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Protestants are not prepared to deal with this sort of thing. But it’s coming, and we had better get ready for it. At the conclusion of his “Brief Catechism on Nature & Grace”, Henri De Lubac writes,
(citing Ratzinger) Let us conclude that “a Christianity which offers man something less than making him God is too modest …. In the struggle for man which we are engaged, such an answer is insufficient.” All along, Christianity has shown perhaps a somewhat less cheerful face; it reminds us with more realism of our condition as sinners, and it does not allow us to forget the prayer given to us by our Lord: “Forgive us our trespasses … deliver us from evil”; but at the same time it opens before us the gates of life in the bosom of the Blessed Trinity.
The promise is not “to become God without God” (as he compares the goal of some in our age). The promise rather, is from God, “you will share in divine life. You will become God”.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but De Lubac says “without the perspective that Christian faith opens of a ‘way out’, leading to divine transcendence and a personalizing union with God in Christ, humanity will not only always remain far from the goal it seeks, it will condemn itself to despair.”
“Personal union with God” means, to the Roman Catholic (with his grand synthesis of neo-Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysic), a literal “fusion of existences” with God, as noted by Herr Ratzinger in his work “Called to Communion”:
Hence, Communion [capital in original] means the fusion of existences. Just as in the taking of nourishment the body assimilates foreign matter to itself, and is thereby enabled to live, in the same way my “I” is “assimilated” to that of Jesus, it is made similar to him in an exchange that increasingly breaks through the lines of division. This same event takes place in the case of all who communicate; they are all assimilated to this “bread” and thus are made one among themselves--one body (36).
Rome’s “justification”, its “sacramental treadmill”, its emphasis on earning “inherent righteousness”, all leads to this.
Of course, the devil tempted Eve, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, ...” Do we want to take the word of the “infallible church” that not only being “like God”, but being “fused into God” is a good thing now, when it wasn’t a good thing then? “The Church” is “the universal sacrament of salvation”. It is this very concept which is its mission to “communicate”, to “bring the fullness of” to people, through the “grace” of its “sacraments”.
That is what these folks have bought into. This will have an appeal in our opra-fied culture, where people all think they're God anyway.
1 Peter 1:13: “Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ”.
It seems Rome is talking about theosis and deification, kind of like the EO do. Am I correct?
ReplyDeleteYes -- there are differences; Rome (especially post-Vatican II) is much more explicit (and explicitly panentheistic).
DeleteWhat are the differences between the EO and RC understanding of theosis and deification? I find it interesting that none of the Trent or Vatican 1 fathers thought in pantheistic and deification terms. It seems this movement came into existence in Post Vatican 2 Rcism. No Post-Tridentine theologian from Bellermine, to Suarez to pretty much any RC up to the early 20th century talked like Ratzinger. In fact Ratzinger would have been considered a heretic by all pre-Vatican 2 RCs. Am i right?
ReplyDeleteVincent, you are correct, this wasn't a problem between Trent and Vatican I -- the issue is "development" (there's a bit of an overview of this process here -- listen to the entire Nick Needham talk) -- all of this came up when Henri De Lubac began writing on "nature/grace" in "Surnaturel", suggesting that the neo-Thomists had gotten things wrong. De Lubac was whacked hard by Pius XII ("Humani Generis"), but throughout the 50's, the ideas of guys like Yves Congar and De Lubac led into Vatican II, and the "dichotomy" that we see coming out of Vatican II is the remnant of that disagreements ("neo-Thomists vs the "nouvelle theologie").
Delete(citing Ratzinger) Let us conclude that “a Christianity which offers man something less than making him God is too modest …
ReplyDeleteHence, Communion [capital in original] means the fusion of existences.
This same event takes place in the case of all who communicate; they are all assimilated to this “bread” and thus are made one among themselves--one body
This confuses becoming holy in character in purifying "your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren,"(1 Peter 1:22) by being "nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine," (1 Timothy 4:6) the preaching of which, along with prayer, is the primary function of pastors (who are never titled “hiereus”=priest) versus obtaining spiritual life and becoming Divine by consuming human flesh, which is never seen in Scripture, but is a form of pagan endocannibalism.*
By this making man God is right in the CCC:
CCC 795 Christ and his Church thus together make up the "whole Christ" (Christus totus). The Church is one with Christ. The saints are acutely aware of this unity:
Let us rejoice then and give thanks that we have become not only Christians, but Christ himself. Do you understand and grasp, brethren, God's grace toward us? Marvel and rejoice: we have become Christ. For if he is the head, we are the members; he and we together are the whole man. . . . The fullness of Christ then is the head and the members. But what does "head and members" mean? Christ and the Church.230
Our redeemer has shown himself to be one person with the holy Church whom he has taken to himself.231
Head and members form as it were one and the same mystical person.232
A reply of St. Joan of Arc to her judges sums up the faith of the holy doctors and the good sense of the believer: "About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they're just one thing, and we shouldn't complicate the matter."233 - http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a9p2.htm
* Alpers and Lindenbaum’s research conclusively demonstrated that kuru [neurological disorder] spread easily and rapidly in the Fore people due to their endocannibalistic funeral practices, in which relatives consumed the bodies of the deceased to return the “life force” of the deceased to the hamlet, a Fore societal subunit. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_%...9#Transmission
Thanks PBJ, I appreciate your input here. This is something that I don't think even Protestants understand the way they should.
DeleteThis goes in line with the whole idea of the church being the incarnation of Christ and sharing ontological properties with him.
DeleteYes
DeleteWhat's the difference between this and the doctrines of union with Christ and Christ's headship of the church?
DeleteSpace Bishop -- one of the most important passages of Scripture for illustrating how the "head/body" metaphors work in Paul's writings is found in Ephesians 2:14-17:
DeleteFor he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.
The "one body" is comprised of both Jews and Gentiles. There is no hint that there is an "ontological" union. Check this concept out with Eph 4:12 ff (as Scripture interprets Scripture), to see how Paul's Hebrew mind conceived of "one body":
And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
We "grow up" -- we mature, we begin to work better together -- not through some kind of "ontological one-ness", but in the same way that Christ "created one new man" out of two -- Jews and Gentiles.
The problem is that these Hebrew concepts then were given different meanings when they got into the neoplatonic culture that wanted to look for some sort of "ontological one-ness".
I think the Reformers sorted this out a bit, but not nearly enough.
Also, CCC 460 The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature":78 "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God."79 "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God."80 "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods."81 http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p122a3p1.htm
DeleteThe custom of eating bread sacramentally as the body of a god was practised by the Aztecs before the discovery and conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards."
ReplyDeleteThe May ceremony is thus described by the historian Acosta: “The Mexicans in the month of May made their principal feast to their god Vitzilipuztli, and two days before this feast, the virgins whereof I have spoken (the which were shut up and secluded in the same temple and were as it were religious women) did mingle a quantity of the seed of beets with roasted maize, and then they did mould it with honey, making an idol...all the virgins came out of their convent, bringing pieces of paste compounded of beets and roasted maize, which was of the same paste whereof their idol was made and compounded, and they were of the fashion of great bones. They delivered them to the young men, who carried them up and laid them at the idol’s feet, wherewith they filled the whole place that it could receive no more. They called these morsels of paste the flesh and bones of Vitzilipuztli.
...then putting themselves in order about those morsels and pieces of paste, they used certain ceremonies with singing and dancing. By means whereof they were blessed and consecrated for the flesh and bones of this idol. This ceremony and blessing (whereby they were taken for the flesh and bones of the idol) being ended, they honoured those pieces in the same sort as their god....then putting themselves in order about those morsels and pieces of paste, they used certain ceremonies with singing and dancing. By means whereof they were blessed and consecrated for the flesh and bones of this idol. This ceremony and blessing (whereby they were taken for the flesh and bones of the idol) being ended, they honoured those pieces in the same sort as their god...
And this should be eaten at the point of day, and they should drink no water nor any other thing till after noon: they held it for an ill sign, yea, for sacrilege to do the contrary:...and then they gave them to the people in manner of a communion, beginning with the greater, and continuing unto the rest, both men, women, and little children, who received it with such tears, fear, and reverence as it was an admirable thing, saying that they did eat the flesh and bones of God, where-with they were grieved. Such as had any sick folks demanded thereof for them, and carried it with great reverence and veneration.”
...They believed that by consecrating bread their priests could turn it into the very body of their god, so that all who thereupon partook of the consecrated bread entered into a mystic communion with the deity by receiving a portion of his divine substance into themselves.
The doctrine of transubstantiation, or the magical conversion of bread into flesh, was also familiar to the Aryans of ancient India long before the spread and even the rise of Christianity. The Brahmans taught that the rice-cakes offered in sacrifice were substitutes for human beings, and that they were actually converted into the real bodies of men by the manipulation of the priest.
...At the festival of the winter solstice in December the Aztecs killed their god Huitzilopochtli in effigy first and ate him afterwards. - http://www.bartleby.com/196/121.html
"By far, the best thing I have ever done." Um. No. New life in Christ is the best thing God has ever done for us. Unfortunately many Protestants get this wrong as well.
ReplyDeleteJim, if nothing else, this will be an opportunity for us to clarify that issue. I think this has relevance to the whole "sell-out" issue with guys like Copeland and Rick Warren.
DeleteSo what if Rome believes and does lots of good things. That was Calvin's point in Institutes 4.1.1, when he said that "Satan, in the papacy, pollutes every good thing that God has given for our salvation".
Did Calvin write that before or after the Council of Trent?
DeleteBoth - sort of concurrently.
DeleteCalvin wrote 1536-1559 (four revisions of Institutes, plus all of his commentaries, sermons, and other writings); he died in 1564. Trent was 1545-1563.
Delete