From Geneva to Rome
My Journey to the Catholic
Church
Why on Earth?
Why would I do such a strange thing? After 47 years on earth, the last 31 of
them as a professing Christian, how could I join the Catholic Church? In what follows, I am addressing
primarily Protestants, fellow believers in the Trinity and in the inspired
written word of God. I will say
just a little about how and why I became a Christian, but the focus of this
essay is how a Protestant made as big a change as you can make within orthodox
Christianity. Protestant readers,
my fellow believers, I would like to begin with a request. In my journey, I began to question the
key Protestant “watchwords,” the slogans that define Protestantism. I did so not because I lost faith in
God or in the Bible, but because I began to see the Bible differently. I first saw that it was possible to
interpret certain verses or passages in the Catholic way. I then began to see that the Catholic
interpretations fit together in a consistent way with each other. Gradually, this new/old way of
interpreting and understanding the Bible began to seem to me to be a better
fit, with the Bible itself and with Church history, than the Protestant way of looking
at these things. As you read, if I
seem to be wrong, I would ask Protestant readers to see if, as believers in
“sola scriptura,” they can, like the Bereans, weigh my words against the actual
scriptures, rather than the theology that came from them. In other words, I ask that we meet and
wrestle on the common ground of the Bible wherever we can. After all, according to the principle
of sola scriptura only the Bible has authority; therefore all Protestant
formulas (including “sola scriptura”) are only helpful statements.
Where's the Center?
The problem of explaining such a
change, as big as you can get within orthodox Christianity, I believe, is that
it involves a "paradigm shift." When Copernicus came up with
his theory of a solar-centric system (I am not discussing yet whether either
Protestants or Catholics are Copernicans!), you could still see the sun “come
up” in the morning and “go down” in the evening, you could "see" the
sun go around the earth. Also, Copernicus' equations for the courses of
the planets were not as good as the old Ptolemaic ones, which very accurately
predicted the courses of the planets. But, the Copernican system was simpler
and "neater" than the old one. In a way, in the early days, you
exercised faith if you followed either system–as we might say now, looking back
after centuries. There was some evidence in favor of your system, and
some evidence in favor of the other. There was no great clarity (which
did not prevent frenzied accusations of each other by both groups). The
reason for following one system or the other, and this is the heart of my
comparison, depended on your first step: did you start with the information
your eyes sent you, with what appeared to be Biblical evidence as well, backed
by solid calculations and math, but with some weird features to be accounted
for? Or, did the clarity and simplicity of having everything go around
the sun overwhelm the arguments of the old system, despite some troubling
problems with the calculations and the appearance that the sun
"rises," besides the fact that you had to reinterpret the verses that
once seemed so clear as "poetic?" To reject Copernicanism
saying "well, I can see the sun go around the earth" would be a
rejection without understanding, and to insult the Ptolemaic system as
"that pathetic remnant of ancient science" would be a failure to
admit the difficulties in the Copernican system. (Keppler later resolved
the whole problem by turning Copernicus' circles into ellipses, but my point
revolves, so to speak, around the pre-Keppler dilemma.)[i]
Step Into the Cathedral and Look Around?
In
a similar way, once I entertained the thought that Catholicism just might be
true (i.e. not the only place where Christians are to be found, but the true
church, organically descended from the one Christ founded and guided by Him
into doctrinal truth, despite some embarrassing sins), I was forced, if I
wanted to be fair, to consider questions of the Church and the Bible from the
Catholic point of view, to try to get a sense of the whole Catholic system of
thinking. To think about Catholicism (or existentialism, or Islam, or
Presbyterianism, or any other way of looking at the world) in a reasonable way,
you have to assume for a little while, for the sake of argument, that its main
points, its guiding lights, are true. If that is too strong, at least you
need to get a picture from the inside of what the “structure of belief” is:
what are the suppositions, the reasoning, the presuppositions.
Step into the cathedral, look around,
ask why the shape, why the statues, what's the history. Then step out,
and ask if the cathedral makes sense. If a Muslim just stands outside the
church proclaiming "They did not crucify him, nor did they kill him, but
it appeared so to them," (the Koranic verse)
[ii],
and never questions Christians, he will never understand Christianity.
Likewise, if I remain on the outside of the cafe or the mosque and never ask
why existentialists or Muslims think the way they do, I will never begin to
understand existentialism or Islam. (By the way, ironically this
questioning or temporary suspension of core assumptions is what Presbyterian
preacher R.C. Sproul urged Catholic students at my old school, Geneva College,
to do–ask themselves for a moment (a Lutheran moment, he said!) if
Protestantism might be true.) After that mental effort, you may still
find you have good reasons for your old belief—as I found when I considered
Islam.
But why bother making the
effort for Catholicism’s sake? If Protestantism is satisfying, why step
into the Catholic "cathedral" at all? For years, I had no
interest in doing that, but I will try to tell the story of why I began to ask
the questions, and where those questions have led me.
Part I: My Journey
Glory
Be To God For Dappled Things!/ For Skies of Couple Colour As A Brinded Cow...
In
the background of this personal history must be my love for Catholic writers,
beginning with JRR Tolkien. Then there was Gerard Manley Hopkins, the
Jesuit poet (author of the lines above), as well as several authors I liked a
lot while not loving them: among them Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh (rather
bad men though both appear to have been, their books are something else).
I was certainly not brought up to despise Catholics or believe them unChristian,
although I was clear that they were wrong where we differed. It would be
hard to harshly reject a Church that had produced such writers and poets.
(Later came the wonderful G.K. Chesterton, and others.) The great CS
Lewis, the 20th century proof that being a Christian can mean having at least
as good reasons for your faith as any atheist, and the world of art and stories
thrown in, was not a Catholic, but he had a certain sympathy for many Catholic
ideas, and explains that sympathy in a way Protestants can relate to.
About purgatory, he imagines in Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer a
redeemed person invited directly into the Kingdom, his sins forgiven but still
clinging to him, saying to the gatekeeper, "Please, sir, I would like to
wash first."[iii] Christ's blood has washed
the heavenly ledger clean, but he wants to get rid of the grime that clings to
his person. As when Aslan freed Eustace from his dragon body in The
Voyage of the Dawn Treader, the process may take some time, and may hurt,
in a good way. On another subject, Lewis makes alive in The Pilgrim's
Regress, The Great Divorce, and perhaps other books the idea that
Mary might be greatly honored in heaven. In the essay “The World’s Last
Night” and a few other places he implies a Catholic understanding of the
Eucharist. To these influences
must be added the wonderful catholicity of education at Geneva College, which
while it did not delve too deeply into pre-Reformation Christianity, did instill
in me a respect not only for Augustine but also for Anselm, Aquinas, and
others, and gave me a firm conviction that there had been a Christian church
before Luther arrived.
Did the Lord and His laws lie hid in Romish night?
Indeed, how could there not have
been an ongoing Christian church, at any point, if the original Christian
teaching is true? This is the question for Muslims, Mormons, and all who
believe in a great rupture between a faithful age in the past and the coming of
‘their prophet' to call the people back to the ancient faith, I believe
including Luther and Calvin: was God not faithful? What about "the
remnant?" Did the whole people of God abandon faith, twisting it
into falsehood? Was it that, to paraphrasing Alexander Pope about Newton,[iv]
The
Lord and His laws lay hid in Romish night.
God said, "Let Luther be!" And all was light.
But
I'm getting ahead of myself. I
became a Christian in the Reformed Presbyterian church, in some ways a lovely
church with some lovely features. The milieu was Evangelical Protestant,
a gentle, tolerant movement (I don’t recall us as being so eager for war then)
that encourages love of God and love of truth, unity in the essentials and
tolerance on everything else, on a foundation of a Bible that, rightly
understood, is without error (these are great features as well!). If I
had not become discontented first with the small denomination and then with the
larger movement, I might not have been open to questions from across the Tiber.
From A Narrow Room To The Hallway
I don't claim any high or noble motives for leaving the Reformed
Presbyterian (“RP”) church. I had a vague sense that the "regulative
principle of worship" (whatever is not commanded is forbidden) was really
not consistently applied there (i.e. you have to use some church history to
establish various RP beliefs and practices–but not too much!), and a strong
belief that the Christian community was much broader than that church, and also
I think a sense that the RPs were simply too "narrow" in some
specific ways. I will always be grateful to the RP church for my
conversion to Christianity, my baptism, and much early teaching. Yet, I
think I always saw the RP church as one among many. I still love the
Psalms and the emphasis on knowledge, (and the Kingship of Christ, and the Covenant!)
and I still appreciate a kind of simple ceremony the RPs do wonderfully.
If I had seen it as the church closest to the ideal, or the church faithful to
the most commands, I would be there still, I hope. But, although I didn't
really have any other denomination in mind, not following very well the
admonition in the introduction of Lewis' Mere Christianity to be sure to
be in a room, not the hallway, I left, and started going to another
Presbyterian church in Beaver Falls, PA, about the time I got married just after
college. There followed a year in New York, in various churches, and two
years in Oman among the Muslims with no church, not a good time in many
ways. On our return to Oman, to Buraimi, we had a quite lively
"non-denominational" church across the border in Al Ain, where we
happily worshiped, and were very involved, for 6 years.
If So, Where Did The True Believers Go?
We spent 8 early years of our marriage among the Muslims (we're
now up to almost 15 in total). For me, Islam is a simple case. Its
oldest forms apparently claimed no miracles for it except the Koran
itself. I've read it all in translation, and I've read some passages in
Arabic. To me, it's lovely (especially in Arabic), but not
miraculous. As I recall, I tried to "suspend disbelief," to
read it ready to acknowledge any good or truth I found. I found the Koran
to have a grave logical and historical flaw. The big problem (outside of
the loss of individuality in the retold Old Testament stories): the Koran
proclaims that Jesus was rightly guided, and his Disciples likewise preached
the Gospel (which the Koran does not define). Then it has Jesus state
that he is not the Son of God,[v] and it states that "they
did not crucify him, nor did they kill him, but it appeared so to them."[vi] It also states that it,
the Koran, confirms “the Gospel you have”[vii] (present tense), meaning that in
the 6th century AD Christians had the Gospel, and it agreed with
Mohammed’s message. My question:
where is the historical evidence of this Jesus? And how could the Church
get started on the right track, spread all over the ancient world, and then
completely reverse course and (a) start to believe wild falsehoods about the
founder, and then (b) wipe out all trace of the original community, replacing
even the original documents, apparently, with forged ones? It doesn't
make a lot of sense even in human terms, but you also have to factor in, on
Koranic assumptions, God allowing His message to be utterly perverted, so that
not even a remnant continued steadily to preach the true faith. (If the
words of the Gospels did not speak to me, I suppose I could believe this
twisting might have occurred somehow–but I can't believe such words, and the
person who apparently uttered them, attracted a group willing to give up everything,
to die in agony, in order to then create, with no sensible motive I can see, a
forged past for their movement and founder. THAT contradiction is too
much for me.) So my intellectual reasons (I have others as well) for
rejecting Islam and remaining Christian were to a great extent
historical. One way Christianity makes sense to me is as a historical
thing, as a body of people handing down stories and a way of life and sacred
writings–and if those writings and stories are true, then the Creator broke
into history some 2000 years ago, not just with a message, but by taking on
human form. Since I was sixteen, the evidence has appeared to me to
indicate that is true. But while that historical sense helped keep me a
Christian, at the back of my mind it made me wonder sometimes about
Protestantism, especially after studying Islam: did the true faith disappear
for 15 centuries, so that only a thoroughly corrupted version survived?
What would that do to the promise of Christ, "I will build my church, and
the gates of hell shall not prevail against it?" (If “sola scriptura” and “sola fide” in their Protestant
understandings are essential to proper Christianity, then it is hard to see
that there was a faithful church, or even remnant, before the Reformation,
isn’t it?)
For Children, Theology Matters
As we started to raise our children abroad, in a
"non-denominational" church, I was troubled by several things.
One was that the "nondenominationals" all seemed to be Baptists (or
occasionally Pentecostals) deep down–at least the ones who ran the show.
This ran into my old sense that theology matters, and church history (touching
questions like infant baptism, for example) matters too. The Bible alone
is not enough, at least in the hands of the Baptists and Pentecostals I
knew. Well, it promoted some fine Christian living in many people, and
that is a wonderful thing, but I couldn't accept that as the whole ball of
wax. According to my Presbyterian upbringing, a church is not an
accidental grouping of saved individuals, it's an entity, it's a body of
believers, and it's also organized: there are ways to govern a church, and
rules for worship, and these come from the Bible, and history, and reason
applied to both. (Under the Holy Spirit, of course, but if two fervent,
godly people in conflict both insist, "the Holy Spirit told me X,"
you are right back to the Bible and history and reason as you seek,
prayerfully, to find which is right.) The second nagging problem: why
wasn't there a worldwide non-denominational Protestant catechism (and hymnbook,
but the catechism especially)? Why should I have to invent my theology
all over again for my children if I'm non-denominational? We came back to
the U.S. after Oman, went back overseas to Pakistan, then to Cambridge Mass,
then to DC for 8 months, then to Yemen. In that time, I had the
(not-understanding) kids baptized, became a PCA (Presbyterian Church in
America), got non-denominational and occasionally Baptist again (in my church
attendance, anyway), and remained confused on many things. Somewhere
along this time I strongly counseled someone close to me not to marry a
Catholic. Maybe if he had been a more devout Catholic I would have had
fewer objections.
Where Are Them Bones?
In Yemen we ran into two of the
characters of our life together, Bob and Liz Siletzky. Bob was, in a
quirky way, interested in the Catholic church, while his wife Liz was a pillar
of the non-denominational Protestant one. I asked Bob what seemed to me
like a tough question: how could anyone take the Catholics seriously, when they
did things like inventing new doctrines, such as the bodily assumption of Mary
into heaven, proclaimed, at a rather late date, in 1950! (I had learned this
from Francis Schaeffer, via his wife’s book The Tapestry.) Bob
looked at me and said, "did you know that no one has ever claimed to have
any of Mary's bones? There are plenty of churches that claim to have lots
of bones of other saints, but no one says they have one of Mary's."
I was a little stunned. Here I had assumed that there could be no
historical evidence of such a teaching, and yet there most certainly was some,
rather strong, negative evidence. The practice of keeping things that had
touched the apostles is mentioned even in Acts,[viii] and the bones of Elisha worked a
miracle in the Old Testament,[ix] so the idea that the early
church kept some relics is entirely reasonable. (I later learned that
traditions of Mary's "dormition" and assumption (into Heaven) can be
traced very far back in church history—not to the very beginning, but then
again, there are a lot of gaps in the historical record of that often
persecuted underground movement.) It didn't suddenly make me a Catholic
(nor do I now say there is an airtight case in what I've just said), but it did
shake me out of complacent certainty that Catholics are dead wrong on all their
"distinctives." Bob also did a Friday afternoon (our Sunday
afternoon) tape series on church history, with tapes by, of all people, R.C.
Sproul, the Presbyterian preacher and theologian whom I had heard speak at
Geneva. I like Sproul. We did a long series of tapes. Along
with the history, Sproul honestly explained the actual teachings of Catholics
on the sacraments and a number of other issues. I think it was the first time
I had heard such details of Catholic teaching. Some of it quite appealed
to me, though I doubt that was Sproul's intention. That sacraments work
"ex opere operato," "by virtue of the action," i.e. that
God has chosen to convey grace to us through physical means, I found
attractive. It's not magic, and the recipient (except in the case of
infant baptism) must be prepared, yet–God acts through the physical. For
example, as my Lutheran friend Joel put it, there is one baptism that saves us
(I. Pet. 3:21): of water and the Spirit. (In fact, in John 3, talking of
being “born again,” Jesus ties it to this one baptism—if you missed that, read
it again.) This is that "incarnational" mark of Catholicism:
that just as God chose to become man in order to save us, so He uses other
physical means to apply that salvation to our hearts. (I was to find that
another mark of Catholic teaching is the use of the words “both” and
“and.”) Another offhand remark of Sproul that struck me was "we
Protestants simply don't obey this command in James to confess our sins to one
another." Very true, I thought–and that's a problem, isn't it?
What to do about it?
It's Scripture Says Who?
Bob and Liz also had a "video ministry" to us (that's an
inside joke). We watched a lot of wierd movies with them, and had fun
doing it. Bob also ran a folk club, and while I enjoyed participating,
I'm actually more inclined to opera and madrigals. But the Catholic ideas
Bob shared stayed with me, and rolled around in my head for years. Especially
one more thought: Bob asked, more or less, how Protestants could trust the
Bible, if the list of books in it (the canon) was drawn up by the Catholic
church. (Leaving aside the apocrypha, this is at least undeniably true
for the New Testament–and most of the Old. I don't really think it's
tenable to say we got our OT canon from the Jewish synod of AD 90. The
Church already existed, but we have to ask what a gathering of non-Christian
rabbis thought? Feeble.) There's a good question, I thought.
I remembered a young RP preacher once saying the only way we can trust the
received canon is to believe that the Holy Spirit guided the church. That
made sense to me (but I didn’t realize how dangerously Catholic it was!)
Later, I heard the theory that the Bible is simply
"self-authenticating," that the Holy Spirit makes clear to each
believer that he is reading God's word. (This appears to be the
Westminster Confession version, and Calvin's, as well.) I'm sorry, I
can't accept this at all. Some parts of the Bible are certainly like that
for me, but there are passages that are hard to make head or tail of, and
others that are just hard to take, and the only reason I accept them without
fully understanding is that I was taught, this is all God's word, it’s a
unit. (Secularists beware: some day you may be contemplating your
daughter's ear, or some other extraordinarily beautiful and intricate feature
of the world, and it may require faith to go on believing that all this came
about by chance. One of the co-discoverers of the DNA molecule, Francis
Crick I think, said that any living cell coming together by chance was about as
likely as a tornado blowing through a junkyard and accidentally assembling a
Boeing 747. Read Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box on this subject
if you dare.) Besides, "self-authenticators" have to deal with
Martin Luther calling the book of James a "book of straw." He
apparently also said he didn't think James was a Christian at all. Follow
this theory with any consistency, and each believer, except for the perfectly
guided, would end up with his very own canon. (According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (on
the web at newadvent.org), in the article “Canon, New Testament,” “for
over a century the followers of
Luther excluded Hebrews,
James, Jude, and Apocalypse, and even went further than their master by
rejecting the three remaining deuterocanonicals, II Peter, II and III John.”)
At
any rate, according to John's gospel Christ promised the disciples that
"the Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth,"[x] and it only makes sense to me
that that would include identifying which books were authentic and which were
not. (Otherwise, how useful would it be to lead the apostles into truth,
but not guide later Christians to know which books were true? But as I
say, I think that has to be true on a corporate, not an individual level. On an individual level, it would simply
lead to chaos.) BUT, that raises the question: if the church could
identify the canon (at least the New Testament canon), AND, as I was taught,
could correctly define the subtle and difficult doctrine of the Trinity in the
fourth century (rather late in the game!), how could we reject the same
church's judgment on other matters? Nothing in the Bible promises
specifically, "the church shall identify the books of the Bible and
correctly define who God is, but on other subjects shall be
fallible." If the church was guided in the one area, why not in all
matters of "faith and morals?" And if it is simply fallible,
why trust it on the canon (or the Trinity)?
African Liturgical Interlude
I took these sorts of lingering questions with me to Iceland (land
of frozen Lutherans) in 1994, and again to Zaire (land of hot believers—in
various things) in 1996. In Zaire I met my good friend Joel
Herndon. While our wives and kids were evacuated to the U.S., we sat one
night and watched a video of Borodin's "Prince Igor" while eating raw
garlic washed down with shots of vodka straight from the freezer–a very Slavic
night! We also formed a rock and roll band–I sang, he played a wickedly
fast lead guitar, there was a bassist and another guitarist, and we had a fine
drummer whose only fault was his lack of rhythm. Joel shared with me a
lot of his reading in the Church fathers, as well as other theological writings
he enjoyed. And, along the way, Joel wrote a Protestant liturgy for the
non-denominational Protestant church. I led that liturgy in the church (I
was a choir director, and Joel and I were also both part of the "council
of twelve" (but apparently we were not the local apostles. ;-)
). The lovely, and very Biblical
liturgy, used only once a month, generated a great storm in our small
group. Certain members of “the twelve" began to mutter darkly that
they heard that people (unnamed) were very unhappy with the liturgy, and
therefore it ought to be dropped. I countered that other people told me
it was wonderful and they loved it. Why not poll the people? Give 5
choices: strongly dislike, dislike some, neutral, like some, strongly
like. We took the poll, and the likers and strong likers outvoted the
others 2 to 1. After which, the council voted anyway, without a single
theological argument (well, there was one, but I refuted it Biblically), to use
the liturgy just once per quarter! I was so unhappy with this neither
Biblical nor democratic procedure that we began to attend a local Catholic
church, led by the American priest Father Bob. We did not commune, but we
enjoyed the short but very strong homilies, as well as good African singing,
and attended for about a year, as I recall.
"The Pillar And Foundation Of The Truth"
Back in the U.S. in 1998, we visited Bob and Liz again (they were
then in North Carolina), and this time I borrowed a book with the corny title Rome
Sweet Home. The author, Scott Hahn, is about my age, became a
Christian and then a Presbyterian in his teens, and went to college at Grove
City College, Geneva College's Christian rival not far away in western PA.
Then he went to Gordon Conwell Seminary, where my college roommate's wife also
went. I found these rough parallels to my own life intriguing.
Strangely enough, this was my first whole book specifically on
Catholicism. Hahn's theological passion from early on was the covenant:
how first the Old Testament people of God and then the Church are God's family,
brought in by grace, and joining the church means not signing a contract with
God, but joining God's family. RPs are big on the covenant, and his explanations
of it (which I've hideously oversimplified) appealed to me. While
studying to become a Protestant pastor, Hahn discovered that all Protestant
churches had opposed artificial means of birth control before 1930, and
decided, with his wife, that modern Protestants are wrong on this point.
One of the books that changed his mind was a Catholic book that emphasized the
covenantal nature of marriage. Later, he started to think, to his shock
at first, that the Reformation picture of “justification” is too much based on
a legal model, whereas the Biblical picture is one of accepting the covenant,
being changed, and being brought into God's family. As I recall, a
Catholic friend or writer then pointed out to him that the only place the Bible
uses the phrase "faith alone" (a core Protestant slogan) is in James,
where James notes that we are "not saved by faith alone."
Another Catholic asked him "in the Bible, what is the ‘pillar and
foundation of the truth'?" The Bible, of course, he answered. But,
that is a description of the Church (I Tim. 3:15). Anyway, it is Hahn's
story of how he gradually came to be convinced, at first to his shock (and much
to his wife's horror) that Catholic teachings were a better "fit"
with the Bible than what he had been taught as a Protestant. Along the
way he debated well-known, tough-minded Protestant theologians, including some
whose books I had read.
"Surprised By Truth"
There was a sudden difference in my search. Someone quite
like me in background, but with a whole Protestant theological education, had
become convinced that Catholicism was, of all things, Biblical. Now,
after a long period of being interested and even intrigued, I was suddenly
serious. Before, I think I had begun to look at the Catholic church as a serious
option, an intriguing source of beautiful liturgy and possible gems of
theology. Now, I began to think seriously that the Catholic church might
be THE Church. It now seemed like I should treat it as a question of
truth, and seriously study and try to decide–is it true, or not? The
Catholic church, as Peter Kreeft points out in his trialogue (see my second
note at the bottom of this essay), makes strong claims, rather like Jesus
does. According to CS Lewis, because Jesus claimed to be God, you can
call Jesus a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord, but not a good man. Peter Kreeft says yes, and the Catholic
Church claims to be the True Church: it is either full of lies, very confused,
or the True Church, but a nice denomination it is not. Of course, if it's
the True Church, we Christians should all be in it. Having been a
Protestant all my life, I felt that my first task was to read more detailed
Catholic works to see what they actually say, and compare that as best I could
to the Biblical and historical evidence. (By the way, I became convinced
in this whole quest that one of my great intellectual failings has been to
accept explanations of what something is from critics, rather than go to the
source. You can read even sincere and thoughtful non-Catholics writing
about Catholicism and never have a clue what well-taught Catholics really think
or why they think it. I now
believe that’s the case with any way of thinking.) I read a book of
various Catholic conversion stories, many from Evangelical Protestantism, like
Hahn, called Surprised by Truth. Many of these stories also make
biblical cases for Catholicism, like the one with the title, "The Bible
Made Me Do It."
The Steward In The House of Gondor[xi]—In The New Testament?
I then read a book on the biblical case for the papacy called Jesus,
Peter, and the Keys. I had never seen the Biblical and historical
case for the papacy so strongly laid out. Although I understand how a
Protestant can reject the thesis of the book (by rejecting the pieces one by
one), it's a great list of quotations, first explaining the "keys"
and other passages that Catholics believe show Jesus commissioning Peter to a
special office (related to an Old Testament king's steward in Isaiah 22:15 -25)
distinguished to some extent even from the other apostles. Then there are
further quotations showing that (1) the early church saw Peter as leader of the
apostles, (2) the early church believed that bishops were successors to the
apostles, with their authority, (3) the early church saw Rome as a church led
by Peter, whose subsequent leaders were, in a special way, successors to Peter
and his office of leadership. They
wrote of the church at Rome as a church which was specifically guarded from
error by God, in a way linked to the fact that its leaders were successors, one
by one, to Peter, and inherited his commission from Jesus to "feed my
lambs," and "strengthen your brothers." I would highly
recommend any of these three books (Rome Sweet Home, Surprised by
Truth, and Jesus, Peter, and the Keys). To try to keep myself
honest, I also asked Joel and my brother-in-law Steve to read Jesus, Peter,
and the Keys, and give me their thoughts. They did so, and I
understood their objections, but I still find the central argument quite
powerful. The Old Testament parallel about keys and the power of binding
and loosing (in heaven!) indicates, along with Peter's new name of
"rock," along with the statement, "you are Rock, and on this
rock I will build my church,"[xii] that Peter has a special role as
a steward of Christ–thus, the leader of the new movement while the King goes
away (one of the main functions of a steward). (So, when Jesus asks Peter
three times if he loves him, and each time follows up with "feed my
lambs/sheep,"[xiii] he is not just confirming his
love to Peter after the threefold denial, but reconfirming Peter's pastoral
commission.) But all the other offices that Jesus institutes continued to
exist, according to the early church (which saw bishops as successors of the
apostles–although this is not stated with crystal clarity until about AD 110,
there is some good earlier evidence. This includes the fact that when
Peter says of Judas in the book of Acts, "let another fill his
office," the word for "office" in Greek is ‘episkopee,' or
"bishopric" in early English translations). Yet, of all the
generations after the Resurrection, the one while the apostles all lived was
least in need of a single leader—after all, they were all eyewitnesses, and handpicked
by Jesus. Therefore, why should the Lord have appointed a steward, unless
it was an office to be passed on? Like elder, episcopos, etc.? (I
think the most successful Protestant way to reject this whole thesis is to chop
it into bits, find that each piece can be doubted, and not worry about the
whole picture, since each piece, considered alone, is not a completely
convincing argument. On the contrary, there appears to me to be a
powerful pattern. While it is true that each given piece of evidence CAN
be interpreted differently, the Catholic interpretation provides a beautiful
and consistent interpretation of all the pieces put together. (I'll
return to this theme.))
Question the Beauty of the Earth
Soon after these, I read the entire Catholic catechism, and found
it beautiful, inspiring, and only rarely confusing or difficult. Try this
first sentence from the prologue: "I. The Life of Man–To Know and Love
God. God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer
goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life.
For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to
man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his
strength." A little later,[xiv] this quote from Augustine:
"And St. Augustine issues this challenge: Question the beauty of the
earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air
distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky...question all
these realities. All respond: ‘See, we are beautiful.' Their beauty
is a profession. These beauties are subject to change. Who made
them if not the Beautiful One who is not subject to change?" More
recently, some of the books I've read are One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic,
by Kenneth Whitehead, a very careful and balanced look at the church of the
first four centuries, and Not by Faith Alone, by Robert Sungenis, (a
Westminster grad turned Catholic), an extremely careful biblical study of the
doctrine of "sola fide" ("faith alone"). I strongly
recommend both these books. Neither indulges in sweeping generalizations.
Is Sola Fide Bona Fide?
Sungenis, for example, carefully looks at descriptions of saving
faith in the Gospels, Romans, Galatians, and James. I can't put this
painstaking book in a nutshell, but I will say that often when Catholics
historically insisted that we are not saved without works, they mean (a)
"salvation" as the entire process of salvation, what we would call
justification plus sanctification (surely we can't believe and live thirty years
without one good work and hope to be saved!), and (b) they do NOT mean that any
of our works is good enough, in and of itself, to save us–but God graciously
treats them as worthy of praise anyway (there are dozens of verses I could
write here–you can find them yourselves, but start with "well done, thou
good and faithful servant"), (c) our good works are all, in one sense,
God’s works, since they all come from God’s grace in our lives, as the Council
of Trent pointed out,[xv] and (d) to be saved at all, we
must repent, and make a conscious act of the will to accept what God says and
follow him: and these actions, in the normal use of language, are a kind of
work. These are not "works that save us," but they are
"works" that are necessary to be saved, in the normal scheme of
things. Luther taught that after justification we are "dunghills
covered with snow." The image
(which my Lutheran friend points out is clearly a humorous one) is of still-dirty
sinners justified only by having our legal status changed. Then we have
to get started, from zero, with the gradual slog of sanctification. By
contrast, Catholics teach, in line with the Scriptures, I believe, that
salvation includes an immediate actual cleansing and change of our hearts. (Cf
Romans 5:5 "God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy
Spirit, whom he has given us," 6:2 "we died to sin, how can we live
in it any longer?" I.Cor.6:11 "and that is what some of you
were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the
name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." I guess Baptists are closer to
Catholics on this issue, and the Bible as I now believe, than the Reformation
churches are.)
Sola Train Wreck
Another "sola," "sola scriptura,"
"Scripture alone," suffers from the fact that it is logically
self-contradictory. It proclaims that all important doctrines of
Christianity must be clearly stated or logically provable from scripture, yet
this doctrine itself is not stated in scripture. (That scripture is true
and God's word and is terribly important and useful is taught, but not the
"sola"–but that is precisely what should be there if "sola
scriptura" is true.) Neither
have I ever seen a logical deduction of the "sola" in "sola
scriptura," although I have seen some attempts. (After all, it
should be provable from scripture, not just shown to be likely–"sola
scriptura" should meet the same standard as it insists on for other
doctrines.) In practice, every organized group of Christians insists on
certain practices or beliefs that are not clearly taught in scripture, although
there is probably always some evidence to argue from. Really, the prime
example of such teachings is the Trinity itself. Although the Nicene
definitions "fit nicely" with many Biblical texts, some other verses
appear to teach something quite different. Which is the clear text that
defines the others, to adopt the Westminster Confession rule? It's a
subjective decision, so how can we know we made the right one? An excellent
remark on this comes from a book called By What Authority? by Mark
Shea. He notes that he heard an Orthodox Protestant radio host debating
an Arian (a non-Trinitarian) who had one good (heretical) explanation after
another of all the verses, and finally the host asked, "but the Church
never understood those verses in your way. Why should we?"
It's a great answer, but it's an escape from "sola scriptura" to
tradition as a necessary complement to scripture. (Again, see the Kreeft trialogue
on the internet, see below, for a subtle, careful explanation of this
point.) (Note: you can assemble a wonderful list of quotations of the
Church Fathers saying that all doctrine must be provable from the
Scriptures. This is great (although if you are really going sola
scriptura it is, by definition, superfluous! ;-) ) but it ignores the context
of the Catholic doctrines these men clearly believed, and must therefore have
believed were present in the Scriptures.
In other words, while believing in some version of “sola scriptura,”
these men also believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary, the transformation
of bread and wine in Communion into the Body and Blood of Christ, the
importance of tradition for interpreting Scripture, the succession of bishops
from the apostles, etc.[xvi])
An Epidemic of Question Begging
Back to my story: as I was reading these latter books, I was also
reading a number of anti-Catholic books at the same time. Steve Salisbury
gave me one called Roman Catholicism, a compendium of essays. I
read them carefully. Another was Roman Catholics and Evangelicals,
by Geisler and MacKenzie. While there is some interesting and good stuff
in these books, I have to say there were big intellectual failings. One
of these, all too common, is to take half of a Catholic position, find the
other half in Church history or the Bible, and proclaim the Catholic teaching
defeated. This is laughably simplistic, but I saw it over and over.
Example: Catholics teach (as Jesus said) about the Lord's Supper: (1) it is a
memorial supper, AND (2) the elements are the body and blood of Christ.
Protestants too often triumphantly show that it is a memorial supper, and
rejoice at having smashed the Catholic position! ;-) There is also an epidemic
of question-begging among anti-Catholic Protestant apologists. Too many
of these writers simply quote Reformation slogans, as if they had found them
right in the text of the Bible, leaving any demonstration of the arguments in
question unnecessary. My favorite sentence like this is from p. 155 of
the first book mentioned above: "Likewise, Catholics can affirm
justification by faith, but this is faith working through love, not faith alone
(sola fide)." The Catholics are Biblical, quoting Galatians, but
they don't follow the Reformation slogan (which is not in the Bible), so
they're wrong! Also sadly typical is to make bald assertions that ignore
Biblical counter-examples or contexts, as if either the author doesn't know the
Bible, or else he hopes the reader doesn't. The silliest of these is to
quote "call no man your father" and consign the Catholic Church
straight to the heretics, as if the inspired apostle Paul had not said, "I
am your father in the faith." Another example, same book, p. 236
(the author begins with two approving quotations):
‘The Word of God is both temporally and regulatively prior to the
church'... ‘Scripture is the Word of God given as a rule to the church, and the
authority of doctrine and of the church comes from God....by way of the
Scriptures. Indeed, it is the Scriptures that, as the Word of God
"bring faith and authority to the church."' The church has no
authority apart from the prior written Word.
I
respond that the Scriptures are indeed "God-breathed, and ... useful for
teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness" (II
Tim.3:16), but the Church was founded by Christ, the living Word, and the
Church was clearly prior to the written word of the New Testament.[xvii] I think it is very clear
from the Bible that the church was formed by Christ himself, directly, and then
grew under the verbal preaching about Christ, under the corrective oversight of
the apostles, which verbal preaching also preceded the written word. Its
authority came originally from Christ himself. The Biblical picture is
that Christ gave real authority to the apostles, and in Timothy and Titus in
particular we see Paul noting the authority he passed on to these men, and
commanding them[xviii] in turn to pass it on to others.
Temporally, there was not even a part of the (New Testament) written word for
over a dozen years while the church was most definitely regulated by the
apostles and those under them whom they had appointed. (And please–the OT
does NOT give clear instructions how to form a church or to be a
Christian.) Even as Paul's and the other letters began to be sent to the
churches, it was many long decades at the very least before many of the local
churches were able to assemble a majority of the New Testament, and centuries
before many churches had all of it. For those decades, they relied on the
authority of the elders and bishops appointed by the apostles who founded their
churches, and the verbal traditions they had left.[xix] Nor do I see how it makes
sense even to say that the written word was "regulatively" prior to
the church. Paul's letters give a lot of guidance on how a local church
is to be run, but they look to me to be very topical, and rarely intended to
give a full and final word on a given topic–but Paul had spent months teaching
and preaching in many of these churches. It's one thing (and certainly
debatable) to claim that the written word totally superceded all that verbal
teaching, but it is another thing (undoubtedly against the Biblical evidence in
my view) to claim that the church was built on the written word of God.
Instead, the written word supplemented the Apostolic teaching (and miracles,
and witness) that built the churches.
These are a few samples of the kind of problems I found with the
Protestant attacks on Catholicism. (I also gleaned a core of sharp
historical attacks on Catholicism. I determined to investigate
these. I found, to my dismay for the authors of the essays, that in each
case their facts appeared to be quite wrong, or else they were ignoring an
important Catholic distinction, that while the Church (Pope or Councils or both
together) are infallible under certain conditions, that does not mean they are
sinless.)
Virtual Debates
Somewhere about this time I also engaged in two long e-mail
discussions/debates with Steve Salisbury on the Eucharist/Lord's Supper, and
with Joel Herndon on "sola fide." (I should note here that
Catholics do NOT believe that Christ is sacrificed again in the Eucharist–they
say that by a miracle the one sacrifice is made present again, across the
bounds of time and space. In a mystical vein, they also quote St.
Augustine, who said (in The City of God), "This wholly redeemed city...is
offered to God as a universal sacrifice by the high priest who in the form of a
slave went so far as to offer himself for us in his Passion, to make us the
Body of so great a head...Such is the sacrifice of Christians: ‘we who are many
are one Body in Christ.' The Church continues to reproduce this sacrifice
in the sacrament of the altar so well-known to believers wherein it is evident
to them that in what she offers she herself is offered.")[xx] Although Steve and Joel
scored some good points scored here and there, all around, I did not feel they
made an overwhelming case made for the Protestant view on either subject.
I felt that with one of my partners in debate a seminarian, and the other quite
widely read in theology, I got a pretty strong argument for Protestant views–sorry
Joel and Steve! ;-)
So When Do The Saints Come Marching In?
I'm sure it's frustrating as well (or a sign of my early
senility!) for some of my readers that I haven't addressed Mary and prayers to
the saints, etc. That's because I don't think these are very tough issues
in light of the bigger questions of Scripture and the Church that I've
discussed above and summarize below. If anyone really wants my thoughts
on these particular issues, I'll be happy to pass them on. I'll just say
here that although I don't see absolute Biblical PROOF for the Catholic way of
looking at them, I do see strong Biblical evidence. (But then, that's
true for a lot of Biblical issues for me—there are many ways to look at the
text, and your starting point determines how you read it.) The point is,
if the Church guided by the successors of Peter and the other apostles has the
authority to interpret the Bible and tradition, then I need to accept
definitive interpretations thereof from that Church, and if the matters are not
core questions, that's pretty easy. If there is no such church so guided,
then I don't need to worry about such questions at all.
Part II: Summing
Up: Two Visions of the Church
Random Assemblies of Saved Individuals...
I prayed for a long time, rather fervently for me, and usually
daily, for wisdom as to what I should think about the Church, and where I
should be in it. I began to see two possible ways to look at the Church,
the Bible, and how they grew. Let's start with the Protestant view.
(Please remember, this is a critique of the Protestant view of the church,
not of all Protestant practice and thought!) On classic Protestant principles, we have an early church
led by men, some of whom are infallible when they write (at least part of the
time–were there lost letters?), but only when they wrote, or, sometimes, when
they supervise the writing of letters or gospels such as Mark or Luke (or
Hebrews?). (I don't see anywhere in the Bible that Christ laid down this
condition–that they should be writing–for the apostles' guidance by the Holy
Spirit.) Still in the Protestant view, the conditional infallibility of
the New Testament writers most certainly cannot be passed on. The
apostles can forgive sins[xxi] (I'm not sure how Protestants
understand this–I seem to remember ignoring such verses), but cannot pass on
that power. (They will do all Christ did, and more[xxii]–but cannot pass on that
power? So what was the point of their having it? Did the first
generation after Christ, but only that generation, need leaders with that
authority and power?) Peter has the keys to the kingdom of Heaven–but
cannot pass on those keys, unless they are a mere symbol of preaching.
(But in that case, why did Jesus not mention giving the keys to all his
apostles, since all preached? Is it a mere coincidence that he only
mentioned keys with Peter? The strong allusion to the Isaiah passage was
an accident?) Peter, on earth, is the leader of the apostles and the
early church (at least through the first few chapters of Acts–I think this is
clear). Christ himself called him keeper of the keys, foundation of the
kingdom, the Rock, steward of the king (read the Isaiah passage), but all this
is temporary, or symbolic. As the years pass after Pentecost, Peter's
leadership fades in some way, and the (gentle and humble yet) monarchical
system so obviously in place during Jesus' earthly ministry evolves
into–what? A democracy? Perhaps an oligarchy in which the apostles,
because chosen by Jesus himself, rule, but as they die one by one each church
begins to govern itself, coordinating as best it can with others (but not
overly worried about that?).
...Make Up A Completely Invisible Body?
Still in the Protestant view, the apostles pass on no
authority. They set up church governments, but apparently laid down no
rule for church government that non-Catholics can all agree on. There is
a church council at Jerusalem[xxiii] organized by someone, but this
is perhaps not normative. Since there is apparently no hierarchy among
churches, any group (with elders? Or can any group appoint new elders if it
needs them?) can break off from any other group if it feels it must.
Paul’s down-to-the-core concern for unity in the here and now no longer
applies. The traditions the
apostles may have taught, at least by example, that did not make it into the NT
(who could be baptized, and when? How to understand the Eucharist, and
baptism, and how many sacraments are there? How was the church hierarchy
to function? Was there one leader per local church? Voted in by the
congregation, or appointed from elsewhere? Etc.) were all unimportant, if
there were any such teachings. The church that followed the apostolic
generation was completely uninspired (or perhaps it was inspired when it
recognized the canon, but apparently not, for that included the Apocrypha, and
the inspired ( ;-) ) reformers could see they were wrong). The only way
to decide what is heresy is to read the Bible, or any book or letter that
claims to be part of the Bible, yourself. The church does not exist as a
single body (except theoretically in God's view), but consists of many bodies,
mutually exclusive, each hoping it has the right interpretations of the books
that it believes are the Bible. The church (called-out group, ecclesia)
that Christ said he would build on Peter was invisible, and really kind of a
figure of speech. "Take it to the church," when the Lord said that
in Matthew 18:17, although it sounds pretty definite, meant, take it to any
group of (self-proclaimed?) believers. Anyone with the NT can start a new
"church," and joining with other "churches" is
optional. If you come to disagree with the leadership of your church on
Biblical principles, you are permitted to join another, or start a new one.
Or: A King, and His Hierarchy
I apologize if this seems like an ugly caricature of the
Protestant view of the church, but by now I sincerely "don't get
it." I welcome a detailed correction. I think I held something along the lines above as a
Protestant, but I simply ignored the strangeness of the full picture, and
focused on other things. I found I
could not go back to Protestantism in part because the view of the church I’ve
outlined no longer made sense to me.
I'll be happy to read someone else's reconstruction of the early church
on protestant lines. (I’ve had readers complain about my picture, but no
one has yet provided me with an alternative Protestant reading!) I read the Westminster Confession’s
section on the church, and it makes its own kind of sense as a defense of the
situation at the time (late Reformation—to use Protestant terminology, under
protest!), but to me it makes no serious attempt to describe what the early church
must have been like–a problem, since according to sola scriptura, if that is an
important question, the answer should be clear in the Bible. My problem
with my "protestant picture" of the early church is that it appears
to strongly contradict much Biblical teaching. (But let me try to make it
clear here that much Protestantism as actually practiced is very good. My critique is solely of the theory or
picture of the church, not of Protestant Christianity as lived.) Here I'll shift to the Catholic picture
as I see it. First, authority. Christ had it in his time as a Man
on earth. Although usually gentle, He acted like a King. He laid
down the Law, and gave Commands when he wished to. He told his disciples
that the leaders in His church would not “lord it over” their followers, or use
their positions to abuse them–which means there would be leaders with
authority. He laid out informally, in Matthew 18, a way of settling
serious local disputes (it starts with a quiet one-to-one talk!), putting authority
in the church, which he allows to cast out people who refuse to listen to it
(not follow them into new churches they start!). His designated chief
steward, Peter, immediately acts as a Leader after the Ascension of Jesus,
laying out courses of action that others follow, and disciplining a follower
who lies to God.[xxiv] Paul asserts his right to command believers,[xxv] and tells Titus, to whom he has
passed authority and spiritual gifts by the laying on of his hands, to appoint
others with authority[xxvi] (implying that the chain will
continue). He tells Timothy to command, instruct, reprove, rule.
Jude (verse 11) warns his readers against the rebellion of Korah (who told
Moses: "the whole community is holy, and God lives among them,"[xxvii] so we don't have to listen to
you as if you were the leader).
Paul's “Blessing” on the First Denominations
The second mark of the Church I see in the NT is unity–which
perhaps includes catholicity, or universality. Jesus promises to build His
Church, not churches. Paul is horrified at the divisions in Corinth.[xxviii] He certainly did not
advise the Corinthians, "as you split up into different denominations,
Pauline, Appolonian, Petrine, and Church of Christ, do not quarrel between your
groups. It's a big city. Respect each other, and have some common
youth rallies and communion services." Paul calls the church a body,
and while there is no doubt he is speaking mystically or spiritually, the
metaphor fits with Paul's obvious attitude toward divisions in Corinth.
He could have called it the army of Christ, or the family, but his favorite
image was striking for the singularity that marks its diversity, right here on
earth. (The view of some Protestants today that only “the invisible
church” is meant to be unified strikes me as one with no foundation in the
NT. The leaders of the early
Church were adamant about unity in the visible Church.) There are
other singular metaphors for the church, e.g. pillar of the truth, foundation
of the truth, a "spiritual house" built of "living stones,"[xxix] "city on a hill,"[xxx] "lamp on a stand."[xxxi] To me it is also striking
that after years of preaching, Paul goes to share his message with Peter and
the other leaders of the mother church, "lest I had run in vain"
(Gal.2:2). Whatever else this means, it seems clearly to me to show a powerful
concern for unity (which ties in with hierarchy and authority, in this
context). I don't think Paul was doubting the teaching he had received,
but he describes his putting it to the hierarchy as a decisive, make-or-break test.
I think this is seen again in the Jerusalem Council,[xxxii] which simply assumes its right
to dictate rules to Paul’s new churches. The apostles appear to be all
there, and they write a letter in the name of “the apostles and elders and the
whole church” informing Paul’s new local churches what they must do. The assumption is clear that the church
is one and universal. And, right from the beginning, the church was quite
concerned about "schism:" breaking off from the rest of the
church. It was seen as a serious sin, even without any heresy
attached. That is partly because the visible church is the church Christ
established, in the real world–just as he took on a real body in a Roman
governorate in real time. (He also told that church "this is my
body," and "whoever eats my flesh…will have eternal life."[xxxiii])
Back to the Dueling Paradigms
To sum up, I see a "Biblical" Protestantism that no
longer makes sense to me historically, in fact that is more or less cut off
from history. It began by rejecting the existing church of its day, and
now you can get an "instant" church, so to speak, by pouring the
Bible on any willing group of people ;-) . (And, there is simply no way
to find even a slightly "protestant" movement or group of Christians
existing through time between the first and sixteenth centuries, even though
you can occasionally find a piece of this or a piece of that teaching in one
group or another. Protestantism as a way of looking at Christianity is a
brand new movement of the sixteenth century. Did God allow truth to be
squelched, or his church to be hijacked from the beginning? But as I say,
the things Protestantism takes for granted about the church simply do not fit
the New Testament picture either.) On the other hand, I see a historical
Catholicism that claims the right, because of authority handed down from Christ
to the apostles (and especially Peter) and to their successors, to interpret
the Bible (which it originally identified as the right books, and which came
from within it). For Ronald Knox,[xxxiv] it’s a question of history. If you accept the New Testament as a
basically reliable group of documents, that leads you to belief in the Son of
God coming down to earth.
According to his recorded sayings in those writings, he promised to
guide his disciples “into all truth.”
If the history leads you to faith in Jesus and a belief in the
reliability of his recorded statements, then it is a reasonable step, based on
that faith, to also accept the claims of the Church that the New Testament is
Holy Writ. It also makes sense
that the Church, formed by Jesus and then by his chosen disciples, would be
able to identify the authentic records of Jesus’ life and teachings. It makes sense in terms of logic as
well—why bother to come down from heaven to create and teach the Good News if
it won’t be preserved in some way.
Thus, in terms of history and logic, it makes sense to accept the
Church’s identification of the authentic books of the New Covenant, and the Church’s
declaration that these books are not just reliable, but the Truth. But if you don’t accept the Church’s
word for it, what makes you sure that any given book, say Romans, or Hebrews,
is really part of God’s word? John
Cardinal Newman said Protestants can't study too much church history, for it
makes them into Catholics (as it did to him).[xxxv] With my historical
penchant that I’ve described, I began leaning towards the Catholic way of
looking at things as soon as I began to see it straight. As I now see it,
the Catholic claim is supported by the Scriptures themselves, which simply do
not support the case for the creation of an ahistorical church without roots,
based on the Scriptures alone. That's not that there weren't some
difficulties for me in the Catholic position, and I wrestled with them.
Mary's special status was one. I think, to avoid writing a tome, that all
I will say here is that there is a Biblical case for the Catholic view, it's
not "goddess-envy" projected onto Jesus' mother. (If we are
commanded to honor our parents, don’t we think Jesus honors His mother? If King Solomon treated his non-royal
mother as a queen,[xxxvi] wouldn’t King Jesus? Didn’t the Holy Spirit inspire her to
say “all generations will call me blessed”?[xxxvii]) Prayers to the saints didn't bother me much once I started
to think about them as asking our brothers and sisters who have gone before us
to pray for us. Hebrews (the "cloud of witnesses" verse in
Chapter 11) strongly implies that they are watching us (the whole stadium image
is bizarre if the saints can’t look in on us), and so does Revelation–which
also states that the elders offer the golden bowls of incense, which are the
prayers of the saints, to God (Rev. 5:8). Why should they be getting in
the middle between these prayers and God, unless the Catholic view is correct,
and we can ask these departed saints to pray for us? (And remember, the
word "pray" is simply an old English word for "ask." To pray to the saints is simply to ask
them to pray for us, because we know that “the prayer of a righteous man is powerful
and effective.”[xxxviii])
Baby Steps in a New Way of Walking
While
I wrestled with the intellectual questions (in a manner far too reliant on the
intellect, most likely, a weakness of mine), I also changed my way of living,
starting with prayer. Peter Kreeft's little book on prayer[xxxix] has been one of my guides.
Catholic services, which almost always include prayer for all mankind, and the
whole church, have marked me. So has a sense, gained partly from
liturgical prayer, that the main function of prayer is for each of us to bring
our very selves into line with what God wants us to be. The main thing we
ask for is God's will to be done, and our asking for other things is a bit
peripheral. I know I could have and did to some extent learn such things
from Protestants, but it all falls together in my prayers now in a new
way. My approach to sanctification has also changed. One of the
things that disturbed me as a Protestant was my sense of not knowing where I
was meant to be going in my Christian life. I mean, holiness seems like a
kind of option following on justification (you have to have some
sanctification, but you probably won't get too far anyway, since we are all
dunghills under snow), and it meant daily prayer and Bible study, which was
meant also to have an impact on my life. I know I could have done better
as a Protestant, and maybe I’m making it sound worse than it was, but the
theory as I understood it left me a bit cold. Now, I am clearly taught
that holiness is the one Divine demand on every Christian, and it means, in
thought, word, and deed embodying the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.
These are not optional add-ons that I should try to get some of—to embody these
fruits is a part of the whole process of salvation. I am far from being there, but it is a worthy goal for every
day of my life: to be sought by "making every effort" (I Peter 1:5),
and at the same time, by relying totally on God's grace at every moment
(there's the Catholic "both/and" theme again: faith AND works, reason
AND faith, nature AND grace). Peter Kreeft quotes Leon Bloy as saying,
"the only tragedy is not to have been a saint."[xl] Suffering, although I
don’t accept it much more easily than before, makes a new kind of sense to
me–even the annoying little sufferings in daily life (which in my life are
rather mild, I know). Instead of some kind of certainty that I will reach
heaven (which is never quite certain in practice, as you must beware of false
certainty), I am offered a robust hope and confidence, in so far as I am daily
seeking God's will, or in other words, seeking to be like Christ, during my
journey to the heavenly city. (There is a total confidence in God, but
not in myself.) Along the way, besides fellowship and sacraments, there
are 2,000 years of spectacular writers and persons such as St. Thomas Aquinas,
and Hans Urs von Balthasar, and St. Francis de Sales, and St. Teresa of Avila,
to encourage and further enlighten me.
I Walked Back To The Cathedral—This Time To Kneel…
Finally, I made a decision. I knew that no knowledge
is perfect on this earth. I knew I would never master all church history,
and all theology, and even if I could, there would still be an element of faith
in accepting the Church as the Church. As John Vance, a wise man (and
Presbyterian pastor of ours), once said, it takes faith to perceive the
existence of the Kingdom of God in the world. I add, it takes faith to
see the Word of God when you read the Bible, or the existence of God when you
look at the mountains and the sea and the stars. It would also take a
kind of faith to deny these things, as there is some very good evidence in
their favor—there will always be atheists with gnawing questions who finally give
up their faith in the god Chance because it doesn’t fit reality. In the
end, there is evidence that speaks to each one of us. On this topic, the
evidence for the Catholic position finally spoke to me in tones I could not
ignore. I finally asked, where do
I sign up? On June 26, 2003, at the age of 47, I was received into the
Catholic Church by Father Varghese Chempoli, parish priest of Saints Peter and
Paul church in Ruwi, Oman. Now I’m
embarked on a new phase of the adventure of my life: the Sacraments in their
fullness (including confession, or “reconciliation,” which is wonderful) and
the guidance of the church for the rest of my walk with God here on
earth. Craig Michael White, November 5, 2003 (lightly revised and
footnoted, March 2004)
Note
1: I’m sorry the footnotes below are incomplete. With a little time, I believe I can back up any assertion
(of normally verifiable fact) that I failed to footnote or incompletely
footnoted. This excepts those
statements made to me personally, which you will have to take on faith. ;-)
Note
2: Besides my story, you could read Peter Kreeft's wonderful “trialogue” (at http://www.shawnplunkett.com/mere_christianity.htm
)
among Thomas Aquinas, Martin
Luther, and CS Lewis. Kreeft imagines Lewis, sitting down to write the
introduction to Mere Christianity, interrupted by a humorous vision of the
Dominican and the Augustinian, who debate with each other and admonish him. It's fabulous, I highly recommend
it–please read everything you find by Kreeft, who also has his own website.
Note 3: after 19 pages of this, I will be shocked
if anyone asks, but I have also written a long essay or “guided Bible study” on
“Justification” where I compare a classical Protestant with the Catholic
view. Ask about it, I’ll pass you
a copy! I’ve also written a truly
brief (3 page) refutation of “sola scriptura” that I will also happily pass on.
[i] Thomas Kuhn,
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
[ii] The Koran,
Sura X, v. y
[iii] C.S.
Lewis,
Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer, p. x
Nature and Nature’s laws lay
hid in night,
God said, “Let Newton be!” and
all was light.
[viii] Acts
19:12 (cf. Acts 5:15)
[xi] please read
Tolkien’s
The Lord of the Rings if you missed this allusion!
[xiv] Catechism
of the Catholic Church, section 32
[xv] The Canons
and Decrees of the Council of Trent, Sixth Session, Chapter XVI, “Christ Jesus
himself, as the head into the members and as the vine into the branches,
continually infuses strength into those justified, which strength always
precedes, accompanies, and follows their good works, and without which they
could not in any manner be pleasing to and meritorious before God…etc.”
[xvii] See
Matt.18:17—the Church even existed before the Resurrection!
But even if you take the traditional
“birthday of the Church,” Pentecost, as your starting point, is there is
clearly no sign of a written New Testament then or for quite a while after.
[xix] Phil. 4:9,
II Thess. 2:15.
Note that the New
International Version of the Bible translates the Greek word for “tradition” as
“tradition” when the connotation is negative, and “teaching” when the
connotation is positive!
[xx] As quoted
in the Catechism, section 1372
[xxi] John 20:22
(cf. Acts 5:1-11)
[xxv] I Cor.
5:3, all of II Cor. (cf. 1:24, 2:9, 8:8, 10:6, 10:8, etc.)
[xxxiv] Ronald
Knox,
The Beliefs of Catholics, Ignatius Press
[xxxv] Newman,
Apologia
Pro Vita Sua
[xl] Kreeft,
On
Prayer, p. x
