Church of England chooses the way of Protestantism

The vote Monday night by the General Synod of the Church of England to permit the consecration of women as bishops means that the Church of England, as an institution, has made its choice, toward the way of Protestantism, and away from reunion with the Catholic Church. This comes one day after the Telegraph's story of Anglican bishops in a secret Vatican summit.

Fr. Longenecker is right when he says

Large scale ecumenism with the Catholic Church is definitely over. There's no point talking with the Anglican Communion. They spit in our face every time. Furthermore, there is no way a unified body could be identified to talk with even if we wanted to. Ecumenism will now be with individuals and smaller groups. Finally, the other thing that is certain is that the fuss in Anglicanism will bring a good number of people to the banks of the Tiber, and for that we should rejoice and continue to pray.

What exactly is happening? A separation is happening, as is quite clear. What principally characterizes the two sides? The essence of the position of the 'liberal' side is what is called 'modernism', which Pascendi Dominici Gregis condemned one hundred years ago. The Catholic encyclopedia entry defines 'modernism' as "the critique of our supernatural knowledge according to the false postulates of contemporary philosophy". The fundamental error of modernism is that it raises human reason above divine revelation. Thus, its fundamental error is a form of the chief of the seven deadly sins, the one through which Satan himself fell, pride. Faith and pride are immiscible, for the former is a trust in God, and the latter is a distrust in God and a trust in oneself.

In contrast to the 'liberal' side, the essence of the position of the 'traditional' side is a subordination of human reason to divine revelation.

Those who subject divine revelation to human reason cannot be truly united to those who subject human reason to divine revelation. "For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?" (2 Cor 6:14) Hence, wherever such persons are mixed together, they will necessarily eventually separate, as oil naturally separates from water. And that is what is happening with Anglicanism.

I believe that this fundamental separation will continue to take place all over the world, as I have argued in a little essay titled "On The Imminent and Final Conflict between the City of God and the City of Man", which I wrote in April/May of last year. [Of all that I have written on this blog, I believe that that and "The Gnostic Roots of Heresy" are the two most important (insofar as anything I have written here is important), for they describe the end and the beginning, respectively, of the story of unity and disunity.] The good ecumenical news out of this Anglican split is that those who subordinate human reason to divine revelation are, in a way, now more free to pursue reconciliation and reunion with the Catholic Church. It is among those persons who subordinate human reason to divine revelation, no matter what their Christian tradition, that ecumenical activity is and will be most fruitful, for such persons have the most important thing in common, i.e. humility before God and divine revelation. That is why I hope and expect to see a continued reconciliation between traditional Anglicans and the Catholic Church.

Two related articles on the prospects of traditional Anglicans reuniting with the Catholic Church are: "Anglicans to Catholics: Ready or Not, Here we Come" and "Church of England bishops coming home to Rome?"

Let us continue to pray for "the reconstitution of the full and visible unity of all Christ's followers".

UPDATE (July 8): Two Anglican bishops seek to lead traditional Anglicans to reconciliation with the Catholic Church. (See here) Fr. Longenecker comments on this development here. Taylor Marshall comments here.

Christianity: Relationship or Religion?

Answer: Both.

To treat it as a religion and not a relationship is to fall into Pharisaism, going through rituals without either understanding or believing what it is that they signify. To treat Christianity as a relationship and not a religion is to fall into gnosticism, i.e. to disregard the sacraments and the Church that Christ founded, by which we receive grace and into which we, as material beings, are incorporated.

Protestants seem more liable to the gnostic error, as Jonathan discusses here. Sherry Waddell points out here that a fair number of Catholics tend toward to Pharisaism.

Imagine if we were united, and had the benefit of each other's gifts.

Rick Phillips on Apostolic Succession

Rick Phillips

Last year I responded here to Rick Phillips' article "Beckwith, Trueman and the Holy Spirit". This past April, Rick wrote "An Apostolic Church". That article opens with a discussion of apostolic succession. Rick writes:

Apostolic Succession. When the qualifications of an apostle are considered, it is readily apparent that the idea of "apostolic succession" is a contradiction in terms. According to Acts 1:21, an apostle must have been in the company of Christ and the disciples during the years of his ministry on earth (Paul being an exception to this), an eye-witness to the resurrection, and a receive a specific, public calling to the office in the Church. it is impossible for anyone to meet these qualifications today. Moreover, when we consider that the redemptive-historic function of the apostles was to lay the foundation for the building of the church (see #3 below and Eph. 2:20), we also see the uniqueness of the office. I claim no expertise in building construction, but friends of mine who do assure me that only one foundation is laid. Afterwards one builds on the foundation already laid, which removes the function of the apostolate after the foundation-laying age.

What is striking to me here is the very first line. Rick seemingly attempts to refute the doctrine of apostolic succession by claiming that it is self-contradictory, since Apostles had to be witnesses of Christ's life and ministry. But the Catholic doctrine concerning apostolic succession does not mean that the episcopal successors of the Apostles are themselves Apostles. The Catholic doctrine concerning apostolic succession is that the Apostles handed on their authority and the stewardship of their teaching to their successors (i.e. the bishops) through the laying on of their hands, and that this handing on of the Apostles' authority and teaching stewardship was commanded by the Apostles to be a permanent practice in the Church, from each generation of bishops to the next. It is these bishops who have the authority to tell us what apostolic succession is, and how the Apostles passed on their teaching and authority. We do not have to choose between the following two options: either the Apostles ordained Apostles as successors, or the Apostles did not pass on their ecclesial authority to the bishops whom they ordained. That's a false dilemma. Of course it is true, as Rick notes, that the office of Apostle was unique, in just the way he says. But that doesn't entail that the bishops whom the Apostles ordained did not receive the ecclesial authority of the Apostles, or that there is no apostolic succession in that sense. The Church has always believed in apostolic succession, from the first century. That is what is meant by the term 'apostolic' in the line of the Creed: "I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church". I have discussed apostolic succession in more detail here, here, and here.

What does catholicity feel like?

We say in the Creed that we believe in "one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church". So what does catholicity feel like? It feels a bit like this:



Catholicity is the exact opposite of the perpetual isolation, solipsism and irreversibly curved-inwardness of the ubiquitous individualism in hell; hence the irony of the title of Matt's video.

"All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." (Matthew 28:20)

"But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth." (Acts 1:8)

"For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall" (Ephesians 2:14)

"Worthy art Thou to take the book, and to break its seals; for Thou wast slain, and didst purchase for God with Thy blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation." (Revelation 5:9)

"After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches were in their hands." (Revelation 7:9)

And I saw another angel flying in midheaven, having an eternal gospel to preach to those who live on the earth, and to every nation and tribe and tongue and people." (Revelation 14:6)

"Young man dedicates years to walk the world for Christian unity"

Sam Clear

This is my kind of guy! I can't imagine what it must be like for him right now, having just completed a one and a half year walk around the globe. Way to go Sam! If you can walk around the globe for Christian unity, the least we Christians can do is commit ourselves to talking to each other about that which still divides us, and praying daily for the full visible union of all Christians.

Here's Sam's website; and here's his blog.

Freedom and Ecclesial Authority

Today in the United States we celebrate "Independence Day", and our freedom as a nation. But our conception of freedom has shifted, over time, from liberty to something closer to license. The contemporary American conception of freedom is roughly the right to do whatever one wants. The lyrics to The Rolling Stones' song "I'm Free" capture the contemporary concept quite well:

I’m free to do what I want any old time
I’m free to do what I want any old time
So love me, hold me, hold me, love me
I’m free to do what I want any old time

I’m free to sing my song though it gets out of time
I’m free to sing my song though it slips out of time
So love me, hold me, hold me, love me
And I’m free to do what I want any old time

Love me, hold me, hold me, love me
But I’m free to do what I want any old time

I’m free to choose what I please at any old time
I’m free to please who I choose any old time
So hold me, love me, love me, hold me
I’m free to do what I want any old time

So love me, hold me, hold me, love me
I'm free to what I want any old time.

This conception of freedom pervades our religious thought as well. Since we believe that freedom is a great good, and since Christ came to set us free (John 8:36; Galatians 5:1), and since freedom in the contemporary sense of the term seems to be at odds with hierarchy and institutional authority, therefore hierarchy and institutional authority are thought to be restrictive of true Christianity. True Christianity, according to this conception of freedom, eventually does away with institutions and hierarchies. In true Christianity everyone has equal access to God; everyone is a priest. We all have the Spirit, and we all have the truth, and the truth sets us all free (John 8:32). No one except Christ has the authoritative determination of doctrine or the authoritative interpretation of Scripture. In Christ we are free to worship God as we see fit.

But in the Christan tradition, freedom has not been understood as doing whatever one wants. To make my argument as briefly as I can, let me start by going back to Socrates. Socrates makes this same sort of argument to Callicles in Plato's Gorgias. Callicles, like Mick Jagger, thinks that freedom is being able to do whatever you want, where "whatever you want" is entirely disconnected [conceptually] from the ontological structure or nature of the human person. In the course of his dialogue with Callicles, Socrates shows that the person who lacks self-control, and is thereby enslaved to his appetites, is not free. So while "being able to do whatever you want" is a true description of freedom, it is very much incomplete and misleading, apart from a fuller account of what it is exactly to do what one truly wants, given the structure of our nature as human persons.

That is why in the classical and Christian philosophical tradition, it was understood that freedom is perfected as one becomes virtuous, and freedom is lost as one becomes vicious. The perfectly virtuous person is maximally free; he does whatever he wants, because whatever he wants (given his ordered disposition in his virtuous state) is truly good for him and perfecting of him – whatever he wants is what he truly and most deeply wants. The vicious person, by contrast, is in bondage to his disordered appetites, constantly doing what he does not truly want to do, and thereby is not free. The early pagan philosophers recognized this truth, particularly those (such as Socrates) who held that only the wise man is free -- and by "wise man" they meant the man trained to live in accordance with his human nature, that is, in justice and virtue. The early Church fathers recognized that here, the pagan philosophers were exactly right. That is why the Catechism of the Catholic Church says:

The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to "the slavery of sin." (cf. Rom 6:17) (CCC 1733)

St. Augustine, for example, argued against the Pelagians that if the possibility of deviating from the good belonged to the essence or perfection of freedom, then God, the angels, and the saints in heaven (who cannot deviate from the good) would either have no freedom or would have less freedom than humans in their present state on earth. St. Anselm argued, on the same grounds, that the ability to sin is not itself a part of freedom, but is actually a weakness, i.e. a privation of the power to avoid sin necessarily; in this way he argued that that power [i.e. the power to avoid sin necessarily] perfects freedom. St. Thomas Aquinas says something similar when commenting on Jesus' statement "Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin." (John 8:34).

My point is that in the Christian (and Greek) tradition, freedom has been understood to be dependent on its relation to goodness and virtue. In this tradition we have distinguished between liberty and license, not reducing the former to the latter. This is why, in this tradition, just law has not been treated as impinging on freedom, but as helping to perfect human freedom. In the Enlightenment tradition, by contrast, the awareness of the relation of freedom to virtue was largely lost. Hence the Enlightenment thinker J.S. Mill replaces virtue with the emptiness and open-endedness of "the limits imposed by the rights and interests of others".

For a Christian, willingly giving oneself over to God, in love and trust and obedience, is not a loss of freedom, but a perfection of freedom, for such union with God is our highest end and purpose; it is what we most deeply and truly want. To be perfectly united to God is thus to be perfectly free. In the Christian tradition, in heaven we will not be able to turn away from God, to rebel against Him. In that respect, we will be like the angels. Our dispositions toward the good will be so fixed and established that we can no longer ever desire evil. And yet we are there and then perfectly free. In freely loving God and binding ourselves to Him, we gladly and eagerly desire the ability never to turn away from Him, for all eternity. And in acquiring that ability, our freedom is perfected, and we ourselves are perfected.

When we understand what freedom truly is, then we can perceive that freedom and authority go together, because freedom and order go together. So contrast Mick Jagger's notion of freedom with Jesus' relation to the Father. Jesus is perfectly free, and yet Jesus does only what the Father tells Him.

"the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing" (John 5:19)

"I can do nothing on My own initiative" (John 5:30)

"I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me." (John 8:28)

"for I have not even come on My own initiative, but He sent Me." (John 8:42)

"For I did not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me a commandment as to what to say and what to speak." (John 12:49)

The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works. (John 14:10)

Similarly, St. Paul tells us that "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." (2 Corinthians 3:17) So the Holy Spirit is likewise perfectly free. And yet the Holy Spirit also does not speak on His own initiative, but speaks only what He hears.

"But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. (John 16:13)

Read St. Therese's Story of a Soul, and you will see a nun who rejoices to find freedom under the authority of her Mother Superior. Why? Because she perceived that the authority was there for her good, and that freedom is perfected as we advance in virtue and goodness. When Christ founded His Church, He did not leave the sheep without shepherds. He appointed Apostles, and they appointed bishops, presbyters (from which we get our word priest), and deacons. The true shepherds are those who do not presume ecclesial authority to themselves, but who are chosen by the Church and sent out by her, just as Jesus and the Holy Spirit do nothing on their own initiative, but only what the Father tells them to say and do. Just as the authority of the Father is not a restriction on the freedom of the Son and the Holy Spirit, so likewise the hierarchy of the Church is not a restriction on the freedom of the sheep; on the contrary, it is precisely that by which we find true freedom. But Christ warned us that there would be those who do not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climb in by some other way. (John 10:1) These are those who make themselves out to be shepherds, but have not obtained ecclesial authority in the manner laid down by the Church from the beginning. They do not have apostolic succession. (See my "The Seduction of Presumed Authority".) From such men we should not be surprised to find bondage instead of true freedom, a message that allows us to remain comfortable in our sinfulness and vices.

If we wish to find true freedom, we must find the true (i.e. validly authorized) shepherds, and "obey" them and "submit" to them, for they keep watch over our souls, as those who will give an account. (Hebrews 13:17) Freedom according to Christ is not freedom according to Mick Jagger, nor is it the conception of freedom in the minds of most contemporary Americans. The way of license is the way of death, and many there be who go there. The way of virtue and obedience is the way of life, and few there be who find it.

Monocausalism and sola scriptura

Many Protestants think that sola scriptura is the only proper way of treating the Bible as God's Word. To deny sola scriptura, it seems to them, would be to put the words of mere men on par with the Word of God. And that, obviously, would belittle and reduce the Word of God, treating it as something less than it actually is, i.e. the infallible Word of God. If we do not distinguish the authoritative difference between the Word of God and the words of mere men, then we are performatively denying the ontological difference between God and mere men. And thus it seem to such Protestants that the denial of sola scriptura is either a kind of performative atheism that implicitly denies the existence of Someone who speaks with more authority than that of mere men, or, what is the same, a kind of blasphemy that raises the words of mere men to be equal in authority to those of God. That is commonly how the issue of sola scriptura is conceived of in the minds of many Protestants, in my experience.

But as I argued here, that is a misunderstanding of what sola scriptura is, and what it denies. Such a characteriziation misrepresents the nature of the disagreement between Protestants and the Catholic Church on this subject. Here is what surprises most Protestants: The Catholic Church has just as high a view of Scripture as do Protestants. For Catholics, as for Protestants, the Bible is the inspired and infallible Word of God. Concerning the books of the Bible the first Vatican Council taught (De Catholica Fide 2.7):

These books the Church holds to be sacred and canonical not because she subsequently approved them by her authority after they had been composed by unaided human skill, nor simply because they contain revelation without error, but because, being written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and were as such committed to the Church.

And Pope Leo XIII, in section 20 of Providentissimus Deus, wrote:

But it is absolutely wrong and forbidden, either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred. For the system of those who, in order to rid themselves of these difficulties, do not hesitate to concede that divine inspiration regards the things of faith and morals, and nothing beyond, because (as they wrongly think) in a question of the truth or falsehood of a passage, we should consider not so much what God has said as the reason and purpose which He had in mind in saying it-this system cannot be tolerated. For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true. This is the ancient and unchanging faith of the Church, solemnly defined in the Councils of Florence and of Trent, and finally confirmed and more expressly formulated by the Council of the Vatican.

So if the Catholic Church affirms the inspiration and infallibilty of Scripture, then what is the difference between the Catholic and Protestant positions on the issue of sola scriptura? Let's take a look. The Catholic Church affirms that God has said everything in His Word, who is Christ, (CCC 65), and that there will be no further Revelation until the return of Christ. (CCC 66). According to the Catholic Church the revelation of Christ was given to the Apostles, who handed on the gospel of Christ in two ways: orally and in writing. (CCC 76) So one important difference between the Protestant sola scriptura position and that of the Catholic Church is that Protestants generally believe that whatever Christ wanted Christians to know was written down by the Apostles in the New Testament. Some Protestants claim that if the Apostles had thought something important for subsequent generations of Christians to know, they would have written it down. So, goes their reasoning, whatever the Apostles didn't write down must not have been necessary for us to know. The disagreement here between Protestants and Catholics is not about the authority of the Word of God. Both agree that the Word of God is the highest authority in the Church. (cf. CCC 86) The first disagreement relevant to sola scriptura concerns whether the Word of God was also handed down orally or not. The Catholic Church claims that Christ's gospel was handed down both orally and in writing (CCC 82), and Protestants deny that it was handed down orally (or claim that oral transmission cannot be trusted, and so in practice we cannot rely on the oral tradition). So one Protestant construal of the sola in sola scriptura is that the Word of God is found only in Scripture. According to this notion, the Word of God is not found anywhere else other than in Scripture.

But the second disagreement relevant to sola scriptura is no less important. It may be even more important. This disagreement concerns not *where* the Word of God is found (i.e. only in the Scripture), but *how* the Word of God is found. The Catholic Church teaches that in order to preserve the gospel, the Apostles left bishops as their successors and gave to these bishops their teaching authority, with the command to preserve this teaching authority through the laying on of hands in a continual succession until the end of time. (CCC 77) This living teaching authority is called the "Magisterium". According to the Catholic Church:

The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone. Its authority in this matter is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ." This means that the task of interpretation has been entrusted to the bishops in communion with the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome. (CCC 85)

The Protestant position, on the question of *how* the Word of God is to be found, is that Scripture is self-interpreting (this is called the perspicuity of Scripture)(cf. WCF 1.9), and that the Holy Spirit has the authoritative interpretation of Scripture (cf. WCF1.10). This is the second construal of the sola in the Protestant conception of sola scriptura. This way of conceiving sola scriptura implicitly denies that the Apostles established a perpetual living teaching authority in the Church. It does this by asserting implicitly that only the [Holy Spirit speaking through the] Scripture-interpreted Scripture is ultimately authoritative. Since the Holy Spirit (not any mere man) has the authoritative interpretation of Scripture, and since we all have equal access to the self-interpreting Scriptures and the Holy Spirit, therefore any claim that some body of mere men has the authoritative teaching concerning the gospel and the authoritative interpretation of Scripture is an encroachment (it is thought) upon Scripture's highest authority. The verse commonly used here is Acts 5:29, "We must obey God rather than men." If this manner of thought was good enough for the Apostles, then it is good enough for us.

So what lies behind this disagreement? The Catholic Church agrees that when what God says is contrary to what men are saying, we must obey God rather than those men. But what we are talking about here is how we know in the first place what it is exactly that God is saying. The Catholic Church teaches that it is through the Magisterium descended in sacramental succession from the Apostles that we may know in the first place what God is saying, just as Philip explained to the Ethiopian eunuch what the Scripture was saying. The Magisterium "is not superior to the Word of God, but is its servant." (CCC 86) Protestants, on the other hand, believe that ultimately it is through our own [Holy Spirit and Scripture assisted] interpretation of Scripture that we know what God is saying. Of course many Protestants believe in various doctrines promulgated by the early Ecumenical Councils, but they do so not because they think of these Councils as authoritative, as shown by the fact that they reject anything in them they think is unbiblical (i.e. contrary to their own interpretation of Scripture). They accept the teachings of Ecumenical Councils only insofar as what a council teaches accords with the individual Protestant's interpretation of Scripture. And "if I accept what an authority says only when that authority agrees with me, then my authority is me."

So what I want to point out here is that the disagreement between Protestants and the Catholic Church is not about the authority of Scripture. Protestants and the Catholic Church both agree about the divine and supreme authority of Scripture. The disagreement between Protestants and the Catholic Church regarding sola scriptura is about the authority of the Magisterium. The Catholic Church teaches that the Magisterium has teaching and interpretive authority; Protestants deny this, placing their own [Holy Spirit and Scripture assisted] interpretation of Scripture above the authority of the Magisterium. That belief necessarily underlies their justification for their departure from the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century. In this way sola scriptura is fundamentally a negative judgment, i.e. either there is no Magisterium or the Magisterium has no authority over my own personal interpretation of Scripture, as assisted by the Holy Spirit and Scripture itself.

What's behind this? I discussed monocausalism recently here, and I want to point out how it applies to this second construal of sola scriptura. (Both construals can be held at the same time, by the way.) Monocausalism is implicit in the notion that if men are speaking, then it cannot be the Holy Spirit who is speaking. Or, in addition, if mere men have such teaching and interpretive authority, then this must detract from the authority of the Scripture, or the Scripture and these men must be equal in authority. The two authorities (i.e. Magisterium and Scripture) are conceived of as in competition in some sense. To recognize the authority of the Magisterium is to exalt mere men to the status of the Word of God. And that is blasphemous and dishonoring to the Scriptures.

The flaw of this monocausal view of authority becomes more clear when we think about the role of the Apostles and how we got the New Testament. The Apostles were mere men, and yet their teaching and preaching and writing was authoritative. Their interpretation of their own writings was the authoritative interpretation of their own writings. The Holy Spirit was speaking through them in what they preached and wrote. To recognize the authority of the Apostles was not to exalt mere men to the status of the Word of God. And that was true of the bishops whom the Apostles appointed. The bishops appointed by the Apostles were not themselves Apostles, and their writings were not divinely inspired the way the writings of the Apostles were. But the bishops' interpretation of the Apostles' writings was authoritative for all Christians. Where in the early centuries do we find the idea of placing one's own interpretation above that of the teaching and interpretation of the bishops? In the practices of the heretics. (See here and here.) When the bishops spoke in unison, that was the authoritative teaching of the Church, and if you disagreed with it based on your own interpretation of Scripture, then ipso facto your interpretation was heretical. "Heretical" did not merely mean "contrary to my own interpretation of Scripture", it meant contrary to the authoritative teaching of the Church, as determined by the bishops in communion with the successor of St. Peter. And that has never changed.

The Protestant attempt to distinguish sola scriptura from solo scriptura fails, as I have argued here, precisely because without a Magisterium, sola scriptura necessarily reduces to solo scriptura. If ecclesial authority does not derive its authority sacramentally from the Apostles, then it derives its authority democratically, according to its agreement with our own interpretation of Scripture. And that is precisely the great error that St. Paul warned would arise in the end times, when men would gather around themselves teachers who taught according to what their itching ears wanted to hear. (2 Tim 4:3) It is the ecclesial consumerism of our time.

To doubt the Apostles was to doubt Christ. "He who listens to you listens to Me; he who rejects you rejects Me; but he who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me." (Luke 10:16) That was just as true of the bishops appointed by the Apostles as it was of the Apostles themselves. In order to have faith in Christ, one had to listen to and trust the Apostles, the bishops they appointed, and the bishops whom those bishops appointed, etc. To doubt the Apostles was to lack faith. And so likewise, to doubt and distrust the bishops they appointed is to lack faith. Today is the feast day of St. Thomas the Apostle, sometimes called "doubting Thomas". He said, "Unless I see the nails marks in His hands and put my fingers where the nails where, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe it." (John 20:25) Jesus said to Thomas, "Because you have seen Me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." (John 20:29) We are blessed who believe without having seen Jesus ourselves, but who believe on the basis of the testimony of those bishops in succession from the Apostles.

Sola scriptura is a formalization of a denial of the authority of the Magisterium, and thus a formalization of a lack of faith. It presents itself as exalting the authority of Scripture, but as I have shown, it has no higher view of Scripture than the Catholic Church has always had. In that way sola scriptura engages in false advertising, for it isn't what it advertises itself to be. It is essentially a denial of Magisterial authority, at best a lack of trust, at worst a form of rebellion. But it shouldn't surprise us that a form of rebellion would characterize itself as seeking to exalt God alone, for the chief rebel of all "masquerades as an angel of light". (2 Corinthians 11:14)

Lord Jesus, on this feast day of St. Thomas the Apostle, help our unbelief (Mark 9:24), that we may be one, as You and the Father are one.

Catholic baptisms, according to the PCA

Sean at You are Cephas refers to a 1987 document showing that the position of the Presbyterian Church in America (my former denomination, and the denomination of the seminary from which I graduated) is that Catholic baptisms are invalid, because (according to the PCA) the Catholic Church is not a church, but only a "Romish communion", because (according to the PCA) the Catholic Church is apostate. [CLARIFICATION: This is the majority position of the PCA's study committee on this subject; adherence to the majority position is not binding on any presbytery.]

Last year in "Responsa ad quaestiones" the Catholic Church made clear that it does not consider Protestant communities to be Churches, because they have failed to preserve apostolic succession. From the Catholic point of view, Protestant communities are in schism and in [material] heresy.

Of course it is painful to see the severity of the division. But I think it is important to grasp accurately where things stand between Catholics and Presbyterians, in order to move forward toward reconciliation. Pseudo-ecumenicism (i.e. let's just sweep our differences under the rug, focus only on what we have in common, and pretend we're all branches of a tree) is worthless in healing such a divide. Better is the sort of bracing honesty where one side says, "We think that you all are heretics." And the other side says, "We think you all are apostate." [pause] Protestant: "Alrighty then, let's pull up our chairs and start talking." Catholic: "So, why do you think we're apostate?" Protestant: "I'll get to that, but why do you think we don't have apostolic succession?" Etc., etc. Charity drives us to the ecumenical table, but charity and truth are not incompatible.

So where is ecumenicism now? See "Pauline Year: The Ecumenical Dream of Pope Benedict" by Sandro Magister. (July 02) Irenaeus of Retractiones comments on that article here. See also Fr. Longenecker's "The New Ecumenicism".

Please continue to pray that Presbyterians and Catholics will come together to talk about those matters at the root of the division between us. Holy Spirit, please bring us together in true and complete unity.

Transalpine Redemptorists reconciled with Rome

See here and here. Gloria Deo!

Prolegomena to the gospel

"The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Paradise"
Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889)

In one of my philosophy courses not too long ago I had a student who had become convinced, based on Darwinism, that God had not made humans, and that religion was a human construct to meet an internal psychological need. Throughout the semester she was obviously antagonistic in the classroom to anything I said that had to do with God or religion. Whenever I referred to God, she would try to get me to re-state what I was saying in the form of a mere hypothetical, but even hypothetical references to God seemed to bother her. Toward the end of the semester, I had a significant discussion with her during office hours, and it turned out that she had been raised in a very conservative Lutheran tradition. When she came to the university and encountered Darwinism in her biology classes, she could not fit that with her fundamentalist conception of religion, and so she had basically tossed out the entirety of religion as just what Dawkins and Dennett claim it to be. But during my class, she had come to see the difference between scientism and science, and between evolution as a scientific thesis, and Darwinism as a philosophical thesis. She had come to see that she didn't have to choose between science and Christianity. (For more on this subject, see William Carroll's article, "Creation, Evolution, and Thomas Aquinas", or pick up the recently published book Creation and Evolution: A Conference with Pope Benedict XVI.)

Those who do not understand the difference between science (in the ordinary contemporary sense of the term) and philosophy are often convinced that if evolution took place, then philosophical Darwinism (i.e. there is no God, no ultimate meaning, no ultimate purpose, no right and wrong, etc.) follows. Creationists who do not understand the difference between science and philosophy often make the very same mistake, reasoning that if God exists and morality exists, etc., then evolution must be false. If you want to see how this works in practice, watch this interview with Jeffrey Dahmer (the serial murderer and cannibal), and notice how he moved from philosophical Darwinism (which served to justify in his mind his immoral actions) to a rejection of the scientific theory of evolution. (H/T: R.E. Aguirre)

What makes it more difficult in our age to hear and understand the gospel is that we tend not to be aware of the philosophical prolegomena to the gospel. When I was a teenager, the gospel seemed to be something that merely floated on top of my human existence; it did not go to the heart of my existence. I knew that I was mortal, and from the Bible I understood that when I died I would go either to heaven or hell. I did not want to go to hell; I preferred to go to heaven. Hence it was obvious that I should "ask Jesus into my heart", which I did when I was about four years old.

But I did not understand what knowing Jesus had to do with my present existence. Knowing Jesus seemed to be something that really mattered only as a necessary condition for determining where I would go in the life to come. Later, I came to understand that I had missed the whole point; I had construed the gospel in an entirely nominalistic and voluntaristic manner, as though it was only extrinsically related to my well-being. (I have discussed this in more detail here.)

If we do not know the answer to the question "What is my purpose in life?" or "Why am I here?" or "Why do I exist?", then we do not truly understand the gospel. The gospel will then seem like "good news" to us only in an indirect, penultimate sense, as relating only to our future state after death. But the philosophical question "What is the meaning of life?" is directly related to the gospel, and presupposed by the gospel.

Here's why. The old catechism asks the question: "Why did God make you?" The answer: "God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next." Broadly speaking, that is the meaning of our human existence. The Compendium to the Catechism adds, "God Himself, in creating man in His own image, has written upon his heart the desire to see Him." The reason we exist, the reason God made us, is to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him, and in that three-fold activity be eternally happy with Him. That means that our human nature, and more precisely the nature of the human soul, is made in such a way that we are not satisfied with anything less than knowing, loving, and serving God. This is why all human cultures express at least some 'groping about' for God in various forms of religion. This is what St. Augustine means when he says "Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee." He is talking about the very nature of the human heart, as God designed it. It "can't get no satisfaction" until it knows, loves, and serves God.

We were made such that we find our complete happiness and fulfillment in fellowship with God. This blessed fellowship is what Adam and Eve had when God walked with them in the cool of the day in the Garden. Everything else besides God is finite, contingent, and incomplete, and therefore cannot ultimately satisfy the human heart. Idolatry is misery; contingent things take their rightful place in our overall blessedness only when we receive them as gifts from our Maker, not when we substitute them for our Maker. We can be perfectly free only in ultimate subjection to Perfect Goodness; ultimate subjection to anything else is slavery. Being made in the image of God involves being made such that we have a power in our soul that is intrinsically directed to the Cause of all causes, the Source of all perfections, the Truth underlying all truths, the Being underlying all beings, the Unity underlying all unities, the Good underlying all goods, and the Beauty underlying all beauties. When separated from fellowship with our Maker, we are lost, confused, miserable, dissatisfied, and blind. We have some sense that things are not the way they are supposed to be, but we are typically so blind that we often do not even recognize how miserable and empty we are. We may feel that we have no reason to live, no purpose in life. It is easy in such a condition to feel suicidal, because it seems like there is no point to living. And if there were no God, then there would be no point to living, because there can be no end [telos] at all if every end [telos] is subordinate to a higher end [telos], and nothing except one who is Goodness itself can be a highest end. We are by nature aimed at God, but in our darkened condition, we seem to have forgotten what we were made for, and lost sight of who we are. We treat ourselves as mere beasts whose purpose is to eat, drink, have sex and be merry, for tomorrow we die. But that mode of living is miserable for humans, because it doesn't satisfy the human soul, which in its very nature is directed toward the transcendent.

How did we get into this condition? Adam and Eve, by their sin, lost their participation in the divine life of God. They were banished from the Garden. Through their sin we all are born in a state of what is called "original sin", deprived of the life and righteousness of God, darkened and separated from that for which we were orginally made, i.e. fellowship with God. And yet this present life remains for us a period of testing. (See my "Monocausalism, Salvation, and Reconciliation".)

What we will be for eternity is determined by the state of our soul at death. If we die in a state of mortal sin, we remain eternally deprived of the life of God. We descend into hell, "eternal death" (CCC 1056). This is not annihilation. We continue to exist in a state of misery and torment, forever.

"Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, "eternal fire". The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs." (CCC 1035)

Hell is what happens to us and in us when we reject our ultimate purpose, when we turn against the telos knitted into the essence of our heart, and reject what we are, i.e. creatures made in the image and likeness of God. When Jesus was challenged about paying taxes, He asked to be shown a coin, and then asked whose image was on the coin. When told "Caesar's", He replied, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and give to God what is God's." (St. Matthew 22) The point is not ultimately about taxes, but about man. Whose image is on us? God's. We are designed to find fulfillment and complete happiness only in giving ourselves entirely and eternally to God, as a lover gives herself to her beloved for the whole of her earthly life.

The Judgment is not something merely tacked on to the story of our human existence; it is essential to understanding what it is to be human, and why we are here in this life. The whole purpose of this present life is a test. What will we choose? Who will we be forever? All of our deeds in this life are eternally and indelibly part of our history, for the rest of eternity. For the rest of eternity, I will be "the person who, during his earthly life, did x, y, and z". The Judgment is the once-and-for-all determination of the result of that test. The Judgment separates all humans into two categories: those who died in a state of loving God, and those who died in a state of mortal sin. (See this video.)

Understanding the gospel presupposes that we know all this. When the Evangelical comes along and asks, "Are you saved?", it sounds like a different language to the modern ear. Saved from what?, we might ask. "Sin, death, hell", he responds. That's true, but it doesn't get to the heart of the matter, because most people today have little sense of the relation between our human nature [our ultimate purpose in life] and "sin, death and hell". That is why "Are you saved?" always seems to come across as a sales pitch for afterlife fire insurance.

A better way to present the gospel to modern man is to start with our purpose in life: Do you know why you are here? Are you looking for the meaning of your life? We [Christians] know the meaning of life. It is to know, love and serve the God who made heaven and earth and all things, including us humans, whom He made in His very own image, to share in His divine life and have fellowship with Him eternally. Our first parents turned away from God and bequeathed sin, sorrow and death to us, but God has sent His Son to reconcile us to Himself. God's Son gave Himself to us, and now offers us His own divine Life, the very Life in which we were made to share eternally. We receive His divine Life through the sacraments which He established in His Mystical Body, the Church, before He returned to the Father. Believe and be baptized. Receive the Spirit without measure. In the sacrament of the Eucharist, Christ offers to you His Body and Blood. If you eat this Flesh, and drink this Blood, you will have in yourself the Life of God, the Life which you have longed for since you were a child, the divine Life than which there is nothing greater, and which alone truly satisfies the deepest yearning of the human soul. Jesus said, "As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also shall live because of Me." (St. John 6:57) And elsewhere, Jesus said, "Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst." (St. John 4:14) We never thirst again because we finally have found that alone which satisfies the human heart. Come, eat and drink without charge; Christ offers Himself to you freely, in love. This is why you exist: to know, love, and serve Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God. This is what you were made for; this is why you are here, right now, to know, love, and serve the One who made you. Nothing else will satisfy you, because what your heart most deeply longs for is God Himself.

In order for Christians to be visibly united, we have to be united about what the gospel is. And in order to be united about what the gospel is, we need to be united about the prolegomena to the gospel, the philosophical and theological background presupposed by the gospel. We cannot understand salvation without understanding what man is, and what is the nature and telos of the human heart.

"Nos fescisti ad te, et inquietem est cor nostrum donec requiscat inte." (You have formed us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You." - St. Augustine)