Convinced Movie Trailer from Don Johnson on Vimeo.
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”.
