Adam.

[editor-surveyor]

>> “You do know what the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception says? Mary was free from the stain of Adam. Ergo, she is outside of Adam and does not die because of Adam.” <<

.
I hope you know enough of Yehova’s word to know that is lower than hogwash?

[boatbums]

Amen!

The four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat on the throne, and worship him that lives for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power: for you have created all things, and for your pleasure they are and were created. (Revelation 4:9-11)

And I beheld, and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing. And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be to him that sits on the throne, and to the Lamb for ever and ever. (Revelation 5:11-13)

[ronnietherocket3]

How is this hogwash? Where does it say Jesus does not have the power to free people from dying in Adam?

[editor-surveyor]

>> “It says here that Paul rebuked him because Peter was afraid of eating with the Gentiles.” <<

.
No, that is not what it says. It says that Peter was a hypocrite, and that his hypocrisy was harming the spiritual lives of others. And yes it is a point of doctrine, because Peter had already admitted that he knew that the gentiles were not to be treated as unclean.

[editor-surveyor]

You would need to start at the beginning with your Bible study.

Yehova’s word says that there is none righteous, and it also states that righteousness cannot be transferred generationally. You cannot inherit righteousness from a parent.

Sins of the father are visited to the sons, but not those of the mother. Mary’s sinful nature had no affect on her son.

[ronnietherocket3]

The first 5 references are easily explained by the writer putting Peter in to clarify the meaning to the people for whom it was written. When I lookup NIV 1 Peter 2:4-8 here: http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Peter%202&version=NIV

It translates using the word cornerstone. A cornerstone is the stone that the rest of the building is set in reference to. The church is built on Peter in reference to Jesus. NIV Luke 6:48: Jesus is telling people that they should lay the foundation of a building deep into rock. When that happens and a flood comes, the house will stand. Somehow the Catholic Church has survived 2000 years of Rome, Barbarians, Islam, Protestantism and is currently under assault from Modernism. However, its basic teachings have not changed. However, large numbers of Protestant churches have been consumed by homosexuality; they teach it is actually okay. If you want to claim members of the Church have sinned, fine. But a stone house can get dirty and filthy.

[ronnietherocket3]

Actually Gal 2:12 says that he ate with the Gentiles and then when certain men came, he did not eat with the Gentiles because he was afraid.

And a hypocrite is someone who says one thing and does another. Again the doctrine of papal infallibility is not a doctrine of papal impeccability. If you want to exclude the possibility of Popes from this, it says that one can know correct doctrine and still sin.

[narses]

[ronnietherocket3]

The Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is that the stain of Adam’s sin was spared from Mary at the moment of her conception. It says that Mary, by virtue of her son’s sacrifice, was free from the stain of original sin. She still needed Jesus.

If you want to respond that Jesus died after her conception, fine, but remember, God can see the future.

[metmom]

The Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is that the stain of Adam’s sin was spared from Mary at the moment of her conception. It says that Mary, by virtue of her son’s sacrifice, was free from the stain of original sin. She still needed Jesus.

Chapter and verse please.....

[boatbums]

That as well as a retread.

[boatbums]

There is a reason for apostasy: "so that it would be shown that they all are not of us." The gospel drives out the hypocrite, the false professor. In fact, if hypocrites and false professors are comfortable in your church, then you have a good reason to question whether the gospel is being preached with clarity and power. Christ knows His sheep. They hear His voice. They do not listen to a man who claims to be the Vicar of Christ, who arrogantly allows himself to be called "Holy Father." They are satisfied with His Word, which is why false teachers tirelessly seek to inculcate dissatisfaction and distrust in the Word. That is how they get the false disciples to follow them. And we see it happen every day. We should expect to see it happening every day. It is a fulfillment of God's Word.

Thanks. That was a powerful statement of truth from White. Christ's sheep DO hear His voice an a hireling they will NOT follow. The hireling will not give his life for the sheep.

[Utah Binger]

Better than goats.

[ronnietherocket3]

Hail Mary:
http://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/greek/nas/charitoo.html
charitoo- to make graceful. Catholicism teaches that Mary’s grace is from God, not from something external to God.
http://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/greek/nas/pleres.html
pleres- lacking nothing, perfect. Of course this applies to Jesus.

Blessed art though: Jael played no role in our Salvation. She played a small role in one of the wars the Jews had with their neighbors.

Holy Mary: Since Mary is unique amongst all non-Jesus humans, I don’t think you will find an example in the OT. In the NT, nothing gives an explicit contradiction of asking for Mary’s intercessions.

Mother of God: Do you deny that Mary was the Mother of God? Also Elizabeth would have spoken Hebrew. One of the Jewish names for God is Adonai. Which translates into english as Lord (amongst other translations all related). Also the Holy Spirit came upon Mary and conceived Jesus, see the Apostolic Creed, which is recited at the beginning of the Rosary.

Pray for us: The people the pagans were praying to were not in heaven (the pagans thought they were). In addition these people were by the very nature in opposition to God. Mary does not stand in opposition to God, in fact her soul magnifies/exalts the Lord. However, the Lord is still the creator of her soul.

Queen of Heaven: You assume that each passage of the Bible has only one interpretation? The Father Richards you cite appears to have been laicized, so I am unsure how he is an authority within the Church. How does that passage relate to Mary? Well after the Child (Jesus) is born, the Devil (Herod) tries to kill the child. This child is destined to rule all nations. The woman flees into the wilderness (Egypt). The devil becomes angry with the woman and then runs off to kill her other children. There are verses here which are not congruent with Matthew 2:13-18; however, Matthew revealed things that happened on Earth. Revelation revealed things that happened in Heaven.

John 2: Mary asks Jesus to do something; Jesus says “Why should I care, My hour hasn’t arrived”; Mary tells the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them; Jesus does exactly what Mary asks.

Mary’s Suffering: It is not claimed that Mary’s suffering atones for anyone’s sins. But we do have that Mary suffered at the Cross (Luke 2:33-35)

On the Cross: My apologies, John was present at the cross, the only apostle to be there. John of all the Apostles was the most faithful; he was the only apostle to return to Jesus before Jesus’s Resurrection. The most faithful took Mary as his Mother.

Title of of Co-Redemptrix: Pope BXVI in that quote of yours says the title should be abandoned because it leads to misunderstanding.

Mary in the Redemption: Mary suffered in her soul. Also this obsession that Protestantism has for Paul appears to be a pity party and a list of mewling babies whining that the Catholic Church did not award him her highest honor.

In your rejection of Sacred Tradition, you do realize the Judaism holds a belief in Tradition, right? The problems of Judaism are that the Tradition can reverse scripture and that the sacrifices were imperfect.

Catholicism does not hold that Mary has power; we hold that she has influence.

Concerning “Pope” Paul: Most of the verses are distorted out of context. Also, one would not expect a Pope to travel much at all; one would expect a Pope to sit in his seat in Rome; one would expect a missionary to move around a lot.

Devotees: Are you really citing a source outside Scripture as having power to shed light on Scripture?

Bereans: Since the Bereans are mentioned in Acts, Acts had definitely not been written at that point. Do we know what books of the NT had been written by this point?

[Elsie]

...Paul rebuked him because Peter was afraid of eating with the Gentiles.

Uh...

Not quite: ...because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.

..and THAT's DOCTRINE!

[Elsie]

...because he stood condemned.

Bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!