Should we Evangelize Protestants ?

We should stop trying to evangelize Protestants, some Catholics say. “Let’s get our own house clean first, before we invite our fellow Christians in,” someone commented on a recent article of mine that presented a Catholic rejoinder to a prominent Baptist theologian. Another reader argued that, rather than trying to persuade Protestants to become Catholic, we should “help each other spread God’s love in this world that seems to be falling to pieces before our eyes.” As a convert from Protestantism, actively engaged in ecumenical dialogue, I’ve heard this kind of thinking quite frequently. And it’s dead wrong.

One common argument in favor of scrapping Catholic evangelism towards Protestants is that the Catholic Church, mired in sex-abuse and corruption scandals, liturgical abuses, heretical movements, and uneven catechesis, is such a mess that it is not, at least for the moment, a place suitable for welcoming other Christians.

There are many problems with this. For starters, when has the Church not been plagued by internal crises? In the fourth century, a majority of bishops were deceived by the Arian heresy. The medieval Church suffered under the weight of simony and a lax priesthood, as well as the Avignon Papacy and the Western Schism, culminating in three men claiming, simultaneously, to be pope. The Counter-Reformation, for all its catechetical, missionary and aesthetic glories, was still marred by corruption and heresies (Jansenism). Catholicism has never been able to escape such trials. That didn’t stop St. Martin of Tours, St. Boniface, St. Francis de Sales, St. Ignatius Loyola, or St. Teresa of Calcutta from their missionary efforts.

The “Catholics clean house” argument also undermines our own theology. Is the Eucharist the “source and summit of the Christian life,” as Lumen Gentium preaches, or not? If it is, how could we in good conscience not direct other Christians to its salvific power? Jesus Himself declared: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” (John 6:53) Was our Lord misrepresenting the Eucharist?

Or what of the fact that most Protestant churches allow contraception, a mortal sin? Or that Protestants have no recourse to the sacraments of penance or last rites? To claim Protestants aren’t in need of these essential parts of the Catholic faith is to implicitly suggest we don’t need them either.

* Moreover, in the generations since the Reformation, Rome has been able to win many Protestants back to the fold who have made incalculable contributions to the Church. St. John Henry Newman’s conversion ushered in a Catholic revival in England, and gave us a robust articulation of the concept of doctrinal development. The conversion of French Lutheran pastor Louis Bouyer influenced the teachings of Vatican II. Biblical scholar Scott Hahn’s conversion in the 1980s revitalized lay study of Holy Scripture.

Another popular argument in favor of limiting evangelization of Protestants involves the culture war. Catholics and theologically conservative Protestants, some claim, share significant common ground on various issues: abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, euthanasia, religious freedom, etc. Secularism, the sexual revolution, and anti-religious progressives represent an existential threat to the survival of both Catholics and Protestants, and thus we must work together, not debate one another. “Let’s hold back any criticism of them,” a person commenting on my article wrote. “Believe me, in the times that we are in, we need to all hang together, or we will definitely hang separately on gallows outside our own churches.”

This line of thought certainly has rhetorical force: we don’t have the luxury of debating with Protestants when the progressivists are planning our imminent demise! Ecumenical debate is a distraction from self-preservation. One problem with this argument is that it reduces our Christian witness to a zero-sum game – we have to focus all our efforts on fighting secular progressivism, or we’ll fail. Yet the Church has many missions in the public square – that Catholics invest great energy in the pro-life movement doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also focus our efforts on other important matters: health-care, education, ensuring religious freedom, or fighting poverty and environmental degradation. All of these, in different ways, are a part of human flourishing. Even if we consider some questions more urgent than others, none of them should be ignored.

Besides, there is a vast difference between mere polemics and charitable, fruitful discussions aimed at resolving disagreements. The former can certainly cause bad blood. The latter, however, can actually foster unity and clarity regarding our purposes. Consider how much more fruitful our fight against the devastation of the sexual revolution would be if we persuaded Protestants that they need to reject things like contraception and the more permissive stance towards divorce that they have allowed to seep into their churches. Consider how non-Christians could learn from charitable ecumenical conversations that don’t devolve into name-calling and vilification.

Finally, abandoning or minimizing the evangelizing of Protestants is to fail to recognize how their theological and philosophical premises have contributed to the very problems we now confront. As Brad Gregory’s book The Unintended Reformation demonstrates, the very nature of Protestantism has contributed to the individualism, secularism, and moral relativism of our age. A crucial component to our Catholic witness, then, is helping Protestants to recognize this, since even when they have the best intentions, their very paradigm undermines their contributions to collaborating with us in the culture war.

I for one am very grateful that Catholics – many of them former Protestants – persuaded me to see the problems inherent to Protestantism, and the indisputable truths of Catholicism. My salvation was at stake. I also found and married a devout Catholic woman, and am raising Catholic children. The Catholic tradition taught me how to pray, worship, and think in an entirely different way. It pains me to think what my life would be like if I hadn’t converted to Catholicism.

My understanding is that non Catholics have limited means of receiving forgiveness of their sins and their assumption that Christ’s death on the cross forgave all future sins is not Biblical and may lead to their loss of salvation.

Only in the eyes of the Catholic religion.

GOD, OTOH, tells us this .. ...

Psalm 103:2-3 Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity,

1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

and this....

Colossians 2:13-14 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

Note the “ALL unrighteousness” and “canceling the record of debt”.

God forgives fully and completely dealing with the entire record of our sin debt. All of it.

Praise God for His abundant mercy and the grace that He LAVISHES on us in Christ Jesus.

He’s not a stingy God stingily doling out little packet of grace based on performance. He’s a generous, giving God who gave His very best, His own Son, to redeem us for Himself.

Romans 8:32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

There is nothing in the Bible that all future sins are forgiven by Christ’s death on the cross. Protestants follow a false doctrine if they accept this erroneous belief and subject themselves to Hell if they die in mortal sin. I can see why the concept that all future sins are forgiven would attract many to this false religion, but it will send many to Hell if they die in unconfessed mortal sin.

My understanding is that if one repents and confesses directly to God it requires perfect contrition and then they do not have the assurance of absolution in the Sacrament.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that mortal sin “destroys charity in the heart of man” (1855) and that “to die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him forever by our own free choice” in a state of existence that we call “hell” (1033). This means that even a Christian who commits a mortal sin can lose his salvation.

The Bible teaches that there are conditions for having our future sins forgiven.

Consider, for example, Jesus’ teaching in the Our Father: “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6:12). Jesus then gives us commentary:

For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses (vv.14-15).

According to Jesus, a condition for having our sins forgiven is that we forgive others. But by making reception of the forgiveness of sins conditional, it can’t possibly be true that our future sins are forgiven. What if we don’t forgive others in the future? Jesus seems to imply that it’s possible for a Christian to choose not to forgive his debtors and thus not be forgiven himself. If our future sins were already forgiven, then such hypotheticals would be unintelligible.

Other elements in the Our Father give support for the ongoing need for forgiveness. Consider that Jesus also instructs us to pray for our “daily bread,” that God’s “will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” that God “lead us not into temptation,” and “deliver us from evil.” Are these requests that we make only once in our Christian life?

If Jesus intends that we make these petitions in the Our Father on an ongoing basis, then it stands to reason that he wants us to pray for forgiveness on an ongoing basis as well. But why would Jesus want us to continuously pray for forgiveness if all our future sins are forgiven from the moment we’re saved?

What Jesus teaches about forgiveness in the Our Father is concretized in his parable about the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18. Jesus tells the story of the servant whose debt of 10,000 talents was forgiven by the king and how the servant didn’t extend the same mercy to those who owed him much smaller debts. Upon discovering the wicked servant’s actions, the king threw the servant into prison.

Given that it would have been impossible for the servant to pay back 10,000 talents, which according to late Anglican New Testament scholar R.T. France is like saying he owed “zillions,” the “prison” most likely represents hell. Similar to his teaching in the Our Father, Jesus then tells his audience, “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

This parable teaches us both that there are conditions for receiving God’s mercy and that it’s possible for future sins not to be forgiven if the condition of forgiving others is not met. Jesus’ audience consists of those who already had their sins forgiven, his disciples: “At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’” (Matt. 18:1). If Jesus threatens his disciples with hell for not forgiving their brethren, then he doesn’t intend for their future sins to have already been forgiven.

In the parable, the king forgave the servant’s debts, which the Church has always understood as an illustration of God’ forgiveness for us—the eternal debt of our sin would be wiped away. If it were true that all future sins of saved Christians are forgiven, it wouldn’t have been possible for the servant to be thrown in jail for not forgiving his debtors. How could hell be the destiny of a disciple whose sins had already been forgiven?

We can also look at another passage from the book of Hebrews: “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (4:16)” If our future sins were already forgiven, this instruction would be unintelligible since there would be no need to approach God’s throne in order to receive his mercy.

The true meaning of Hebrews 10:10,14 is that the grace Christ won on the cross for the forgiveness of sins can be applied to sinners at all times, on the condition that they repent.

The meaning of “once for all” in verse ten becomes clear in verses eleven and twelve, wherein the author contrasts the repeated sacrifices that can’t take away sins with Christ’s single sacrifice for sins:

And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.

The point the author is making is that Christ’s one sacrifice is sufficient to take away our sins (whenever we repent). He doesn’t have to offer himself again to merit the grace that forgives us of any new sins we commit. His death on the cross 2,000 years ago was sufficient.

Concerning verse fourteen, where we read that Christ has “perfected for all time those who are sanctified,” in light of the above passages we know that the author can’t mean that our future sins are forgiven. Therefore, he must mean something else.

A plausible reading is that Christ’s sacrifice makes complete provision for Christians of all times to achieve their goal of perfection. Not only does the Greek word ken (“he has perfected”) allow for such a reading, it would also fit the context that speaks of Christ’s death precluding any further sacrifices for sins.

Furthermore, the phrase “those who are sanctified” can be translated “those who are being sanctified” (as it is in the ESV translation). The present participle suggests that there is an ongoing application of the merits of Christ’s single offering, unlike the Old Testament sacrifices, which needed to be constantly repeated. This militates against the way the challenge interprets the text, since if our future sins were already forgiven there would be no need for a continuous application of Christ’s merits.

As I show in my book Meeting the Protestant Challenge: How to Answer 50 Biblical Objections to Catholic Beliefs, perhaps a reply to our Protestant friends could be, “Is repentance a condition for forgiveness or not?” The bible says it is. The Bible also says ongoing repentance is necessary as well. If there’s any belief that doesn’t jibe with Scripture, it’s the idea that all our future sins are already forgiven.

https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/sanctified-for-all-time

Another article
https://www.catholic.com/tract/the-forgiveness-of-sins

Have you ever wondered why Jesus authorized and breathed into His Apostles and their successors the ability to forgive or retain sins? John 20:21-23

It must be easier to commit a mortal sin and then believe all future sins are forgiven. Why would anyone avoid sin? So if Hitler, Castro, Stalin, etc said they believed all future sins are forgiven/ Doesn’t meet the reason and logic test!

The Catholic faith never said that non Catholics sins could not be forgiven, but if you read the Bible there are multiple commands to repent. Your choice.

Sorry that it is long, but I thought it was all worthwhile.

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