Nick Needham on Roman Catholicism Today: “We are genuinely in new territory”

What follows is a transcription of about the first seven minutes of an hour-long lecture by Nick Needham on the state of Roman Catholicism today. Needham is the author of a series of works on the history of the Christian church.

This lecture is available at Monergism.com and also at ROCHE, (the Repository of Church History, etc.), where a brief outline is also available.

Nick Needham on Roman Catholicism Today
Martin Lloyd Jones gave a lecture back in 1967 at the British Evangelical Council Conference. The lecture was entitled, “Luther and His Message for Today.” Inevitably, in the course of the lecture, Lloyd Jones strongly criticized seven aspects of Roman Catholic teaching. He then anticipated the following objection. I quote:

“But someone may object at this point and say, ‘but are you not forgetting that Rome is changing? Are you not yourself falling back to the 16th century? Have you not been carried away by Luther? Are you forgetting that you’re living in 1967 and that Rome is changing?’”

All right, let us examine the change. The Church of Rome today is not identical with the Church in Luther’s day. Lloyd Jones then pointed out several ways in which Roman Catholicism today has indeed changed and is different from what Martin Luther faced in the 16th century. (1:17)

The most important difference that Lloyd Jones highlighted, I would suggest, was his final one. And again, I quote:

“Then others say, ‘what about their new attitude to the Bible?’ Let us face it. Did you know that the new attitude to the Bible, in the Roman Church, is mainly the higher-critical attitude? And that what is coming into the Roman Church, is modernism, liberalism and higher criticism. Not evangelicalism. Do not be deluded my friend. Those are the facts concerning the Roman Catholic Church. (1:58)

Now my talk this evening is really an exploration of the two basic points that Lloyd Jones made in 1967. Both points are crucial if we’re to have anything like a right understanding of present day Roman Catholicism.

First, Rome has changed since the time of the Reformation. It is pointless pretending that it is not so, and refighting the battles past, when the battle lines have been redrawn. That would be like Britain basing its defense policy on threat of a new conflict with Nazi Germany. Laughable, you may think. Yet something akin to that would be what we were doing if we based our attitude to Roman Catholicism on the obsolete battle lines of the 16th century. (2:53)

Those battle lines were seriously and fundamentally redrawn by the Second Vatican Council, which met from 1962-65. This was a global assembly of Roman Catholic clergy and theologians that met in Rome to enact reform within their religious communion. The Second Vatican Council was undoubtedly the watershed that marked the birth of modern Roman Catholicism. It’s called “the second” in succession to the First Vatican Council of 1869-1870. The two councils are often referred to in shorthand simply as “Vatican I” and “Vatican II”. (3:40)

Vatican I was the council that for the first time defined the nature of the infallibility of the pope and made this a positive dogma binding on “the faithful.” That council broke up without being officially dissolved, owing to the invasion and occupation of Rome by the army of Victor Emanuel, king of the newly united Italy. The second Vatican council, Vatican II, was therefore perceived by many as a sort of continuation of Vatican I, resuming and completing its work. When Vatican II undertook that task, however, the whole climate of thought within Roman Catholicism had changed, and the result would undoubtedly have shocked most of those who had taken part in Vatican I. (4:34)

Martin Lloyd Jones, then, speaking in 1967, only two years after the conclusion of Vatican II, recognized very clearly what winds of change that council had unleashed within the Roman Catholic communion. If we today would grapple truthfully with modern Rome, I suggest as a matter of urgency that we must follow in Lloyd Jones’s footsteps. We must candidly acknowledge the reality of the change that took place in Roman Catholic theology, and seek to understand its nature and implications. That’s the first point. (5:15)

And then second, the most significant aspect of this change, lies in a new attitude to Divine Revelation on the part of Roman Catholic theology. A new attitude to Divine Revelation. Lloyd Jones expresses this in terms of Rome’s attitude to the Bible, embracing liberal Protestant ideas that limited inspiration and accuracy. We can perhaps expand Lloyd Jones’s point by asking about Rome’s attitude to “truth”. In what sense does the Bible contain “exclusive religious truth.” And in what sense is that truth necessary for salvation? These two related questions take us into the heart of modern Roman Catholicism. (6:05)

Now we’ll see later what this involves. But here is a real and critical change in mainstream Roman Catholic thinking, and it has rendered most of the past controversies redundant. We are in genuinely new territory in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, as Lloyd Jones rightly perceived. I reiterate his cry, “do not be deluded my friends, those are the facts concerning the Roman Catholic Church.” A new appreciation and a new critique are called for on the part of Christians who still resist the claims of Rome, if we’re to be honest and not live in the past. (6:49)

More to follow, Lord willing...