Tag Archives: Protestant Reformation

“Let him be Anathema”: Not what many Protestants think it means

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Giraudon, Council of Trent

The Council of Trent, 4th December 1563 (23rd session).

I do hope this can be a very short, breathless break, since my thesis is picking up momentum and I don’t want to do anything to put on the brakes. But this is something that has come up frequently in my conversations with Protestants: Many Protestants misunderstand the idea of anathema, as in the formula used by the councils of Church in rejecting various doctrines — most particularly the canons of the Council of Trent in rejecting Protestant doctrines:

CANON IX. If any one shall say, that by faith alone the impious is justified; so as to mean that nothing else is required to co-operate in order unto obtaining the grace of justification, and that it is not in any respect necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will; let him be anathema. (Council of Trent, Sixth Session [1547], Decree concerning Justification [trans. Theodore Alois Buckley])

(For the most piercing and enlightening commentary I’ve ever read on these pronouncements of Trent concerning justification and other doctrines, you should read my dear frend Laura, a former Protestant like myself who can sweep away Protestant questions and confusion like nobody else I know.)

The Council of Trent

The Magisterium of Church, assembled at the Council of Trent.

So anathema: To translate the word etymologically and literally, it can mean “accursed”; even “devoted to destruction.” Many Protestants understand that when the Council of Trent declared holders of these doctrines to be “anathema,” it was “devoting them to destruction” or even pronouncing “eternal damnation” on them — such that Protestants think that to “anathematize” someone is to “damn them to hell.” Naturally, Protestants are rather offended by this, and rightly hold that any Church that would pronounce eternal damnation on someone is not acting according to God’s will — which is that all men should be saved (1 Timothy 2:4).

But that’s not what the council was saying at all. Through generations of use, beginning even with the usage of St. Paul in the New Testament, anathema came to mean something other than its literal, etymological meaning — particularly in Latin, and particularly in the councils of the Church. Anathema sit (“Let him be anathema”) became a legal formula, something repeated by the councils to announce a particular, traditional judgment. When the councils pronounced holders of a doctrine anathema, it marked a formal excommunication from the Church: nothing more and nothing less.

Ribera, Saint Paul (1637)

Saint Paul (1637), by Jusepe de Ribera.

Excommunication, too, is often misunderstood; even though it is a biblical doctrine that many Protestants practice (I have heard them refer to it euphemistically as “disfellowship,” but the concept is the same): to remove one who is unrepentant in sin or incorrigibly teaching error from one’s church body, as St. Paul recommended in 1 Corinthians 5, even using language evocative of anathema (“deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh”, v. 5).

But the Catholic Church’s model of excommunication is just as St. Paul’s: it is not a pronouncement of eternal damnation, but a disciplinary measure designed to motivate the sinner to repentance and reconciliation. The full verse above reads, “Deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” The goal of excommunication is not damnation, but salvation. It is the Church’s mission to love and lead the lost to salvation in Christ, not to hate or damn to hell (hello Westboro Baptist Church). Excommunication is tough love, the Holy Mother Church kicking her prodigal son out of the house until he gets his act together. And just as with the father of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32), it is the Church’s great joy to accept and embrace her lost son back as soon as he repents and seeks forgiveness (cf. 2 Corinthians 2:5–11).

El Greco, Portrait of Pope Pius V (c. 1605)

El Greco, Portrait of Pope Pius V (c. 1605) (WikiPaintings.org)

“But… but… you’re making that up!” I’ve heard Protestants say. “You’re just trying to change the meaning to whitewash what the council did!” “Show me where it says that this is what it meant!” Well, simple logic dictates that the Church was not pronouncing a permanent, irrevocable damnation here: If that were so, then the Church would not have gone to such great effort to win back our separated Protestant brethren during the Counter-Reformation (notably through the efforts of the Jesuits) and ever since: If any holder of Protestant doctrines was irretrievably damned — if the Church wanted to damn him — then why bother? Many, many separated brothers, even whole countries, such as Poland and Lithuania, were brought back to the Catholic faith, and accepted with open and loving arms.

Also, for what it’s worth, the canons of the councils of the Catholic Church apply only to members of the Catholic Church: after one has formally separated from the Catholic Church and rejected its authority, then its disciplinary pronouncements have no more bearing on him. The declaration of anyone as “anathema” at the Council of Trent does not technically apply to Protestants today, only to Catholics who were espousing those doctrines. You can’t very well be excommunicated from something you were never formally a part of.

But here are a few sources explaining the meaning of anathema, not made up by me or anyone else:

ANATHEMA. A thing devoted or given over to evil, so that “anathema sit” means, “let him be accursed.” St. Paul at the end of 1 Corinthians pronounces this anathema on all who do not love our blessed Saviour. The Church has used the phrase “anathema sit” from the earliest times with reference to those whom she excludes from her communion either because of moral offences or because they persist in heresy. Thus one of the earliest councils — that of Elvira, held in 306 — decrees in its fifty-second canon that those who placed libellous writings in the church should be anathematised; and the First General Council anathematised those who held the Arian heresy. General councils since then have usually given solemnity to their decrees on articles of faith by appending an Anathema.

Neither St. Paul nor the Church of God ever wished a soul to be damned. In pronouncing anathema against wilful heretics, the Church does but declare that they are excluded from her communion, and that they must, if they continue obstinate, perish eternally. (W. E. Addis, & T. Arnold, A Catholic Dictionary. New York: Catholic Pub. Soc., 1887], 24)

And for a bit lengthier and more precise:

Anathema. — This may be a convenient place to explain the true meaning of the phrase, “Let him be Anathema,” with which these and so many other definitions of doctrine close. The word is of Greek origin, and exists in that language in two forms, distinguished by a very trifling difference of spelling, but very distinct in use. Both are derived from a verb meaning “to set aside,” and in one form (ἀνάθημα) the word is used of something precious, set aside for the service of God, such as the gifts with which the Temple in Jerusalem was adorned (St. Luke 21:5; see also 2 Maccabees 9:16). But the word occurs also in another form (ἀνάθεμα), and with this spelling it is employed to signify a penal setting aside, whether of a thing which has been used as the instrument of wickedness, or of a person who has lost his social rights by crime. It occurs in both senses, in a verse of Deuteronomy (7:26). St. Paul uses the word more than once, to signify that a person is not worthy to be admitted into the society of Christians (1 Corinthians 16:22; Galatians 1:8, 9).

In the language of the Church, the phrase, “Let him be Anathema,” is used in the same manner as by St. Paul, and is a form of assigning the penalty of excommunication for an offence; when used, as it often is, to enforce definitions of faith, it means no more than this; but sometimes an Anathema seems to mean an excommunication pronounced against an offender with solemn and impressive ceremonies, which, however, do not alter the nature of the punishment. As we remarked in the place cited from our first volume, no anathema or other act of a human judge can take away the grace of God from the soul, if by any error the judgment has been pronounced against an innocent man.

In one place (1 Cor. 16:22) St. Paul adds to the word Anathema “Maranatha;” and the same is sometimes done by Councils of particular Churches, but the usage has not passed into the general Canon Law. It has been supposed, but wrongly, that the addition of this word signifies that the censure will never be relaxed (Benedict XIV, De Synod. 10, i. 7). Maranatha is in truth an Aramaic word, belonging to a language familiar to St. Paul and most of his readers. It means “The Lord is at hand,” and has the same force as when this expression is used in its Greek form. (Philippians 4:5) The phrase enhances the force of that to which it it appended, by solemnly reminding the reader that Christ will come again, to judge the world. (S. J. Hunter, Outlines of Dogmatic Theology, 3rd ed., vol. 2 [New York: Benzinger Bros., 1896], 399–401)

And for a secular source, lest you think this is a Catholic conspiracy to change history:

anathema, (from Greek anatithenai: “to set up,” or “to dedicate”), in the Old Testament, a creature or object set apart for sacrificial offering. Its return to profane use was strictly banned, and such objects, destined for destruction, thus became effectively accursed as well as consecrated. Old Testament descriptions of religious wars call both the enemy and their besieged city anathema inasmuch as they were destined for destruction.

In New Testament usage a different meaning developed. St. Paul used the word anathema to signify a curse and the forced expulsion of one from the community of Christians. In A.D. 431 St. Cyril of Alexandria pronounced his 12 anathemas against the heretic Nestorius. In the 6th century anathema came to mean the severest form of excommunication that formally separated a heretic completely from the Christian church and condemned his doctrines; minor excommunications, while prohibiting free reception of the sacraments, obliged (and permitted) the sinner to rectify his sinful state through the sacrament of penance. (“Anathema,” in Encyclopedia Brittannica)

You’ll find much the same in any other scholarly source (barring the likes of Jack Chick and Loraine Boettner).

Once again, I fail, predictably, at brevity. I’d better get back to work. I do hope this will be helpful to some seeker.

The Work of the Reformation

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Von Werner, Luther before the Diet of Worms

Luther before the Diet of Worms (1877), by Anton von Werner. (Wikipedia)

I love the boldness of nineteenth century writers:

The work of the Reformation was a work of division, of separation, of isolation. It was an effort to sever nations from Peter, the centre of Christian life; to rob the faithful of the bread of angels, to cast off the intercession of Mary and the Saints, thus leaving man alone to purchase, as best he could, the heavenly kingdom by a barren faith in the one Mediator.

—Alexis Henri Marie Cardinal Lépicier, OSM
Indulgences: Their Origin, Nature, and Development (1895)

I’m teaching a lesson on Indulgences to our RCIA class next week, and I’m learning a lot in the process. This book is a fascinating read: Cardinal Lépicier is quite ardent for the faith, and doesn’t pull punches. I’m also learning a lot about Penance, and it’s strengthening me greatly in my Lenten journey. I hope to post more about it soon.

Please pray for me. It’s crunch time for my thesis.

A burden for Christian unity

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Giotto di Bondone. The Lamentations Over Our Lord Christ. Cappella Scrovegni a Padova.1305

I am really deeply troubled.

I can’t entirely put my finger on why, but this is the same burden that has been dogging me all weekend.

It seems very wrong, very contrary to the will of God, that even in the decadence of modern secular society — a decadence that threatens even the Church — the Church of Christ remains deeply divided against itself. We are fighting among ourselves when we should be fighting for Christ.

This was the sentiment behind the Evangelicals and Catholics Together document drafted by Chuck Colson and Fr. Richard Neuhaus in 1994. A number of prominent leaders in both evangelical churches and the Catholic Church agreed to it and signed it. More troubling, though, is the not insignificant number of leaders on both sides who attacked the document and refused to have anything to do with it.

500 years after the Reformation, there are still a large number of evangelicals who will offer no quarter to a Catholic, who will not even sit down at the table with one lest there be any appearance of compromise. They would separate themselves from all fellowship with Catholics, even deny them a place in the kingdom of God. These are not just fringe elements; these include major leaders and theologians such as R. C. Sproul. People like James White write whole books attacking Catholicism and denying that Catholics are Christian. I have run into quite a few of these people in just my short time in the blogosphere. Even my own best friends would rather fight me when it comes to discussing doctrine than seek common ground. And every time it happens I feel a burden of rejection and frustration and despair.

And I don’t understand it. There is a wide diversity of doctrine in Protestantism — yet not the same kind of unfathomable chasm. Calvinists and Arminians disagree sharply, but are willing to have conversations with each other. Baptists and Methodists can agree to disagree about infant baptism versus believer’s baptism. These are issues that go just as deeply into soteriology, the theology of salvation, as the divide between Catholics and Protestants, and yet many Protestants wouldn’t even consider a similar truce with a Catholic.

James White argues that Catholics and Protestants disagree fundamentally about what the Gospel even is. Having been both a Protestant and a Catholic, that argument is incomprehensible to me. Of course it’s the same Gospel. How can anyone deny that? I follow the same Christ I’ve followed all my life. I hope in the same salvation, the same forgiveness of sins, the same resurrection. My Protestant Baptism was acceptable to the Catholic Church; why can’t my Catholic justification be valid in the eyes of a Protestant?

Catholics and Protestants have deep disagreements about doctrine. I don’t deny that, and I don’t pretend it doesn’t matter. If we believe what we teach, then it necessarily means believing that the other side of the argument is wrong. But look at it this way: Regardless of which side is right, the other is not excluded from salvation. If it is true, as Catholics believe, that we are justified by the outpouring of God’s grace through faith, and sanctified over the course of our lives as we walk in that grace, then certainly many Protestants, who faithfully believe in Christ and from that faith follow Him and walk with Him, will be saved. Or if it is true, as Protestants believe, that we are justified by faith alone in Christ through His grace, then certainly many Catholics who have a genuine faith in Christ will be saved. The only way to exclude Catholics from salvation, as some Protestants are wont to do, is to believe that salvation is by faith in the five solas alone — that by confessing the Reformation we are saved.

I have no interest in attacking the Protestant faith. I will defend the Catholic faith, but it is deeply unpleasant to me to be forced to return polemic for polemic, as I’ve had to do in White’s case. I am glad to help any pilgrim who wishes to cross the Tiber, but even more deeply than that, I want to build a bridge, on which both sides might meet and resolve some of these rancorous disputes. I long for Christendom to be at peace.

Luther and Indulgences

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Martin Luther

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

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

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Martin Luther

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:

  1. An indulgence is not a permission to commit sin, or a pardon of future sin.
  2. An indulgence is not, and does not offer, forgiveness of the guilt of sin; it presupposes that the sin has already been forgiven.
  3. An indulgence is not an exemption or immunity from any law or duty, and does not in itself make restitution for sin.
  4. An indulgence does not confer immunity from temptation or remove the possibility of falling into sin.
  5. 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

All Saints

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)

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

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Codex Vaticanus

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.

Why Protestants Should Care

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St. Gregory the Great

St. Gregory the Great, a Christian of the sixth century.

So, I finally revealed my blog to my Facebook and Twitter friends. And a good many of them have followed me. Being a little more public has brought about a good bit of self-scrutiny: Am I relevant? Why should anybody want to read my blog? Why should Protestants, in particular, want to read my blog?

Well, let me say up front that my aim is not to convert anybody. If my own journey in any way inspires anyone else to look into the Catholic Church for themselves, I would be gratified and humbled; but I don’t really expect that to happen.

But the first reason I would give why Protestants should read my blog is that the Roman Catholic Church is Christian, too. There’s such a tendency — particularly in the evangelical branches of the faith, as I can attest — to marginalize and ignore the modern Catholic Church as something foreign, irrelevant, and obsolete, at best — at worst as something corrupt, unbiblical, and anti-Christian. Growing up evangelical, I simply never heard about the Catholic Church. Reading even the most scholarly and thoughtful evangelical books, I never saw the Catholic Church mentioned. When I did hear it mentioned, it was usually in shades of otherness and mistrust — as a “dead religion” bound up in “empty tradition” and “works’ righteousness.” The primary thing I want to convey about my newfound faith is that this stereotype is completely false. By my witness and by my words, I hope to vividly proclaim the life and love of the Catholic faith. And, as Protestants, I hope you will welcome this message and embrace Catholics as brothers and sisters in the faith.

Not only is the Catholic Church Christian, but it is an essential part of the Christian heritage of all Protestants. The Christian faith didn’t suddenly emerge out of nothing in 1517. Whatever you may believe personally about the Catholic Church, you must acknowledge that the Roman Catholic Church received and nourished and protected the Christian faith, and its Bible, through nearly 1,500 years of history, at last bearing it into the hands of the Protestant Reformers in the sixteenth century. What happened over the course of those prior centuries? Growing up, I had little idea, and I suppose many other Protestants do not either. There is a tendency among many Protestants to reject the Catholic past, when in fact it is the Christian past. Did the faith die, or shrivel up, or disappear, over those ages? Did the Catholic Church cease to be Christian? One only need look as far as just a few of the shining examples of faith we have in the saints, to assure oneself that it did not: St. Gregory the Great (c. 540–604), St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), St. Francis of Assisi (1182–1226), St. Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556), St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873–1897). These and many other Christians of the past can inspire and enrich your faith.

Through understanding the Christian past — where your faith has come from, how it came to you, and the people of the past who have lived and shared it — you can better understand the faith and how to live it today. Through appreciating the Catholic Church as the Mother Church of your own, rather than rejecting it as something lost and devoid, you can gain assurance of the integrity, security, and timelessness of the Christian Gospel over all the ages of history. You may even find something of value to your own faith that has been lost through all the turmoil of the Reformation and its aftermath. As an historian, a friend, and an evangelical, I hope to be able to share the history of the Church in an accessible and interesting way.

Finally, I hope you will read my blog because we are all Christians together. We all share the love of God and the Gospel of Christ. And we owe it to our Lord not to abandon His Church to the division and disunity to which our ancestors have driven it. It is the burden of each and every one of us to strive for understanding across the chasms we have made — because Christ is undivided; it is we who have brought brokenness to the earthly Church, and we who perpetuate it every day that all Christians cannot break bread together. It is my hope that through striving to understand our differences and disagreements in these pages, I will help all see that we are not that far apart, and maybe even help us to draw closer together — closer to reunification. I truly believe that it is possible, and that it is more important now than ever before that we stand together as the Body of Christ.

By Scripture Alone; Alone with Scripture

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

Gutenberg Bible

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.

Salvation by Grace Alone

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One of the most frequent charges I’ve heard from Protestants against Catholicism, who attack it as a heresy or a “false gospel,” is that the Catholic Church teaches “works’ righteousness,” or “salvation by works.” This is what I grew up hearing and believing, so I know the thinking well. Protestants think that Catholics believe they can “save themselves” or somehow merit salvation from God, through their good works, apart from His grace. This couldn’t be further from the truth. So, I thought I would take a moment to present what the Church actually teaches, so that anyone making this charge will at least be informed.

Protestant theology teaches salvation (or justification; Protestants and Catholics have different understandings of this word) by grace alone (sola gratia) through faith alone (sola fide), drawing this largely from the epistles of St. Paul, especially Romans and Galatians. Protestants seem to think that Catholics don’t read the same letters. We do, and always have. The Catholic Church fully affirms that salvation is by grace alone, but has a different interpretation of the passages in which Protestants read sola fide, especially in light of other passages, most notably from the Book of James (which Martin Luther famously declared an “epistle of straw” and wanted to discard as uncanonical). Catholics certainly affirm salvation by faith. But Paul never once says by faith alone.

This is a much bigger argument than I have time to get into in a single post — many, many people have written whole books about this issue, and I have no hopes to resolve it here. The Wikipedia article is meaty with evidence and claims from both sides, for anyone who might be interested: there are just as many verses of Scripture cited to reject sola fide as to support it. This is one of the fundamental disagreements between Catholics and Protestants, and as long as people have free thought, we will be of different minds.

What I do hope to do here is to clear up what the Catholic Church actually teaches regarding grace and faith and “works” in salvation. (There’s another much misunderstood doctrine of “merit” that relates to this, but I will save that for next time.) Protestants teach that justification comes from grace alone. Catholics affirm this:

Our justification comes from the grace of God. Grace is favor, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life (CCC 1996).

This vocation to eternal life is supernatural. It depends entirely on God’s gratuitous initiative, for he alone can reveal and give himself. It surpasses the power of human intellect and will, as that of every other creature (CCC 1998).

Now, regarding works: let’s go ahead and get this out of the way. The Council of Trent, in its first canon on justification, declared in no uncertain terms:

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”).

Do Catholics believe that works (or deeds, or things we do) justify us? Absolutely not. We are justified solely by the gratuitous grace of God.

But what is the role of works? Do works play a role in our justification? Catholics believe they do. So do many Protestants. One needs to understand what we mean by “works.” Basically, and most importantly, it means one has to work at salvation: we have to do something.

What do we have to do? First, and most essential, we have to cooperate with God’s grace; we have to accept it:

Justification establishes cooperation between God’s grace and man’s freedom. On man’s part it is expressed by the assent of faith to the Word of God, which invites him to conversion, and in the cooperation of charity with the prompting of the Holy Spirit who precedes and preserves his assent:

When God touches man’s heart through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, man himself is not inactive while receiving that inspiration, since he could reject it; and yet, without God’s grace, he cannot by his own free will move himself toward justice in God’s sight (Council of Trent, 1547: Sixth Session, Chapter V [DS 1525]) (CCC 1992).

This belief that we have to assent to God’s prevenient grace (that is, grace coming before regeneration, drawing us to Christ) is essentially the same doctrine taught by Arminian and Wesleyan theology. In fact, they found it the same place we did, St. Augustine.

The Synod furthermore declares that . . . the beginning of the said Justification is to be derived from the prevenient grace of God, through Jesus Christ, that is to say, from His vocation [calling], whereby, without any merits existing on their parts, they are called; that so they, who by sins were alienated from God, may be disposed through His quickening and assisting grace, to convert themselves to their own justification, by freely assenting to and co-operating with that said grace . . . (Council of Trent, 1547: Sixth Session, Chapter V). [This quote dovetails with the one above cited in the Catechism.]

So, initial justification and conversion is entirely by grace, but must be assented to in order to receive it. So what about continuing “works”? Well, in our continuing sanctification and conversion to Christ, we have to continue cooperating with God’s grace. And that’s a lot of work. And, as St. James says, “Faith apart from works is dead” (James 2:17, 26 ESV). Do works justify us? No. But through our works, God works with us to bring about our sanctification.

And just to be clear, what “works” am I talking about? Most important is participation in the Sacraments, constantly renewing our relationship with Christ and with His Church. Also prayer, fasting, almsgiving, acts of charity and loving our neighbor: what Jesus commanded us to do. Without these “works,” a Christian isn’t exactly taking part in the life of Christ. St. Paul tells us to “work out [our] own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in [us], both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12 ESV).

God works in us, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. It is God’s constant and continuing grace that enables us to do the work we do, to even engage with His working in our lives:

The preparation of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace. This latter is needed to arouse and sustain our collaboration in justification through faith, and in sanctification through charity. God brings to completion in us what he has begun, “since he who completes his work by cooperating with our will began by working so that we might will it” (St. Augustine, De gratia et libero arbitrio, 17):

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, De natura et gratia, 31) (CCC 2001).

Once again, this doctrine of cooperating with God’s grace is very similar to the doctrines of Arminian Protestants. We understand grace in different ways, but both agree that we must work with it. Arminian theologian Roger Olson writes, “If people are working out their salvation, from beginning to end, it is only because ‘God is at work’ in them. That’s prevenient, assisting grace: prevenient leading up to conversion and assisting throughout the entire Christian life” (Olson, Against Calvinism, 172).

So, to draw this to a close: synergistic (requiring our cooperation with God’s grace), Catholic theology is, similar to Arminian and Wesleyan theology; as opposed to monergistic as are Calvinist and Lutheran theology. “Works’ salvation” it is not.

What was I before?

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I’ve been doing some reading lately. Feeling slightly ashamed, I used to admit to my Catholic friends that I was reading a Protestant book, but I don’t anymore. No one has ever said anything. Whether a book is Catholic or Protestant has little bearing on its read-worthiness; both Catholics and Protestants have worthy things to say about God.

Belatedly (posthumously?), I’ve been boning up on my Protestant theology. When I was a Protestant, I had little understanding of theology, and little patience for its uncertainty — with all of the voices disagreeing, interpreting Scripture differently, how could I possibly find the truth in that muddle? But now that I’ve found an absolute certainty in the authority of the Church and Magisterium — now that I have a firm foundation on which to base what I believe — then I am better able to comprehend and consider the ideas of others. It’s ironic that the very cornerstone of the Reformation, sola scriptura, the Reformers’ very attempt to find a bedrock of authority, proved to be my greatest stumbling block.

My theological underpinning was never strong to begin with. Growing up, I never had any formal catechesis on Christian doctrine or theology. What I knew, I knew by osmosis, more from the culture around me than from any teaching or preaching: Jesus died to forgive our sins that we might have eternal life. Beyond that basic truth was muddiness. I had heard of Martin Luther as the heroic Reformer, and of John Calvin as “that guy who believed in predestination, and we don’t believe in that” — but we didn’t seem to be following in either of those traditions. Who were we? Where did we come from?

It wasn’t until late in high school, when we reading The Scarlet Letter, that I first learned the differences between Calvinism* and Arminianism. And I realized that we at Calvary were essentially Arminian, a term I had never heard before. Predestination (election), grace, and human nature just weren’t talked about at my church, ever. In my thinking, our salvation depended on us, on our choosing to follow God in faith. God wasn’t compelling us by His grace, snatching us up against our will, or damning others to the fires of hell. Neither was He denying that we had free will at all. And we could certainly backslide and walk away from God. I had this crude, misshapen conception of Reformed theology for years.

* Some of my Reformed friends have taken exception to the term “Calvinism,” preferring instead “Reformed” theology or even simply “doctrines of grace.” I use the term “Calvinism” both out of grammatical expediency and an aim for doctrinal clarity, to refer to those doctrines taught by, in line with, or in the tradition of John Calvin and his followers, and not to convey any negative connotation. Because there is more than one “Reformed” tradition, and more than one understanding of the “doctrines of grace.” I’m talking about the Calvinist one.

As I grew older and attempted to educate myself more, I became more and more frustrated by theological confusion and my lack of foundation. And I eventually decided that it didn’t really matter anyway, that God loved us all no matter what we believed about Him, that there was no way to find the truth in all the mess. It was a position of thoroughgoing ecumenism, or worse, doctrinal agnosticism. I have met so many Christians at this same point, eschewing labels and denominations and formal doctrine in favor of terms like “nondenominational Christian,” “mere Christian” (I preferred that one, after C.S. Lewis — but Lewis never intended in that book that anyone should remain a “mere Christian”), or “Jesus follower.”

But the more I read, the more I see that labels and denominations and doctrines do matter. In one sense I believe I was right, and still maintain, that all orthodox believers are followers of Christ and should strive to find our common ground rather than be continually divisive in our disunity. But in another, what we believe about God and about salvation profoundly affects how we view God and ourselves and our relationship to Him, how we view the world around us, how we view our neighbor and our mission as Christians on this earth. Just looking around to what different Christians do attests to this. Some emphasize world missions, devoting money and time to spreading the Gospel and ministering to the needs of regions of our world stricken with poverty, disease, and strife. Others are more focused on caring for the needy in their own back yard. Some are ardently evangelical, canvassing cities with tracts and distributing Bibles, warning of the immediacy of death apart from salvation. Others are more reflective and calculated in their evangelism and outreach, preferring their lives and their works to be their witnesses. Still others, perhaps the majority, don’t do anything at all. It’s not so much about labels as about lifestyle.

I never thought much until recently about the differences between how Christians view the Christian life and Christian piety. In my Pentecostal upbringing, as I’ve written, the focus was on the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, and on personal piety, Bible study and “quiet times” of private devotion. Other Christians around me just didn’t seem to care about that, and I must confess, I wondered, especially when I was younger, if they were “bad” Christians, if they didn’t care about God or their relationship to Him. But no — the book I’m reading pointed out that this understanding of a personal, private relationship with God is essentially an evangelical one — that some Christians, especially Reformed (as the book is treating), but just as well Catholics, see the heart of Christian life in public professions of faith, in liturgy and the Sacraments, and most of all in service. That doesn’t diminish the importance of personal piety and personal faith at all — but it’s what we do in the light that makes us Christians (John 3:19-21).

I’ve always struggled with the terms “evangelical” and “fundamentalist.” So do a lot of people; there have been whole books written on the difference. I am not convinced the distinction is really very helpful: most evangelical Christians believe the “fundamentals,” and most fundamentalists are evangelical in outlook or piety; the difference, especially to the secular world, often seems to be one of the degree of fervency or severity, and especially the latter label is often used pejoratively. It seems clear (I now realize fully for the first time) that Reformed (Calvinist) Christians are not evangelicals. And it also seems clear to me that I as a Protestant was an evangelical, because of the emphasis on a personal conversion experience and personal relationship with God, and a Charismatic and a Pentecostal (the latter is a subset of the former), because of the emphasis on miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit. And, I would argue, because of the emphasis on personal, emotional experiences of God, on sensation and feeling over reason and doctrine.

A friend of mine, a convert to Orthodox Christianity, shared something while I was converting that I didn’t really understand until I reached this point. She wrote that her identity as an Orthodox Christian doesn’t erase or overwrite her identity as a Protestant or evangelical, but that deep down she will always have that and be that. I feel that about myself, too, as a Catholic. In converting, I didn’t cease to be something I was, but became something more. The butterfly still has the genes of the caterpillar. Though my feelings toward the faith of my youth are often ambivalent, I have taken many things from it that I will always carry with me as a Christian, that I believe are good things: devotion to private prayer and Bible study, a commitment to regular tithing of my income, and love for praise and worship music. So no, reflection on Protestant things is not “posthumous” at all or even retrospective. I am sure there are many other fruits of my Protestant identity that will continue to come to light.