Analogies for the Catholic view of grace and salvation

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Joseph T. Richardson

I posted these in a comment to somebody, and thought they might be worth sharing:

The best analogy I can think of to the Catholic understanding of salvation — and this has made all the difference in my life and in my Christian walk — is that we are trapped in our sins at the bottom of a pit, and entirely unable to do anything on our own to get out of it. Then God lowers us a rope (grace), and by that rope He can pull us out. But first we have to take the rope.

This was a much cuter photo than the ones of the old people and rehab patients.

Another one is this: we are little children taking our first steps — or alternately, we are old and decrepit, or in rehab — in any case, we can’t walk on our own. We can’t even take the first step under our own power. But Christ takes hold of us (by His grace), and as long as we hold on to Him, He holds us up. If we let go even for an instant, or try to do anything without Him, we go tumbling. But as long as we let Him hold us and help us, we are able to take steps forward. He is the one doing all the heavy lifting — we are just moving our feet, inching slowly toward our sanctification. (The old and decrepit person may work better, because unlike the child, we’ll never have the strength to walk on our own. The only good thing about the child metaphor is the paternal aspect.)

Against a Charge of Pelagianism

Posted on June 25, 2012 by Joseph T. Richardson

St. Augustine (c. 1645-1650), by Philippe de Champaigne.

(I was accused of heresy today. I’m sure it won’t be the last time, but since it’s the first time, I’m rather upset, and was interrupted from writing your regularly scheduled post. Rather than leave this as a lengthy comment on an innocent bystander’s blog, I thought I would post it here.)

Oh, so you want to appeal to the historic Church? I hope you are prepared to support your arguments.

First, the Pelagian heresy espoused that Adam’s original sin did not taint human nature, and that man was capable, in himself, of choosing good over evil without the grace of God. Which the Catholic Church explicitly denies, and always has. You should remember that it was the Catholic Church that branded Pelagianism a heresy in the first place and rejected it at the Council of Carthage in 419 — which affirmed that without God’s grace, it was impossible to do good works (Canon 113). The Council of Trent again affirmed in 1547:

If any one saith, that man may be justified before God by his own works, whether done through the teaching of human nature, or that of the law, without the grace of God through Jesus Christ; let him be anathema (Council of Trent, 1547: Sixth Session, Canon I “On Justification”).

So if you’ve going to charge anyone with Pelagianism, you should (1) know what Pelagius actually taught; (2) remember who it was who condemned Pelagius; and (3) understand what the party you’re charging actually teaches.

The Catholic Church in every way affirms that salvation is from God and by God; that God does the saving, by His grace alone, not man, by anything that he does or could do. Believing that God offers His grace freely, but allows man the free will to choose or reject it, is a far different proposition than claiming “man saves himself.” You are charging the Church with an opinion that it does not hold, does not assert, and has never asserted.

Second — you claim your view is that of the “historic Church” and St. Augustine. Would you agree with these statements?

[L]est the will itself should be deemed capable of doing any good thing without the grace of God, after saying, “His grace within me was not in vain, but I have laboured more abundantly than they all,” he immediately added the qualifying clause, “Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.” In other words, Not I alone, but the grace of God with me. And thus, neither was it the grace of God alone, nor was it he himself alone, but it was the grace of God with him. For his call, however, from heaven and his conversion by that great and most effectual call, God’s grace was alone, because his merits, though great, were yet evil. (St. Augustine, On Grace and Free Will, 5:12) (A.D. 427)

Unintelligent persons, however, with regard to the apostle’s statement: We conclude that a man is justified by faith without the works of the law (Romans 3:28), have thought him to mean that faith suffices to a man, even if he lead a bad life, and has no good works. Impossible is it that such a character should be deemed a vessel of election by the apostle, who, after declaring that in Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails anything, nor uncircumcision, Galatians 5:6 adds at once, but faith which works by love. (St. Augustine, On Grace and Free Will VI.18)

… This love the Apostle Peter did not yet possess, when he for fear thrice denied the Lord (Matthew 26:69-75). There is no fear in love, says the Evangelist John in his first Epistle, but perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). But yet, however small and imperfect his love was, it was not wholly wanting when he said to the Lord, I will lay down my life for Your sake (John 13:37); for he supposed himself able to effect what he felt himself willing to do. And who was it that had begun to give him his love, however small, but He who prepares the will, and perfects by His co-operation what He initiates by His operation? Forasmuch as in beginning He works in us that we may have the will, and in perfecting works with us when we have the will. On which account the apostle says, I am confident of this very thing, that He which has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6). He operates, therefore, without us, in order that we may will; but when we will, and so will that we may act, He co-operates with us. We can, however, ourselves do nothing to effect good works of piety without Him either working that we may will, or co-working when we will. Now, concerning His working that we may will, it is said: It is God which works in you, even to will (Philippians 2:13). (St. Augustine, On Grace and Free Will XVII.33)

Indeed we also work, but we are only collaborating with God who works, for his mercy has gone before us. It has gone before us so that we may be healed, and follows us so that once healed, we may be given life; it goes before us so that we may be called, and follows us so that we may be glorified; it goes before us so that we may live devoutly, and follows us so that we may always live with God: for without him we can do nothing. (St. Augustine, On Nature and Grace 31)

But God made you without you. You didn’t, after all, give any consent to God making you. How were you to consent, if you didn’t yet exist? So while he made you without you, he doesn’t justify you without you. So he made you without your knowing it, he justifies you with your willing consent to it. Yet it’s he that does the justifying …” (St. Augustine, Sermon 169.13) (PL 38, 923)

“No man can come to me, except the Father who hath sent me draw him”! For He does not say, “except He lead him,” so that we can thus in any way understand that his will precedes. For who is “drawn,” if he was already willing? And yet no man comes unless he is willing. Therefore he is drawn in wondrous ways to will, by Him who knows how to work within the very hearts of men. Not that men who are unwilling should believe, which cannot be, but that they should be made willing from being unwilling. (St. Augustine, Against Two Letters of the Pelagians, I:19) (A.D. 420).

As strong as we could, we urged on them, as on your and our brothers, to preserve in the catholic faith, which neither denies free will whether for a bad life or a good one, nor allows it so much effect that it can do anything without the grace of God, whether to convert the soul from evil to good, or to preserve and advance in good, or to attain eternal good, where there is no more fear of falling away. (St. Augustine, Epistle 215:4) (A.D. 423).

Augustine was writing in many of these cases against the Pelagians — who argued that they could do good works and be justified apart from God’s grace. Their argument never was that they didn’t need works to be justified — and so Augustine never argued specifically against that; all of his arguments go to the fact that God’s grace was necessary to do good works, which the Catholic Church affirms. As for the teachings of the other Church Fathers:

Seeing, therefore, that we are the portion of the Holy One, let us do all those things which pertain to holiness, avoiding all evil-speaking, all abominable and impure embraces, together with all drunkenness, seeking after change, all abominable lusts, detestable adultery, and execrable pride. “For God,” saith [the Scripture], “resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.” Let us cleave, then, to those to whom grace has been given by God. Let us clothe ourselves with concord and humility, ever exercising self-control, standing far off from all whispering and evil-speaking, being justified by our works, and not our words.” (Clement of Rome, Epistle to the Corinthians, 30) (A.D. 98).

But He who raised Him up from the dead will raise up us also, if we do His will, and walk in His commandments, and love what He loved, keeping ourselves from all unrighteousness, covetousness, love of money, evil speaking, falsewitness; “not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing,” or blow for blow, or cursing for cursing, but being mindful of what the Lord said in His teaching: “Judge not, that ye be not judged; forgive, and it shall be forgiven unto you; be merciful, that ye may obtain mercy; with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again”; and once more, “Blessed are the poor, and those that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” (Polycarp, To the Philippians, 2) (A.D. 135).

All creation fears the Lord, but all creation does not keep His commandments. They only who fear the Lord and keep His commandments have life with God; but as to those who keep not His commandments, there is no life in them. (The Shepherd of Hermas, II Commandment Seventh)

We have learned from the prophets, and we hold it to be true, that punishments, and chastisements, and good rewards, are rendered according to the merit of each man’s actions. Since if it be not so, but all things happen by fate, neither is anything at all in our own power…But this we assert is inevitable fate, that they who choose the good have worthy rewards, and they who choose the opposite have their merited awards. For not like other things, as trees and quadrupeds, which cannot act by choice, did God make man: for neither would he be worthy of reward or praise did he not of himself choose the good, but were created for this end; nor, if he were evil, would he be worthy of punishment, not being evil of himself, but being able to be nothing else than what he was made. (Justin Martyr, First Apology, 6) (A.D. 155)

If men by their works show themselves worthy of this His design, they are deemed worthy, and so we have received — of reigning in company with Him, being delivered from corruption and suffering. For as in the beginning He created us when we were not, so do we consider that, in like manner, those who choose what is pleasing to Him are, on account of their choice, deemed worthy of incorruption and of fellowship with Him. For the coming into being at first was not in our own power; and in order that we may follow those things which please Him, choosing them by means of the rational faculties He has Himself endowed us with, He both persuades us and leads us to faith. (Justin Martyr, First Apology 10) (c. 150)

Whoever dies in his sins, even if he profess to believe in Christ, does not truly believe in Him, and even if that which exists without works be called faith, such faith is dead in itself, as we read in the Epistle bearing the name of James. (Origen, Commentary on John, 19:6 (A.D. 232).

All indeed depends on God, but not so that our free-will is hindered. “If then it depend on God,” (one says), “why does He blame us?” On this account I said, “so that our free-will is not hindered.” It depends then on us, and on Him. For we must first choose the good; and then He leads us to His own. He does not anticipate our choice, lest our free-will should be outraged. But when we have chosen, then great is the assistance he brings to us … For it is ours to choose and to wish; but God’s to complete and to bring to an end. Since therefore the greater part is of Him, he says all is of Him, speaking according to the custom of men. For so we ourselves also do. I mean for instance: we see a house well built, and we say the whole is the Architect’s [doing], and yet certainly it is not all his, but the workmen’s also, and the owner’s, who supplies the materials, and many others’, but nevertheless since he contributed the greatest share, we call the whole his. So then [it is] in this case also. (John Chrysostom, Homily on Hebrews, 12:3) (A.D. 403).

There is a whole lot more where this came from.

Third, regarding “Mary worship”: That’s a very ignorant thing to say. Catholics do not “worship” Mary, or the saints, or anyone but God. Regarding the Eucharist (I presume you are referring to the Real Presence): I encourage you to read the Church Fathers, every one of whom affirmed the Real Presence.

Regarding “liberal theology”: Our theology is older than yours by about 1,500 years, and has remained consistent. That’s nothing if not conservative. Regarding ecumenical efforts: Certainly there can be no reconcilation if you’re not willing to listen to what anyone else has to say. Don’t let biases and prejudices cloud your judgment.

Regarding “the majority of the Christian Church [viewing] the Catholic church as a cult [whose] followers are going to Hell”: the last time I checked, we are the majority of the Christian Church, by about two to one. And I can speak from having been a Protestant most of my life that very few Protestants think the Catholic Church is going to Hell.

Fourth, you call me “brother,” yet in the same breath call me a heretic and an “unbeliever.” That’s not very generous or charitable of you. I can see very well your view of the Catholic Church today. I propose that you should do a little studying of your own about what the Catholic Church actually teaches, rather than simply accepting what you’re told — especially before you accuse a “brother” of heresy or consign a fellow Christian to Hell. We have a fundamental difference — but it is not what you are accusing me of. We both agree that salvation is only by God, through grace, and that man can do nothing to save himself apart from grace. We both agree that true Christians produce good works, that good works are necessary, and that man can only do those works by God’s grace. The only difference appears to be whether man has free will to accept or reject God — and I do not think an affirmation of free will amounts to Pelagianism or any other historical heresy. What do you say to those who walk away from the faith after years of living in grace?

Luther and Indulgences

Posted on June 24, 2012 by Joseph T. Richardson

Martin Luther (1533), by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

Yesterday, I exposited in detail the Catholic doctrine of indulgences — what the Catholic Church actually teaches. Indulgences, of course, were at the heart of Martin Luther‘s criticisms in his Ninety-Five Theses, which sparked the Protestant Reformation in 1517. Today, I will examine Luther’s criticisms, which offer a vivid window into the abusive teachings and practices that had crept into the Church by Luther’s time. I hope in this post, as in my post yesterday, that you will learn something about Protestant and Catholic thought and theology and about the Reformation.

Luther was not the first to attempt to reform the practice of indulgences

In large part, I will allow Luther’s document itself to demonstrate the kinds of abuses that were taking place in the Church of the early sixteenth century — but first it should be noted that Luther was not the first to attempt to reform the practice of indulgences in the Church. The Church had known for centuries that indulgences could be abused and were being abused, and on a number of notable occasions, both popes and councils spoke out to reform them.

One major problem early on was the granting of excessive indulgences. When something invisible and intangible is being offered for free, it is easy to see how this could happen: In his exuberance, a bishop could declare a very lengthy indulgence (that is, in the length of penance being remitted); or conceivably prelates of various churches might even have become embroiled in “price wars” over the lengths of their indulgences, in competition to draw pilgrims. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council urged moderation (Canon 62):

Because the keys of the church are brought into contempt and satisfaction through penance loses its force through indiscriminate and excessive indulgences, which certain prelates of churches do not fear to grant, we therefore decree that when a basilica is dedicated, the indulgence shall not be for more than one year, whether it is dedicated by one bishop or by more than one, and for the anniversary of the dedication the remission of penances imposed is not to exceed forty days. We order that the letters of indulgence, which are granted for various reasons at different times, are to fix this number of days, since the Roman pontiff himself, who possesses the plenitude of power, is accustomed to observe this moderation in such things.

Over the next few centuries, right up to the time of the Reformation, a number of other efforts were made to reform indulgences (Indulgences in Catholic Encyclopedia):

1268 – Pope Clement IV forbade the modification by local prelates of indulgences already granted to Dominicans and Franciscans.
1317 – Council of Ravenna again restricted length of indulgences to forty days.
1330 – Pope John XXII arrested and imprisoned all brothers of the Hospital of Haut-Pas for falsely asserting that their letters of indulgence offered more indulgences than had been granted to the order.
1392 – Pope Boniface IX, in letter to Bishop of Ferrara, condemned the sale of indulgences, and claims by religious to be able to pardon sins and guarantee salvation and prosperity in exchange for money.
1420 – Pope Martin V reprimanded Archbishop of Canterbury for offering unapproved plenary indulgence for a Jubilee pilgrimage.
1450 – Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, at Council of Magdeburg, condemned preachers who taught that indulgences could remit the guilt of sin as well as the temporal punishment.
1478 – Pope Sixtus IV restricted powers to grant indulgences from a large number of confessors who had been giving them not to promote virtue, but to condone vice.

(Bear in mind that all of these references come from a single source, which has a clear bias in defense of the Catholic Church — though I confirmed the accuracy of several of the statements independently.)

In short, the Church was aware that there were ongoing abuses for a very long time, and always had the power to correct those abuses.

Luther was not initially opposed to the doctrine of indulgences

It is common wisdom among Protestants that Martin Luther fought against indulgences. But the whole truth is that at least initially, in his Ninety-Five Theses, Luther had no dispute with the doctrine of indulgences per se, much less with the doctrine of Purgatory. He was opposed only to the abuses of those doctrines. Prior to the Reformation, Luther was a Roman Catholic priest and theologian, and a brother in the Augustinian order. The Church had taught the doctrines of indulgences and Purgatory for nearly 1,500 years; and Luther, trained in Catholic doctrine and theology, initially supported the whole Catholic tradition.

I would love to go through all ninety-five of Luther’s theses and provide a running commentary, but for the sake of brevity I’ll give only a few illustrative examples. I encourage any one of you who’s interested to read the whole document — it’s not that long.

The great majority of Luther’s ninety-five theses relate to the doctrines of Purgatory and indulgences; but not once in any of them does he directly challenge the validity of the doctrines themselves. He exposes and challenges abuses of the doctrines, but implicitly acknowledges a proper teaching of them.

For example, in support of indulgences, he writes:

71. Let him be anathema and accursed who denies the apostolic character of the indulgences.

72. On the other hand, let him be blessed who is on his guard against the wantonness and license of the pardon-merchant’s words.

Indulgences are an apostolic teaching. This sounds more like something I would have expected to hear from the Council of Trent. Concerning abuses of the doctrine, however, he writes:

26. The pope does excellently when he grants remission to the souls in Purgatory on account of intercessions made on their behalf, and not by the power of the keys (which he cannot exercise for them).

27. There is no divine authority for preaching that the soul flies out of the Purgatory immediately when the money clinks in the bottom of the chest.

28. It is certainly possible that when the money clinks in the bottom of the chest avarice and greed increase; but when the church offers intercession, all depends in the will of God.

Johann Tetzel.

Luther’s criticism, immediately, has to do with the granting of indulgences to living persons on behalf of the dead in Purgatory — especially with the sale of such indulgences, the granting of the indulgence for a monetary exchange and not a good work. In these theses, Luther is especially attacking the teachings of Johann Tetzel, the Dominican preacher and seller of indulgences who is reported to have said, “As soon as a coin in the coffer rings / the soul from purgatory springs.” According to historian Ludwig von Pastor, this doctrine had already been rejected by theologians at the University of Paris in 1482, and again in 1518. It had also been condemned by the prominent theologian Thomas Cardinal Cajetan — who became a major opponent of Luther. (Von pastor gives a detailed and surprisingly fair-minded account of Tetzel, Luther, and the beginning of the Reformation in his History of the Popes, vol. 7 [1908], 347-350, ff.)

32. All those who believe themselves certain of their own salvation by means of letters of indulgence, will be eternally damned, together with their teachers.

33. We should be most carefully on our guard against those who say that the papal indulgences are an inestimable divine gift, and that a man is reconciled to God by them.

34. For the grace conveyed by these indulgences relates simply to the penalties of the sacramental ‘satisfactions’ decreed merely by man.

These arguments mark some of the other false teachings that seem to have been spreading through the Church. According to the proper teaching of the doctrine, indulgences do not reconcile man to God; they cannot guarantee anyone’s salvation. These “satisfactions” he refers to are penances, the works one must undergo to satisfy the temporal punishments of a sin.

36. Any Christian whatsoever, who is truly repentant, enjoys plenary remission from penalty and guilt, and this is given him without letters of indulgence.

37. Any true Christian whatsoever, living or dead, participates in all the benefits of Christ and the Church; and this participation is granted to him by God without letters of indulgence.

38. Yet the pope’s remission and dispensation are in no way to be despised, for, as already said, they proclaim the divine remission.

This — especially 36 and 37 — begins to sound more like familiar Protestant theology, in opposition to works. But the key even here is “truly repentant” — a Christian with true, complete contrition is only then properly disposed for the remission of sin.

39. It is very difficult, even for the most learned theologians, to extol to the people the great bounty contained in the indulgences, while, at the same time, praising contrition as a virtue.

40. A truly contrite sinner seeks out, and loves to pay, the penalties of his sins; whereas the very multitude of indulgences dulls men’s consciences, and tends to make them hate the penalties.

41. Papal indulgences should only be preached with caution, lest people gain a wrong understanding, and think that they are preferable to other good works: those of love.

In teaching, it seems, the purchase of indulgences was being overemphasized, to the detriment of seeking true contrition for one’s sins or the practice of good works of charity or mercy.

53. Those are enemies of Christ and the pope who forbid the word of God to be preached at all in some churches, in order that indulgences may be preached in others.

54. The word of God suffers injury if, in the same sermon, an equal or longer time is devoted to indulgences than to that word.

55. The pope cannot help taking the view that if indulgences (very small matters) are celebrated by one bell, one pageant, or one ceremony, the gospel (a very great matter) should be preached to the accompaniment of a hundred bells, a hundred processions, a hundred ceremonies.

Indulgences, it seems, were being so overemphasized in some places as to completion overshadow the preaching of the Gospel.

47. Christians should be taught that they purchase indulgences voluntarily, and are not under obligation to do so.

They weren’t obligated to buy them — indulgences were not necessary for penance or salvation — but apparently some were teaching this.

49. Christians should be taught that the pope’s indulgences are useful only if one does not rely on them, but most harmful if one loses the fear of God through them.

This error seems to have been taking root for a while. The overemphasis of indulgences seems to have been giving some the idea that they could escape all the consequences of sin by purchasing an indulgence, and need not fear God at all or seek holy behavior. This seems a little ironic in light of the path modern evangelical thought has taken.

81. This unbridled preaching of indulgences makes it difficult for learned men to guard the respect due to the pope against false accusations, or at least from the keen criticisms of the laity.

Luther, at this point, was still inclined to defend the pope from accusations and criticisms. He did not want or intend a schism with the pope or the Church.

Luther’s later views, and the Protestant Reformation

I am not a Luther scholar or a scholar of the Reformation; so I confess that I feel a little lost in this sea I’ve paddled out into. But, if I wanted to learn to navigate it, I guess I did the right thing by rowing out here. I know I have a couple of Lutheran friends out there in my circle — I would appreciate your input.

Luther eventually rejected Purgatory, indulgences, and the whole Catholic shebang. I don’t know the chronology of this, but presumably this happened gradually as he translated the Bible and eventually arrived at a conception of sola scriptura. His opposition to the Catholic Church, I presume, was aggravated by the Church’s condemnation of him.

But the point of this message, however feeble it has turned out to be, is that Luther didn’t initially oppose Purgatory or indulgences. The champion of Protestantism didn’t leap from the pages of Scripture fully grown and prepared for battle; his views had to develop over time. Luther had to put his pants on one leg at a time, too.

I would like to study and acquire a better understanding of the Reformation. I would like to get to the bottom of the disputes between the Reformers and the Church, and how they arose. Because I think only in understanding our origins is there any hope of reconciliation. Luther wasn’t the first to attempt to reform the Church. Voices in the Church were already trying to reform the practice of indulgences. Why did his protests elicit the response from the Church they did? Why did his complaints, initially intended for discussion and correction, explode into the Protestant Reformation?

For my next post, I intend to look at the Council of Trent and its response to Luther.

Indulgences: What they mean

Posted on June 23, 2012 by Joseph T. Richardson

Martin Luther (1533), by Lucas Cranach the Elder.

One of the most misunderstood doctrines in the history of the Church, by both Protestants and Catholics, is the doctrine of indulgences. The mere mention of the word to Protestants conjures ideas of the worst corruptions of the Roman Church, the heights of decadence and depravity and abuse. For it’s well known that indulgences were the root of the Protestant Reformation.

But there’s much more to the story than most people realize. There is a lot of misinformation and misconception. In this post and the posts to follow, I will go back to the original sources, from both the Catholic Church and the Protestant Reformers, to present a better understanding about what the Catholic Church taught, and teaches, about indulgences; what exactly Martin Luther’s dispute with the Church over indulgences was; and why it’s not as big a deal as you think.

I am not expecting to convince anybody, here, of the truth of the doctrines of indulgences or Purgatory. My only aim is to clarify what the Church teaches and what the dispute in the Reformation was actually about. Whether you agree with the Church’s teachings or not, I hope you will at least learn something about them. Also bear in mind that I am new to these doctrines, too. I will strive to the best of my ability to explain them with the utmost clarity, accuracy, and honesty, but I doubtless will make some mistakes. If anyone catches them, I hope you will correct me.

Before I begin, let me say that I have a great deal of respect for Martin Luther; and through the study I have conducted in the writing of this post, I have come to respect him even more. The Protestant Reformation is the most tragic event in the history of the Christian Church: the rending of Christ’s spotless Bride — and it makes it all the more tragic to read Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses and realize that he was right: to recognize, through this window into the past, the terrible abuses that were taking place in the Renaissance Church, that Luther spoke out to reform. Yes, in many ways the practices of the Church of Luther’s day were decadent and corrupt. Yes, indulgences were one of the focal points of that corruption. If the Church had cooperated more readily with Luther and other critics, rather than condemning them, and if the matter hadn’t so quickly erupted out of control, our schism might have been averted.

What an indulgence is not

It is important, first of all, to realize what an indulgence is not:

An indulgence is not a permission to commit sin, or a pardon of future sin.
An indulgence is not, and does not offer, forgiveness of the guilt of sin; it presupposes that the sin has already been forgiven.
An indulgence is not an exemption or immunity from any law or duty, and does not in itself make restitution for sin.
An indulgence does not confer immunity from temptation or remove the possibility of falling into sin.
Most of all, an indulgence does not purchase one’s salvation or the release of another’s soul from Purgatory (Indulgences in Catholic Encyclopedia).

What is an indulgence?

The clearest, most succinct definition I’ve read comes from Indulgentiarum doctrina (1967), the Papal Constitution of Pope Paul VI on the doctrine of indulgences (Norm 1):

An indulgence is the remission before God of the temporal punishment due sins already forgiven as far as their guilt is concerned, which the follower of Christ with the proper dispositions and under certain determined conditions acquires through the intervention of the Church which, as minister of the Redemption, authoritatively dispenses and applies the treasury of the satisfaction won by Christ and the saints.

This sounds more complicated than it is. Let me take it apart. When we sin, by our actions, by our guilt, we harm and weaken our relationship with God. Grave or mortal sin in particular can separate us from God and completely break our communion with Him — because we have turned away from Him, done what is evil in His sight, and brought judgment on ourselves. This is what it means by the guilt due for sins. This is what Christ’s grace and forgiveness sets us free from: He justifies us, makes us righteous before God, and returns us to communion with Him.

But sin does something else, too. The wages of (mortal) sin is death (Romans 6:23) (that’s why it’s called “mortal”) — but all sins have wages. Even our venial sins and peccadilloes lead us into “an unhealthy attachment” to earthly things — a strengthening of our sinful habits and inclinations; the darkening of our minds; the harm sin itself does to our souls — the real, day-to-day consequences of our sin that we have to deal with even after we are forgiven. This is the temporal punishment of our sin: the temporal effects of the sin itself (CCC 1472; see also Sin in the Catholic Encyclopedia). God’s grace may wipe away our guilt, but we are still left with our sinful inclinations. From these we have to be purified — through pursuing the life of grace, especially the Sacrament of Penance; through prayer; through acts of charity and mercy — through being conformed more to Christ.

If we live and die in God’s grace, our eternal salvation is assured (CCC 1030). But if we die with these temporal effects of sin still hanging on — if we still need to be purified — then we enter a state of purification after death. The Church calls this Purgatory. Purgatory is not a place of punishment for the guilt of our sins — all the souls in Purgatory have already had their sins forgiven in full, had the eternal punishment of their sins bought and paid by the Blood of Christ; their eternal salvation is assured. But they still need to be purified, repaired, molded — to do what they didn’t finish doing in life (CCC 1031, cf. 1 Cor 3:15, 1 Pet 1:7).

This is where indulgences come in. The doctrine of indulgences (Latin indulgentia, from indulgeo, to be kind or tender; to concede, allow, grant, bestow as a favor) is an ancient teaching of the Church, the roots of which extend all the way back to the Apostles. It intersects with a number of other ancient and often misunderstood doctrines, including the “treasury” of merit and the communion of saints. It would take a while to convey a full understanding of all of these, but I will attempt to simplify things below.

The Communion of Saints and the Treasury of Merit

Fra Angelico. The Forerunners of Christ with Saints and Martyrs (about 1423-24).

All people are connected, in that the sin of one person harms others and the holiness of one person benefits others: we affect each other. Just as all humans have suffered through the original sin of Adam, through communion with Christ we can all share in His righteousness and reap the rewards of His sacrifice. Likewise, we are connected to each other in that through charity we can lift each other up in prayer; we can help bear each other’s crosses; we can share with each other spiritual “goods” (i.e. good things) — our prayer, our charity, our penitence. And because all believers are connected through the Body of Christ — those of us sojourning on earth; those saints receiving their reward in heaven; and those souls being purified in Purgatory — all can share with each other spiritual “goods,” even across the barriers of life and death. This is at the heart of the idea that saints can pray for us, and share with us the satisfaction earned by the merits they have obtained before God. By this same idea, we can reach the departed souls being purified in Purgatory, to pray for them and share with them our spiritual “goods” (CCC 1474-1475; Indulgentiarum doctrina 4-5).

The combined merits of Christ and all the saints — all the good that anyone has ever done through God’s grace, and all the reward that it has ever received — creates a “treasury” of merit in heaven. This “treasury” contains, most of all, the infinite and inexhaustible value of Christ’s mercy and sacrifice, together with the wealth of all the prayers and good works of all the saints of all the ages (CCC 1476-1477).

The Doctrine of Indulgences

The Delivery of the Keys (Perugino, Sistine Chapel, Rome).

We believe that the Church, by the power of the keys Christ entrusted to Peter — the power to “bind and loose on earth and in heaven” — has the power to unlock this “treasury” of merit and dispense its spiritual “goods,” to apply them to truly penitent sinners for the expiation of the temporal punishments of their sins. Only God can forgive the guilt of sins — but the Church, which administers penance for the expiation of the temporal punishments, can also apply the satisfaction of this treasury of merit to remit those punishments, for those who are penitent and properly disposed.

And this is the idea of indulgences. By the Middle Ages, the Church was granting indulgences — the remission of the temporal punishment due for sins already forgiven — in reward for certain, approved good works that were deemed for the good of the penitent, or for the good of all the faithful and the Church. Some examples of these works include making a devout pilgrimage to a holy site, praying the Rosary or Stations of the Cross, or the pious use of devotional objects such as a Crucifix or medal. Earning an indulgence could be applied to either one’s own temporal punishments, or to those of a departed soul in Purgatory, to shorten the time he or she might spend there (CCC 1478-1479, Indulgentiarum Doctrina 6-7).

Of indulgences, Pope Paul VI wrote (Indulgentiarum Doctrina 8):

The aim pursued by ecclesiastical authority in granting indulgences is not only that of helping the faithful to expiate the punishment due sin but also that of urging them to perform works of piety, penitence and charity — particularly those which lead to growth in faith and which favor the common good.

I fear this may be a crass metaphor — but as I have studied this, I’ve thought of indulgences as the rewards system of a kindergarten classroom. In order to promote good citizenship, virtue, and praiseworthy behavior, the teacher grants to her students gold or silver stars on a board. She may also give them certain rewards if they achieve enough stars. The Church, which has the power to dispense these rewards for the expiation of temporal punishment, chooses to offer them as incentives for good works that are beneficial to the penitent or the entire Christian community — to raise them up to do those things as a matter of habit.

A Church with Authority

The doctrine of indulgences only makes sense if you believe in a Church with authority in both heaven and earth — if you believe the Gospels at their word (Matthew 16:19):

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Despite the Word of the Gospel, the idea of the Church having real spiritual authority is foreign to most Protestants — many of whom deny the very idea of authority beyond the letter of Scripture and the individual conscience. But when we acknowledge that Christ invested his Church with exactly this kind of authority, and with the authority to remit sins (John 20:21-23) — when we acknowledge that the Church is more than just a temporal, manmade institution, but a divinely-appointed spiritual authority, existing both on earth and in heaven — then this doctrine commands a great deal more weight.

I recognize the difficulty of presenting this doctrine to anyone adhering to a sola scriptura viewpoint; but Tradition and the writings of the Church Fathers support that the whole Church held and believed the doctrine of indulgences in some form for nearly 1,500 years. I do not expect the explanation above to be convincing, but I do hope that it is at least illuminating about what the Catholic Church actually teaches regarding indulgences, and helps clear up some misconceptions.

Indulgences, properly taught, have nothing to do with forgiveness of the guilt of sins, and nothing to do with eternal salvation. The very idea of indulgences is that the guilt for one’s sins has already been forgiven. Indulgences have only to do with the temporal punishments for sin that still remain and with the need for purification from them, either in life or in the hereafter in Purgatory. All souls being purified in Purgatory are already guaranteed salvation in heaven, with or without indulgences.

Indulgences, however, weren’t always properly taught. By the late Middle Ages, abuses were creeping into some areas of the Church regarding the teaching of indulgences. By the Renaissance, these abuses were becoming widespread and flagrant. It is in this context that Martin Luther protested in 1517, and produced his Ninety-Five Theses — initially only proposals for critical, academic discussion — but soon igniting the fires of Reformation across Europe.

(Next time: Luther and his theses — what he protested and why.)

Tradition and Biblical Interpretation

Posted on June 14, 2012 by Joseph T. Richardson

A leaf from Codex Vaticanus, one of the earliest extant manuscripts of the Greek New Testament.

Tradition, I think, is a scary word for evangelical Protestants. But all it means on its letter is something handed down — from Latin trado: trans (over, across) + do (give) — something passed from one generation to the next, from one group to the next. As I’ve pointed out before, all Protestants, whether they admit it or not, adhere to some form of tradition. As Christians, everything we believe is by necessity traditional: it was not handed to us by God directly, but given to us by the Christians before us. Even the Bible is a collection of traditional writings: documents that were handed down to us from the Early Church. All Christians follow in the tradition of someone, whether it’s the Roman Magisterium, Martin Luther, John Calvin, or John Wesley. Ultimately, all Christians hope they are following in the tradition of the Apostles. If they are not — if they claim to be rejecting all tradition — then their Christianity must be seriously suspect.

Likewise, the way we interpret the Bible is traditional. Christians do not approach the biblical books as texts in a vacuum. Our readings are generally viewed in the light of the whole of Scripture. We read the Old Testament in the light of Christ’s fulfillment of it (with notable exceptions, such as the translations of the RSV and NRSV); we read the New Testament Epistles in the light of the Gospels and of each other. We approach Scripture with preconceptions of theology and doctrine. A prime example is the doctrine of the Holy Trinity: All orthodox Christians read the fullness of the doctrine of the Trinity in Scripture, but it is not at all written on Scripture’s face. We recognize the Trinity because the Church’s ancient theologians and exegetes have fleshed it out for us, hammered it out by generations of successive argument and refutation of heterodox views. Likewise is the doctrine of the fully human, fully divine nature of Christ and His hypostatic union. Even the canon of Scripture itself — what documents we accept as part of the Bible and what documents we reject — depends on the tradition of the Fathers of the Church in the first Christian centuries, arguing for and against the inclusion of various texts. Protestants read Scripture in the firm paradigms of their doctrinal traditions, whether Lutheran, Calvinist, Arminian, or so forth, appealing to the traditions and commentaries of great theologians of the past — with the result that despite their proclamation of sola scriptura, their understanding of Scripture is by necessity deeply rooted in tradition.

The Catholic Church reads Scripture in the same way — only with the whole of apostolic and patristic tradition behind its interpretations. As an historian (revisionists aside) builds his interpretations on those of his predecessors, the Catholic Church’s doctrinal framework is founded upon the traditions of popes, councils, great theologians and thinkers, all the way back to the Church Fathers, the first generations of Christians after the Apostles themselves. The Church proclaims its adherence to Apostolic Tradition, both that handed down orally and that written, and it is the early Fathers who attest to our traditions back to the hands of the Apostles.

As I have written before, the New Testament writings handed down to us are at best a fragmentary record of the teachings of the Apostles and Early Church; the Sacred Tradition handed down through the Church Fathers fills in the gaps and completes our image. But the Fathers also read and interpreted Scripture; and it is only in the light of their Tradition that we can properly understand the Bible. As for the historian, one of the crucial tasks in approaching a primary text, in understanding the thoughts and intentions of a writer, especially one of an ancient time and culture, is to understand how his words were received and understood by their primary recipients. The earliest Church Fathers, such as Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch, are at most only thirty or forty years departed from the writing of the New Testament: they are the New Testament’s primary recipients, and within living memory of the Apostles. To separate the New Testament texts from the understanding of these early Christians, as a strict reliance on “sola scriptura” does — to read the New Testament in a presentist view, without the light of the interpretations of the Early Church — risks taking it out of context, or else grossly misinterpreting it.

Some Protestants do read the Church Fathers — but many are selective in their readings, reading the parts of Augustine especially, for example, that seem to support their Reformation theologies. Taking the Church Fathers, or any writer, out of their historical context in this way is as dangerous as it is with Scripture. For Augustine was a bishop of the Roman Church, operating in and upholding its traditions. His views must be interpreted against his position and his entire belief system; he would not have sanctioned his doctrines being used to support any theology that opposed the Catholic Church.

The fact of the multiplicity of Protestant readings and interpretations of Scripture — that there is less doctrinal agreement among Protestant churches than at any time prior — that there are more fragmented Protestant denominations than ever before (more than 33,000) — proclaims the utter failure of sola scriptura, and the danger of severing the interpretation of Scripture from tradition and authority. This is not a new phenomenon with Protestants: at the root of every heresy has been the decision to reject traditional doctrine and follow one’s own interpretation.

Before I began converting, the idea of giving up one’s personal, individualistic interpretation of Scripture to accept the teachings of a rigid and authoritative institution seemed to be an anti-intellectual subjugation of individual thought and will, and a recipe for abuse. For couldn’t the Church teach that Scripture said anything they wanted it to say, to justify their extrabiblical traditions? Wasn’t the freedom of the Christian to think and read the Bible for himself the only insurance he had against manipulation and deception? But I now see that the truth is just the opposite. The Christian who is “free” from authority is much more susceptible to being misled and exploited. It is the authority of the Church — the authority handed down from the Apostles — that protects us, that ensures the integrity and orthodoxy of our faith. And this protection is built into the system: Today’s prelates cannot abuse their authority, they cannot introduce inventions or radical reinterpretations, because the root of their authority and their interpretations is the Tradition of the Church — which is open, accessible, and visible for any Christian to investigate and in which to verify the truth.

The Body and Blood of Christ

Posted on June 10, 2012 by Joseph T. Richardson

Today at Mass we celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. According to the Roman Missal, the actual date of the feast worldwide was last Thursday, the Thursday after Trinity Sunday; but in countries in which Corpus Christi is not a Holy Day of Obligation, including the United States, it is commuted to the following Sunday. In short, I get a slight reprieve for forgetting to blog about it on Thursday.

Corpus Christi celebrates the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Brad made a brilliant and fascinating post over at SFC on the historical origins of Corpus Christi, to which there is little I can add. But in the spirit of my own blog, I wanted to say a few words about my journey toward a belief in the Real Presence, and share my own tribute.

The Doctrine of the Real Presence in Scripture and Theology

First, what do I mean by “Real Presence”? I take for granted that most people know, but I certainly didn’t until I studied the Church in school. Catholics (and Orthodox, too) believe and affirm that Christ’s Body and Blood are really present in our Eucharist — that our Eucharist, or Holy Communion, is not just bread and wine, but that by the grace of the Holy Spirit, the elements actually become the Body and Blood of Christ. I am not theologian enough to argue to the fine point of transubstantiation, but it amounts to this: we believe that the substance of the the bread and wine change into the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ; while everything that we can see, feel, smell, and taste (the appearances, or species in Latin) remains the same. Christ’s Body and Blood are contained in the Eucharist, under the forms of the bread and wine. Father Joe has a great, accessible post from a week or two ago on the doctrine of transubstantiation, St. Justin Martyr, and St. Thomas Aquinas.

Many Protestants, on the other hand, believe that Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper, is only a symbol or memorial. Others, like Lutherans, Anglicans, and Methodists, have varying ideas about the Real Presence. Growing up, I was taught that it was only a memorial, though the doctrine was never clearly stated. “Do this in remembrance of me,” Christ said in St. Paul’s account of the institution of the Eucharist. “As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Corinthians 11:23-26): these are the verses that were always emphasized. I frankly, now, have a very difficult time understanding how Protestants can read even this passage (and especially the parts before and after it) as describing anything but a real, actual presence of Christ in the Eucharist; let alone the passages in when Jesus was describing it (Matthew 26:26-28, Mark 14:22-24, Luke 22:17-20, and especially John 6:22-59). I simply don’t see any other way to interpret it than as the Eucharist being Christ’s Body and Blood. I would be very happy if some of my Protestant friends could discuss that with me (civilly and, I hope, productively).

I’ve posted about the Real Presence before, and gave some important proof texts attesting to the very early belief in the Real Presence. It is very clear that St. Paul, the Apostles, and their followers all believed the Eucharist to be much more than a symbol. How did Protestants fall away from a belief in the Real Presence? I know Luther rejected transubstantiation, but affirmed a different idea of the Real Presence. Did Calvin reject the Real Presence? According to the wiki, Calvin rejected a real, physical presence, but still affirmed a definite spiritual presence. Apparently we owe the view that the Eucharist is only a memorial to Zwingli. Many thanks to the wiki.

The Real Presence in My Journey of Faith

Growing up, despite believing that Communion was only a symbol, it was always an occasion for solemn reflection. The churches I was a part of never had Communion with particular frequency; only about once a month (I suppose the Methodists had it every week). It was in college, as I learned about the Church in history classes, that I first learned of the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence. And immediately, I admired it, and somehow longed for it, long before I even realized I was longing for it: it was something real, something substantial, something tangible; something more than I was getting: a way to actually touch the presence of my Lord. Every time we took Communion after that, I began receiving it with the idea of “what if” this is really Jesus; until I began to think that “I want” it to really be Jesus.

It wasn’t until I was halfway converted already that I realized how wrong it was that I admired the Church Fathers so much, while discounting so much of what they believed, including the Real Presence. And by that time, there was no turning back. So much of my belief in Catholic doctrine was less a process of having to be convinced, than of acknowledging that the Catholic Church was the True Church, and belief in its doctrine falling in line after that.

Eucharistic Hymns

Before I close, let me share with you a couple of my favorite reflections on the Real Presence in the Eucharist. I have always loved Ave verum corpus, even long before I was Catholic, especially through Mozart’s setting:

St. Thomas Aquinas’s Adoro te devote is also very important to me, reminding me that even though what we see is bread — even though even the most brilliant minds may doubt — it is our Lord beneath the species:

I devoutly adore you, O hidden Deity,
Truly hidden beneath these appearances.
My whole heart submits to you,
And in contemplating you,
It surrenders itself completely.

Sight, touch, taste are all deceived
In their judgment of you,
But hearing suffices firmly to believe.
I believe all that the Son of God has spoken;
There is nothing truer than this word of truth.

On the cross only the divinity was hidden,
But here the humanity is also hidden.
I believe and confess both,
And ask for what the repentant thief asked.

I do not see the wounds as Thomas did,
But I confess that you are my God.
Make me believe more and more in you,
Hope in you, and love you.

(There is more).

By Scripture Alone; Alone with Scripture

Posted on June 1, 2012 by Joseph T. Richardson

(I am afraid this one gets a little preachy; possibly a little critical. As always, my heart is not to attack, but to rebuild.)

The Gutenberg Bible, the first printed Bible. (Wikipedia)

So continuing from my thoughts yesterday:

One of the most strident cries of the Protestant Reformation, and of Protestants to this day, is sola scriptura: by Scripture alone. Scripture, the Bible, was to be the sole rule and authority of faith and doctrine.

From an academic standpoint, I can respect this. It holds Christian doctrine and tradition to a very high, legalistic standard of proof. It demands that all belief and practice be absolutely attested to in inspired writing and stamped with divine approval. It demands written attestation by the Apostles — or by God Himself — before Christians put any element of faith into action. But is this a reasonable expectation?

As I wrote yesterday, nothing in our New Testament represents itself as a compendium or catechism of the Christian faith. No book claims to contain the sum of Christian truth. There is no demand or expectation in the New Testament that the New Testament writings alone should support, nourish, instruct, or guide the Church. At the time these documents were written, there wasn’t even any such collection as the New Testament. How could Paul, at the time he wrote his letters, have expected that his words, with those of a few others, would be the sole rule of the Church’s faith? Arguably, he and the other writers were aware that their writing was inspired by the Holy Spirit; but it is doubtful that they at the time would have understood their words to be Scripture — which to them referred to the Old Testament (though St. Peter in 2 Peter 3:15-16 apparently places St. Paul’s writings on the level with Scripture by the end of their lives, ca. A.D. 63–67).

It is evident throughout the New Testament that the Apostles’ primary mode of transmitting the teachings of Christ was through spoken preaching and teaching, not writing. Most of the Apostles were too busy doing other things, like evangelizing to the ends of the earth and dying martyrs for the faith, to write much. That Paul was such an effective writer as well as a tireless preacher surely had a lot to do with why Christ chose him. On every page of Paul’s epistles, he refers to what he taught to the churches in person, teachings that he does not repeat in writing. The Early Church, living prior to the New Testament being collected, received their Christian faith directly through the oral teaching of the Apostles and their successors, and could not have even comprehended an insistence on “Scripture alone.” It is a little ironic that a faith so focused on sermons and preaching should at the same time reject the oral tradition of the Apostles.

Some Protestant sects take this rejection further than others. Especially some of the older groups, such as Lutherans and Anglicans, have retained many of the external trappings of the Church’s traditions. I speak only anecdotally, I confess — I have a lot of reading to do about these churches — but I often hear Anglicanism referred to as “Catholic lite.” Many more conservative and traditional Anglicans are making the journey back to the Mother Church by the parish. I’ve never been a part of a Lutheran church, but through following Ken Ranos and talking to my friend Heather (who attends an ELCA church in California), I’m frequently nodding in agreement at all the similarities and parallels between our traditions. They take the attitude, it seems, that many of the traditions of the Church are valuable and beautiful and praiseworthy, and ought not to be discarded as long as they don’t hinder the Gospel of Christ.

Other churches, especially those descending from the Calvinist tradition, take the rejection of tradition much further. Here I’m on much more familiar ground, having been a part of Baptist and Presbyterian churches. The iconoclasm of Reformation Calvinists toward religious images is well known. It is evident to anyone who has ever seen or set foot in an evangelical church the extent to which their sects have rejected the artistic, ornamental, and architectural aspects of tradition. In doctrine, to a further point than Lutherans or Anglicans, these churches reject anything that is not written explicitly on the face of Scripture. The Sacraments of Confession and Confirmation are completely absent, for example — if not the notion of sacramentality itself. The veneration of saints, the very idea of sainthood, is gone. The attitude here, as I’ve heard from many Protestants, is that the absence of a tradition from Scripture is reason in itself not to do it.

This can, and has, been taken to extremes. The Seventh-Day Adventists and their ilk reject Sunday worship — which has been practiced by the Church since the earliest days — because it is not commanded by Scripture. The Churches of Christ reject the use of musical instruments in worship because there is no evidence of it in the New Testament. I encountered a “new wave” church in Alabama that had no pastor but professed to practice a “New Testament model of church organization.” I am not quite sure what that means, since the New Testament never lays out a model of church organization; but presumably it included elders and deacons. It is common to hear of Protestant churches that try to reconstruct the New Testament Church — but the New Testament gives only glimpses of the faith and practice of the Early Church; most evangelicals reject the authorities that would shed the most light, the Church Fathers. Some churches are even rejecting the traditional doctrine of the Trinity, and returning to such ancient heresies as Sabellianism and Arianism. I’ve talked to Protestants who readily acknowledged that some of the traditions of the Church are good things to do and hold, and have value and merit — but that their churches nonetheless reject them because they can’t find them in Scripture.

This seems to me to be an awfully lonely and barren place to be. By their strictness in living by Scripture alone, these churches are left entirely alone with Scripture. They have shorn themselves of all of the beautiful and wonderful things that have clothed and ornamented the Church over the ages: all of the history, all of the scholarship, all of the art, all of the music. They have spurned the fellowship of the heroes and martyrs, the great cloud of witnesses, who are a part of our spiritual communion in Christ. Even more seriously, they have cast away elements of the faith — the Sacraments, Holy Orders, Apostolic Succession — that make the Gospel work, that guide and nourish the Church, that protect her teachings and sacraments, and that keep her in communion with the Holy Spirit.

Most tragically, with these nuts and bolts and hinges removed, the Church has lost her unity. Since the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, the breakaway Protestant sects have split, and split, and split again, until there are estimated to be upward of 33,000 distinct Protestant denominations (and this is a conservative estimate). There have been more new denominations formed in the past century than have ever existed in all the prior centuries combined. Many churches — the hundreds of thousands of independent or nondenominational churches — really are completely alone. Only the Catholic Church remains one and coherent in the face of this disintegration. The Protestant churches beyond are splintering.

But wasn’t the Reformation supposed to restore the Church? Wasn’t sola scriptura supposed to bring the Church back to the Gospel? Whatever may be said about the doctrine’s aims, without any kind of magisterial authority to guide the Church, disagreement about the interpretation of Scripture only multiplies. Sola scriptura is the linchpin of the whole Reformation, without which it would not have been possible to reject the Catholic Church, its hierarchy, or its Sacraments. It, more than any other doctrine, is the root of our continued disagreement, and our failure to reunite the Church. And it has fostered the individualistic, private interpretation of Scripture, which to this day has been more divisive than any other element in Christian spirituality.

Sola Scriptura and Sacred Tradition

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Joseph T. Richardson

This weekend I met with my friend Josh the Baptist, my oldest and dearest Christian friend. Over the years he has not been the most amenable to Catholicism — he once told me, years before either of us had any idea I would end up here, that he didn’t believe Catholicism was Christian. But he has nonetheless been very supportive of my faith and my journey. We picked at some doctrinal and theological points the other night. Both of us realized points where we needed to learn and firm up our arguments. Iron sharpens iron.

I realized talking to him, as I am realizing more and more talking to other Protestants, that one of the fundamental obstacles standing between Catholics and Protestants, if not the fundamental obstacle, is sola scriptura for Protestants and Sacred Tradition for Catholics. For Protestants, Scripture is the sole, exclusive authority for doctrine. Catholics found their doctrine on the union of Scripture and Tradition. Not only is this divergence an obstacle to agreement, it’s even an obstacle to understanding. Protestants are so fixed in the sola scriptura mindset that the very idea of rooting beliefs in Tradition is foreign and incomprehensible. Likewise for Catholics, the idea of rejecting Tradition because it’s not in Scripture seems absurd.

Because Scripture and Tradition are two different vessels for transmitting the deposit of faith — both that which was written down and that which was spoken (2 Thessalonians 2:15 ESV). It makes little sense to a Catholic to reject the oral tradition of the Apostles simply because it was oral tradition. The Gospels themselves were written from testimony that had persisted in oral tradition for at least thirty or forty years. Neither Christ nor the Apostles made any attempt to compose a formal, encyclopedic, or exhaustive compendium or catechism of the Christian faith. The writings that make up our New Testament never purport to be the whole, complete body of Christian Truth — in fact, they admit of themselves that they are not (John 21:25 ESV). The Law of the Old Testament was self-consciously the whole, written legal code of the Hebrews, given to govern their people and their relationship to God. But the New Testament is a scattered collection of various documents, comprised of selective narratives for specific audiences; epistles written to specific recipients to address specific concerns; and an apocalyptic prophecy. We should receive these writings for what they are, and not expect them to be something they are not.

The Protestant argument is that the Holy Spirit preserved for us the sum of what we needed in Scripture. The Catholic argument is that the Holy Spirit preserved for us the sum of what we needed — in Scripture and Tradition. Personally, I find the Catholic argument more palatable and reasonable. As an historian, I highly value primary sources written by the hand of people who experienced an event, but I don’t reject other sources that received information secondarily and then declare that the only knowledge I will accept as true comes from the primary documents. A fair portion of the New Testament documents are actually secondary sources, not written by Apostles (Mark, Luke, Acts, probably Hebrews) but by their followers, who wrote down the testimony and teachings of others as they were passed down to them. (That number is even more, if you consider that Matthew and Luke appear to have used Mark as a source.) Yes, the Holy Spirit guided and inspired the New Testament writers — but just so, we believe that the Holy Spirit guided and protected the passing down of apostolic teachings through Sacred Tradition.

The New Testament never claims to be the sole rule or source of faith. No one prior to Luther attempted to make it so, nor would early Christians have found sola scriptura in any way comprehensible. St. Paul writes, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17 ESV) — but neither Paul nor anyone writes that Scripture alone is profitable or acceptable. In fact, just a chapter before, he had said otherwise (2 Timothy 2:1-2 ESV):

You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

What Paul is describing is oral tradition, the passing down of sacred teachings from generation to generation by word of mouth. This is the beginning of apostolic succession. Men chosen and approved were ordained to receive the deposit of apostolic teaching; so that by the succession of consecrated bishops, whose lineages could be traced back to the Apostles themselves, the Christian faithful were assured of the integrity, orthodoxy, and wholeness of their faith. As Clement of Rome wrote in ca. 95-96, a mere generation after the Apostles, himself a successor of Peter (1 Clement 42, 44):

Through countryside and city [the Apostles] preached, and they appointed their earliest converts, testing them by the Spirit, to be the bishops and deacons of future believers. Nor was this a novelty, for bishops and deacons had been written about a long time earlier. . . . Our Apostles knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife for the office of bishop. For this reason, therefore, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those who have already been mentioned and afterwards added the further provision that, if they should die, other approved men should succeed to their ministry.

And St. Irenaeus, a century later, in ca. 180 (Against Heresies, III.3.2):

[We confound the heretics] by indicating that tradition derived from the Apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops.

Most Protestants, whether they admit it or not, adhere to some form of extrascriptural tradition. It permeates the entire Church, in all that Christians do and how they do it. The basic order of worship, the singing of hymns following by the reading of Scripture and a sermon, is as old as the Church, but found nowhere in the Bible. The celebration of the Lord’s Day on Sunday, in commemoration of the Resurrection, rather than on the Jewish Sabbath, is a nearly universal Christian tradition (excepting Seventh-Day Adventists and the like), but found nowhere in Scripture. The bare bones of the Church’s liturgical calendar, Easter and Christmas, are observed by nearly all Christians and even most of the secular world, but not mandated by Scripture. Even the canon of Scripture itself, on which sola scriptura depends, cannot be derived from Scripture alone. The canon of the New Testament was hammered out through questioning and disputation by successive Church Fathers and councils over the course of the first three centuries. Likewise, the doctrine of the Trinity, taken for granted by most Christians today, is nowhere laid out plainly in Scripture. It took centuries of theological wrangling by the Fathers and councils, disputation with heretical sects and condemnation of numerous heterodox views, for the orthodox Trinitarian dogma to fully emerge.

More subtly and seriously, the schools of scriptural interpretation which shape the Protestant reading of the Bible, through sola scriptura, are firmly ensconced in tradition. Most Protestants raised up in a particular theological tradition — in Calvinism, or Armininianism, or Lutheranism, or Wesleyanism — tend to adhere to the interpretations that they are taught. They are likely to read and understand the Bible the same way their pastors do, and possibly the same way their fathers and grandfathers did. Protestants appeal to great theologians and exegetes of the past — to the tradition of biblical interpretation having been handed down — all while not recognizing that their Christian understanding is colored and supported by anything but sola scriptura.

Letting go of sola scriptura is probably a significant hurdle for many Catholic converts from Protestantism. It never was for me. I had been reading the Church Fathers for five or six years before I converted. I have admired the traditions of the Church for as long as I can remember. By intellectual training, I have learned to operate in a traditional paradigm, through history and historiography, citing authorities of the past as support for truth. A good year or two before I made any move toward the Church, I found that I had already given up sola scriptura.

The Other Side of Calvin

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Joseph T. Richardson

John Calvin (1509-1564)

I’m about to enter the scriptorium exeuntis, the paper-writing cave, from which there may be no return. But I suppose I shouldn’t leave everyone (all one or two of y’all?) hanging. Here is the second half of my post about Calvin.

I have felt pretty bad about the tone of that last post. I very nearly quietly removed it this morning, but after re-reading it, I decided that it wasn’t so bad. But I have feared that I came across in too polemical a way. That isn’t what this blog is about. I do not want, I am not interested at all, in attacking anyone else’s doctrine or theology or tradition. This blog is about my journey to the Catholic faith, all the good and praiseworthy things I have found in Catholicism. As I found out early on, embracing the Catholic tradition necessarily entails rejecting some other things. But I want to be clear that my aim is not to denigrate. In that last post, it was late; I was tired; and I probably could have done with a better choice of words (not to mention a good many fewer).

The title of this book I’m reviewing is Against Calvinism — but I am not against Calvinism at all. On the contrary, I am very fascinated by it. I think it is a worthy, valuable, and thoughtful paradigm for interpreting Scripture and thinking about God. I don’t know everything about God. The Catholic Church doesn’t know everything about God, nor does it claim to. What the Church does claim, I have embraced and I will uphold. But I do respect and even admire the knowledge and thought of others.

Against Calvinism. Dead, wilted TULIPs.

Roger Olson, in Against Calvinism, does come across in a rather polemical way. That was demonstrably his commission from Zondervan: to take apart and critique Calvinism, to provide the con to Michael Horton’s pro in For Calvinism. Olson makes clear that his aim is not to attack Calvinists — he affirms his love and respect for them as brothers and sisters in faith — but when he gets down to arguing, he can come across as rather vicious.

Notably, it’s clear that Horton and Olson didn’t read each other’s manuscripts before the publication of these books. Horton provides little in For Calvinism to anticipate the criticisms of Olson — and he probably should have, since I understand they’re pretty common criticisms. Likewise, the seemingly moderate Calvinism Horton presents (he vehemently denies his support of “hyper-Calvinism”) is not the Calvinism that Olson critiques in Against Calvinism. Olson takes aim at the “radical Reformed” theology of the “young, restless, Reformed” generation.

I went to school with a lot of those people (one or two may even be reading this), so I completely understand what Olson is talking about. I admire their passion for the Gospel and for God and most of all for their re-application of the intellect to faith. Olson sadly explains — and I nod fervently — the death of theology and doctrine in much of evangelical culture, the growing anti-intellectualism that leaves so many young people feeling empty. It certainly did that to me. It was a very good thing that I found security in my Catholic faith before reading Horton’s book. If I had read it while I was still lost, I think I would have pounced on Calvinism ravenously. (Most of my exposure to Calvinism while I was lost, though, was rather frightening and distasteful. Maybe I’ll share that sometime. But Horton presented it better than anyone ever had to me.)

As Olson critiques “radical Calvinism,” though, he makes clear that nearly all Calvinism is radical, if followed to the ends of its logic. Like a vicious game of dominoes, he pursues every Calvinist argument to its logical conclusions — many painful contradictions that, as Olson presents them, impugn the character of God. One of several phrases he repeats throughout the book is that Calvinism’s conclusions make God “either morally ambiguous or at worst a moral monster.” He demonstrates how each of the “five points” of Calvinism demands each other, how no “moderate Calvinist” can affirm just four and be logically honest (usually the one they want to reject is “limited atonement”), and how the whole system is predicated upon, and proceeds logically from, the affirmation of God’s absolute, meticulous sovereignty.

One thing I appreciate about Olson’s work is the extensive quotations he gives from Calvinist thinkers and authors, demonstrating that they in fact affirm what he is accusing them of affirming. Olson quotes from both Calvin and a half dozen influential Calvinist authors, including Loraine Boettner (a favorite villain for Catholics, who penned the wildly inaccurate Roman Catholicism (1962), responsible for so much of the rabid anti-Catholicism of the past half-century; I must confess I rather enjoyed watching him be pecked apart), R.C. Sproul (of whom I’d heard, but knew little about; I didn’t realize he was so anti-Catholic, and I’m now tempted to read him), and John Piper (the paragon and spiritual leader of so much of the RUF crowd; notably not anti-Catholic; I would really like to read him).

The contradictions Olson exposes are real and problematic. In my mind, they amount to these: If God is absolutely, meticulously sovereign, decreeing every event and movement down to the smallest atom, then he is necessarily the author of sin and evil. He created Satan and caused him to rebel; he created Adam and caused him to sin — or at least, “rendered his sin certain”; he “renders certain” each of our sins and failures. Calvinists have many ways of evading the conclusion that God bears responsibility for human sins and evils, arguing that God’s ways are not our ways, that He has a sovereign plan for it all, for His greater glory. They have many ways of explaining the apparent paradox between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility for our sins. But I am convinced by Olson’s argument here — both cannot be true.

Also, and even more problematic for me, Calvinism would present that God divinely reprobates the nonelect — those whom he did not choose to be saved — for sins that He himself ordained. He created many, if not most, of humanity for the sole purpose of being damned, of suffering both in this life and in eternity. God, who has the power and sovereignty to save all effectually, chooses to reject the most, even by choosing not to save them. How could a God who is love (1 John 4:8) do that? Olson argues that “double predestination” is a necessary conclusion of Calvinism’s other doctrines; that it can’t be excluded as Horton tries. And many (most of the authors he quotes) openly affirm it. Calvinists again have many arguments to explain divine reprobation. They argue that our human concept of love is not the same as God’s concept — but if God created our concept of love, how could it not be the same? Jesus reveals to us in fullness the character of God (John 14:9) — and I do not see Jesus rejecting people in this way or consigning anyone to suffering. Piper, for example, argues that God loves the elect in special way, but being love, loves all of creation, giving even many blessings to the reprobate — but as Olson points out, this is tantamount to “giving them a little piece of heaven to go to hell in.” How does creating people for suffering and death and loss, without any hope for redemption, exhibit “love”?

And that has always been my problem with Calvinism. I have had many friends who extol the hope and assurance it gives them to believe that God is control of everything, that no matter what happens, no matter what trials and sufferings they face, God has a plan for it and will ultimately bring them to glory and salvation. But I have always tended to see the other side of that coin. Identifying, as Jesus does, with the lost and the suffering, the “least of these,” I have only seen the utter hopelessness and despair to which these propositions necessarily leave the great mass of humanity. What is the point of living, of suffering through this existence, if there is no hope for anything beyond — if those people are predestined for only more and eternal suffering? To me, it necessarily undermines the essential dignity of all mankind, one of my core beliefs as a Christian and as a human — that all people are created in the image of God, and all people are worthy of love and respect; that no one deserves death and pain, and that I should labor in service to all. But Calvinism would tell me that much of humanity is destined only for destruction, that ministering to the lost is only a salve to the dying, that God ultimately doesn’t love those people the same way he loves his exclusive, preordained flock. Calvinists argue that the reprobate earn their destruction for themselves, through their sins and their rejection of Christ — but that only makes it worse, to say that they deserve it. For Christ rejected them first; he had the power to save them too, but didn’t. God decreed the very sins for which they suffer.

*exhales* … And as I said, I’m not against Calvinism. *grins sheepishly* I, like Olson I think, tend to get a little carried away with my rhetoric. I was going to say that I thought Olson was being a little harsh, but I’m not sure I did a lot better. The bottom line: I enjoyed Against Calvinism as well, though it was a bit of a painful experience, like watching someone take a hammer to the beautiful sculpture Horton had crafted. But I do think Olson is correct to point out these paradoxes, contradictions, and conundrums. All faith necessarily has mysteries, places where faith seems even foolish — in the Catholic faith, most ostentatiously, that bread and wine literally become the Body and Blood of Christ, when the senses show us otherwise. The problem of evil, explaining the origins and causes of sin and pain and suffering, is a problem for any faith. I certainly believe — I have seen enough in my life to affirm without a doubt — that God is sovereign over this world and our lives. But I have a very hard time embracing a view that openly declares that God is the author of all sin and pain, or that our loving God is not as loving as we believe.

Discovering Calvin

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Joseph T. Richardson

John Calvin (1509-1564)

Last Christmas, I received a couple of books of theology: For Calvinism by Michael Horton and Against Calvinism by Roger Olson. I had asked for them; they had come highly recommended. I had never given Calvinism a fair shake, I felt. Every time I had tried to approach it through personal study in the past, it had left me feeling hopeless and despondent; it seemed to undermine the essential dignity of man. But I had a feeling that I probably wasn’t comprehending it fully. Other people I had talked to spoke of the hope and assurance it brought them; but I couldn’t see that at all. What was I missing? These books, I was told, were written by well-known academic theologians who presented their arguments well, so I hoped it might help me properly put the pieces together in my mind. And I was curious.

I’ve never had much of a mind for theology, especially not to discern between all the competing arguments that each seemed to have weight. Having no real foundation of my own, I had no point of reference from which to judge ideas; so more often than not, the entire discipline left me feeling frustrated and lost. But in coming to the Church, I had found my bedrock of truth, the faith passed down from the Apostles and confirmed by the generations. For the first time in my life, I knew what I believed. I was ready to tackle this.

For Calvinism. See the pretty TULIPs?

Almost from the start, Horton’s For Calvinism charmed me. The picture Horton painted was not the bleak, harsh world that I had encountered before. The ideas he presented were surprisingly moderate, and seemed to follow logically. It was not a worldview at odds with the rest of Christianity (for I have met too many combative, polemic Calvinists), but a system of interpretations that sought to recover biblical truths. These interpretations, Horton claimed, were not new. They had been passed down from the Church Fathers and councils, most notably St. Augustine, but passing through a long list of great men, including my beloved St. Bernard of Clairvaux — until finally they were returned to light by Calvin. This seemed, at once, too good to be true.

To my immense surprise, I found Calvin himself, from the many quotes Horton shared from the Institutes and other writings, to be compassionate and amiable — not the cold, stern voice I was expecting. He was erudite, thoughtful, and reasonable, yielding points where I did not expect him to yield; I was expecting rigid, dogmatic pronouncements. I had to admit, I liked Calvin. One passage in particular, Horton quoted at length. Of my beloved ancients, Calvin wrote:

Whenever we come upon these matters in secular writers, let that admirable light of truth shining in them teach us that the mind of man, though fallen and perverted from its wholeness, is nevertheless clothed and ornamented with God’s excellent gifts. If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God. For by holding the gifts of the Spirit in slight esteem, we contemn and reproach the Spirit himself. What then? Shall we deny that the truth shone upon the ancient jurists who established civic order and discipline with such great equity? Shall we say that the philosophers were blind in their fine observation and artful description of nature? Shall we say that those men were devoid of understanding who conceived the art of disputation and taught us to speak reasonably? Shall we say that they are insane who developed medicine, devoting their labor to our benefit? What shall we say of all the mathematical sciences? Shall we consider them the ravings of madmen? No, we cannot read the writings of the ancients on these subjects without great admiration. We marvel at them because we are compelled to recognize how preeminent they are. But shall we count anything praiseworthy or noble without recognizing at the same time that it comes from God? Let us be ashamed of such ingratitude, into which not even the pagan poets fell, for they confessed that the gods had invented philosophy, laws, and all useful arts. Those men whom Scripture, calls “natural men” were, indeed, sharp and penetrating in their investigation of inferior things. Let us, accordingly, learn by their example how many gifts the Lord left to human nature even after it was despoiled if its true good (Calvin, Institutes, 2.2.15, quoted at Horton, For Calvinism, 42).

The more I read, the more I was taken aback. As Horton laid out the doctrines of the TULIP (the terms of which he slightly modified), the “five points” of Calvinism, the idea began to crystallize: This is not that different than what we believe. Though Horton made fairly frequent references to what “Roman Catholics believe” — very often misunderstanding or misrepresenting what we in fact believe — his descriptions of Calvinist doctrine seemed to agree in many aspects with Catholic understandings. Total depravity — our total inability, in mankind’s fallen state, to reach to God in any way apart from His grace: certainly, the Church has always believed that. Unconditional election — without a doubt, Scripture teaches God’s election; and the way Horton presented it, it made perfect sense; when it didn’t, he appealed to mystery. I was impressed and relieved that Horton vehemently rejected double predestination. No, Horton said, it is perfectly reasonable to believe that God simply passes over those he does not choose, leaving them to the wages of their sins. I began to write extensively in the margins.

The chapter on atonement fascinated me. Horton went down a list of theories of the atonement, none of which I had studied before. But each of the ones Calvinism affirmed were consistent with the Church’s teachings; most of them, Horton admitted, were proposed by Church Fathers or even medieval theologians. In fact, Horton very frequently cited Church Fathers or church councils to illustrate or support his arguments. I met the doctrine of particular redemption (Horton’s preferred term for what is often called “limited atonement”) with considerably more resistance, but Horton explained it very well; it seemed to be logically necessary.

The way Horton presented effectual grace (or “irresistible grace”) didn’t immediately conflict with Catholic teaching. Catholics affirm that it is only by God’s grace that we are called. Though we believe that we have to assent to that grace, how do we know it wasn’t irresistible, since we who are Christians didn’t resist it? It was certainly effectual in us. Horton explained that after that initial, saving grace, Calvinists believe that in their continuing conversion, they have to “work out their salvation with fear and trembling,” cooperating with God’s grace to move toward their sanctification — an idea completely consistent with Catholic teaching.

At the very beginning of his argument for perseverance of the saints, Horton gave a hefty quote from St. Augustine. In the margin I wrote, “HA!” Following from Augustine, Horton went on to describe the “visible church” that contained both the elect and the nonelect — both those who would be saved and those who would be lost — in the same terms Catholics use. People fall away, he affirmed; people apostasize; it happens. But God never loses those whom He chose, whom He effectually called. If we do not fall away, if we do not deny Him, we will be saved.

Horton went on to relate Calvinism and the Christian life. His descriptions of a piety that emphasized public, communal means of grace over private relationships with God could be easily applied to Catholic piety. The remainder of the book, with chapters on Calvinism and missions, and a hasty summation rounded out with rude, unsupported jabs at Roman Catholicism, was unsatisfying. Horton should stick to what he does best, theology.

In the end, I was thoroughly enchanted by Horton’s book. He had sanded off the hard edges of Calvinism, and presented what on its face seemed moderate and logical and well supported. I went off jabbering about all the things it had in common with Catholicism, wondering why in the world we had been unable to resolve our differences for the past five hundred years. I didn’t realize until later — until after I’d read Olson’s Against Calvinism — where I had gone wrong. In my thinking, I mistook unconditional election for foreknowledge: since we have to assent to God’s call, how do we know he didn’t elect from the beginning those whom he foreknew would assent? But then, this election wouldn’t have been unconditional. Remove that brick, and the whole structure comes tumbling down.

Ultimately, in his efforts to be reasonable and moderate, Horton had nearly completely downplayed the absolute, meticulous sovereignty of God that Calvinists affirm. I had to go back through to look for affirmations that this is what he believes; and they were there, but subtle. All of the points of Calvinism that seemed acceptable to me had only been acceptable without the idea that God was decreeing absolutely everything. Adding this back to the mix, and following it to its logical conclusion — as Olson does in Against Calvinism — results in some truly disturbing contradictions.

But you’ll have to wait until tomorrow (or later; I can’t promise) to hear about that. Of For Calvinism, I can say that it was well written and well presented, and I enjoyed it a lot. Horton is a good theologian and a good writer and I hope to read some more from him in the future. He dispelled many of the caricatures I had of Calvinism; he puffed away even some of the bad experiences I have had with Calvinists. Above all, and most important, he brought me to an understanding of the harmony and consistency of Calvinist thought. I can at last see why my friends find it so assuring. I have a newfound respect for Calvinist theology, and for Calvin himself, and I intend to continue my study.

Postscript: For what it’s worth, I am not alone in my feeble attempt to reconcile Calvinist theology to Catholic theology. Jimmy Akin did the same thing a number of years ago, with much better results: A Tiptoe through TULIP.

The Lonely Pilgrim

A Christian's Road Home to Rome and Journey Onward

Category Archives: Theology

Analogies for the Catholic view of grace and salvation

Against a Charge of Pelagianism

Luther and Indulgences

Luther was not the first to attempt to reform the practice of indulgences

Luther was not initially opposed to the doctrine of indulgences

Luther’s later views, and the Protestant Reformation

Indulgences: What they mean

What an indulgence is not

What is an indulgence?

The Communion of Saints and the Treasury of Merit

The Doctrine of Indulgences

A Church with Authority

Tradition and Biblical Interpretation

The Body and Blood of Christ

The Doctrine of the Real Presence in Scripture and Theology

The Real Presence in My Journey of Faith

Eucharistic Hymns

By Scripture Alone; Alone with Scripture

Sola Scriptura and Sacred Tradition

The Other Side of Calvin

Discovering Calvin