Bryan's stalled chess game

Bryan Cross recently reviewed Roman but Not Catholic: What Remains at Stake 500 Years after the Reformation, by Kenneth Collins & Jerry Walls, in Faith and Philosophy 35/4 (October 2018), 485-491. 

i) It's worth noting who didn't write the review. It wasn't written by a cradle Catholic. It wasn't written by a graduate of a Catholic seminary. It wasn't written by a Catholic Bible scholar or church historians at a Catholic seminary or pontifical university. It wasn't written by a Catholic theologian. It wasn't written by a priest, monsignor, or bishop. It wasn't written by the prefect for the CDF. 

Rather, it was written by a Catholic layman and evangelical convert to Catholicism. It was written by a self-anointed spokesman for Catholicism. Whenever I read Bryan, I'm struck by how he presumes to pontificate (pun intended) for Catholic theology. But how representative are his views within the hierarchy or mainstream Catholic academia? Or is this an idealized abstraction that's out of step with official currents in Roman Catholicism? 

ii) I've skimmed the book Bryan is reading. I read the parts that interested me. For purposes of this post, I'll assume that Bryan accurately represents the stated positions of Walls and Collins in the book. I won't go back to compare his representations with theirs. They can do that on their own if they choose to respond to him. I did reread their section on the sufficiency and perspicuity of Scripture before writing this post. 

iii) It's somewhat roundabout to review a review. I don't necessarily frame the issues in the same way as Collins and Walls. And Bryan wasn't responding to me, so he can't be faulted for failing to engage my arguments, since that wasn't his aim. So my response is orthogonal to this particular exchange. I speak as an interested third party, overhearing their exchange. 

“It is never a sin not to be a Roman Catholic”

Click here to listen to Ken Collins’s chapel address on 

why he co-authored this book.

I’m continuing to talk about the work “Roman but Not Catholic”. One of the things that the review by Fred Sanders points out is that unlike other polemical works of this kind, most of which are “often churned out from tiny presses to serve a niche market”, a key distinction is that this is a work that truly looks at the bigger picture and will stand the test of time. It focuses not on some of the smaller points of contention at any given moment, but it always keeps “the big picture” of the global church, in both time (2000 years) and space, in mind.

Here is a chapel address by Ken Collins on the occasion of the commemoration of the Reformation at Asbury seminary – outlining the reasons why he decided to work on this book. The biggest reason, he claims, is to point out the inconsistency of the Roman anathema found in CCC 846 (“Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it”)

Pointing to the large numbers of individuals around the world – especially in the southern regions of the world, including Latin America, where huge percentages of the population are leaving the Roman Catholic Church in favor of Pentecostal and other evangelical churches, Collins forcefully declares, “it is never a sin not to be a Roman Catholic”.

Here is the link to the video and audio addresses.

“Roman but Not Catholic” Can Former Catholics be Saved?

Hell: Is this the fate for former Roman Catholics? 

The work “Roman but Not Catholic” by Ken Collins and Jerry Walls is an incredibly thorough and yet well-ordered and concise treatment of issues that have spanned 2000 years.

The Roman Catholic Church, in its all-encompassing arms, must deal with different organizations and also different categories of individuals, and it seems to do its best to draw its fuzzy lines:

When the Roman Catholic Church looks in the direction of the broader church, beyond its Vatican walls, so to speak, it does so from the vantage point of the same three standards identified earlier as championed by both Bellarmine during the Reformation and its aftermath and by Pope John Paul II more recently in his encyclical Ut Unum Sint (1995): right faith, valid sacraments, and proper governance under the authority of the pope. In this specific context, with these standards well in mind, Rome engages in yet another round of wordplay by distinguishing the church (the [Roman] Catholic Church) from churches (plural) and then again the church (the [Roman] Catholic Church) from what are called ecclesiastical communities (p.113).

I’ve been asked to comment on an issue that is a particularly difficult one, especially for those among us who may have grown up or converted to the Roman Catholic Church, and then left that institution. The phrase is summed up in the following brief sentence, which seems nevertheless to have changed its meaning over time:

"Outside the Church there is no salvation"

The website “Catholicism.org” (an online journal edited by the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Saint Benedict Center, NH), has helpfully collected a compendium of “popes through the centuries” who have “defended the doctrine ‘outside the Church there is no salvation’”.

What it means to be “Roman” but “not catholic”

As part of my ongoing series discussing the work “Roman but Not Catholic” by Jerry Walls and Ken Collins, I’d like to comment on the word “Catholic” and “catholic” with a small “c”. (I’ve discussed the word “Roman” here).

I’m on record as having said that I don’t like the word “catholic” (and its variations “catholicism”, etc.), especially not as it applies, for example, in the phrase “Reformed Catholicism” etc. There are too many different definitions of the word, and there is too much opportunity for confusion. Roman Catholicism, for sure, hangs onto that title “Catholic” – equivocating from when it was used in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed (“one holy, catholic, and apostolic church”) until its use after the Council of Trent. It is supposed to represent “early beliefs”, but the weight of evidence is showing that even those beliefs and practices had changed from the second to the fourth century, much less the 16th century.

“Rome”, “Roman”, and the source of “anti-Catholic bigotry”

Walls, Collins, and “Rome”

The charge has been raised that because Walls and Collins use the abbreviations “Rome” and “Roman” for “the Roman Catholic Church” (instead of simply calling it “the Catholic Church” all the time), that some kind of “anti-Catholic bigotry is behind it.

In titling their work “Roman but Not Catholic”, authors Ken Collins and Jerry Walls have staked out some property amidst two different and competing concepts, that are not altogether accepted (it seems) by Roman Catholics. I’ve already mentioned Turretin and his complaint that by claiming the title of “The Church”, he said, “[Roman Catholics] think they can, as with one blow, beat down and settle the controversy waged against them …” by simply “hiding themselves under the specious title of the antiquity and infallibility of the Catholic church” (Turretin, “Institutes”, Vol 3. pgs 2-3).

This is how the Roman Catholic Church seeks to win arguments: by co-opting the meanings of words. And for sure, both of the words, “Roman” and “Catholic” (the latter also being available with a small “c”) have generated their fair share of contention. So defining them is going to be very important.

“Roman but Not Catholic”: Authors Jerry Walls and Ken Collins

Jerry Walls (l) and Ken Collins

This is part of a review series I’m going to be doing on the Jerry Walls and Ken Collins work “Roman but Not Catholic: What Remains at Stake 500 Years after the Reformation” (Grand Rapids, Mi: Baker Academic, 2017). The work is unique in that it explores very many of the historical developments that led to the post-Vatican II Roman Catholic Church that we see today.

I want to first briefly talk about the authors of this work. They are not the kind of traditional authors that one might find mentioned on this blog.

For example, in an earlier comment, a good Reformed friend wrote, “Never thought I would buy a book authored by Jerry Walls”. Jerry certainly has a reputation here at Triablogue, most notably for a work and a sentiment entitled “Why I’m Not a Calvinist”.

The Roman Catholic Problem with Reality

“Rome has a problem with reality”

In the end ... [Rome] has a problem with reality

I’ve been reading through an advanced copy of the text of “Roman but Not Catholic”, by Jerry Walls and Ken Collins. I’ve just finished Chapter 7 (of about 20 chapters), and I came across this nugget:

In the end, Rome not only has a problem with the church, the living body of Christ well beyond its walls, but also has a problem with reality, a reality that is right in front of its eyes ...

They make this statement in the context of a discussion that those who leave the Roman Catholic Church are still under some kind of anathema. It is in the context of conciliar documents, present and past, and of Canon Law, which is still on the books and in fact was revised in 1983. They make this statement in the context of a section entitled “Giving Rome the Benefit of the Doubt”.

I’ll look forward to explicating this “problem with reality” in a review series that I’m planning to do when the book is released October 17.