Porter on Christianity Today Caving to Mob Rule . . .

https://domainthirtythree.com/2019/05/14/ct-caves-to-pressure/

“Mere Protestant” Confession Seeks to Reclaim the Word “Catholic”

By 1529, a dozen years after the start of the Reformation, there was an on-going dispute, both political and theological, between Martin Luther’s German Reformation, and the Swiss Reform led by Ulrich Zwingli. In an effort to bring the two sides together, Philip of Hesse, a local Protestant ruler, brought Luther, Zwingli, and a number of other Reformers (including the Stephan Agricola, Johannes Brenz, Martin Bucer, Caspar Hedio, Justus Jonas, Philipp Melanchthon, Johannes Oecolampadius, and Andreas Osiander) at the castle hall at Marburg for what has become known as the “Marburg Colloquy”. Primarily a political conference, the colloquy nevertheless marked the start of a long-standing division. According to Alister McGrath’s account:

This attempt foundered on one point, and one point only. On 14 articles, Luther and Zwingli felt able to agree. The fifteenth contained six points, on which they were able to reach agreement on five. The sixth posed difficulties. Luther and Zwingli reluctantly were forced to declare that they had not “reached an agreement as to whether the true body and blood of Christ are bodily present in the bread and wine.” From Alister McGrath, Reformation Thought: An Introduction (p. 183). Wiley. Kindle Edition.

This week, more than 250 Protestant leaders and theologians published what they call a “Reforming Catholic Confession”, “A ‘Mere Protestant’ Statement of Faith to mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation”.

Just on the surface, I don’t like the word “catholic”, because of the kinds of confusion it can lead to, but this statement seems to genuinely re-capture and re-establish the proper meaning of that word.

Wesley So: Elite US Chess Player Shares His Christian Faith

Christianity is the “thinking man’s religion”.

Wesley So: a Christian and the #2-rated chess player
in the world

Christianity Today featured an article by Wesley So, the Philippine-born grandmaster who is currently the US Chess Champion and who, for the last six months or so has been the second-highest rated chess player in the world.

I was 12 when Bobby Fischer played Boris Spassky and won the World Championship title – and I was heartbroken when he refused to play Anatoly Karpov in the next World Championship cycle, and consequently the World Chess Federation (“FIDE”) stripped him of the title. These days, I play chess informally, and someone even talked me into playing in a league, which I greatly enjoyed.

CT enabled Wesley to publish a first-hand account of his conversion to Christianity and his Christian life:

By the end of 2014, I had quit college, moved in with my foster family, and launched a professional chess career. Most importantly, I had also entered into a relationship with Jesus Christ. It all happened so fast that we still look back at those early days in disbelief.

Since my foster parents were mature Christians, it must have been obvious when I first moved in that my faith wasn’t as sophisticated as theirs. They never condemned me for this, but they did insist that living as a member of the family meant abiding by certain house rules and customs. I would need to read my Bible every night and faithfully accompany them to church on the weekend. Over the first few months, I would fall asleep during every sermon—not because they were boring, but because all the changes in my life were so stressful and overwhelming.

I never minded going to church, and somehow I managed to absorb real wisdom from those sermon fragments. I also got very interested in reading the little Bible I was given. Whenever I had questions I would ask my foster parents, and their answers were always simple and made good sense. They taught me how to find answers in the Bible myself and use it to check what others said. The Bible was the final authority, deeper and wiser than the internet and more truthful than any of my friends.

Before long, I was practicing my faith in a more intense way. My new family calls Christianity the “thinking man’s religion.” They encouraged me to ask questions, search for answers, and really wrestle with what I discovered. All the while, I would observe how they lived their lives, taking note of how they spent their time and money. They worked hard, they always went the extra mile to help others, and they made every effort to resist immorality. I knew I wanted the kind of simple, contented, God-fearing life they enjoyed.

Current Top 10 Chess Players in the World

The God of Everything

People in the chess world sometimes want to know whether I think God makes me win matches. Yes. And sometimes he makes me lose them too. He is the God of chess and, more importantly, the God of everything. Win or lose, I give him the glory. Of course, it’s hard when I don’t get what I want, the way it is for any child whose father says no. But even when I don’t understand God’s ways, I’m confident that his vision is much bigger than my own.

Instead of worrying about the future, I try to focus on the work God has put before me. Right now it’s chess, so I study it diligently and play it as well as possible. Will I rise to become the world champion one day? Only God knows for sure. In the meantime, I know that he is a generous and loving father, always showering me with more blessings than I could possibly deserve. I content myself with playing one match at a time and practicing gratitude for my daily bread.

Born in 1993, he’s as old as my #3 son. But Wesley So has as good a chance as anyone of becoming the next World Champion.

Read his whole story here.
Here’s a link to the list of the Top 100 chess players in the world.
Here’s a link to Wesley So’s historical rating and ranking.

Weigle Room at Christianity Today

In a web-only interview with George Weigel, the not-quite-converted Chris Castaldo gives Weigel lots of wiggle-room to evangelize Evangelicals with his Roman Catholic message, but fails to alert people of the Borg-like nature of interaction with Rome. From the intro, “Chris Castaldo, director of the Ministry for Gospel Renewal at Wheaton College's Billy Graham Center, spoke with Weigel about obstacles facing Evangelical Catholicism, from secular hostility to challenges inside the church.”

In the process, the assumption that Castaldo allows to run free is that “Evangelical Catholicism” somehow holds “evangelical doctrines” – which it does not – in favor of the notion that it is “being evangelical” in its spread of Roman Catholicism.

Not only is that fact completely unspoken in this interview, but Castaldo permits Weigel to engage in the fiction that Roman Catholicism somehow encompasses and promotes some “biblical realism” [to use Weigel’s phrase] rather than simply “Roman Catholicism”.

* * *

Castaldo also leaves without comment the impact of the fact that there are “Catholic clergy and laity who are in a ‘diminished state’ of communion with the Church”. We’re not talking about “separated brethren” here. What we are talking about is the fact that “doctrinally wayward priests” actually represent “an abrogation of responsibility by pastors, be they priests or bishops.”

The fact that bishops (and there are many of them) may be not only “morally” but “doctrinally wayward” betrays the confusion that exists within “the Magisterium” itself.

Finally, Castaldo himself amplifies Weigel’s fiction that “Bishop of Rome is, above all, the Church's first witness—the witness whose own witness strengthens the witness of all the brethren”.

At a minimum, Castaldo and the editors of Christianity Today ought to be castigated for this in polite company, for exhibiting their ignorance of the non-Christianity of Rome when they allow this tripe to be published under their banner.

The hope is that calling this sort of thing to their attention will give them some opportunity to think through what they are doing.

Christians of Egypt

Who are the Copts?

Christianity Today on Sex Abuse: “Monsters Among Us”

Just to show that I’m an equal-opportunity reporter of child sex abuse in churches, Christianity Today published an article entitled “The ‘Monsters’ Among Us: Child Sex Abusers in Our Midst“.

The man and his wife had parented 75 foster kids in their suburban home encircled by a white picket fence. He worked in marketing for three Chicago ministries, going on to establish a support network for foster-care families.

“Long before we got married ... we agreed we wanted to have large families,” the man told a Christian publisher in 2009. “We thought it would be fun to have a lot of children.”

And then, the man was arrested and held on charges of sexually assaulting two of his foster children, one 6, the other 12 at the time. This winter, he confessed to police of many nights spent drinking before coming home to commit literally unspeakable violations against these and likely other children.

We at Christianity Today recognized the mug shot. For nine years, he was our coworker in a non-editorial role.

The story came to us right before another: a Wheaton College Christian education professor arrested for hoarding and trading thousands of child porn images.

And now today comes another tragedy, with the news that Voice of the Martyrs executive director Tom White, a source, partner, and friend to several of us here, apparently committed suicide to avoid an investigation into an accusation that he had molested a young girl.

These events brought a sickening dose of reality to our hallways.

So, Christianity Today gets sick at “three”. For those keeping score, this is now three among Evangelical Christians reported (I’m sure the Roman Catholics who are keeping score will be able to find a few others), and 6,115 accused priests and 16,324 “survivors”. I haven’t calculated the percentages for the Evangelicals, but for Roman Catholics, that’s The 6,115 priests [a count provided by the U.S. bishops] as accused comprise 5.6% of the 109,694 priests in ministry 1950-2002. As As BishopAccountability.org notes notes:

The 6,115 priests who are now counted by the U.S. bishops as accused comprise 5.6% of the 109,694 priests in ministry 1950-2002. Yet as recently as November 2002, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, stated in an interview: “In the United States, there is constant news on this topic, but less than 1% of priests are guilty of acts of this type.”

So the pope wasn’t elected for his Math skills. Or do you think maybe he was intentionally lying so as to minimize the problem in people’s minds? And note that he barely seemed to be sickened at 1%. Much less 5.6%.

Consider, we are talking about 5.6% of all priests between 1950-2002. One out of every 20. One out of 20 every Catholic parishes – one out of a smaller number, if you consider the parishes with multiple priests – had a sex abuser as Pastor or Assistant Pastor. (I know mine had one).

What to do, then, if you know of a sex abuser in your church or ministry?

The Roman Catholic method for handling sex abuse was, as recently as a 2011 Grand Jury report, “to prevent or delay reports of sexual assaults, to the point where applicable statutes of limitations expired. And Archdiocese officials, by burying those reports they did receive and covering up the conduct, similarly managed to outlast any statutes of limitation”. As a result of these policies, “these priests and officials will necessarily escape criminal prosecution”.

The Christianity Today way to handle sex abusers: “certainly means jail time, psychological testing, and an intensive recovery program. It should mean complete barring from children’s ministry”.

Yes, nobody’s playing favorites here. 

“Why the Spirit, not the magisterium, will lead us into all truth”

Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today, “the magazine of Evangelical conviction”, responded to the question, “What do you make of all the evangelicals converting to Roman Catholicism?” Here’s a quick overview of the response he gives is:

The Holy Spirit set the pattern for what church would be like at the day of Pentecost. And it looked like this: Massive confusion. So much confusion that when onlookers tried to describe it, they called it a drunken party (Acts 2:13). When Peter interprets what was happening, he says this:

And in the last days it shall be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams;
even on my male servants and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy. (Acts 2:17–18) ….

Many matters took decades, if not generations, to settle out—including the matter of which writings were to be included in the canon to help settle these matters! In other words, there was no magisterium in the early church, but only Christians who lived and argued together at the prodding of the Holy Spirit. Yes, there were bishops and councils who attempted to settle disputes that arose, but many of those bishops were simply wrong on key points, and many of the councils had to be reversed by another council. The full sweep of church history suggests that the Holy Spirit has, in fact, led us into all truth through no other way than men and women, slave and free, Jew and Gentile wrestling with one another about whatever issue is at hand until, in the Spirit's good time, a consensus emerges….

This is the church the Holy Spirit birthed at Pentecost, and this is the church in which the Holy Spirit raises up all manner of people to say one thing or another we all need to hear. One way we adjudicate these issues is by listening to one another today. Just as important is to listen to the church historic, our great tradition of creeds and confessions and great theologians of the past. And yes, more than anything, we continue to mine the Scriptures to discover the truth the Holy Spirit is leading us into, which is always an old truth we've not been able to hear until today….

The common critique of evangelicalism is that "the center will not hold." Bah. Humbug. Of course the center will hold, because at the center is not a doctrine, nor some human authority figure, nor a complete and inerrant statement of faith. There is only the Center, Jesus Christ. We don't need a magisterium. We already have a Lord, who told us that not even the gates of Hades (whose landlord loves to sows confusion in the church!) will prevail against the church.

His response leaves a lot to be desired, but he’s fundamentally right. We don’t need the Roman Magisterium. The Roman Magisterium is a contrived thing. It’s a counterfeit. The Holy Spirit does lead the church. And this question, asked very publicly, and his answer, is one that’s going to help to continue to draw the lines that need to be drawn. It’s going to help a lot more Evangalicals (especially those who have left Rome) to begin to focus on what the right answers are.