Witherington on “Roman but Not Catholic”

Ben Witherington III has started a review series on the work “Roman but Not Catholic”, by Ken Collins and Jerry Walls. The various entries are pithily entitled Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4. I’m not sure how far it will go, but here’s what he’s got so far:

Part 1: Keep in mind, “a text, not read in light of its original context, just becomes a pretext for whatever one wants it mean today, and distortion inevitably follows”, and “nothing can be theologically true that is historically false”.

Part 2: This is just a throwaway, introducing the next two sections as contributions by the two authors.

Part 3: Ken Collins outlines his own chapters in the book, 2,3,6,7,9-12,15-19. Topics include Tradition, Scripture, “The Church”, Sacraments, Priesthood (very good!), the papacy, Mary, Justification, and Regeneration, Assurance, and Conversion.

Part 4: Jerry Walls chapters (1,4,5,8,13,14, and 20), “What We Have in Common”, logical challenges to Newman and his theory of Development, dealing specifically with “the Tu Quoque” objection, the claims of the papacy in the light of probabilities of history, popular Roman Catholic apologetics, and also “the World’s Largest Pluralist Denomination”.

This is a work for your pastor – for you if you are a pastor! – or for the book table at your church. You don’t need it until you need it, and then you really will wish you had digested the contents of it while you’re talking to someone who wants to go “home to Rome”. The subject matter is not simple. In some ways, it is all-encompassing of twenty centuries of church history (in this sense, the book itself is pithy), seasoned with Scripture and sound logical argument.

And if you have not yet been to the Amazon site for this book, go there, check out the reviews, comment on them, write one for yourself, and encourage every Protestant to read it.

“When ‘Catholic’ is not ‘catholic’”

This is my review of Roman but Not Catholic by Jerry Walls and Ken Collins, and it's my first review for the Reformation21.org site: http://www.reformation21.org/featured/when-catholic-is-not-catholic.php. “This is a book that I wish had been written in the 1970's, when I was first looking at the question of whether I should remain Roman Catholic.”

“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.

“A well-reasoned, informative, and truly helpful book about Roman Catholicism”

Fred Sanders has written a very positive review of “Roman but Not Catholic” for The Gospel Coalition (TGC) website.

Acknowledging that “There’s a real need for clear and honest polemical literature about serious Christian differences”, he suggests that Collins and Walls have “raised the standard for how they should be written”:

What they can’t accept is simple: they object to the exclusive claims of the Church of Rome to be the one true church, and the only ecclesial entity deserving the title of catholic. With this focus, Collins and Walls work through the various doctrines and traditions that are distinctively Roman Catholic (in the areas of sacraments, priesthood, papacy, Mariology, and justification), citing the church’s own authoritative texts and respected spokesmen (the 1994 Catechism shows up a lot, and John Henry Newman is a recurring voice). They call in support from the Eastern churches to illustrate the areas in which Rome is peculiarly isolated in her truth claims. And throughout, Collins and Walls go deeper into the argument than any book I know of.

For example, I thought Jerry Walls’s treatment of Newman’s Doctrine of Development was the best I’d ever seen, and Sanders came to the same conclusion: “The caliber of the arguments and interlocutors in this chapter is impressive. This is no defensively short-sighted attempt to fend off Rome’s claims, but a real wrestling with the underlying issues, with considerable depth and refinement.”

The book is hefty enough and deep enough in its understanding that Sanders believes it will be less useful for the person in the pew struggling with these issues, and “more useful for pastors and teachers to read for themselves so they can replicate, mobilize, and contextualize the arguments in it.”

I would have appreciated having this book in 1983.

The key is that the authors do have a definite interest in convincing Roman Catholics to cease and desist immediately from their groundless boasting that the only way to be part of the universal church is to pledge allegiance to the Roman church….

As they explain in the introduction, Collins and Walls were moved to write the book because of the significant number of Protestant friends who were troubled by Roman Catholic claims.

In that sense, it’s a thorough and well-argued manual contra the Roman Catholic apologists of our era. Check out the full review and then “buy the book for your pastor or church library”.

“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 Fall of the Roman Catholic Church

Important note: This has already happened.

For all of you naysayers out there who are prone to say “the gates of hell shall not prevail”, keep in mind here that I’m not making a prediction. I’m reporting on what has already happened. This is going to be largely a personal note, and more anecdotal than I’d like it to be. But I want to explain some of the excitement that I have right now, and some of the hope that I have for the future.

John Bugay, Cradle Catholic

I’ve been dealing with Roman Catholicism for a long time. I was born into a Catholic family. I grew up Roman Catholic. It meant something to be “a good Catholic”.

On my mother’s side of the family, my great grandparents were immigrants from Slovakia. My great grandfather died when I was very young – I remember being at his deathbed at some point. My great grandmother then went to live with my Uncle Eddie, who was the sixth child in that family of six (and the youngest brother to my grandmother). They had a nice, 1950’s style brick home in one of the newer suburban areas around Pittsburgh.

My uncle just had a young family at the time. He may or may not have had one small child at the time, my cousin Michael who, oddly, was my mother’s cousin. Because of their relative age, we visited them a lot.

It was the kind of big Catholic family that was prominent back then. My great grandmother didn’t know much English, even in the early 1960’s, but the phrase I heard all the time was, “you good boy Johnny”. She said that to me all the time, and rarely did she say anything else. And I’d smile and say “thank you”. We were in church very frequently, as part of a large, extended family – weddings, baptisms, funerals. And there was much family time and fellowship. It worked that way on my mother’s side of the family, where my mother was from one of the older siblings, and also on my father’s side of the family, where he was one of the younger siblings. I had some same-aged cousins, but most of my cousins were a lot older, with families of their own.

That was the form of pre-Vatican II form of “Roman Catholicism” that I knew in the early and middle 1960’s. You didn’t get “catechized” back then. You lived it. You lived your life, and life revolved around “the Church”.

Amazon review of Roman but Not Catholic

I've posted my review of "Roman but Not Catholic" at Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R2ZD8ZSN0PXOH2/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=0801098939

Pop on over and check it out, and give me a "helpful " rating if you thought it was helpful.

“Roman but Not Catholic” is released today

Why Walls and Collins are not Roman Catholics

Today is the official release date for “Roman but Not Catholic”, a book by Jerry Walls and Ken Collins. The original title of the book was to be “Why I’m Not a Roman Catholic”, through the Brazos publishing house (a division of Baker Books) – perhaps a part of a pair of books which also featured “Why I’m Not a Protestant” (and similar to the “Why I’m Not a Calvinist/Arminian” pair in which Walls was one of the authors). But as the authors began to write, it soon became apparent that the subject matter was going to be too great for just a small book. So the book was moved to the Baker Academic division, and now at 464 pages, I think the intention is for this work to become a kind of textbook for seminary students.

I think this is highly appropriate. The late Fulton Sheen made the statement that “There are not a hundred people in America who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions of people who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church — which is, of course, quite a different thing.” (Foreword to Radio Replies Vol. 1, (1938) page ix”). While contesting Sheen’s numbers, I think it has to be admitted that very many Protestants don’t know what Roman Catholicism claims, nor what it is all about. Just to be fair, it seems that, in the era of “Pope Francis”, many Roman Catholics, too, show evidence of not knowing what “the Catholic Church” really is all about.

Here is the main point:

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.

C.S. Lewis: “Newman makes my blood run cold ...”

In his introduction to the work, “Roman but Not Catholic”, co-author Jerry Walls writes, “We have heard from lots of people who have read John Henry Newman’s famous essay on doctrinal development and found his arguments compelling. I thought it might be helpful to hear from persons who have read Newman but found his arguments deeply confused and his conclusions badly overstated.”

Apparently, C.S. Lewis was one of those people.

C.S. Lewis: “Newman makes my blood run cold ...”

C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm chpt. 6
HT: Steven Wedgeworth on Facebook.

The Roman Catholic Church was Never “Catholic”

Anticipating the publication of the book “Roman but Not Catholic”, which is due out in time for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, I want to re-publish and clean up some of the articles that I’ve written over the last few years that support the authors’ conclusion. In this article, I summarize what the Roman Catholic Archbishop Roland Minnerath (who studied the matter for an official Roman Catholic historical study of “the primacy of the bishop of Rome in the first millennium”) said: “The East never shared the Petrine theology as elaborated in the West.”

What this means, essentially, is that at a most fundamental level, the Roman Catholic Church was never truly “catholic”, in the sense that the word was first used by Ignatius (in the second century, when it first referred to “the whole body of believers”). This article is updated and slightly edited since its first publication on June 6, 2011.