Reply to Atheist Seidensticker on Demands for “Evidence”

May 21, 2018 By Dave Armstrong

These exchanges occurred in a blog combox of mine. Bob Seidensticker runs the large and influential blog, Cross Examined. See the related dialogues / critiques involving him: Why Do We Worship God? Dialogue with an Atheist, and Seidensticker: Christians R Intellectually Dishonest Idiots. Bob’s words will be in blue.

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God is not an unjust Judge because He doesn’t give rebellious man an infinite amount of time to repent or because some refuse to accept His gracious pardon or to give Him due honor and worship and end up in hell.

Man is rebellious? Whose fault is that? Maybe we should blame his Maker.

“Accepting his gracious pardon”? Paul makes clear that that’s unnecessary: “Just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (Rom. 1:19). In other words, we didn’t opt in to get Adam’s sin, so we don’t need to opt in to get Jesus’s salvation. We’re good. . . .

And don’t get me started on the injustice of hell. Infinite punishment for finite crimes? It doesn’t even make sense within the context of religion. Wow—how savage is this guy?

[replying to someone else] Sounds like you’ve assumed the Christian god exists. I don’t make that assumption. Indeed, I find very little evidence supporting that claim. . . . I came out of the box imperfect. Whose fault is that? . . . Perpetual torment for finite crimes is God’s greatest gift? What a cool religion—how do I sign up? . . . How about if God simply shows me he exists for starters? Why is that too much to ask?

If he gave me this big brain, he gave it to me to use. It would be an insult if I simply said, “Well, the predominant religion where I come from is Christianity, so I guess I’ll just go with that.”

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Sounds like you’ve assumed the Christian god exists.

I would contend that most Christians do indeed assume that there is a God, not simply from irrational blind faith (whether they are fully aware of the reasoning or not), but rather, from the rational and quite defensible notion of a “properly basic belief.” See my paper about that, which heavily cites Alvin Plantinga: the greatest living Christian philosopher.

I’ve never found that compelling, though I have yet to understand the idea well enough to write about it. I’ll add your post to my list.

I think you’d find it fascinating and challenging, at the very least.

Along the same lines, there are the related concepts of “innate knowledge” or “tacit knowledge”: per the thinking of Michael Polanyi or John Henry Cardinal Newman (Grammar of Assent). I’ve collected many papers along these lines on my “15 Theistic Arguments” collection of links (see section 2).

I don’t make that assumption. Indeed, I find very little evidence supporting that claim. . . . How about if God simply shows me he exists for starters? Why is that too much to ask?

Well, that gets into very deep waters. Right off the bat, I would ask you several closely related questions:

1) What do you mean by “evidence”?

You and I have been chatting. That’s some evidence that you exist. Suppose we had lunch together. That’d be more evidence.

Jesus chatted with His disciples, before and after His crucifixion. He ate with ’em, too, before and after. That’s evidence.

No, we don’t have evidence that Jesus ate with his disciples. We have a story that he did so. We don’t get to put that story into the History bin without a lot of work.

He claimed to be God. Either he was a nut case or a liar, or truly was God in the flesh.

Liar, lunatic, Lord, or Legend.

We think all the evidence considered together makes it overwhelmingly more probable that He is God, rather than the alternatives.

My evidence for God is that of a pen pal who communicated telepathically. Sometimes. Or at least I think he does.

That’s what we believe happens in prayer. And similarly, in written form, the inspired revelation of the Bible.

Right. Which is very different from my evidence of you. I need to see that God doesn’t have no more evidence for him than someone who doesn’t exist.

That God exists is kinda key to even beginning any discussion about apologetics. Why is he hidden? A hidden god that Christians handwave excuses for is precisely what you’d see if he didn’t exist at all. You can see why I haven’t moved past that default assumption.

We deny that He is hidden. He’s revealed Himself in many ways:

To paraphrase Churchill, God is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. I want really, really, really good evidence that he exists. Christians can’t provide it. Why is this not Game Over?

1) Through Jesus.

To repeat myself: we don’t have Jesus, we have a story of Jesus. Did it really happen like that? Maybe, but surely not likely, given how history treats the supernatural tales of everyone else of antiquity (Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus, Alexander, etc.).

2) Through many miracles.

3) Through the changed and transformed lives of those who wholeheartedly follow Him (including my own).

4) Through the marvels and wonders and beauty of His creation.

And now you’ve moved onto deist arguments. You say, “Look at God’s marvelous sunset!” and I say, “Look at the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s marvelous sunset!”

5) Through the laws of science and the remarkable way things function in the natural world, which are extremely difficult to ultimately explain through purely naturalistic assumptions.

6) Through reason: the cosmological and teleological arguments and many more theistic arguments.

7) Through the revelation of Scripture.

8) Through the lives of saints.

9) Through personal spiritual experiences.

This is, of course, a big discussion in and of itself. But my point is to strongly contend that we deny that He is hidden in the first place.

No, I don’t think so. Since the ordinary ways of knowing that a person exists don’t apply to God and you’ve got to tap dance other approaches, this again seems to be the Game Over moment. Doesn’t God really want to have a relationship with us? If so, the fact that he doesn’t make himself known in a conventional manner contradicts that. Makes me think that he doesn’t exist. How could I do otherwise?

I would even say that there is more reasonable justification for belief in God than for our own existence. There aren’t 15 or so major theistic (serious philosophical) arguments for why I exist, but there are for God’s existence.

Uh . . . because it’s easy to see that you exist? Why isn’t it easy to see that God exists? Why the rigamarole? Why is it hard?

2) What do you believe is “enough” evidence?

You tell me. How much evidence would you need to convert to some other religion? That’s probably how much I’d need.

[I replied to this question asked of me, to another atheist. But here it was an attempted diversion on Bob’s part]

I can’t tell you how much you need, because that is your thing, that I am exploring. I’m delving into your epistemology, and your fundamental axioms and premises, not mine. You say you need more evidence, so the natural question to ask is: how much is enough? What would this look like for you?

So where does this leave us? I keep answering this question, and you keep telling me that my answer is unsatisfactory? Doesn’t sound like a fun or useful game.

This is a bit of a tangent, and I don’t want to assign you homework, but I’ll include a blog post series that does respond to this in a way. It’s called “25 Reasons We Don’t Live in a World with a God.” In short, I’m saying with these reasons: show me that these arguments that we don’t live in a world with a god don’t exist, and I’ll have an easier time believing in the Christian god.

3) On what basis can you establish what is “enough” evidence?

Ask God. He’s really smart, and he would know what it would take to convince me. And yet he’s not give that to me. Is he just playing games? Or does he not exist? You can imagine which answer I think is simplest.

This is basically an evasion of the simple question I asked you. It makes perfect sense to ask you this. Now, if you have no answer, simply say so (and then you would have other problems to deal with, with regard to your own intellectual justifications). But the topic-switching game is not one I ever play, and it doesn’t work with me. If you want to engage in dialogue with me, you’ll have to provide some sort of direct answer to what I ask you (just as I am doing with your questions). That’s the nature of the game of dialogue.

This sounds, again, like an unanswerable question. If what I’ve given you so far doesn’t satisfy you, then I’m pretty sure that, from your standpoint, I have no answer.

And, again, I’m wondering why I’m in the hot seat, getting failing grades for my answers. Last time I checked, you were the one making the extraordinary claim that God exists.

4) Do you presuppose that empirical knowledge is the only valid sort of knowledge?

What else do you have in mind? If you have other ways to know things, I’m all ears.

Looks like that is a yes. For starters: 1) mathematics, 2) logic, 3) the non-empirical starting axioms of science, and 4) innate or tacit knowledge that I have already alluded to.

Mathe . . . what is it? Mathematics? Wow—that’s weird stuff. You’ll have to explain that one to me.

Sarcasm aside, you are, as I expected, pointing out avenues with which I was already familiar.

As for 3), how is this not empirical? These axioms aren’t taken on faith; they’re tested all the time. Take, for example, “everything has a cause.” Sounds right, but we’ve tested that and found that, in the world of quantum physics, this isn’t necessarily the case. Some things don’t have causes (this is the Copenhagen interpretation).

As for 1), suppose we had as a foundational assumption 1 + 1 = 2 (or take another axiom math is built on). We test this continually. If we were to find an exception, that would be noted, and we’d proceed using that.

5) If so, why?

6) If you say “yes” to #4, are you unaware that mathematics is a valid non-empirical form of knowledge, and that it is necessary for modern science to proceed? And that logic is also non-empirical, and that science starts from non-empirical assumptions?

7) You do apparently acknowledge that there is a “little” evidence for God. Okay, what is it? Otherwise, you should say, “no evidence . . . ”

Christians exist. The Bible exists.

Good! Glad to hear that. It’s a little crack of light (from where I sit)!

OK, I’m glad you’re pleased. I’d be surprised if you were surprised, however.

8) On what basis do you determine that your standards for evidence with regard to God are more unarguable and self-evident than the next person’s, or indeed, many thousands of persons?

Do we agree that people make up religions?

Yes.

Is Hinduism manmade, for example?

I think so, though I would say that the impulses for most religions are based on a real knowledge of a real Being (God), however imperfectly so.

I doubt that. If Hindus could see Yahweh poorly, Muslims see him a little better, and Christians see him with varying degrees of clarity (depending on specific beliefs), you’d imagine that world religions would converge with time. God and his truth aren’t changing, after all. In fact, we see the opposite. In Christianity especially, we see new denominations forming at a rate of 2 per day.

This is just what religions would do if they were manmade.

If we agree that religions by the thousands are manmade, then I would suggest that Christianity looks like just one more.

I understand that. But by the same token, I see atheism as simply one more man-made tradition, which is as susceptible and vulnerable to intense scrutiny and analysis as anything else. I’ve examined atheist premises and arguments and again and again and I find them altogether non-compelling and underwhelming. In other words, two can play at that game.

Not really a game.

When the time is right, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on atheism.

And that gets back to my initial question (which you partially avoided): you have not established (in this discussion) why your epistemology is superior to that of Christians or other religious groups.

My approach is to take individual arguments, either for Christianity or for atheism, and evaluate them. Will you be unconvinced by my arguments? Almost certainly. You’re asking for my proof that your evaluation of my arguments was flawed? I don’t have one.

And these are the sorts of questions you will have to grapple with, if you are serious about your own views (just as all people ought to be).

Obviously. To assume that I need this nudge is condescending, but perhaps that wasn’t your intention.

You passed over my questions 9 and 10 [see them immediately below], which I can understand in a way, because they are very difficult to answer. So I will assume that you can’t answer them, rather than that you can and refuse to for whatever reason. :-)

9) What exactly do you require God to do to prove to you that He exists?

Do what Dave Armstrong does when he wants to prove to someone that he exists. If God would need to do a little more to prove that he’s actually God rather than a human or an alien, I’ll bet he’s smart enough to handle that.

(Oooo . . . I bet I get another F on that answer.)

10) On what basis do you have the opinion you have in reply to my question in #9?

I don’t know what this means. But perhaps this is relevant: you could say that I’m arrogant (or something) for my stance on evidence for God. Let me dig my hole deeper: I demand this evidence. God, if you exist, the ball’s in your court, pal. Your move.

How could I have any other stance? You are making what is about the most remarkable claim possible. I’m open minded. I’ll consider your claim. But don’t expect me to accept it because it’s a nice worldview or because I’d like it to be true. If I stand in judgment, I’ll be able to say that I used his gift of a human brain to its fullest. I didn’t check my brain at the door.

Etc., etc.

I’m sure I could think of many more, but these are sufficient for starters. All of a sudden it’s not quite as simple as atheists typically make it out to be, is it? Y’all just ain’t used to the scrutiny that you constantly send our way.

I’m happy to clarify my position, but let me encourage you to avoid asking questions just to avoid being put on the defensive. You’re the one making the remarkable claim, so you have the fundamental burden of proof.

I can’t avoid asking questions because I am a socratic.

A bit of feedback: the typical teacher/student structure of a Socratic dialogue is obnoxious to the “student.”

I will always go right to the premises of my dialogue opponents, to better understand what they believe and why. Without that, constructive dialogue is impossible. It’s not true that Christians have all the burden of proof. You have just as much, because you make extraordinary claims, just as we do (just of a different nature).

Gotta disagree with you there.

You have come here and made certain claims which are contrary to my Catholic beliefs, and so (as an apologist and socratic debater) I have challenged you with regard to them.

You don’t get away with merely stating things here. You don’t get to [try to] simply poke holes in all the Christian beliefs, as if it is a one-way thing. You’ll be challenged every time to back up what you are saying: your beliefs and epistemology as well. And it’s not always fun. It’s work and toil, too, because I’m a very experienced debater on these topics. I’ve been doing it these past 37 years.

If I can’t ask questions, or my opponents start refusing to answer relevant and necessary ones, then there will be no dialogue with me.

?? The problem is when you want to be the one asking the questions, the one on the offensive.

I only engage in authentic dialogue. I’ve answered your questions carefully, and at far greater length than you are offering me. You need to do the same for a good, constructive dialogue to occur. This one is way above average, and I appreciate that and commend you.

Likewise, this conversation is more constructive than the ones I have with the vast majority of Christian commenters on my blog.

And you haven’t descended to personal insults at all (bravo!). But it could be much better than it is if we got into the great depth that these topics deserve.

In the meantime, I don’t recall if you have said whether or not you used to be a Christian. If so, what denomination? And if so, do you have a posted deconversion story?

I was raised Presbyterian. Basically, it dictated what you did Sunday morning, and that was about it. It never had much of a hold on me, so my deconversion story was untraumatic. When I went to college, I wasn’t made to go to church anymore, so I didn’t. I probably would’ve checked the “Christian” box in a survey form for a couple of decades later, but I never really thought about it. Then about 20 years ago, a fundamentalist, YEC relative got into it with me on evolution. From there, we got into the God question. And once I started thinking, I couldn’t stop. In other words, I’m an atheist thanks to my fundamentalist relative (not what he intended, I’m sure).

Funny story: when I told my wife about my new conversation with that relative about evolution, she immediately said, “It’s a waste of time. You’ll never convince him.” What? His responses were all softballs. They were easy to hit out of the park! Seeing how shallow his arguments were, I was sure that with a little time, he’d change his tune.

Nope. She was right. I think there’s a lesson in that for me somewhere. Maybe more than one.

So, if you have studied Christianity as an atheist, has it only been through reading skeptical / atheist materials, or have you read the Christian side, too?

Reading the Christian side too, obviously. How much can you learn by reading only one side?

One ongoing issue, though, is finding more than just the fundamentalist side. They seem to be the noisiest–WLC, Frank Turek, Greg Koukl, J. Warner Wallace, etc. To a lesser extent, CS Lewis, Plantinga, and others. Suggestions welcome.

I find the deeply philosophical to be the least accessible and least interesting (on both sides of the issue)–if it’s a boring slog for me, what would I have to share with my readers?

Glad to hear that you are reading our side, too. Good for you.

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Photo credit: image by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images [The Blue Diamond Gallery]

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What REALLY Moves and Persuades Atheists

May 8, 2018 By Dave Armstrong

An atheist wrote on my blog: “I left the Catholic faith in stages. . . . [many atheist reasons given] Sell me on coming back to Mass, Dave. Give me the best you’ve got.”

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I don’t think someone like you can be persuaded with rational arguments. You have accepted all these ideas that I think rest on false premises and have built up an edifice which you think demonstrates that Catholicism is false. That can’t be deconstructed in a short time, and certainly not by arguments.

I could try to dismantle them one-by-one, but you wouldn’t likely be convinced. And if I knocked ’em all down (even in your eyes), you’d just find some other ones. That’s what skeptics and atheists do. I know; I’ve been interacting with them as a Christian apologist for now 36 years.

What you need is a miracle right in front of your face. There are plenty of documentations of miracles, such as the cures at Lourdes, but atheists always find some way to (inadequately) dismiss them.

Or you need a profound act of love that could warm up your frozen heart: like someone saving your life or leaving all their money to you: something that would start you wondering why they did this thing. It’s very difficult for me to do that as a writer, through the screen. But I can say that I care about you and your soul, just as I do about all people.

I want you and everyone to be as happy and fulfilled and joyful and at peace as I am with this Christianity that I have found (Catholicism in particular).

Atheist and friend Jon Curry stated: “I’m starting to think that argumentation barely plays a role in persuading people. Maybe a little.”

That’s what I’ve thought for about 34 years. Welcome aboard!

The first atheist also asked: “Have you ramped up your engagement with skeptical bloggers because perhaps you are wondering about your own faith commitment?”

Not at all. I’m as confident as ever, and each story I look at it confirms yet again and all the more that atheism doesn’t have a leg to stand on and that my beliefs are indeed true ones.

Why I did it at this time is quite simple. I follow my “muse” at any given time. I write about hundreds of topics within theology and apologetics. I just came back from a 24-day trip to Alaska, considered what I’d like to start writing about again, and thought first of analyzing “deconversion stories” (which I had already done in the past: John Loftus being one of my main critiques).

It could have been any number of topics, but that one came into my head, and so I followed the muse. It’s one of my secrets of self-motivation and of being so prolific in my writing.

I usually deal with atheists in cycles, anyway. I tire of it after a while, do something else, and then feel like it again after so many months or years.

Generally speaking, I think now is a time for Christians to do more apologetics about atheism and to have more dialogues with atheists, because your movement is growing, and the result, I believe, will be more miserable people, who (if they think about it fully and with complete consistency) will ultimately be in despair at a meaningless world and universe. So it’s a motive of love again. I don’t want to see anyone get to that place when there is so much more to life and existence.

If I’m all wrong in the end, then so be it. At least I did what I thought would help other people, and not what would hurt them. The motive was love, not malice. If all I have left when I die (if there is no afterlife or God) is a legacy to my children and those who knew me, of service and compassion for others, I’ll take that any day.

In either case, it’s worth doing. If there is a God and heaven, I have helped a few souls to believe in Him and to get there. If not, my motives have been pure (albeit misguided and based on falsehood, if that turns out to be the case). It’s certainly not the profit motive that leads me on!

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(originally 7-21-17)

Photo credit: photograph of badge created c. 1987, from 24 November 2011 [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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Hell: Dialogue with a Philosophy Graduate Student

May 7, 2018 By Dave Armstrong

The following is a response to a person who is sincerely seeking to understand Catholic teaching on hell. He is “currently completing a PhD on the philosophy of Aristotle”: so one can see that it is quite a challenge to me to answer his inquiring objections. His words will be in blue.

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I believe good, honest, sincere questions deserve a good answer, so I will offer mine, and hope that it is an aid to you as you work through the issue and come to a decision about Catholicism one way or the other.

I took about eight courses in philosophy in college and have always loved it. I delve into some philosophical theology now and then in the course of doing apologetics, and love to apply the socratic method in my own debates.

[There] are certain basic Catholic doctrines which I find it impossible to reconcile with the dictates of my conscience. I am hoping that somebody on this forum will be able to help me to find clarity regarding some of the issues troubling me.

I hope so too. I admire your evidently sincere search for truth in these matters. You show yourself a true philosopher, in the best meaning of the word.

I want to make it very clear that my expression of disagreement with certain Catholic positions, as I understand them, is not intended to be polemical. I am deeply struggling with the question of conversion. What I am looking for is clarification, which will hopefully make it possible to reconcile my conscience with the Church’s teachings, thus removing the obstacles to conversion.

That’s what the apologist tries to do: the very heart of our endeavor: to remove obstacles and roadblocks that hold people back, in good faith.

I know that on some issues my own convictions differ from the teachings of the Church. What I am hoping for is a statement of the Church’s position on the issues I mention, but a statement which responds to the concerns I have, in a way which helps me to see why I am wrong ( if that is the case) and why the official Catholic position is not subject to the problems I mention.

I’ll do my best. I suspect that, given your education, some of what you seek will probably have to come from fellow philosophers who are Catholic (or otherwise Christians if it involves doctrines that are agreed), but I think I can offer you something to ponder. Just take from my replies whatever you think is useful to you.

My first and foremost problem is with the doctrine of Hell. I realise that this is not exclusive to Catholicism, but I am interested in the Catholic perspective on this. I have tried since I first grappled with the idea at 17, to find some way of reconciling this doctrine with my understanding of God and morality and I have been unable to. I have spoken with many Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox, and nothing they have said has made the doctrine acceptable to me. I consider this to be a question of fundamental importance in so far as a conception of hell implies a certain understanding of God. I cannot relate to this doctrine purely intellectually. It offends me at some fundamental level, since it seems to me to be a calumny against God. So you might be wondering what exactly my problem with hell is, and what kind of conceptions I reject.

I definitely would, in order to answer properly. Objections to hell generally fall into relatively few general categories. But there are lots of particular variations. To give a solid answer, I would need to know with great specificity what your objections are. That may very require a few back-and-forths. If it becomes inappropriate here at a certain point, I’d be more than happy to continue such a discussion on my blog.

Let me try to give you a brief statement of my views.

Good!

Firstly, I am not talking simply about the conception of hell which sees its punishments as essentially retributive. The view that God actively punishes the damned is to me so morally abhorrent, indeed blasphemous, that I have never been able to even consider it as a real possibility.

Well, it seems that you have a very strong emotional reaction to your conception of the Christian doctrine of hell. I think, oftentimes, we project onto God thoughts of our own, as if hell reduces to some kind of petty revenge on God’s part or His desire to exercise a sort of sadistic power to torture people who disagree with Him. I don’t think any of this is true. I wrote in one of my debates with an agnostic:

Those who go to hell do so in their own free will, by their own free choice, having rejected the God Whose existence and nature is “clearly seen” by all (Romans 1). For the life of me, I don’t understand why this should be so objectionable: God allows free creatures to reject Him and even spend eternity without Him if they so desire. Would you rather have Him force you to go to heaven rather than give you the freedom to freely choose heaven or hell as your ultimate destination? In any event, the existence of hell is no proof whatsoever that God is evil. It proves (almost more than anything else) that men are free.

In my main defense of the Christian doctrine of hell, I stated:

The essence of hell is separation from God. God in effect says: “so you want to live apart from Me? You think that is a preferable state of affairs to living with Me? Very well, then, go ahead; see how you like it.” Of course, God would have a great deal more love and compassion than that (I’m applying human emotions to Him — a sort of anthropomorphism in reverse), but this is the basic idea. The Bible talks about God giving men up to their own devices and the hardening of their hearts (the same sort of notion).

C. S. Lewis stated that “the doors of hell are locked from the inside.” God respects human free will so much that He is willing to let men reject Him and spend eternity away from Him, if that is their choice. Of course, those who choose this don’t have the faintest idea of what an existence utterly without God is like, because they have not yet experienced it. This is the tragic folly of the whole thing.

The instant they do experience it, they’ll know what a terrible mistake they made, and in my speculative opinion that will be the primary horror of hell: the intense, irreversible self-loathing, self-hatred, and regret at having made such a stupid and perfectly avoidable mistake as to end up in an unspeakably dreadful, hideous place or state like hell. We know from this life how difficult it is to live with bitter regret: the mulling over the “if only’s” of life and our bittersweet journey through it.

Imagine doing that for eternity! And, of course, this is one big reason why Christians want to proclaim the gospel, so people can avoid that miserable fate, and can live eternally the way God intended them to live, without suffering and sin: complete, whole, perfect creatures, rejoicing in God’s wonderful presence forever.

If this is indeed the official doctrine of the Catholic Church then any possibility of my finding my home there is ruled out. I hope, and my conversations with a number of intelligent Catholics has given me reason to hope, that this is not in fact the case, and that enlightened theological opinion rejects this view. In my conversations and reading I have come across the view, supposedly quite influential, that the punishments of hell are not inflicted by God, so much as a necessary result of the post-mortem state of the soul of someone who has cut himself off from God. This seems to me far superior to the former view.

I think this may be another way of expressing what Lewis meant by saying that the doors of hell are locked on the inside. It’s not that God forces people to follow Him, but that they don’t want to follow Him, because of, often, misconceptions about what it means to follow God as a disciple.

But even here I find grave problems. Essentially I cannot accept the view that hell, even on this conception, is eternal, that once in hell it is impossible to leave it, and that the soul is, after death, fixed in its orientation and unable to make spiritual progress.

Why would this be inconceivable to you? There is a temporal and a timeless existence. Once we die we enter into a timeless eternity, which cannot be other than what it is. Therefore, once we grant that there are moral distinctions to be made in this life, between good and evil, and we grant that there is a good God, it seems rather straightforward that the concept of divine justice would make it absolutely necessary for there to be a rather definite and compelling cosmic justice and weighing of the facts of what a person has done and believed in this life.

The necessity of judgment is apparent from the human analogy of laws and judges. When we do bad things, there are consequences. And often, they are irreversible. If we murder a person, they are gone from the earth forever. The act had a consequence that to us, from the earthly, temporal perspective, is final. If we get drunk and ride a motorcycle and crash and have to lose an arm or leg or suffer brain damage, those things are irreversible. The dumb behavior had definite consequences. A price had to be paid. This is simply reality. By analogy, if (as I would strongly contend) the dumbest thing a person can do is reject and disbelieve in God, or in His goodness and mercy, then we would expect that there would be some extremely severe consequences to this in the long run.

Since souls are eternal by nature, that consequence is an unending place or state that is separate from God, that we have no remote conception of now: how horrible it is. And to end in hell is entirely our fault, not God’s. So why would anyone in effect “try God” for the existence of hell, since no one ever had to go there in the first place? It’s like blaming a judge who gives the sentence, for the existence of a penitentiary. Does that make any sense? Yet this is essentially what you have done by finding hell objectionable and somehow a thing that casts aspersions upon God’s character.

God the Father has provided a way for any man to be saved who desires to. He has made the way of salvation available through the death of His Son Jesus, Who is in fact God, and the second Person of the Holy Trinity. Catholicism isn’t Calvinism, inasmuch as it doesn’t teach that God predestines people to hell. I think that view (double predestination) does indeed lay God open to the charge of cruelty and arbitrariness and injustice. But that is their argument: let them defend it. It’s not our burden.

Catholicism and Arminian Protestantism and Orthodoxy (which constitute the vast majority of Christians now and at all times throughout Christian history) reject this. And that may constitute part of your objection. When it is seen that people choose hell of their own free will and that God allows them to go there if they insist, that takes the “blame” off of God, in my opinion. There is a strong sense in which it is absurd to even blame God for it, just as men habitually blame God for every evil: including ones that are the fault of man altogether (things like the Holocaust or unjust laws or wars).

Even on the more moderate view that the punishments of hell are a consequence of alienation from God, not of God’s active punishment, it makes no sense to me that they could be eternal.

But you have to step back and ask yourself several things that you have assumed as premises before you even get to this point: “on what basis do I find an eternal state apart from God nonsensical or implausible or impossible?” Your presuppositions entail a necessary examination of anthropology: i.e., from the theological perspective: what is man? Of what does he consist? Does he have a soul; what is that, and is it temporal or dies it have no end? Is there such a thing as sin? If so, how does God judge it and what are its consequences? Is there such a thing as original sin or the Fall, sufficiently serious enough in its rebelliousness and wrongdoing to require in the nature of things justice and punishment from the God against whom we have rebelled? Is this corporate, and involving the whole human race (as the Bible clearly teaches)?

On what possible basis can one conclude that an eternal existence apart from God, of creatures who have expressly rejected this God, is an a priori impossible or unjust or implausible state of affairs? To me it’s rather simple: we are creatures who will exist from this point into the future. We will never have an end to our existence. We’re like a ray in geometry: with a beginning but no end. We can be with God in eternity after we die or without Him. The choice is ours. No one has to go to hell if they will simply believe in God and follow Him, enabled by His grace to do so. These things are essentially matters of faith, part of revelation. But they are also able to be defended by many analogies to human experience and felt internal conceptions of morality and justice.

If they were, any purpose or value that they might have would be totally removed. It would simply be purposeless suffering without end.

I reject your premises and fail to see why a timeless state apart from God (hell) reduces to a situation where, thereby, no “purpose” or “value” is present. The purpose is a combination of “cosmic justice” and the determination of God to permit human free will even where it entails a rejection of Him and eternal misery. Human beings are given an adequate chance to avoid all that. The choice is theirs. But to say that timelessness in and of itself wipes out all purpose makes no sense. One has to first establish that there is no such thing as atemporality. Even the laws of physics after Einstein make that rather difficult to do. Therefore, if there is an existence outside of time or beyond time or in other dimensions, then those who have chosen certain paths will be present in this state either happily or unhappily, just as they live on this state in basically one condition or the other, in the deepest depths of their heart and soul.

To me a God Who would countenance the existence of such suffering would be not much better than one who actively punished sinners. When I have brought these thoughts up with Catholic friends, they have usually responded by saying that hell is a necessary consequence of free will, and that God respects human choice even if this is the choice of eternal separation from God.

Okay; let’s play along with that, then. We can pursue several alternative choices:

1) God chooses to annihilate people rather than their being eternal creatures (i.e., relatively from the time of their origination, not absolutely, like God, Who has no beginning or end).

2) God chooses to annihilate the ones who aren’t worthy of salvation (this is the Jehovah’s Witness and Christadelphian belief).

3) God chooses to not judge anyone at all. The evil as well as the good all end up the same. There is no “cosmic justice.”

4) God saves everyone.

5) God predestines all to hell no matter what they do or believe. (the flip side of #3).

Now, let’s examine each, and see if they make more sense than an eternal hellfire (and heaven).

Reply to Option 1: Here one argues from the existence of things that cannot be otherwise. We can comprehend many such things. The laws of non-contradiction and of geometry or mathematics are two such things. Can we really imagine any possible universe in which one can exist and not exist at the same time, or in which a square is a circle or a line is a triangle? No. Can we imagine a universe with no spatial characteristics at all, even one in which there was no matter? We can easily comprehend a possible universe that is entirely non-material or pure spirit, with no matter, but we can’t comprehend either a completely dimensionless universe or a state of affairs where nothing whatever existed, even space.

Therefore, by the analogy of things such as the above that cannot be otherwise, we reason, based in part on the revelation about the existence of both eternity and souls, that souls, too, are included in the class of things that cannot be otherwise: that they are what they are (in terms of duration) by nature. They are unending, just as a ray in geometry is unending. They simply keep going indefinitely, analogous to rays of light that will travel throughout the universe without end. We may not understand it, but is it inconceivable? No, not at all. I see nothing implausible or unreasonable at all in the notion. And if we accept this and also some law of justice that applies to all sentient beings with moral responsibility, then we arrive at the Christian notion of heaven and hell as final destination places or conditions.

Reply to Option 2: This is certainly possible, but it is contrary to biblical revelation, and it has the characteristic of “metaphysical asymmetry.” If saved souls live forever, then it would seem to follow that damned souls would also, not that they would be annihilated, because in both cases, human souls are involved, and souls have the characteristic of either being temporary or endless. So it would seem to make a lot more sense that either all souls are annihilated or none (in order to have one consistent definition of a soul), but not one class only.

Reply to Option 3: This would make the world a meaningless place, where there is no consequence to good or evil actions. That is far more horrible than the state of affairs in which good, saved people are eternally happy, and bad, damned ones eternally miserable. Instead, we can commit any evil whatever and not expect any undesirable consequences for our actions. That would make “god” worse than the worst person imaginable. He would become evil Himself, as well as a weakling and the furthest thing from omnipotent.

Reply to Option 4: This is also logically possible, but the problem is that it makes mincemeat of human free will and it makes moral behavior meaningless. And of course it is utterly contrary to biblical revelation, if a person believes in that by faith.

Reply to Option 5: Variation of #3 and subject to the same replies.

We conclude, then, that the Christian scenario of heaven and hell makes (philosophically) far more sense (considered apart from revelation) than any of the alternatives.

Really, the issue for me has less to do with human choice and more to do with God.

But then you are discounting that we all make the choice to follow God or not. This contradicts your own introductory statements, that presuppose that you are making religious choices of your own free will (“I began my own path of questioning and eventually found my way back to Christianity, . . . I am currently struggling with the question of conversion to Catholicism”); indeed, this entire discussion would be meaningless if you have no free will to make such choices.

Even if we could choose hell,

What makes you think that we couldn’t or wouldn’t do so in the first place? This is the thing to ponder. Do you deny that there is such a thing as an atheist?

the more pertinent question is how could God countenance the existence of creatures condemned to eternal suffering.

Because God values free will more than a bunch of mindless, will-less, soulless robots that “love” Him. He wants us to enjoy the freedom of choice to do the good or the bad that He Himself possesses. God always chooses good. He can’t make us creatures that way without denying free will, but at least He can give us the freedom to do good and to believe truth.

That being the case, there must necessarily be a class of those who will exercise this free will wrongly and stupidly. How could it be otherwise?

What kind of God could countenance something like that?

The true God doesn’t countenance anything bad. I am contending that what you see as a “bad” thing is either misunderstood by you as to its actual nature, or isn’t the case, period. Not all suffering and bad choices of creatures can be blamed on God. If there is free will, then there is also moral responsibility of the ones who possess it. And that simply can’t be blamed on God. It’s a bum rap.

It does not seem enough to me to say that God would suffer knowing that there were souls in hell.

God has compassion on all souls. He can’t be otherwise. It’s because God is love.

I cannot see how God could refrain from actively working to lead those souls out of darkness, however long it took.

They have an entire lifetime, and (many believe) a chance right after death, too. The thing to ask here is why you have this notion that God must work eternally to redeem souls? He is under no such obligation. He only has to give every person an adequate chance to believe in Him or reject Him, and we believe as Christians, based on revelation, that He more than amply does that in this lifetime.

You are presupposing that what God does to redeem a stray soul is never enough, but then we’re back to blaming God again for the rebel, rather than placing the blame with the rebel, which is where it belongs. This makes no sense. We always want to blame God for everything. It’s a sort of “cosmic blame-shifting.” We never want to blame evil, rebellious man for anything. He’s always a poor, pitiful victim, and it’s always God, God, God Who is supposedly at fault for not having done enough. I would urge you to stop and consider (granting a good God’s existence) the gross unfairness of that endeavor and “spirit.”

To say that God respects a human beings choice of eternal suffering is to limit God’s love, His compassion, His wisdom.

How? I don’t see that this follows at all. God, in effect, is saying:

1) You will live forever.

2) You can choose to believe in Me.

3) Or you can choose to reject Me, because I have given you the dignity of having the free will to do so and to make intelligent choices.

4) Both choices have eternal consequences because your soul is eternal (#1).

5) If you believe in Me, you will have a wonderful existence in heaven with Me for eternity. You’ll have all your aspirations and dreams and deepest impulses and desires and longings completely fulfilled, beyond your wildest imaginings. You were created to serve Me, which is why you are happy and joyful and at peace only when you do that.

6) If you reject Me, you will suffer terribly. I love you and am trying to save you from that fate, and am giving you all the information from My revelation, and internal intuitions and knowledge, and the witness of other human beings and changed lives and miracles, and my enabling grace, to avoid this, But I will not deny your free will.

That’s the choice given, according to biblical revelation. Yet you want to say that such a state of affairs is unloving on God’s part? How? I swear that I don’t comprehend it. Do we blame a parent when he or she does absolutely everything that they should to adequately train and provide for a child, yet the child goes astray in the exercise of his or her free will? We all know people like this. Is it their fault (at least in terms of primary responsibility) or the child’s?

How is it at all unwise, either? God could either give us a free will or create us as robots Who followed His commands just like robots do ours. Would you rather be a robot? This very conversation would be meaningless. Once free will is granted, then it makes entire sense to speak of good and bad eternal destinations. Souls are eternal by nature, so the afterlife is eternal (or, I should say, timeless and unending) as well.

It is to say that evil can triumph against God, that God can be faced with an evil which He cannot overcome by means of what is most truly His, namely love, gentleness, compassion.

That’s correct. That is the nature of free will. How can God force a free agent to love Him? Then it would no longer be free will. He can’t do that, just as He can’t annihilate Himself or make a square circle. These are logical impossibilities, not limitations on His omnipotence, which means, “ability to do all that is logically possible to do.” This is the proper response for the problem of evil as well.

For who is to say that God will never find a way to lead a soul out of darkness without infringing on human freedom?

He can give a human being every way out of darkness but they have to follow, just as the horse has to drink the water after being led to it, and we can’t force it to do so.

So the argument that hell is a necessary consequence of free will seems to me to be unconvincing.

For the life of me, I don’t understand why. I never have. Perhaps you can explain to me why you find it to be so, so I can comprehend the objection.

There is no reason why God could not forgive sinners again and again and again, even after death, until they learn and are reconciled to him.

To the contrary, there is no reason why He should be required to exercise mercy indefinitely and not have a cut-off point. If indeed, all men have a more than adequate chance in this life to repent and follow God, then there is no reason whatever why God should have to extend this mercy indefinitely after death. He is under no “moral obligation” to extend mercy at all, let alone indefinitely.

Take the analogy to our legal system again. The judge says that a person can be paroled, given a few (not at all impossible) conditions. This is legal “mercy.” But the prisoner fails to abide by these, and so he doesn’t gain parole. Now, in your thinking, the one to blame for this is the parole officer or judge, because He didn’t exercise enough mercy and should have forgiven the prisoner an infinite amount of times for all his violations. In my thinking, the prisoner is at fault and the judge, not in the slightest, because he was exercising clemency and mercy and the prisoner in his stupidity failed to do the few things he had to do in order to receive this gracious gift.

This would in no way infringe on free will.

It certainly would because it renders free will itself ridiculous, insofar as any acts done with this free will have absolutely no consequences and errant or evil acts must be forgiven an infinite number of times. That makes mincemeat of the very notion of justice and morality as well, along with free will.

The idea that a human being could be rebellious to the bitter end may be possible in an abstract sense, but it seems to me thoroughly unrealistic.

We see it all the time. How is it unrealistic? We see many examples of evil people who never reform, even when given chances to do so. And that is because evil has the capacity to completely corrupt a soul. Your problem is that you are (as presupposed by your argument, if not consciously) soft-pedaling man’s evil and rebellion. It’s very common, because it is natural man’s natural response to being told that he is an evil rebel. We always raise ourselves higher than we are. We don’t see as God sees.

Assuming that God did provide for the possibility of purification after death, it is highly implausible to suggest that human sinfulness could win out in the end.

How so? The existence of any moral evil at all in the world, shows that evil men can “prevail” over God, because God allows evil to exist: because of free will.

One Catholic priest I spoke with stated that a Catholic is obliged to believe in Hell only as a logical possibility, necessarily arising from free-will.

He is wrong. Hell is a dogma of the Church and clearly taught in the Bible.

On this priest’s view, the Church has never definitively stated that any particular person is in hell.

That’s correct, but it doesn’t follow logically that there is no hell. There certainly is, according to the teaching of Jesus (Who talked about it even more than He did about heaven) and other teachings in the Bible.

More strongly still, this priest stated that strictly speaking a Catholic is not expected to believe that there is anyone in hell. In other words, while rejecting the very possibility of hell is heretical, it is acceptable to believe that hell is empty. Is this an accurate account of Catholic doctrine?

No. We can hope that any individual person will be saved in the end, but the Bible is clear that many people will be damned, and the place of the damned soul is hell. This is what we teach.

Let me say outright that I have no problem with the idea that we have to take responsibility for our actions and that sometimes the only way to correct error and to move forward is through suffering.

Then I think that some of my replies should carry some force with you, because they expand upon your own principles.

My own deeply considered belief is that after death, the soul, freed from some of the deep seated egocentrism of earthly life, and by the grace of God, will be able to see its earthly life with a clarity and comprehensiveness which was impossible earlier. We will see all our failings, all of the hurt we have caused others, the unknown consequences of our actions, and we will have to take responsibility for them, feel genuine contrition, and certainly, in all likelihood, suffer terrible pangs of conscience.

The Church has not ruled out a possible salvation right after death. We simply don’t know much about it, from revelation alone. But there is no concept of a “long” time after death or souls going from hell to heaven, etc. Those in purgatory are saved. it is inevitable that they will be in heaven in due course. That’s entirely different from the reprobate in hell.

I imagine also, that a soul excessively attached, one might say addicted, to earthly life, pleasure and so on, would also suffer “withdrawal symptoms” of a sort, as it accustomed itself to a new form of existence. In the case of somebody deeply mired in evil, I suppose those pains would be both terrible and prolonged.

That’s exactly why we Catholics believe in purgatory. It makes perfect sense. But as I just stated, those souls are saved already, not in the process of being saved. We are saved by Jesus Christ and God’s grace, not our works.

So, basically, the only conception of hell that makes sense to me is closer to the Catholic conception of Purgatory, as I understand it.

Good. But you have to allow for hell as well, for those who continue to reject God.

In other words, a period of post-mortem purification, whose duration and intensity depends on the individual. It is not retributive. If it is painful, the pains are not a punishment but the result of a conscience enlightened by God. Unlike the usual conception of hell, which seems to be based on the assumption that no spiritual progress is possible after death ( at least for the damned), my view would be that everybody can make progress, repent and be redeemed and that purification, however long and painful, must have an end.

On what basis do you believe such a thing? You actually want to deny that a person can achieve a state of being irreformably evil and opposed to God? Why would you think that?

I am certain that my views are incompatible with Catholic doctrine in so far as I am familiar with it.

You are correct.

I hope and pray that somebody will be able to clarify the Catholic position on this question in a way which will allow me to reconcile myself with the Church’s teachings.

I’ve given it my best shot (for an “introductory” reply, anyway). I eagerly look forward to further interaction. Perhaps I can persuade you! But it goes far beyond mere persuasion. It requires grace and faith to believe in all the things of the Catholic faith. If you are truly open to God, and willing to follow Him wherever He leads, He will give you this enabling grace to believe these things. And you will see (if you are persuaded) that they don’t cast doubt on God’s goodness or power or justice at all.

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(originally 12-26-08)

Photo credit: Demon (Horror Fantasy), by Maxwell Hamilton (3-3-14) [Flickr / CC BY 2.0 license]

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Mary Was a Virgin During Jesus’ Birth (“In Partu”)

April 18, 2018 By Dave Armstrong

[for the necessary background, see my paper, Mary’s Perpetual Virginity “In Partu” (a Miraculous, Non-Natural Childbirth) is a Binding Catholic Dogma. The comments below were my related thoughts in a vigorous Facebook thread]

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1. An intact hymen was how virginity was historically defined; not as simply the absence of intercourse.

2. An intact hymen means that birth was miraculous. The whole point is to preserve the utterly miraculous nature of the virgin birth: in conception and in the process of birth.

My job is to present all of Catholic dogma as it is: not to make more “difficult” ones palatable to the zeitgeist of the times.

Catholic Encyclopedia: “Virginity” explains the term as classically understood in the Church:

Morally, virginity signifies the reverence for bodily integrity which is suggested by a virtuous motive. Thus understood, it is common to both sexes, and may exist in a women even after bodily violation committed upon her against her will. Physically, it implies a bodily integrity, visible evidence of which exists only in women. The Catholic Faith teaches us that God miraculously preserved this bodily integrity, in the Blessed Virgin Mary, even during and after her childbirth (see Paul IV, “Cum quorundam”, 7 August, 1555).

This is what the Church means when she says that Mary was a virgin at conception, during the birth of Jesus, and after; as reflected in Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) #510:

Mary “remained a virgin in conceiving her Son, a virgin in giving birth to him, a virgin in carrying him, a virgin in nursing him at her breast, always a virgin” (St. Augustine, Serm. 186, 1: PL 38, 999): with her whole being she is “the handmaid of the Lord” (Lk 1:38).

In other words, Jesus was conceived without the sexual activity of a man or Mary. He was born in a miraculous way, and Mary never had sex after He was born (thus defeating all the nonsense about his having siblings, and preserving the absolutely miraculous mature of His conception and birth). This was universal patristic teaching.

Likewise, Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J., in his Modern Catholic Dictionary:

VIRGINITY OF MARY. The revealed dogma that the Mother of Jesus conceived without carnal intercourse, gave birth to Christ without injury to her virginity, and remained a virgin all her life. The Church’s faith in Mary’s virginal conception of Christ is expressed in all the creeds. Mary’s virginal conception was already foretold in the Old Testament by Isaiah in the famous Emmanuel prophecy: “Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and his name shall be called Emmanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). Mary’s virginity includes virginity of mind, i.e., constant virginal disposition of soul; virginity of the senses, i.e., freedom from inordinate motions of sexual desire; and virginity of body, or physical integrity. The Church’s doctrine refers primarily to her bodily integrity.

The Blessed Virgin Mary’s intact hymen is settled dogma, which is determined by understanding how “virginity” was defined; as seen in the citation of Fr. Hardon above. See:

CCC 499 The deepening of faith in the virginal motherhood led the Church to confess Mary’s real and perpetual virginity even in the act of giving birth to the Son of God made man. In fact, Christ’s birth “did not diminish his mother’s virginal integrity but sanctified it.” And so the liturgy of the Church celebrates Mary as Aeiparthenos, the “Ever-virgin”.

St. Thomas Aquinas wrote:

Article 2. Whether Christ’s Mother was a virgin in His birth?

Objection 1. It would seem that Christ’s Mother was not a virgin in His Birth. For Ambrose says on Luke 2:23: “He who sanctified a strange womb, for the birth of a prophet, He it is who opened His Mother’s womb, that He might go forth unspotted.” But opening of the womb excludes virginity. Therefore Christ’s Mother was not a virgin in His Birth.

Objection 2. Further, nothing should have taken place in the mystery of Christ, which would make His body to seem unreal. Now it seems to pertain not to a true but to an unreal body, to be able to go through a closed passage; since two bodies cannot be in one place at the same time. It was therefore unfitting that Christ’s body should come forth from His Mother’s closed womb: and consequently that she should remain a virgin in giving birth to Him.

Objection 3. Further, as Gregory says in the Homily for the octave of Easter [xxvi in Evang., that by entering after His Resurrection where the disciples were gathered, the doors being shut, our Lord “showed that His body was the same in nature but differed in glory”: so that it seems that to go through a closed passage pertains to a glorified body. But Christ’s body was not glorified in its conception, but was passible, having “the likeness of sinful flesh,” as the Apostle says (Romans 8:3). Therefore He did not come forth through the closed womb of the Virgin.

On the contrary, In a sermon of the Council of Ephesus (P. III, Cap. ix) it is said: “After giving birth, nature knows not a virgin: but grace enhances her fruitfulness, and effects her motherhood, while in no way does it injure her virginity.” Therefore Christ’s Mother was a virgin also in giving birth to Him.

I answer that, Without any doubt whatever we must assert that the Mother of Christ was a virgin even in His Birth: for the prophet says not only: “Behold a virgin shall conceive,” but adds: “and shall bear a son.” This indeed was befitting for three reasons. First, because this was in keeping with a property of Him whose Birth is in question, for He is the Word of God. For the word is not only conceived in the mind without corruption, but also proceeds from the mind without corruption. Wherefore in order to show that body to be the body of the very Word of God, it was fitting that it should be born of a virgin incorrupt. Whence in the sermon of the Council of Ephesus (quoted above) we read: “Whosoever brings forth mere flesh, ceases to be a virgin. But since she gave birth to the Word made flesh, God safeguarded her virginity so as to manifest His Word, by which Word He thus manifested Himself: for neither does our word, when brought forth, corrupt the mind; nor does God, the substantial Word, deigning to be born, destroy virginity.”

Secondly, this is fitting as regards the effect of Christ’s Incarnation: since He came for this purpose, that He might take away our corruption. Wherefore it is unfitting that in His Birth He should corrupt His Mother’s virginity. Thus Augustine says in a sermon on the Nativity of Our Lord: “It was not right that He who came to heal corruption, should by His advent violate integrity.”

Thirdly, it was fitting that He Who commanded us to honor our father and mother should not in His Birth lessen the honor due to His Mother.

Reply to Objection 1. Ambrose says this in expounding the evangelist’s quotation from the Law: “Every male opening the womb shall be called holy to the Lord.” This, says Bede, “is said in regard to the wonted manner of birth; not that we are to believe that our Lord in coming forth violated the abode of her sacred womb, which His entrance therein had hallowed.” Wherefore the opening here spoken of does not imply the unlocking of the enclosure of virginal purity; but the mere coming forth of the infant from the maternal womb.

Reply to Objection 2. Christ wished so to show the reality of His body, as to manifest His Godhead at the same time. For this reason He mingled wondrous with lowly things. Wherefore, to show that His body was real, He was born of a woman. But in order to manifest His Godhead, He was born of a virgin, for “such a Birth befits a God,” as Ambrose says in the Christmas hymn.

Reply to Objection 3. Some have held that Christ, in His Birth, assumed the gift of “subtlety,” when He came forth from the closed womb of a virgin; and that He assumed the gift of “agility” when with dry feet He walked on the sea. But this is not consistent with what has been decided above (Article 14). For these gifts of a glorified body result from an overflow of the soul’s glory on to the body, as we shall explain further on, in treating of glorified bodies (XP, 82): and it has been said above (13, 3, ad 1; 16, 1, ad 2) that before His Passion Christ “allowed His flesh to do and to suffer what was proper to it” (Damascene, De Fide Orth. iii): nor was there such an overflow of glory from His soul on to His body.

We must therefore say that all these things took place miraculously by Divine power. Whence Augustine says (Sup. Joan. Tract. 121): “To the substance of a body in which was the Godhead closed doors were no obstacle. For truly He had power to enter in by doors not open, in Whose Birth His Mother’s virginity remained inviolate.” And Dionysius says in an epistle (Ad Caium iv) that “Christ excelled man in doing that which is proper to man: this is shown in His supernatural conception, of a virgin, and in the unstable waters bearing the weight of earthly feet.”

In a General Audience of Jan 28, 1987, Pope St. John Paul II cited the above text from the Lateran Council:

Mary was therefore a virgin before the birth of Jesus and she remained a virgin in giving birth and after the birth. This is the truth presented by the New Testament texts, and which was expressed both by the Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 553, which speaks of Mary as ‘ever virgin’, and also by the Lateran Council in 649, which teaches that ‘the mother of God…Mary…conceived [her Son] through the power of the Holy Spirit without human intervention, and in giving birth to him, her virginity remained incorrupted, and even after the birth her virginity remained intact.

On June 10, 1992, during a talk in Capua, Italy, he further stated:

It is a well-known fact that some of the Church Fathers set us a significant parallel between the begetting of Christ ex intacta virgine [from the inviolate Virgin] and his resurrection ex intacto sepulcro [from the sealed tomb]. In the parallelism relative to the begetting of Christ, some of the Fathers put the emphasis on the virginal conception, others on the virgin birth, others on the subsequent perpetual virginity of the Mother, but they all testify to the conviction that between the two saving events – the generation–birth of Christ and his resurrection from the dead – there exists an intrinsic connection which corresponds to a precise plan of God: a connection which the Church led by the Spirit, has discovered, not created.

. . . . [I]t is necessary for the theologian, in presenting the Church’s doctrine on Mary’s virginity to maintain the indispensable balance between stating the fact and elucidating its meaning. Both are integral parts of the mystery: the meaning, or symbolic value of the event is based on the reality of the fact, and the latter, in turn, reveals all its richness only if its symbolic meanings are unfolded.

See much more excellent materials along these lines. Fr. William Most also defends Mary’s virginity in partu against liberal dissident notions. Eastern patristic evidence is abundant, as well:

Mary’s virginity was hidden from the prince of this world; so was her childbearing, and so was the death of the Lord. All these three trumpet-tongued secrets were brought to pass in the deep silence of God. (St. Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Ephesians, 19; c. 107 AD)

Who loves you is amazed and who would understand is silent and confused, because he cannot probe the Mother who gave birth in her virginity. If it is too great to be clarified with words the disputants ought not on that account cross swords with your Son. (St. Ephraim the Syrian, Songs of Praise, 1, 2)

Believe in the Son of God, the Word before all the ages, who was…in these last days, for your sake, made Son of Man, born of the Virgin Mary in an indescribable and stainless way,-for there is no stain where God is and whence salvation comes… (St. Gregory of Nazianzen, Oration on Holy Baptism, 40:45; 381 AD)

Though coming in the form of man, yet not in every thing is He subject to the laws of man’s nature; for while His being born of a woman tells of human nature; virginity becoming capable of childbirth betokens something above man. Of Him then His mother’s burden was light, the birth immaculate, the delivery without pain, the nativity without defilement, neither beginning from wanton desire, nor brought to pass with sorrow. For as she who by her guilt engrafted death into our nature, was condemned to bring forth in trouble, it was meet that she who brought life into the world should accomplish her delivery with joy. (St Gregory of Nyssa, Homily on the Nativity 388 AD?)

O mystery! I see miracles, and I proclaim the Godhead: I perceive sufferings, and I do not deny the humanity. For Emmanuel opened the doors of nature as man, but as God did not break through the bars of virginity. (St. Proclus of Constantinople, Oratio 1, no. 10; PG 65:692A).

How can death claim as its prey this truly blessed one, who listened to God’s word in humility, and was filled with the Spirit, conceiving the Father’s gift through the archangel, bearing without concupiscence or the co-operation of man the Person of the Divine Word, who fills all things, bringing Him forth without the pains of childbirth, being wholly united to God?… It was fitting that the body of her, who preserved her virginity intact in childbirth, should be kept from corruption even after death. She who nursed her Creator as an infant at her breast, had a right to be in the divine tabernacles…. It was fitting that she who saw her Son die on the cross, and received in her heart the sword of pain which she had not felt in childbirth, should gaze upon Him seated next to the Father. (St. John Damascene, Second Homily on the Dormition of the Mother of God)

So far as He was born of woman, His birth was in accordance with the laws of parturition, while so far as He had no father, His birth was above the nature of generation: and in that it was at the usual time (for He was born on the completion of the ninth month when the tenth was just beginning), His birth was in accordance with the laws of parturition, while in that it was painless it was above the laws of generation. For, as pleasure did not precede it, pain did not follow it, according to the prophet who says, Before she travailed, she brought forth, and again, before her pain came she was delivered of a man-child (Isaiah 66:7). The Son of God incarnate, therefore, was born of her, not a divinely-inspired man but God incarnate…. But just as He who was conceived kept her who conceived still virgin, in like manner also He who was born preserved her virginity intact, only passing through her and keeping her closed (Ezekiel 44:2). (St. John Damascene, On the Orthodox Faith, IV, 14)

The author of one article on the topic (not credited), wrote: “The only early Church writers who rejected this belief were Tertullian, Jovinian and Helvidius, all of whom were heretics.”

One doesn’t have to specifically mention intact hymens if it is already understood (as I would contend) that this is the literal meaning of “virginity”. Rather, these utterances have to be understood in context. If the Blessed Virgin’s virginity or “integrity” etc. is intact during childbirth, then we have to ask what this means. What does it mean to be “a virgin during childbirth”? It obviously has nothing to do with having intercourse or not. Those statements are referring to physical virginity; understood throughout Church history as an intact hymen.

No one has yet explained to me what in the world it means to say “a virgin during childbirth” if it is not the notion of in partu virginity, as explained. If it’s not that, it must mean something else. So what else is there that it could mean?

If we were merely talking about the absence of sexual activity, it would make no sense to note that Mary was a virgin “during” childbirth. That would be understood as following from the virgin birth (or I should say, virginal conception), without having to mention it.

It was noted precisely because it is another aspect of the miracle of the incarnation: a miraculous birth as well as miraculous conception.

I have a few more quotes from my book, Quotable Eastern Church Fathers. Some may overlap what I gave above:

Seek not the sequence of nature, he says, when that which takes place is above nature; look not round for marriage and throes of child-birth, when the manner of the birth is too grand for marriage. (St. John Chrysostom, Homily Against Publishing the Errors of the Brethren, and Uttering Imprecations upon Enemies, 7; NPNF1-9)

But in Thy Resurrection Thou persuadest them concerning Thy Birth; since the womb was sealed, and the sepulchre closed up; being alike pure in the womb, and living in the sepulchre. The womb and the sepulchre being sealed were witnesses unto Thee. . . . she conceived Thee not by nature after Thou wast come, O Holy One, and was a Virgin when she had brought Thee forth holily. (St. Ephraim, Hymns on the Nativity: VIII; NPNF2-13)

. . . this blessed woman, who was deemed worthy of gifts that are supernatural, suffered those pains, which she escaped at the birth, in the hour of the passion, . . . (St. John Damascene, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, IV, 14; NPNF2-9)

Being God He becomes man, and is marvellously brought forth without detriment to the virginity of His Mother. . . . Is it not thee, conceiving without man and still remaining a virgin? Let the inspired Ezechiel come forth and show us the closed gate, sealed by the Lord, and not yielding, according to his prophecy–let him point to its fulfilment in thee. The Lord of all came to thee, and taking flesh did not open the door of thy virginity. The seal remains intact. (St. John Damascene, Sermon I on the Assumption)

But she is ever a virgin, before the event, in the birth itself, and afterwards. . . . She brought Him forth without pain, . . . who preserved her virginity unsullied in her motherhood, . . . (St. John Damascene, Sermon II on the Assumption)

We shouldn’t excommunicate people who don’t grasp what in partu means, or that it is a Catholic dogma; we should educate them. Unfortunately, there is some erroneous teaching on this score floating around, even from Catholic Answers (thus, there is more excuse for folks to be confused or wrong). Other apologists, like Mark Shea, realized they were mistaken and publicly changed their view.

I’ve had my own growth in this area. I would have argued otherwise, 20 years ago or even more recently. But I learned more stuff and changed my mind as to Church teachings on it. I yield to the wisdom and teachings of Holy Mother Church.

Anything that has anything whatever to do with sex, must be questioned these days. So early on in the discussion [not included above] we heard the common “Church is anti-sex” / docetism / gnosticism themes crop up. Lots of folks think the Church holds to the entire doctrine of perpetual virginity (and consecrated celibacy), let alone in partu virginity, primarily for these reasons: missing the entire point: that it is always Christocentric in purpose and essence: just as in all other Marian doctrines.

People will believe what they believe. My job is to try to explain, as best I can, the Church’s teaching and why it is held. Mostly I’ve cited others who know far more than I do about it. But I think I may have offered a few helpful tidbits to the discussion here and there.

An afternoon listening to Debussy orchestral transcriptions and discussing in partu . . . what a life I lead! Yesterday and the day before I wrote about how the Via Dolorosa is likely in the wrong place. I’m sure that could make me very unpopular in some circles as well. Being an apologist is like being an umpire. We’re always displeasing someone . . .

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(originally 9-19-14; slight modifications and additions on 4-18-18)

Photo credit: The Adoration of the Shepherds (c. 1650), by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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Conversion to Catholicism: Reflections on its Complexity

April 4, 2018 By Dave Armstrong

Rationales for conversions might be consistent and even quite respectable, but (now I speak as a Catholic partisan) can be attacked on the presuppositional level. This is why I write so often about sola Scriptura and the Church and the crucial role of tradition. Every Christian must grapple with those issues one way or another.

If the roles were reversed and I was analyzing a Catholic conversion to Protestantism, I could surely grant that a person sincerely believed that sola Scriptura were true over against the three-legged stool of Bible, Church, tradition, or that he could not accept Catholic Mariology, for whatever reason, or the papacy, or insisted on adult, believer’s baptism only, for what he felt were compelling biblical reasons. Etc., etc.

I can disagree without denying that the person sincerely thought through the issues. I can acknowledge that the person is consciously basing his decision on his biblical or historical reasoning and making his choice in good conscience, based on what he knows. I don’t have to doubt his self-report, or question his reasoning abilities.

I don’t have to make out that it must always or almost always be the case that he is merely going on emotion and a disgust at Catholic nominalism or lousy homilies, or mechanical-appearing worship in individuals, or biblical illiteracy, or catechetical ignorance, or Bingo or swearing or excessive drinking, or sexual laxity, or any number of faults that we have in our circles, just as every Christian group has.

It is about granting some respect and dignity to a very serious thing: a conversion. I don’t deny that there are also many who convert for much less serious reasons (including the famous “convert to get married” scenario). I am opposing the degree to which many Protestants say these kinds of factors cause conversion to Catholicism.

A big part of my objection to many Protestant explanations of conversions to Catholicism, is my intense dislike for single causal explanations of almost anything. I find that intuitively false: almost from common sense. This is one valuable thing I received from my studies in sociology and psychology.

Reality is always more complex than one simple explanation. Conversion is all the more so. It’s an extraordinarily complex and painful process and simply can’t be explained as primarily or solely due to being sick and tired of in-fighting, in almost all cases.

We are human beings in communities, with experiences, emotions, stories, influences, psychological, personal, familial, temperamental, and many other factors all having an effect on both our beliefs and actions.

Conversion stories provide a sort of moral support or what I have called a “plausibility structure” for the belief-system that was thus adopted. This gets back to the notion: “human beings don’t live in a rational, logically airtight vacuum”. Conversion stories provide indirect rationales for viewpoints because of the nature of the process itself and those who undertake it.

The people reading them see folks working through issues and ultimately adopting a position (in this instance, Catholicism). The stories in their detail show that the reasons were not frivolous or insubstantial; they have merit. They are usually mentioned in passing or simply identified, rather than elaborated upon at length (especially in oral presentations).

Plausibility is a fascinating subject in its own right. Why do people find one thing persuasive and another not? What factors into that? Why do two people see the same set of data and one feels one way and the other the total opposite? Conversion stories to Catholicism mainly make Catholicism a more plausible, even (in hard cases) “thinkable” option.

There are a host of factors leading to conversion. There are mystical and intuitive reasons, there is the moral argument (which has even been developed by philosophers in great detail, but need not be philosophical in a given individual), there is experiential and miraculous evidence (philosopher William Alston has developed this line in great depth), there are pragmatic and psychological and relevant emotional and highly personal considerations.

One might, for example, read of accounts of miracles at Lourdes and Fatima, or about the Incorruptibles, or people being raised from the dead or healed in extraordinary ways, about the bi-location of saints like Padre Pio, or exorcisms, etc. They may witness some miracle themselves or be so moved by an act of love by some Catholic that this convinces them that Catholicism is the True Way.

This is eyewitness, legal-type testimony similar to that found in the Bible accounts of miracles. One may read of these and become convinced that Catholicism is true. Certainly the early Church thought miracles were highly important in their testimony and evangelization. They highlighted the Resurrection, and Jesus Himself came back to let Thomas put his hand in His wounds, etc.

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(originally 9-7-05)

Photo credit: Larisa Koshkina [PublicDomainPictures.Net / CC0 Public Domain license]

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The Nature of the Church: Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue

April 3, 2018 By Dave Armstrong

Pastor Ben Maton (Lutheran – Missouri Synod [“LCMS”] ) serves at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. His words will be in blue.

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Dear Dave (and the rest of cyberbia reading this stuff) —

The Lord be with you! And thank-you for your patience in waiting for our reply. Larry [another Lutheran pastor who was participating in the dialogue] is very busy and I am just lazy!

We ended our first essay “If we have written clearly…” We did not – at least not as clearly as we could and should have. You are right to pick up on a seeming contradiction in our response. However, it is a seeming contradiction in our response only and stems from our attempt to cut-and-paste two individual essays into one. Rather than exegete our own essay and try to explain how Larry and I managed to say seemingly contradictory things, let me instead enter into dialogue regarding the more important writings of Luther and the Lutheran confessions regarding the nature of the church and to what extent the RCC reflects it.

You use Luther’s Wider Hans Wurst to highlight what you see as a contradiction in Luther. You argue Luther wants to have it both ways: Rome is not true church but is true church. A closer contextual reading of the treatise will make clear what Luther is saying, namely: insofar as human traditions are taught in the RCC as the commands of God for the meriting of eternal rewards thereby robbing glory from Christ and comfort from burdened consciences left to doubt the grace of God, the RCC is not the true church but a false one. Yet, insofar as things like Holy Baptism and the Holy Scriptures are maintained in the RCC, God in his mercy, continues to use her to create and sustain Christians. As it is the Roman hierarchy insisting on the salvific efficacy of these human traditions, it is that hierarchy that comes in for the most criticism.

I think this is good in some ways and bad in others. The good part is that Luther and Lutherans do not view the Catholic Church as totally apostate, in the way that standard anti-Catholicism today (often emanating from Reformed and Baptist circles) does. On the other hand, there some misunderstanding as to what Catholics truly believe. And so we see the notion that Catholics can be saved despite all these teachings about “meriting of eternal rewards thereby robbing glory from Christ” and “burdened consciences left to doubt the grace of God.”

This is not what our soteriology entails. Accurate mutual understanding of each others’ soteriology is absolutely crucial. Our theology of salvation is scarcely any different from St. Augustine’s, since he firmly believed in merit, too. We don’t differ at all from his own conception (in fact, he is cited in the Catholic Catechism on this point: #2005-2006, 2009):

The Lord made Himself a debtor not by receiving something, but by promising something. One does not say to Him “Pay for what You received,” but, “Pay what You promised.” (Commentary on Psalms 83:16)

You are glorified in the assembly of your Holy Ones, for in crowning their merits you are crowning your own gifts. (En. in Ps. 102:7; cf. Ep. 194, 5, 19)

Grace has gone before us; now we are given what is due . . . Our merits are God’s gifts. (Sermo 298: 4-5)

Someone says to me: “Since we are acted upon, it is not we who act.” I answer, “No, you both act and are acted upon; and if you are acted upon by the good, you act properly. For the spirit of God who moves you, by so moving, is your Helper. The very term helper makes it clear that you yourself are doing something.” (Sermons 156, 11)

Wherefore, even eternal life itself, which is surely the reward of good works, the apostle calls the gift of God . . . We are to understand, then, that man’s good deserts are themselves the gift of God, so that when these obtain the recompense of eternal life, it is simply grace given for grace. (Enchiridion of Faith, Hope, and Love, chapter 107; NPNF 1, Vol. III)

Thus, the deeper question becomes: “does the very idea of merit intrinsically detract from the glory and grace of God?” St. Augustine and Catholics say “no.” Lutherans say “yes.” Yet Lutherans (like Calvinists) claim to be following St. Augustine’s theology of grace. This is the disconnect that I keep emphasizing: between distinctive Lutheran theology and previous medieval and patristic theology; particularly that of St. Augustine. It’s a contradiction for Lutherans to continue to claim to be legatees of Augustine’s theology, while at the same time disagreeing and repudiating Catholic theology, when (as in this instance) it simply agrees with Augustine’s.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church makes it quite clear that merit in Catholic theology is not opposed to either God’s grace or glory at all. Nor is this merely “human tradition”; we maintain (rightly or wrongly, but we do claim this) that it is biblical, apostolic, and patristic tradition. Nor is “the Roman hierarchy insisting on the salvific efficacy of these human traditions” — because we deny that they are merely human traditions (meaning “corruptions” of biblical theology) and we deny that we place faith in them rather than in Christ and His grace. Hence, we observe how the Catechism explains merit:

2005 Since it belongs to the supernatural order, grace escapes our experience and cannot be known except by faith. We cannot therefore rely on our feelings or our works to conclude that we are justified and saved. However, according to the Lord’s words “Thus you will know them by their fruits”- reflection on God’s blessings in our life and in the lives of the saints offers us a guarantee that grace is at work in us and spurs us on to an ever greater faith and an attitude of trustful poverty.

A pleasing illustration of this attitude is found in the reply of St. Joan of Arc to a question posed as a trap by her ecclesiastical judges: “Asked if she knew that she was in God’s grace, she replied: ‘If I am not, may it please God to put me in it; if I am, may it please God to keep me there.'”

2007 With regard to God, there is no strict right to any merit on the part of man. Between God and us there is an immeasurable inequality, for we have received everything from him, our Creator.

2008 The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace. The fatherly action of God is first on his own initiative, and then follows man’s free acting through his collaboration, so that the merit of good works is to be attributed in the first place to the grace of God, then to the faithful. Man’s merit, moreover, itself is due to God, for his good actions proceed in Christ, from the predispositions and assistance given by the Holy Spirit.

2009 Filial adoption, in making us partakers by grace in the divine nature, can bestow true merit on us as a result of God’s gratuitous justice. This is our right by grace, the full right of love, making us “co-heirs” with Christ and worthy of obtaining “the promised inheritance of eternal life.”⁶⁰ The merits of our good works are gifts of the divine goodness.⁶¹ “Grace has gone before us; now we are given what is due. . . . Our merits are God’s gifts.”⁶²

2010 Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification, at the beginning of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit and by charity, we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification, for the increase of grace and charity, and for the attainment of eternal life. Even temporal goods like health and friendship can be merited in accordance with God’s wisdom. These graces and goods are the object of Christian prayer. Prayer attends to the grace we need for meritorious actions.

2011 The charity of Christ is the source in us of all our merits before God. Grace, by uniting us to Christ in active love, ensures the supernatural quality of our acts and consequently their merit before God and before men. The saints have always had a lively awareness that their merits were pure grace.

After earth’s exile, I hope to go and enjoy you in the fatherland, but I do not want to lay up merits for heaven. I want to work for your love alone. . . . In the evening of this life, I shall appear before you with empty hands, for I do not ask you, Lord, to count my works. All our justice is blemished in your eyes. I wish, then, to be clothed in your own justice and to receive from your love the eternal possession of yourself.^{63 [St. Therese of Lisieux, in Story of a Soul]}

2025 We can have merit in God’s sight only because of God’s free plan to associate man with the work of his grace. Merit is to be ascribed in the first place to the grace of God, and secondly to man’s collaboration. Man’s merit is due to God.

2026 The grace of the Holy Spirit can confer true merit on us, by virtue of our adoptive filiation, and in accordance with God’s gratuitous justice. Charity is the principal source of merit in us before God.

2027 No one can merit the initial grace which is at the origin of conversion. Moved by the Holy Spirit, we can merit for ourselves and for others all the graces needed to attain eternal life, as well as necessary temporal goods.

I think that if Lutherans properly understood exactly what Catholics mean by “merit”, that this would be much less a point of contention, if at all, since all we are teaching is what St. Augustine and (so we contend) St. Paul taught (Rom 2:5-13 [esp. 2:6]; 1 Cor 3:8-9, 15:10,58; 2 Cor 6:1; Gal 5:6; Eph 2:8-10, 6:8; Phil 2:12-13; Col 3:23-25; 1 Tim 6:18-19; 2 Tim 4:7-8). The Council of Trent asserted the same doctrine shortly after Luther (Decree on Justification, Chapter XVI and Canons I-IV on Justification). Martin Luther himself expressed something not all that different, in his statements on the importance and necessity of good works.

The very passage you quote to highlight a seeming contradiction, in fact, makes this argument clear. Unfortunately, in your citation, you elide Luther’s most crucial words:

We acknowledge not only that you have, with us, come from the true church and been washed and made clean in baptism through the blood of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, as St. Peter says here, but also that you are in the church and remain in it. Indeed, we say that you sit and rule in it as St. Paul prophesied in II Thessalonians 2 [:3–4], that the accursed Antichrist would sit (not in the cowshed), but in the temple of God. But you are no longer of the church, or members of the church, for in this holy church of God you are building your own new apostate church, the devil’s brothel with limitless whoredom, idolatry, and innovation, by which you corrupt those who have been baptized and redeemed along with yourselves. (LW 41, 209-210)

As far as I can see, this reaffirms my initial impression that Luther contradicts himself. For what does Luther say later on the same page about how much truth and how many true believers remain in the Catholic Church?:

But it is God, who by his wonderful almighty power in the midst of so much abomination among you and the whoredom of the devil, nevertheless still sustains the young children through baptism, and some old people, but only a few, who at the end of their lives have turned once more to Christ [Dave: i.e., became Lutherans?], of whom I myself have known many. So it is that the true ancient church with its baptism and the work of God still remains with you, and your god, the devil, has not been able to obliterate it entirely with all this new idolatry and all your devilish whoredom. (LW 41, 210)

The “idolatry,” and so forth, is, of course, in Luther’s eyes, the sacrifice of the mass. But St. Augustine (along with many many Church fathers) strongly held to the sacrifice of the mass. All faithful Catholics participate in this rite every week at church. So it isn’t just the popes and bishops who are guilty of this so-called “idolatry” and “devilish whoredom” but in fact, any faithful, committed Catholic whatsoever. But if Catholics forsake these Catholic, patristic, apostolic, biblical beliefs and become good Lutherans, while remaining inconsistently in the Catholic Church, then for Luther they will be “of the Church” (not just “in the Church”, as the pope, the “anti-Christ” is) and good Christians.

Luther expresses the same thought later on:

Therefore those who teach, baptize, or distribute the sacrament falsely cannot be or remain in the church, as Psalm 1 [:5] says. For they act not only against the life the church must endure—particularly when it is hidden—but also against the doctrine that must gleam and shine in public to be a guide for life. This has been taught from the beginning, as St. John says, “They went out from us, but they were not of us” [I John 2:19], and, “They are in the church but not of the church”; or, “In number but not in merit,” and the like. Accordingly, we draw this distinction: not all are Christians who pretend to be Christians. But when there is disagreement in doctrine, it becomes quite evident who the true Christians are, namely, those who have God’s word in purity and refinement. (218-219)

And the “true Christians” will be, of course, those who agree with Luther (and later, with the Lutheran confessions, that agreed for the most part with Luther). The question immediately becomes, of course: “why should agreement with Luther [or the Lutheran confessions] be the criterion of Christianhood, rather than agreement with the unbroken apostolic tradition of the Catholic Church?” And, “by what authority does Martin Luther [or the Lutheran confessions] become the new standard-bearer of orthodoxy and who and who is not a Christian?”

The Catholic approach to authority is self-consistent. non-circular, and in accord with the past history of Christianity: “God preserves one true Church down through the centuries, via apostolic succession and the supernatural guidance of the Holy Spirit. Hence, whoever agrees with this one Church (headed by the pope in Rome) is orthodox and a true Christian.” This is what the Church fathers, and the apostles, and the Bible taught, contra Luther and Protestantism. For example, St. Augustine:

[I]f you acknowledge the supreme authority of Scripture, you should recognise that authority which from the time of Christ Himself, through the ministry of His apostles, and through a regular succession of bishops in the seats of the apostles, has been preserved to our own day throughout the whole world, with a reputation known to all. (Reply to Faustus the Manichaean, 33:9; NPNF 1, Vol. IV, 345)

For in the Catholic Church, not to speak of the purest wisdom, to the knowledge of which a few spiritual men attain in this life, so as to know it, in the scantiest measure, deed, because they are but men, . . . – not to speak of this wisdom, which you do not believe to be in the Catholic Church, there are many other things which most justly keep me in her bosom. The consent of peoples and nations keeps me in the Church; so does her authority, inaugurated by miracles, nourished by hope, enlarged by love, established by age. The succession of priests keeps me, beginning from the very seat of the Apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after His resurrection, gave it in charge to feed His sheep, down to the present episcopate. And so, lastly, does the name itself of Catholic, which, not without reason, amid so many heresies, the Church has thus retained; so that, though all heretics wish to be called Catholics, yet when a stranger asks where the Catholic Church meets, no heretic will venture to point to his own chapel or house. (Against the Epistle of Manichaeus 4:5; NPNF 1, Vol. IV, 130)

For my part, I should not believe the gospel except moved by the authority of the Catholic Church. (Against the Epistle of Manichaeus 5, 6; NPNF 1, Vol. IV, 131)

God has placed this authority first of all in his Church. (Explanations of the Psalms, Tract 103:8, PL 37:520-521; in Congar, 392)

It is obvious; the faith allows it; the Catholic Church approves; it is true. (Sermon 117, 6)

To be sure, although on this matter, we cannot quote a clear example taken from the canonical Scriptures, at any rate, on this question, we are following the true thought of Scriptures when we observe what has appeared good to the universal Church which the authority of these same Scriptures recommends to you; thus, since Holy Scripture cannot be mistaken, anyone fearing to be misled by the obscurity of this question has only to consult on this same subject this very Church which the Holy Scriptures point out without ambiguity. (Against Cresconius I:33)

. . . the Roman Church, in which the supremacy of an apostolic chair has always flourished. (To Glorius et al, Epistle 43, 7; NPNF 1, Vol. I, 278)

And thus a man who is resting upon faith, hope, and love, and who keeps a firm hold upon these, does not need the Scriptures except for the purpose of instructing others. Accordingly, many live without copies of the Scriptures, even in solitude, on the strength of these three graces. (On Christian Doctrine, I, 39:43; NPNF 1, Vol. II, 534)

I believe that this practice [of not rebaptizing heretics and schismatics] comes from apostolic tradition, just as so many other practices not found in their writings nor in the councils of their successors, but which, because they are kept by the whole Church everywhere, are believed to have been commanded and handed down by the Apostles themselves. (On Baptism, 2, 7, 12; Jurgens, III, 66; cf. NPNF 1, IV, 430)

. . . the custom, which is opposed to Cyprian, may be supposed to have had its origin in apostolic tradition, just as there are many things which are observed by the whole Church, and therefore are fairly held to have been enjoined by the apostles, which yet are not mentioned in their writings. (On Baptism, 5, 23:31; NPNF 1, IV, 475)

Petrine, papal, Catholic, apostolic authority is also strongly rooted in the Bible, as I think I have shown in many papers.

The argument is simple: The RC opponents “are IN, but not OF the church.” Just as the kings and priests of Elijah’s day had all the churchly trappings IN the church, it was faithful Elijah and the 7000 who were truly OF the church. (210) As, of course, they must, RC’s take issue with the Reformers referring the papacy as the Anti-Christ, as Luther does here. However, that very claim has ecclesiological significance. Speaking with scripture, one of the chief marks of the Anti-Christ is that he takes his seat “not in the cowshed, but in the temple of God [that is, in the church].” Therefore, every mention of the papacy as the Anti-Christ is at the same time an assertion that the RCC is church. If it was not church, the pope could not be the Anti-Christ.

But the faithful Catholic is bound to accept papal and conciliar teaching. The pope teaches the sacrifice of the mass (one of the main targets of Luther’s charge of “idolatry”). And Catholics practice that every week, and (for many) even daily. So if the pope is a “bad guy” for teaching this supposed false doctrine, so is every Catholic who accepts this teaching and worships accordingly, and so is St. Augustine, etc. That makes us anti-Christ, too, doesn’t it?, or at least his pawns and dupes.

Recourse to the distinction between the visible and invisible church is not enough for you to “reconcile the extremity of Luther’s statements.” However, properly understood — in a Lutheran as opposed to a Reformed sense, that distinction is precisely the place to look to resolve your difficulty. For a Lutheran, the idea of the invisible church is nothing more than the ecclesiological correlate of the sola fide. In other words, we are not talking, as the Reformed often seem to, about two free floating churches with little interaction. The church is only invisible in the sense that faith is invisible – i.e., only the Shepherd can know which sheep are his and which are faking it. However, God creates and sustains that salvific faith through very visible means – namely through the proclamation of the Gospel and the administration of the Gospel sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion. Those visible “marks” or “means of grace” tell us where – and only where – Christians are to be found because only they make Christians. Even if those marks cannot tell us exactly in which individuals the Spirit has worked faith through them, they nonetheless tell us where God is making Christians according to his promise and where we ourselves should gather to be sustained in the faith. It should go without saying that the church cannot then be said to be co-extensive with any particular outward communion – Lutheran, RC, or otherwise. Instead, the church exists wherever God works through his means. Those outward/visible means in turn become the criteria by which true and false communions are judged.

With all due respect, I must contend that this is inconsistent, too, though, with Lutheran belief, and how Lutherans acted when their movement began. You (and Luther) say that the Catholic Church possessed the means to salvation: particularly baptism and the Scriptures. Transubstantiation is far closer to the Lutheran view of the Eucharist than both the Reformed belief and the pure symbolism of the Anabaptists and Baptists today.

Hence, Luther’s and Melanchthon’s opinion that Zwingli and the Sacramentarians were not part of the Church at all; they were damned, which had a lot, no doubt, to do with their consent to have them executed, largely based on their repudiation of infant baptism and supposed “seditious” characteristics. On the other hand, Luther did not reject a person from his party due to belief in transubstantiation:

Now, I have taught in the past and still teach that this controversy [over transubstantiation] is unnecessary, and that it is of no great consequence whether the bread remains or not. I maintain, however, with Wycliffe that the bread remains; on the other hand, I also maintain with the sophists that the body of Christ is present. (Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper, [written in 1528], LW 37: 296)

I have often asserted that I do not argue whether the wine remains wine or not. It is enough for me that Christ’s blood is present; let it be with the wine as God wills. Sooner than have mere wine with the fanatics, I would agree with the pope that there is only blood. (Ibid., 317)

He had expressed the same opinion in his famous tract, Babylonian Captivity of the Church, in 1520:

Therefore, I permit every man to hold either of these opinions [transubstantiation or substance of bread remaining with the Body of Christ also present], as he chooses. (LW 36:30)

The 1577 confessional Formula of Concord, unfortunately, didn’t see fit to enshrine Luther’s “metaphysical agnosticism” on the exact nature of eucharistic change, and stated:

[W]e unanimously reject and condemn . . . papistic transubstantiation . . . (Epitome, Article VII: “Lord’s Supper”; p. 484 in Theodore G. Tappert edition, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1959)

We . . . reject the papistic transubstantiation . . . (Ibid., Solid Declaration, Article VII: “Lord’s Supper”; p. 575)

[W]e reject and condemn with heart and mouth as false, erroneous, and deceiving every error which is inconsistent with or opposed and contrary to the aforementioned doctrine, based as it is on the Word of God:

First, papistic transubstantiation . . . (Ibid., Solid Declaration, Article VII: “Lord’s Supper”; p. 588)

Therefore, if the Catholic Church possessed all these true Christian elements, mixed in with the rotgut and idolatry (as Luther saw it), and if, as you say, “the church cannot then be said to be co-extensive with any particular outward communion – Lutheran, RC, or otherwise. Instead, the church exists wherever God works through his means” — why, then, did the early Lutherans justify the theft of hundreds of Catholic churches and monasteries, and go out and commit these deeds? This suggests to me that they had deemed them (the ones they plundered and stole) to be false churches through and through. Luther expressly justified such theft, saying that the “goods are no longer his”, referring to Catholic bishops (and I have documentation of that, but I won’t belabor readers with it at this juncture).

In my last response, I noted (citing Catholic historian Warren Carroll) that the Lutherans, who claimed to be attempting some sort of lasting reconciliation at the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, flatly refused to return these stolen properties:

Early in July the bishops presented their complaints to the Diet of the plundering and destruction of churches, seizure of monasteries and hospitals, prohibition of Masses, and attacks on religious processions by the Protestants. When Charles called upon the Protestants to restore the property they had seized, they said that to do so would be against their consciences. Charles responded crushingly: “The Word of God, the Gospel, and every law civil and canonical, forbid a man to appropriate to himself the property of another.” He said that as Emperor he had the duty of guarding the rights of all, especially those Catholics unwilling to accept Protestantism or go into exile, who should at least be allowed to remain in their homes and practice their ancestral faith, specifically the Mass; the Protestants replied that they would not tolerate the Mass . . .

How, then, can this attitude square with the present argument that “the church cannot then be said to be co-extensive with any particular outward communion – Lutheran, RC, or otherwise. Instead, the church exists wherever God works through his means”? Every time a church was stolen and plundered, it had been determined that God was no longer working there? There was(we’re supposed to believe) no longer any baptism, or Scripture reading, etc.? The Lutherans who were (quite conveniently) acquiring all this property for themselves had made a sober, reasoned judgment that this was the state of affairs in these individual churches?

This makes no sense. Either this behavior, sanctioned and encouraged by Luther himself, was (in this scenario, as with Luther’s own views) vastly contradictory to the Lutheran opinion of the historic Catholic Church headed by the pope in Rome, or the true opinion of Catholicism must have been otherwise, in order to justify the highly questionable and ethically dubious behavior.

The Lutherans had decided (at least on an individual parish level), that the Catholic Church possessed not enough “truth” for Catholics to be allowed to retain their property and right to worship as they pleased in Lutheran territories. This material in my previous response has all been passed over without comment. But I submit that it is quite relevant and crucial to understand what happened in the 16th century and why both sides believed and acted as they did. Ecclesiology ties into that.

As the foundational statements of the Augsburg Confession V and VII put it:

To obtain such faith God instituted the office of the ministry, that is, provided the Gospel and the sacraments. Through these, as through means, he gives the Holy Spirit, who works faith, when and where he pleases, in those who hear the Gospel…It is also taught among us that one holy Christian church will be and remain forever. This is the assembly of all believers among who the Gospel is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments are administered according to the Gospel.

An understanding of this sense of the church visible/invisible distinction allows one to see the consistency of Luther’s comments vis-à-vis Rome. Insofar as the faith creating means of grace are at work in the RCC, God is there creating and sustaining faith. Insofar as doctrines of men are added to the Gospel and so turning men away from Christ upon themselves, the devil is at work to destroy such faith.

Insofar as Catholicism is deemed a mixture of truth and falsehood, that isn’t much different from how we view any form of Protestantism. But we were not the new movement in the 16th century, that justified for itself theft and plunder of the Church that had established itself in an unbroken tradition of 1500 years, and the suppression of the Mass and — oftentimes — even the banishment of Catholics from Lutheran territories.

The Anabaptists and Zwinglians could be executed, according to Luther and Melanchthon (Luther rejoiced at news that Zwingli had been killed in battle, because he had long since concluded that he was “damned” anyway). Whatever relatively greater respect for Catholics was present, it didn’t prevent plunder and theft. Nor was there enough respect for the Christian elements remaining in Catholicism to avoid statements such as “in the papal realm the worship of Baal clings — namely, the abuse of the Mass” (Article XXIV: “The Mass,” in The Book of Concord).

If in Hanswurst Luther highlights those places in which the devil is at work in the papacy, he elsewhere praises the work God continues to do in her. Against those who wanted to throw out the baby with the holy water, Luther, while lamenting false accretions, wrote the following in thankful recognition of the work God continued to do even under the papacy:

…Christ himself came upon the errors of scribes and Pharisees among the Jewish people, but he did not on that account reject everything they had and thought (Matt. 23[:3]). We on our part confess that there is much that is Christian and good under the papacy; indeed everything that is Christian and good is to be found there and has come to us from this source. For instance we confess that in the papal church there are the true holy Scriptures, true baptism, the true sacrament of the altar, the true keys to the forgiveness of sins, the true office of the ministry, the true catechism in the form of the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and the articles of the creed … I contend that in the papacy there is true Christianity, even the right kind of Christianity and many great and devoted saints.

Listen to what St. Paul says to the Thessalonians [II Thess. 2:4]: “The Antichrist takes his seat in the temple of God.” If now the pope is (and I cannot believe otherwise) the veritable Antichrist, he will not sit or reign in the devil’s stall, but in the temple of God. No, he will not sit where there are only devils and unbelievers, or where no Christ or Christendom exist. For he is an Antichrist and must thus be among Christians. And since he is to sit and reign there it is necessary that there be Christians under him. God’s temple is not the description for a pile of stones, but for the holy Christendom (I Cor. 3[:17]), in which he is to reign. The Christendom that now is under the papacy is truly the body of Christ and a member of it. If it is his body, then it has the true spirit, gospel, faith, baptism, sacrament, keys, the office of the ministry, prayer, holy Scripture, and everything that pertains to Christendom. So we are all still under the papacy and therefrom have received our Christian treasures.

… We do not rave as do the rebellious spirits, so as to reject everything that is found in the papal church. For then we would east out even Christendom from the temple of God, and all that it contained of Christ. But when we oppose and reject the pope it is because he does not keep to these treasures of Christendom which he has inherited from the apostles. Instead he makes additions of the devil and does not use these treasures for the improvement of the temple. Rather he works toward its destruction, in setting his commandments and ordinances above the ordinance of Christ. But Christ preserves his Christendom even in the midst of such destruction, just as he rescued Lot at Sodom, as St. Peter recounts (I Pet. 2 [II Pet. 2:6]). In fact both remain, the Antichrist sits in the temple of God through the action of the devil, while the temple still is and remains the temple of God through the power of Christ … (LW 40, 231ff)

If we can see beyond the 16^th century polemical language, it should be clear by now what Luther then and Lutherans now claimed and claim about the nature of the church as it pertains to the RCC. It is really little different from what Rome has said more recently about ecclesial communions not in outward communion with her. In her view, though those separated brethren are deficient in some respects, because they retain the written word of God, baptism, etc., the Spirit of Christ continues to use them as means of salvation. That is precisely the Lutheran claim going the opposite direction. Tragically, but necessarily, Lutherans cannot be in outward communion with Rome because to do so would be to countenance error. Nonetheless, thank God the Spirit of Christ still uses her as means of salvation.

I don’t see how this can be squared with the behavior of Lutherans, in stealing Catholic churches, monasteries, even hospitals. What sense does it make?

***

(originally 11-19-07)

Photo credit: Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Lehre, Germany (Lower Saxon): originally constructed in the 13th century. Photograph by Kirchenfan (Summer 2010) [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication]

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Catholic Doctrine of Mary: Introductory Biblical Guide

March 28, 2018 By Dave Armstrong

[book and purchase information]

Mother of God

The ecumenical council of Ephesus in 431 declared Mary the Mother of God (Greek, Theotokos) in order to safeguard the divinity of Christ, which was being attacked by the Nestorians, a heretical group which had recently arisen. Since Christ was God in the flesh (Col 2:9; Jn 1:1,14), Mary is the Mother of God the Son. Both Luther and Calvin (along with all the major Protestant founders) agreed. But she is a creature, like us, and is not worshiped in Catholicism as a sort of goddess. She is venerated due to the unfathomable honor of having been chosen to bear and raise the incarnate God.

Mary’s Immaculate Conception

Catholics believe that God saved Mary in a special way, preventing her from sin, because of her extraordinary role and proximity to God the Son and Holy Spirit (Lk 1:35). An angel called Mary highly favored or full of grace in Luke 1:28. The Greek word, kecharitomene, means “completely, perfectly, enduringly endowed with grace.” On this and other grounds, Catholics hold that she was free of sin from conception and throughout her life. Even Luther agreed! The medieval theologians constructed an interesting word-picture to illustrate how Mary was just as saved as we are (Lk 1:47), yet in a different sense. Imagine a pit in a forest path, representing the quagmire of sin.

All of us are in that pit, wallowing in the mud. But God will pull us out of it and redeem us, provided we are willing. With Mary, God did something different. He never allowed her (unlike us) to fall into this pit. But in both cases, whether through prevention or rescue, it is equally true that it is God alone who saves. Mary is everything she is due to the unmerited, free grace of God, not because of some intrinsic superiority, regarded as originating separately from God.

Ark, Temple, Tabernacle, and Mary

The closer one is to God, the holier one must be (e.g., Ex 3:5; Deut 23:14). God’s presence imparts holiness (1 Cor 3:13-17; 1 Jn 3:3-9). The Jewish high priest entered the “Holy of holies” in the tabernacle or temple only once a year, under pain of death (Lev 16:2-4, 13). The ark of the covenant was so holy only a few could touch it (Num 4:15; 2 Sam 6:2-7). Scripture compares Mary to the ark (Lk 1:35 and Ex 40:34-8 / Lk 1:44 and 2 Sam 6:14-16 / Lk 1:43 and 2 Sam 6:9). If mere inanimate objects can be so “holy” due to proximity with God, how much more so Mary, who bore God? Protestants often have difficulty with this conception because of their faulty view of mere external, “legal” justification, which doesn’t necessarily lead to actual, objective holiness.

Mary’s Bodily Assumption

The Assumption is not an arbitrary presumption. It follows from Mary’s sinlessness. Since bodily decay results from sin (Ps 16:10; Gen 3:19), the absence of sin allows for instant bodily resurrection at death (i.e., the Assumption). Mary shared (in a secondary, derivative fashion) in her Son’s victory over sin, death, and the devil (Heb 2:14-15), as foretold in Genesis 3:15. She was the “firstfruits” of Christ’s work on our behalf, which will eventually put an end to death and result in all saints having glorious, incorruptible bodies.

It was proper and appropriate for Mary — since she was the mother of God the Son — to “prefigure” the redeemed world to come by means of both her Immaculate Conception and Assumption. Scripture provides examples of occurrences similar to the Assumption: Enoch (Gen 5:24; cf. Heb 11:5), Elijah (2 Ki 2:11), St. Paul (2 Cor 12:2, 4), the so-called “Rapture” (1 Thess 4:15-17), risen saints after Jesus’ crucifixion (Mt 27:52-3). It is illogical and unacceptably dogmatic to assert that an event couldn’t have happened because it was not recounted in Scripture. This would be as foolish as saying that Jesus couldn’t have done any miracles other than those we find in the Bible (see Jn 20:30; 21:25). If the Assumption is not that radically different from many other occurrences in Scripture, flows from the interrelated theological notions explicitly found there, and is supported by the testimony of early Christian tradition, it is neither “idolatrous” nor “unbiblical” to believe in it.

The Blessed Virgin Mary

All the Protestant Founders (Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, etc.) firmly believed in Mary’s perpetual virginity, but some Protestants since have claimed that Jesus had siblings. The Greek word for “brother,” adelphos, can and does mean many things in Scripture: nationality (Acts 3:17, 22), neighbor (Mt 7:3; 23:8), even all mankind (Mt 25:40). Several other biblical arguments exist also. No one sought to deny this tradition until the late 4th century, when one Helvidius unsuccessfully tangled with St. Jerome.

Mary Our Spiritual Mother and Intercessor

The idea of Mary as the Mother of believers is derived most directly from John 19:26-27, where Jesus tells St. John from the cross to “behold thy mother.” Mary is also Mother and symbol of the Church in Revelation 12:1, 5, 17. Catholics believe that they greatly benefit from Mary’s intercession because of her sinlessness (Jas 5:16). Since Mary is incomparably more alive and holy than we are, to ask for her prayers (Rev 5:8; 6:9-10) is good biblically based “spiritual sense.”

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(originally from 1995)

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Dialogue: Real Presence vs. [?] Holy Spirit’s Indwelling

March 9, 2018 By Dave Armstrong

Tim Roof is a friendly Reformed Protestant fellow (OPC) with whom I have enjoyed great, cordial dialogues. His words from his initial comments that I am responding to will be in blue; his counter-responses to arguments of mine will be in green.

* * * * *

The idea of Jesus going away to be seated at the right hand of the Father was so that the Holy Spirit would come and be the real presence of Christ with and in His people in the world.

John 16 explains this well:

“I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. 5 But now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ 6 But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. 7 Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. 8 And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; 10 concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; 11 concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

These verses are not parabolic. Christ’s going to the Father was to demonstrate to His people and to the world that the righteousness of Christ is accepted by the Father. This is a critical point.

I doubt that Catholics and Calvinists would disagree on the primary purpose of the Ascension itself. The problems come in the false, (I think) scripturally unwarranted conclusions that you have drawn from the Ascension and Jesus’ words in John 16.

The work of the Holy Spirit is for the purpose of taking the place of Christ in his physical absence from His Church.

This where your reasoning goes astray, in my opinion. You are employing an “either/or” mindset (extremely common in Protestant circles and seemingly a key plank of the Protestant worldview) in order to bypass other aspects of this, as seen in Holy Scripture itself. Jesus is here in spirit, too, just as the Holy Spirit is, and as the Father is. They are all present spiritually because they are one in essence.

I have no argument with your statement [the previous two sentences above], per se, but I do fear that a lack of clarity on my part has sent you off in a direction I did not intend for my reader to go.

Alright; then I am happy that you are willing to clarify for your readers and mine.

* * *

So what sense does it make to assert that the Holy Spirit “takes the place” of Jesus and to tie this in with His physical presence on earth as if the latter is now no longer possible or actual? A spiritual presence of the Holy Spirit in no sense “takes the place” of Jesus, let alone His eucharistic physical presence.

In fact, if we refer the question to the Bible alone, we find many indications that all three Persons of the Holy Trinity are present. This gets into the complicated aspect of trinitarian theology known as perichoresis or circumincession. Catholic theologian Ludwig Ott, in his Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, expresses it this way:

The Trinitarian Perichoresis (Circumincession)

The Three Divine Persons Are in One another. (De Fide.)

. . . Denzinger 704. Christ testifies that the Father is in Him and that He is in the Father. John 10,30: “I and the Father are one.” 10,38 . . . Cf. John 14,9 et seq.: 17,21. The Indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the Father and in the Son is indicated in 1 Cor 2, 10 et seq. . . . The fundamental basis of the Trinitarian Perichoresis is the one Essence of the Three Persons. Cf. S. th. I, 42, 5.” (p. 71)

The Spirit has been in the world from the beginning (in creation Genesis 1:2) and all throughout the Old Testament. We touched on this before in a previous discussion about Abimelech. However, it was not until after the ascension that His work within the individual would be most manifest within His people and to the world.

Agreed.

I think the way you phrase your statement is open to a wrong impression. I don’t think you mean to say that each of the divine persons of the Godhead has a spirit: the Father has “a spirit,” the Son has “a spirit,” and there is the Holy Spirit, which may or may not have “a spirit” of His own.

I wasn’t arguing that particular issue above; I was simply asserting that all three Persons of the Trinity are referred to as indwelling us. I suppose that would become a complicated discussion itself. But we do have the evidence of Luke 23:46: “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” Catholics refer to the “body, blood, soul, and divinity” of Jesus in the Eucharist. Here are some more relevant passages (RSV):

Matthew 27:50 And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.

Mark 2:8 And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question thus in your hearts?

John 13:21 When Jesus had thus spoken, he was troubled in spirit, and testified, “Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.”

These passages refer to a “spirit” that is distinct from the Holy Spirit, as in also the following:

Romans 8:16 it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God,

For clarity’s sake I think we should understand that the Holy Spirit is the “spirit of the Father” and the “spirit of the Son” of which is being spoken, the divine essence, as you have said, being one.

The passages I originally presented teach that, yes.

You would agree, I think, that we are not speaking of multiple spirits. But perhaps there is a Catholic doctrine about this that I am not aware.

I was dealing with God the Father, God the Holy Spirit and God the Son, Jesus, all indwelling us, according to plain biblical teaching. One has to get beyond an “either/or” outlook to the biblical “both/and” worldview. Perichoresis (Circumincession) is sufficient to explain this particular question, I think.

In any case, I would never argue that the Holy Spirit of Christ is not or could not be in believers and in the Eucharist at the same time. This is not my reasoning for arguing against the “real presence” as Catholics understand it.

I was only objecting to the fact of the Ascension being used to argue that therefore, Jesus can’t be with us physically anymore. That doesn’t follow.

I do not have a compelling reason to believe that Christ is physically present in the bread in an incarnational way. It seems clear to me that that phase of His redemptive plan has come to an end.

It’s not clear to me at all.

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One passage cited in isolation (John 16), interpreted in an “either/or” fashion, contrary to all of this additional related (and plain, explicit) biblical data, misses all this wealth of related information.

His work is to testify to Christ’s righteousness through conviction of sin and the regeneration and sanctification of sinners. Being incorporeal, He has no physical limitations such as our Lord, as a human being, had.

Jesus had no particular physical limitations after His Resurrection, since He was able to (so the text vaguely suggests) “float” through walls. So this is a non sequitur. Jesus had a glorified Body after the crucifixion and Resurrection that was capable of extraordinary things. Therefore, the artificial, ultimately Docetic-influenced antithesis of spirit and matter is not a factor in the sense which you claim.

Quite right. I was speaking of those limitations the Father placed upon Him (or He upon Himself) while he was ministering on earth before His resurrection. Also, I am not making a [Docetic] or gnostic statement about a dualism between matter and spirit. The Scriptures teach that at the final resurrection we who are in Christ will be given glorified bodies, just as Jesus had a glorified resurrected body. However, His glorified resurrected body is not suited for the indwelling of believers.

I was applying this aspect to Jesus being able to physically present Himself in the Eucharist; not physically in the indwelling. In context, we were speaking of the state of affairs, post-Resurrection, and my point was that Jesus had no particular limitations after He was resurrected (therefore, it is another reason to believe in the Real, Substantial Presence, beyond the fact of God’s [including Jesus’] omnipotence and omnipresence).

* * *

The idea of the “real presence” in the Eucharist conflicts with the clear biblical teaching that Christ by necessity for the sake of His children needed to be physically absent that His Spirit may carry on His work in this world.

This is flat-out false. It is an instance where you have brought in your prior assumption to the biblical text but have not demonstrated at all that it is present in the text itself. You’ve simply assumed it. That is circular logic. Let me show how and why it is, with some logical analysis:

Your argument:

1) Jesus ascends.

2) He has to do this (“by necessity”) in order for the Holy Spirit to come and indwell all believers.

3) This precludes any further physical presence of Jesus on earth.

#1 is agreed upon by all Christians. #2 is questionable and dubious insofar as you make it a question of necessity. The Bible doesn’t teach that. I would contend that it is an example of the samespi fallacy (“after this, therefore because of this”). I grant that it is not too far-fetched of a prima facie interpretation of the text, but the text doesn’t logically require this to be held.

Jesus says (Jn 16:7): “if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” But does it follow from this that He must have done so “by necessity”? No. That was the plan that God carried out: Jesus would die, resurrect, ascend, and then the Spirit would descend upon the new believers in the Upper Room. But it is not necessarily the case. The Holy Spirit had come upon individuals before that time. God could have decided to fill relatively more people with the Holy Spirit before Pentecost. He was under no necessity.

The whole verse clearly demonstrates the imperative nature of what Jesus is about to do:

7 Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you.

Granted the word necessary (or necessity) as I suggested is not present in the verse, but Jesus could not be clearer about it. It is for their good that Jesus is to go to the Father so that the Spirit can be sent to them. The word necessity is strongly implicit in the passage. He needs to go and the Spirit needs to come. Likewise implicit is the fact that if He doesn’t go, the Spirit will not come to them. The phrase “to your advantage” here doesn’t mean “it’s helpful, but you don’t really need it.”

We agree that God’s plan was for Jesus to ascend and the Holy Spirit descend upon all believers, starting at Pentecost. That is not in dispute; only finer points and conclusions that yo attempted to draw from that fact. My arguments here were three-fold:

1) Jesus and the Father also indwell us, so it is not an exclusive situation of “Jesus going away and the Spirit coming to us,” because all three are involved. Both/and . . .

2) There was no absolute necessity that Jesus had to go up to heaven in order for this to happen.

3) The Ascension does not in any way preclude a future eucharistic (physical, sacramental) presence of Jesus. The texts you cite do not entail this conclusion.

The suggested dichotomy between Jesus and the Holy Spirit with regard to “presence” has been shown to be an unbiblical teaching anyway. In the same Last Supper Discourse (John 14-17) Jesus referred to He Himself (and God the Father) being “in” us:

John 14:18 . . . I will come to you. (cf. 14:16-17)

John 14:20 . . . I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you.

John 14:23 . . . my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

John 15:4 Abide in me, and I in you. . . .

John 17:23 I in them, and thou in me, . . .

Therefore, this idea of “Jesus goes so that the Holy Spirit can come” is an incomplete truth, since the Father and the Son are described in the same way. The Bible must be interpreted as a whole.

#3 above is the most unfounded conclusion of all. How is it somehow impossible for Jesus to be physically present anymore, simply because there is now an indwelling? This doesn’t follow at all. John 6 itself shows that this is a false dichotomy, but I won’t get into that, as I have written about it many times. To claim that the indwelling precludes a physical Eucharist is purely illogical. How is this derived from the text you have presented?

I don’t see it there at all. How can it be argued that “there is a spiritual, non-physical indwelling; therefore it can’t be the case that God could also manifest Himself physically on earth, after the Ascension.” Where does such a notion derive? It isn’t coming from the Bible (if you disagree, please show me why, from Scripture: John 16 alone is nowhere near sufficient to do this), so it has to be from some man-made philosophy that smacks of an anti-incarnational antipathy to matter and sacraments.

I’ve re-read my original comments three times now and I cannot find where I made this statement. [referring to the second sentence of the paragraph above]

I was referring most specifically to your statement:

The idea of the “real presence” in the Eucharist conflicts with the clear biblical teaching that Christ by necessity for the sake of His children needed to be physically absent that His Spirit may carry on His work in this world.

I then paraphrased your thinking as:

How can it be argued that “there is a spiritual, non-physical indwelling; therefore it can’t be the case that God could also manifest Himself physically on earth, after the Ascension.”

Apparently, I made an unwarranted conclusion as to whether you were arguing that the Catholic belief on the Eucharist is impossible and necessarily false. But your argument (post-clarification) seems to at least come close to that thought. You’ve conceded that your “necessity” above was too strong, and I am acknowledging that this particular application of necessity regarding the Eucharist was too strong of a restatement of your views; that I misinterpreted that motif. These are the sorts of things that make a second round of any dialogue extremely important, and why I am such an enthusiastic proponent of back-and-forth dialogue.

Yes, Jesus is God and He can do anything. But I cannot find any compelling biblical reason to believe that it was His intention to reappear in physical form on the earth after His ascension. John 16 indicates quite the opposite, in fact.

I can only appeal back to the Last Supper eucharistic and Pauline discourses, and John 6. John 16 doesn’t overcome these at all; it needs to be incorporated harmoniously with the other relevant passages. John 16 has nothing to do with whether Jesus would be present in the Eucharist or not. It has to do with His ascending and the Spirit indwelling all believers. Why should one thing (the indwelling) exclude the other (the real, substantial presence in the Eucharist)? That is more either/or thinking that is not supported in the texts themselves. You make an argument from silence and commit logical fallacies in your use of John 16, while overlooking the (I think) compelling exegetical evidences of the eucharistic passages.

I did a very in-depth treatment of John 6 again in my new book, Bible Proofs for Catholic Truths, consisting of almost entirely cross-referencing alone, showing how it only makes sense if it is literal (i.e., in the latter part of the discourse). I will soon post that, since it has come up in this dialogue.

* * *

If there is no physical aspect to the Eucharist, then why does, for example, St. Paul make a direct analogy between pagan sacrifice and the Christian “table” or altar (1 Cor 10:16-21, as I recently wrote about). What sense does it make?

If we back up our context a bit to the beginning of the chapter, we see that Paul is plainly using analogies to speak of spiritual matters:

1 For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ (1 Corinthians 10:1-4, emphasis mine).

Why, then, must we see the bread as some kind of physical indwelling of the ascended (now again descended) Christ when Paul clearly is speaking of spiritual metaphors? He explicitly calls them “spiritual food” and “spiritual drink” from the “spiritual Rock.” We are not meant to understand these things literally for the word “spiritual” is right there in the text.

When Protestants see the word “spiritual” they so often irrationally pit it against matter and sacraments, as if they are antithetical notions. No! Jesus’ crucifixion was quite the physical event; Jesus’ blood was a physical thing; yet all of this was very “spiritual” as well. There is no dichotomy. It ain’t “either/or.” Yet you have seized upon the words “spiritual” in this fallacious sense. But of course there is also literalism and realism in the same passage; even in your own citation.

The Red Sea and the cloud were physical things, and Paul makes an analogy to baptism. St. Peter makes the same sort of analogy, and is even more explicit in his realism, leading to a plain teaching of baptismal regeneration:

1 Peter 3:18-21 For Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit; in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,

The Bible has to be interpreted as a harmonious whole. You pick out parts that you think support your case, but I submit that when context and cross-referencing is further pursued, your case collapses. This is the Protestant method of isolated proof-texting that is so objectionable, and that has wreaked havoc on exegesis. You try to spiritualize the entire passage and make it non-physical, yet the Apostle Paul is plain as day in verse 16:

The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?

How much more literal can one get? What more can one say to express literalism? Jesus says “This is My Body” and Protestants simply say “no it isn’t; it’s only a symbol, and this is obvious to one and all” (I used to do that myself). Paul says this but it isn’t sufficient for Protestants. Jesus is even more literalistic in John 6.

He carries this through in 16-21 with similar language meant to convey that Corinthian believers partaking in the Lord’s Supper must understand that they are partaking of Christ and His people. They have bound themselves to Him and to each other as one body. Likewise, those Corinthians who were taking part in the temple feasts were participating in idolatry: “the cup of the Lord / the cup of demons,” “the table of the Lord / the table of demons.” They also have bound themselves, not to Christ and his people, but to Satan and his minions.

And once again you ignore all the literalism strikingly present: references to sacrifice and the priest eating the offerings in the Old Covenant. Therefore, in the New Covenant Christians are to eat the sacrifice of the Lamb of God in the sense of the Holy Eucharist. The analogy is absolutely straightforward.

You have made a connection between the sacrifices of the pagans in Corinth with the Lord’s Supper. If you are saying here that the Eucharist is a new or ongoing sacrifice of Christ, then you are running afoul of several New Testament texts. Below are two of them:

27 He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. 28 For the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a Son who has been made perfect forever (Hebrews 7:27-28).

11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified (Hebrews 10:11-14).

Yes, we agree. The Sacrifice of the Mass (as we believe it to be, and this is Catholic dogma, I assure you and everyone) is not killing Jesus over and over; it is a miraculous making present of the one sacrifice of Calvary. It’s miraculous in a two-fold sense: Jesus is physically present, and the great redeeming event at Calvary is also present. This is how orthodox Jews view Passover, as a matter of fact (as I recently wrote about). The Christian Church took overt that understanding and developed it, so that past events could become present.

Two additional notes here:

First, notice that we are told clearly that He is at the right hand of God (waiting) until His enemies become His footstool. Now of course we don’t read this “waiting” in the sense that He is doing nothing. Quite the contrary as His Spirit testifies in the lives of the saints throughout history. But I think His physical presence, that is, His spiritual body at the right hand of the Father comports well with what we learn from John 16.

Then why is it in the book of Revelation (which is largely set in heaven), there are still descriptions of the Lamb and of an altar, if all that is past and done away with? I wrote in another paper:

Revelation . . . describes an altar in heaven before God’s throne. This is curious if Protestantism is correct about the need for altars being abolished with the death of Jesus and the end of the OT system of sacrifice and priests. In actuality, the Bible is a continuous whole from Genesis to Revelation, with no radical discontinuity between the OT and NT or Old and New Covenants, as Protestantism is wont to believe. In Revelation we find the “altar” or “golden altar” being mentioned in 6:9; 8:3-5; 9:13; 11:1; 14:18; and 16:7.

The climactic scene of this glorious portrayal of heaven occurs in Rev 5:1-10. Verse 6 describes the “Lamb as it had been slain.” The Lamb (Jesus) is “in the midst of the throne” (5:6) which is in front of the “golden altar” (8:3). Is this presentation of Jesus as “Lamb” to the Father a one-time event or an ongoing occurrence (from God’s perspective, timeless)? We have strong biblical indications that the latter is more accurate. The sacrifice made “once” in Heb 7:27 refers to the human, historical death on Calvary of Jesus. However, there is a transcendent aspect of the Sacrifice as well. Rev 13:8 describes “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,” and Heb 7:24-5 informs us that:

But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an un-changeable priesthood. (25) Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.

Secondly, those who are being sanctified have already been perfected in Him. That goes into different territory; we have enough on our plate now.

* * *

This idea is in effect saying that it is impossible for God to do something, when in fact it is entirely possible and not at all ruled out a priori.

It is patently obvious that the early Church accepted the Real, Substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist. There were very few dissenters from this doctrine in the entire period up to the “Reformation” when Zwingli adopted pure symbolism and Calvin a “mystical” presence which is not much different from Zwingli’s view, in my opinion, and (I think) much more incoherent. Why was this the case in the early Church if it is so supposedly obvious that the Eucharist was only symbolic (or in any event non-physical)? Why did the entire Church get it wrong until Zwingli and Calvin saw the light 15 centuries later?

That makes no sense to me at all, purely regarded as a matter of plausibility or probability, within the Christian realm of faith and guidance by the Holy Spirit that we are discussing in this very dialogue (the indwelling). It is far more reasonable (at least in my book) to accept the plain biblical indications of a literal Eucharist, in Jesus’ words and in Paul’s interpretation, and to agree that the early Church could not have gotten the doctrine flat-out wrong, with not a single prominent Church father dissenting and seeing what most Protestants now take as self-evident.

They were united in belief precisely because this was the apostolic teaching, received from Jesus and the apostles. The ones who forsook Jesus in John 6 left because they would not accept a literal Eucharist. They didn’t merely misunderstand (if so, Jesus would have surely explained further, in order to retain them, as he often did). They understood and rejected the teaching. The same holds for Protestants today. The antipathy to matter and sacramentalism and the miraculous in Christian worship is what should be re-examined: not the unchanged eucharistic teaching of the Catholic Church for almost 2000 years. It stems, I think, from a lack of faith in God (God “wouldn’t do so-and-so; He can’t do so-and-so”) as well as from misunderstandings.

That’s more an argument from frustration than anything [last sentence above]. What seems so obvious to you is not to most Protestants, just as what seems obvious to us is not to you. I don’t think, necessarily, that our differences stem from a lack of faith on your part (or ours). In addition, I don’t think the argument for an “antipathy to matter” is useful or on the mark, as I indicated above regarding the Donatist/gnostic question.

It’s not an expression of frustration (though I’m sure I get a little frustrated at times, as we all do). I’m very happy to be able to clarify this theme of mine. When I say “lack of faith,” I’m not attacking the piety or spiritual motivation or walk with God of Protestants (least of all you yourself). It’s not intended as any form of personal attack or ad hominem. It is more so referring to “faith” as tied into theological presuppositions. As a Catholic and amateur historian I have to account somehow for the fact that the Bible appears to me very plainly in favor of a literal Eucharist (and I give the exegetical arguments; I don’t just make a bald claim). I have to also account for the rationale that is employed in order to depart from such overwhelming patristic consensus (an aspect of my paper that you chose to completely pass over).

I firmly believe that the symbolic or mystical Eucharist outlook came in from extraneous philosophical schools of thought (just as Protestants are always saying about us, with the paganism charge, etc., so we have the prerogative to do the same), because it contradicted what the Church had always believed and taught. Heresies do not come in out of the blue; they have historical pedigree. Thus, we can trace anti-incarnational strain of thought back to the Gnostics and the Docetics. The disbelief in miracles and mysteries can be traced to aspects of the secular Renaissance and to the Enlightenment. Zwingli was originally some sort of humanist, and was probably influenced by less orthodox schools. He brought in the purely symbolic Eucharist. In many ways he argues like a rationalist skeptic of today or any age.

That is a lack of faith in the beliefs of traditional Christianity, as it had always been understood. Calvinists and other Protestants today are usually unaware of all the historical background of their particular beliefs (which is one reason I am always analyzing Luther and Calvin). But it still has its effect. What I try to do is to persuade Protestants to take a closer look at some of these things. Elsewhere I have written several times about how Protestants never seem to be able to arrive at an entire body of Christian truth. By nature the Protestant enterprise is to perpetually search and to claim that some things can never be resolved. Whole areas of theology are (sadly) consigned to this “uncertainty bin.” We Catholics don’t believe that. We think that most things have been made quite clear by now: 2000 years after Christ. And we think that to deny that is another mark of lack of faith that God can guide His Church into all truth, just as Jesus said at the Last Supper. We take Him literally at His word.

Through the work of the Holy Spirit, Christ is truly with us “even unto the end of the age” (MT 28:20).

Jesus is not inferior to the Holy Spirit in any sense (nor vice versa). None of the three Divine Persons are inferior to the other ones.

Each person in the Godhead has His role to fulfill as He has covenanted within Himself. The various functions never suggest the superiority of one over the other, nor the inferiority of one to the other. The Son is not inferior because there is a Father, and the Spirit is not inferior because He “proceeds” or “goes forth” from the Father and the Son. This is a Muslim argument, and a poor one at that.

Good; we agree here.

* * *

Therefore, we cannot properly say that Jesus is with us by means of (and only by means of, and only because He ascended) the Holy Spirit. I submit that this notion has been amply refuted from Scripture itself.

If Christ says that he has to leave so that the Spirit can come, then so be it. It doesn’t mean that anyone is inferior to anyone. I know of no Reformed Christian that would argue this way, and it has nothing to do with the issue at hand.

I’ve made my arguments above. Often I make arguments analyzing premises of opponents, and contend for what I think these premises logically lead to. And usually (surprise!), the opponent in question disagrees that the logical reduction is in fact the case. In other words, I am not always implying that someone believes y as derived from x; only that y does in fact logically derive from x (including use of reductio ad absurdum methodologies which are usually greatly misunderstood themselves), so that the person needs to either accept that or show how it isn’t the case. That is the socratic form of argument that I love. I wanted to make that clear, because it will probably come up in our discussions.

Thanks for the continuing dialogue and articulate expressions of your heartfelt belief. I am enjoying it very much. Plato and Socrates thought that good dialogue could only occur between friends who had a measure of respect for each other. We are seeing how non-hostility (at the very least) makes a great discussion possible, even between Reformed and Catholic proponents!

But if you had started out denying that I was a Christian at all, then that would have involved a rank insult and a lie so extreme and outrageous that any hope of constructive discourse would have been pretty much doomed from the outset, since this outlook entails my being placed in a vastly inferior box, with everything I say immediately being suspect, because, what do I know? I’m not even a Christian! . . . That’s one reason among many why I don’t waste time anymore attempting dialogues with anti-Catholics. It’s impossible. I know from over ten years of trying. On the other hand, I’ve had many scores of wonderful dialogues with ecumenical Christians who have managed to figure out that Catholics are part of the Body of Christ, too.

[see also several related comments made in the combox by Tim, in the original Blogspot posting]

***

(originally 8-15-09)

Photo credit: Holy Spirit window: Christ the King Catholic Church (Ann Arbor, Michigan). Photo by Nheyob (8-5-13) [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license]

***

Popes Leading the Church Into False Doctrine (E.g., Paul VI)

March 8, 2018 By Dave Armstrong

This is the mindset of radical Catholic reactionaries today, directed not only against Blessed Pope Paul VI, but also against Pope St. John Paul II.

***

Bloviator extraordinaire Chris Ferrara wrote on 2-28-18 at The Remnant:

But now the seemingly imminent canonization of Paul VI, following approval of two purported miracles which, based on the information published, seem decidedly less than miraculous (to be discussed in Part II of this series), has provoked widespread incredulity about the canonization process itself, going even beyond the skepticism that greeted the canonizations of John XXIII and John Paul II. How could the very Pope who unleashed what he himself lamented—too little too late—as a “spirit of auto-demolition” in the Church, including a “liturgical reform” that led to what Cardinal Ratzinger called “the collapse of the liturgy,” the same Pope who wondered how “the smoke of Satan” had entered the Church during his tumultuous reign, be raised to the altars as a model of Catholic virtue for veneration and imitation by all the faithful?

And here are the sorts of idiotic, quasi-schismatic, reactionary comments underneath this disgraceful article, that The Remnant has no problem allowing (while folks like me are censored and deleted over there):

Sam Sham • I do not accept the validity of any of Jorge Bergoglio’s “canonizations.” I would have a tough time accepting canonizations done by anyone since the silly relaxation in the process and elimination of the “devil’s advocate.” In the case of two popes and the inevitable designation of Paul VI, this can be seen as nothing more than the “canonization” of Vatican II.

Maggie • There is NO way that I can accept Paul VI as a “saint”. He was, at the very least, an extremely weak pope and what occurred under his pontificate has been a travesty. I know of no cult of devotion for him nor are the so called miracles without questions.

Barbara • I simply cannot, and will not, venerate or emulate John Paul II or Paul VI, or John XXIII because they have done so many things that are displeasing to God. How to I know this? My eyes and ears are open – the fruit of these Papacies is plain for all to see. The fruits of their pusillanimity is all rotten and destructive. Pope Francis, and John Paul II before him, is using canonization as political statement and it’s just plain wrong.

Babs Byrne • I don’t have a problem with refusing to accept or acknowledge Paul VI as a saint after reading Fr Luigi Villa’s account of his life and his refusal to have any Catholic symbols on or near his coffin/grave. His mother’s grave has Masonic symbols on it. If Pope Benedict canonized Paul VI I WOULD have a problem.

See also the short article (with a video) from editor Michal Matt: “SAINT Pope Paul VI? (When Pigs Fly!)” [caps in original], from 2-10-18. The little introduction blesses us with the following analysis:

Down in the catacombs, Michael Matt looks at the life and legacy of one of the worst popes in history—the man Pope Francis now intends to canonize in October. Does papal infallibility seriously come into this farce? Please! At this point, claiming the Holy Ghost has anything even to do with such an obvious political stunt—aimed at canonizing the revolution of Vatican II—borders on the blasphemous.

***

The Remnant is not the only reactionary rag doing this. Rorate Caeli (remember them? They’re the guys who trashed Pope Francis on his first day in office; utilizing Holocaust denier Marcelo González as their source to do it) also excoriates “the astonishing canonization” of Blessed Pope Paul VI in an article from 2-27-18, by Fr. Pio Pace (complete below):

Perhaps Paul VI had remarkable and heroic virtues in his private and secret life. But, as Pope, he is the object of not little debate: he promulgated the most liberal texts of the Council (Gaudium et Spes, Unitatis Redintegratio, Nostra Aetate, Dignitatis Humanae); he led a liturgical reform that turned sacred liturgy upside down and inside out; and several other things, big and small, such as the suppression of the extremely ancient and venerable Roman Subdiaconate.

Paul VI fully embodies Vatican II. It is precisely for this reason that he has been chosen for canonization, as the Popes of the Council and post-Council, who have been canonized one after the other: John XXIII, John Paul II…

Is Paul VI presented to the Church as an example due to the publication of Humanae Vitae? Or rather for his “ecumenical gestures”, such as having given in 1966 to the archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, his pastoral ring and a chalice — which allowed Cardinal Coccopalmerio to affirm that the Anglican ordinations could be considered valid: “What could it mean for Paul VI the fact of giving a chalice to the archbishop of Canterbury? If it was to allow for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, it was out of consideration for valid ceremonies, right?” And we could go on: John Paul II was an example for the solid defense of Humanae Vitae, or rather for having organized the sadly famous “Assisi meeting”?

*

We must dare say it: by canonizing all Vatican II popes, it is Vatican II that is canonized. But, likewise, canonization itself is devalued when it becomes a sort of medal thrown on top of a casket. Maybe a council that was “pastoral” and not dogmatic is deserving of canonizations that are “pastoral” and not dogmatic.

***

Good ol’ Catholic Family News certainly didn’t want to miss this opportunity to bash Pope Paul VI, or to be outdone by its fellow reactionary fanatics. In an editorial of 2-6-18, entitled, “The Imminent ‘Canonization’ of Paul VI” it thunders:

CFN will be covering this unhappy development on the web and in our upcoming March issue in depth; we recommend reading Fr. Luigi Villa’s Paul VI Beatified?, available online here in the interim.

The ‘canonization’ of Papa Montini is nothing else than a ‘canonization’ of the sordid agenda and disastrous orientation of Vatican II, the abysmal Novus Ordo Missae, and the embarrassing entirety of post-conciliar legislation and innovation.

. . . we . . . . [should] resist this fixed ecclesiastical farce, . . .

Then there is Phil Lawler: the respectable, renowned, mild-mannered Catholic journalist widely described and praised as orthodox and measured and calm and collected and objective and scholarly (not given to extremes or fanaticism at all; no, not him!) and slow to arrive at difficult conclusions (etc., ad nauseam). He wrote that the pope was:

leading the Church away from the ancient sources of the Faith. . . . radical nature of the program that he is relentlessly advancing. . . encouraged beliefs and practices that are incompatible with the prior teachings of the Church. . . . a Roman pontiff who disregarded so easily what the Church has always taught and believed and practiced on such bedrock issues as the nature of marriage and of the Eucharist . . . a danger to the Faith . . .

Oh, sorry! I was confused for a moment there. Lawler was writing about Pope Francis, not Blessed Pope Paul VI. It was such similar “sky is falling down” rhetoric that I got it mixed up (my bad). He wrote these remarks in the Introduction to his book, Lost Shepherd. But he never remotely proved the assertions in the book. Thus, I have described reading it and waiting for the “proofs” of these serious charges — that never came –, as similar to “peeling an onion.”

***

Photo credit: Chicken Little. Photograph by Dave Walker (12-12-06) [Flickr / CC BY 2.0 license] Chicken Little, you may recall, was the young chick in the children’s fable, who believed the sky was falling after an acorn landed on her head.

***

White’s & Hays’ Anti-Catholic Analyses of My Catholic Conversion

February 24, 2018 By Dave Armstrong

Bishop “Dr.” [???] James White (words in brown) made the argument that I was supremely ignorant as an evangelical, and so that amply explained my conversion, which need not give anyone the slightest pause.

Hence his description of me in December 2004 as “one who has given very little evidence, in fact, of having done a lot of serious reading in better non-Catholic literature to begin with. In fact, I would imagine Armstrong has done more reading in non-Catholic materials since his conversion than before. In any case, this lack of background will resound loudly in the comments he offers, . . .”

And so I went ahead and showed White exactly what I had read in my 13-year evangelical period, which included many Reformed scholars [he is reformed Baptist] and otherwise solid evangelical biblical scholars or Church historians, such as, e.g., Bernard Ramm, John Walvoord, R.C. Sproul, C.S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, A.W. Tozer, Francis Schaeffer, Harold Lindsell, Merrill Tenney, James Montgomery Boice, Lorraine Boettner (The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination), Oswald Allis, George Marsden, J. Gresham Machen, Kierkegaard, John MacArthur, J.I. Packer, Billy Graham, Walter Martin, G.C. Berkouwer, F.F. Bruce, D.A. Carson, Norman Geisler, Alvin Plantinga, Gerhard Maier, Augustus Strong, Charles Hodge, Gleason Archer, John Gerstner, A.A. Hodge, Benjamin Warfield, Dunn, Alford, Westcott, J.B. Lightfoot, Peter Berger, Os Guinness, Thomas Oden, John Ankerberg, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jonathan Edwards, Ronald Nash, Carl F.H. Henry, Charles Colson, Dorothy Sayers, and James Davison Hunter, among many others.

Now, how did White respond to that?: “Mr. Armstrong has provided a reading list on his blog. In essence, this means that instead of blaming ignorance for his very shallow misrepresentations of non-Catholic theology and exegesis, we must now assert knowing deception.”

[further discussion with ecumenical Presbyterian friend Tim Roof (words in green) ]:

For White (and anti-Catholics like him, generally), there is no such thing as an intellectually honest conversion from an educated Protestantism to Catholicism. Thus, he claimed at first that I was dumber than a doornail about Protestantism and never was a true Protestant at any time (never having been Reformed).

After I provided my reading list he (even he!) could no longer plausibly argue that I was an imbecile. I knew too much. Thus, the only choice left in his severely limited thought-world was deliberate deception. I couldn’t possibly be sincere or honest, knowing what I did, in becoming a Catholic.

I have never thought this pertained to you and your own history, Dave. And I would never attribute this to Catholic converts in general. However, I have heard several high-profile men who have converted to Catholicism from Protestantism whose descriptions of what they believed while Protestants bore little relation to what Protestantism actually teaches. I mean, I’ve heard some say some truly astonishing stuff. In those cases, it makes sense to me that they converted to Catholicism since what they believed before was so convoluted. My own Pastor, Carl Trueman, Chairman of the Church History Department at Westminster Theological Seminary has told us, “If you’re not a Roman Catholic, you had better have good, solid reasons as to why you are not.” In other words, don’t be Protestant simply because you’re not Catholic, or because you think it’s “cool” or “hip” or whatever. Know thoroughly what and why you believe the way you do.

I completely agree with your last part. Thanks for not thinking I am either a dumbbell about Protestantism or a deceiver.

I would just add that whenever we speak of “Protestantism” we have to make a hundred qualifications or exceptions; which brand? Thus, those from one sector may not understand others, etc. They are going by their own experiences and may be overly extrapolating to others and being a bit inaccurate.

I think I had a pretty firm grip on Reformed thinking, since I had read so much of it, as seen in my list of books that I had read. But most Arminians have a poor understanding of Calvinists and often vice versa as well. But in any event, we all have to know what we believe and why we do. I help with the latter, as an apologist.

I would only add that most Calvinists started out as your garden variety Arminian, which is to say that Calvinists TEND toward much more serious and deep study. This is the case with me.They typically are better able to give a defense of their faith. This is a generalization, of course; there are always exceptions. But the trend is much more going from Arminian to Calvinist rather than the other way around, and converts to Catholicism TEND to be Arminian as Protestants rather than Reformed/Calvinist.

Calvinists definitely are more educated as a whole, among Protestants. I was gonna actually say that above. Arminians are much more prone to theological liberalism, too.

I think Arminians being more prone to liberalism, as you have said above, may be a function of that system being (in my view) more emotion-based and less intellectual-based. Liberalism TENDS to be much more about emoting and much less about the consequences for others of one’s actions. I am not saying that evangelical Christians are “dumber” than Reformed. However, I do think that pursuit of biblical and theological knowledge is much more characteristic of Reformed theology than general evangelicalism. I am speaking broadly, of course.

I agree again, and I am a former Arminian. Calvinists tend towards other vices: a certain “coldness” and over-intellectualizing of faith; minimizing of legitimate religious experience, disbelief in continuing miracles, and anti-Catholicism, as well as anti-anything other than Calvinism.

You show none of these traits. James White shows all of them.

Conversion is extraordinarily complex (at least for those who try to think through issues). All the more reason to excoriate the tunnel vision “ignoramus or lying deceiver” choice that White has limited himself to . . .

My only caveat to what you have said would be a Calvinist belief in continuing miracles but not a belief in the continuation of the miraculous gifts of the Spirit.

It’s interesting to note how Steve Hays (equally anti-Catholic) was, in 2006, still able to say some nice things about me: something White has never ever done in 22 years. He changed a few years later and started saying that I was “evil”, but at this point he was much more nuanced (words in blue):

*****

“An open letter to Dave Armstrong” (9-9-06) [most of it]

I don’t think I’ve ever accused him of being a traitor or apostate or infidel.

Everyone is entitled to his own usage. I won’t judge someone else’s usage. They have their reasons.

But those are not the adjectives I’d reach for in the case of Armstrong.

Those are words I reserve for extreme cases, not borderline cases.

To judge by his conversion story, he had a rather brief and superficial experience [untrue!] with Evangelicalism—reading popularizers and attending emotive, anti-intellectual churches [untrue as a generalization].

A transition from a shallow brand of Evangelicalism [untrue!] to devout Catholicism is not the same thing as apostasy—much less infidelity. Not by my definition, at least.

And, unless he’s sheltering his wealth from the Feds, I don’t think one can accuse him of changing sides for fast cars, fast women, and a vintage pint of sherry.

So it’s not as if he’s another Kim Philby or Guy Burgess with a Rosary.

I have nothing to say, one way or the other, regarding his state of grace. But his sincerity is unquestionable.

I also don’t dislike him. And this is not a pro forma disclaimer to prove what a charitable guy I am, for there are some bloggers whom I do dislike. (Sorry, no names!)

I don’t think there’s anything malicious about Armstrong—unlike some people who come to mind.

In addition, I don’t think I’ve ever said he was unintelligent.

For the record, it’s obvious that Armstrong has a quick, nimble mind.

Then writing generally in the combox, Hays added (in a remarkably fair way, given his anti-Catholicism):

The term “apostasy” carries with it a heavy presumption that the apostate is a hell-bound reprobate.

I think it’s unwarranted to assume that all Catholics or converts to Catholicism are damned.

In addition, when you use the same adjective for Dave Armstrong or Scott Hahn that you use for John Spong or Robert Price, the charge loses credibility and can backfire.

In fact, some former evangelicals have swum the Tiber precisely because they discovered a disconnect between hyperbolic polemics and the less lurid reality.

We should avoid the temptation to exaggerate and overplay our hand.

I replied in the combox as follows (this comment was later deleted):

Thanks, Steve, for the nice things said. I appreciate it. This was a classy piece. Just a few observations, if I may:

Your theory of my odyssey from evangelicalism to Catholicism is — shall we say? — “interesting.” I was in a shallow environment, so that Catholicism was quite possibly even a “step up” and I get a pass for ignorance; therefore I am not an apostate, etc. (never having been a Calvinist – is the implication). This reminds me of a statement I saw from Phillip Johnson, where he said that much of evangelicalism was worse than even Catholicism in the 16th century.

The problem, of course, is that this is an inaccurate portrayal of what I used to believe and the circles I used to be in. You claim that I “had a rather brief and superficial experience with Evangelicalism—reading popularizers . . .”

James White made the same argument [see above]: that I was supremely ignorant and an evangelical, and so that amply explained my conversion, which need not give anyone the slightest pause.

Will that be your approach now, too, once you have discovered that I was not nearly as ignorant as you would like to make out presently? I hope not.

My “brief and superficial experience with Evangelicalism” included intense anti-cult research and many other informal studies on various theological topics. You can see, for example, what sort of thing I was doing and writing back then by perusing the following papers (dated 1982 and 1987). If you want to classify this as “superficial,” you have every right to, but I don’t think one out of hundred evangelicals who read this stuff would agree with you.

Biblical Refutation of “Hyperfaith” / “Name-it-Claim it” Teaching: Is it Always God’s Will to Heal in Every Instance?

Jehovah’s Witnesses: “The Apocalyptic Arians”: A Biblical and Historical Critique

This experience included intensive street witnessing at the Ann Arbor Art Fair in Michigan, for ten straight years, and in many other places (often, Kingdom Halls or Marxist meetings), and a five-year stint as a campus evangelist.

As for “attending emotive, anti-intellectual churches,” this is also grossly inaccurate. It is true that I attended some charismatic churches, but they were not “anti-intellectual” by any means (if they had been, I wouldn’t have been there in the first place). One of the non-denominational churches I went to had an assistant pastor who had a master’s in philosophy. Later, the pastor was Al Kresta, one of the sharpest people I have ever met, who had a very popular evangelical talk show for ten years in the Detroit area, on the largest Christian radio station, WMUZ. He later converted to Catholicism, but in any event, he is no anti-intellectual, by any stretch of the imagination.

I also started out at a Lutheran church, with a brilliant, missions and outreach-minded pastor named Dick Bieber. Lutherans are generally not accused of anti-intellectualism, to my knowledge.

The man who “baptized” me (when I believed in adult believer’s baptism), and who married me has a Ph.D. in education, etc. Another good friend, who pastored a Reformed Baptist church that we often attended, eventually obtained his Ph.D. and is now a professor at a college in Michigan. Hardly “anti-intellectual” circles again . . .

You can stereotype charismatics if you wish as “emotive and anti-intellectual,” but as in all categories (even Calvinism) you can always find solid proponents and shallow ones. I believe in the spiritual gifts, on biblical grounds. I never believed, however, that everyone had to speak in tongues in order to truly be indwelt with the Holy Spirit, because I saw that as contrary to Paul’s clear teaching on the gifts.

At the same time, also, I was issuing strong critiques of excesses within the charismatic movement (see the paper above about healing: from 1982). I was strongly criticizing Jim Bakker even before the big scandal hit. I attended MENSA groups and meetings of university philosophy professors during my evangelical apologist / evangelist period in the late 80s. Etc., etc., etc. “Anti-intellectual”? Um, I don’t think so. Strange that you would claim this.

I became an avid pro-lifer and participant in Operation Rescue all during my evangelical period. Was all this “a shallow brand of Evangelicalism”? I think not.

The only way you could make such a claim (having truly understood my background) would be on the basis that all non-Calvinist brands of evangelicalism are “shallow” and “superficial.” I think that is rather silly and laughable (and would apparently include even your own compatriot Jason Engwer), but then I think that about the tiny anti-Catholic wing of evangelicalism too.

So, thanks again for the nice things you said, but I had to correct the misrepresentations of the state of my theological and spiritual knowledge and what sort of fellowships I was involved in as an evangelical.

I converted precisely for the reasons that I have explained in my four or five different accounts. It wasn’t because I was ignorant of evangelical Protestantism. It wasn’t because I despised or hated same or came to regard it as worthless. It wasn’t because I was disenchanted with where I was. My journey began out of simple intellectual curiosity about why Catholic believed certain things that I thought were exceedingly strange and puzzling (particularly, the ban on contraception, and infallibility).

Many of the things I hold very dear now (love of the Bible, interest in Christian worldview, pro-life, opposing cults and atheists, evangelism, fighting cultural sexual immorality, apologetics in general, strong family values, political conservatism, concern for the poor, love for great Christian authors and thinkers) were cultivated during those days. That’s where I initially learned all that stuff. It was the air I breathed. I’ll always be thankful for that and remember those times with the utmost fondness. Ironically, you appear to view many of your evangelical brothers and sisters far, far more negatively than I would ever dream of characterizing my own past.

You see, those of us who were evangelical and loved it, who later become Catholics, don’t have to reject our past and regard it as an evil, bad thing. We simply think that we have come to understand in faith some additional elements of Christianity that were lacking in our previous Christian circles (a sense of history, sacramentalism, ecclesiology, the saints, greater emphasis on the Incarnation and actual sanctification, etc.).

As I wrote recently, it isn’t “evil vs. good”. Rather, it is a matter of “very good” and “better” or “a great deal of truth” and “the fullness of truth” or “excellent” and “best.”

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Unfortunately, two-and-a-half years later, Steve Hays’ fairly tolerant, nuanced analysis quickly changed to an outright hostile one:

I used to think that Dave Armstrong was just a jerk. Not deeply evil. Just a jerk. . . . He isn’t just a narcissistic little jerk. He’s actually evil. It’s not something we can spoof or satirize anymore. He’s crossed a line of no return. (4-13-09)

[I]f you do a spot-on impersonation of someone who’s hypersensitive, paranoid, an ego-maniac, narcissistic, with a martyr and persecution complex, then how are we supposed to tell the difference between the person and the impersonation? The make-up, inflection, &c, is just uncanny. . . . For that matter, have you ever encountered a self-obsessive individual who admits to being a self-obsessive individual? Don’t we expect a self-obsessive individual to deny how self-obsessive he is? A self-obsessive individual spends endless amounts of time talking about how he’s not a self-obsessive individual, which, of course, is just another way of talking about himself–over and over again. Does that ring a bell? Sound like anyone you know? . . . Not only is Dave an idolater, but a self-idolater. He has sculpted an idol in his own, precious image. A singular, autobiographical personality cult. (7-16-09, on James Swan’s Boors All site [later deleted by Swan] )

[Y]ou play the innocent victim when someone exposes your chicanery. . . . you’re a hack who pretends to be a professional apologist . . . you don’t do any real research. . . . If I did pray for Armstrong, do you think I’d announce it in public? But suppose I didn’t? . . . Dave isn’t somebody who lost his faith and went quietly into the night. No, Dave is a stalwart enemy of the faith. He’s no better than Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens. Just like the militant atheist, his modus operandi is to destroy faith in God’s word to make room for his alternative. In this case, his corrupt denomination. (1-28-10; comment at 11:53 PM)

I realize that, due to your persecution complex (by the way, you need to have your psychiatrist up the dosage), you imagine that only “anti-Catholics could ever find fault with your stainless conduct . . . Are you hearing voices? . . . I didn’t say you were evil in this one instance. You have an evil character. This particular instance brought that to the fore. . . . Since you can’t out-argue [Jason Engwer], you try to discredit him by creating a deceptive narrative about his performance. . . . There’s always a clientele for P. T. Barnums like you. . . . I’m supposed to be taken in by your bipolar tactics? (1-29-10; two-part comment at 8:25 PM)

It’s entirely possible for a schizophrenic guy like Armstrong to contradict himself from one moment to the next. Indeed, just look at the wild mood swings which he has put on display in this very thread. . . . The question is not whether the accusation makes sense, but whether Dave makes sense. Dave is confusing logical consistency with psychological consistency. It’s psychologically possible for an emotionally unstable guy like Dave to be logically inconsistent. . . .

That disclaimer would be a bit more plausible if Dave didn’t go on and on and on in one hysterical comment after another after another. One of Dave’s problems is his lifelong love affair with himself. He reacts to any imagined slight the way a normal man reacts if someone slights his wife or mother or girlfriend. . . . Dave is self-important. . . . People who are truly self-effacing don’t ordinarily crow about how truly self-effacing they are. If would help Armstrong if, in refuting the allegation that he’s emotionally unhinged, if he didn’t become emotionally unhinged whenever he hears the allegation. A hundred hysterical comments later: . . .

Well, since you ask, one of Armstrong’s problems (yes, the list is long, I know) is his repudiation of Pauline sola fide. And we see the practical outworking of his life. Because he doesn’t trust in the merit of Christ alone for salvation, Dave has an insatiable need for self-justification. He, like other Catholics, has no peace of mind. . . .

Yes, Dave, that’s evil. Pure evil. . . .

Of course, that’s symptomatic of Armstrong’s instability. He will post reams and reams of high-strung reaction pieces in the heat of the moment, then, after a cooling off period, when it dawns on him that his impetuous commentary unwittingly backfired, he will follow that up with a mass purge. (4-18-10, on James Swan’s Boors All site [later deleted by Swan]. Somehow, when Swan engaged in his “mass purge” of Hays’ remarkably unhinged comments, that evidenced no metal instability on his part. Nor did Hays’ own multitudinous deletions of my comments on his page, and eventual banning of yours truly indicate his own psychosis)

Both Paul Hoffer and Dave Armstrong are bad men who imagine they are good men. That’s not unusual. Bad men often have a high opinion of their own motives. And Catholicism reinforces that self-deception. (12-7-11; comment at 12:51 AM)

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(Dec. 2004; added dialogue from 2-21-17; additional citations added on 2-24-18)

Photo credit: photo by Nick Youngson [The Blue Diamond Gallery / CC BY-SA 3.0 license]

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