Martin Luther
Posted on 01/05/2002 11:55:52 AM PST by Brian Kopp DPM
Why Only Catholicism Can Make Protestantism Work: Louis Bouyer on the Reformation MARK BRUMLEY
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ABSTRACT: Louis 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. |
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Martin Luther
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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.
In that regard, Bouyer's brief introduction is worth quoting in full:
This book is a personal witness, a plain account of the way in which a Protestant came to feel himself obliged in conscience to give his adherence to the Catholic Church. No sentiment of revulsion turned him from the religion fostered in him by a Protestant upbringing followed by several years in the ministry. The fact is, he has never rejected it. It was his desire to explore its depths, its full scope, that led him, step by step, to a genuinely spiritual movement stemming from the teachings of the Gospel, and Protestantism as an institution, or rather complexus of institutions, hostile to one another as well as to the Catholic Church. The study of this conflict brought him to detect the fatal error which drove the spiritual movement of Protestantism out of the one Church. He saw the necessity of returning to that Church, not in order to reject any of the positive Christian elements of his religious life, but to enable them, at last, to develop without hindrance.The writer, who carved out his way step by step, or rather, saw it opening before his eyes, hopes now to help along those who are still where he started. In addition, he would like to show those he has rejoined how a little more understanding of the others, above all a greater fidelity to their own gift, could help their 'separated brethren' to receive it in their turn. In this hope he offers his book to all who wish to be faithful to the truth, first, to the Word of God, but also to the truth of men as they are, not as our prejudices and habits impel us to see them.
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."
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."
In other words, "Listen up, Catholics!"
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."
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.
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.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
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.
THE AUTHOR
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.
Copyright © 2001 Catholic Dossier
Few would believe it from my demeanor here, but I search only for Truth. I do not adhere to a religion but that which I discern to be true. Yours is a position I really didn't examine when I returned to Catholicism. I examined Luther at length, and independent Christianity in its myriad forms, as well as eastern orthodoxy. Believe it or not (some on this thread will not) I will honestly examine your perspective. I am always searching.
The primary reason I rejected the claims of eastern orthodoxy is their waffling on contraception.
In my mind the words, "In the end times, good will be called evil, and evil will be called good," ever ring.
If a church institutionally or officially teaches something against the constant moral theology teachings of Christinaity, I dismiss it out of hand, for it already is in apostacy. Its hard to debate and discern salvation theology and all the competing claims.
But moral theology has been a constant, through the last century, and thus serves as one of the only remaining reference points for me in discerning the fruits of an interpretation of scripture.
Thus in my search, it was quickly narrowed down to a very short list.
Did you say the OP church still preaches that all contraception is sinful? I cannot remember now, but I know you commented on it. I know our conservative Brethren churches here still do, as well as the Amish and a few of the Mennonites.
Up till now, if I was not Catholic, the only other Christian denomination I considered would have been the Brethren, at least locally, though they are anabaptist, which I find to be anti-intellectual.
LOL Pot ...kettle ..black..
We all have our weaknesses. I am self centered and prideful at times. I'm a doc and a published author. I use that over folks, and I am patronizing, even as I'm trying to be charitable.
I was too forward in my post. I should have included a "/sarcasm" line or something. It was intended as a good natured prod to you OP, nothing more, but also as a call to Robert to see that there is plnty of pride all around.
And I think I have made it clear that my position is based on a world situation that is deadly serious. I do not make these comments about contraception lightly, or to goad or inflame.
It bugs me that someone couldn't see that, and instead counted me as an enemy.
that only points out that I have failed some folks in my endeavors on this thread.
TOBY KEITH LYRICS
I Wanna Talk About Me
(Bobby Braddock)
We talk about your work how your boss is a jerk
We talk about your church and your head when it hurts
We talk about the troubles you've been having with your brother
About your daddy and your mother and your crazy ex-lover
We talk about your friends and the places that you've been
We talk about your skin and the dimples on your chin
The polish on your toes and the run in your hose
And God knows we're gonna talk about your clothes
You know talkin' 'bout you makes me smile
But every once in awhile
I wanna talk about me
Wanna talk about I
Wanna talk about number one
Old my me my
What I think, what I like, what I know, what I want, what I see
How I like talking about you you you you usually, but occassionally
I wanna talk about me
I wanna talk about me
We talk about your dreams and we talk about your schemes
your high school team and your moisturizer creme
We talk about your nanna up in Muncie, Indiana
We talk about your grandma down in Alabama
We talk about your guys of every shape and size
The ones that you despise and the ones you idolize
We talk about your heart, 'bout your brains and your smarts
You know talkin' 'bout you makes me grin
But every now and then
I wanna talk about me
Wanna talk about I
Wanna talk about number one
Old my me my
What I think, what I like, what I know, what I want, what I see
I like talking about you you you you usually, but occassionally
I wanna talk about me
I wanna talk about me
You you you you you you you you you you you
I wanna talk about me
I wanna talk about me
Wanna talk about I
Wanna talk about number one
Old my me my
What I think, what I like, what I know, what I want, what I see
I like talking about you you you, usually, but occassionally
I wanna talk about me
I wanna talk about me
Old me
My "opening salvo", if you will recall, concerned my spiritual forebears who were employed as bonfire-kindling by the French Catholic Army -- the French Calvinists and Jansenists who were murdered by the hundreds of thousands by the French Jesuits (who are, as I delineated above, fairly close to the Eastern Orthodox communion in their Synergistic ["man-centred"] views of Salvation and Predestination).
Understand: Jesuit-Molinists are anathema to Orthodox Protestants. We consider them to be Spiritual Tares within the "apostate Israel" of Roman Catholicism, the "priests of Ba'al" who murder the Prophets whom God is still pleased to send to apostate Rome. In our view, the Jesuit-Molinists combine the worst of Eastern Synergistic theology with the worst of Roman Catholic sacralist State-religionism.
Now, I (because I consider myself an honest debater) am not going to try to create a "false division" between Thomist-Catholics and your Jesuit-Molinist co-religionists. I will alert you in advance that the Calvinist-Jansenist view has been anathematized by Rome as heretical, and the Jesuit-Molinist view has been included within the aegis of Roman Theology as a legitimate expression of Roman Faith (indeed, they are your co-Communicants).
I will only tell you of our point of view:
In our view, at least the Thomist-Romanists, and the Lutheran-Augustinians/and Calvinists, are agreed in this: There is a serious "breakdown of communication" between the Spirit of God, and the Souls of Men, which God Alone must act to remedy. Free Will avails nothing; Grace must precede, occasioned only by God's own Good Pleasure.
It is our view that the Heresy of Romanism is confirmed in this: When the proto-Calvinist, true-Augustinian saint Martin Luther confronted the Church with the errors of Eastern Synergism which had crept into Augustinian-Catholicism over the span of a thousand years... Did Rome respond by excommunicating the Anti-Augustinian Synergists? NO!! That damnable Roman Harlot instead excommunicated saints Luther and Calvin, affirming instead the anti-Augustinian Synergists, denying her own Augustinian heritage and affirming those who would soon become the Jesuit-Molinists, who tried their best to kill us!!
Be advised: it would be, from the Roman view, a point of Heresy for you to break communion with your fellow Jesuit-Molinists, and listen to the pleas of we "heretical" Lutherans and Calvinists. I am not trying to mislead you in this matter.
But in our view, our disagreement was never so strong with your Half-Godly Thomists, as with the Jesuit-Molinists who tried to kill us. The Predestinarian Thomists, we could at least disagree with, though our disagreements would be spirited and harsh. The anti-Augustinian Molinists, on the other hand, we affirm to this day are teaching a False Gospel which robs the Glory of Salvation from God Alone.
But there's no going back, now, is there? We absolute-predestinarian Lutheran-Augustinians and Calvinists never affirmed the presumptuous "infallibility of the Papacy", and your Jesuit-Molinists did... so the Synergistic priests of Ba'al are therefore entitled by Papal decree to preach their False Gospel of man-centered "salvation" throughout Roman Israel, and we Protestant Judeans lie under your worthless and illegitimate "excommunication"... the 7,000 of Prophet Elijah, whom God has reserved unto Himself.
No, I do not deny that there are Saved Saints within Roman Israel.
But I deny that the True Gospel is found in her temples.
I need to hear more on your estimation of eastern orthodoxy. It would seem you actually give an edge to Thomistic RCism over the orthodox (that would really upset some orthodox---they generally hate Thomistic thought). Can you explain?
I give a strong edge to Thomistic Romanism. The Thomists are -- at least -- weak, compromising, and confused disciples of Augustine. The Molinists, OTOH, are (in my own admittedly-biased view) disciples of the Easterner, Maximos the Confessor, whose man-centered theology I hold in little regard at all.
And, while I pray that God will see fit to send His Salvation upon any Easterner whom He is pleased to send it, while the Molinist-Jesuits have largely adopted the soteriology of Maximos, the Easterners are wholly enthralled thereby.
And Augustine and Maximos cannot stand together. They really are fundamentally different theologians -- to the core. This is why Maximian Easterners have gone so far as to call Augustine "Western Romanist Poison" and "The Drowner of the Western Church".
But Augustine was neither a "Poisoner" nor a "Drowner". From the Protestant view, at least on the Doctrine of Predestination, Augustine preached the Faith once for all delivered to the Saints.
And so -- it was the anti-Augustinians -- not Luther, and Calvin -- who deserved Rome's excommunication, if the so-called "Universal Bishop" wanted to maintain his claim of being a Preacher of the True Faith.
A follow-on point....
You should NOT be shocked to hear that the Reformers "give an edge" to Roman soteriology over Greek.
Oh, yeah, I suppose you could lump us in with the Easterners given our affirmation of Synodical rather than Papal Church Governance, defined as such:
But the Reformation was never about strictly-Ecclesial matters per se; but about the Doctrine of Grace itself.
And as pertains to that Question... ever heard the term, "Magisterial Reformation"?
Here's what it means (the estimates are entirely my own) -- Magisterium + Reformation. To wit:
Anglicans: 90% Magisterial
Lutherans: 75% Magisterial
Calvinist Presbyterians: 60% Magisterial
Calvinist AnaBaptists: 50% Magisterial
"Radical Reformation": Less than 50% Magisterial
Orthodox Protestantism does not reject the Magisterium; We affirm that Scripture stands in judgment thereof. As such, you should not be surprised that we "give an edge" to Western Roman Augustinianism;
Indeed, we wish that Rome had never left the Augustinianism of her youth.
We are not Easterners.
We are Western Augustinians.
We know what Augustine actually preached.
We have common ground at least in this: modern day Jesuits are just as "anathema" to me today as an orthodox conservative Catholic as real Jesuits were to your OP forebears. The Jesuit order today sits upon the trash heap of history, as an apostate order with a few very notable exceptions (Fr. John Hardon SJ comes quickly to mind, God rest his soul.)
I have a dim view of the fatalism Calvin reintroduced to Christianity, a pagan fatalism that Christ had dispelled, but Calvin reintroduced, that is IMO a violation of the perfect Justice of God.
I am open to hearing others' views but I have deep seated concerns about Luther and Calvin that I have refrained from sharing here as it would only inflame and scandalize. Obviously I do not count them among "the saints."
This is my overriding complaint against Roman Catholicism and against the Pope; if you really needed me to summarize it. This is exactly why I have said that the Pope is hating the world religions by praying with them.
BTW, just for fairness, I have made the same complaint against my own Episcopal roots, who today are really nothing more than RC wannabe's. I am currently searching for a story that came from my mother-in-law Sunday about their new "Arch-bishop" wanting to re-interpret scripture to modernize it. Makes me really want to puke.
Insignificant?!?!
Good grief, man, your botch was, and remains, thunderous. The argument which you are attempting to use as your "escape hatch" for Matthew 11 Augustine does not endorse; he soundly refutes it.
Since you still manage to miss this point (again proving that, for your own good, you should certainly not attempt to demonstrate your "proficiency" with Augustine at the next My Ego Needs Some Affirmation show-and-tell), it appears that I shall have to hammer you with it again...
I put into his mouth the words of another whom he is citing approvingly -- whose position he is implicitly adopting.
Oh, really??
Augustine may have had kind words for the person of his fellow-Catholic disputant, but that does not constitute and endorsement of the fellow's argument. As concerns absolute predestination, Augustine refuted the fellow's argument.
Remember, squire: When considering your proposal that "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", Augustine offers the devastating counter-argument...
...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.
So tell me.... do you see anywhere in the whole of On Perseverance, or any of Augustine's other works, where Augustine sees fit to refute his own counter-argument against your Matthew 11 "escape hatch" -- that, if God were worried about the Tyrians falling from their hypothetical faith, He could simply call them from life once they had believed? Because Augustine says in On Perseverance that he does not believe that there is an answer to his criticism of the argument.
So, unless you can produce an Augustinian answer to Augustine's assault upon the "Tyre and Sidon might have subsequently lapsed from their faith" position, we shall be forced to the rather unsavory conclusion that you have somehow managed to horrifically botch the SAME passage of Augustine in the SAME way, twice in a row!!
Having corrected your significant misreading of this passage, the remainder of your preening, self-aggrandizing strophes blow away in the wind like so much intellectual flatulence. No offense.
No offense taken. After all, it is you who are now trying to play through with a 7-high Bluff... having crushed your ridiculous misreading of Augustine once, it remains only for me to crush you yet again, since you make exactly the same mistake this time around.
Indeed, while Augustine does argue against "the theory that God punishes souls for uncommitted but foreseen sins" -- saying that even if one adopted the view that Tyre and Sidon were foreknown to fall away from their hypothetical faith, this would not constitute a punishment for uncommitted but foreseen sins.
But since Neither one of us is taking that position in the first place, I can't imagine why you would think Augustine's comments thereupon are in any way relevant, so it makes little sense to me that you would bring those comments into this debate (although I suspect it is because your are looking for an intellectual "hidey-hole" in which to shelter yourself from shame). See, "punishment for uncommitted but foreseen sins" -- that's not what OUR argument even concerns. OUR argument concerns whether or not Augustine endorses the "escape hatch" from Absolute Predestination in Matthew 11 that you have proposed: God withheld grace based on foreknown falling-away.
And not only does Augustine himself not endorse the argument, but he lays down a condition enjoining you not to use the argument until you meet his objection:
In fact you have NO answer, and you know it. And so you have just horrifically botched your Augustine YET AGAIN.
Why, oh why, the persistence of this self-misleading tendency among the Protestants to excise (or, better, "rip") texts out of context in breathtaking disrespect for their true meaning. This is something that must be ingrained in their youth -- and probably results from being taught to treat Holy Scripture in the same manner.
You're playing a 7-high Bluff.
And me, I'm winning all your chips, hand after hand.
This isn't a debate, it's a slaughter.
As explained above, you have completely misapprehended this passage. But let's further examine the crux of this matter -- the Calvinist teaching on divine "reprobation without demerit," and the Calvinists' claim that St. Augustine supports this teaching.
Oops... Calvinists do not teach "reprobation without demerit".
Election confirmed by the calling of God. The reprobate bring upon themselves the righteous destruction to which they are doomed. -- chapter heading, Chapter 24 Book III, Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin.
Now, if you are not intellectually competent to read Calvin, I suppose that you will read "reprobation without demerit" into his works where it does not exist. This is not hard if you excise pieces of Calvin's work, and ignore others. But his own choice of Chapter Headings should make his over-arching view plain enough: The reprobate bring upon themselves the righteous destruction to which they are doomed, not "reprobation without demerit".
Ergo, Calvinists do not teach "reprobation without demerit", nor do we claim that Augustine taught this (why would we?).
We DO teach that Augustine did affirm Absolute and Pre-Determining Sovereign Predestination in Matthew 11, and we DO teach that Augustine specifically denied you the use of the "escape hatch" that you wish to use -- the objection "that the people of Tyre and Sidon might, if they had heard, have believed, and have subsequently lapsed from their faith".
For deny it he did. Augustine lays down the condition that, before he will permit you to use this "escape hatch" to get out of Absolute Predestination in Matthew 11, you MUST ANSWER his question, "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"?
You have managed to completely misread Augustine in the same embarassing way twice in a row now, and you STILL don't have any answer to his question, do you?
One endorsing the Calvinist claim would have to suppose that Augustine developed his doctrine in absolute contradiction of at least six of his own writings on the subject:(1) "On Correction and Grace," 13, Para. 42; (2) "On Merits and Remission of Sins" 2, Para. 17-26; (3) "Against Felix the Manichean," 2, Para. 8; (4) "On 88 Diff. Ques.," 68, Para 4; (5) "Commentary on the Gospel of St. John," 53, Para. 6; and (6) "On Instructing the Ignorant," 52.
All of the above predicated upon your incorrect belief that Calvin taught "reprobation without demerit" and that Calvinists think Augustine did too. Calvin did not teach this, ergo, your entire paragraph is irrelevant.
Meanwhile, the "escape hatch" that you NEED in order to escape Absolute Predestination in Matthew 11, Augustine has DENIED to you with the question, "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"? And you STILL have no answer for him.
One must then suppose that Augustine also developed this "doctrine" in complete contradiction of all of the Greek Fathers who addressed (and rejected) the teaching -- St. John Damascene, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Justin Martyr, St. Irenaeus, St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Gregory of Nazianus, and Theodoret.
All of the above predicated upon your incorrect belief that Calvin taught "reprobation without demerit" and that Calvinists think Augustine did too. Calvin did not teach this, ergo, your entire paragraph is irrelevant.
Meanwhile, the "escape hatch" that you NEED in order to escape Absolute Predestination in Matthew 11, Augustine has DENIED to you with the question, "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"? And you STILL have no answer for him.
One must further suppose that St. Augustine decided to place himself also in opposition to all the Latin Fathers who had decided against this "doctrine" -- St. Ambrose, St. Hilary of Poitiers, and St. Jerome.
All of the above predicated upon your incorrect belief that Calvin taught "reprobation without demerit" and that Calvinists think Augustine did too. Calvin did not teach this, ergo, your entire paragraph is irrelevant.
Meanwhile, the "escape hatch" that you NEED in order to escape Absolute Predestination in Matthew 11, Augustine has DENIED to you with the question, "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"? And you STILL have no answer for him.
Finally (and perhaps most tellingly), one would have to claim that St. Augustine's best and most devoted pupil, St. Prosper of Acquitaine, the great defender of Augustinian theology, just up and contradicted his master on this highly salient point. For St. Prosper, like the Greek and Latin Fathers, wholly rejects this notion of reprobation without demerit. In "Responses to Objections of the Gauls," 3, St. Prosper writes, "for this reason they were not predestined, because they were foreseen as going to be such as a result of voluntary transgression...therefore, just as good works are to be attributed to God who inspires them, so evil works are to be attributed to those who sin." And he further states at 7, Para. 85, "He foresaw that they would fall by their very own will, and for this reason He did not separate them from the sons of perdition by predestination. In "Responses to the objections of the Vincentians," 12, Proper states, "because they were foreseen as going to fall, they were not predestined."
All of the above predicated upon your incorrect belief that Calvin taught "reprobation without demerit" and that Calvinists think Augustine did too. Calvin did not teach this, ergo, your entire paragraph is irrelevant.
Meanwhile, the "escape hatch" that you NEED in order to escape Absolute Predestination in Matthew 11, Augustine has DENIED to you with the question, "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"? And you STILL have no answer for him.
Personally, I have always been fascinated by the way Calvinists fixate on out-of-context quotations from Augustine -- usually over-the-top, imprecise statements made in heat of debate with the Pelagians -- like so many moths to a flame. But, of course, they cannot get too close to the flame, lest they be burned. So they content themselves with their isolated quotations, but generally ignore the full body of his teaching, particularly on the issues of human freedom, the Real Presence, Petrine Primacy, and the indispensable role of the Holy Virgin in God's salvific plan.
The "isolated question" in this case is whether or not you are mentally capable of reading Augustine.
You have just thunderously botched your reading of Augustine TWICE in the SAME way. Meanwhile, the "escape hatch" that you NEED in order to escape Absolute Predestination in Matthew 11, Augustine has DENIED to you with the question, "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"? And you STILL have no answer for him.
Note -- While Prosper endorses the theory that "because they were foreseen as going to fall, they were not predestined", the fact remains (my constant repetition is born of the hope that maybe, just maybe, you will notice this key point of contention this time around and not hang yourself with your own Augustine a third time in a row) that Augustine requires of any (like yourself or Prosper) who would attempt to use this argument, "he perhaps might answer who was pleased in such a way to solve the above question... 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."
If God were worried about the Tyrians and the Sidonians falling away, why not just call them away from life?
Augustine predicted that any who would try to use the "foreseen falling-away" argument would have NO answer to this question.
Apparently, Prosper didn't.
Apparently, you don't either.
Apparently, no one in the whole of Romanism has an answer for Augustine.
Only someone that still believes in purgatory could say that :>)
"If the baptized person fufils the obligations demanded of a Christian,he does well. If he does not--provided he keeps the faith,without which he would perish forever--no matter in what sin or impurity remains,he will be saved,as it were,by fire; as one who has built on the foundation,which is Christ,not Gold,silver, and precious stones,but wood, hay straw,that is, not just and chasted works but wicked and unchaste works."
Augustine,Faith and Works,1:1(A.D. 413),in ACW,48:7
"Now on what ground does this person pray that he may not be 'rebuked in indignation, nor chastened in hot displeasure"? (He speaks) as if he would say unto God, 'Since the things which I already suffer are many in number, I pray Thee let them suffice;' and he begins to enumerate them, by way of satisfying God; offering what he suffers now, that he may not have to suffer worse evils hereafter."
Augustine,Exposition of the Psalms,38(37):3(A.D. 418),in NPNF1,VIII:103
"And it is not impossible that something of the same kind may take place even after this life. It is a matter that may be inquired into, and either ascertained or left doubtful, whether some believers shall pass through a kind of purgatorial fire, and in proportion as they have loved with more or less devotion the goods that perish, be less or more quickly delivered from it. This cannot, however, be the case of any of those of whom it is said, that they 'shall not inherit the kingdom of God,' unless after suitable repentance their sins be forgiven them. When I say 'suitable,' I mean that they are not to be unfruitful in almsgiving; for Holy Scripture lays so much stress on this virtue, that our Lord tells us beforehand, that He will ascribe no merit to those on His right hand but that they abound in it, and no defect to those on His left hand but their want of it, when He shall say to the former, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom," and to the latter, 'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire.' "
Augustine,Enchiridion,69(A.D. 421),in NPNF1,III:260
" During the time, moreover, which intervenes between a man's death and the final resurrection, the soul dwells in a hidden retreat, where it enjoys rest or suffers affliction just in proportion to the merit it has earned by the life which it led on earth."
Augustine,Enchiridion,1099(A.D. 421),in NPNF1,III:272
"For our part, we recognize that even in this life some punishments are purgatorial,--not, indeed, to those whose life is none the better, but rather the worse for them, but to those who are constrained by them to amend their life. All other punishments, whether temporal or eternal, inflicted as they are on every one by divine providence, are sent either on account of past sins, or of sins presently allowed in the life, or to exercise and reveal a man's graces. They may be inflicted by the instrumentality of bad men and angels as well as of the good. For even if any one suffers some hurt through another's wickedness or mistake, the man indeed sins whose ignorance or injustice does the harm; but God, who by His just though hidden judgment permits it to be done, sins not. But temporary punishments are suffered by some in this life only, by others after death, by others both now and then; but all of them before that last and strictest judgment. But of those who suffer temporary punishments after death, all are not doomed to those everlasting pains which are to follow that judgment; for to some, as we have already said, what is not remitted in this world is remitted in the next, that is, they are not punished with the eternal punishment.of the world to come."
Augustine,City of God,21:13(A.D. 426),in NPNF1,II:464
"But since she has this certainty regarding no man, she prays for all her enemies who yet live in this world; and yet she is not heard in behalf of all. But she is heard in the case of those only who, though they oppose the Church, are yet predestinated to become her sons through her intercession. But if any retain an impenitent heart until death, and are not converted from enemies into sons, does the Church continue to pray for them, for the spirits, i.e., of such persons deceased? And why does she cease to pray for them, unless because the man who was not translated into Christ's kingdom while he was in the body, is now judged to be of Satan's following? It is then, I say, the same reason which prevents the Church at any time from praying for the wicked angels, which prevents her from praying hereafter for those men who are to be punished in eternal fire; and this also is the reason why, though she prays even for the wicked so long as they live, she yet does not even in this world pray for the unbelieving and godless who are dead. For some of the dead, indeed, the prayer of the Church or of pious individuals is heard; but it is for those who, having been regenerated in Christ, did not spend their life so wickedly that they can be judged unworthy of such compassion, nor so well that they can be considered to have no need of it. As also, after the resurrection, there will be some of the dead to whom, after they have endured the pains proper to the spirits of the dead, mercy shall be accorded, and acquittal from the punishment of the eternal fire. For were there not some whose sins, though not remitted in this life, shall be remitted in that which is to come, it could not be truly said, "They shall not be forgiven, neither in this world, neither in that which is to come.' But when the Judge of quick and dead has said, 'Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,' and to those on the other side, 'Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire, which is prepared for the devil and his angels,' and 'These shall go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life,' it were excessively presumptuous to say that the punishment of any of those whom God has said shall go away into eternal punishment shall not be eternal, and so bring either despair or doubt upon the corresponding promise of life eternal."
Augustine,City of God,21:24(A.D. 426),in NPNF1,II:470
RnMomof7:
From Purgatory:
Christ refers to the sinner who "will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come" (Matt. 12:32), suggesting that one can be freed after death of the consequences of one’s sins. Similarly, Paul tells us that, when we are judged, each man’s work will be tried. And what happens if a righteous man’s work fails the test? "He will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire" (1 Cor 3:15). Now this loss, this penalty, can’t refer to consignment to hell, since no one is saved there; and heaven can’t be meant, since there is no suffering ("fire") there. The Catholic doctrine of purgatory alone explains this passage.
Then, of course, there is the Bible’s approval of prayers for the dead: "In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view; for if he were not expecting the dead to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death. But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought. Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin" (2 Macc. 12:43–45). Prayers are not needed by those in heaven, and no one can help those in hell. That means some people must be in a third condition, at least temporarily. This verse so clearly illustrates the existence of purgatory that, at the time of the Reformation, Protestants had to cut the books of the Maccabees out of their Bibles in order to avoid accepting the doctrine.
Prayers for the dead and the consequent doctrine of purgatory have been part of the true religion since before the time of Christ. Not only can we show it was practiced by the Jews of the time of the Maccabees, but it has even been retained by Orthodox Jews today, who recite a prayer known as the Mourner’s Kaddish for eleven months after the death of a loved one so that the loved one may be purified. It was not the Catholic Church that added the doctrine of purgatory. Rather, any change in the original teaching has taken place in the Protestant churches, which rejected a doctrine that had always been believed by Jews and Christians.
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