Dispatch from Philadelphia: Street Witness to Roman Catholics

I had the privilege to work with Geoff Robinson and some of the team who were reaching out to Roman Catholics last week. Because of my personal situation this summer, I wasn’t able to do as much as I had liked. However, there were a few over-runs on the expenses, and Geoff provides links below and it would be great if someone could help out with these a bit.                                                                                                      

Meanwhile, here is Geoff’s recap of the week: 

.. after our daily witness to the World Meeting of Families, we headed to the suburban transportation centers. We decided it would be next to near impossible to get everyone coordinated in the city. We don't need to see the pope. We just wanted to get to the people.

Well, as far as I can tell we were the only ones with that idea, at least on the South Jersey side of things. [Several of us]  had a successful witness in some of the SEPTA stations....

I estimate we gave out about 4,000-5,000 broadsides this weekend. People were in a rush so we didn't have a ton of conversations, but there were a few.

Again, the consistent thing I'm hearing from Catholics is that they are deceived by both Catholic and Protestant leaders into thinking that there is no difference between Catholic and Protestant teaching on justification.

[JB note: My blog posts on the “Joint Declaration” were a result of some quick research I did in response to questions on this question].

I tried to cut through that by emphasizing what Paul tells us about adding works to justification: if you rely on works of the law you are under a curse, because they have to be perfect.

I ran into the folks at Jeremiah Cry ministries heading into the city. They are a Reformed street preaching ministry. They were sharing the gospel in the city. God bless those guys they were such an encouragement to just run into them.

So, besides praying for everyone who read or heard the message of God's free grace in Christ, the main takeaway I would give to all of you is that our team and others proclaimed the gospel to a lot of Catholics who didn't even know there was a difference between us. (Some did know and would just say something like "James" while walking by.)

Many thousands in our home area of Philadelphia and beyond now know there is a difference. And this difference isn't an inconsequential difference. If that is the bare minimum of how the Lord used this, this opens up opportunities. And it should remind us that there are many who are essentially "unreached" in my opinion in our own back yard.

We had 4 law/gospel broadsides. All were written with Roman Catholics in mind. 2 specifically mentioned that we have disagreements with Rome (we mentioned and quoted Trent). We got reactions and conversations mostly from the two that respectfully mentioned our disagreements. So another lesson: don't hide your difference for fear of offending. Pointing out disagreements leads to clarity and can give opportunities for making the gospel message more clear for people.

One item of business before I leave you. Ammi Ministry graciously bought $180 worth of SEPTA tokens for our campaigners. We also need some extra money for incidental expenses and I wanted to give the church that housed us during the week a donation for being gracious hosts to us.

If the Lord leads you to give, please help defray some of these costs.

http://www.ammiministry.org/Donations.html

https://www.gofundme.com/opstcyprian

In Him,

Geoff Robinson

Dispatches from Philadelphia: “Pope Francis” Schedule for Sunday. Please pray for Papal Outreach Street Evangelization

Sunday, Sept. 27

9:15 a.m. - The pope is scheduled to begin his day by meeting bishops at St. Martin’s Chapel in St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in an event that is closed to public.

11:00 a.m. - Francis is expected to visit the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility. While at the Philadelphia facility he is due to meet with a group of prisoners, their families, and prison staff members.

4:00 p.m. - The pope is expected to celebrate Mass Sunday to bring a conclusion to the World Meeting of Families, the congress held to promote family life, at the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Francis is expected to parade along the parkway leading up to the event. Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to attend the Mass, which is a ticketed event, while more than 1 million could attend in the general area of the parkway.

7:00 p.m. - Francis is scheduled to meet with organizers, volunteers and benefactors involved with the World Meeting of Families at the Atlantic Aviation hangar.

8:00 p.m. - Francis is expected to depart for Rome, bringing to a close his first visit to the United States.

Dispatch from the Papal Outreach in Philadelphia, 6:00 am 9-26-2015

Geoff Robinson, who is coordinating a street-evangelism ministry to the Roman Catholics who will be thronging to see “Pope Francis” in Philadelphia, provides this update:

We have completed the first phase of our campaign.

The Lord blessed our outreach to the World Meeting of Families. Due to several factors under God's providence, it seemed we were everywhere. We had t-shirts designed and donated to us that, without our knowledge, matched the color scheme of the t-shirts given out at the conference. And the Convention Center had only so many access points so we were able to cover the area quite well with a minimal amount of people. Our bilingual tracts made it easy to give out the gospel message to people we couldn't communicate with.

We engaged in many conversations. Most of the people we talked to believe there is no difference between Rome and for lack of a better term the Reformation. Others would just shout out a quip about James 2 to us, but the vast majority of those folks didn't engage in a meaningful conversation.

If I can give one example, I was engaged in conversation with a priest. He was claiming that we believe the same thing regarding grace, etc. If surface-level language is to be believed, he even supported imputed righteousness. It took several minutes to get to the point of agreement that Rome believes in faith + works produces justification and how we disagree on that point.

At that point, the priest gave me a similar objection as the one Paul anticipated in Romans 6:1. At which point I tried to drive the point home: "You are this close! Don't you see!?! You gave me the same objection as Romans 6:1. That means I explained Romans 1-5 correctly!"

I relate this story for one purpose: It's easy to dialogue with someone who has everything clear in their head about where our differences lie. It's not so easy to communicate on the street or with friends, etc. We talked to Catholics who ranged everywhere from crass Pelagianists to people who were confused to people who understood the gospel of free grace and believed it but were still in Rome.

If you run into someone who believes that Reformation was a waste of time, be patient with them and take the time to talk with them. That's a good sign they are confused. And, frankly, that's people in our congregations as well.

Make sure you invest the time with your friends and neighbors to really make sure they understand the differences and understand that those who add works to be justified "are under a curse; for it is written 'cursed is everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them."

As of this morning, campaigners will be going to various SEPTA and PATCO stations. Please pray for the campaigners and that God will bless the gospel message.

In Him,
Geoff

What’s Wrong with the “Joint Declaration on Justification”? (Part 3: Smoke and Mirrors)

One muddle-headed Roman Catholic referred to “The Lutheran-Catholic Declaration on Justification” as “the Catholic Church teaching on justification/salvation”. It is no such thing, and I pointed this out at these links:

Part 1.
Part 2.

I’d like to further pick up what Thomas Schreiner said about this document in his work “Faith Alone, The Doctrine of Justification: What the Reformers Taught … and Why It Still Matters” (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2015):

Gerald Bray and Paul Gardner in their evaluation of the Declaration note repeatedly that the document is vague. For instance, it is possible that Lutherans will read the word “imparts” simply to mean that God gives righteousness to someone, while Catholics will almost surely interpret it in transformative terms, so that it denotes infused righteousness. On the other hand, many Protestants today agree with the Catholic definition of justification, defining it in Augustinian terms to mean “make righteous.”

That is their right to agree of course, as scholars and pastors, but it should be clearly explained in the document that these scholars have veered from the traditional Protestant view.

Bray and Gardner make yet another vital observation. The document fails to articulate clearly the Lutheran view of imputation, nor does it unpack the theology of sin in the Lutheran tradition. One cannot understand the Lutheran view of justification without a clear comprehension of the nature of sin.

Again, we see the lack of clarity in the document. By leaving out imputation, one of the main differences between Lutherans and Catholics is glossed over, and the agreement is much less substantial than it appears at first glance. Catholics and walk away believing that justification is based on inherent righteousness, while Lutherans can still believe in an imputed righteousness, an alien righteousness. Ecumenical agreements are not significant if major issues are left unaddressed, unless the Lutheran signatories are suggesting that such matters are no longer important. If this is what they are saying, that should be clearly communicated to their readers (Schreiner, pgs 218-219).

At this point, I’ll say that the motives of the signatories should be brought into question much more than Schreiner does so here. The motives should be to honestly outline each party’s genuine beliefs – not to look for places where equivocation can enable the parties to feel good that they are reaching out to each other.

Someone is right about this, and someone is wrong, and such candy-coated instances of equivocation are simply nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

What’s Wrong with the “Joint Declaration on Justification”? (Part 2)

I’ve been in touch with some of the folks who are doing “street evangelization” in Philadelphia, in conjunction the visit of “Pope Francis” there. In response to a “church history” document they are handing out, one muddle-headed Roman Catholic sent this response:

Thanks very much for sharing your handout outside the convention center this morning. I read it with great interest.

I'd like to share with you some additional information on the Catholic Church teaching on justification/salvation which you can find at the Vatican website:

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cath-luth-joint-declaration_en.html

I believe that we are fully aligned! I hope that this has resolved any doubt. Many blessings.

I responded here yesterday. Thomas Schreiner, in his “Faith Alone”, goes further:

Certainly some progress has been made, but the Joint Declaration does not accomplish [nearly] as much as is advertised. The fundamental problem with many ecumenical documents is their ambiguity. Both parties read the agreement in a way that accords with their theological tradition. In other words, both Catholics and Lutherans could sign off on the Joint Declaration without changing their theology in any significant way.

Of course, the Roman Catholic interlocutor yesterday was completely wrong: Rome had not “signed off” on it at all – Rome first rejected it and then added its own appendix – and even so, it is a badly damaged and gutted document.

The Roman Catholic discussion of “justification” 

in the “Joint Declaration” encompasses 

the section between the two red arrows here – 

and leaves out the whole practice of the 

Roman Catholic religion – and its necessity 

for anyone who would become Roman Catholic. 

The ongoing sacramental theology of Roman Catholic and their conception of indulgences, says Henri Blocher, “[awakens] horrible doubts as to the genuineness of the agreement.” Furthermore, the claim that justification occurs in baptism is disquieting, especially for those of a Baptist persuasion.

Now, “horrible doubts” is what Blocher actually said, and what he is talking about, is that “the Joint Declaration” leaves out so much of “the Roman Catholic Religion” that MUST be practiced AFTER BAPTISM. That is, the Roman Catholic doctrine of “salvation by faith” occurs up to and only up to the point of baptism. For most Roman Catholics, that occurs when a child is only several weeks old. In that sense, it is meaningless for virtually every Roman Catholic.

The bulk of the practice of the Roman Catholic religion, including “confession” (“satisfaction”), “indulgences”, and the whole economy of Purgatory, occur after baptism, and “justification by faith”, for any individual Roman Catholic, is a thing long past. That is illustrated in the “sacramental treadmill” chart nearby.

Even sympathetic observers … point to this omission as the problem of the “Joint Declaration”. It could hardly be denied that acceptance of justification by faith as understood by the Reformers immediately entailed the rejection of these beliefs and practices, which, for centuries, the overwhelming majority among Roman Catholics, both clergy and laity, have understood in ways incompatible with the Reformation. The fact awakens horrible doubts as to the genuineness of agreement. (Henri A. Blocher, from “The Lutheran-Catholic Declaration on Justification” in Bruce L. McCormack, ed., “Justification in Perspective: Historical Developments and Contemporary Challenges”, Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006, 207).

It is terribly irresponsible of the “ecumenical” parties to leave out the context for such a doctrine. I know that they are eager to come to some kind of agreement – to show progress – but it should not come at the expense of this kind of distortion of *precisely where* this “agreement” occurs in the overall schema of both parties.

What’s Wrong with the “Joint Declaration on Justification”? (Part 1)

I’ve been in touch with some of the folks who are doing “street evangelization” in Philadelphia, in conjunction with “Pope Francis”’s visit there. In response to a “church history” document they are handing out, one of the individuals received this response:

Thanks very much for sharing your handout outside the convention center this morning. I read it with great interest.

I'd like to share with you some additional information on the Catholic Church teaching on justification/salvation which you can find at the Vatican website:

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cath-luth-joint-declaration_en.html

I believe that we are fully aligned! I hope that this has resolved any doubt. Many blessings.

Of course, no one is “fully aligned”. In the first place, the “Joint Declaration” document is not “Catholic Church Teaching”. It is there for information purposes only.

Second, it has been heavily qualified. That is, the final draft was submitted, and THEN the Vatican rejected it and THEN added its own qualifications. I cited the Roman apologist Richard John Neuhaus here:

Rome did officially “receive” JD in the sense that it affirmed that very significant progress had been made in removing past misunderstandings, and in moving toward full agreement on what it means to say that the sinner is justified by faith. However, many of the Catholics and Lutherans involved in producing JD are saying—mainly off the record, for the present—that the Roman response is, in the most important respects, a rejection of the declaration. JD proposed that, with the new understandings achieved by the dialogue, the mutual condemnations of the sixteenth century no longer apply, and remaining differences over the doctrine of justification are not church-dividing. The Roman statement does not accept that proposal.

It would be an understatement to say that the theologians involved in the dialogue, both Lutheran and Catholic, were taken aback by the Roman response. During the process, Rome had indicated problems with aspects of the declaration and, almost up to the last minute, revisions were made to take those concerns into account. The participants in the dialogue thought they had been assured that JD would be approved by Rome. Certainly that was the understanding that informed the LWF's approval of the declaration. In the immediate aftermath of the statement by CDF and CCU, the mood among dialogue participants was bitter and despondent. One Lutheran pioneer of the dialogue declared that the theologians, both Lutheran and Catholic, had been “betrayed” by Rome. For decades to come, he predicted, it would be impossible to reestablish confidence in any theological dialogue with the Catholic Church.

The happy-go-lucky Roman Catholic interlocutor has got his facts wrong.