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
To me, the church has passed on the purity of the gospel as far as most truths are concerned, but you have to look past many practices and traditions that are really unnecessary and obscure the principle gospel message.
The bigger tragedy to my way of thinking is that both Martin Luther and the Catholic church followed courses which led to and aided and abetted the Holocaust.
I write in my own attempt to come to grips with my own conscience about where Christianity, in general, got intertwined with politics and went off course. I just can't get it right yet. I wish I didn't feel this way about the church.
Jerry, and yet another Roman Catholic makes a personal attack.
No where in the article is Jesus slandered!
You assume that I mean the article. I meant instead a certain post, which is the sole reason that I flagged my fellow Protestants. I believe that you also responded to this post [indirectly] and even more, you defended the idea that Jesus could possibly return as a San-Fran homosexual. I may be wrong and if so, I do apologize, but I do have copies of the thread.
Oh, BTW, my fellow Calvinist will testify to my status as not only a saint, but also a priest; called out of darkness by God to cry out against every false way and spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
It was, along with your response, the most Prideful and Arrogant statement I believe I have ever seen on FR! You need to hang your head in shame at your unsupported boastfulness!
Review your statements...then look-up in the Bible where Jesus the Christ gives you permission to inflate your own sense of purpose and justifies your claim by the opinion of mere men! Just shameful!
You assume that I mean the article. I meant instead a certain post, which is the sole reason that I flagged my fellow Protestants.
Woody, the posts should be about the article. We should not be addressing the subsequent "Posts" as if they stand on their own as a "thread"(and I am just as guilty o this as everyone else).
I believe that you also responded to this post [indirectly] and even more, you defended the idea that Jesus could possibly return as a San-Fran homosexual. I may be wrong and if so, I do apologize, but I do have copies of the thread.
I'll give that one! My sin was that I did not condemn it for all to see. I don't believe I made any comments about it at all (could be wrong) but again, I let it slide. Naturally, I believe it was most unfortunate that anyone in their zeal to defend the Lord, completely misrepresents His essential purity.
This issue is deadly serious. If you love God, you will not mock this thread, nor cry to the moderators to have it pulled.
The biggest challenge to political conservatism is championing the Culture of Life in a society and political climate in large part obsessed with the Culture of Death. If we lose the fight for the Culture of Life, the Republic is lost. Any other political debate is moot.
To understand the roots of the acceptance of many facets of the Culture of Death, one must grasp recent historical developments in Christianity. In 1930 mainstream "Bible only" protestantism fell away from the constant teaching of Christianity regarding contraception. Christianity always taught contraception was intrinsically evil. (This was ALL Christians, for ALL time, not just Catholics. The point isn't even debatable. Read the detailed history on the lower right hand column of my profile page for further information.)
This change in teaching on contraception is the very root cause of the eventual legalization of abortion.
Abortion follows the acceptance of contraceptive mentality as night follows day. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the US Supreme Court decision that confirmed Roe v. Wade [U.S. decision to permit abortions] stated "in some critical respects, abortion is of the same character as the decision to use contraception... for two decades of economic and social developments, people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail."
As Professor Janet Smith points out, "The Supreme Court decision has made completely unnecessary, any efforts to "expose" what is really behind the attachment of the modern age to abortion. As the Supreme Court candidly states, we need abortion so that we can continue our contraceptive lifestyles."
Furthermore, because mainstream protestantism and "Bible Christianity" in general condones non-procreative contraceptive sex, they have no moral authority upon which to preach against non-procreative homosexual sex, as homosexual "Christian" theologians are pointing out even today, to the consternation of conservative protestant scholars.
Thus the homosexual agenda juggernaut is also directly a result of the failure of "Bible Christianity" on the birth control issue, as well as the reluctance of the Catholic hierarchy and priesthood to promote Humanae Vitae and the Church's true teachings on sexuality in general.
And if you can kill the innocent baby in the womb, why not granny in the nursing home? Euthanasia too is becoming widespread, as a result of the acceptance of abortion, which came from this change in moral teachings regarding, and acceptance of, the contraceptive mentality among Christian churches.
The widespread acceptance in American culture of the culture of death --abortion, contraception, homosexuality, euthanasia-- lies squarely on the backs of those who caved in on these life issues several decades ago.
They caved in based on private interpretation of scripture and rejection of the teaching authority Jesus willed for His Church.
Until Christianity turns back from this apostacy, respect for human life from conception til natural death, the hallmark of any true political conservatism, will continue to erode.
Given what I see to be the roots of abortion/ the homosexual agenda, can anybody wonder why I continue to try to bring good Christian folk home to Rome?
Disagree with my interpretation of scripture. Frown upon posting such as this to a conservative news forum.
But do not attempt to squash an idea that is bigger than either you or me.
Babies die from legalized abortion in this country every 15 seconds.
Because the culture, the protestant culture, caved on the contraception issue 70 years ago.
This debate is deadly serious, it has grave political ramifications, and lives hang in the balance of its outcome.
I may be nutz. I may be the only one on this forum to advance what seems such a bizarre concept.
But there must be a root cause of the Culture of Death (besides the obvious, Original Sin.) Please do not attempt to stifle debate on these root causes, a debate that very well may point the way to a solution to the abortion crisis in our country.
Many of us Catholics have been protestants, and understand protestantism quite well.
The author of this piece that started the thread grew up an Evangelical Protestant, and converted to Catholicism only several years ago. He understands protestantism from the inside out, probably much better than most protestants, but you dismiss his article out of hand, for it fails to support your preconceived notions.
Many of us Catholics have been protestants, and understand protestantism quite well.
The author of this piece that started the thread grew up an Evangelical Protestant, and converted to Catholicism only several years ago. He understands protestantism from the inside out, probably much better than most protestants, but you dismiss his article out of hand, for it fails to support your preconceived notions.
Many of us Catholics have been protestants, and understand protestantism quite well.
The author of this piece that started the thread grew up an Evangelical Protestant, and converted to Catholicism only several years ago. He understands protestantism from the inside out, probably much better than most protestants, but you dismiss his article out of hand, for it fails to support your preconceived notions.
Oh, well, another duplicate post...
Oh, well, another duplicate post...
I hate it when it does this
Honest, heartfelt thoughts, aliska. Thank you for sharing them.
I have thought about the same thing. But eventually it all comes back to Original Sin, and the lust for power and loss of control over our impulses. We all sin. It is the mystery of iniquity. It is the mystery of why an All Powerful creator would be so crazy as to give us such a powerful thing as Free Will.
Christians get involved in seeking power because of Free will and Original sin.
It is a simple concept. But that does not make it easy. Hang in there.
There are probably many good, kind, simple things many, many catholics did in the past which never got recorded. Even some of the elite were occasionally capable of transcending that lust for power. I do try to remember that but sometimes to see only one side of the picture. I need to turn the tapestry over and look at the hidden threads on the back.
First of all, Catholicism is not necessarily the solution to the abortion mess. The evangelicals I know are opposed to abortion and post-conception "contraception," too.
In the next place, Jerry was not trying to stifle debate on any topic. He was just pointing out that Roman Catholics do tend to be prejudiced against evangelicals. And he was pointing out that the Admin Moderators sometimes stifle the Protestants in favor of abusive Catholics. (I'll bet this has to do with the fact that Protestants don't push the abuse button as much anyway.)
In the next place, the original article was not really a discussion of abortion anyway. So, although I understand your opinion that RCism is the great hope of our anti-abortion movement, I honestly think that it is beside the point.
Isn't it? Given my thesis, (one no one has tried to debate, whether because folks think I'm nutz, the thesis has no merit, or know it their hearts it is true) the culture of death is holding sway because we have lost 1930 years of traditional Judeo-Christian moral teachings on contraception (all contraception, not just abortifacient contraception).
To discuss the perceived errors of protestantism is also to discuss the perceived fruits of those errors. Acceptance of contraception is one of them. Abortion is the natural result.
The author of this piece that started the thread grew up an Evangelical Protestant, and converted to Catholicism only several years ago. He understands protestantism from the inside out, probably much better than most protestants, but you dismiss his article out of hand, for it fails to support your preconceived notions.
The fact that some are RCs are former Protestants proves nothing. A lot of Protestants are going to burn in hell forever even if they stay in Protestantism.
My point in saying that is to warn you that people are by nature religious fools. And I say again that the former Protestants who are now in Catholicism never understood Protestantism in the first place.
But I understand it because I can read the Bible and understand the interpretive problem which is involved in the doctrine of justification. And I can see its correct solution. And I can see the spiritual consequences of blunders in this matter.
And I notice that John Calvin's explanation of justification was the correct one. Sadly, Rome has never faced that. It would be too embarrassing for Rome to admit that in the necessarily full way of true repentance. (The article at the top of the thread only pretends to make concessions to the Reformers. The author and the fellow he cited are just too proud of Rome to face the fact that Rome's doctrine is Scripturally bankrupt.)
You really ought to go back and re-read my earlier post, including the link I gave to my comments on another thread. You ought to address what I said. Unlike the article leading off this thread, it is clear and completely Scriptural. I demonstrated that I am not following "preconceived notions" but putting the Apostles Paul and James together in the only way that makes any sense from the Scriptures. The Epistle of James is smashing antinomianism--whether "Protestant" or "Catholic"--but Romans 3:28 is explicitly smashing your RC doctrine of "justification by faith-plus-works."
This is not all that difficult, friend doctor. You are probably as bright as I am, maybe more so. But I am not so foolish as to expect you to yield to me even if I am inarguably right about this doctrine. The reason why I say that is your screen name. Your very screen name screams out the warning that you have no ability to be objective.
Pride is a monstrous sin even when you are right. It is utterly murderous when you happen to be wrong. (There will be self-righteous, smug pro-lifers in hell, of course. Plenty of them. They are going to be very surprised on Judgment Day.)
P.S. to grumpster-dumpster: According to Scripture, ALL true Christians are SAINTS. You must pardon me for not even acknowledging, under the circumstances of that fact, the Romanist "definition" of a saint. Although you may not be a saint, CCWoody and I are.
It's not that difficult to grasp. You just have to go back to the Bible (which involves throwing out the doctrines of men, including Popes).
You are incredibly misinformed...
Its a question of how you define it. Anything the Irish do is terrorism. What the English did isn't because they are ``the government.''
I'm afraid that you don't know much about the history of Christianity.
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