Tooting his own Horn

Catholic apologist Trent Horn has a running commentary on Mike Winger's critique of Catholic authority:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23hl_fkhiCQ&t=66s

Horn is one of the best younger-generation Catholic apologists, so he's a good foil. I'm going to selectively comment on Horn's responses. For several reasons I won't comment on everything Trent says. The arguments of Catholic apologists are repetitious. I've been over this ground many times before. I wrote a partial review of Horn's book (The Case for Catholicism). Winger sometimes frames issues in ways I don't. 

1. Like Catholic apologists and theologians generally, Horn commits the fallacy of casting the fundamental issue in terms of authority. But it just isn't possible, in principle or practice, always to begin with authority for what you believe, because the logic is regressive. Horn is a convert to Catholicism. Catholic authority wasn't and couldn't be the starting-point at that stage of the argument, because that is what needed to be established. Given Catholic authority, he can say this is my authority for what I believe, but that only pushes the question back step: by what authority does he believe in Catholic authority? If you always require some authority to justify what you believe, then the requirement extends backwards ad infinitum. It's self-refuting for Catholic apologists to insist that every interpretation of Scripture, or the case for the canon of Scripture, must be backed up by authority. That's a condition which the Catholic apologist will be unable to consistently meet. It's necessary that we be able to establish some positions independent of authority to make any progress at all. The warrant for these positions isn't authority but reason and evidence. Positions based on argument rather than authority. That can include an argument for authority, but you can't always fall back on authority and argue from authority, because what you take to be your authority is in itself a key issue in dispute. 

2. Apropos (1), he says the special divine guidance which Rome enjoys is negative rather than positive protection (53-54 min.). God doesn't inform the Magisterium to interpret the whole Bible but to shield it from disastrous misinterpretations. In his response to Winger, Horn frequently corrects what he takes to be Winger's misinterpretations or invalid inferences from Scripture. But by his own admission, Horn has no authority for his own interpretations. His alternative interpretations of Winger's prooftexts aren't superior because they are authoritative interpretations. Rather, Horn appeals to the wording of the text, and the context–as he understands it. In addition, he accuses Winger of inconsistency. So most of this debate falls outside the framework of authority. 

As such, it's confused for Horn to accuse Winger of making himself his own authority when he interprets the Bible. That accusation backfires. Protestants aren't guilty of doing the same thing they accuse Rome of doing. If you're going to act like every time a reader interprets the Bible, he is making himself an authority, then that will sabotage any attempt by the Catholic apologist to correct a perceived misinterpretation or make his own case for Catholicism. Interpretation is not inherently an exercise of authority, and authority isn't necessary to validate the interpretation.

3. Apropos (2), the demand for authority is bound up with the demand for certainty. But even if that's ideal, it's unobtainable by falling back on authority all the time, since that reflex just relocates the same demand: what makes you certain of your authority source?  So the whole strategy is self-stultifying. That doesn't mean certainty is necessarily unattainable, but not by acting like you must invariably start with authority. 

4. "historical pedigree in connection with apostles"

That's a Catholic criterion. It's understandable that a Catholic apologist will appeal to a Catholic criterion, but it begs the question when debating Protestants inasmuch as we operate with a different theological paradigm. We don't need to have historical pedigree in connection with the apostles. Historical pedigree is irrelevant. We just need to be faithful to apostolic teaching. 

In fairness, I'm not suggesting a Catholic apologist shoulders the sole burden of proof. It begs the question if a Protestant simply asserts his alternative paradigm when debating Catholics. Both sides have a burden of proof. It's incumbent on both sides to argue for their respective positions. 

4. "When did sola scriptura come into effect? Give me a date. The doctrine has never been in effect."

i) That's loaded question. A fallacious way to frame the issue because it runs afoul of the sorites paradox. It's unreasonable and unrealistic to demand dates for many historical developments. History is a continuum with transitional phases. 

Indeed, Horn's demand is self-destructive given the doctrine of development. Many of these doctrinal innovations evolved over time. They gradually went into effect. The process was incremental.

ii) Horn fails to appreciate the underlying principle of sola scriptura, which is the supremacy of divine revelation. Scripture is the mode or medium of divine revelation. During the era of public revelation, divine revelation had an oral as well as written mode, but that stage of redemptive history is behind us. 

In response to Winger, Horn raises stock objections to sola Scriptura which, among other places, I recently addressed:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/01/oral-and-memorial-tradition.html

5. 2 Thes 2:15

Horn accuse Winger of construing this passage too narrowly:

i) To begin with, if you're going to use this as a prooftext, then you ought to restrict yourself to what Paul actually says. Now, what he says here may be consistent with other things he doesn't say. But you can't use it to prooftext things he doesn't say. 

ii) It's possible to derive more general principle from what Paul says, but that will have to operate at the same level. If you sat under the feet of St. John, the same principle would apply. You can't expand what Paul says to a different principle. 

iii) Paul isn't appealing to apostolic tradition, in the customary sense of tradition. The concept of tradition connotes a chain of transmission with links in the chain. But that's not what Paul is describing. He's explicitly referring to direct oral teaching, from Paul to his immediate audience. There are no intervening links. Not what Paul taught a second person who passed it along to a third person who passed it along to a fourth person. That's not what Paul has in view. Rather, hold fast to what Paul taught you in person. Face-to-face transmission from an apostle to a Christian. The principle is restricted to Christians with firsthand knowledge of Paul's oral teaching. 

iv) That doesn't necessarily invalidate a chain of custody. Some historical traditions are reliable. But 2 Thes 2:15 isn't making that claim. 

6. Mt 18:15-18

Where does the Bible say that the church is just all the people who love Jesus? That is the church in one sense, but when you read through Scripture it is very clear that the church has an authoritative hierarchy composed of a three-tiered system of deacons, presbyters–from which we get the word priests–and bishops, the overseers, the episcopate. So when you look for example in Mt 18:15-18…then he says to the apostles whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Bring it to the church, not to your church, because it's not like oh okay well if that church disagrees with me and condemns me I'm going to join this other church over here. No, rather, when you look in the NT it's very clear that it talks about the church in Rome, the church in Antioch, the church in Jerusalem…It refers to the fact that there is one church and that church has to have authority, and you're going up the chain of authority–especially if you bring two or three with you, what does it mean to take it to the church? Do you just get every other Christian around and you're like a mob of thousands of people? No, you're going to something authoritative that has apostolic succession behind it in order to resolve the dispute. That's the highest level for you to do to (27-29 min).

1. It's a semantic fallacy to suggest that because the word priest derives from presbyter, therefore 1C church presbyters were priests in the sacerdotal sense. In Catholicism, it acquires a technical sense according to Catholic ecclesiology. But it's anachronistic to read that back into NT polity and usage. 

2. He assumes that "bishop" and "presbyter" are separate church offices, with the episcopate as the higher office. Which disregards the arguments of Bible scholars that NT usage is fluid and interchangeable. These are variant designations for the same church office. NT polity hadn't hardened into the more specialized usage and hierarchical structure of Roman Catholic eccesiology.

3. Horn acts as though Mt 18:15-18 envisions an appellate process like the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. But in context the setting is a local church, and a judgment of excommunication is rendered by the congregation, not higher clergy in particular. 

Protection of Roman Catholic Ecclesiology at the Heart of Sex Abuse Scandal

Cardinal Gerhard Müller, recently dismissed as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF, formerly the “Holy Office”, formerly the Inquisition”) by “Pope Francis”, recently wrote:

The primacy of the Roman Church with its bishop is not due to a claim of superiority over other churches or to some will to power cleverly organized over the centuries by the clergy in the capital of an empire, but rather to the foundational will of the Lord of the Church [emphasis added]. Peter suffered martyrdom in Rome, and thus his primatial apostolate devolves upon the Church of Rome and consequently upon its visible head, the Bishop of Rome.

The primacy of Peter did not flare up at some point over the real world as an ideal, only to grow dim over the course of history and increasingly lose its contour in history’s vicissitudes. In order to comprehend the nature and mission of the episcopal ministry and of the primacy, one must go beyond a naturalistic understanding of the Church as a legal assembly. The Church has its origin in God’s salvific will and is the instrument thereof [emphasis added]. By its nature and mission it is not merely a religious assembly organized by men. The dualism between a supratemporal ideal image and its pale reflection in its historical realization must be overcome also. (Müller, Benedict and Francis: Their Ministry as Successors to Peter, English translation by Michael J. Miller, Manchester, NH: Sophia Institute Press ©2017, pgs 7–8.

This is the core of Roman Catholic ecclesiology.

Roman Catholicism distorts the Biblical message about God’s work in time

Leonardo De Chirico has revised and re-posted an article of his that demonstrates how the Roman Catholic distortion of time plays a major role in its current ecclesiology (which is, as I’ve mentioned, its major selling point in the post Vatican II era). He focuses on two words, two biblical measures of time, “hapax” (“once for all”) and “mallon” (“for evermore”)

As Protestants, we believe the following:

1. The incarnation of Christ was “once for all”
2. Christ’s death and resurrection and our redemption were “once for all”
3. “Revelation” was “once for all delivered to the saints”.

Roman Catholicism flips these precisely on their head:

1. The Roman Catholic Church is the “ongoing incarnation of Christ” (“for evermore”)
2. “The Eucharist” (“the sacrifice of the Mass”) is a “re-presentation” of the one sacrifice of Christ, providing redemption on an ongoing basis (“for evermore”) throughout time.
3. The “once for all” sense of biblical revelation is opened up to being integrated with “living Tradition” that is mediated by the Magisterium, creating a dialectic between the biblical message and the process of tradition.

De Chirico’s original Themelios (2004) article is here.

In it, he suggests “Roman Catholicism is not intentionally driven by the desire to confuse the time periods of God. It would be uncharitable and prejudiced to think so,” he says.

However, Roman Catholicism IS driven to exalt itself: “Rome IS all about aggrandizing Rome”. And if it means distorting the Biblical message about God’s work in time, it has no hesitation to do so. This is not at all “uncharitable and prejudiced to think so”, because it is true.

The Pope and the Patriarch

The main point of discussion was, “how far have fashions
in clerical garb diverged in 1000 years?”

It’s been a historical day folks. “Pope Francis” met Patriarch Kirill (head of the Russian Orthodox church) at the airport in Havana, Cuba as the two religious superstars were headed for different points on the globe. Bergoglio was on his way to Mexico, and Kirill was headed for parts unknown.

The Russian Orthodox church is the largest now among a number of “autocephalous”, or “independent” Orthodox bodies, which are descended from the eastern churches when Rome split with them in 1054 AD. Today, the individual “Orthodox” church bodies in each country, while professing the same “faith”, and claiming the same “apostolic succession” of bishops, are functionally and governmentally independent from one another.

After the meeting, “Pope Francis” 

proposed replacing the papal skullcap with 

a Mexican Sombrero for all state meetings.

Anecdotally, Constantinople has been considered to be “second Rome”, but after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453, Moscow, where the Russian Orthodox church is centered, has been popularly considered to be “third Rome”.

One major point of discussion was how far fashion in clerical vestments had diverged since the eleventh century. After the meeting, exhibiting how “development of doctrine” works in real life, “Pope Francis”, exhibiting a bit of headgear-envy, proposed that the papal skullcap be replaced at State meetings with the Mexican Sombrero.

What’s wrong with Rome’s Christ-Church Interconnection?

The Roman Catholic “Nature-Grace Interdependence”
along with its “Christ-Church Interconnection”

In the last three blog posts, I’ve followed Gregg Allison’s comprehensive work on Roman Catholicism, “Roman Catholic Theology and Practice: An Evangelical Assessment”, which I’ve called “Eternal Rome, Eternal Mediator? (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

This “Christ-church interconnection” places Rome squarely in the ontological plan of Christ and Christ’s kingdom, in a way that it can never be moved (from a Roman perspective). It is an ontological reality that places Rome upon the very “edge of the Godhead”, so to speak (“grace completes nature) – and renders it as the sole channel of grace in the world, as Allison notes. Check out this link for one succinct example of how this plays out in real life:

The Catholic faith, however, contains a doctrine involving Christ’s founding of and indissoluble union with the Catholic Church as His Mystical Body, sustained in part but essentially through His unique relation to St. Peter and his episcopal successors in Rome in their role as the Vicar of Christ until Christ returns. The Catholic act of faith is in this way unique, because in making this act of faith, one does not merely assent to propositions concerning Christ as considered apart from the Church, or as considered apart from any visible body on earth.

One expresses faith in Christ-as-inseparably-united-to-the-Catholic-Church, and thus faith in His working in and through His Church, to guard her from error and guide her into all truth until He returns. Because of the essential role of St. Peter and his episcopal successors in the structure and identity of the Catholic Church, the act of Catholic faith includes faith in Christ regarding each successive pope, specifically faith that Christ will protect each pope in his exercise of the papal office from promulgating any false doctrine.

This “act of faith” as he describes it is a mere presupposition – and further, it is a presupposition that has been challenged by history, and found to be sorely wanting.

Here is how Allison “assesses” this doctrine:

Eternal Rome? The Eternal Mediator? Part 3

The Roman Catholic Magical Mystery Tour

The Roman Catholic Magical Mystical Tour.

Here is Gregg Allison’s summary of how the Roman Catholic view of itself as the “ongoing incarnation of Christ” plays out in its various doctrines. Note how indispensable Rome makes itself out to be in the world. It is something of a “Roman Catholic Magical Mystical Tour”: “how wonderful, wonderful it is that Rome is in the world”.

And note that it is Rome making these “interpretations” about itself. Jesus said, following the principle from Deuteronomy 19:15, “A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed. Only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established”. Jesus said, “If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not true” (John 5:31). He says further:

You judge according to the flesh; I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. In your Law it is written that the testimony of two people is true. I am the one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me” (John 8:18).

Later, in John 15, Jesus confirms that both the Holy Spirit and the Apostles will also “bear witness”:

“But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning (John 15:26-27).

This is one of the Scriptural reasons why the Protestants rely on both “word and Spirit”. The internal confirmation of the Holy Spirit confirms the Word of God for believers.

Rome, on the other hand, excludes witnesses other than itself: “The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the Word of God, whether in its written form or in the form of Tradition, has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone.”

And for this reason, Allison points out that, with Rome in the world (according to Roman doctrine), of what use is the Holy Spirit in the world?

Here is Rome’s “Magical Mystery Tour”, based on its lone testimony about itself:

Shake-up in the Roman Catholic Hierarchy

“Bye-bye Conservative Catholics!”

Pope Francis is Getting Rid Of Pope John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body”

Pope Francis is “cleaning house” by getting rid of conservative influences in the Vatican.

About a year ago, I noted that “Pope Francis” intended to “intended to clean house” – it’s been happening – this past week, we saw the second “shot across the bow” as Cardinal Raymond Burke, the conservative Cardinal (formerly of Bryan Cross’s hometown of St. Louis), has received his second “demotion” in less than a year.

This time, Burke lost his post as “the prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura (the Vatican’s highest court)”. This is one of two crucially high positions at the Vatican. Roman Catholicism is run first of all by its doctrine (and the overseer of doctrine is the “Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith” – formerly the “Holy Office” and prior to that “the Inquisition”). But on a day-to-day level, it is run by “Church Law”, otherwise known as “the Code of Canon Law”. Burke was the “Prefect” for “Canon Law”.

He is being moved to be “patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta”, surely an “honorary” post at best, and in real life, a move that is likely to be as close to an insult as you can get at this level of the Roman Catholic Church.

But Burke is not just Burke; he represents multiple conservative Cardinals – these include his close associates and co-authors Cardinals Gerhard Müller, prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Walter Brandmüller, president emeritus of the Pontifical Committee of Historical Sciences; Carlo Caffarra, archbishop of Bologna, Italy; and Velasio De Paolis, president emeritus of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs of the Holy See, - "five Cardinals of the Church, and four other scholars, [who responded negatively] to the call issued by Cardinal Walter Kasper for the Church to harmonize "fidelity and mercy in its pastoral practice with civilly remarried, divorced people".

Last year, it was reported that Burke lost his position as the head of the influential “Congregation for Bishops” council, which is responsible for choosing the individuals who the pope will then name to become bishops. From the story last year:

Cardinal Raymond Burke's departure from the Congregation of Bishops council and his subsequent replacement by the more moderate Wuerl is being viewed by some as Pope Francis moving the Catholic church away from combating hot-button social issues and focusing on a more pastoral approach. Burke is a strong opponent of same-sex marriage and abortion, and has in the past said that moderates like Wuerl were "weakening the faith."

Burke has been a vocal advocate against the “reforms” of Pope Francis, which not only have been seeking to “welcome gays” but to re-think virtually all of the “theology of the body” that Pope John Paul II put into place during his long pontificate.

Here is just one Q/A from a recent (last Tuesday) interview with Burke:

Interviewer: One reported discussion was about changing the language of some terms such as “living in sin,” “contraceptive mentality” and “intrinsically disordered.” It was said there was a “great desire” to alter the language and make it more “inclusive,” but there was no criticism of this reported, which many found surprising.

Burke: I was not able to say so publicly, but I have quoted John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae, when he says we have to call things by their proper name. He properly called abortion murder, which it is. And here, now, some want to say cohabitation is not living in sin. Well, what is fornication or adultery? And the same thing with regard to same-sex relations, which have come up. Some do not want to talk about disordered acts. Well, what is a homosexual act? It is disordered. And how am I being kind — if you are beset by this inclination and do these acts — how am I being charitable to you by calling the acts by some other name or by giving the impression that there are good aspects to the acts?

That is the other thing. Some are saying that we need to find the good aspects of de facto unions and homosexual unions. What are the good aspects of unchaste acts? There cannot be.

For further reading:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/18/conservative-us-cardinal-demoted-pope-raymond-burke

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/rome-synod-family-homosexuality/?print=1

http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Blog/3449/cardinal_burke_to_cwr_confirms_transfer_praises_pushback_addresses_controversy_over_remarks_by_cardinal_kasper.aspx

“New paradigms of divorce and homosexuality are now at home in the highest levels of the Church. Nothing has been decided, but Pope Francis is patient.”

This gives new meaning to Bryan Cross’s “agape paradigm”.

Calvin: “The entire church is polluted by the papacy.”

In the comments below, explorer wrote:

When the Popes launched all the “horrific events” in the middle ages etc, was that counted as “solemn/infallible judgement” or just a “discipline” or was it “only committed by the secular state”?

In that same comment thread, Matthew Schultz asked, “How would the situation been different if Roman Catholicism had not ‘disfigured’ the Gospel? Do you think a proper Gospel would have somehow contained Islam? (Perhaps launched more effective Crusades?)”

I’m grateful for these questions. I seriously get disgusted first that Roman Catholicism attempts to sweep all of its past under the rug, and second, that its attempts are successful, insofar as people just forget about all of it. And every “papal conclave”, we see on TV the thoughtless crowds cheering on “il papa”, and the ignorant news casters suggesting that the pope is somehow the leader of all Christians.

I do stand by what I said about Rome and the papacy – it doesn't take much reading in church history to understand that the direction it took was a wrong one. If the church at Rome had been more faithful to Christ, instead of pushing its own agenda of domination, I'm sure that history would have turned out much differently.

This isn’t my own opinion. I have picked up on this theme which was earlier articulated by John Calvin.

Calvin begins Book IV of the Institutes – the section on the Church – with a comment succinctly describing the papacy’s relationship to the Gospel, to the church and the world:

In the last Book, it has been shown, that by the faith of the gospel Christ becomes ours, and we are made partakers of the salvation and eternal blessedness procured by him. But as our ignorance and sloth (I may add, the vanity of our mind) stand in need of external helps, by which faith may be begotten in us, and may increase and make progress until its consummation, God, in accommodation to our infirmity, has added such helps, and secured the effectual preaching of the gospel, by depositing this treasure with the Church.

He has appointed pastors and teachers, by whose lips he might edify his people (Eph. 4:11); he has invested them with authority, and, in short, omitted nothing that might conduce to holy consent in the faith, and to right order. In particular, he has instituted sacraments, which we feel by experience to be most useful helps in fostering and confirming our faith. For seeing we are shut up in the prison of the body, and have not yet attained to the rank of angels, God, in accommodation to our capacity, has in his admirable providence provided a method by which, though widely separated, we might still draw near to him (Institutes 4.1.1)

So, given all that God has done for man (Institutes 1-3 – through Creation, fall, and redemption), we still, through “ignorance”, “sloth”, and “the vanity of our minds”, need help in “accommodation to our infirmity”. To this end, God has given us “the Church”, within which “He has appointed pastors and teachers, by whose lips he might edify his people (Eph. 4:11)”.

Note how Calvin now describes the relationship of “the papacy” to “the Church”:

Wherefore, due order requires that we first treat of the Church, of its Government, Orders, and Power; next, of the Sacraments; and, lastly, of Civil Government;—at the same time guarding pious readers against the corruptions of the Papacy, by which Satan has adulterated all that God had appointed for our salvation (Institutes 4.1.1).

That was from the online Beveridge translation. The Battles translation refers to:

those corruptions by which Satan, in the Papacy, has polluted everything God has appointed for salvation (Vol 2, pg 1012).

The entire church is polluted by the papacy. This is not in any way a stretch or an exaggeration.

All the good things that God has given to us in the church, visible and invisible, is polluted by the papacy. Pastors, teachers, Scriptures, interpretations, sacraments/ordinances. Everything. That is why I work so hard to bring this to light. If we can remove, or at least understand this curse, God’s blessings to us in the church will be so much more available to the world.

In the spirit of Luke 9:46 (and similar verses), “An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest”, the papacy – the “successor to Peter” – the “Petrine ministry” – whatever they are calling it these days, has consistently brought bitterness and strife into the church.

I’ve written extensively on the topic of “The Nonexistent Early Papacy”, and I’ve encouraged the work of others on this topic (most notably Brandon Addison, a WSCal grad who has gone farther and deeper, in a more pastoral and scholarly way than I ever could have done).

The whole church, virtually all through history, has the stench of pollution in it because of the papacy. Because of the impulse of early bishops of Rome to say “I’m the greatest. I’m the ontologically and epistemologically necessary component of ‘the Church’. I’m the connection between heaven and earth.”

Calvin, however, said it best: “Christ’s headship is not transferable” (Institutes 4.6.9).

“Divine Revelation” Part 3: Methodological Considerations When Discussing “the Church” and “the mind of the Church”

http://reformation500.com/2014/02/24/divine-revelation-part-3-methodological-considerations-when-discussing-the-church-and-the-mind-of-the-church/:

I believe here that we are really close to being able to identify the heart of the issues between Roman Catholics and Protestants....

In your initial comments, you reference a Ratzinger phrase, “the living organism of the faith of all ages”, and you also somewhere reference “the mind of the Church”, failing to take into account a critical portion of thinking.

It’s not true to say that the New Testament writers were “somewhat confused”. I will grant that some patristic writers of the first three centuries were very much confused. Writers especially of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox traditions just simply ignore this confusion – the thinking holds something like “these early writers were closer to the time of the Apostles, therefore they must have had the best understanding” – however, this does not follow at all. In the link that I provided here in this paragraph, I’ve cited many instances of this “confusion”, and many others could be provided....

Bergoglio’s Gig, Part 3: Opposing Ratzinger

In one of his first major public addresses as pope, at St. Peter’s Square, Sunday, March 17, 2013, “Pope Francis” specifically cited Cardinal Walter Kasper’s book “On Mercy”:

In the past few days I have been reading a book by a Cardinal — Cardinal Kasper, a clever theologian, a good theologian — on mercy. And that book did me a lot of good, but do not think I am promoting my cardinals’ books! Not at all! Yet it has done me so much good, so much good... Cardinal Kasper said that feeling mercy, that this word changes everything. This is the best thing we can feel: it changes the world. A little mercy makes the world less cold and more just. We need to understand properly this mercy of God, this merciful Father who is so patient.... Let us remember the Prophet Isaiah who says that even if our sins were scarlet, God’s love would make them white as snow.

Now, who has made the world “cold” in the first place? Could it be anyone from the previous generation of popes? In what way did the world seem “less just”? Who is it, really, who has been working so hard for “social justice” in the world? I’m just askin’.

I remember the days when the Soviet Union was still a world power, and “Kremlinologists” would study posed photos of the leadership, to see who was standing closest to Breshnev. It was a way of understanding who was “in” and what the policy directions of the Soviet Union might be. It wasn’t perfect, but it was one of the better methods for understanding that regime at the time.


Cardinal Walter Kasper says that “Pope Francis” is going to bring new life” to Vatican II, the same “spirit of Vatican II” that Hans Küng says is needed, and that the two previous popes sought to suppress. He says that Bergoglio has “inaugurated a new phase” of Vatican II.


For those who don’t know, Kasper is a former Assistant to Küng; he was “removed in 1999 by John Paul II as the Bishop of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart”. He was transferred to Rome, where until 2010 he was the President of the Pontifical Council on Promoting Christian Unity.

Roughly from 1999 to 2002, Kasper and Ratzinger had a “dialog” – Kasper is called a “conciliarist”, which in Medieval days, was the impulse that arose from the ashes of the “Great Schism” (when there were two and even three popes), and which opposed the imperial papacy. Conciliarism held rather (similar to the Eastern Orthodox) that councils and their doctrinal pronouncements are the highest “law of the land” in the church.

For the Eastern Orthodox, Ecumenical Councils are “extraordinary synods of bishops which primarily decide upon dogmatic formulations, especially in the face of heresy. Secondarily, they also issue canonical legislation which governs the administration of the Church.”

Kasper and then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger disagreed vehemently on a point of ecclesiology. You can find that disagreement summarized here:

Haggling with Bryan Cross over Ecclesiology

In response to my comment here (which essentially is found in this blog post), Bryan Cross said:

No one is claiming that propagation of the apostolic deposit has been “left to chance.”

Perhaps you can be more consistent in the way you bring up “ecclesial deism”, especially with respect to the Reformed doctrine of the church.

And the fact that there is no opposition between nature and grace, (or between the natural and the supernatural) does not entail that necessarily all men are independently capable of understanding rightly God’s self-revelation.

I disagree. A God who makes “all men”, and who desires to speak to them, can and will do so (Romans 1). Unless they are impaired in some way, but even then you see stories of kids with Down’s syndrome, who are incredibly loving children.

Moreover, just because God chooses to speak through a prophet does not entail that that prophet is an idol.

Of course not. Your suggestion that I may be suggesting that there is any kind of “entailment” at all in that situation is way out of line. I am talking specifically in the instance of the Roman Catholic claims regarding authority, infallibility, and specifically to be “the sacrament of salvation”. That is what is idolatrous.

‘The Church’ in Roman Catholic Ecclesiology: is it the ‘Universal Sacrament of Salvation’? Or merely an idol?

The Roman Catholic Church, at Vatican II, called itself “the universal sacrament of salvation”. Here is how they put it:

In later usage the term sacramentum emphasizes the visible sign of the hidden reality of salvation which was indicated by the term mysterium. In this sense, Christ himself is the mystery of salvation: “For there is no other mystery of God, except Christ.” The saving work of his holy and sanctifying humanity is the sacrament of salvation,… a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity among all men.” The Church’s first purpose is to be the sacrament of the inner union of men with God….

This much is Rome’s paying lip-service to the concept that I’ll relate below. As such, it should be seen as external to the direct relationship of the believer to Christ.

But as I’ve written in the past, what Rome gives with one fork of its tongue, it takes away with the other.

Because men's communion with one another is rooted in that union with God, the Church is also the sacrament of the unity of the human race. In her, this unity is already begun, since she gathers men "from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues”; at the same time, the Church is the "sign and instrument" of the full realization of the unity yet to come.

As sacrament, the Church is Christ's instrument. “She is taken up by him also as the instrument for the salvation of all,” “the universal sacrament of salvation,” by which Christ is “at once manifesting and actualizing the mystery of God's love for men.” The Church “is the visible plan of God’s love for humanity,” because God desires “that the whole human race may become one People of God, form one Body of Christ, and be built up into one temple of the Holy Spirit.”

With this second fork, Rome is making itself not merely an external sign, but “the instrument” alone which through flow “sacramental graces” “in their fullness” – without which men are “sort of on their own” – they can’t get the grace of the other sacraments.

But in reality, here, it sets itself up as an idol opposed to the direct mediation by Christ alone. In effect, it claims to be a mediator of the Mediator.

Michael Liccione (278) follows through with some of the logical result of this model:

1. You cite mathematics and the natural law as fields in which we don’t need “interpretive paradigms,” and you present those as analogues to theology. Now I don’t happen to agree that some fields of human knowledge require no IPs, but I’ll grant that assumption anyhow for argument’s sake. The real problem with your argument is that it assumes there is no relevant difference between what’s knowable by natural reason and what can be apprehended only by the supernatural gift of faith (emphasis added).

Interesting the way you oppose “the supernatural gift of faith” with “what’s knowable by natural reason and what can be appended”.

My point is that God has given man the capacity to be a direct receptor of that revelation. The notion that man will somehow miss what God is saying, either through general or special revelation, is not something that God has left to chance, although, your model assumes that God can only mediate his revelation through the Roman Catholic Church. That is false. Rather, Rome has set itself up as an idol, claiming to represent God, but really only getting in the way.

Bavinck notes, “The revelation that appeared in Christ as such is absolutely not opposed to nature but only to sin, which as an alien element has insinuated itself into the world. Revelation and creation are not opposed to each other, for creation itself is a revelation.”

Thus Adam in his world knows God not only by speaking personally with him, but by correlating that knowledge with what he perceives of God in the world around him (Romans 1). These two things are consonant, not separate. Bavinck continues:

Revelation was present before the fall. Even now, revelation is still present in all the works of God’s hand in nature and history; his external power and deity are perceived and understood from his creatures. And even supernatural revelation as such is so far from being in conflict with nature that every human in the core of his or her being is a supernaturalist and believes in a direct operative presence of God in the world (emphasis added; from Bavinck, “Reformed Dogmatics”, Vol 1, pg 361).

This is what makes entirely superfluous your positing some sort of “authority” which can mediate “the formal proximate object of faith”.

In reality, “the formal proximate object of faith” is “Christ alone”. “The Church” in Roman Catholic doctrine is a substitute for Christ. As such, it is an idol.

This is my main objection to Roman Catholicism. You deflect the believer’s mind from God, and focus it on “the Church”. “The Church” as defined by Rome is not “the sacrament of salvation”. It is an idol that leads people to focus on things other than God in Christ.

That is what I’m saying all along. God has created human beings with a direct capacity not only to understand him, but to be in direct union with him. If we really believe that we are in “union with Christ”, then, this direct union with “the Mediator” makes every other relationship secondary. This includes the relationship with other Christians, including “the church” as Protestants describe it, and particularly “The Church”.

It works the other way around. Christ is in us; word, church, and sacrament function externally to “stir up the spirit that is within us”. This is why we don’t miss what God is saying to us.

You may have heard Bonhoeffer’s famous statement, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die”.

Here is how that works:

Thus it begins; the cross [for Christians] is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ.

Communion with Christ is thus a form of isolation from the rest of the world – even from other Christians. Bonhoeffer continues with this concept:

We must face up to the truth that the call of Christ does set up a barrier between man and his natural life. But this barrier is no surly contempt for life, no legalistic piety, it is the life which is life indeed, the gospel, the person of Jesus Christ. By virtue of his incarnation [Christ] has come between man and his natural life. There can be no turning back, for Christ bars the way. By calling us he has cut us off from all immediacy with the things of the world. He wants to be the centre, through him alone all things shall come to pass. He stands between us and God, and for that very reason he stands between us and all other men and things. He is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality. Since the whole world was created through him and unto him (John 1:3, 1 Cor 8:6, Hebrews 1:2), he is the sole Mediator in the world. Since his coming, man has no immediate relationship of his own any more to anything, neither to God nor to the world; Christ wants to be the mediator. Of course, there are plenty of gods who offer men direct access, and the world and the world naturally uses every means in its power to retain its direct hold on men, but that is the very reason why it is so bitterly opposed to Christ, the Mediator.

The Roman Catholic Church says you can only come to Christ in a way that is mediated only through [or only in “fullness”] “the Church” and its sacraments. And this is why, as I’ve posted prominently at my site, “The Reformers’ forensic understanding of justification ... the idea of an immediate divine imputation [of righteousness] renders superfluous the entire Catholic system of the priestly mediation of grace by the Church.”

But Paul says, “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” And also, “for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”

This is a one-to-one relationship. Your fear is, as you said in 281, “The problem with lacking such a distinction is precisely that we cannot distinguish between what God is saying to us and what we are saying to ourselves.”

But God himself does not leave this to chance. Your notion that we must accept some earthly authority “as divine” is a poor and idolatrous substitute for the one, unmediated (or “mediated by Christ alone”) divine authority.

Thus, as you build your argument:

We can know truths of mathematics and precepts of the natural law by natural reason, but we cannot know divine revelation by such means. In the very nature of the case, we can only accept and believe divine revelation by faith, which entails trusting some authority as divine…

You deny the very power of God. You remove God in Christ from the direct sight of the believer, and you place “the Church” as an alternative “divine authority”. A secondary “divine authority”.

Rome seeks to impose itself and its will between the believer and Christ. In that way, it is simply an idol.

‘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:

The ‘people of God’: Old Testament expectations

In considering the question, “what is the church?” I noted that we have to go back a ways and ask “what was the church?”

That is, we have to ask, and understand, what was the church in the New Testament? What was the Old Testament expectation?

In understanding what “the church” is Edmund Clowney in his work “The Church”, (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, ©1995), relates that there is no question it has reference to “the people of God”. He notes, “the Bible does not deliver shipments of doctrine on cargo containers. Rather, the new grows out of the old, as the flower opens from the bud”. And in understanding the entire process of this unfolding, you have to go back to the beginning.

[The story of what God is doing in the world] does not begin at Bethlehem’s manger: it begins in the Garden of Eden, when God promises that the son of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. It continues in God’s promise to Abraham, made with an oath, ‘because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised’ (Hebrews 6:17). The story of the church begins with Israel, the Old Testament people of God (Clowney, pgs 27–28).

Clowney goes on to relate that, according to the Bible, “the church is the people of God, the assembly and body of Christ, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit”.

Yes, man fell in the garden, and God promised to redeem him. But, the question is, “redeem him to what?” From what had he fallen?

What did it mean to God’s actually assembled people throughout history?

What is God trying to do in the world? Understanding God’s purpose in creation is a means of understanding what “the church” is today: what it means to be “God’s people”.

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) notes:

We can speak of Gen 1:28 as the first “Great Commission,” which was repeatedly applied to humanity. The commission was to bless the earth, and part of the essence of this blessing was God’s salvific presence. Before the fall, Adam and Eve were to produce progeny who would fill the earth with God’s glory being reflected from each of them in the image of God. After the fall, a remnant, created by God in his restored image, was to go out and spread God’s glorious presence among the rest of darkened humanity. This witness was to continue until the entire world would be filled with divine glory. Thus, Israel’s witness was reflective of its role as corporate Adam, which highlights the notion of missions in the OT.

According to Beale, this was the ongoing theme of the Old Testament.

Without exception, the reapplications of the Adamic commission are stated positively in terms of what Noah, the patriarchs, Israel, and the eschatological Israel or its king should do or were promised to do. Always the expectation is that of actual conquering of the land, increasing and multiplying population, and filling the promised land and the earth with people who will reflect God’s glory.

Never is there a hint that this commission is to be carried out by what we might call a negative act—that is, by death. Of course, Isaiah 53, Daniel 9, and Zechariah 12 (and a handful of typological Davidic texts such as Psalm 22) prophesy the messiah’s death as crucial to achieving Israel’s restoration, but these texts are the minority, and they are never directly associated with the repetitions of the Adamic commission. Therefore, the Adamic expectations and promises of obedience for Israel’s partriarchs, the nation, and its king are always stated in positive terms of what they were to do or were promised to do (Beale, 58).

Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection were for the accomplishment of a purpose, that was to be fulfilled in the creation and ongoing mission of the people of God.

Beale outlines this story line as it appears in the Old Testament:

I am not positing a center or single topic as the key to OT theology but rather a storyline around which the major thematic strands of the OT narratives and writings revolve. Although story as a hermeneutical approach to biblical literature has become popular in recent biblical scholarship and accordingly has even been applied to the doing of whole biblical theologies, the older Dutch Reformed scholars sometimes employed the notion of tracing the “redemptive-historical story” of “creation-fall-restoration.” It is also significant to recall that all the ancient creeds and confessions had a basic skeletal plotline of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. The threefold pattern of “sin-exile-restoration” of Israel has been proposed recently as the framework of a biblical theology, as has a six-act structure of the Bible as a drama with kingdom as the overarching motif:

1. Kingdom establishment
2. Rebellion
3. The king chooses Israel
—interlude: the kingdom story awaits ending during the intertestamental period—
4. Coming of the king
5. Mission of the king’s message
6. Return of the king

As is evident from the preceding, both the threefold and the sixfold pattern are included here but compose only some of the elements of a larger overall cyclic pattern of sacred history.

In the light of the above, my formulation of the storyline of the OT is as follows:

The Old Testament is the story of God, who progressively reestablishes his new-creational kingdom out of chaos over a sinful people by his word and Spirit through promise, covenant, and redemption, resulting in worldwide commission to the faithful to advance this kingdom and judgment (defeat or exile) for the unfaithful, unto his glory.

Rather than referring to this as the “center” of the OT, I prefer to see it as the primary strand of the biblical storyline thread, composed of other minor strands that are held together by the primary one.

The kingdom of the new creation and its missional expansion likely form the major stepping-stone for the accomplishment of divine glory. Accordingly, in the classic fourfold division of the scriptural story as creation, fall, redemption, and consummation, the last two elements are better revised as redemption through new creation and consummation of that new creation. Thus, the story of the Bible in this formulation begins with creation and ends with the restoration of creation (61–62).

Next time, Lord willing, I’ll follow some of these threads through the Old Testament, and begin to tie them into expectations that Israel [the “people of God”] and the disciples carried with them in the New Testament.

What is ‘the church’? What was ‘the church’?

“The Lazy Man’s Way”

In asking the question “what is the church?” in the context of 2000 years of church history, we have to also ask the question “what was the church?” And in asking the question “what was the church?” we have to also further ask the question, “what was the church at different times?” And also, we have to ask, “according to whom?”

All of those questions make it a big topic.

Rome, of course, sidesteps that process, simply holding that “What the Church is today, that’s just what it always was, except that the folks back then didn’t know it”.

They follow Newman’s notion, and take it to the extreme:

It is not a violent assumption, then, but rather mere abstinence from the wanton admission of a principle which would necessarily lead to the most vexatious and preposterous scepticism, to take it for granted, before proof to the contrary, that the Christianity of the second, fourth, seventh, twelfth, sixteenth, and intermediate centuries is in its substance the very religion which Christ and His Apostles taught in the first, whatever may be the modifications for good or for evil which lapse of years, or the vicissitudes of human affairs, have impressed upon it.

Thus we have the spectacle of a Bryan Cross, for example, suggesting that Jesus’s statement about murder and anger in Matthew 5:22 “was fully compatible with the mortal/venial distinction”.

Bryan seemingly holds that Jesus had the [later] mortal/venial distinction in mind as he preached the Sermon on the Mount. [“And for you to say ‘he didn’t’ is an argument from silence, and thus a fallacy”.]

All of this, too, comes into the realm of the “Roman Catholic System”, or as Lane Keister puts it (following Anthony de Chirico), “getting at what makes Catholicism Catholicism”. Lane says, “Because the hermeneutical, systemic, presuppositional issues have not been dealt with yet, it is somewhat futile to argue about individual issues.”

That’s not quite true. Turretin noticed this need for a “systemic” argument in his “Institutes of Elenctic Theology” (1696). The question, for Turretin, as he introduces the concept of “church” is “whether the knowledge of the church ought to precede the knowledge of doctrine?”

He put it this way:

For although the controversies concerning the church are not among the first (which occasioned our secession from the Roman church), but only among the secondary (which sprung from the others); inasmuch as the Romanists (distrusting the goodness of their cause in other heads of doctrine) have betaken themselves to the authority of the church that they might be the more safely concealed under her shield, still in the progress of time they have become the principle matter in which our opponents seem to place the strength of their cause.

In other words, the primary Roman argument in Turretin’s day was “we are ‘the Church’, we are in authority, and it is our authority say what the doctrine is”. We’ve seen many Roman Catholics in our day that the Roman Catholic Church “has the authority to interpret Scripture”. This is tantamount to saying “only we have the authority to say what Scripture means”, the consequence of which is, “you don’t”.

The fact is that that, over the centuries, independent biblical scholars of all stripes have worked hard to, in the words of Martin Luther, “say what a thing is”, that is, to understand what the Scriptures are really saying – and the fact is that that we Protestants, in our day, have made amazing progress in reaching a consensus about what the message of the Scriptures actually is. It is further away from the Roman understanding than ever.

Thus this day the Romanists (although they are anything but the true church of Christ) still boast of their having alone the name of church and do not blush to display the standard of that which they oppose. In this manner, hiding themselves under the specious title of the antiquity and infallibility of the Catholic church, they think they can, as with one blow, beat down and settle the controversy waged against them concerning the various and most destructive errors [that they, the Romanists have] introduced into the heavenly doctrine.

Turretin goes on to say that “although the knowledge of the church is especially necessary to us, still it must not be supposed that it ought to precede the examination and knowledge of doctrine”.

The study of individual doctrines [building then up to the knowledge of the church] “is long, uncertain and dangerous,” he says, but the former, the Roman way, is “short and indubitable”.

Turretin cites contemporary authors who say that Roman Catholics “must follow the way of the authority of the church and not the way of discussion and examination of doctrine. For the latter is long, uncertain, and dangerous, but the former short and indubitable”.

For Turretin’s Roman contemporaries, the appeal to authority is the easy way out. The lazy man’s way to riches. No hint of a logical fallacy here.

Turretin then makes four arguments in favor of the fact, however, that an examination of doctrine should precede the mere acceptance of authority as the measure of an acceptance of the doctrines.

1. From the Scripture itself, “which is wont to premise the examination of faith and doctrine to the knowledge and communion of the church. Christ, sending the apostles to gather the church, supposes the necessity of a preceding instruction and knowledge of doctrine: ‘Go, teach all nations, baptizing them’ (Matt 28:19); they were added to the church who had been taught before by the apostles (Acts 2:41); the Samaritans who believed were baptized (Acts 8:12)”. Thus, he concludes “as adults in faith ought to precede baptism, so examination of faith and knowledge ought to precede knowledge of the church”.

2. From the nature of the thing: “a unified society (group) supposes some necessary principle in which the members themselves are united. The unity of the church supposes a preceding unity of faith in which believers are joined”.

3. From the sayings of the fathers. Jerome: “The church does not consist in buildings, but in true doctrine. The church is where true faith is”. Ambrose: “Therefore, the faith of the church is commanded to be sought first of all, in which if Christ dwells, it is undoubtedly to be chosen”. And Augustine: “Let us not hear, I say this, you say that; but the Lord says this. There are surely books of our Lord, whose authority we both assent to, believe and observe. There let us seek the church; there let us examine our cause”.

4. From reason: The way of authority (which thrusts forward the authority and infallibility of the church as the rule of faith) also rests upon a double hypothesis, but far more obscure and uncertain; nay, most false—assuredly that an infallible visible church is granted upon earth which teaches nothing but the truth and that church is none other than the Roman. To examine both of these, there is need of a long train of arguments and an accurate examination of histories [which is not forthcoming from the Roman side], since it supposes the truth of antiquity and of an uninterrupted succession. This cannot be ascertained without reading the whole of ecclesiastical history, councils and the fathers—a thing of immense labor (which very few of the learned can scarcely attain with diligent study; much less can it be perceived by the unlearned and the common people.)

Rome, of course, wants to have its cake and eat it too: it claims authority, it assumes authority, but it doesn’t lift a finger to prove that it has the authority. Because it simply can’t.

Of course, contra de Chirico, those theologians he examined as well as most of the anti-Roman apologists in our day are more than happy to undertake that “thing of immense labor”, to attempt to read the whole of ecclesiastical history, and to follow the path that seems “long, uncertain, and dangerous”.

It’s just simply ignored by someone like Bryan Cross, in favor of his argument from authority. It's the Bryan Cross version of “the lazy man’s way to riches”.

A Look at Roman Catholic Ecclesiology

Over the coming weeks, Lord willing, I hope to discuss a topic that’s come up in response to a work by Leonardo de Chirico, who argues that Evangelicals need “to engage with Roman Catholicism in a more theologically-integrative way”. Here is his contention:

The author suggests that evangelicalism's appraisal of Roman Catholicism has lacked systematic awareness, tending instead towards more episodic aphoristic criticism of Roman doctrine, which for all its truth lacks integrated analysis. With this in mind, Dr. de Chirico proposes a critique which (i) applies the category of 'system' or 'worldview' to Roman Catholicism, and (ii) perceives two foundational theological foci in Roman theology - the relationship between nature and grace, and the self-understanding of the Church.

“Nature and Grace” is a huge topic all its own. I’ve written on the topic of “the self-understanding of the Roman Catholic Church” in the past, and my hope in this upcoming series is to respond more systematically to the issue of “the self-understanding of the [Roman Catholic] Church”.

Meanwhile, here are some links that can serve as a place to review some of the issues for anyone who’s hoping to look more closely at this topic:

The Roman Church Thinks Highly of Itself

The Pillar and Ground of the Truth

The Real Body of Christ

The Church that Roman Catholics Believe In Today

Rome is all about aggrandizing Rome

Newman, “The Roman Catholic Hermeneutic”, and Rome’s Foundational Assumption

Whatever else the “definition of the word church” contains, it must be purged of Roman conceptions of Rome

I’ll be placing these blog posts into the category “Roman Catholic Ecclesiology”. If you click on that link at the bottom of any of these blog posts, it will bring up all the Triablogue posts on that topic.

The Roman Catholic “System”

I’ve wanted to get into the topic of “Roman Catholic ecclesiology” for some time now, but it is a massive topic, and there are always other things to be concerned with.

But just recently, a commenter at Green Baggins recommended a work by Dr. Leonardo De Chirico, who is now a commentator for Reformation21, entitled Evangelical Theological Perspectives on post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism (Religions and Discourse, V. 19).

Here are some selections from a review of that work:

Dr. de Chirico has recently completed his PhD studies at King's College, London. His thesis was published last year by Peter Lang and is entitled Evangelical Theological Perspectives on post-Vatican II Roman Catholicism.

In our present-day context of increased doctrinal confusion, the blurring of historic formulations of faith and an apparently inexorable advancement in the Protestant-Catholic project of ecumenism, Dr. de Chirico persuasively presents the need for evangelicals to engage with Roman Catholicism in a more theologically-integrative way. This is evermore pressing in the light of varied developments within Catholicism since Vatican II (1962-5), which have prompted something of an international change in the way many evangelicals perceive the Catholic Church….

The work explores the way six evangelical theologians (Gerrit Berkouwer, Cornelius Van Til, David Wells, Donald Bloesch, Herbert Carson and John Stott), have grappled with and responded to developments within Roman Catholicism post-Vatican II, as well as summarising the ongoing international dialogue and debate between evangelicals and Catholics since 1965.

The author suggests that evangelicalism's appraisal of Roman Catholicism has lacked systematic awareness, tending instead towards more episodic aphoristic criticism of Roman doctrine, which for all its truth lacks integrated analysis. With this in mind, Dr. de Chirico proposes a critique which (i) applies the category of 'system' or 'worldview' to Roman Catholicism, and (ii) perceives two foundational theological foci in Roman theology - the relationship between nature and grace, and the self-understanding of the Church….

I have tried to suggest something like this “integrated analysis” with blog posts here …

So you, my friend, according to Rome, are saved because “the Roman Catholic Church” is the “universal sacrament of salvation,” because “all grace of salvation is not only ordered toward [the Roman Catholic Church], but in some way comes fromand through the [Roman Catholic] Church. As a sign and instrument of all salvation, the church is not merely the goal toward which grace is directed, it is the channel or medium through which grace is given. You are in a “certain, though imperfect communion” already with the Roman Catholic Church.

… and here, for example.

In fact, in the Roman Catholic conception of “church”, all Protestants really are really just Roman Catholics who have become “separated” (as in “separated brethren”) – still under the visible headship of the pope and visible hierarchy [which is an integral, ontological part of the one body of Christ], yet “institutionally separate from the one Church”…

That’s why Rome can never give up. It’s own conception of itself is just too important in [its own] scheme of things. Rome has defined itself in as the most important element in the body of Christ. This is why I say, Rome is all about aggrandizing Rome.

And in comments over there, I said:

Vatican II ecclesiology has its roots in the writings of Johan Adam Mohler, who brought up the notion that the Roman Catholic Church is the “ongoing incarnation of Christ”. This is one source for the notions about panentheism. I’ve responded to Roman Catholics who tell me “the Church is Christ”. It is said to be a Christological rather than a pneumatological view of the Church.

This Vatican II ecclesiology has its roots in The Tübingen School, home of Ferdinand Christian Baur, in the works of Johann Adam Möhler (6 May 1796 – 12 April 1838), and particularly his 1825 work Unity in the church or the principle of Catholicism: presented in the spirit of the Church Fathers of the first three centuries (Die Einheit in der Kirche oder das Princip des Katholicismus, dargestellt im Geiste der Kirchenväter der drew ersten Jahrhunderte (Tübingen, 1825). English translation (1995): Unity in the Church or the Principle of Catholicism: Presented in the Spirit of the Church Fathers of the First Three Centuries, Peter C. Erb, trans., Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D.C.).

My hope is to begin to look at this work, and its setting in Tübingen, heavily influenced by names like Baur, Hegel, and Schleiermacher. Being primarily liberal, this work of Möhler’s was not widely accepted at first, although after Pius X’s dealings with modernism, he became very influential for other Roman Catholic theologians in the first part of the 20th century: Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, and perhaps even Herr Ratzinger.

David Wells, in his 1972 work “Revolution in Rome”, had noted this association between Vatican II and the liberal Protestants:

Present-day Catholicism, on its progressive side, is teaching many of the ideas which the liberal Protestants espoused in the last [19th] century. Though progressive Catholics are largely unaware of their liberal Protestant stepbrothers, the family resemblance is nevertheless there. Since these ideas have only come into vogue in Catholicism in the last two decades, they appear brilliantly fresh and innovative. To a Protestant, whether he approves or disapproves of them, they are old hat (pg. 8).

In the coming weeks and months, I’ll hope, Lord willing, to provide more background and details on this.