[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.

But since it was not given to them to believe, the means of believing also were denied them. ~~ This is not an example of negative predestination. The phrase "since it was not given them to believe" does not refer to God withholding from them the grace of faith. It rather refers to these peoples' personal and collective refusal to believe.

I should think it would be warning enough to you of the intensely heretical error of the Roman doctrine to point out that your "interpretation" here stands in direct opposition to the specific words of Jesus Christ himself, who affirms as divinely-attested Fact that the Tyrians and Sidonians would most certainly believe, had God willed to perform such miracles in them.

would have repented

But since we are debtaing the Patristics, I shall instead point out that your "reading" of Augustine stands in direct opposition to... Augustine!!

You say of Augustine:

It rather refers to these peoples' personal and collective refusal to believe

But Augustine himself calls your contention nonsense, saying:

But where are the rest left by the righteous divine judgment except in the mass of ruin, where the Tyrians and the Sidonians were left? who, moreover, might have believed if they had seen Christ's wonderful miracles. (Pred., 35)

And again you say of Augustine,

God, in His Mercy, did not try to give them the grace, knowing that they would either refuse or squander it.

But Augustine himself affirms that you are precisely wrong:

There fore the eyes of the Tyrians and Sidonians were not so blinded nor was their heart so hardened, since they would have believed if they had seen such mighty works, as the Jews saw. But it did not profit them that they were able to believe, because they were not predestinated by Him whose judgments are inscrutable and His ways past finding out. (ibid)

Your "reading" of Augustine ends up being the exact opposite of what Augustine himself says. This simply will not do. It is an utterly damning indictment of your intellectual credibility; for if you cannot even read Augustine without managing to interpolate into his words the exact opposite of what he actually says, then you are not intellectually competent to judge Calvin as a "manipulator" of the Patristics. Your blithe dismissals of Calvin's commentary must be regarded as mere hand-waving protestations, not as any sort of informed critique. It is not, then, your place to sit in judgment of Calvin (for how can you judge Calvin's reading of Augustine, when you are atrociously incapable of reading Augustine yourself?)... or for that matter, of RnMomof7. She may be a "wiper of floors" to you, but at least she is able to read "they would have believed" without taking from it the meaning, "It rather refers to these peoples' personal and collective refusal to believe".

And not only is this a damning indictment of your credibility as an expositor, but an annihilating blow against the very foundation of your position. For if, as Augustine says, "There fore the eyes of the Tyrians and Sidonians were not so blinded nor was their heart so hardened, since they would have believed if they had seen such mighty works, as the Jews saw. But it did not profit them that they were able to believe, because they were not predestinated by Him whose judgments are inscrutable and His ways past finding out", we know (as the Bible tells us quite frankly in the first place) as an established fact that the Tyrians and Sidonians would most certainly have believed and been saved to Everlasting Life, but instead, "since it was not given to them to believe, the means of believing also were denied them", remanding them deliberately and incontrovertibly to eternal Damnation.

Augustine thus establishes that the Tyrians would most certainly have believed had God seen fit to show them equivalent works to those He demonstrated in Chorazin and Bethsaida, but since it was His deliberate intent that they should not believe, He denied them the means of belief.

QED.

The soul's response to grace (unlike an eternal decree from all eternity) is largely an issue of the present moment. Tyre and Sidon were successfully evangelized by the Apostles themselves after the Ascension -- that, of course, would not have happened if they were predestined to damnation from all eternity, as you suggest. Corozaim and Bethsaida are condemned because they would not believe Christ Himself; Tyre and Sidon are justified because they believed the Holy Apostles.See St. Jerome, Hier. Comm. in S. Matt.

Irrelevant to the case at hand. Certainly Tyre and Sidon were long Christianized by Augustine's day; and yet, in his treatment of Tyre and Sidon, he regards them as Reprobated to Damnation. Why? Because he is not discussing future generations of Tyrians and Sidonians, but that specific generation (and their forebears) of Tyrians and Sidonians of whom Christ spoke in Matthew 11, who were delivered over to Final Impenitence by the deliberate election of the Father to deny them the means of belief.

I should think it would be warning enough to you of the intensely heretical error of the Roman doctrine to point out that your "interpretation" here stands in direct opposition to the specific words of Jesus Christ himself, who affirms as divinely-attested Fact that the Tyrians and Sidonians would most certainly believe, had God willed to perform such miracles in them. Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. (Matthew 11:21)

Actually, St. Augustine himself states in the De Don. Pers., 10, that God foreknew that those of Tyre and Sidon would fall from the faith they embraced after they had believed the miracles done there. As a result, he avoided doing the miracles -- again, so as not to have them incur the weight of rejecting the faith they had embraced.

She may be a "wiper of floors" to you, but at least she is able to read "they would have believed" without taking from it the meaning, "It rather refers to these peoples' personal and collective refusal to believe".

What Mambo#7 may do or not do is anyone's guess. If you must know, however, I really don't view her as a "wiper of floors" as much as I view her as someone with issues.

More to the point. Taking language merely on its face, often a sign of laziness -- though I'm sure not in your case -- can be deceiving. For example, when Our Lord says, "I desire mercy, not sacrifice," is He speaking in the exaggerated manner typical of those in the context in which He was living, such that He really meant "I desire mercy more than sacrifice," a line in Deuteronomy. Or, in the alternative, is He, God, saying that He no longer wants sacrifice as He once did -- but will accept another. Or, in yet another alternative, is He, God, contradicting Himself and changing by saying that He once said He wanted sacrifice but now no longer does. That's where exigesis comes in.

The point here, of course, is that language cannot always be taken at face-value. That maxim particularly applies to the language of theology and theologians.

Please see immediately above for what St. Augustine is actually saying.

Irrelevant to the case at hand...Because he is not discussing future generations of Tyrians and Sidonians, but that specific generation (and their forebears) of Tyrians and Sidonians of whom Christ spoke in Matthew 11.

Hello! History teaches that Tyre and Sidon were converted within three years of the Resurrection. So it was the same generation.

Ultimately, squire, I suspect that there is only one way to correct your incapacity for reading Augustine. You are going to have to stop reading Augustine for a moment, and instead experience Augustine. By which I mean you must grapple with the very matter with which Augustine grappled in coming to his position of Predestination 35.

Thank you for your advice. But, given the facts that (1) I have cited no less than five independent tracts of St. Augustine to support the Catholic position, and (2) you base your position on a single phrase (that can be explained in an alternate manner) in a single tract of Augustine, some might think that you are perhaps getting a little too big for your britches with your last point. I would suggest that you read a little more Augustine -- both on the issue of predestination and the related issue of human freedom. Maintaining your present reading of his theology will require you, at last, to conclude that he contradicts himself directly, and, therefore, is not credible. In any event, then, he is of no use to you because you will have to conclude either (1) that he embraces the Catholic teaching; or (2) that, owing to self-contradiction, he has no credibility.

On a somewhat-unrelated note, I would urge you to read again the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Calvinist teaching comports not in the least with our Father God as portrayed in this parable.

God foreknew Tyre and Sidon's free choice NOT TO REPENT in the case of His non-performance of such Miracles; AND God foreknew Tyre and Sidon's free choice TO REPENT in the case of His performance of such Miracles; AND God CHOSE not to perform these Miracles in Tyre and Sidon, a choice which had as its perfectly foreknown result the NON-Repentance of Tyre and Sidon, just as He foreknew. True, or False?

As explained above, this issue (as almost all things in life) is not so simple -- or simplistic. I like St. Augustine's (and St. Jerome's) position that God foreknew that Tyre and Sidon would have believed had they seen the miracles, but that they would then have fallen away -- and therefore would have been worse off than if they had never believed.

Once you answer that question, you will be intellectually equipped to read Augustine.

I'll have to ask the folks at the next Mensa meeting if they think I'm intellectually equipped to read Augustine. But in the meantime, I'm fairly confident that I'm at least intellectually equipped to read more than one work of St. Augustine. And at least intellectually equipped to know that one cannot understand the entirety of a theologian's teaching by restricting myself to that single work.

As for poor Calvin, though the great St. Robert Bellarmine refuted Calvin and his unholy theories point by point, it really takes no great intellect to do so. After all, a child, in the simplicity of his or her faith in a Father God, knows instinctively that poor Calvin could not have been more wrong.

Whoops. Time for Onc rounds. Be good.

Actually, St. Augustine himself states in the De Don. Pers., 10, that God foreknew that those of Tyre and Sidon would fall from the faith they embraced after they had believed the miracles done there. As a result, he avoided doing the miracles -- again, so as not to have them incur the weight of rejecting the faith they had embraced.

Huh?!?!

Doctor, the patient Squire is in worse shape than we thought.
Here is the entire excerpt of which you speak:

IT MAY BE OBJECTED THAT THE PEOPLE OF TYRE AND SIDON MIGHT, IF THEY HAD HEARD, HAVE BELIEVED, AND HAVE SUBSEQUENTLY LAPSED FROM THEIR FAITH.

A certain catholic disputant of no mean reputation so expounded this passage of the gospel as to say, that the Lord foreknew that the Tyrians and Sidonians would have afterwards departed from the faith, although they had believed the miracles done among them; and that in mercy He did not work those miracles there, because they would have been liable to severer punishment if they had forsaken the faith which they had once held, than if they had at no time held it. In which opinion of a learned and exceedingly acute man, why am I now concerned to say what is still reasonably to be asked, when even this opinion serves me for the purpose at which I aim? For if the Lord in His mercy did not do mighty works among them, since by these works they might possibly become believers, so that they might not be more severely punished when they should subsequently become unbelievers, as He foreknew that they would, -- it is sufficiently and plainly shown that no dead person is judged for those sins which He foreknew that he would have done, if in some manner he were not helped not to do them; just as Christ is said to have come to the aid of the Tyrians and Sidonians, if that opinion be true, who He would rather should not come to the faith at all, than that by a much greater wickedness they should depart from the faith, as, if they had come to it, He foresaw they would have done. Although if it be said, "Why was it not provided that they should rather believe, and this gift should be bestowed on them, that before they forsook the faith they should depart from this life"? I am ignorant what reply can be made. For he who says that to those who would forsake their faith it would have been granted, as a kindness, that they should not begin to have what, by a more serious impiety, they would subsequently forsake, sufficiently indicates that a man is not judged by that which it is foreknown he would have done ill, if by any act of kindness he may be prevented from doing it.

Therefore it is an advantage also to him who is taken away, lest wickedness should alter his understanding. But why this advantage should not have been given to the Tyrians and Sidonians, that they might believe and be taken away, lest wickedness should alter their understanding, he perhaps might answer who was pleased in such a way to solve the above question; but, as far as concerns what I am discussing, I see it to be enough that, even according to that very opinion, men are shown not to be judged in respect of those things which they have not done, even although they may have been foreseen as certain to have done them. However, as I have said, let us think shame even to refute this opinion, whereby sins are supposed to be punished in people who die or have died because they have been foreknown as certain to do them if they had lived; lest we also may seem to have thought it to be of some importance, although we would rather repress it by argument than pass it over in silence.

Now, let's note the passages I have highlighted in bold.

FIRST, the argument that "that God foreknew that those of Tyre and Sidon would fall from the faith they embraced after they had believed the miracles" is NOT Augustine's position at all, but a position which he clearly identifies as being advanced by another disputant -- a position he goes on to criticize!! How could you possibly miss this, given that it is Augustine's very first sentence.

SECOND, Augustine offers the devastating counter-argument...

Although if it be said, "Why was it not provided that they should rather believe, and this gift should be bestowed on them, that before they forsook the faith they should depart from this life"?

...that if this view were true (that God foreknew a presumed potentiality that Tyre and Sidon would fall away), why then would God not call the Tyrians and Sidonians away from life, before they fell away? And he further twists the blade by which he has just felled this argument by observing that ("I am ignorant what reply can be made") He sees no possible answer to his criticism of the argument.

THIRD, He says that if anyone would attempt to deny Absolute Predestination by this sophistry...

...he must answer the objection which he has just raised against it in order to use the argument (and Augustine frankly thinks no reply to his objection is possible, #2 above). And so...

FOURTH, Augustine states...

However, as I have said, let us think shame even to refute this opinion, whereby sins are supposed to be punished in people who die or have died because they have been foreknown as certain to do them if they had lived; lest we also may seem to have thought it to be of some importance, although we would rather repress it by argument than pass it over in silence.

...that though He would like to repress this opinion by further argument, he would feel it a shame even to bother with more refutations thereof; having dispensed of the opinion with his (unanswerable) counter-argument (#2 above), he prefers to waste no more of his time on an argument he considers so bad that he does not want foolish readers imagining it is of any logical importance.

How can you possibly attribute to Augustine an argument ("IT MAY BE OBJECTED THAT THE PEOPLE OF TYRE AND SIDON MIGHT, IF THEY HAD HEARD, HAVE BELIEVED, AND HAVE SUBSEQUENTLY LAPSED FROM THEIR FAITH") which he specifically says is A.) Not his; B.) Fatally vulnerable to the critique that even if God were worried about Tyre and Sidon falling away, He could just call them from life before they fell; and C.) is therefore such a worthless objection he is not even going to waste any more of his valuable time bothering to refute?

More to the point. Taking language merely on its face, often a sign of laziness -- though I'm sure not in your case -- can be deceiving.

Yes... I think I am beginning to see....

When Augustine himself says, "they would have believed if they had seen such mighty works", the Roman Catholic Church says that what he really means to say is "The phrase since it was not given them to believe... rather refers to these peoples' personal and collective refusal to believe."
When Augustine himself says, "The argument that 'God foreknew that those of Tyre and Sidon would fall from the faith they embraced after they had believed the miracles' is not my position but that of another disputant" the Roman Catholic Church says that "St. Augustine states in the De Don. Pers., 10, that God foreknew that those of Tyre and Sidon would fall from the faith".
When Augustine himself says, "this opinion is fatally vulnerable to the unanswerable counter-argument that if God worried about Tyre and Sidon falling away, He could have just called them out of mortal life before they fell", the Roman Catholic church says... erm, uh, well, actually (as Augustine figured) they never have answered his counter-argument.
And when Augustine himself says that, having dispensed with a single blow the opinion that Tyre and Sidon would fall, he considers that opinion to therefore be so unimportant that he does not even want to bother with repressing it by further argument, the Roman Catholic church says that it shall be the crux of their evasion of Absolute Predestination, and the foundation of their position: "As explained above, this issue (as almost all things in life) is not so simple -- or simplistic. I like St. Augustine's (and St. Jerome's) position that God foreknew that Tyre and Sidon would have believed had they seen the miracles, but that they would then have fallen away -- and therefore would have been worse off than if they had never believed."

Well!! I'm glad we cleared that up!!

If I were to continue in the lazy practice of taking things at face value, in reading what Augustine himself actually says, I would be forced to conclude that:
1.) The modern Roman position is a complete reversal of Augustine's actual absolute-predestinarian treatment of Tyre and Sidon in On Predestination;
2.) The modern Roman position attributes an evasion of predestinarian doctrine to Augustine, which Augustine himself specifically declared in Perseverance to be the opinion of someone else entirely;
3.) The modern Roman position has never even answered the counter-argument Augustine raised which he considered to be unanswerable (and which has indeed gone unanswered);
4.) That therefore, this evasion of predestinarian doctrine which Augustine finds so easily dismissed as to be logically trivial, the modern Roman position takes up as the very foundation of her "case".

At least, if I read things at face value, that would seem to sum things up pretty well.

Hello! History teaches that Tyre and Sidon were converted within three years of the Resurrection. So it was the same generation.

Irrelevant to the case at hand on two grounds:

1.) Jesus says that they could have been shown the miracles and Repented "long ago", has God seen fit to demonstrate the miracles to them long ago. How many Tyrians do you suppose died in their sins during those long ages?
2.) Sodom was never converted, but destroyed and damned to hell. And yet, Matthew 11 says that had Sodom been granted miracles the equal of Capernaum, they would have repented and remained to that very day.

given the facts that (1) I have cited no less than five independent tracts of St. Augustine to support the Catholic position, and (2) you base your position on a single phrase (that can be explained in an alternate manner) in a single tract of Augustine, some might think that you are perhaps getting a little too big for your britches with your last point.

I am trying to take it easy on you. We have been examining your citations one at a time, and so far (On Predestination and On Perseverance) you are 0 for 2. That does not bode well for you as we continue.

I would suggest that you read a little more Augustine -- both on the issue of predestination and the related issue of human freedom. Maintaining your present reading of his theology will require you, at last, to conclude that he contradicts himself directly, and, therefore, is not credible. In any event, then, he is of no use to you because you will have to conclude either (1) that he embraces the Catholic teaching; or (2) that, owing to self-contradiction, he has no credibility.

Or that, as he matured in the Faith, Augustine deliberately retracted many of the anti-predestinarian positions of his youth... because this learned Doctor of the Church frankly recognized that any deviation from Absolute Predestination was dead wrong.

Which is, of course, the actual fact of the case.

On a somewhat-unrelated note, I would urge you to read again the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Calvinist teaching comports not in the least with our Father God as portrayed in this parable.

Patience. We are still trying to get you up to speed on your Augustine.

And it is not looking good, so far.

I'll have to ask the folks at the next Mensa meeting if they think I'm intellectually equipped to read Augustine.

I... um... how do I say this... I would not advise that. At least, I would not present them with examples of your expositions so far.

Egads.

But in the meantime, I'm fairly confident that I'm at least intellectually equipped to read more than one work of St. Augustine.

But... you've just horribly botched two in a row... not good.

And at least intellectually equipped to know that one cannot understand the entirety of a theologian's teaching by restricting myself to that single work.

Especially if you can't even read that single work correctly.

Poor Calvin will have to wait. Right now, even the "simplest child" would be aghast at your string of exegetical mishaps in consideration of just two of Augustine's works.

This is the problem which orthodox Protestants face. Rome thinks that we do not sufficiently respect the Patristics; meanwhile, we sometimes wonder if Rome can even manage to read them.

Do you begin to understand why this is so frustrating to us?

OrthodoxPresbyterian; Squire; RnMomof7; proud2bRC; JMJ333; attagirl; RobbyS; tiki; St.Chuck; Askel5; AlGuyA Since I am the fellow who first informed Squire that he didn't understand Augustine, I think I ought to give a broad outline of our overall exchange with Squire. I believe that this will be important for lurkers who care enough about the overall conflict between Protestants and RCs to go back and re-trace what was said.

In my post #1038, I said:

The funny thing is, the Protestants agreed with Augustine on the most important stuff. Sixteenth century Rome, on the other hand, actually rejected Augustine on the very point which Luther correctly identified as the pivotal issue of the Reformation.
You're in this over your head for the time being. You need to come up to speed on the topic.

Squire immediately protested in his #1039 with a cute display of what I would call only a Romanist scholar's general familiarity with Augustine. I responded in #1041 that Squire was still over his head in the discussion. My point was that all Squire really knows about Augustine's position is ROME'S PARTY LINE CONCERNING AUGUSTINE--which is, to put it bluntly, an outright LIE.

I gave Squire fair warning about this, so when Squire protested again in his #1042, I knew he was a goat headed for the slaughter in this debate. Unlike Squire, I did already know Augustine's position. Unlike Squire, who presupposes that the Church of Rome is honest, I knew that we could quickly prove that the Church of Rome was lying in the sixteenth century and has continued lying to this very day.

The absolute, double predestinarian position of the Reformers, which position the RCs loathed in the sixteenth century and still loathe to this very day, was AUGUSTINE'S POSITION. And when you grasp Augustine's Scriptural understanding of the doctrine of reprobation--specifically, predestination to hell!--the whole mess is almost hilarious.

My point here is that Luther and Calvin were correct. The Church of Rome really is apostate. This is seen in Rome's lying refusal to admit what Augustine clearly asserted. And the folks who can't even admit what the Blessed Augustine clearly taught would, according to a logical application of Augustine's position, certainly appear to be reprobate.

Notice that this debate necessarily gets pretty rough--fast! This thread is not for the faint-hearted. For example, we Reformed theologians will cheerfully denounce Bouyer's teachings in the lead article on this thread as smarmy theological garbage. Gosh, we regard Bouyer as a pagan sophist, not a Christian theologian. Unless and until he repents--which is not likely, under the circumstances of his depraved pride in RCism--we regard him as a vessel of wrath fitted for destruction (Romans 9).

My #1043--which I respectfully submit is probably worth reading if you are a lurker on this thread--reiterated my overall warning to Squire concerning his ignorance of Augustine's double-predestinarian teaching and then handed off the argument to OrthodoxPresbyterian. I knew OP would crush Squire pretty quickly. Again, the reason why I knew this is because Augustine really was on the side of Luther and Calvin in this astonishingly important doctrine of the Reformation. And I knew that this is not hard to demonstrate.

OrthodoxPresbyterian's #1051 to me, concerning my request that he pick up the discussion, is remarkable for its frankness in warning Squire:

He's rather too presumptuous for my tastes. You're asking me to cast my exegetical pearls before someone who is acting swinish. My temptation is simply to shake my sandals and move on. (My time is valuable too)
I am content to answer his arguments as you request, but only if he agrees to meet me in a spirit of charity. That does not mean that I desire for him to emasculate his own arguments -- that is what RC's typically expect of Protestants; to forego any truly forthright condemnation of Roman error on grounds that such forthrightness is "Catholic-bashing". Protestants have little patience for such ecumenical pap; I would gladly see "squire" present his arguments as strongly and adamantly as he is able. After all, I would do the same.
But if he intends to be presumptuous and snide, I am not going to waste my time.
I will "tease" Squire with this: if you meet me in exegetical battle, your arguments will be crushed. You will see them taken apart and cast down before your eyes. Of this, I have not even an inkling of doubt.
But I'll not throw pearls into the slop.

[CONTINUING MY DISCUSSION OF OUR EXCHANGE WITH SQUIRE]

As I said above, this is a pretty fierce controversy. But it is by no means as fierce as the Reformation itself was. My goodness, untold numbers of Protestants were murdered by Rome. The modern RC's refusal to face that murderous fact reminds me of the anti-semitic freaks who claim that the holocaust of WWII didn't really happen.

We need to face reality, not run and hide from it. So, lurkers who are inclined to be only dismayed at the ferocity of the disagreement on this thread need to wake up and notice which side is telling the truth. And to help lurkers understand just how sharply the lines are drawn, I will point out that we Protestants do maintain that RCism is a pack of lies and has been so since well before the time of the Reformation. Under the circumstances of what we Protestants do know and what today's RCs do not know, we cannot help but maintain this to our FReeper friends. Therefore, insinuating that we are Talibans for being so bold as to take a stand on a terribly important matter--as Squire did insinuate in his #1034--is just an example of the malevolent, truth-hating spirit of the RCs on our forum. When we Protestants speak the truth in a debate, we get trashed as "Catholic bashers." This foolish backlash against truth-tellers is downright Clintonian in its character of pride and vicious perjury.

And that is the truth.

(Ah, but the slander which is flung at Protestant as troublemakers often fools the moderators on FreeRepublic. [Our Protestant position is that if FreeRepublic's RCs are going to post ignorant nonsense disparaging Protestants, they need to be required to take the heat of our measured responses. And although OrthodoxPresbyterian and I have surely offended a number of folks on this thread, we will flatly maintain that the problem lies in the souls of those who are offended by the Truth. Ours is a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it.])

***

After some bantering back and forth between Squire and OrthodoxPresbyterian, we finally got down, beginning in #1091, to the nitty-gritty of the extraordinarily interesting debate concerning what Augustine actually taught. It is interesting for Squire's very stubbornness in refusing to read Augustine with any real honesty whatsoever.

Lurkers are invited to read the entire exchange:

OrthodoxPresbyterian to Squire: #1091
Squire to OrthodoxPresbyterian: #1116
OrthodoxPresbyterian to Squire: #1186 and 1187
Squire to OrthodoxPresbyterian: #1194
OrthodoxPresbyterian to Squire: #1195

My take on this debate, the take of any honest lurker, is that OrthodoxPresbyterian has made good on his promise to crush Squire in the argument. The Church of Rome, which Squire has defended doggedly and with as much skill as a former lawyer could muster, is found guilty of the most flagrant of perjuries concerning the doctrine of predestination and specifically concerning Augustine's teachings concerning the absoluteness of God's predestination.

(During the Reformation, Rome actually claimed to be aligned with Augustine. Rome actually maintained that Augustine did not teach absolute, double predestination. But this is an outright lie, as OrthodoxPresbyterian has demonstrated from the crystal clear words of Augustine. The pompous defenders of the Papacy scoffed at Calvin and Luther for not understanding Augustine. But Calvin and Luther did understand Augustine, just as OrthodoxPresbyterian and I understand Augustine!)

Heck, if Augustine had been alive during the time of Luther and Calvin, he would have been a Protestant, not a defender of Rome. The whole thing really is quite funny. (RCs don't find it very funny, of course, but at some level in their souls, they do see the irony. It is precisely what infuriates them in debates like this one.)

***

As an aside, I will point out to lurkers that Squire is quite bright (especially for someone who is now in medical school). No question about it. But when OrthodoxPresbyterian charged that Squire is intellectually incompetent to understand Augustine or the Bible, OP was merely making a spiritual observation. Sin is intellectually incapacitating in ways which proud sinners will not face squarely. And that refusal to face reality squarely is the incapacitation itself.

Maybe Squire will come up to speed--and admit that he has been on the wrong side the whole time. Then again, maybe he won't. How about the rest of my FReeper friends?

OrthodoxPresbyterian and I have been telling you the TRUTH concerning Augustine's Scripturally thoughtful doctrine of God's absolute predestination. What are you going to do with that?

I urge lurkers to see www.bereanbeacon.org for the testimony of Richard Bennett, a priest who discovered that Augustine was right and that Rome's very real apostasy is actually a fulfillment of Augustine's warnings concerning reprobation. Bennett is persuaded that Rome is profoundly dishonest about almost everything of real importance.

Acts 17:23

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