Roman Catholicism: “simply making up things to justify pet doctrines and practices”

St Thomas the Train Wreck Aquinas

While our culture is talking about “fake” things, such as “fake news”, why not talk about “fake religion”?

R. Scott Clark, a professor of Historical Theology at Westminster Seminary, California, published an original piece of work dealing with Aquinas’s inability to find biblical evidence in favor of “images”. Perhaps he is still feeling the sting of a WSCal grad like Jason Stellman having turned “Drunk”, or maybe there is a “Reformed Thomist” somewhere in his life. Whatever the reason, in this blog post, Clark, who reads Aquinas in the original Latin, unloads with both barrels:

The Allure Of Unwritten Tradition:

The earliest post-apostolic Christians (some of whom are denominated the Apostolic Fathers) knew of an apostolic tradition but they did not know about a secret and unwritten apostolic tradition on the authority of which the church could justify virtually anything it wanted. Remarkably, however, over time this is just what happened in the life of the church. In preparation for the annual [“Is the Reformation Over?” conference] this Friday and Saturday (January 13–14, 2017) I have been looking at Thomas Aquinas’ appeal to an unwritten tradition to justify practices that he freely admits are not biblical. In Summa Theologica 1a2ae 25.3, where he was defending the veneration of the cross, he faced a very sensible and eminently biblical objection:

Turning “Pope Francis” into a “Drunk Ex-Pope”?

This photo is a screen capture from here.

From here:

When a relative we love, due to aging or an underlying medical issue, starts saying or doing inappropriate things, what do we do? Out of love, we take him out of the limelight of life. We spare him of any shame - not for our sake, but for his. When a dear grandmother starts babbling inappropriate words, there is no greater love than to protect her image.

With talk of “Pope Francis” being an “antipope”, it seems as if the Traditionalist Roman Catholics at Rorate Caeli may be ready to take a lesson from Jason Stellman and his “Drunk Ex-Pastors” schtick.


They are already promoting Cardinal Burke’s “some form of fraternal correction”. Maybe they should go a bit further and turn “Pope Francis” into a Drunk Ex-Pope. In doing so, they have already turned to a Biblical account (!) as a potential model, the account of Noah in his drunken nakedness:

Bryan Cross: “The ordinary Catholic life just is the long dark night of the soul”

That headline is a direct quote from Bryan, taken from a February 17 2016 Bryan Cross comment on this Jason Stellman blog post. (The topic of Stellman came up earlier this week, and so I took a look, and came up with this conversation.) In that blog post, Stellman is complaining that “my experience with God is largely characterized by divine absence, the ‘real absence of Christ’”. I don’t want to get into Stellman’s self-absorbed hand wringing, but here’s the larger Bryan Cross quote:

I don’t have the Calvary Chapel background that you do. But I do have a Pentecostal background. Of course we both went through a substantive Reformed period. But it took me some time to realize that some remainders of that original spirituality lingered on, a tradition in which spiritual experience in its subjective phenomenological sense, is extremely important, and is the measure of one’s closeness to God, perhaps even the very measure and ground of one’s faith.

Hold this thought, because this is not at all what the Reformation faith – the earliest Christian faith – was about. I’ll address this below.

Jason Stellman’s New Postmodern Doctrine of God

Bryan Cross and his one-time mini-me
wannabe, Jason Stellman

Normally, I don’t read Jason Stellman. I predicted he would be a disaster back in 2008. Jason is a Westminster Seminary of California grad who first became enamored with the Called to Communion apologetic, then converted to Roman Catholicism, left his wife and children, and now he has a podcast entitled “Drunk Ex-Pastor”. In fact, I said then:

In truth, I don't see any of these folks as "settled" in Rome. Life is too unsettled, and Rome just simply has too many discrepancies for a genuinely tender conscience to come to grips with it. Maybe some of these converts will be happy being Roman Catholics for a while; many others have ended up merely visiting Rome as a weigh station on the road to something else, however.

“Drunk ex-Pastor”: Did Called to Communion ruin Jason Stellman’s life?

Warning: Graphic Content

He tried to portray himself as hip and cool, but really, as recent history has shown, he was one of the weak ones. Bryan Cross and the Called-to-Communion gang put a big target on his head and set him in their sights. Of course …

… the folks at CTC treated him as one of their trophies. Like a returning war hero.

Thanks to the growing power and speed of the Internet, we can see the “crash-and-burn” in real-time.

Jason Stellman Joins Called to Communion

What a surprise!

The Circle of Life

Bergoglio’s Gig: Devoutly Venerate This Painting.

Protectress of the Roman People

If peace breaks out in Syria, some Roman Catholics will believe it was because Pope Francis invoked this icon: the “Salus Populi Romani”, or the “Protectress of the Roman People”.

ROME, September 12, 2013 – With the passing of the days the extraordinary nature of the vigil presided over by Pope Francis in St. Peter's Square on the evening of Saturday, September 7 is becoming ever more perceptible.

First of all, the reason: a day of fasting and prayer to call for peace in Syria, the Middle East, and wherever there is war. With the participation not only of Catholics but of men of every religion and simply “of good will.” Not only in Rome but in many cities of the world.

Then the duration. One cannot recall a public vigil of prayer of four consecutive hours, from sunset to late into the night, in the constant presence of the pope.

Then the silence. Over the entire span of the vigil the recollection of the hundred thousand persons crowding St. Peter's Square and the surrounding areas was intense and emotional. In harmony with the accentuated austerity of the very presence of the pope.

Then, above all, the form that the prayer took on. It began with the rosary, the most evangelical and universal of the “popular” prayers, and with a meditation by Pope Francis. It proceeded with the adoration of the sacrament of the Eucharist. It continued with the office of readings - the nocturnal psalmody of the monks - with the reading of passages from Jeremiah, St. Leo the Great, and the Gospel of John. It concluded with the singing of the “Te Deum” and with Eucharistic benediction imparted by the pope.

Catholic Converts and “Buyer’s Remorse”: Permitting “Pitifully Low Standards” to Overcome It

The Real Roman Catholic Hierarchy

In response to this thread, “Jason Stellman Defending the Faith”, Nomosian asked:

Are Catholics really that desperate to enlist among their ranks of apologists converts that have been enlightened a mere one year? That's rather telling in my opinion. By their measure, he's been teaching and preaching heresy for the last 20 years, but now, in the last year he's some how finally gotten it right and is qualified to lead others? Those are some pitifully low standards.

He really answered his own question. I responded: “My thought is that the whole ‘Catholic Convert’ schema has been set up to allay the buyer’s remorse that many of them have upon finding out what they've really gotten themselves into.”

Another Called to Communion writer has portrayed that feeling as “a marriage, in which romance does not reduce to sentimentalism, nor prescind from difficulty and pain, but rather flows from the realities of a life shared together, come what may”.

In other words, the newness comes off, and the Roman Catholic convert who falls in love with “The Church” wakes up one day and finds that the purported “Bride of Christ” really does have warts.

Jason Stellman, “Defending the Faith”

Yes, I remember being scoffed at when I said something to the effect that if Jason Stellman converted to Roman Catholicism, they’d turn him into a celebrity.

But that very thing has happened already, as Stellman was one of a number of “headliners” at a recent “Defending the Faith” conference held at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, July 26-28.

Stellman joined Scott and Kimberly Hahn, Patrick Madrid, Bishop Jeffrey Monforton, Peter Kreeft, Mark Shea, Ralph Martin, and others. Stellman’s talk was based on his conversion story as posted at Called to Communion, “I Fought the Church and the Church Won”.

According to Shea, there were some 1500 attendees. He had this to say about Stellman:

the big highlight for me was Jason Stellman's conversion story, which is a true profile in courage. Jason contacted me several years ago because he lives in my area (right across the lake over in Woodinville). We met once and (though I don't remember saying it) he said that in that one meeting I told him I had no doubt in my mind he would become a Catholic. I don't recall saying it but I do recall thinking it as we talked. At any rate, it apparently hit him hard without my realizing it….

His dilemma was that he was a Calvinist pastor who, having acted as prosecutor in a heresy trial against Peter Leithart for exhibiting dangerously Romish tendencies, had himself wound up taking too close a look at the Church's claims and--after immense amounts of prayer, study, and anguish, abandoning all earthly security and the only job had had ever known--entered the Catholic Church in an incredibly gutsy leap of faith. Happily, Fr. Kurt Nagel out at Holy Family in Kirkland was able to hire him for a few months and Jason's congregation was very generous to him in terms of a severance package. Now he's working with Logos Software on an awesome program that I think will do great good. I can't tell you how honored I am to know such a man of integrity.

Jason Stellman’s failure as a prosecutor led to the Leithart acquittal

I know there is a lot of disappointment among PCA members over the what essentially is the decision to let a lower-court verdict stand.

Over at the Green Baggins discussion of the Peter Leithart case, Ron DiGiacomo is clearly making the most lucid comments:

To suggest that the SJC should have taken into account any evidence other than the trial itself is to undermine one’s right to a trial. In other words, evidence is never to be considered so incriminating as to allow for an immediate conviction without a trial. Accordingly, it would have been inappropriate for the SJC to arrive at a guilty verdict based upon arguments not formulated by the Presbytery. To have done so would have been for the SJC to try the case without having to undergo rebuttal and cross-examination, a clear violation of Leithart’s rights.

The failure is Jason Stellman’s failure as a prosecutor:

[Peter Leithart] essentially denied on the stand what FV has gone on record affirming. All that is left to do at that point is to pepper the defendant with questions regarding inconsistency in view of previously written (or stated) Roman Catholic tendencies. That did not happen and that was Jason’s job. Consequently, the SJC was left with too many uninterpreted brute particulars that were not fleshed out with formal argumentation. Again, to have drawn their own conclusions based upon arguments that were never formulated would have been to put PL on trial without the right of a defense attorney. We’re Presbyterian not papists.

On Not Taking Jason Stellman Seriously

Back when Jason Stellman was beginning his unwinnable fight with “the Church”, reflecting upon Reformed ecclesiology as presented by Michael Horton in People and Place, Jason asked this question:

Now the question could arise about how, given the fractured nature of Protestantism, a particular church’s binding and loosing can be taken seriously. I mean, with no visible church but only visible churches, who’s to say whose earthly binding and loosing is in fact reflective of the heavenly reality?

What stops Joe PCA, upon being disciplined, from running down the street to the OPC or even the PCUSA? What good is discipline in that case? He further asks:

Some questions to further discussion: (1) Does Rome’s magisterial view of ecclesiastical authority betray an overrealized and romanticized eschatology? (2) Can Protestantism’s insistence that there is no necessary coincidence between earthly and heavenly binding and loosing bear the weight of the Scriptural evidence, e.g. Matt. 16:19? and (3) By their respective self-authenticating definitions of the church as either the assembly that gathers around the bishop (Catholicism) or the assembly that gathers around the Word and sacraments (Protestantism), has either side effectively rigged the game?

Rome, apparently, “rigs the game” by ignoring their own rules.

Paradigms, Tradition, and the Lexicon, Part 4

The Precedence of Written Torah. Or, Jason Stellman’s “already-existing apostolic tradition”.

We should keep in mind what Jesus thought of “oral tradition”. Oscar Cullmann notes (“The Tradition”, in “The Early Church”, London, UK: SCM Press Ltd, ©1956) “Jesus rejected in a radical manner the paradosis of the Jews” (pg 60). Consider how Jesus put it:

So for the sake of your tradition you have made void the word of God. You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.”

We have seen how this worked in John Wenham’s contribution in Norman Geisler, ed., “Inerrancy”, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, ©1980), when he says:

Our Lord used the Old Testament as the court of appeal in matters of controversy. Both with Pharisee and Sadducee, He did not call into question their appeal to Scripture; rather, He rebuked them for failure to study it profoundly enough. Even the seeming waste of time and effort by the Pharisees on detailed legal formulations based on their study of the Torah He commended rather than condemned. “You should have practiced the latter,” He said. Their mistake was not that they applied the law too rigorously, but that they left undone its more important matters (Matt. 23:23, pg 10).

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness. These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others. You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel!”

Markus Bockmuehl (“Jewish Law in Gentile Churches”: Halakhah and the Beginning of Christian Public Ethics, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, ©2003) takes this notion further and puts real flesh on the bones of Wenham’s outline, exploring “your tradition” and how it intersected with “the word of God” in first century Palestine:

The Mishnah [the authoritative compilation of the oral law, ~200AD] commends that a good interpreter should ‘make a fence’ for the Torah, i.e., interpret in keeping with tradition… Pharisaic halakhah, and later normative halakhah, was a way of giving increasingly definitive traditional shape to the practice of Judaism. Whether or not the pharisaic respect for oral tradition had already crystallized into a formal doctrine of oral law, Jesus’ legal disputes with the Pharisees represent a clash between different conceptions of halakhah, different ways of building that protective hermeneutical fence.

That Jesus, too, was engaged in the erection of an interpretive fence cannot be in doubt, even if his overall concern had a different focus. Several emphases of Jesus’ teaching demonstrate this quite clearly. First, and most strongly attested, is his opposition to halakhic arguments that restrict or suspend the plain meaning of the written Torah (emphasis added).

The key illustration here must be the dispute about handwashing in Mark 7:1–13 par. The argument concerns the authoritative place of Pharisaic tradition in a matter of purity not explicitly legislated in the Torah, viz. that of ritual handwashing to cleanse any acquired contamination before each meal. Jesus’ interlocutors appeal to a well-known Pharisaic principle of halakhah that is not based on the Torah (and is apparently not attested at Qumran): food is rendered unclean at second remove, by derived impurity of the hands ([non-Biblical references omitted]; nb impurity of ‘hands’ as distinct from the body). Biblical law, by contrast, recognizes only direct sources of impurity, which affect the body as a whole (e.g. Lev 11:31–35).

Jesus’ reply, as recorded somewhat differently in Mark and Matthew, consists of two parts. First, he insists on the distinction between the authority of the Torah, which he accepts, and that of the ascendant Pharisaic halakhah, which he rejects (Mark 7:8–9 with reference to Isaiah 29:13). This insistence on the halakhic primacy of Scripture over against Pharisaic tradition was also shared by the Sadducees and the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls).

It was Jesus “making a fence for the Torah” – giving precedence to the Written Torah.

The second part of the argument in Mark 7, equally rooted in a Palestinian Jewish Sitz im Leben well before AD 70, illustrates Jesus’ charge that the Pharisees in practice assign a higher authority to their tradition than to Scripture. He does so by drawing on the familiar halakhic topic of vows (cf. also Matt 5:33–37; 23:16–22), to which the Mishnah later devotes an entire tractate and which was also of interest to the Essenes.

Bockmuehl notes that Josephus “suggests that the Essenes refuse to take vows altogether. Although vows are envisaged … the document nevertheless criticizes the conditional hedging of vows in terms reminiscent of Matt 5:34–36; 23:16–22.”

Jesus again was “giving precedence to Written Torah” in a way that was not unusual in his time.

The halakhah of Jesus’ opponents apparently did not allow them to release a person from a vow to make and offering in the Temple, even in the case where the designated resources were needed to support one’ parents. There is clearly a conflict of commandments here, between the duty to keep one’s vows (Numbers 30:2; cf Deut 23:21, 23) and that of honouring one’s parents (Exodus 20:12; Deut 5:16). The tradition of Jesus’ opponents; perhaps holding all mitzvoth to be of equally binding force [non-Biblical references omitted], had led them to a legal rigorism that made the mitigation or suspension of a lesser commandment in favour of a more important one very difficult to achieve.”

(Bockmuehl discusses “The Weightier Things of the Torah” shortly).

What is more, Jesus’ view in Mark 7 relates easily to the range of mainstream Jewish positions, as is clear from a late first-century debate recorded in the Mishnah (and previously, in Philo). There, a position not dissimilar from that of Jesus is taken by the late first-century R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus (who is elsewhere reported to have been sympathetic to an apocryphal Halakhan of Jesus [non-Biblical references omitted]; the explicit Scriptural commandment to honour one’s parents can take precedence over the secondary and merely traditional rules about the cancellation of vows.

For Jesus, therefore, the ‘fence’ around the Torah is itself rigorously scriptural; in case of conflict, the Decalogue’s commandment to honour one’s parents takes precedence over the laws about vows, which are in any case voluntary. Jesus refuses to subordinate one written commandment to the oral tradition pertaining to another (a distinction recognized in [rabbinic doctrine, non-Biblical references omitted].

In the first instance, then, Torah serves as its own interpretive fence.

Thus, Jesus, in giving his teaching, was relying on sola Scriptura, the precedence of Scripture norming tradition, and emphasizing “the weightier things of the Torah”.

As I’ve related: “By standards that Beale relates, there may be more than 4,000 “allusions” or “echoes” of the Old Testament found within the New. Given that there are 7956 verses in the New Testament, more than half the New Testament can be seen as bearing at least some form of “echo of” or “allusion to” some Old Testament concept or idea.”

Jesus, in his teaching, was echoing and reinforcing Torah above all.

Thus, when Jesus, and then a New Testament writer talks of “tradition” “handed down (παρέδοσαν) to him by “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word”, the “content” of that “tradition” was “oozing with Old Testament words and concepts.”

In the question of “The Tradition and the Lexicon”, the two were, in the New Testament, one and the same.

“To my knowledge only John Bugay called shennanigans from the get-go”

Unsolicited:

http://oldlife.org/2013/01/what-a-difference-a-council-makes/comment-page-2/#comment-70491

If I thought for a second that the CtC crew had innocent motives to explore the areas where Protestants and Roman Catholics agree and disagree, I’d be far more inclined to dialogue. But make no mistake, they aim for our conversion to Rome. The trophy wall of Reformed converts on their blog, and their very name are indicators. I watched as they gained a foothold over at Stellman’s blog, as many of us naively stood by and assumed they were in it for the dialogue, to my knowledge only John Bugay called shenanigans from the get-go. I can understand that they think they are on a noble mission, but what they in effect are seeking is to knock us off of the foundations of Scripture and the gospel we all confess. As a Reformed individual, I am loathe to acknowledge that anyone has noble, or even neutral motives.

‘What is the church?’ Ask first ‘What does God intend for man?’

What is God’s intention with respect to man? That’s a key component in answering the question “what is the church?”

While keeping the Reformed confessions in mind, G.K. Beale, in his A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic ©2011) says this:

My thesis is that the major theological ideas of the [New Testament] flow out of the following New Testament storyline, of which the new-creational kingdom and its expansion are the central element leading to God’s glory: Jesus’s life, trials, death for sinners, and especially resurrection by the Spirit have launched the fulfillment of the eschatological already-not yet new-creational reign, bestowed by grace through faith and resulting in worldwide commission to the faithful to advance this new-creational reign and resulting in judgment for the unbelieving, unto the triune God’s glory [emphasis is Beale’s, pg 23].

Beale swoops out and takes a look at the grand sweep of Scripture. He stresses that “the resurrected Christ is ‘the foundation-stone of the New Creation [that] has come into position.” But elsewhere, he notes that the resurrected Christ has a “back story” that extends back through the Old Testament to Adam. He stresses that Paul’s contention in Romans 5, for example, is not a brand new thought of Paul’s, but rather, it is the result of a lifetime of the Apostle’s reflection on the Old Testament message:

Housewives Called to Communion

I keep handy a copy of J.I. Packer’s “A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision for the Christian Life” [©1990 Crossway Books]. According to Packer, with respect to spirituality, “the Puritans are giants compared to us, giants whose help we need if ever we are to grow” (16).

Last, night, I came across the chapter on marriage and family. Packer notes “there is much to be learned by tracking Puritan thought on marriage and the family” (260). Especially, he notes, “the Puritans, like the Reformers, glorified marriage in conscious contradiction of the medieval idea that celibacy as practiced by clergy, monks, and nuns is better—more Christlike, more pleasing to God—than marriage, procreation, and family life” (260).

Packer cites a number of Puritan writings on the tenderness of married love. Here are several selections:

There is no such fountain of comfort on earth, as marriage.

It is a mercy to have a faithful friend that loveth you entirely … to whom you may open your mind and communicate your affairs …. And it is a mercy to have so near a friend to be a helper to your soul and … to stir up in you the grace of God.

God is the first Institutor of marriage, gave the wife to the husband, to bee, not his servant, but his helper, counselor, and comforter.

And then there is the well-known commentary of Matthew Henry on Genesis 2:22:

The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to top him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near to his heart to be loved”.

Packer speaks of “the erotic agape of a romantic marriage” which was common in Puritan life.

Called to Desperation

This runs counter, now, to what the Called to Communion wives are experiencing. Perhaps they went along with their husband’s whims to give up the Reformed faith and move to Rome. I know, from correspondence with members of Jason Stellman’s church, that Jason’s wife did not give up her membership at Exile Presbyterian, and further, Jason’s youngest son made a profession of faith in that church. We should continue to pray for the difficulties left behind when these men gave up the faith.

“Marriage and Family” have a somewhat different meaning for Roman Catholics. Packer notes:

Thomas Aquinas gave teaching on womanhood that undergirded the opinion [that celibacy is more virtuous, more Christlike, and more pleasing to God]. He went so far as to opine that the birth of a girl is the result of a male embryo going wrong; that while a married man’s wife is a convenience to him, in that she enables him to procreate and avoid concupiscence (roving passion, prompting promiscuity), in all other respects a man will always make him a better companion and helpmeet than his wife, or any woman, can ever be. Furthermore, affirmed Aquinas, woman are mentally as well as physically weaker than men, and more prone to sin, and are always by their nature subject so some man. Husbands may correct their wives by corporal punishment if necessary, and children ought to love their father more than their mother. It may be said without fear of contradiction that the great theologian’s oracles about the second sex make distinctly dismal reading.

Nowadays, Roman Catholics pride themselves on their Church’s “Social Teaching”, but that is only a recent phenomenon. These attitudes of Aquinas were dominant for perhaps the largest portion of the time when “the Roman Catholic Church” was in ascendancy.

Thomas’ negativism here was not, indeed, entirely his fault; not only did Aristotle, whose thought Thomas sought to claim for Christianity, take a very low view of women, but many of the orthodox Fathers, whose teaching Thomas’ method required him to follow, had been just as negative and down-putting with regard to women, and even more so with regard to sexual relations in marriage. Chrysostom had denied that Adam and Eve could have had sexual relations before the Fall; Augustine allowed that procreation was lawful, but insisted that the passions accompanying intercourse were always sinful; Origen [who had made himself a eunuch for the Kingdom] had inclined himself to the theory that had sin not entered the world the human race would have been propagated in an angelic manner, whatever that might be, rather than by sexual union; and Gregory of Nyssa was sure that Adam and Eve had been made without sexual desire, and that had there been no Fall mankind would have reproduced by means of what Leland Ryken gravely calls ‘some harmless mode of vegetation’. (260–261).

Never fear. One reason why 90+% of Roman Catholic married couples today thumb their noses at Roman Catholic teaching about “marriage and family” is because John Paul II and Benedict XVI have been champions of a similar ethic on marriage. When he was a mere bishop, Karol Wojtyla (later John Paul II) wrote the book that was a major contribution to the birth control encyclical, Humanae Vitae.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes from prison (December 18, 1943) “to put it plainly, for a man in his wife’s arms to be hankering after the other world is, in mild terms, a piece of bad taste, and not God’s will. We ought to find and love God in what he actually gives us; if it pleases him to allow us to enjoy some overwhelmingly earthly happiness, we mustn’t try to be more pious than God himself and allow our happiness to be corrupted by presumption and arrogance, and by unbridled religious fantasy which is never satisfied with what God gives” (Letters and Papers from Prison, pg 168).

The Emperor Wants your Marriage

And yet, this is exactly the way that the “Holy Fathers” want Roman Catholics to approach love in marriage.

John Paul II cautions his readers that love in marriage can quickly turn to lust, and urges his readers not to succumb to it. There is a difference between “lust” and “holy sexual desire”. “John Paul goes on to articulate that while the sexual urge is itself a gift from God that attracts towards one another, it is possible that this can easily corrupt the person when he/she seeks only the sexual attributes of the other than the person as a whole.” (Rev. Benjamin P. Bradshaw: “The Theology of the Body according to Pope John Paul II: Conference IV: From Lust to Love, updated 3/20/2010). Citing Wojtyla’s “Love and Responsibility”:

Inevitably, then, the sexual urge in human beings is always in the natural course of things directed towards another human being, this is the normal form in which it takes. If it is directed towards the sexual attributes as such this must be recognized as an impoverishment or even a perversion of the urge…It is just because it [sexual urge] is directed towards a particular human being that the sexual urge can provide the framework within which and the basis on which the possibility of love arises (pg 49).

The document continues, citing Benedict XVI:

For his part, Pope Benedict beautifully addresses this distinction in his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est/God is Love published on Christmas day, 2005. In part I (of II) of the encyclical, Benedict addresses the transformation of eros, or erotic love (amor concupiscentiae) to agape or self-giving love (amor benevolentiae). The Holy Father points out that while erotic love is itself a great good, it must be purified, and in a way vivified by the self-sacrificing nature of agapic love:

An intoxicated and undisciplined eros, then, is not an ascent in “ecstasy” towards the Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man. Evidently, eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns…Purification and growth in maturity are called for; and these also pass through the path of renunciation. Far from rejecting or “poisoning” eros, they heal it and restore its true grandeur.

For the Roman Catholic male, then, you should remember Pope Benedict XVI when making love to your wife. He says it is good to make love to your wife, but then, the pope wants you to know that you ought not to be thinking lustful thoughts about her. That is a fall, a degradation. At that moment, you must take the pope’s instructions to heart and work toward “purification and growth in maturity” which are called for.

Wives, Roman Catholic wives, now, do not tempt your husbands to lust. Burn your lingerie, your lacey nighties; you too, must work for purification of yourself and your husband in bed, lest your corrupted eros ultimately lead to lust, and pride, and using your husband as a product.

You Desperate Called-to-Communion Housewives should now pause for a word from Your Holy Sponsor.

Breaking Bad

James White and Turretinfan have taken on Jason Stellman in a two-part audio series that I’d highly recommend.

Jason Stellman (right side of image) of course is all over the place at the Called to Communion site these days – he’s the equivalent of a Roman Catholic Convert anti-hero. And the good guys, James White and Turretinfan take on this Jason Stellman interview in a two-part (and more-to-follow) series of their own:

Part 1 (approx. 30 minutes).

Part 2 (approx. 90 minutes).

About the image: My wife and I have been watching through the “Breaking Bad” series. To “break bad” evidently is to turn and start being evil instead of good. The anti-hero of that series is a man named Walter White (left side of image), and the main character is someone who certainly becomes evil over the course of time.

When I had the CTC site up on my monitor this morning, Beth noticed the resemblance immediately. [And how do we know that Stellman isn’t purposely trying to look like this character?]

Breaking Bad is about a chemistry teacher who, on finding that he has lung cancer, seizes upon the side job of “cooking” crystal methamphetamine – known as “meth”. So the connections seem obvious to me. Stellman, in his own way, has been “breaking bad”, in his case selling something called “cath”.

On the word “catholic”, as it was used in the early church, meant that the church was “universal”, that is, encompassing those who professed faith in Christ throughout the world. Rome, of course, has twisted that meaning with its oxymoronic usage, making the “provincial” “Roman” to be the sum and center of “the church that Christ founded”, when really, it is, well, quite provincial. Calling the Roman church “catholic” is as much a misnomer as saying “crystal methamphetamine makes you feel good”.

Interestingly, the crystal methamphetamine wiki site notes that long term usage of “crystal meth” “develop a long-lasting psychosis resembling schizophrenia after stopping methamphetamine. The condition persists for longer than 6 months and is often treatment resistant”. It will be interesting to see where these guys are in a few years. Andrew Preslar is already on record saying that “Catholicism is like a marriage, in which romance does not reduce to sentimentalism, nor prescind from difficulty and pain, but rather flows from the realities of a life shared together, come what may”.

To be sure, there will be difficulties.

At any rate, if you’re interested in following the Jason Stellman saga from a safe distance, James White and Turretinfan provide an excellent analysis of the things Stellman is saying, and it seems as if more is to follow.

Bavinck on Justification and Adoption and Perseverance and Assurance

Jason Stellman asks (118):

I am asking how you, John Bugay, would reconcile your insistence that Protestants can have assurance without having to “do anything” (unlike with Catholics) with the statements in the NT like “Unless you forgive others, your heavenly Father won’t forgive you,” etc.

Here is the great 19th century Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck on how justification and adoption and perseverance and assurance all work together:

A Brief History of the Sacrament of Penance

Jason Stellman made the claim “There’s a rich case that has been made from Scripture and the early fathers about the sacrament of reconciliation, in case you’re interested”.

As a cradle Catholic, I knew it as “confession”. Only later did it become “reconciliation”. Of course, whatever it was, the Council of Trent was quite adamant about it:

Canon 1. If anyone says that in the Catholic Church penance is not truly and properly a sacrament instituted by Christ the Lord for reconciling the faithful of God as often as they fall into sin after baptism, let him be anathema.

Canon 3. If anyone says that those words of the Lord Savior, “Receive ye the Holy Spirit, whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained” are not to be understood of the power of forgiving and retaining sins in the sacrament of penance, as the Catholic Church has always understood them from the beginning, but distorts them, contrary to the institution of this sacrament, as applying to the authority of preaching the gospel, let him be anathema.

Canon 6. If anyone denies that sacramental confession was instituted by divine law or is necessary to salvation; or says that the manner of confessing secretly to a priest alone, which the Catholic Church has always observe from the beginning and still observes, is at variance with the institution and command of Christ and is a human contrivance, let him be anathema.

[Council of Trent, 1551].

For a variety of reasons, I’ve decided to follow up with that. Bavinck noted that “It was the Roman Catholic penitential system that prompted Luther’s reformational activity” (Vol 3, pg 517).


Alister McGrath gives something of a brief history of the sacrament:

“The systematic development of sacramental theology is a major feature of the medieval period, particularly between the years 1050 and 1240” (Cited in Alister McGrath,Iustitia Dei, A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, Third Edition, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, ©2005), pg. 117.

McGrath also notes that Peter Lombard’s inclusion of penance among the seven sacraments was “an inclusion which is of major significance to the development of the doctrine of justification within the sphere of the western church” (120-121). He also says, “It may be noted, however, that there was no general agreement upon the necessity of sacerdotal confession: in the twelfth century, for example, the [Peter] Abelardian school rejected its necessity, while the Victorine school insisted upon it (121). It was not until the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) that “penance” officially became a “sacrament”. That council “laid an obligation upon believers to confess their sins to their priest annually” (122).

Not coincidentally, Thomas Doyle traces the advent of priestly sexual abuse to the practice of private confession around this time:

With the advent of the private confession of sins came the abuse known as solicitation for sex in the act of sacramental confession. Unscrupulous priests began to use the intimacy of confession as an opportunity to seduce the penitent into some form of sexual contact. This abuse is particularly heinous because it takes advantage of a person when he or she is most vulnerable and susceptible to the abuse of priestly power. It is not known when the very first reports of solicitation became known, but by the 16th century the Church had begun to pass legislation to control and eradicate this vile form of abuse.

The first work mentioning anything resembling a “second plank” (which is what “the sacrament of reconciliation” was originally called) is Tertullians work “De paenitentia, or on repentence”. Tertullian.org gives this summary of the work:

A short work in 12 chapters discussing whether forgiveness for major public sins is available after conversion, and outlines the position generally held at that time - once only, with public repentance. (De pudicitia 3 tells us the penitent can still be saved; but cannot be received in the church).

Here is Tertullian’s practice in his own words.

The narrower, then, the sphere of action of this second and only (remaining) repentance, the more laborious is its probation; in order that it may not be exhibited in the conscience alone, but may likewise be carried out in some (external) act. This act, which is more usually expressed and commonly spoken of under a Greek name, is exomologesis whereby we confess our sins to the Lord, not indeed as if He were ignorant of them, but inasmuch as by confession satisfaction is settled, of confession repentance is born; by repentance God is appeased. And thus exomologesis is a discipline for man's prostration and humiliation, enjoining a demeanor calculated to move mercy. With regard also to the very dress and food, it commands (the penitent) to lie in sackcloth and ashes, to cover his body in mourning, to lay his spirit low in sorrows, to exchange for severe treatment the sins which he has committed; moreover, to know no food and drink but such as is plain,----not for the stomach's sake, to wit, but the soul's; for the most part, however, to feed prayers on fastings, to groan, to weep and make outcries unto the Lord your God; to bow before the feet of the presbyters, and kneel to God's dear ones; to enjoin on all the brethren to be ambassadors to bear his deprecatory supplication (before God). All this exomologesis (does), that it may enhance repentance; may honour God by its fear of the (incurred) danger; may, by itself pronouncing against the sinner, stand in the stead of God's indignation, and by temporal mortification (I will not say frustrate, but) expunge eternal punishments. Therefore, while it abases the man, it raises him; while it covers him with squalor, it renders him more clean; while it accuses, it excuses; while it condemns, it absolves. The less quarter you give yourself, the more (believe me) will God give you.

This of course, was quite a public ceremony.

In the “rich tradition of the early church”, [instituted by Christ], a third-century Christian has the opportunity to go through this process precisely once, after which he is “cemented to contumacy”.

This no doubt is the “undeveloped” third-century view of the Catholic sacrament, instituted by Christ, “the manner of confessing secretly to a priest alone”, “as the Catholic Church has always understood them from the beginning”, according to Trent.

So what this shows is that maybe Tertullian actually “misunderstood” what Christ actually meant when he instituted that sacrament?


Now, let me ask, if Christ instituted this “sacrament”, what makes Trent think that the “developments” since this important early third-century “interpretation” are better than what Tertullian practiced? Isn’t this what Christ told the Apostles to practice? Or did Tertullian somehow get this wrong, only to have the later church get it right again? To have re-found the “original” apostolic practice?


McGrath follows up on this:

The ninth century, however, saw the Anglo-Irish system of private penance become widespread in Europe of private penance become widespread in Europe, with important modifications to the theology of penance following in its wake.

These are the ones who, upon further “reflection” on the practice that “Christ instituted”, softened the experience for our tender 21st century sensibilities, who think “penance” actually consists of saying three Hail Mary’s.

Although earlier writers considered that penance could be undertaken only once in a lifetime, as a ‘second plank after a shipwreck’ (tabula secunda post naufragiam -- see Jerome Epistola 130) this opinion was gradually abandoned, rather than refuted, as much for social as for pastoral reasons. Thus the eighth-century bishop Chrodegang of Metz recommended regular confession to a superior at least once a year, while Paulinus of Aquileia advocated confession and penance before each mass. Gregory the Great’s classification of mortal sins [sixth century] became incorporated into the penitential system of the church during the ninth century, so that private penance in the presence of a priest became generally accepted. Penitential books began to make their appearance throughout Europe, similar in many respects to those which can be traced back to sixth-century Wales.

The spread of the practice in the Carolingian [French] church appears to have been due to the formidable influence of Alcuin, who has greater claim than any to be considered the founder of the Carolingian renaissance [ninth century]. It is therefore of considerable significance that Alcuin specifically links penance with justification….

A further development of this idea may be found in the works of Rabanus Maurus, who became the leading proponent of private confession in the Frankish church after Alcuin; justification here is linked, not merely with the act of penance, but specifically with sacerdotal confession. The relationship between justification, baptism and penance was defined with particular clarity in the ninth century by Haimo of Auxerre:

Our redemption, by which we are redeemed, and through which we are justified, is the passion of Christ, which, joined with baptism, justifies humanity through faith, and subsequently through penance. These two are joined together in such a way that it is not possible for humanity to be justified by one without the other.

McGrath, pgs. 117-118.

So it really seems that the ninth century church, thus having the authority to “develop” doctrines, developed it in such a way that removed some of the severity from the third-century doctrine (articulated by Tertullian presumably as it was “instituted by Christ” directly to the Apostles).

Or is there some step in “the Tradition” that maybe we don’t know about at this point, where Christ really did advocate the private confessional, and Tertullian somehow made the mistake of thinking it was that “one-time plank”, complete with “sackcloth and ashes”, after which time (“it is impossible to be brought to repentance”, Hebrews 6:6)?

The Roman Catholic Bait-and-Switch on Justification

Over at Green Baggins, Jason Stellman is making the argument that, “under the New Covenant” (Galatians 3), “disobedience brings death”, and that Protestants and Roman Catholics “believe in exactly the same phenomenon but call it different things”:

The problem here is that because of our different paradigms, we both believe in exactly the same phenomenon but call it different things.

You believe that if a baptized person who professes to be a Christian lives a life characterized by disobedience and sin, that he, despite his profession, will most likely be condemned on the last Day.

So do I.

A Public Service Announcement from your Good Friends at Triablogue

For those of you who may be inclined to be on the lookout for various ad hominems that you can avoid in discussions, I’ve noted that Bryan Cross has exhibited a severe dislike for the phrase “the boys at Called to Communion”. This is from a while back at Tim Prussic’s blog:

One thing that Mr. Stellman wants to make clear is that he was REFORMED before his move to Rome. This is, or course, part of the polemic. Protestant Christian, rest assured that Jason Stellman KNOWS your position better than you do. HE WAS TOTALLY REFORMED. In Mr. Stellman’s words:

… blather here, etc., etc., ...

This is the uniform pitch from the boys at Called to Communion. They were more Reformed than you. After all, did you graduate from Westminster… the bastion of Reformed verity?! You might think you know the Bible and Reformed theology, but these boys at CTC know Reformed better than you do, cuz they were totally Reformed.

Bryan, as is frequently the case, provides the first comment on the blog post:

Tim,

“Boys”? I’m 43. How old are you? Are your arguments and evidence so poor that you have to resort to this sort of patronizing name-calling?

In your opinion, what, exactly, about Reformed theology did those of at CTC not know?

After several denials on Tim’s part that any harm was intended, Bryan helpfully explained (as he often does):

Here’s what I see quite commonly among Reformed pastors. Men who agree with you are called men. Men with whom you disagree strongly are called boys. That’s why the federal vision defenders are frequently referred to (by those who disagree with them) as “FV-boys.” There is a reason for this selective use of the term ‘boys.’ It is derogatory. If it weren’t, they would use it equally of men with whom they agree, and men with whom they disagree. When called on their use of it, they can, of course, always claim that they meant it as “fellows.” But, their selective use of it only in reference to those with whom they disagree shows otherwise.

In all, the word “boys” was use some 38 times in this post and comment string, a testimony to the truly offensive nature of this moniker.

Now, I myself have aroused some ire using the phrase “the Jason Stellman gang”, in a March 1, 2009 email, with that subject line. It began:

Subject: "The Jason Stellman Gang"
------------------------

From: John Bugay
To: [names withheld]
Date: Sun, Mar 1, 2009 at 10:36 AM

Hi all -- This email is to introduce you to the "Called to Communion" website, http://www.calledtocommunion.com .

I apologize for being provocative in my subject line, but I can't help but be provoked by the roll call of names that have put this together:
*

# Andrew Preslar
# Bryan Cross *
# Jonathan Deane (?)
# Matt Yonke *
# Neal Judisch *
# Sean Patrick *
# Taylor Marshall
# Tim Troutman *
# Tom Brown *
# Tom Riello

These individuals say, “We arrived in the Catholic Church in diverse ways but through a similar path involving spiritual formation within the Reformed tradition of confessional Protestantism.”

An Asterisk (*) denotes those who also arrived on this website via Jason Stellman’s blog.

Now, this was my own email to somebodys other than Jason. Of course, I was asked for some proof that these individuals didn’t know each other before they started communing on Jason’s blog. Which I was not able to produce. But Jason caught wind of it, and it really seemed to have raised his ire at the time.

If you wish to avoid the charge of ad hominem when dealing with the stalwart defenders of Roman Catholicism over at Called to Communion, I urge you to avoid using the phrases “the boys at Called to Communion” and “the Jason Stellman gang”.

Thank you.