Posted on 05/24/2013 6:25:25 AM PDT by Gamecock
In his Wednesday Mass homily this week, Pope Francis attracted considerable media attention. According to reports, the message drew on Mark 9:40, where Jesus says, “He who is not against us is for us.” Like the disciples, we can be intolerant of the good that others can do—even atheists. Because we’re all created in God’s image, there is still a possibility of doing good. So far, nothing particularly controversial in terms of classical Christian teaching. The most ardent evangelical would affirm that although our works are so corrupted by sin that they cannot justify us before God, they can help our neighbors.
However, the pontiff added, “The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone!…We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”
Reports from major outlets, including the Huffington Post, express astonishment at the pope’s comments. What is this strange new teaching? Of course, it’s not new at all. It has been an emphasis ever since the Second Vatican Council, where the previously shunned speculations of Karl Rahner, S. J., became official teaching. There is no way to reconcile the previous councils and papal pronouncements depriving non-Roman Catholics of salvation with the idea of the “anonymous Christian.” Nevertheless, there it is. Not the development of dogma, as Cardinal Newman formulated, but the flat contradiction of dogma.
Before Vatican II, the standard teaching was that ordinarily no one can be saved who does not submit to the magisterium and papal authority in particular. Especially in trouble were those who had been reared Roman Catholic and yet explicitly rejected the pope’s headship. Although they were consigned to everlasting punishment by papal decrees, the Protestant Reformers never applied the same rule to their Roman Catholic opponents. Calvin even said that although Rome has excommunicated itself according to the criterion of Galatians 1:8-9, “There is a true church among her.”
What has changed? We keep hearing from Protestants that, given the Vatican II reforms, if Luther and Calvin were alive today they’d renew their Roman Catholic membership cards. I doubt it. Not even the craziness of contemporary Protestantism could push them to make that move against a Scripture-bound conscience.
What has changed is that Rome has carried its incipient Semi-Pelagianism to its logical conclusion. I know, Karl Rahner and Vatican II repeatedly condemn Pelagianism and extol grace as the fundamental basis for salvation. Yet that has always been Rome’s teaching. It is by grace alone that we are empowered to cooperate in meriting further grace and, one hopes, final justification.
The Reformers never accused the medieval church of embracing outright Pelagianism, but of that subtler form of works-righteousness that invokes grace as no more than assistance for our attainment of God’s favor. Maybe Protestants don’t get that because this is essentially the same tendency at work in many mainline and evangelical churches.
There is a certain truth, then, to the idea of development, at least from the sixteenth-century Council of Trent and the twentieth-century Second Vatican Council. Various seeds have come to full flower: •Collapsing special revelation into general revelation, and therefore the gospel into the law, Rome maintains that Scripture provides a higher revelation—greater illumination. The gospel is simply “the new law”—easier than the old covenant—with Christ as a “new Moses.” •Collapsing our works into Christ’s, the familiar slogan of the medieval church was “God will not deny his grace to those who do what lies within them.” It is this slogan that is official dogma, according to Vatican II and the current Catechism of the Catholic Church. •The Council of Trent anathematized the view that we are so thoroughly bound by sin that we cannot cooperate with God’s grace by our own free will. The new dogma simply extends this logic to conclude that everyone is “in Christ,” infused with saving grace, and capable of attaining final justification by grace-empowered works. •The medieval dogma of implicit faith was a way of demanding absolute obedience to everything taught by the pope and magisterium, which Calvin described as “ignorance disguised as humility.” Now, implicit faith is invoked to support the idea that even atheists evidence an openness to divinity by their good works. They may not have explicit faith in Christ—or even in any transcendent Creator, but it lies buried in their sub-consciousness nevertheless.
What’s different is this: where the older view denied that faith was sufficient for justification, the new view denies that faith—at least the explicit faith in Christ everywhere assumed in Scripture—is even necessary. In other words, good works not only now supplement faith in justifying sinners but replace faith entirely.
It’s no wonder that the media is welcoming this Wednesday homily with such glee. Aside from some major social problems, the world, after all, is not as in need of being rescued as we thought. We just need a little direction to get back on the road, some encouragement to be more tolerant and attentive to the plight of others. Somehow Jesus Christ has made it possible for all of us to wind up in heaven (purgatory, etc., left to the fine print).
But is this a gospel—good news? Perhaps it is to good people who could be a little better, but not to the ungodly who need to be justified before a holy God. What’s so amazing is that the pope’s message is treated as kinder and freer, even though it replaces faith in Christ with our own acts of charity. For anyone who knows what God counts as true love—and therefore good works, this can only provoke deeper guilt and fear.
Although the surprise expressed by the Huffington Post report cited above reveals unfamiliarity with official teaching, it does get one important thing right in its conclusion: “Of course, not all Christians believe that those who don’t believe will be redeemed, and the Pope’s words may spark memories of the deep divisions from the Protestant reformation over the belief in redemption through grace versus redemption through works.” Anyone who thinks that the Reformation is over doesn’t realize just how much further from the gospel Rome has moved in recent decades.
So they DO believe salvation is through works!
Boy are they gonna be surprised!
**“The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone!…We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!**
Isn’t this what non-Catholics are always saying? Christ died for everyone?
But then we have the parameters that God the Fathr sets: “Many are calloed’ few are chosen.”
Is this what Pope Francis is saying?
Many are called but only a few will answer the call?
I think it's pretty clear that you cannot just "earn" your spot in Heaven, and I think it's pretty clear that Jesus is the doorway and no one gets in, except through Him.
So now one of the largest Christian religions on earth is in the business of denying Christ?
So HOW will you answer the call?
Hopefully as a servant as Christ was, doing good for others.
What has changed? We keep hearing from Protestants that, given the Vatican II reforms, if Luther and Calvin were alive today they’d renew their Roman Catholic membership cards. I doubt it. Not even the craziness of contemporary Protestantism could push them to make that move against a Scripture-bound conscience.
What has changed is that Rome has carried its incipient Semi-Pelagianism to its logical conclusion. I know, Karl Rahner and Vatican II repeatedly condemn Pelagianism and extol grace as the fundamental basis for salvation. Yet that has always been Rome’s teaching. It is by grace alone that we are empowered to cooperate in meriting further grace and, one hopes, final justification.
Michael Horton / White Horse Inn PING!
They’ve been denying Christ’s sufficiency for centuries.
I think you are right. I read elsewhere that what he said was that atheists, by doing good works, will be drawn to the Source of all Good, Christ.
Wow! I’m with you. Really hoping he didn’t mean as it sounds here.
Anyone know of any other past comments from Pope Francis on this topic?
“The ONLY way to the FATHER is through ME”.
JESUS
Jesus *said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. John 14:6
Faith is through Christ and Christ alone. No need for a pope, priest, pastor or any other title you can name. It is through Christ and Christ alone.
They believe men must cooperate with grace. They never warn poor sinners that the Bible promises us that anything added to grace nullifies grace.
From the earliest pages of the Bible we are taught that only a perfect, spotless sacrifice would be accepted by God. That’s what is pictured in the lives of Cain and Able. Cain tried to offer his works and his sacrifice was rejected. Able offered a blood sacrifice (”without shedding of blood is no remission” [of sin]) and his sacrifice pleased the Lord.
Here’s a Catholic article that tries to clarify what he meant:
http://www.catholicvote.org/what-pope-francis-really-said-about-atheists/
” Pope Francis did not say that an atheist who does naturally good things can be saved if he dies an atheist. Yet that is the impression given by Catholic Online’s half truth headline…
The Pope… simply reminded the faithful that there can be, and is, goodness, or natural virtue, outside the Church. And that Christ’s death on the Cross redeemed all men. He paid the price so that every man could come to God and be saved.
If Catholic Online is insinuating that Pope Francis has “reformed” the irreformable dogma, outside the Church there is no salvation, then that is shameful and disingenuous.”
Isn’t this what non-Catholics are always saying? Christ died for everyone?
No.
(Depends who you talk to.)
Review John 14:6.
This is typical of how some who call themselves “christians” spread calumny and distort truth. Catholics believe that only God knows men’s hearts and circumstances, and salvation is be determined by God, for whom anything is possible. For some reason those who claim to own salvation truth, also pretend to be authority on Catholic doctrine. I guess if you can be God-like and determine salvation, that also makes you all knowing. Good works are a reflection of faith, nothing sinister about that. Perhaps if somebody was busy doing good works, like spreading God’s message of love, the wouldn’t be so busy looking for splinters in their brothers eye.
That article is a tissue of lies.
I would recommend finding the Pope's remarks and reading them. And if you find where he said, in so many words, people can be saved without Jesus, show me.
For one simple thing, which seems often to be overlooked, there's an important difference between "without Jesus" and "Without faith in Jesus." A person who is "without Jesus" in the sense that he does not believe or trust explicitly in Jesus, but who later comes to believe and trust -- at some point he was both without Jesus (in one sense) and with Jesus, in another, because it was by the action and grace of God in Jesus and through the Spirit that he came to faith. It is apparent that we have many differing views. If one holds to TULIP, one differs from what Catholics hold in many ways. The Pope contradicted the ‘L’ of TULIP and that contradiction also implies that the ‘I’ is, in our view, a little more mysterious and harder to pin down than most TULIP believers consider it to be.
Therefore, in our system, to say that redemption is for all, is NOT the same as saying all are saved. And to take one part of our system out of ours and view in in terms of yours can only give a false evaluation of what how that part works in our system.
But there's a further difference. With (I would think) a great many TULIP adherents, PapaF is very concerned with the encounter with Christ, and with the great commission.
So the question arises: how do I lovingly and respectfully evangelize an atheist? Well — as I understand PapaF, one way is to do a good work with him.
Because good works save? HECK no! Because, for example, to feed the hungry is itself good, even if a sinner does it. It may not be good or salvific for the sinner (indeed, without grace, it cannot be), it is good in itself.
And all good comes from God. So, however it ends up working in his life, when I join with “Atheists for Life” for a rally outside Planned Parenthood, or at the ‘Bread for the Hungry’ place, I am WITH him and sharing a good work with him.
Our atheist is close, albeit mostly externally, to a good thing, and close to graced people, people grafted into the body, at the same time. He may stubbornly resist anything they have to say, bit he is already a teeny-tiny bit open to the good they are doing with him. He is, in fact, in a gentle encounter with Christ, which may help him to be less skittish and shy in any subsequent and more intense encounter.
So, as PapaF says, there is an “encounter,” an encounter with Christ mediated by the goodness of the good work and the association with graced people.
I don't see him saying that this is any kind of completion or end. It's a START, a beginning or early step in facilitating, by witness and prayer, an encounter with Christ.
Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works,and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
When I read an article like this one, I just shake my head. It is okay when people misunderstand. It is a very great evil when people set out to misunderstand, when they listen to or read some words waiting to pounce on some unwary sentence. When they evaluate the sentence NOT in the context of the speaker but in their context in which it does not fit.
Instead, he's talking about some sort of "encounter". Sounds to me like he's saying we can work with atheists of good will to build a more civil and just society here on earth. Nothing very shocking about that. Perhaps, through that experience, atheists can come to an appreciation of the Gospel and grow into people of faith. It's happened before.
It's surprising to me how many people love to believe the Pope said something scandalous, based on any number of "news" articles or "analyses" by third parties pretending to tell us what the Pope really meant, without paying much attention to what he actually said. After all, it's not like the Pope's actual words are hard to find.
Is it that way with every public figure, or is the Pope singled out for that special sort of [cough] affection?
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