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:

Gregg Allison addresses Rome’s “Nature-Grace interdependence”

You can purchase this work here.

As was shown in my last three blog articles on “the Roman Catholic View of Nature and Grace” (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3), this “interdependence” serves as a foundational tenet of Roman Catholicism, and virtually every Roman doctrine is shaped and underpinned by it.

Finally, here, Allison gives his opinion of this “interdependence” – the source of it, and the reason why its source is flawed. What follows is from Gregg R. Allison, Roman Catholic Theology and Practice: An Evangelical Assessment (Kindle Locations 1006-1073). Crossway. Kindle Edition, pgs 52-55 in the printed edition.

Each of the above doctrines and practices will be assessed in due time in the remainder of this book, but an appraisal of the first pillar on which they are built—the nature-grace interdependence—will be undertaken now.

Evangelical theology disagrees strongly with its counterpart concerning the interdependence between nature and grace. One objection is that the Catholic system’s concept of nature owes more to philosophical traditions—the Neoplatonism at the heart of Augustine’s theology; the Aristotelian philosophy to which Thomas Aquinas’s theology was wedded—than to Scripture.

Because Catholic theology defines “nature” philosophically, rather than shaping this concept according to Scripture, evangelical theology considers its notion of nature to be fundamentally flawed.

A Roman Catholic View of Nature and Grace Part 3

How the Roman Catholic view of nature and grace intersects with a variety of Roman Catholic doctrines and practices.

See also:

A Roman Catholic View of Nature and Grace Part 1.

A Roman Catholic View of Nature and Grace Part 2.

Aquinas was the problem; the Reformation was the solution.

I’m continuing to work through Gregg Allison’s work, “Roman Catholic Theology and Practice: An Evangelical Assessment”.

A proper evangelical assessment of Catholicism will treat Catholic theology as a coherent, all-encompassing system with one of its two key tenets being the nature-grace continuum that underscores the less-than-devastating impact of sin on nature, which, as a consequence, retains some capacity to receive, transmit, and cooperate with grace.

Specific theological doctrines and practices in which the outworking of this understanding of the nature-grace continuum can be seen are:

A Roman Catholic View of Nature and Grace Part 2

The source of synergistic justification and holy water

I’m continuing the Gregg Allison’s explication of “nature and grace” in Roman Catholicism that was started here:

In one sense, these two divergent views reflect in part the different models of the nature-grace relationship as developed by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas: “[W]hereas the Augustinian tradition has stressed the concept of natura vitiate [spoiled or fallen nature], therefore underlining the pervasive and corrupting reality of sin and the utter primacy of grace, the Thomistic tradition has instead insisted on the inner resources of nature’s capacitas dei [capacity for God], giving a more positive account of its intrinsic disposition towards the elevating operations of grace” (citing De Chirico, pg 228. See footnote [1] below for more information).

On this issue, [following the Reformers] evangelical theology follows the Augustinian tradition, with its pessimistic view of nature because of the devastating impact of sin on it, while Catholic theology follows the Thomistic tradition, with its relatively optimistic perspective on nature and its openness to and capacity for grace.

A Roman Catholic View of Nature and Grace Part 1

When Protestants think of the various topics or loci that comprise the various systems of “systematic theology” that have been studied over the centuries, the lists of these loci might include the “prolegomena” (which might encompass a discussion of philosophy and a doctrine of Scripture or a doctrine of “revelation”) – and following that we might find the doctrines of God, the Trinity, creation, humanity, sin, the person of Christ, the atonement, the Holy Spirit, soteriology, “the church”, “last things” – we tend to see these things as inter-related, but each having their own “self-contained-ness” as well.

In Roman Catholicism, which (following De Chirico and Allison) may and should be thought of as a “system”, there are two “core doctrines” or ideas or themes which underlay all of the other loci -- these two are what Allison has referred to as the nature-grace interdependence.

Now, one of the first things I’ll say is that, as Reformed believers, we tend to think we know what is meant by “grace” – after all, we talk about things like “salvation by grace” and the “doctrines of grace”.

But the word “grace” in the context of all of church history has a long and convoluted history and meaning, and we do need to be careful of context if we are to understand what is meant by “grace” in any given instance. For example:

We live in a meaningful world; God gives it meaning.

Creation and Grace

Stephen Wolfe makes this argument:

If Protestants want to reject modernity, then they ought to reject the nominalist assumptions that go into religious observance outside of revelation. This means rediscovering the regulative principle of worship as the means of reconnecting oneself to God’s creation. Only through this principle will one properly join the choir of creation.

Think of C.S. Lewis’s “Great Dance”. Although Lewis is perhaps guilty of the thing that Stephen argues against here:

How the Regulative Principle of Worship Affirms, Supports, and Ensures a Meaningful World.

I think this is one of the most clear and important things he has written. In fact, this piece helps us to think through God’s program in this world, for man and creation, from beginning to end. He says:

This argument is directed at Protestants. For I can see how Roman Catholics can answer this. They would simply say that the Church has the divine authority to recognize and make certain ceremonies meaningful, and by this authority God becomes active in the event. So I think that Roman Catholics are consistent in this regard.

Of course, the idea that the [Roman Catholic] Church has such authority is false, but at least they are consistent. Protestants, on the other hand, do not have the [JB note: I would put the word “benefit” in quotes] benefit of such authority. We could form fuzzy notions of pursuing “catholicity,” but this suffers for want of clear criteria and it cannot legitimately be anything more than an attitude toward pre-reformational traditions.

In making this argument, I think Stephen is showing the difference as well between what we might call “God’s metaphysic” [my term] vs the “classical metaphysics” of Aristotle and Aquinas. Because in truth, “God’s metaphysic”, however that is characterized, is based on that which is given in his own special revelation, and not from the cobbled-together thoughts of human philosophers over time.

The principle is evident in what follows:

What Is Roman Catholicism? Part 1

What is Roman Catholicism in our day? According to Leonard De Chirico, no evangelical theologian has had a good handle on answering this question in the post Vatican II years.

(Although to be fair to evangelicals, Roman Catholics don’t seem to have a handle on it either. As the AP recently quoted “Pope Francis”, “What are we waiting for? For the theologians to reach agreement? That day will never come, I assure you”).

One should note that even (maybe especially) among the core group among the Roman Catholic laity, “large chunks of Mass-going traditional Catholics don’t believe in basic doctrines of the Church” – that’s not “lapsed” Roman Catholics – it’s a group of people who attend Mass regularly and at least feign some kind of devotion to “the Church”. Maybe it has always been that way, since “Christianity” was made the “official” religion the Roman empire. Rome was careful to figure out “Rome is first”, but it kind of left the rest of “ecclesiology” an open question.

(Evidence: I’ve recently had the book “Figuring Out the Church” recommended to me. This is a work by a major Roman Catholic theologian, examining the writings of other Vatican II theologians. Whereas the Vatican II doctrine is “infallibly correct”, no one as yet can definitively figure out what it means).

Nevertheless, De Chirico tries, and Allison very much affirms what De Chirico concludes: that Roman Catholicism does have a “core” and it is identifiable.

General Revelation and Special Revelation, Nature and Grace, and how and why Roman Catholicism Minimizes the Effects of Sin

Sorry for the very snappy title there. But this is foundational material to understanding the differences between Rome and the Reformation, both as they existed at the time of the Reformation, and as they exist today (in a much more subtle form).

In recent weeks, I’ve put together several short blog posts from Bavinck on the role of “General Revelation” generally, and how that ties in with the concept of “nature and grace”. Gregg Allison touches on the topic, but before we get into his explanations, I’d like to provide a bit of context from Bavinck, whom I would consider to be an unimpeachable Reformed source.

The first three installments are:

Herman Bavinck on “General Revelation and Christian Discipleship”. The payoff here is: “dogmaticians do not first divest themselves of their Christian faith in order to construct a rational doctrine of God and humanity … in order later to supplement it with the revelation in Christ. But they draw their knowledge solely and alone from special revelation, i.e., from Scripture. This is their unique principle.”

When Bavinck speaks of “the Christian faith”, he is considering it in the area of what he calls “religion”, which is roughly “the human practice of things”. That is, it falls on the “ectypal” side of things – and not on the “archetypal” side (God as God knows it). More ....