From Calvinist Prosecutor to Catholic Apologist

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

All your attempts fail to support your conclusions:

charitoo- to make graceful. Catholicism teaches that Mary’s grace is from God, not from something external to God.

This is irrelevant, as all grace given to us us from God, and again, charitoo, applies to all believers, (Eph. 1:6) does not mean full, which "plērēs," does for Christ, and in 16 other places in the NT.

Blessed art though: Jael played no role in our Salvation.

Jael was a salvific instrument of God, as she played a part in saving Israel, of whom Christ concerning the flesh came, but according to your marginalization of her, then being blessed above women can hardly carry the extreme significance which it is extrapolated to mean concerning Mary.

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.

Begging the question. You premise is what remains to be proved, while basing doctrines on what Scripture does not say is not sound, while again PTDS to heaven has zero examples and is contrary to what is taught as regards who prayer to Heaven is directed to, and the sufficiency of Christ that would advantage praying to the departed.

Mother of God: Do you deny that Mary was the Mother of God?

Read my reply more carefully.

Also Elizabeth would have spoken Hebrew. One of the Jewish names for God is Adonai. Which translates into english as Lord

Adonai is the Hebrew equivalent to kurios, and also does not specify diety, (Gn. 23:6) though it can mean that in context. Again, the Holy Spirit is not careless in what words He uses, and never uses "mother of God" which most naturally denotes Mary is ontologically the mother of Deity, while the Holy Spirit even clarifies that Israel provided Christ "according to the flesh ."

Pray for us: The people the pagans were praying to were not in heaven (the pagans thought they were).

Regardless, such is the ONLY example of people on earth praying to the unseen departed. There are around a hundred prayers by believers in the Bible and ALL of them are directed directly to God, and NONE to the departed.

Queen of Heaven: You assume that each passage of the Bible has only one interpretation?

If i did why would i state that yours is only one interpretation?

The Father Richards you cite appears to have been laicized

Typical, as even if he was then you ignore that both the approved notes of your official Bible and commentaries teach Israel and or the church is the women.

John 2: ... Jesus does exactly what Mary asks.

Regardless, as said, being an intercessor on earth does not mean such is to be prayed to in Heaven, for which we have no example. Jesus also did exactly what others asked, even a Gentile "dog" who had no covenantal right, while equating Mary with all believers in response to her desire to see him. (Mt. 12:1-5)

Mary’s Suffering: It is not claimed that Mary’s suffering atones for anyone’s sins.

Then she is not a coredemptoress, or are the apostles, who also suffered seeing their Messiah crucified, are coredeemers.

On the Cross: My apologies, John was present at the cross, the only apostle to be there.

But he had also fled before, though apparently Peter alone tried to follow Jesus after his arrest. That only John returned to see Jesus is not certain: John only mentions himself in relation to Mary, (Jn. 19:25,26) but we know Mary was not alone. (Luke 23:49, 5; 24:10; Matthew 27:55; Mark 15:40, 41)

The most faithful took Mary as his Mother.

He may have been, but Scripture does not definitely say John was, and God, who understands the circumstances and motives of men, is the judge of who was most faithful, which the day of the Lord shall declare. Meanwhile, the act here was part of the Lord being the good shepherd, but which does not make Mary the mother of the church, etc.

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

Likewise in principle this applies to theotokos.

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.

The other apostles also suffered in their soul, while neither Mary's suffering or other aspects of her life do not make her the Queen of Heaven and object of prayers to Heaven. That is the issue.

Meanwhile, your scorn for Protestant esteem for Paul, while engaging in hyper exaltation of Mary, is a reproof of Scripture, as it is indeed Paul and his labor of love in birthing souls and building the church that the Holy Spirit gives the most press to.

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.

Certainly Judaism holds a belief in Tradition, and the Talmud exposes the nonsense this can contain, and the problems with Tradition being contrary to Scripture applies to Rome as well, from pastors distinctively being called priests to PTDS and other issues .

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

Catholicism, without censure, ascribes to Mary many things which are not seen in Scripture, including that Mary has almost "unlimited power:"

“The power thus put into her (Mary’s) hands is all but unlimited." "...that through her are obtained every hope, every grace, and all salvation." (Pope Leo XIII, in Adiutricem (On the Rosary), Encyclical promulgated on September 5, 1895, #8. http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Leo13/l13adiut.htm; Pope Pius IX, in Ubi Primum (On the Immaculate Conception), Encyclical promulgated on February 2, 1849, #5.)

Concerning “Pope” Paul: Most of the verses are distorted out of context.

Prove it.

Also, one would not expect a Pope to travel much at all;

Or go to war, or live in regal palaces, with ostentatious clothing, receiving brethren bowing down to him, kissing his feet, or sanctioning torture, and ruling over those without the church, etc.

Note also that "pope Paul" is a not actually contending Paul was a Pope, but is in response to the claim Peter was a Roman pope based on him being used of God, which Paul abundantly was, though being relatively marginalized by RCs.

one would expect a Pope to sit in his seat in Rome;

One would expect to see that in Scripture. Prove it that he was.

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

Why do you consider that contrary to SS, unless you subscribe to the idea that it means nothing else can be used but Scripture in understanding it? But i was not, as regards things like Ray Masters devotees, but that such testimonies as yours can be found in cults, but Scripture is the supreme judge of such claims, and the standard for obedience, as seen in 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?

Irrelevant except as pertains to the sufficiency aspect of SS, which was not the issue here, but that as written, Scripture was the standard for testing truth claims, which the Bereans exampled. Yet the OT Scripture materially provided for additional writing being established as Scripture, like as previous ones were due to their enduring Divine qualities and attestation, like as true men of God were, even if rejected by those in power.

I know plenty of Karaite Jews that accept only Torah and Tanakh, and do not respect the tokanot and ma’asim of the rabbis.

A heretical sect founded in medieval Egypt that resurrected the errors of the Tzadduqim. Although they do have the good sense to reject chrstianity.

The world is changing rather rapidly in this respect. Yehova is calling his remnant out of Israel.

Using Hebrew names cannot kosher a false religion.

As for the vowels, they are noted in a substantial portion of the masorite scriptures; its just certain words that have the vowel points omitted, and even those sometimes have the vowel points present.

The "masorite scriptures" are not the Torah written by G-d and dictated to Moses. This consists of nothing but consonants, without vowels or punctuation of any kind. The Massoretes merely created vowel points to indicate the correct vocalization handed on by Oral Tradition. Your pointed "masorite scriptures" are not the Written Torah but the Written Torah plus Tradition. If you want to see the pure Written Word of G-d look at a kosher Torah Scroll.

One has to search to find them.

As for the differences in the interpretation of the role of Messiach, much of that is from a culture with a broken heart.

:Sigh: It's from a culture that is keeping the Torah as it was given to their ancestors. Whether or not one's heart is broken is irrelevant.

Not that many ‘Christians’ have such a great understanding either. They want desperately for Messiach to have invented a new faith, rather than re-affirm the existing on as he did. They want victory over the Jews, rather than the grafting in that the NT really presents.

I've heard it all before. I used to believe it. The Torah does not provide for nor allow for the possibility of a "gxd/man" who "dies for the sins of the world." This is from the imposition of alien concepts into the TaNa"KH and the Jewish religion.

Its not our job to sort it out; Messiach will do that when he comes with his angels.

He's not coming with angels. He's going to rise to power, become king, destroy `Amaleq, and build the Temple.

It is going to accomplish nothing arguing back and forth. In your mind the truth of J*sus is antecedent to the Torah. You cannot conceive of the Torah standing on its own. All you have ever known, and all you are capable of understanding, is a Torah that foreshadows and prepares for J*sus (chas vechalilah!). The fact is that in real life it is the Torah that is antecendent to J*sus and to everything else. It is the Torah that sits in judgment on Mashiach and not vice versa. Since in your mind J*sus is antecedent to every other truth, our arguments are simply going to accomplish nothing.

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