Catholicism: 28 Weeks Later

Luis Dizon has penned a first-year retrospective on his reversion to Catholicism:

https://eacanada.wordpress.com/2019/10/31/looking-back-at-the-reformed-tradition-one-year-later/

1. Before commenting on specific passages, I'll venture some preliminary remarks:

Human beings aren't logic boxes, so there can be personal pressures and incentives that figure in our political and religions affiliations. For instance, Luis said on Twitter (pined tweet): 

- During my Protestant days, I considered becoming a minister. I've since dropped this idea

- Not considering the priesthood. Permanent diaconate after marriage is still on the table, however

This drift of this seems to be that he wants to have a normal family life, something he'd be free to do as a Protestant minister but not as a Catholic priest. With that in mind, I wonder if the pool of marital prospects isn't a whole lot deeper for a Filipino-Canadian Catholic than a Filipino-Canadian Reformed Baptist. 

2. What kind of Catholicism did Luis actually revert to? Again, on Twitter (same thread) he says:

@LuisDizon

RELIGIOUS VIEWS (5/7)

- My current Catholic orientation can best be described as "Semi-Trad." I go to a Novus Ordo parish, which I'm pretty comfortable with for the most part. But I try to do things the trad way whenever possible (recite prayers in Latin, receive in tongue, etc.)‏

RELIGIOUS VIEWS (6/7)

- My views on Vatican II are complicated. I think some things were better before the council, and I'm in favour of a partial rollback. I wouldn't want a complete reversal, however. I still think the move towards vernacular, for example, is a good thing.

So he didn't revert to official, establishment Catholicism. He favors a "partial rollback" of Vatican II. In reality, he reverted to the Masada of RadTrad Catholicism. Catholic Essenes, like the Jewish Essenes and Qumran sectaries who viewed the official religious establishment in Jerusalem as an unclean thing to be kept at a safe distance. Only in this case the unclean thing is the religious establishment in Vatican City. Or, to switch illustrations, RadTrads be like Mormon fundamentalists holdup in their polygamist compounds. 

3. This, in turn, goes to a related feature of his position. His reference frame of isn't Catholicism as a living faith but the ersatz construct of RadTrads and Catholic apologists. 

4. Turning to statements in his retrospective:

At the same time, I was imbibing Reformed theology through ministries such as Alpha and Omega Ministries and Ligonier Ministries. I have read and listened to way more James R. White and R. C. Sproul than almost any other Reformed preacher, and I went deep into their brand of populist, reactionary Calvinism. 

I also distinctly remember watching Trent Horn vs. James White debate the question of whether Christians can lose their salvation in early 2017 (see here), and finding Horn’s arguments to be significantly better than White’s. I had watched some of White’s debates with Catholic apologists before, but I resolved at that point to watch every single one of them (you can find a list of them here). It’s easy to think that White did well in these debates when one’s impression of them comes from 15-minute excerpts and post-debate commentary on the Dividing Line. It’s quite another picture when one actually watches all of the debates from beginning to end (although to be fair, most of those debates weren’t available online until recently). Not all of the Catholic apologists he debated were equally proficient. I noted that when he faced off against, for example, Jimmy Akin, Mitch Pacwa, or Robert Sungenis, the latter would often offer very well-reasoned and compelling arguments for the Catholic position, which I was forced to reckon with.

i) What's striking about this is that, by his own lights, he's making Reformed popularizers and oral debates the yardstick for Calvinism. But that's not judging Calvinism by its most sophisticated exponents. What about Reformed exegetes like Greg Beale, Don Carson, Karen Jobes, Peter O'Brien, Ramsey Michaels, Vern Poythress, and Tom Schreiner (to name a few) or Reformed philosophers like James Anderson, Guillaume Bignon, Paul Helm, Paul Manata, and Greg Welty? 

Why would someone with his academic bent not take a more scholarly approach? Surely Toronto U has a magnificent theological library and an active interlibrary loan dept. So he made it easy for himself and took intellectual shortcuts by aiming low rather than high. 

(In a tweet he alludes to "Westminster Seminary theologians"–but he doesn't say if that refers to WTS or WSC, and he doesn't name the theologians in question.)

ii) There's an irony in mentioning Sungenis, who's now in self-exile from contemporary Catholicism.     

5. Moving along:

The Reformed phase of my life lasted for approximately nine and a half years. I continued to identify as Reformed even as I did my Master of Theological Studies at Wycliffe College (a seminary run by the Anglican Church). My sense for the need for a high sacramentology and a historically-grounded liturgy became more acute during my stay there. I thought, however, that I could have that while holding onto my Reformed Baptist confessional allegiance.

Some professing Christians seem to be psychologically hardwired to hunger for "a high sacramentology and a historically-grounded liturgy." They just have that emotional need for ecclesiastical handholding. It's not something I can relate to. 

6. Moving along:

At this same time, several of my friends in Evangelical and Reformed circles were crossing the Tiber. I would always have a friend crossing the Tiber here and there, but during the years 2016-2018, there was a sustained wave of conversions happening among my friend circles (there was also a smaller number of them opting for Eastern Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, and High-Church Anglicanism). 

Of course, most of the traffic is moving in the opposite direction. 

7. Moving along:

I would like to focus on two doctrinal issues which have played a large role in my disenchantment with Reformed theology: Perseverance of the Saints, and the denial of Baptismal Regeneration.

On Perseverance of the Saints, it seems that there are many passages that, if taken in their plain sense, teach that believers can lose their salvation. John 15:1-6, Romans 11:22, Galatians 5:4, Hebrews 10:26-30, and 2 Peter 2:20 all, if taken at face value, contradict the Reformed doctrine, and assert or assume that someone who has been saved can go back into the world and be cut off from Christ, if they do not continue to abide in Him. Scripture’s continued use of “cutting off” language makes no sense whatsoever if those being “cut off” were never in Christ to begin with. In order for the Bible’s language to make sense, they must have previously had a real relationship with Christ, who is the vine from whom they were cut off.

This is not to say that Scripture does not teach a concept of “Perseverance.” Scripture does teach that there is a category of people called “the elect,” and that those people will persevere to the end and be saved (Mark 13:13), and that such perseverance is the gift of God’s grace (Philippians 2:12-13). However, it doesn’t follow logically from that the elect constitute the entirety of God’s saints, or that those who fail to persevere to the end never had salvation. That is an extra postulate which, if we were to use Occam’s Razor, we ought to dispense with. In other words, it is much better to postulate the Perseverance of the Elect (which is a simpler concept and easier to defend biblically), rather than the Perseverance of the Saints.

i) It's fine to relabel it the "perseverance of the elect," but surely the label isn't the key issue. That's just semantic.

ii) I have nothing new to say about that. I wrote a whole thesis on that, combing through all the prooftexts pro and con:

https://calvindude.org/ebooks/stevehays/Apostasy-and-Perseverance.pdf

At the time I wrote it I was struggling with "Fibro fog," so some parts are better written then others. If I could go back, I'd streamline the analysis of Heb 6 & 10. 

8. Moving along:

The same can be said about sacramental theology. I remember when discussing theology with a Presbyterian colleague (who has since become Catholic as well), that one of the major flaws in Reformed theology is its inability to account for the multiple passages in Scripture that quite obviously teach baptismal regeneration. I know that if I say “baptism saves you” to a group of my Reformed colleagues, most of them would instantly cry “heresy!” and “works-righteousness!”, yet those very words are a direct quotation from 1 Peter 3:20-21 (I include the previous verse about Noah being saved through the floodwaters lest anyone make the argument that this refers to Spirit baptism, as distinct from water baptism). There are many other passages which point towards baptism’s regenerating ability, which Reformed theologians are at pains to explain away. These include John 3:5, Romans 6:4, Galatians 3:27, and Titus 3:5, among others.

i) Once again, I have nothing new to say on that score. I've detailed why I think the prooftexts are fallacious. For instance:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2018/01/born-of-water.html

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2014/11/parsing-baptism.html

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2015/10/baptism-saves-you.html

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/01/born-of-water-and-spirit.html

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2015/10/disambiguating-sacramentalism.html

ii) In addition, what, if any, academic monographs has Luis studied that challenge his position? For instance:

K. Aland, Did the Early Church Baptize Infants? (Wipf & Stock 2004)

R. Bauckham, "Sacraments?," Gospel of Glory: Major Themes in Johannine Theology (Baker 2015), chap. 5.

E. Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries (Eerdmans 2013) 

T. Schreiner & S. Wright, eds. Believer's Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ (B&H 2007)

H. F. Stander & L. P. Louw, Baptism in the Early Church (EP Books 2004)

D. F. Wright, Infant Baptism in Historical Perspective: Collected Studies (Wipf & Stock 2007)

9. Moving along:

The two issues mentioned above compound one another if they are taken together. If Baptismal Regeneration is true, then Perseverance of the Saints is necessarily false. This is because if Baptism saves, then it saves all who are baptized. But if it saves all who are baptized, then that includes those who fall away from the Christian faith after their baptism. Reformed soteriology will not tolerate such an idea. This is just one of many ways that a thoroughgoing adherence to Reformed theology inevitably leads to a lower Sacramentology.

It's true that these are interrelated. Does "thoroughgoing adherence to Reformed theology inevitably lead to a lower Sacramentology"? Or does it correct superstitious priestcraft? 

10. Moving along:

Up to this point, I have not even brought the Church Fathers into consideration yet. Thus far, it already appears from Scripture alone that Reformed theology is on shaky ground. It becomes even harder to sustain once one considers the testimony of the saints throughout history. I have oftentimes made the argument that neither Perseverance of the Saints nor the denial of Baptismal Regeneration can be traced back earlier than the Reformation. From the Apostolic Fathers onwards, the testimony on these two issues is unanimous. One would have to assert that nobody got it right since the Apostles died until the Reformers came along.

I don't have an informed opinion on that. And I don't care. The so-called church fathers aren't my lodestar:

i) Well-meaning Christians can be wrong. Christians disagree with each other on lots of issues. They can't all be right. Catholics argue with each other all the time.

ii) We know from the NT that doctrinal error and confusion crept into the church during NT times. Churches actively overseen by apostles. Antiquity carries no presumption of orthodoxy. 

iii) The rupture between church and synagogue led to exegesis and theological developments foreign to the Jewish context of the NT.  

11. Moving along:

It seems to me that if the Scriptures are clear on a topic and that all of pre-Reformation church history is unanimous on the same point, then there should be no question about which belief is the orthodox one. On just the two points listed above, one can safely rule out Reformed theology and all of the many sub-traditions that have branched off of it as valid understandings of Biblical Christianity. 

i) What does unanimity amount to when only a fraction of the population is literature, has access to books, and theological dissent is a free ticket to the auto-da-fé? This argument, endlessly repeated by Catholic converts and apologists, is sociologically naive. 

ii) Is Catholicism a bastion of historical unanimity? Luis is recycling a stock argument which, with many variations, goes basically like this:

"I converted to Rome because I was impressed by its fundamental historical continuity." When confronted with many examples of dramatic discontinuity, the convert then replies that since dogma never changes, changes to traditional teaching means that was never infallible, irreformable teaching.  

But that's circular. On the one hand, doctrinal continuity is cited as evidence for Catholicism, but when counterexamples are presented, the convert appeals to the authority of the Catholic church to determine what counts as fundamental continuity. So they use church history to prove Catholicism while they simultaneously use Catholic authority to sift church history.