Different Approaches to Scripture between Protestants and Roman Catholics

Regarding Jesus’s conversation with the rich young man (Matt 19:16:22), Philip writes:

Here we have what may superficially be deemed “works salvation.” However, the Lord goes on to say, upon the laments of the disciples that such perfection is exceedingly difficult, “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). Without the grace of God, the kingdom of heaven is inaccessible.

You have to step back here and look at what’s really going on. Here’s an approach, which shows the fundamental difference in approach to the Scriptures. It is what Roman Catholics do not do. And what the Protestant Reformers did.

You have to start with God. Ask, “What is God doing in the world?”

Rome, through the centuries, was fascinated by, enamored with, its own history. It’s as if they’re saying, “God has made us great … He has given us authority, and by golly, we deserve it. We are the See of Peter, we go back into the 300’s with this authority”, etc. It has a pile of doctrines and dogmas that it accreted. And it has to account for and justify these. This is how Rome primarily uses the Scriptures.

On the other hand, if you are to be able to really understand who God is, what He’s doing in the world, you have to start with the beginning of God’s revelation to us: His written Word. The Old Testament is very explicit about who God is, and what he’s doing in the world.

The Reformers were among the first who were able to do this – they were able to take the broad sweep of the Hebrew OT and the Greek New Testament, to look at the broad sweep of what is called “salvation history” – think of Stephen’s speech in Acts 7; think of Irenaeus “The Preaching of the Apostles”.

You need the Old Testament as an anchor for the New. And in this regard, the Reformers were able to go back and look at this, and build their theologies upon an understanding of the Character of God, and not on Rome’s infatuation with its own authority.

Quoting from George Eldon Ladd, “A Theology of the New Testament”:

Although Matthew contains some texts that seem to suggest a rigorous advocacy of law-keeping on the part of Christians, other texts give a different impression, notably 11:28-30 and 17:24-27. In the first of these texts Jesus invites people to take on his easy and light yoke. In the second, the curious story of the temple tax, Jesus speaks of the “sons of the kingdom” being “free”; the language used here is quite Pauline with its references to “freedom” and “not causing offense.” Given such Matthean texts, it is not at all obvious that Matthew is a legal rigorist….”

Ladd notes here, “Paul and Matthew have much in common”.

Here is the difference: Rome looks at a verse of Scripture and says, “how can we use this as a proof-text for our system of doctrine?” And they say, “Oh, well, we are all of grace up to Baptism, then the Catholic must be on the “sacramental treadmill” all his life. The Catholic has gotta get the sacraments, gotta get to confession” and all the “gotta-do’s” fit nicely with a “works-righteousness” interpretation of a verse like this. The Protestant looks at the Scripture and says, “how does this fit into God’s overall Revelation?”

In a way, this passage about this wealthy young man is an extension of the Sermon on the Mount material – it is not at all a kind of “works righteousness”. It is saying, “you can’t be righteous enough. You need your righteousness from another source.”

R.T. France notes the concept of “perfect” in Matthew (5:48): it s “a righteousness greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees (5:20). But perfection is, according to that verse, the characteristic of God, who has just been declared in v. 17 to be the only one who is truly “good.” The young man’s request for some “good thing” to do has brought him face to face with goodness at a level which will prove too high for him. The “goodness” of keeping commandments is, as v. 17 has reminded us, always relative; Jesus now replaces it with a demand which is absolute, the demand of the kingdom of heaven” (The Gospel of Matthew”, pg 734).

Here we are back at Paul and Romans 3:9: “There is no one righteous, not even one.”  

Following Up with Philip Jude

Philip and I corresponded privately behind the scenes, but I wanted to respond here to some of his comments in the thread below:

1. I certainly did not (and do not) mean to be disingenuous. I just wanted to have a conversation. I am an affable and curious and talkative guy. Also, my name really is Philip Jude, so you don't need to put it in scare quotes. Heck, you even know my last name, having traced me back to Catholic Lane.

Hi Philip, I know we have corresponded privately, but I wanted to respond publicly to some of your comments here. I am sorry that you feel uncomfortable. I apologize, if you did not intend to be disingenuous, but after our private correspondence, and reading some of your other works, I’m still inclined to think you’re holding something back. (And again, I respect your privacy and anonymity, but I’m inclined to think you’re not being straight, and I’ll say why below).

2. I am not a professional by any means, just a practicing Catholic who loves the Bible and is fascinated by philosophy and theology. The last class I took on theology was in tenth grade. I don't even have a college degree! (For many years I struggled with alcoholism and substance abuse, which complicated the whole formal education thing.) Nope, I am just a theology geek with a big appetite for books. Simple as that.

Even so, this level of humility does nothing to explain some of the things you have written which are very articulate and well-thought-out pieces. Maybe not a “formal education”, but you are not just “a theology geek with a big appetite for books”. You have trained and knowledgeable teachers, and not only a “big appetite” for books, but access to them, and the time to study them. I’m thinking maybe you are affiliated with a religious order somewhere, or at least, you have close access to them, but that’s just a surmise.

4. Yes, I have been editing for Catholic Lane for several months. It is a part-time, unpaid position that I secured through a friend. It's my small way of giving back to the Church.

Such things take time and knowledge, and you have these, and you have not acquired them in a haphazard way, through light and curious reading.

The Bible is not enough, as it clearly states! That is an Islamic claim unknown to Christians prior to the Reformation. Even then, it was exclusive to the radicals, utterly rejected by the likes of Calvin and Luther.

You will have to show me where the Bible states that it is not sufficient. You should qualify that, as “sufficient for its own intended purposes”. As it is, your statement is a bit of a straw man. Even the WCF qualifies the “naked Bible” as you posit.

Anyway, the adjective "Roman" (which you insist upon) is ultimately misleading. It is rather the Church Universal. That the Chair of Peter happened to end up in Rome is an accident of history. (And, as I've remarked before, I am indeed wary of certain papal claims.)

On the contrary, Rome is precisely the problem. It is the wholesale importation of Roman culture that is among the earliest corruptions of the Apostolic message, and I believe that with the help of some of the modern New Testament scholarship, and other scholarship dealing with the early church, this will become more and more evident over time.

Rome “claims” universality, and I intend to comment, for example, on Ratzinger’s article about the very nature of “Roman” “Catholic”. And as far as Peter having ended up in Rome as “an accident of history”, Ratzinger disagrees with you. In his “Called to Communion”, he goes to great lengths to prove that “Rome was the original pre-eminent authority”, the very purpose of the progression in Acts. But I’m sure you are more correct than he is in this question.

Although, it is likely that Peter, a traveling missionary to the Jews, never had a “chair”. The concept of “a chair” is a later superimposition on what the Apostles actually taught and did.

You separate Christ and His Church, but this is impossible. Communion with Christ is communion with His Body (the Church), and vice versa.

No, I do not “separate Christ and His Church”. I separate Rome from “Christ and his church”. Roman, pagan accretions. Yes, every Christian, as I said above, may boast of “union with Christ”. But this is a direct, personal relationship. No Roman hierarchy is required.

Given this great and wonderful mystery, the Christian is bound to discern the true Church among the chaos of competing sects. From my (admittedly amateur) study of history and Scripture, I believe this to be the Catholic Church.

No, turn to Christ and you be a member of the church. “Repent and be baptized.” “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved”. And you will be part of the universal body of Christ. No Roman hierarchy is required.

You insist on using the semi-pejorative term "Roman," but this is misleading: there are Byzantine Catholics, Maronite Catholics, Chaldean Catholics, Syro-Malabar Catholics, Malankarese Catholics, Coptic Catholics, Ethiopian Catholics, Syriac Catholics, and so on. Some of these rites differ significantly from Rome, undercutting the notion that communion with the papacy is truly a state of abject servility.

It is not the “rites” that are foundational. It is “abject servility to the papacy” that makes them part of the Roman network of things. There is one thing that unites all these “rites”. As an Opus Dei friend put it to me, “the pope is in charge”.

As for the hierarchy: Sure, all churches have hierarchies. Anyway, hierarchy was an aspect of the Church from the start, as evidenced by Acts. The episcopal structure is revealed by Scripture and confirmed by the earliest fathers.

Yes, and here is the hierarchy: “he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ”. Not popes and bishops and sees and chairs and endless successions based merely on “office”. In the “earliest fathers”, you should note that even Ignatius did not hold to “apostolic succession” as Rome defines it.

As I mentioned in our emails, Francis Sullivan’s study, “Apostles to Bishops” concludes, “while most Catholic scholars agree that the episcopate is the fruit of the post-New Testament development, they maintain that this development was so evidently guided by the Holy Spirit that it must be recognized as corresponding to God’s plan for the structure of his Church”.

I’ll agree with him that it was a “post-New Testament development”, but it is evident (as further study is showing) that this is not only not “structural” in any way, but it was rightly rejected by the Reformers, when this system, which was beneficial in the 2nd century but had become totally corrupted by the 14th century.

Let me reiterate that I do harbor doubts regarding certain aspects of Catholicism (mainly the papacy).

Then you are on a good path, and in good company. Follow up on this. John Meier and others have said that the papacy “cannot give a credible historical account of its own origins”.

“Philip Jude” and the fullness of corruption

Someone named “Philip Jude” showed up in the comments box of my Mark Shea post yesterday, and we had what he called “a mighty discussion”. He first talked about “Wisdom/Word Christology” being “greatly anticipated in the Old Testament”; he said “The early Church used the Wisdom/Word Christology of Scripture to relate to the Platonism of the pagan world. This is clear and reasonable enough, and I believe it is all Shea was driving at.”

So right away we have someone who seems to know something that most people don’t know about, and right away we have an attempt to minimize the disagreeable nature of Mark Shea’s motives. He also questions my motives for challenging Shea. “Don't you think you're overdoing this a bit much?”

The conversation continued a bit, but I knew I was dealing with “a professional” when he dropped the little quip, “Could you give me your favorite anticipations of Wisdom/Word Christology in the Old Testament (outside Proverbs and Psalms)? Just interested. This is one of my favorite topics. I just finished reading Skarsaune’s ‘Incarnation: Myth or Fact.’”

Oskar Skarsaune is a Norwegian New Testament scholar, the author of several works on early Christianity. I’ve not read him, but I’ve seen his name in Larry Hurtado’s work, “Lord Jesus Christ”. Hurtado noted that Skarsaune had surveyed “the Christian use of the Old Testament in the second and third centuries”. His work has also appeared in the theological journal Themelios, for example. Skarsaune’s name was dropped in such a casual way that it seemed to have been an effort to try to impress me or maybe catch me off guard.

The disingenuous nature of “Philip Jude’s” motivations became fully clear to me, however, when I got home last night, and followed his “electron trail”. His immediate profile link goes to a blog entitled A Heart of Flesh. There he quotes liberally from Augustine and Aquinas, as well as Charles Spurgeon and Charles Wesley.

At the bottom of some earlier posts is the signature @ Catholic Lane. A click to the link takes you to a reprint of an article by Philip Primeau. Another click on his name takes you to an Author Archive, and at the bottom is the following attribution: “Philip Primeau is an associate editor at Catholic Lane. He also blogs at a-heart-of-flesh.blogspot.com. So there’s our man Philip Jude.  

Normally, I don’t go out of my way to find out who anonymous commenters are. I know folks who prefer to remain anonymous, and I respect their privacy. But this individual clearly tried to throw me off the trail when he said “I am particularly fascinated by Logos Christology because it piques the philosophical (or wannabe philosophical) dimensions of my intellect.”

He is clearly someone who has studied philosophy. The “wannabe” comment is an example not only of false humility but of mental reservation, which was defined in a court document as “a concept developed and much discussed over the centuries, which permits a churchman knowingly to convey a misleading impression to another person without being guilty of lying”. Maybe he did this reflexively, maybe intentionally, but the effect was to try to persuade me he was some kind of student and no real threat.

But he is a threat. A self-styled “Augustinian” (he also posted a comment in Steve’s post Judging God’s Morality), here is the central thrust of his message, which came far down the comment thread:

I am catholic, by the way. (Probably obvious by this point.) I certainly hold Scripture in high regard. Certainly, this is not the case for all of us. Mark Shea seems like a good enough guy to me, if a little self-righteous.

The Bible might not receive as much attention among Catholics, but that is because we have a fuller sense of God's activity among men. The Word did not only become Flesh and Book, but Eucharist and Sacrament and Church, too.

We trust and love the Bible because of the Church, which is Christ's body (Colossians 1:24), the communion of saints (I Corinthians 12), a spiritual house of living stones (I Peter 2:5), holy Mount Zion (Hebrews 12:22), the "pillar and ground of the truth" (I Timothy 3:15). Christ did not bother to write down so much as a single word, but He took the time to establish His church and bequeath it with the power to represent Him (Matthew 10:40) and judge for Him (John 20:23).

The Bible is not enough. God’s word to man is not enough for us. We can’t “trust and love the Bible” because it is God’s word spoken to us. We have to “trust and love the Bible” because of the Roman Catholic Church.

Look at the method here that he uses. It’s pure bait-and-switch. I’ve accused Roman Catholics of being dishonest with their approach among Protestants, and here we have a very clear, living example of that. “Philip Jude” came here with the unspoken agenda of perhaps “reaching out” and giving us “Prots” a taste of God’s “fuller” calling – which is something we reject, by the way. Though Philip can show “Prots” how truly magnanimous he is – doing exactly what Shea was talking about, “taking the best of whatever we humans come up with and pressing it into the worship of God” – only Philip Jude is able to present these wise “Prots”, with a wink and a nod that, even though they were smart, talented men, they did not possess “the fullness of the faith”.  

Philip Jude is feeding us a line. He is trying to sell Christians all that they already have, plus, throw in Rome for “fullness”.

In truth, Philip Jude, the church is Christ’s body – but Rome is no part of that. True saints may boast of union with Christ. We believe in the communion of saints – but we are united in Christ, and not through some artificial structure or Roman-imposed hierarchy. The church indeed is a spiritual house of living stones, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. The church is Mount Zion. The church preaches the truth.

In truth, Philip Jude, Christ’s true church has all of those things, minus the corrupt doctrines of Rome. In no wise did Christ “establish” or “bequeath” anything in Rome to represent him. But the wolf in sheep’s clothing would impose himself upon Christ’s sheep. It is the wolf who will, contrary to Christ’s commands sit himself down in a place of honor, and then fabricate elaborate stories to try to persuade the church that he had been invited all along. Roman Catholicism, in fact, does not offer “the fullness of the faith”, but “the fullness of corruption”.

I don’t know if Philip Jude will come back and explain these things here, or interact with some of the challenges we’ve presented him with, or if he’ll go back to his own blog and write about how unreasonable some converts might be. I guess we’ll see.