March 27, 2018

March 27, 2018 By

This series of mini-dialogues (most, frustratingly incomplete and “left hanging,” in my opinion), occurred in a very lively combox on my Facebook page. Karl’s words will be in blue. The sections are not necessarily chronological. He and I are good friends, with mutual respect. I consider him the father of the modern Catholic apologetics movement.

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I don’t read Douthat regularly, but every time I’ve read him I’ve pegged him as a conservative, both politically and religiously–not as a traditionalist in either sense. 

I see no evidence that he is moving toward what you [Michael Liccione] and Dave call the radical reactionary position. As for his becoming sedevacantist, Douthat is more likely to become a Scientologist first.

Questioning essential aspects of Vatican II doesn’t give you concern, as a longtime critic of reactionaries yourself?

Like you, Dave, I haven’t seen Douthat’s book yet. Like you, I’ve seen only Winters’ review in the (heterodox) National Catholic Reporter, where quotations often are cherry-picked. I’m leery of someone–whether you, Michael Liccione, or anyone else–trying to draw conclusions about Douthat’s personal status or trajectory.

That said, I can’t think of an ecumenical council that hasn’t been “questioned” in some way. The “questioning” of Vatican II has existed since about 1963, and it’s come from all parts of the spectrum. 

For example, it’s become a truism, agreed upon by just about all commentators, that the council documents manifest much misplaced optimism about how things were going to be going in the world in the near future. 

The documents were written on the cusp of the sexual revolution and about a decade before the general abandonment of Christianity in the West had become obvious. Most of the council fathers expected a springtime for the Church, but that spring never came–not because of the council but because of forces already long at work that those fathers didn’t have a sufficient measure of. (Some of them did, but most didn’t.)

Although two of the sixteen documents, in their titles, are denominated as doctrinal, most of the documents are considered–again, by nearly all parties–as chiefly pastoral and thus largely of prudential judgment. (Trent had pastoral provisions too, but a much smaller proportion. Other ecumenical councils also had pastoral provisions.) Pastoral provisions don’t fall under the charism of infallibility and thus are open to revision, reinterpretation, or even dispute.

I can remember discussions–in orthodox books and magazines–as far back as the 1980s where orthodox Catholics, including clerics and professors of note and impeccable reputation, pointed out ambiguities or other weaknesses in some of those sixteen documents. Again, historically this is nothing new. 

The Holy Spirit guarantees that an ecumenical council won’t teach, definitively, as true something that in fact is false. He doesn’t guarantee that the council fathers will write clearly or will cover all the topics that should be addressed in their time.

I think you make some good points. Let’s cut to the quick: Do you think Pope Benedict or Pope St. John Paul would speak of failures of certain essential aspects of Vatican II, as Douthat does?

It’s possible that I am reading too much into some of his criticisms of Vatican II, which is why I will keep a close eye on further developments, but it’s also true that he has a different view than the last two popes.

I don’t know what Douthat has written about Vatican II because I haven’t seen his book (nor have you). I’m not going to draw conclusions from a review written in a heterodox newspaper by a very liberal writer who quotes only a few sentences from the book. 

Given that newspaper’s reputation (I used to subscribe to it), I can’t have any confidence that the review accurately or fairly expressed what Douthat meant, so I’ll wait to read his book, which I hope to do over the next couple of weeks.

I drew my key reference from the review at One Peter Five, which incorporated several direct quotations from Douthat’s book. I also drew from Douthat’s own words in his Jan. 2016 First Things piece. I didn’t draw from Winters at all in this piece or argumentation. Neither his name nor his review appear in the above post.

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You seem to be operating on the notion that it is impossible to criticize a pope or council legitimately: any criticism is illegitimate a priori, which obviates the need to read, actually read, a book that proffers criticism. 

You don’t seem to entertain the idea that a particular writer might have both legitimate criticisms and illegitimate criticisms. 

I have argued the contrary for over twenty years, as laid out in my post, On Rebuking Popes & Catholic Obedience to Popes (which combined many past articles of mine on the topic).

This very day, I put up another post about honoring popes. In that paper, I wrote:

Now, to be clear: I’m not saying that no one can ever say or do anything about a wicked ruler. The Bible also contains Revelation 13 as well as Romans 13, as I noted recently to a severe critic on another page. I have taken the same view of popes: one can criticize under rare circumstances, with the right attitude and spirit (and the right people doing it). I’ve literally expressed that view for 20 years online (while the reactionaries denied the entire time that I did).

What one cannot do, and pretend to be honoring the pope is lambast, bash, condemn, slander, speak evil against, gossip about, spread mere rumors about a pope day in and day out. That is not “honoring” a pope or ruler, as we are commanded to do, in any way, shape, form, or matter.

We simply don’t find models of pope-bashing behavior in the Bible, even as regards one of the most wicked tyrants in history, Nero, or wicked kings of Israel, such as Saul and Solomon.

In fact, if we define “criticizing” popes very broadly, I did so myself. I would say it is respectfully offering advice, but I did do it, at National Catholic Register (Sep. 2017), in my article, “I Hope the Pope Will Provide Some Much-Needed Clarity.”

Obviously, then, what you thought my position was, was incorrect. I’m saying that the criticisms that Lawler made (the book I read) are not substantiated at all. It’s not the simple fact that he is making criticisms (though I think they should be very rare and not public). The problem is that his criticisms hold no water. That’s the biggest scandal. They simply aren’t true, and he hasn’t demonstrated that they are.

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I want to note that I’m distressed at seeing how these exchanges are going. I fear there will be irreparable ruptures.

I am, too. We disagree on this issue, but I continue to respect you. I don’t see that it should harm our friendship. I have hundreds of Facebook friends right now who are being critical of Pope Francis. I have hundreds of friends who detest President Trump. I have liberal friends, atheist friends, many Protestant friends. I’ve always been able to be friends with those who disagree. No problem.

Our responsibility (both of us) is to accurately represent other opinions and to not caricature or demonize them. The more emotional folks get, the more this is the temptation. We’ve all fallen into it, including myself.

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I don’t think the term “pope-bashing” is inappropriate, inaccurate, or should stop being used. There is undeniably pope-bashing going on. It’s not just this academically sophisticated, calm, cool, collected necessary criticism.

The Merriam-Webster Thesaurus defines “bash” in this sense as “to criticize harshly and usually publicly.” Yep. That’s what’s going on. You may think it is just and necessary criticism but it is unarguably both harsh and public. And that’s what the word means.

It gives a synonyms: “abuse, assail, attack, belabor, blast, castigate, excoriate, jump (on), lambaste (or lambast), potshot, savage, scathe, slam, vituperate.”

Thesaurus.com gives a host of synonyms for “bash” too: many of which describe exactly what is going on these days.

I still would like to know whether it’s possible, in your estimation, for there to be a book that’s critical of a pope, whether on a few or on many points, and yet isn’t a “pope-bashing” book. If Author A has exactly one criticism of a pope but Author B has 100 criticisms of him, is Author B a basher but Author A not? How is a line drawn between legitimate criticism and illegitimate criticism, assuming the latter exists? (Some Catholics apparently think no criticism can be legitimate, period.)

It’s a spirit and lack of charity and as such, can’t be quantified in the way you seek. I think what Phil Lawler wrote in his Introduction to Lost Shepherd is bashing:

. . . leading the Church away from the ancient sources of the Faith. . . . a source of division. . . . radical nature of the program that he is relentlessly advancing. . . . encouraged beliefs and practices that are incompatible with the prior teachings of the Church. If that complaint is justified, he has violated the sacred trust that is given to Peter’s successors. . . . 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 . . .

Particularly, it’s “bashing” because he made the extraordinary claims but never came within a thousand miles of proving them beyond all doubt. He never proved that the pope was indeed “lost” per the title of the book. In other words, I could only conclude that these dramatic statements were falsehoods.  (or at the very least, inadequately demonstrated; therefore, not worthy to be asserted). And spreading unsubstantiated rumors about another is clearly bashing them.

I kept waiting for this amazing compelling demonstration to appear in the book: to prove definitively that Pope Francis is an anti-traditionalist subversive, but it never came, which is why I compared reading it to peeling an onion and finding no core in the final analysis (or peel).

Non-bashing criticism would be like what St. Catherine of Siena wrote to Pope Gregory XI:

I have prayed, and shall pray, sweet and good Jesus that He free you from all servile fear, and that holy fear alone remain. May ardor of charity be in you, in such wise as shall prevent you from hearing the voice of incarnate demons, and heeding the counsel of perverse counselors, settled in self-love, who, as I understand, want to alarm you, so as to prevent your return, saying, “You will die.” Up, father, like a man! For I tell you that you have no need to fear.

Note that she was a saint, a mystic, and a Doctor of the Church, too. This is one of my points of protest against what is happening. It was also a private letter (another big point of mine).

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If you [Pete Vere] (and Dave and others) think that the likely small sales of Douthat’s book (at least when compared to Dawkins’ book) means that Douthat is inconsequential, . . . I think that they will have substantial influence and are worth talking about, provided the talking is done without hysterics, exaggeration, and name-calling–and preferably by people who actually have read the books.

Yeah, me too. I’ve disagreed repeatedly with Pete yet you seem (who knows why?) to think I haven’t. If I didn’t think these books were important and influential (not to mention quite harmful), I wouldn’t be devoting scores of hours to writing about them.

I find the exchanges fascinating, though I don’t mean by that that I’ve found them particularly satisfying intellectually. I think there’s been more dross than fine metal.

I couldn’t agree more. Now if you would actually take it upon yourself to interact with any of my six critiques of Phil Lawler’s book, then we actually might accomplish something constructive in these exchanges because (novelty!) we’d actually be talking directly about the contents of the book, rather than about people.

You’re welcome to critique my latest piece about Henry Sire [The Dictator Pope author], too.

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[Julian Barkin: “So then Dave based on your four point criteria of [radical Catholic reactionaries], Douthat would be one now or close to it? Pope bashing or supporting such, check. Bashing Vat II? Check.”]

He (like Lawler) thinks like them in two of four key aspects. The other two are anti-ordinary form Mass and anti-ecumenism. How close he is, I don’t know. That will be determined by watching his progression into the future. I think if he is moving that way, it’s gradual.

Is being “anti-ordinary form Mass” the same as being “pro-extraordinary form Mass”? If someone prefers the old form over the new, is he thus part way to becoming a “radical reactionary”? Is it possible to prefer the Extraordinary Form and not be tainted with radical-reactionaryism at all?

Once again, you are quite unfamiliar with my thought, as consistently expressed through the years. There’s nothing wrong with that (no one can know all the thought of another), but I’m just saying that I have never ever expressed what you fear here. Quite the contrary, in fact.

There is nothing whatsoever wrong with preferring the EF [Extraordinary Form / “Old” / Tridentine Mass]. I have favored availability of the EF from the minute I converted, in 1990. I attended one such Mass shortly after my conversion (we had to cross the river to Windsor, Ontario, in those days, as there were none available in Detroit). I attended a parish for 25 years which offered it, but more regularly, the OF [Ordinary Form / Pauline / “New” Mass] in Latin, with high tradition and reverence (altar rails, facing the altar, etc.).

I am still a member of a parish (it’s a two-church cluster) which sometimes offers the EF and a very traditional, reverential OF (and I continue to prefer OF, as I always have). So, it’s not preference for the EF which is any sort of problem. I am all for that: 110%. Probably 75% of all the Masses I have attended since 1990 were in Latin (though OF).

It’s the bashing of the OF as vastly inferior, sub-par, heterodox, or, in extreme cases, invalid, which is the problem. That creates divisions and animosities. That runs contrary to Pope Benedict’s Summorum Pontificum, which I have strongly defended over against reactionaries like Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, who are now rejecting the reform of the reform and, by logical necessity, also the interior logic and conclusions of SP.

So you see, Karl, once again, our differences are not nearly as great as you feared. If you ask me what I believe, I’ll tell you. I’m not some wild-eyed radical. I’ve been in the same general place I’ve been my entire 28 years as a Catholic: orthodox, Newmanian, lover of JPII and Vatican II and the current Mind of the Church, which (rightly understood) presupposes all existing tradition.

We agree here, and we agree that it is possible to criticize a pope (just very widely in degree and nature, on the latter). I’m not an ultramontanist. That’s always the charge whenever someone complains about papal criticism: that we never accept any, ever, under any circumstances.

The various issues involved have to be discussed on their merits. Start with my five reviews of Lawler, or my Amazon review, which condenses the “meat” of all five. If you’ll stop looking at me and thinking I am becoming some unhinged fanatic, and simply address my arguments, I think we could make much progress, and agree on lots of things, just as we agree on these two things you brought up today (acceptance of the EF as perfectly fine and there being such a thing as permissible pope-criticism).

But you never need fear a terrible rupture between us. I respect you far too much as the father of modern apologetics, and Catholic Answers, for that ever to happen, or even be thinkable / conceivable. There are some “big names” out there who have given up on me, and unfriended me, but very few, when all is said and done. And that’s because I can get along with anyone, if they are willing, too. Because of that, I’ve had four major reconciliations in the last few months. We still disagree on things, but we are able to be friends. You’ve been far more critical of me than I have been of you through all this.

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Photo credit: Photograph of Karl Keating, in the article, “Exclusive Interview: Karl Keating – Catholic Answers” (Aurelio Porfiri, O Clarim, 8-12-16). 

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March 24, 2018

March 24, 2018 By

It’s Ross Douthat who is being used as a puppet of the devil, not Pope Francis.

There are many “blessings” that flow from the current slew of best-selling pope-bashing books: Phil Lawler’s Lost Shepherd (see my many articles on that) and Ross Douthat’s  To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicism, that I specifically address now:

1) They help to undermine the faith of the average Catholic (whether they think logically or consistently about it or not) in Catholic ecclesiology, the institution of the papacy, infallibility, and indefectibility. Thus (mark my words) they will lead to many abandoning the Church.

2) They undermine the traditional characteristic of reverence and deference towards the pope, as the leader of the Church, which follows scriptural injunctions concerning honor and respect towards rulers and leaders.

3) By undermining the papacy, indirectly, other Catholic doctrines also become implicated. The relatively unsophisticated Catholic in the pews (and pubs) starts to question things, because he or she hears the false rumors that even the pope has done so.

4) They make a laughingstock out of the Catholic Church, since even non-Catholics know that the pope (and his office) ought not be treated with such contempt; and it is a disgraceful, utterly unseemly outward display to the watching world. As such, it works against people seriously considering becoming Catholics.

5) And it confirms Protestants and Orthodox in their mistaken views that the papacy is unbiblical, and a non-necessary office in the first place.

The first thing Martin Luther did when he decided to go his own way and revolt against the Catholic Church was attack the pope. And he did so with lies, talk of the “antichrist” and scurrilous mocking illustrations. This approach remains a key trait of anti-Catholic rhetoric, lies, and polemics to this day. The last thing I did before yielding up my own strong evangelical Protestantism and bowing to the wisdom of the ages in the Catholic Church, was fight ferociously against papal infallibility, as I have written about in great detail.

The latter is very close to the heart of any educated Protestant, because it is utterly contrary to their rule of faith: sola Scriptura.  In that view, Scripture Alone is the infallible source of faith. That means that tradition and popes are not infallible. This is why Luther, early on, in his debates (in 1519), went after infallibility. He knew it was a central issue.

The devil’s victory today is that he has Catholics inside the Church doing the work traditionally reserved for non-Catholic critics (i.e., they are “useful idiots”). He just sits back and enjoys himself to no end, watching the stupidity and gullibility of Catholics, and laughing and mocking us to scorn. Now we have the pathetic spectacle of millions of Catholics judging and lying about the pope, gossiping about him and trashing him on a regular basis.

And so, as I confidently predicted, now we are seeing Protestants rejoice in these pope-bashing books, and noting that they back up their own claims of skepticism towards the very office of the papacy. Evangelical Protestant Collin Hansen, editorial director for The Gospel Coalition, wrote an article, entitled, “What If Pope Francis Isn’t Catholic?” (3-20-18), which was a review of sorts, of Douthat’s To Change the Church. It’s actually a fairly well-argued, measured, temperate piece (far more so than 90% of the pope-bashing trash that we are getting today from fellow Catholics).

He’s simply being a consistent evangelical. It’s the Catholics who are being inconsistent and hypocritical, and thinking much like evangelicals. If I were reading the same pope-bashing stuff in 1990, when I was seriously considering conversion, and railing against papal and conciliar infallibility as self-evident absurdities, I would have had a field day with it: stuffing it into my Catholic friends’ faces. It would have been my Exhibit #1 in the group discussions in my home that led to my conversion.

Perhaps I wouldn’t have even become a Catholic (at least not in that year). After all, I was so stubborn that it took Cardinal Newman’s ultra-sophisticated historical arguments about development of doctrine to bring me to my senses and admit defeat in debate.

So what does evangelical Hansen conclude, in reading such a book? Here is how he sums it up:

Not that he intended to do so, but I don’t think Douthat could’ve written a better apologetic for Protestant arguments against the papacy.

There you go, folks. This is supposed to be something that will edify Catholics and persuade Protestants to join us? It will have exactly the opposite effect. Even if the arguments in it were true and factually correct (they are not), it would have the same effect. But it’s all the more tragic that it will cause such skepticism and abandonment, being a pack of lies about the Holy Father. Here is how Hansen describes the outrageous premises of Douthat’s volume:

What if Pope Francis isn’t Catholic? What if he aims to overturn centuries of dogma? What if he plans to stack the College of Cardinals with liberal allies who will ensure his revolution can’t soon be reversed? What if he banishes his conservative critics to the church’s periphery? Who, then, will enforce the teaching on sexuality and marriage preserved against Western cultural trends by the late Pope John Paul II and self-titled Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI? Indeed, how can the vicar of Christ so confidently dismiss the words of Christ on marriage and adultery from the Gospels?

Yeah, what if? And what if none of these charges are true, as I and many others have, I think, shown again and again? What then? How would we get the genie back in the bottle? How would we unscramble that egg? It would be the perfect Satanic storm. I critiqued Douthat’s own severe flaws in thinking a little over two years ago, before this book was ever heard of.

At that time, Douthat said that “Francis is not a theological liberal.” He was mostly critiquing his economic and social views (it’s the typical regrettable either/or dichotomy between the Church’s doctrinal and social teaching), and contending that he was too lax against the liberals in the Church.

Douthat lacked faith in the indefectibility of the Church already by then, and he bashed Vatican II, which is the second of the three hallmarks of the radical reactionary Catholic (the other two being pope-bashing and ordinary form / Pauline Mass-bashing). Thus, the stage was set for his current no-holds-barred attack against the pope. He wrote:

Conservative Catholics need to come to terms with certain essential failures of Vatican II. For two generations now, conservatives in the Church have felt a need to rescue the real council, the orthodox council, from what Pope Benedict called “the council of the media.” . . . the council as experienced by most Catholics was the “council of the media,” the “spirit of Vatican II” council, and that the faithful’s experience of a council and its aftermath is a large part of its historical reality, no matter how much we might wish it to be otherwise. But its deliberations simply took place too soon to address the problems that broke across Catholicism and Christianity with the sexual revolution and that still preoccupy us now. Which is not to say that what the Church needs right now is a Council of Trent, exactly. The recent Synod on the Family suggests that, if attempted, the outcome would be either empty or disastrous.

In other words, he is thinking like a reactionary in two of three key respects. That’s the backdrop of his papal bashing now. I replied to this paragraph in my paper about him:

What has occurred is no more the failure of the council itself, than it is a failure of Pope Francis when the media and popular secular culture distort his view on a given subject. This is not an essential failure of Vatican II. Douthat seems particularly confused on this point: throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The misguided liberal “spirit of Vatican II” only proves that people delude themselves about the magisterium, and try to spin and distort it to the public. The fault for that lies on those who do it, not the council. Is this not utterly obvious?

I’ve documented how Phil Lawler was also starting to attack Vatican II itself. I’ve also demonstrated the heavy influence of past reactionary thinking in the signatories of the Filial Correction of the pope. Lawler — just like Douthat — questioned the authority of an ecumenical council (Vatican II). He did this in an article at his Catholic Culture site, dated 23 August 2017:

Did the problems that arose after Vatican II come solely because the Council’s teachings were ignored, or improperly applied? Or were there difficulties with the documents themselves? Were there enough ambiguities in the Council’s teaching to create confusion? If so, were the ambiguities intentional—the result of compromises by the Council fathers?

. . . the proponents of change can cite specific passages from Council documents in support of their plans. So are those passages being misinterpreted. Are they taken out of context? Or are there troublesome elements of the Council’s teaching, with which we should now grapple honestly? One thing is certain: we will not solve the problem by pretending that it does not exist.

This is classic reactionary thinking, folks. I know that, because I have studied the reactionary mindset closely for over twenty years. I have a major web page devoted to it (probably the most extensive from any orthodox Catholic), and have written not just one, but two books on the topic.

I’m doing my job as a Catholic apologist: studying serious errors within the Catholic milieu and warning people about them; showing how and why they are wrong. This sort of lack-of-faith, gossipy, fear-mongering mentality lies behind a great deal (not all) the current pope-bashing. The chain of thought, from one error to another, is clear as day.

Remember, Protestants deny that ecumenical councils are infallible, too, so once again, the pope-bashers exhibit another key trait of both radical reactionary, liberal Catholic, and Protestant thought: ecumenical councils can be questioned, and their results distorted and co-opted in plans to pervert their actual objective meanings (precisely what is being done now to the papal document Amoris Laetitia also). Hansen continues:

Douthat also repeatedly warns Francis against trying to remake the Catholic Church in the Protestant image. But conservative Protestants, at least, would actually recognize and support many of Douthat’s claims, . . .

How utterly ironic that statement is! It’s clearly Douthat who is thinking like Protestants and Catholic reactionaries (notorious for thinking like Protestants). After all, he is deliberately undercutting / questioning / bashing the authority of both a pope and an ecumenical council: both things that Protestants characteristically (and at least self-consistently) do. Luther attacked the pope and he attacked councils as self-contradictory (they “can and do err”: so said he at the Diet of Worms in 1521); therefore untrustworthy.

I noted sixteen days ago on my Facebook page that Protestants were being emboldened by Lawler’s book in the same way (“Thanks, Phil Lawler. Now the Anti-Catholic Protestants Are Taking Notice of Your Book and Mocking the Church as a Result”). This time it was the guy who runs the website, “excatholic4christ.” He wrote:

For centuries, Roman Catholics have proudly boasted to Protestants that their church alone was guided by the infallible “Vicar of Christ” and that the Holy Spirit would prevent any pope from leading the church into doctrinal error. . . .

This book is an absolutely incredible resource for evangelicals like myself who scrutinize the Roman Catholic church and have been observing this ongoing “Amoris” controversy. I read the entire book in only two sittings. We have not witnessed a similar crisis in our lifetime, as conservative Catholic clerics and lay leaders are absolutely bewildered by their pope and advising the laity to disobey him. My prayer is that this crisis will lead many Catholics to question the false claims once routinely made about their pope and the other man-made traditions of their church and to seek out the unchangeable Savior who offers them the Good News! of salvation by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone.

I also wrote about (on 2-22-18) how former Catholic Rod Dreher loves Phil Lawler’s book, too. Of course he does! It confirms his decision to leave the Catholic Church!

Douthat and Lawler precisely parrot Luther, dissident Catholics, and reactionary Catholics. And that’s why their books (not even getting to their innumerable errors and fallacies) are so outrageous and spiritually (even morally) dangerous to the flock, and to non-Catholics as well. Avoid them — and the gossip and trash-talk that invariably surrounds them, in comboxes and cocktail parties — like the plague, and warn others to do so as well.

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Photo credit: Photograph by Kallistii (5-7-14) [Pixabay / CC0 Creative Commons license]

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March 17, 2018

March 17, 2018 By

Folks, I called all this years ago.  My first book on the radical Catholic reactionaries, entitled, Reflections on Radical Catholic Reactionaries was completed in 2002. It had chapters called, “Post-Vatican II ‘Liberal’ Popes” and “Was Blessed Pope John Paul II a ‘Modernist’?” It’s all the same mentality. This is one of the trademarks of reactionary thought: pope-bashing. And if you bash one pope, you will bash any pope. I wrote about the same thing in my second book about reactionary Catholics: Mass Movements, in 2012, before Pope Francis was pope. There’s nothing new under the sun. All errors are recycled over and over.

We have a somewhat new thing today, in that Pope Francis is being increasingly bashed by people and venues who previously did not enter into the typically reactionary pastime of bashing popes. Now we have Phil Lawler’s hit piece, Lost Shepherd (see my many writings about that; especially my review for Amazon). We have Raymond Arroyo regularly bashing the pope on his TV show (and even on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News conservative politics show the other night). Lots of folks and venues have now jumped on the chic, fashionable bandwagon as well.

Meanwhile, the reactionaries, from whom this mentality (in my opinion) is directly derived (having engaged in it for over 50 years), have upped the ante. They have now started in on a full frontal attack on Pope Benedict XVI. He’s the big scapegoat (whereas he has been the hero of legitimate mainstream traditionalists and the wacko reactionaries for many years now). If he hadn’t resigned, we wouldn’t be where we are now (so they think). There’s nothing like one’s hero letting one down (so they think) and becoming a traitor. The “hero of reactionaries” was always a myth, and so is the “traitor” routine now fashionable. If you think this thing is ugly now, just give it six more months, or a few years. We ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

What appears to have triggered this next step in the evolution of rebellion against Catholic ecclesiology was the recent incident of the letter Pope Benedict wrote in support of Pope Francis (that I dealt with in my other post today). It’s nothing new. He has consistently supported him all along. But as a result of this occurrence, prominent reactionaries have decided to cast Pope Benedict to the wind and attack him with a fanatical fury and ignorant calumnious vehemence previously reserved only for Pope Francis.

I basically called this, too (i.e., specifically the attacks on Pope Benedict), and have been predicting it over the last several months. In my article, “Nothing New”: Reactionary Attacks on Pope St. John Paul II, from exactly two weeks ago, before the letter incident happened, I wrote:

Pope-bashing didn’t start with Pope Francis . . .

For a direct, demonstrable connection between this bashing of Pope John Paul the Great and the present bashing of Pope Francis, see my documentation of the opposition of many of the signatories of the Correctio, to Pope St. John Paul II’s beatification or canonization. Search “John Paul II” in this paper. There are 13 appearances. Michael Voris savaged Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation and accused him of abandoning his flock (he called the resignation “immoral”) and exaggerating his illness: another pathetic theme that is seen more and more as of late (example). Even his liturgical opinions are rejected.

The examples of bashing I provided from Chris Ferrara and Michal Matt of The Remnant and from Bob Sungenis, were actually from the years 2005 and 2011. I wrote about how it seemed that Cardinal Burke may be subtly questioning Pope Benedict’s resignation. That was over two months ago now.

Eight days ago I wrote about how the reactionaries were attacking Blessed Pope Paul VI due to his impending canonization (just as they bellyached and bloviated and whined like petulant 2-year-olds about St. John Paul the Great’s canonization). And now, just a week and a day later, we see  the latest movement to “diss” and reject Pope Benedict XVI. All these popes (along with Pope St. John XXIII) are perfectly consistent with each other. The reactionaries have finally figured that out and thus reject them all (just as the sedevacantists do; though the reactionaries don’t deny that they were valid popes, like the sedes).

Steve Skojec of One Vader Five infamy, citing certified wingnut Hilary White, has now jumped on the bandwagon, as I documented in my other post today. To get the full treatment of what we can now expect to regularly hear about Pope Benedict, there is no one better than the inimitable Hilary White to be our “guide.” She already gave indications of this more radical and tin-foil hat conspiratorial view a few years back (when I engaged in some surreal exchanges with her). Her revealingly titled savagery at The Remnant: “Et Tu, Benedict? (Some Final Thoughts on Joseph Ratzinger)” (3-12-18) tells us all we need to know. I shall cite as little of it as I can, to give you the idea (line breaks indicate a break in the text):

It’s been five years, and I’ve noticed that there are a lot fewer people talking about what a “courageous” act it was to give up the pontificate.

[A]s all the poisons that had been lurking for fifty years in the NewChurch mud are busily hatching out, many Catholics want to know why we hear nothing from him? This man whom we had believed a “champion of orthodoxy,” whom we thought we knew. Error, even heresy and blasphemy are pouring daily out of the mouth of his successor, who has, literally, turned the Vatican into a den of thieves, and we hear nothing but the occasional, carefully worded statement on how fine everything is.

There’s no doubt that this is an extremely strange and frankly fishy situation; something doesn’t add up, it’s true.

With the “arch-conservative” “Rottweiler” Ratzinger in CDF, why do we have the situation we have today? What did he do to stop the explosion of neo-modernism – that burned like an unchecked wildfire throughout the Catholic world through the reign of John Paul II?

[T]he scandalous pack of frauds we currently have in the episcopate is entirely the product of the “arch-conservative” John Paul II and the “Rottweiler” Benedict XVI pontificates. Why did we think that Ratzinger, in this crucial role of CDF prefect, was a bulwark of orthodoxy? Is it simply that we have moved so far away from the ancient Faith that we no longer have a realistic notion of the Faith ourselves to make a comparison, to make an objective judgement?

Steve Skojec told me that our willingness to go along with the whole “emeritus pope” charade was an error: “I think the problem is that we all went along with their game of make believe, and we shouldn’t have.” In fact, I am starting to think that the willingness of most Catholics to go along with the entire charade of post-conciliar Catholicism has been a grave error. By playing along, by pretending that we could be “conservative Catholics” in this New Paradigm that also includes “liberal Catholics” we have helped them perpetrate one the most monstrous frauds in human history.

For five decades we played the Anglican game; as long as we don’t talk about it, there isn’t a problem. Ottaviani’s Holy Office and schema were the last gasp of the old Church – and as de Lubac said above, it was killed by Joseph Ratzinger. We had a long hiatus in which the popes pretended nothing essential had changed, while the institution around them fell to the New Paradigm, until the papacy was the only thing left. One of the things I’ve been saying is a blessing in disguise, and an enormous relief, about the Bergoglian era is that we can finally leave behind us the absurd situation of the Wojtyla/Ratzinger era. We were expected for all those years to pretend we were in the “New Springtime of Vatican II,” while we watched these wolves in shepherds’ clothing eating the sheep. Now we can, at least, finally stop pretending that everything is just dandy under the New Paradigm of Merciful Conciliar Wonderfulness. For those still wondering, Bergoglio isn’t a shock, he isn’t even a surprise; he’s just the logical end result. This pontificate isn’t an anomaly; it was the only possible outcome, and it was as much the work of Joseph Ratzinger as Walter Kasper.

She added more worthless nonsense and potshots on her own site the next day:

Bergoglianism is the logical conclusion of VaticanTwoism, and that, not the historic Catholic Faith, is what Ratzinger always believed in.

I seriously had no idea there was this letter thing coming. I knew nothing about it before yesterday morning. And, as predicted by some Traddie pals, it has been leapt-upon by increasingly hysterical “conservatives”, desperate to make excuses for darling Benedict, concocting Dan-Brown-thriller conspiracies to explain it: Benedict was threatened. Benedict was coerced. Benedict didn’t write it.

But I think it’s time to drive this home: Ratzinger isn’t coming to save us. He isn’t the pope. He wasn’t “coerced” into resigning. He hasn’t been intimidated into silence. All these people concocting hysterical fantasies about this have failed to do him the courtesy of taking him at his word. He has repeatedly told us, but we have continued to refuse to accept it.

He was never a hero of orthodoxy. We were fooled. We bought the media propaganda. Maybe it’s wounded pride that keeps us trying to defend him.

The truth is the man we loved never existed. He was created for us out of a blend of wishful thinking and secular media narrative, propaganda which we heavily bought into because we were terrified of the alternative.

The evidence is starting to be gathered, in fact, that Ratzinger himself had more than a little to do with the debacle of the Synods and Amoris Laetitia.

I know the big, bitter Red Pill is hard to choke down, but once you do you will feel so much better.

Chris Ferrara of The Remnant: arguably the most vocal and influential reactionary writing today, is ready to jump on board. He wrote (3-14-18):

[I]f Benedict is aware of the Bergoglian Debacle, then the conclusion that he is knowingly aiding and abetting it is inescapable. In that case, the letter to Vigano would be just another example of how the conciliar Popes have presided over an epoch of deception that the Vatican has been orchestrating for more than fifty years.  . . .

That fraud upon the Church was finally exposed by Benedict himself in Summorum Pontificum. Yet even Summorum kept the fraud going on some level by means of the shifty rhetoric that has enabled the post-conciliar revolution from its inception. . . .

Here, and in so many other places throughout Joseph Ratzinger’s long ecclesiastical career, we see an evidently conflicted theological liberal, a “moderate” Modernist who was instrumental in the Council’s disastrous departure from its traditional schema. Yet he later had the intellectual honesty to admit the failure of the post-conciliar aggiornamento, especially where the new liturgy is concerned, while invoking the utopian hope in a future realization of “the true Council” by way of a “hermeneutic of continuity” that he was never able to explain and should never have been necessary in the first place. . . .

But who can provide a definitive diagnosis of the mind of Ratzinger, his subjective intentions for the Church over some sixty years, or the reasons for his mysterious abdication? Certainly not this writer. This much is clear, however: Pope Benedict’s abdication and the rise of Bergoglianism mark the end of the line for neo-Catholicism and its ruinous attempt, assisted too often by Ratzinger himself, to reconcile Tradition with the spirit of the age.

Calypso Louie Verrecchio (“aka Catholic”) throws in his two cents as well (3-15-18):

Let us not forget, however, that the stage was set for the Bergoglian propaganda operation by yet another audacious act of fakery – the so-called “resignation” of Benedict the Abdicator, who, according to no less an authority than his longtime and current personal secretary, Archbishop Ganswein, thereby sought to transform the Petrine Office by dividing its duties among two men.

There you have it, folks. This kind of outrageous bilge is the ultimate logical reduction of the pope-bashing going on today with regard to Pope Francis. If you despise Francis, you start thinking about the pope who resigned and made his pontificate possible. And then you start to go after him and engage in ridiculous conspiracy theories. Blessed Pope Paul VI and Pope St. John Paul II were bashed before that (and still are today). It’s a mentality. It’s the spirit of falsehood and calumny and gossip and rumormongering.

People engage in it, of course, to different degrees of consistency, fanaticism, and rebellious attitude. I know that. But I also am trying to take a long view of this mess and what it might evolve into as we go forward. It has already evolved quite a bit. I do so based on my long study of both reactionaries and pope-bashing in particular. I’m trying to issue a warning. I’ve been proven right in predicting that more and more people would start attacking Pope St. John Paul II and also Pope Benedict XVI. I was writing about it way back in 2002. Perhaps I am also right about my overall thesis, and in my belief that Pope Francis has not proven himself to be a heretic or subversive revolutionary at all.

I’m calling it as I see it. And you, the reader, have to make up your mind whether you want to join in this “feeding frenzy” of unjust pope-criticism going on every day and growing every day. Will you jump on the bandwagon so you can be praised and lauded by all of those already on it, or will you speak out against it, because it’s wrong and a disgrace? This stuff may be fashionable in certain circles, but it still remains true that Pope Francis has an 84% approval rate among American Catholics (essentially identical to that of world Catholic opinion), according to a recent survey of Pew Research. So there are plenty of people who have not jumped on the bandwagon. Think and act as a Catholic should. Think for yourself!

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Photo credit: Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, later pope Benedict XVI., in the colors of his fraternity, KDStV Rupertia Regensburg im Cartellverband (undetermined date). Photo from KDStV Rupertia Regensburg [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license]

March 17, 2018

March 17, 2018 By

It never ceases to amaze me how prior bias will adversely affect the 1) logic and the 2) objectivity of people. Critics of Pope Francis take one side of this debate over what Pope Benedict thinks of Pope Francis. But it’s not logical thinking, as I will show. They are seeing only what they want to see, which is what happens when strong prior bias comes into play. For the background to the controversy, see Edward Pentin’s article, which I will refer to later, and a second one by Mike Lewis that speculates in-depth on why someone at the Vatican did this.

I couldn’t care less about the motives or reasons of whoever “doctored” the photograph of the text. My only interest is in determining the nature of Pope Benedict’s opinion of Pope Francis, based on the evidence of the full letter, and in examining the reasoning of the Francis-critics who seem to think that the “doctoring” somehow alters Pope Benedict’s opinion.

The full text can be read in Pentin’s article, and he is a papal critic, so I can’t be accused of using a “pro-pope” translator. Here are the two paragraphs where Pope Benedict expresses his view that the pontificate of Pope Francis is in continuity / consistent with his own. Francis critics — almost to a person — think this is not the case. Yet Pope Benedict has not said anything critical of Pope Francis, that I’m aware of, and I have been following all of this for five years now, as an apologist. The present material is in complete “inner continuity” with what he has said in the past:

I applaud this initiative that wants to oppose and react to the foolish prejudice in which Pope Francis is just a practical man without particular theological or philosophical formation, while I have been only a theorist of theology with little understanding of the concrete life of a Christian today.

The small volumes show, rightly, that Pope Francis is a man of profound philosophical and theological formation, and they therefore help to see the inner continuity between the two pontificates, despite all the differences of style and temperament.

That’s both a positive endorsement of Francis’ pontificate, and a positive assessment of it as in complete consistency with his own, even taking into account “differences of style and temperament.” People tried to make out in 2005 that Benedict would be fundamentally or essentially different from Pope St. John Paul II. He wasn’t, and I wrote right after he was elected, that he wouldn’t be. Now they are trying to make out that Pope Francis is fundamentally or essentially different from Pope Francis, and he is not, and Benedict himself says he is not. I’ve been contending for the same opinion these past five years.

Even the radical Catholic reactionary pope-basher Steve Skojec admits that these paragraphs represent a “fairly hearty endorsement of Francis.” Michael J. Matt, editor of The Remnant (the most prominent reactionary site), echoes his sentiments, throwing in a dash of conspiratorialism for good measure:

In a March 11th letter signed by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and addressed to Msgr. Dario Vigano, prefect of the Secretariat for Communications, the former pope reportedly offers an impassioned defense of Pope Francis against the claim that he lacks theological and philosophical formation. In no uncertain terms, this letter, bearing Benedict’s signature, affirms that “there is an internal continuity between the two pontificates.”  Whether Benedict actually wrote this letter or not, it gives rise to a number of grave questions that need to be answered rather urgently before history closes the book on this commedia diabolica.

So now the task of the Francis-critics is to somehow undermine this clearly expressed opinion of Pope Benedict. They do so by noting the next long paragraph, that was initially omitted by the Vatican:

However, I don’t feel like writing a short and dense theological passage on them because throughout my life it has always been clear that I would write and express myself only on books I had read really well. Unfortunately, if only for physical reasons, I am unable to read the eleven volumes in the near future, especially as other commitments await me that I have already made.

Papal critic Sandro Magister interprets the final paragraph as Benedict’s real opinion, expressed with “refined” irony, so as to wipe out the earlier portion, which was (he seems to think, best I can make out) merely boilerplate and perhaps not (hint hint wink wink) “sincere candor” like the last paragraph was:

And then there is that final paragraph, omitted in the press release, in which Ratzinger, with sincere candor, provides proof of his refined streak of irony. It’s all there for the reading. And he who wishes to understand, let him understand.

Reactionary luminary Chris Ferrara takes it further by essentially implying that Pope Benedict was lying and taking part in a cynical ruse:

Benedict’s obvious slighting of “the theology of Pope Francis” does indeed lend itself to reading the letter as a whole thus: “I am saying what I am expected to say, but I want you to know that I cannot vouch for it.” And yet Benedict was still willing to subscribe to the claim that eleven volumes he hadn’t read “rightly show that Pope Francis is a man of profound philosophical and theological formation,” thus providing the Vatican PR machine with a handy blurb for a work of which he knows practically nothing. This bespeaks either undue influence upon him or his own lack of candor. Which, I cannot say for certain. . . .

Despite its contrary signaling, therefore, Benedict’s letter to Vigano must be seen as cooperation in a scheme to rescue Bergoglio’s imploding papacy from itself, no matter what Benedict’s subjective intention may have been in going along with the ruse. The letter’s claim of an “internal continuity” between his pontificate and Bergoglio’s is a transparent evasion of the truth. “Internal continuity” is just another way of saying “apparent lack of continuity.” Nor can the apparent lack of continuity be reduced to “differences of style and temperament.”

Steve Skojec in a separate article a day later noted how many papal critics blithely assumed that the initial abridged letter was a fake (as Michael Matt hinted above). He vehemently denies this. His solution to the “dilemma” (“how can Benedict like Francis?!?! The sky is falling!!!!”) is to “diss” Pope Benedict. I have been predicting lately, that this was coming. In the rush to bash Francis, the mentality would also spread to Benedict and Pope St. John Paul II. Currently, the reactionaries are objecting vociferously to the impending canonization of Blessed Pope Paul VI, because they hate Vatican II. Skojec feels these inner tensions in his position, and so like a true extreme reactionary that he is, he gets consistent and includes Benedict in on the conspiracy to subvert Holy Mother Church:

Simply because I continue to assert that a) Benedict most likely wrote this letter praising Francis and claiming continuity between their pontificates and b) Benedict bears a responsibility for what is happening now that he has a duty to confront, I have been blocked on Facebook, have lost financial supporters of this website, and have generally met with reactions varying from incredulity to accusations that I am falling prey to obvious lies to anger and accusations of disrespect. . . .

And it is this kind of attachment we have to the idea of Benedict as a guy who would never go along with what’s happening really demands deeper consideration.  . . . The rot beneath the surface was merely papered over by the 21st century analog of authentic, rooted, traditional orthodoxy; by the trappings of office and the liturgical nostalgia of a pope like Benedict who nevertheless counted himself as among the theological revolutionaries who gave birth to the post-conciliar experiment — an experiment that has categorically and manifestly failed.

His critics want to maintain the illusion that Benedict was the darling and savior of reactionaries and mainstream traditionalists, while Francis is Satan Incarnate (or at least Attila the Hun). The letter under consideration blows through all that (Benedict clearly praises and agrees with Francis). So Skojec — in his nearly infinite wisdom — concludes that Benedict is a bad guy, too: one of those wascally wascal “neo-Catholics” intent on destroying all that is good and traditional.

We could go into all sorts of what has been speculated about regarding this letter, among the papal critics. Skojec and Magister will suffice as examples of the mindset. But as a general summary, we can say that the critics used the blurring incident as a way to discount what was said about Pope Francis in the beginning. This doesn’t work at all, because it’s quite easy to fully reconcile the two portions of the letter. The following considerations and proposed possibilities or scenarios are all perfectly feasible:

  1. Pope Benedict looked over the eleven volumes briefly (perhaps for several hours or an evening’s reading, for all we know), saw that it was in harmony with his own previous opinions and then gave an overall summary of the books. But he candidly admitted that he didn’t have the time or energy to read all eleven volumes and write a more meaty “dense theological passage on them.” The first paragraph is simply his prior oft-expressed opinion of Pope Francis.
  2. People write short “blurb” reviews of books they haven’t fully read, all the time. If anyone denies that they do ever this, don’t believe them. They also use ghost writers under their own name (which I’ve never ever done, and I have 49 published books). I’ve done this with regard to book reviews several times, myself. I can “heavily skim” books (a variant of speed reading) and get enough from them to know that I agree or disagree, and then write a review (sometimes the longest one a particular book receives). I’ve even put together several quotations books by this method. Note: in case anyone is wondering, I did fully read Lost Shepherd by Phil Lawler before negatively reviewing it.
  3. It’s not absolutely required of a person (even if he didn’t have a firm prior opinion as Benedict does here) to literally read eleven volumes to conclude that a given person “is a man of profound philosophical and theological formation.” One can, for example, peruse the five volumes of the Summa Theologica for twenty minutes and rightly and justifiably conclude that about St. Thomas Aquinas. Or they could gaze at forty volumes from St. Augustine in a library and grasp that Augustine was also such a mind.
  4. The observation of not having read the whole set (Pentin’s translation uses the phrase of not having read it “really well”: i.e., not totally, implying that he had read some of it), simply doesn’t contradict the earlier portion, based on the reasoning of #1 and #2 above. He felt fully justified in writing his summary statements, but not in writing a more in-depth analysis which would require a full reading (reading “really well”).
  5. Because the critics want so much to believe that their darling Pope Benedict opposes Pope Francis just as they do, they desperately jumped at the opportunity of discounting the first portion based on the second and the blurring / “censoring” by others. But consider the implications of that for a second. It would follow that the former pope was not being sincere in the two early paragraphs (or to be more blunt, was flat-out lying). Magister reconciles this by asserting a use of irony. But this won’t do. It’s a half-baked “solution” made up on the spot to salvage his prior anti-Francis bias. Others go for the “fake letter” or “coerced letter” wacko conspiratorial theories. Or they can go the route of Skojec of One Vader Five infamy (following the thought — cited at length — of the even more radical extremist Hilary White) and conclude in despair that former hero Ratzinger / Benedict is a bad, sinister guy, too, and alas, was all along. I think my proposed explanation is a lot more plausible and feasible.

Addendum: Now there is yet another portion of the letter that has come out: the actual final section. Pope Benedict objected to the inclusion of one particular writer in the eleven-volume set:

Just as a side note, I would like to mention my surprise at the fact that the authors also include Professor Hünermann, who during my pontificate put himself in the spotlight by heading anti-papal initiatives. He participated to a significant extent in the promulgation of the “Kölner Erklärung,” which, in relation to the encyclical “Veritatis Splendor,” attacked in a virulent manner the magisterial authority of the pope especially on questions of moral theology. The Europäische Theologengesellschaft, which he founded, also was initially designed by him as an organization in opposition to the papal magisterium.

Sandro Magister notes in his article about it:

German theologian Peter Hünermann, . . . was an implacable critic both of John Paul II and of Joseph Ratzinger himself as theologian and as pope. About Hünermann, a professor at the university of Tubingen, it may be recalled that he is the author of, among other things, a commentary on Vatican Council II that is the polar opposite of the Ratzingerian interpretation.

This doesn’t alter my argument above in the slightest because my topic was what Pope Benedict thought of Pope Francis: not his opinion of some radically liberal theologian who was included in the set. If anything, this supports our contention that Pope Benedict is orthodox and no liberal, because here he vehemently opposes a liberal participant in the set, which runs contrary to the present blistering attacks on Pope Benedict as a modernist: documented in my other article today. It also highlights all the more, the former pope’s declaration in the first part of the letter that Pope Francis’ thought and policies continue his own. Thus, he is surprised that someone with a different interpretation is included in the set.

None of that changes at all what the pope expressed as to his agreement in spirit with Pope Francis, as even reactionaries concede (hence, my citation in this regard of Skojec and Matt above). At the most, it explains that Pope Benedict’s reluctance to make a full endorsement based on a complete reading had to do with more than just being elderly and time considerations; it also included this objection. But neither objection is based on some imagined fundamental disagreement with the theology and approach of Pope Francis. Thus, realizing and recognizing this continuity of the present pope and the precious one, the reactionaries (due to their utter despising of Pope Francis) are now seeking to trash and bash Pope Benedict as a stinking neo-Catholic modernist, just as they have been doing with all other popes since Ven. Pope Pius XII.

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Photo credit: Pope Benedict XVI during a general audience (5-2-07; taken by Tadeusz Górny) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

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March 10, 2018

March 10, 2018 By

Stephen Phelan is vice president of family initiatives for the St. John Paul II Foundation, based in Houston, Texas. He has produced three documentaries that have been broadcast on EWTN, and his articles have been published in First Things, Lay Witness Magazine, and other publications. He was replying to my Amazon review of Lost Shepherd, on a thread at The Catholic World Report, where my review was linked. His words (reproduced in their entirety) will be in blue.

*****

Mr. Armstrong’s article fails for precisely the same reasons that he says Lawler’s book fails. In citing articles that “prove” Pope Francis’s intent in Amoris Laetitia, Armstrong ignores the many, many claims from Francis’ allies that the Church’s teaching (no longer just “pastoral practice) have undergone a “paradigm shift” or “revolution”.

The first rule of logic is a=a. A book review is a book review. I was reviewing a book written by Phil Lawler: a credentialed Catholic journalist and author. Thus, I was reviewing his thoughts and particular arguments: not the opinions of who knows how many “allies” of the pope. They may or may not have false views. These would have to be examined one-by-one. But it was simply not within the purview of a book review.

I’m not a [muckraking] journalist (as I alluded to in my review). I don’t get into “who said what?” and “who did what?” and “palace intrigue”-type speculation. That’s the “stuff” and domain of journalists and/or gossips, not theologians and professional apologists like myself: who prefer to stick to theology and ascertained facts. Now, Mr. Lawler claims in the book that the pope is actively seeking to subvert Catholic teachings and traditions.

My reviews (I’ve written five; summarized or condensed in the Amazon review to which Mr. Phelan was responding) specifically dealt with the grandiose claims made by Mr. Lawler in his Introduction. Accordingly, I was looking for some serious and compelling proofs of the claims made, and I never found them. I saw no proofs documented from the pope himself; nothing remotely compelling at all.

Instead I discovered arguments from silence, conclusions based on false premises from remarks taken wildly out of context (“Who am I to judge?”), “arguments” based on paraphrases from memory of the pope’s statements, as well as flat-out absurd and unsubstantiated or fallaciously argued assertions (my favorite of those was: “[Francis] appeared to suggest that . . . St. James and . . . even St. Peter himself—were not believers”).

And now, defenders of Mr. Lawler like Mr. Phelan want me to also deal with “allies” of the pope (these include, for example, Cardinal Müller, who thinks the pope is perfectly orthodox), in a book review of a book that directly accuses Pope Francis of very grave errors. Sorry. I’m a big believer in dealing with one major issue at a time. It’s not my burden — in this context — to deal with every Tom, Dick, and Harry having to do with Pope Francis (he is, after all, supposedly the “lost shepherd”). It’s Mr. Lawler’s intellectual burden to substantiate his extraordinary accusations. I believe I have demonstrated some serious weaknesses in his attempt to do that.

Then Armstrong accuses Lawler of taking Pope Francis’s (Who am I to judge) statement out of context, and Armstrong does this by deliberately taking Lawler out of context, and dismissing his qualifications as if he hadn’t said them.

I did no such thing. I cited Mr. Lawler’s own words: “the pope’s statement seemed to suggest that the Church should move away from its clear and constant teaching that homosexual acts are gravely immoral.” I provided a link to the actual statement in context, that he or anyone else can read for themselves. Then I chided him for overlooking context (as a veteran journalist), gave examples of three concrete actions or statements, which reveal that the pope is not soft on the issue at all, and cited Jewish New York Times columnist Laurie Goodstein, who “gets” this, while Mr. Lawler doesn’t. Now I’m accused of taking Mr. Lawler out of context (an alleged instance of projection, I guess). Okay, let’s examine that.

Mr. Lawler devoted two-and-a-half pages to the question. First of all, I can hardly cite all of that. It would have taken up half of my review. So I can’t give the reader all of that context, whereas I can link to the context of the pope’s remarks. Lawler obviously set the stage for the insinuation that Pope Francis was a “liberal”; hence, soft on homosexuality as both theological and political liberals notoriously are. He wrote:

At first, Francis seemed to defy easy classification as a “liberal” or “conservative,” but as the months passed, a pattern emerged of support for causes usually associated with the political Left—environmentalism, disarmament, unrestricted immigration, income redistribution.

He qualifies a bit (but it itself is qualified by “at least initially”):

After all, on other hot-button political issues, Francis seemed to have taken a conservative position—at least initially. During his tenure as archbishop of Buenos Aires he had denounced a proposal for acceptance of same-sex marriage as the work of the devil. More recently, he had admitted that he was concerned about the possible influence of a “gay lobby” within the Vatican.

So there is a qualification (granted). But Mr. Lawler immediately “takes it back” in the next paragraph:

But if orthodox Catholics had concluded that Francis would stand firm against homosexual influence within the Church, their confidence was shattered by his remarks to reporters on a trip to Brazil in July 2013. Asked about homosexual priests, he replied, “If they accept the Lord and have good will, who am I to judge them?”

After that, Mr. Lawler descends to “palace intrigue” elements (as he often does in the book) and what he thinks the pope should have addressed in that interview but didn’t. Then he chided the pope for his lack of care. That’s all well and good, and reasonable people can possibly take such a stand in good faith. But in the final analysis, the impression is still undeniably left that the pope is personally soft on the issue: not just guilty of imprecise, irresponsible statements regarding it.

And Lawler still has not examined the five infamous words in their proper context: which is always a primary responsibility in dealing with others and a matter of fundamental journalistic ethics.

The book makes many such mere insinuations, yet without anything near compelling proof; whereas in my critiques I provided actual concrete examples of the pope’s stand on the issue:

  • Pope Francis opposed so-called “gay marriage” in a Slovakian referendum in February 2015.
  • He did the same in December 2015 as regards Slovenia.
  • In January 2015, the pope visited the Philippines and stated: “The family is also threatened by growing efforts on the part of some to redefine the very institution of marriage, by relativism, by the culture of the ephemeral, by a lack of openness to life.”

I went much more in-depth in my earlier review on this issue alone. I wrote there:

[Lawler] Why were the most famous words of his pontificate uttered in an informal question-and-answer session on an airplane ride?

To answer the last question first: obviously it was because the media / reporters from the session wanted the words taken out of context to be spread far and wide. I don’t see how the pope is to blame for that. Everyone knows that words are often taken out of context in order to suit some particular agenda of the one citing them. And everyone knows that the secular media very often does that. I need not waste any time arguing this. It’s perfectly self-evident.

The relevant question is, then (as in our previous installment): what is the pope’s true view, and what did he express in this interview, in context?

Same with his weird claim in which he quotes Lawler, including his qualification of Scalfari’s method and translation, when Lawler (rightly) says that Scalfari’s quote of Pope Francis “appeared to cast doubt on the existence of hell.” Of course the quote did, and the fact that Pope Francis has many times spoken of hell does not change the fact of the Scalfari quote in question.

The claim is that my counter-argument was “weird”? I submit that it was nowhere near as weird as Mr. Lawler’s joke-of-a-pseudo-“argument” based on paraphrases of the pope’s words from memory from a 92-year-old atheist, who also recently claimed that the pope denies the existence of heaven and purgatory too (!!!). No one could make that up in imagining a novel. And to top it off, Mr. Lawler again refused to do the research himself as to what Pope Francis actually believes; so I had to do it for him, and he comes off looking quite reckless and feckless indeed: to make such charges.

So why attribute to Lawler the false claim (or implication) that he thinks the pope doesn’t believe in hell, other than his obvious point that the pope often speaks carelessly about important things, 

Again, Mr. Lawler somewhat subtly insinuates this. But that’s all he needs to do, in the present toxic, gossipy environment where many millions will eagerly eat up any suggestion (subtle and/or qualified or not) that the pope is “again” heterodox or out of line or “scandalous.” All Lawler had to (and did) say was, “This time Francis—at least as interpreted by his favorite interviewer—appeared to cast doubt on the existence of hell”. Then he quoted the words (which again, are not the pope’s own) and left them hanging (like a bitter aftertaste or a frightening image in a nightmare).

He certainly must know that the typical reader of a book of this nature will interpret that as “the pope denies hell!” So why would he present this  as he did, with no effort to document what the pope actually believes (as I have done): if indeed he doesn’t think the pope actually denies it? It’s scurrilous, muckraking journalism. We expect that of Big Liberal Media. But it’s a disgrace, coming from a reputable Catholic journalist, regarding the Holy Father.

or, in the case of Scalfari, keeps giving him interviews in which he is misquoted, but does not demand a correction.

I think it’s legitimate to question the prudence and wisdom of the pope continuing to utilize Scalfari (I do, myself), but that’s a different question from whether he actually denies hell (not to mention purgatory and heaven) or not.

If this is a “defense” of Pope Francis, then let us pray he gains more able defenders, and advisors. As a critique of Lawler’s book, it fails miserably.

Mr. Phelan is entitled to his opinion. He also can choose to ignore this  critique of mine, just as all my critiques of Mr. Lawler’s books have been utterly ignored by the legions of Francis bashers, as to their substance: not touched with a ten-foot pole by anyone (including by Mr. Lawler, who informed me when he gave me a copy of his book that he had no interest in further dialogue).

As always, I am quite happy to let my readers judge the merits of my arguments. And (as above) I allow those I am critiquing to have their say in their own words, so my readers can read the arguments of both sides of a difference of opinion, expressed by both proponents, and then determine where the truth more plausibly lies.

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Photo credit: Image by geralt (12-8-15) [Pixabay / CC0 Creative Commons license]

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March 6, 2018

March 6, 2018 By

These exchanges occurred underneath a related post of mine, and under my review of Phil Lawler’s Lost Shepherd on Amazon. At the end I throw in a few comments made in private correspondence with two different people. Words of others will be in various colors.

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Dave, you wrote that you and Karl [Keating] both defended previous popes against people from the left and right, and imply that you are doing no different here. But what makes this different is that Pope Francis appears (and I do emphasize “appears”) to be trying to alter unchangeable doctrines about marriage and the Eucharist.

Benedict and JPII as universalists? Even if they were, they didn’t cause doctrinal teachings to change in that direction. Thus, Catholics should defend these popes. Benedict exaggerating his illness? Even if true, it has no bearing on doctrine or dogma. Catholics should defend him. Popes since John XXIII as modernists? Even if true, they didn’t attempt to change the unchangeable teachings on marriage and the Eucharist. Catholics should defend the popes. Francis perhaps allowing the door to open for divorced-and-remarrieds to receive the Eucharist without a firm purpose of amendment? Catholics should not defend this.

You and I must agree that Francis can’t change unchangeable teachings — a guarantee of the Holy Spirit! So… the only problem I see here is how to reconcile his teachings (such as Amoris Laetitia) with such a promise. That’s more difficult to do lately without a lot of mental and verbal gymnastics. I’m not saying that you’re doing such gymnastics, but I wonder if you should be a wee bit more sympathetic to Lawler and his ilk.

Amoris Laetitia can easily be defended because there is nothing heterodox in it. Hence, a paper from a theology professor recently posted on my blog: Five Dubia: Answers from Amoris Laetitia Itself (Dr. Fastiggi). See also many more articles in defense of its orthodoxy in my long collection of materials on Pope Francis (just search “Amoris Laetitia“).

Why should I be sympathetic to Phil Lawler when he makes lousy, fallacious arguments: some of the worst I’ve ever seen? See my Amazon review that no one has even attempted to refute: just as they haven’t touched my earlier five blog reviews in two months.

Yes, you’ve given many quotes where Francis has reaffirmed traditional teaching. But…Quotes from here and there don’t necessarily offset other statements that contradict those quotes. For instance, a politician can tell me all day long that he’s in favor of a bill but then go into the legislative chamber and vote against it.

With AL, Pope Francis has given ambiguous direction to his flock. Yes, Dr. Fastiggi makes some good points. But a good shepherd would answer the dubia from his cardinals. The actual response? Silence. Maybe not an outright problem in itself. 

But what comes next? A heterodox interpretation from Argentina that the pope clearly endorsed. Hmm…what next? The pope enters that statement about Argentinian interpretation as official “acta” of his office.  That seems to be a refutation to your thesis that the pope is conforming perfectly to his predecessors.

Final point: I gently caution you about an air of superiority. What’s with this “No one has ever attempted to refute me? and “No one’s ever touched my five blog reviews”? I’m amicably trying to do counter your views here! Please take it in such a manner without scoffing at honest attempts at dialog.

The Buenos Aires statement (like Amoris Laetitia) is orthodox and doesn’t change anything, as both Cardinal Müller and sometimes critic of the pope, canon lawyer Edward Peters have pointed out.

As for the pope allegedly sending conflicting signals, I wrote about that in my review of Lawler on Amazon:

There were insinuations here and there that the pope is talking out of both sides of his mouth and being two-faced: not saying what he “really” means. But anyone can say that about any person at any time and attempt to “prove” any theory whatever. That would be like saying, “Armstrong really loves Lawler’s book. He’s just saying the opposite to fool all of us.” Personally, I prefer hard facts, not “jesuitical” conspiracy theories.

It’s not an “air of superiority” to note that no one has attempted to refute one’s particular arguments. It’s frustrating to me that no one seems to be willing to debate the merits of Lawler’s book. Like much discourse today, folks get into their camps and echo chambers, and never the twain shall meet. Now many think Lawler’s book is the greatest thing since sliced bread, and it’s getting praised to the skies, yet when I read it and critiqued it, I found it to be of a very low quality, and in my opinion his points were not proven at all.

I stated that no one has attempted to take on my specific arguments in my reviews of Lawler’s book. That’s simply a fact. You haven’t at all, either. As Dizzy Dean said, “it ain’t braggin’ if you can do it.” If anyone has an “air of superiority” it is those who criticize and scold the pope as if he were some ordinary Catholic rebel of no particular importance.

I’ll buy that — thanks for your reply. I’ll just leave it at this: Your position would indeed be bulletproof and impervious if you could supply a quote where Francis has said, “Based on our theology of the sacraments, the Church cannot ever admit to Holy Communion those who are in an objectively adulterous relationship, despite what they may believe in their consciences.”

Your quoting his beliefs on so-called gay marriage and his orthodoxy on the indissolubility of marriage are not relevant to AL. The issue lies with the Eucharist and whether it can be administered to those in mortal sin. Francis hasn’t slammed the door on that — oh how I wish you could indeed find such a quote!

People are assuming that he believes this, but they have no basis. You ask for him to deny it. I would like to see a quotation where he asserts it. That’s where the burden of proof lies. Otherwise, it’s an argument from silence. Thus, the “answer” is provided by Dr. Fastiggi in the above-cited article:

In AL there are no changes in regard to the requirements of priests and penitents with respect to the Sacrament of Penance. In AL, 3 Pope Francis indicates that the exhortation does not represent an intervention on the part of the magisterium to introduce new teachings on “doctrinal, moral or pastoral” issues. Nowhere in AL does Pope Francis give permission for divorced and civilly “remarried” Catholics to receive Holy Communion who are not observing continence.

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Your Verbosity is overwhelming in such a way as to demonstrate your obvious bias. Broaden your own knowledge and review some historical facts of this “Black Pope.” His reign of terror alone in far off Argentina should have been enough to discredit any claim to the papacy. 

My review is only 1636 words, or about five-and-a-half pages, but this is no rational argument (Lawler has an obvious bias, too), and you offer none against my critique. What else is new? There’s very little true dialogue online anymore. Most people don’t even attempt it at all. You read two negative books and so Pope Francis is Satan Incarnate. I’m unimpressed.

Serious question to you Armstrong, “How do you explain all the confusion that his beset the Church since Francis became pope?” 

I explain it by all the confusion that beset the Church after Vatican II and every other ecumenical council. It doesn’t make them illegitimate and it doesn’t make Pope Francis, and you are assuming the fallacy of “after Francis therefore because of Francis”: which is the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

Does the pope speak out of both sides of his mouth? Yes. He says something Catholic one day and then heretical the next. You are just cherry picking the moments this pope decides to play Catholic and ignoring all the times the pope propagates heresy. 

You assume that the pope is a lying deceiver. Therefore, no rational discussion can be had with you about him, as I alluded to in my review, because if he says something orthodox, you merely conclude that he is lying and deceiving. Thus (in your mentality), there is no conceivable rational way in which he can be proven to hold orthodox positions.

Interesting how you won’t respond to a simple question, Do you reject or accept the proposition ‘The pope is propagating ambiguous, incoherent, or contradictory teachings that are misleading faithful Catholics’? A simple reject or accept would suffice.” Learning from Pope Francis I see. Never give a straight answer. Matthew 5:37 

My answer to that was clear in my review. If you had read it, you would already know. Why, then, do you ask me? Since you appear to be unable to deduce the answer in my review, it’s “reject.”

Is this the famous podiatric surgeon, or the lawyer of the same name? If so, I think it would be better for you to stick to being the expert in your own profession.

No. I’d be a lot richer if so. I’m the guy who wrote three articles  (one / two / three) which are hosted by Catholic Culture: the website where Phil Lawler is Director, and a regular columnist. I’m also mentioned in four others there (one / two / three / four), by Lawler’s longtime co-worker, Dr. Jeff Mirus. In the third link, Dr. Mirus kindly writes:

Sophia Press is offering a collection of eighty short essays by Catholic convert and apologist Dave Armstrong, entitled Proving the Catholic Faith is Biblical. Reading this is very like reading a collection of CatholicCulture.org’s commentaries by Phil Lawler or myself; the little essays are drawn chiefly from Armstrong’s excellent work online addressing questions that come up again and again as Protestants challenge the faith of their Catholic neighbors.

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My position has been all along that it would be good for him to clarify (as to the Dubia and confusion surrounding Amoris Laetitia), and I strongly argued that in an article for National Catholic Register (September 2017). But if he doesn’t, the answers to the Dubia are already in Amoris Laetitia.

I don’t know why he doesn’t provide such clarity. But I know that he has not asserted falsehood in this regard. Why didn’t Blessed Pope Paul VI clear up a lot of the confusion that also followed Vatican II (in which liberals dishonestly exploited supposed “loopholes” just as they are doing now? The reactionaries blame him for much of that, too.

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There are a lot of conspiracy theories floating around. I like to stick with ascertainable facts. I do know that Lawler’s book contains some of the worst argumentation in it that I have ever seen from an established Catholic writer. Whether Pope Francis turns out to be Attila the Hun or Vlad the Impaler or not (when history and the Church and God judge him in the end), it still remains true that this book presents no compelling argument (or much of an argument at all) for his being some kind of heretic or dissident.

You had to be given solid facts and reasons to change your mind and become a Catholic. I’m simply asking for the same with regard to the pope. If my critiques of Lawler’s book are wrong, I have to be shown how and why, or else I will retain the views, just as I do with regard to anything else. I’ve never believed things merely because “everyone else” does. That’s the ad populum fallacy.

You’re quite right that I am not right simply because no one wants to try to refute what I write about the pope. On the other hand, it sure is unimpressive — if you guys are right about this — that not a soul can be found to interact with and refute my reviews of Lawler’s book. If the case is so strong; so compelling and unarguable, don’t you think there would be someone (not a sedevacantist or extreme reactionary like the ones “replying” on Amazon) who could blow any defenses of mine out of the water?

I’m just explaining my perspective, from where I sit. If I make arguments and no one even tries to refute them, there’s no reason for me to change my mind. I have to be shown how I am wrong (just as I was shown that I was wrong to be a Protestant in 1990).

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Photo credit: A Protestant Allegory, by Girolamo da Treviso the Younger (1508-1544). The four evangelists stone the pope, together with hypocrisy and avarice. Painting commissioned by King Henry VIII of England and hanging at Hampton Court Palace at his death in 1547. [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license]

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March 5, 2018

March 5, 2018 By

Very in-depth discussion with Orthodox and Protestant dialogue opponents.

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The following exchanges were with Orthodox and Baptist friends of mine. Their words are in blue. Eastern Catholic William Klimon’s words are in green. He agrees with my view.

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Let me ask you this David, aside from the fact that we call a divorce a divorce, and you call it an annulment, how is your position morally superior? Suppose our bishops decided to play it your way: A case that was previously under consideration for a divorce in which the husband was on his 3rd marriage (the previous two ending in the death of the first two wives) and a wife, charged with adultery — in the Orthodox approach, the husband could not have remarried because this was his 3rd marriage, and the wife (if guilty) could not have remarried because she was guilty; but following the Roman method, this marriage could just be annulled, and both parties would be free to marry again. How is this the stricter position? How is it morally superior?

Your scenario is clearly “stricter” in the sense that it is more “sexually (or, “ascetically”) rigorous.” Then again, why do you object when we are more rigorous and strict than you with regard to the celibacy of priests? Stopping at three marriages (in the case of deaths — say during a war, pestilence or a plague or something) is certainly more arbitrary than our biblically-based criteria of the preferability of priestly celibacy (which you impose on monks and bishops).

Moral superiority is another question. Remarriage after the death of a spouse does not violate any principle of sacramentalism, since marriage vows apply up to the death of one party only. As to the man on his third marriage in such an instance, he may or may not be able to marry again in Catholicism, depending on the sacramentality and validity of the third ostensible marriage. Adultery in and of itself is not grounds for annulment, if the marriage was a valid one in the first place. So that if there were no grounds, he would not be able to remarry (in a Catholic ceremony, at any rate), just as in your view.

If the marriage was indeed invalid, then why shouldn’t he be able to marry legitimately? Why penalize him because his first two wives died, by God’s Providence? He was faithful to to his marriage vows in each case. That’s the whole point. It seems that now you guys are getting a bit legalistic and Pharisaical, huh? But this prohibition is no different in kind than our celibacy requirement, which you so despise (and which has considerably more practical and pastoral justification behind it).

Now as to the adulterous woman: if she never intended to honor the vows and the sacramental nature of marriage, then there was no marriage, period. If one doesn’t even believe or intend to keep a vow as they are saying it, how can it have any binding force? This is as sinful as (and not essentially morally distinguishable from) an immoral affair, and cannot sensibly be acknowledged as a valid marriage in either of our views, it seems to me. Don’t Eastern Orthodox recognize that there is such a thing as a sham “marriage” which was never seriously undertaken by one or both parties in the first place? This is self-evident. I don’t see how it could be denied.

So why should the man be punished in that eventuality? Can she marry again? Sure, she can straighten herself out, reform herself, learn what really constitutes marriage, grow in the faith, repent and confess, meet the right guy, get the proper premarital counseling, and have another chance. Welcome to mercy and forgiveness, redemption and reconciliation. Welcome to the fallen human race! “He who is without sin . . .” She had never been in a valid marriage in the first place, so she is free to enter into a valid one. If she had been, then the Church is powerless to do anything, as by definition such a marriage is indissoluble.

On the other hand, quite ironically, by now forbidding her to validly marry because she sinned sexually, you burden her with the very “undue” penalty for which you chide us for imposing on those we deem to have been legitimately and sacramentally married (now dysfunctional in some fashion). So that now your practice of “condescension” is not applied, thus (using Eastern Orthodox rhetoric) condemning the woman (due to not accepting “reality”?) to even worse sins of promiscuity, fornication, perhaps masturbation, unbridled lust, etc.

This being the case, how, then, is your view “morally superior” to ours? I say we are the ones who uphold both the principle and inviolability of sacramental matrimony, and mercy, whereas you are willing to deny both, according to — respectively — moral laxity and an arbitrary, cruel legalism. In conclusion, then, your hypothetical situation backfires as support for your outlook.

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Also what is happening in the Roman Catholic Church as regards to annulments? I read that the American Catholic Church gave over 11,000 last year,

The higher numbers can be explained two ways:

1) more and more people have not the slightest inkling of what a “sacramental marriage” is, and what responsibilities it entails; hence; these “marriages” were never sacramentally (and that is the key) valid in the first place. This would be a legitimate reason for greater numbers.

2) heterodox priests and bishops may be abusing the power to annul marriages; giving in to societal pressure, which would be a grave sin on their part, possibly leading to their damnation if they willfully persist in violating Church teaching.

most notably the annulment of Joe Kennedy’s 11 year marriage. How could the Church annul a marriage of 11 years that produced children? Is this not de facto making annulment the same as divorce?

Children per se do not make a marriage valid, if it was not undertaken with the proper understanding of what the sacrament of matrimony is. I don’t know the particulars of the Kennedy case, but it may be an instance of liberal abuse, as in #2 above.

Is the Roman Catholic Church through a technicality beginning to slide down the slippery slope on marriage and ending marriage that many Protestant churches (sadly in some cases my own [Southern Baptist Convention] ) have gone? I would hope the Catholic Church will stand tall on this issue.

As I’ve argued many times, our doctrine on this has not changed in the least, whereas Protestants do change their official stands and long history of conservative marital teaching. Annulment — properly understood — is not divorce at all. Rather, it is the determination that the proper elements of a valid, consummated, sacramental marriage was never met in the first place. If a marriage is sacramentally valid, it cannot be annulled by any power on earth. It may appear to be so, but it is not in God’s eyes, and whoever violates His moral teaching will pay a penalty for it, if not in this life, then perhaps in the next (whether purgatory or hell). Jesus is very clear on this.

As to the somewhat complex qualities of a valid sacramental marriage, theCatechism of the Catholic Church discusses these in its Part II, chapter 3, Article 7, numbers 1601-1666.

[Further dialogues with Orthodox, on my Apologetics/Ecumenism list, November 1998]:

You keep asking for quotes from the Fathers to support the Orthodox position,

Indeed. When will you guys produce that? If you are right, I should think that would be an easy task. I have always thought that the Orthodox sought to be faithful to the Holy Fathers, so this is most disappointing. We have supported our viewpoint from the Fathers (my paper “Divorce: Early Church Teaching”).

but the Orthodox position is the same as yours. We also believe that remarriage after divorce is sinful.

So it’s sinful, but you allow it . . . Very well, then. I will take your word that the Orthodox Church sanctions and upholds — even has a ceremony for — that which it itself regards as sin. In my humble opinion, that’s an even more objectionable position than holding that divorce isn’t a sin, because it involves hypocrisy and compromise; an accommodation with that which God hates (Malachi 2:16). I don’t mean to be harsh or judgmental, but I don’t see how a Christian could regard this stance otherwise. Christianity cannot sanction sin and wrongdoing, period.

We (Orthodox) do not argue the fact that remarriage after divorce is sinful!!!

Duly noted. I shall keep this post for when someone asks me about your position. You have stated it very clearly twice now, and in my opinion, refuted your own position.

Let me say it again so that we have no doubt….please mark this down in your notes: THE ORTHODOX CHURCH BELIEVES THAT REMARRIAGE AFTER DIVORCE IS SINFUL. I have said it three times now….a holy number.

Okay — even more documented now. Let me state our position in caps, too: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH BELIEVES THAT “REMARRIAGE” IS SINFUL IF ONE OR BOTH PARTIES IS ALREADY MARRIED, SINCE A VALIDLY CONSUMMATED, SACRAMENTAL MARRIAGE IS INDISSOLUBLE. AND WE DO NOT SANCTION WHAT WE BELIEVE TO BE SIN.

The question is, how do we deal with real people who have fallen into this sin? The Roman Catholic Church has come up with the idea of annulments. That is, the marriage did not really exist in the first place. This is a very clever answer to the problem.

We didn’t come up with it, the Apostle Paul did. Our Lord Jesus did. St. Ambrose, St. Leo and other Fathers did, as I demonstrate below.

In Orthodoxy, we allow the spouse who was the innocent party to remarry, the other spouse is out of luck. However, the service is not the same as it is in the first marriage. The service in a second marriage is more of a penitential service. Why do we allow this?

I hope part of the penitence is for the Church which is possibly compromising with sin (in cases where a theoretical annulment could not be obtained) in order to allow this “marriage.”

Because the Church is a hospital for the soul, not a court room. In the Church, sometimes we have to choose between the lesser of two sins.

I regard that as atrocious Christian ethics myself. If we start allowing sins, it is a slippery slope, and by the same logic, many sins could then be justified. Why single out marriage? If the idea is to avoid related occasions of sin, I could think of a dozen additional examples of a scenario like that.

Recall that the Church speaks for Christ on Earth. So what we have here is a decision that, in some instances, is made by the Church to allow a person to remarry lest they fall into fornication.

What you don’t seem to understand is that if a divorce takes place in instances of an existing valid sacramental marriage, then the Bible and the Fathers are both clear that a second “marriage” is a state of perpetual adultery. Jesus never taught as you do here. So in effect you are saying that “rather than burn and commit fornication, our Church will sanction an adulterous state.” This is nonsensical morality. Two wrongs don’t make a right. I can hardly believe I am reading this.

When I was still Roman Catholic I used to wonder how the Orthodox could call the RCC legalistic, when obviously they seems much more obsessed with the canons and traditions. It was because when the Orthodox say that the RCC is legalistic they are not faulting them for their observance of rules, but rather in the placing of rules above an individual soul.

Yeah, far be it from us to harm a soul by preventing it from entering into a sin so serious its eternal destiny might be jeopardized. We will be like you, then: rather than tell them the difficult truth which will help them to be more righteous (Jesus did that a lot, too – remember the rich young ruler?), we will inform them of an easy way out, and sanction a sin which Jesus and the Fathers didn’t allow at all.

To say that a rule is engraved in stone and that there can be no exceptions is to undermine the authority of the Church to bind and loose.

Yes, relativists, antinomians, many libertarians, secularists, and theological liberals argue the same way: they tell us that Christian morality is too rigid and archaic, and that there are no absolutes: we must exercise a flexibility and compassion which takes into account human frailty, situation ethics, and modern society. Teenagers can’t be expected to abstain, so we will pass out condoms to them and not even try to stop them from engaging in sex. Rather than protect them from the possibility of contracting AIDS by urging abstention, we will give them a balloon for sexual purposes and hope that it doesn’t break. We’re willing to take that chance (with their lives). Instead of telling college kids they shouldn’t get drunk, we know they will anyway, so we will come up with the claptrap about “designated drivers.” Where does such reasoning end? The eternal destiny of a soul is far more important than even saving one’s life.

In Orthodoxy we have what is called economia. Economia means to lessen a rule for the sake of a person’s soul. It is the prerogative of the Bishop to exercise this economia.

So what other sins are allowed as cases of “economia?” The lesser of two evils . . . ?

So, what I am saying here essentially is that the Roman Catholic Church should get off of their high horse when it comes to this issue. We all agree that remarriage after divorce is sinful. The difference is in how we deal with it.

Obviously. We continue to follow through on the notion that it is sinful and thus we won’t allow a second “marriage.” But if an ostensible “marriage” was in actuality never valid in the first place, the couple can be released to enter into a valid sacramental marriage. That is mercy and economia exercised in harmony with the upholding of right and wrong — not a compromise with what is inherently immoral. The concept is fundamentally different.

You have your annulments, which makes bastards out of the children of these “non-marriages,”

“Bastard” is a secular, legal term, and derogatory at that. Therefore it has no relevance whatever to Church rulings regarding sacramentality. The Catholic Church has never taught this (though, of course it is a common slander which you parrot).

but is very logical and seems to get around the problem.

There is moral logic and consistency, and there is moral illogic and inconsistency and incoherence.

And we simply admit to the fact that people make mistakes, and that not everyone can remain chaste after a divorce, and they should not be punished indefinitely for a divorce that is the fault of the other spouse.

“The two shall become one flesh.” Your teaching might be preferable if ethics were relative and if we didn’t have such clear NT and patristic teaching that “remarriage” is adulterous, and that true marriage is indissoluble. In my humble opinion, those things make your position impossible to consistently take from within a Christian framework.

With regards to birth contol…I posted the following back in July…..

    “…For what its worth, in the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad birth control is still considered a sin. However, it is not quite as black and white as in the Roman Catholic Church.”

Another clear case of a sliding scale of ethics. This is downright shocking and depressing. Another act is wrong, is sinful (by your own admission), yet you will allow it. That’s all I need to hear. What is there to argue further? Black is white, and white is black.

But here again, we are dealing with souls. The Church is larger than its canons. The canons were made to serve the people, not the other way around. That is one reason that we have Bishops. They can decide how strictly canons should be applied on a case by case basis.

When Jesus contended with the Pharisees over, e.g., the levitical legality of rescuing a sheep on the Sabbath, He was not saying such an act was wrong, which He was now relaxing for pastoral purposes, in order to accommodate human weakness. Quite the contrary; He was saying that such acts never were wrong, but that they were misunderstood as being forbidden by the Law when in fact they were not contrary to the Law – properly understood spiritually. He said that the Sabbath was made for man, not vice versa.

Orthodoxy, on the other hand (if you are representing it properly – and I sure hope you are mistaken) is asserting that what is truly sinful and wrong can be relaxed and allowed, as an exercise of pastoral mercy or prudence. Such a principle is never found in the Bible. Jesus didn’t tell the woman caught in adultery that she was free to engage in sin because she couldn’t help it. No, He said, “go and sin no more.” By your reasoning, the early martyrs could have exercised “economia” and bowed down in idolatry to Caesar to spare their lives. They could have reasoned, “it is too difficult to be burned alive or eaten by lions, so God and the Church will understand if I renounce Christ in order to get out of this mess.”

Uh uh. I don’t buy this at all. It is very dangerous ground which Orthodoxy has decided to tread. And without biblical and patristic precedent . . . You can get mad at me if you want, but I won’t back down because it is the easier, more pleasant course. God didn’t call me to be an apologist in order to win a popularity contest. Oftentimes it is a thankless task. I must speak out against what I (i.e., my Church) believe to be wrong. I am not saying anything the Fathers before me didn’t say. I stand with them, and on Holy Scipture. I am accountable to God as a teacher. And again, I am just a messenger.

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By the way…I don’t believe that there is any Eastern tradition or anything in the early Tradition of the Western Church that supported the use of annulments.

I cited both Scripture and referred to my compilation of Fathers in that regard. But all one has to do to establish that is to show that there is a distinction between merely civil and sacramental marriage. If that is true (which I think you would grant), then clearly a marriage can exist which is one sort but not the other, more sublime type. And that is the presuppositional basis for an annulment, which Bill Klimon shows (below) even existed in the East. I don’t consider this a particularly difficult concept to grasp. Nor should it be at all controversial, in my opinion.

I had asked earlier if you have any history that supports the practice of annulments. Is there any historical justification within common Church Tradition for their usage?

From my paper on the subject, the following are the two clearest examples:

There is hardly anything more deadly than being married to one who is a stranger to the faith, where the passions of lust and dissension and the evils of sacrilege are inflamed. Since the marriage ceremony ought to be sanctified by the priestly veiling and blessing, how can that be called a marriage ceremony where there is no agreement in faith? (St. Ambrose, To Vigilius, Letter 19:7 (A.D. 385), in FC, XXVI:176)

This is an unambiguous example of the “Pauline privilege,” which is a type of annulment.

And so a wife is different from a concubine, even as a bondwoman from a freewoman. For which reason also the Apostle in order to show the difference of these persons quotes from Genesis, where it is said to Abraham, ‘Cast out the bondwoman and her son: for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.’ And hence, since the marriage tie was from the beginning so constituted as apart from the joining of the sexes to symbolize the mystic union of Christ and His Church, it is undoubted that that woman has no part in matrimony, in whose case it is shown that the mystery of marriage has not taken place. (Pope St. Leo the Great, To Rusticus, Epistle 167:4 (A.D. 459), in NPNF2, XII:110)

This raises a very interesting point, one I had not previously thought of (praise God for your call for clarification! ). The OT distinction between a concubine and a wife is somewhat analogous to our distinction between civil and sacramental marriage — itself the kernel and foundational premise of the concept of annulment. Sarah told Abraham to have sexual intercourse with the slave girl Hagar in order to produce a child (she being barren up till that time).

This was a Hebrew custom in those days. Concubines were protected by Mosaic law (Ex 21:7-11, Deut 21:10-14), though they were distinguished from wives (Judges 8:31) and were more easily divorced (Gen 21:10-14). Remember, God approved of the sending away of Hagar and her son Ishmael (Gen 21:12), not because they were evil or disparaged by Him (see Gen 17:20, 21:13,17-20), but because Sarah was Abraham’s wife in the fuller sense (akin to sacramental marriage), as St. Leo argues above, following the Apostle Paul (see Gen 17:15-21; Gal 4:21-31).

But later prophets encouraged monogamy (Mal 2:14 ff.) and the ideal woman of Proverbs 31 lived in a monogamous society. Later, of course, Jesus taught that monogamy (with no divorce) was God’s ideal from the beginning (Mt 19:1-12; cf. Gen 2:24). Divorce — so Jesus said — was permitted to the Jews only because of “hardness of heart.” But the “except for fornication” clause of Matthew 19:9 is interpreted by us (and, I believe, the Fathers) as a case of non-matrimonial ongoing fornication as opposed to real marriage, and as such is a biblical basis for annulments, along with the Pauline privilege (1 Cor 7:15), which has always been accepted by the Church.

So there you have it: three biblical arguments and two patristic citations. Even the OT biblical evidence for annulment (by strong analogy), considered in isolation, is stronger than for many doctrines we both (and all Christians) accept, such as the resurrection of the body, heaven, the atonement of Christ, original sin, the Eucharist, and other doctrines, which were all developed much more fully in the New Testament. In this case, too, the NT builds explicitly upon the kernels of the Old Testament.

Albeit, as a legal device they may have some utility they have been misused recently within the Catholic Church and used improperly as a form of de facto divorce.

No one denies that abuses take place, but that does not prove whether or not theconcept is valid or invalid. Arguments from abuses never rise to “essence.” I know you wouldn’t appreciate it if I made this sort of argument about something in Orthodoxy.

The use of annulments in conjunction with Catholic divorces need to be discussed as you try to critique the Orthodox views toward divorces…views which are Biblical and Traditional as well.

Again, in our case, it is a matter of abuse. I have shown you the biblical and patristic rationale for both annulments and “no divorce.” You have institutionalized the sin, precisely as you have done with contraception and division (and what we have always refused to do). That is our beef with you (the biggest moral objections we have).

The annulments still look like divorces in fact. A rose or in this case a skunk still is skunk but only by another name. It appears unfortunately that the annulment game does lead to more moral Christians or to more loving parents or spouses. Catholics are no more moral than most Protestants or Orthodox in their behavior as a result of the use of the annulment loophole.

This has absolutely nothing to do with my post, which was about the Fathers’ views on marriage, remarriage, and divorce, and about how Eastern Christendom changed the primitive, apostolic Tradition on this — following the emperors rather than councils and popes, the Bible and the Fathers (as was clearly documented).

Not a word has been “spoken” about these things – which were, after all, what my post was about. It’s an historical argument (about the actual early Tradition), not a moral or philosophical or ethical one, about what constitutes an annulment, how corrupt our marriage tribunals are, etc.

Either Orthodoxy has diverged from the teaching of the early Church and the Fathers on this or we have. But ignoring the issue doesn’t advance the discussion at all — nor does switching it over to corruptions in practice. As Joe Louis said, “he can run but he can’t hide.” The “ring” in this instance is Church History.

The same tactics have been used in the past by my Orthodox friends with regard to contraception. Unable to prove that the Fathers allowed it in any way, shape, or form, the debate is switched over to the nature of Natural Family Planning (NFP). This reminds me of today’s politics, too: instead of responding to anothers’ actual argument, or defending yourself with facts, just attack the attacker (in this case the Catholic Church, which is said to be playing “games” with annulments and rationalizing about the essential distinction between NFP and contraception).

I think the facts speak (loudly) for themselves. If Orthodox want to say that the Fathers were simply wrong on this issue en masse, then that is an option, I suppose, but it sounds more like Protestantism to me than what I understand as the Orthodox self-conception of their unique preservation of apostolic Tradition.

And I still can’t comprehend a view which holds that “divorce is a sin and evil, yet we as a Church sanction it under certain circumstances.” Is there not something fundamentally wrong in that picture? I would prefer Luther’s half-facetious “be a sinner and sin boldly” to this!

Aren’t annulments innovations that are corruptions?

The concept — rightly understood — isn’t an innovation, but rather, a development of the notion of valid sacramental marriage. Corruptions of the process are just that, but they don’t touch on the essence of a true annulment, any more than a Hans Kung or any other heterodox buffoon passing themselves off as “Catholic” affect the essence and validity of true Catholic dogma (or your liberals affect true Orthodoxy).

without any biblical support?

The “Pauline privilege” (1 Cor 7:15) would be an example of a situation which precisely fits a certain type of annulment (and the Church has always accepted it — for the very reason that it is so clearly taught in Holy Scripture). Also, we argue (with much exegetical and linguistic justification) that Jesus’ “except for adultery (‘porneia’)” in Matthew is a reference to an adulterous affair which is in actuality no sacramental marriage at all. I also cited the parallelism of Abraham and Hagar / Sarah above. You may think differently, but then you have to deal with the overwhelming consensus of the Fathers.

and which have no precedence in either early Eastern or Western Church history.

Maybe not in the East, since that’s where the false notion of dissolubility and permissible divorce originated. But certain aspects of annulments are seen in some of the patristic quotes I presented. But if I recall correctly, there were many easterners in that collection, such as St. John Chrysostom.

Don’t annulments undermine your whole notion that divorce does not exist in the Catholic Church?

No, not in the slightest, because annulments and divorce are entirely different in essence. You can complain about annulments if you like, but that does not make them the equivalent of divorce. The least you could do would be to get the definitions right — without which no constructive discussion is possible. We’re just ships passing in the night.

Look at the facts and reality of the behavior of most Catholics.

There are sinners in the Catholic Church?????!!!!!!! Thanks for pointing that out! Now, . . . what does that prove?

Let’s get real here Dave!!

I am very real, thank you. Now — with all due respect — you (and other Orthodox) ought to “get” courageous and brave; gird up your loins and work up enough gumption to tackle my challenge about the early Church and divorce, and how and why the East (and later Orthodoxy) departed from it.

[Additional clarifying comments by my friend William Klimon, an Eastern Catholic who is very knowledgeable about Orthodox history]:

I don’t really care to weigh in on the history of Christian marriage. I think the basic principles of life-long indissoluable marriage are clear from Scripture. How they have played out in the history of the Church is exceedingly complex, I will grant.

I will address one of my pet peeves, though, namely:

Ignorance of the distinction between divorce and annulment and the claim that annulment is “Catholic divorce.” That claim is an incorrect and really uneducated one, for the following reasons:

(1) There is no system of civil marriage law in the Christian world (and those parts of the world influenced by the Christian view) that does not have both categories–divorce and annulment–by whatever names.

(a) “Annulment of a marriage is legislative or judicial invalidation of it, as in law never having existed, as distinct from dissolution [divorce], which terminates a valid marriage.”– The Oxford Companion to Law, ed. D.M. Walker (1980), s.v. “Annulment.”

(b) “An ‘annulment’ differs from a divorce in that a divorce terminates a legal status, whereas an annulment establishes that a marital status never existed.”–Black’s Law Dictionary (6th ed. 1990), s.v. “Annulment.”

(2) This distinction is recognized even in the Eastern canon law.

(a) “One should probably distinguish [when looking at the Eastern canon and civil law] between divorce proper and the annulment of marriage caused by its illegality (e.g., marriage prohibited by impediments, such as consanguinity) or by the social inequality of the partners.”– The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium , ed. A.P. Kazhdan (1991), s.v. “Divorce.”

(b) See also Eve Levin, Sex and Society in the World of the Orthodox Slavs, 900-1700 (Cornell U. Pr., 1989), p. 112 (citing examples of annulment on the grounds of minority and consanguinity–and demonstrating that these were in fact annulments by showing that they did not “count” as valid marriages when calculating whether someone was attempting a forbidden fourth[!] marriage).

(3) Additionally, every system of marriage law with which I am familiar also recognizes two types of divorce:

(a) “A mensa et thoro”: literally “from table and bed” (or more colloquially “from bed and board”). This is the type of divorce known as limited divorce or legal separation. It involves a judicial decree that the parties may not live together, but it does not affect the legal status of the marriage.

(b) “A vinculo matrimonii”: literally “from the bond of marriage.” This is the type of divorce known as absolute divorce or dissolution. Under this type of divorce, the parties are free to contract other marriages.

(c) The Roman Catholic church, in the Codex Iuris Canonici (1983), in fact recognizes limited divorce (though in a very limited way). See CIC, canons 1151-55. The reasons given in those canons for limited divorce are adultery, “serious danger of spirit or body to the other spouse or to the children,” or some other situation that “renders common life too hard.”

So we may conclude by saying that annulment and divorce are two entirely different things. Every modern system of law recognizes both. Divorce itself is of two types, limited and absolute. The Catholic Church recognizes limited divorce, but does not–cannot–countenance dissolution of valid marriages with the freedom to remarry.

What the heck is a “limited divorce?”

I thought I had explained it clearly. Here is what Black says:

“[The] term refers to a divorce a mensa et thoro (from bed and board) with no right to remarry.”– Black’s Law Dictionary  (6th ed. 1990), s.v. “limited divorce.”

A DIVORCE, in what we are discussing, is a dissolution of a marriage bond. This is not about legal separation– this is not even close to the issue that was brought up to the Orthodox on the list. Either the RC Church recognizes divorce or not.

My point is simply to clarify the terminology. Annulment is not divorce. Divorce comes in at least two distinct forms–limited and absolute. Divorce is not necessarily dissolution.

In effect, the whole letter restates precisely what I said: The RC Church refuses to recognize the legal dissolution of the bond of marriage. A separation from bed and board, I must point out, is not the recognition of a divorce; it’s a recognition that a couple cannot live together–a very different thing indeed. Couples find themselves not living together all the time. A state of war is a good example. Are you telling me this is a state of “limited divorce”?

No, that is not what it means. One of the duties of marriage is cohabitation. To live apart deliberately and indefinitely is not permitted. (Circumstantial separations are of course not what is referred to here.) If a grave reason (usually adultery or danger to one or the other spouse) exists, then a competent judicial authority may decree a limited divorce: that is not a “recognition that a couple cannot live together,” but rather a judicial determination that they ought not to live together.

This accords fully with the thought of the great majority of the Fathers who, in interpreting 1 Cor. 6:16, required spouses to separate (without of course the possibility of remarriage) when one or both parties had committed adultery. See Henri Crouzel, “Divorce: I. Separation” in Encyclopedia of the Early Church, ed. A. Di Berardino (Oxford U. Pr. 1992), vol. 1, p. 243.

If you are telling me this loophole is precisely the Catholic view, and we therefore agree in principle that this is the ACTUAL view of the Catholic Church (which was not acceptable for discussion when I said it, perhaps because I did not include the term “limited divorce”) please demonstrate a historical precedent based on the everyday practice of the pre-schism Church.

I am not certain what you mean by “loophole.”

It is quite right to note that the exact legal formulation and possibility of a decree of divorce “a mensa et thoro” de jure does not enter into the (western) canon law until the 12/c. See Roderick Phillips, Putting Asunder: A History of Divorce in Western Society (Cambridge U. Pr. 1988), p. 13.

As I indicated above, though, it is a concept completely in accord with the thought and the practice of the Fathers, who required a de facto limited divorce when one or both spouses had committed adultery. The only relevant question the Fathers were divided on was whether the innocent spouse had to accept back the erring one. None of the Fathers thought that either party would be free to marry someone else.

Another clear example of the use of de facto limited divorce was the separation of spouses so that they could both enter religious life, or the husband the episcopate and the wife monastic life. The marriage is not dissolved or declared null, rather the effect is that the parties may not live as spouses, but neither are they free to remarry. This was of course a very wide-spread practice after the 4/c. St. Basil the Great specifically approved of it. See his Moralia 73, 1; Great Asceticon 12.

To sum up, my points were these:

(1) Annulment is not divorce.

(2) Divorce is of at least two types–limited and absolute.

(3) The Catholic Church does not recognize the absolute divorce of those in a sacramental marriage.

(a) It does recognize the limited divorce of those who, for grave reasons, should not live together.

(b) It also recognizes the dissolution of valid but non-sacramental marriages in some cases (the Pauline and Petrine privileges).

My main point is that annulment is not “Catholic divorce.” Historically, it was generally not viewed and not used in that way. One of the foremost historians of the subject has concluded that “the cases of marriage annulment [in the Middle Ages] lend little support to the view that the church’s laws on marriage were regarded as rules to be cynically broken at the time of marriage and then, just as cynically, applied so as to obtain an annulment in order to escape from an unhappy marriage in a society that did not permit divorce.”–Phillips, op. cit., p. 13.

Unfortunately, today we American Catholics have had an annulment explosion accompanying the wider societal divorce explosion. Seventy-five percent of all annulments are granted in the U.S. Six hundred were granted in 1968; 60,000+ in 1998. Are many of these de facto divorces? Obviously, yes. That is the conclusion of Robert H. Vasoli in What God Has Joined Together: The Annulment Crisis in American Catholicism (Oxford U. Pr. 1998).

Of course, the annulment process, like any judicial proceeding, is open to abuse. If someone is intent on defrauding the proceeding by, e.g., lying under oath, there is not much that can be done to stop that. One does not, therefore, dismantle the process. Abusus non tollit usum.

But the abuses in the American church (which seem largely limited to the American church) do not change the real nature of the annulment process (which seeks to determine whether a particular marriage was valid ab initio) nor the Church’s teaching on marriage.

[Additional dialogues from my Apologetics/Ecumenism List, from Orthodox and Protestants]:

This is somewhat of a response to Dave’s “Divorce….a Sin but OK???”. . . I could give a litany of similar titles . . .
  • “Polygamy…a sin but OK???” (Jacob)
  • “Concubines…a sin but OK???” (David, Jacob)
  • “Divorce…a sin but OK???” (Deuteronomy)

In all these cases, a sin? Yes. Ok? No. Permitted? Yes. You only need to look back to the OT to see that grace is greater than law.

The fallacious premise here is that you wish to take us back to the OT dispensation, the Law, a state of being as it was prior to the New Covenant and revelation of Jesus and the New Testament. In other words, the Orthodox position on divorce is the moral and developmental equivalent of OT polygamy, concubinage, and divorce. The only problem is that Jesus expressly “overruled” these things. He calls divorce the result of “hardness of heart” and not as God intended things from the beginning. He went on to absolutely prohibit it. Staying back in 900 B.C. simply won’t cut it for Christians. We have to grapple with the words of Jesus and Paul now. We don’t have the luxury of not yet hearing their teaching.

The sin is forgiven once and the person moves on.

You continue to ignore the Fathers on this. How do you explain that? At least please explain how you can ignore them, if you don’t want to deal with the issue of their witness against you.

Similarly, in divorce the Church chooses between the lesser of two sins.

John 8:34 . . . Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin . . .

1 John 3:8-9 Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil . . . Those who have been born of God do not sin.

Romans 7:7, 12 What then should we say? That the law is sin? By no means! . . . the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good.

Romans 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.

If one spouse is beaten by her husband, and he goes out and gambles their money away every week, and finally she divorces him, the Church is willing to allow this woman to remarry with the penitential service I was talking about. As for her husband: never! Only the innocent party is given the exception.

Always the hard cases . . . a standard form of propaganda. What about the routine, run-of-the-mill cases? What about the Fathers and the biblical teaching? Must I ask till I’m blue in the face?

I don’t understand why Dave is so upset over this very ancient Orthodox practice. It is not something that we just started doing in the 60’s you know.

No, it started in the 6th century, as I have shown. When I say “ancient,” I mean at least the classic patristic period, and on back to the biblical (apostolic) period.

and I am quite comfortable with the Orthodox position on this. The Church may bind and loose.

No Church which claims to be following Jesus — the sinless One- – may sanction sin. “Binding and loosing” refers to forgiving sin, not giving one the freedom to indulge in it. I find all this extremely shocking and depressing.

I will easily grant your assertion that Jesus raises the bar to a higher level of moral expectations. Jesus states that marriage is permanent (until death). He does not qualify it by saying “sacramental” marriage.

That’s precisely what the “fornication clause” of Mt 19:9 does (and also the “Pauline privilege”). Jesus and Paul were distinguishing between an actual marriage and a state of fornication. God also made the same distinction between Sarah and Hagar, according to Pope St. Leo the Great and (I think, as he did) Scripture. This is what annulment is all about.

Are you serious? The Pauline privilege is about fornication (porneia?)? I was reading the Scriptures the other night and I noticed that Paul said that in the case of a marriage between an unbeliever and a believer, the unbelieving spouse is “sanctified” because of the marriage and the children are “holy” because of the marriage. How could a state of fornication result in a sanctified spouse and holy children? How could Paul allow someone to live in a state of fornication? Paul tells them to stay in their marriage if the unbelieving spouse will allow it, so if he is talking about fornication, he is telling them to stay in a state of fornication. It is hard to believe that Paul would tell them to remain in a state of fornication. By St. Paul’s use of the adjectives “sanctified” and “holy”, I would tend to think that he is referring to a “sacramental” marriage. Yet, in the case of this marriage with a sanctified spouse, Paul allows the believer to remarry in the case of abandonment.

You’re right. I should have been more clear about this. Jesus was obviously talking about fornication, because He used the word porneia. But in the case of the Pauline privilege, that may be in many cases a valid marriage in some sense (as opposed to merely a state of perpetual fornication) but not a sacramental one. This was true in my own case. I had never been Catholic, and married in a Protestant service, so I was in a valid marriage according to Catholic teaching (and I believe it is even considered a sacrament). My wife, however, had been raised Catholic, so for her it was “invalid form.” Therefore, we had our marriage “sacramentalized” when I was received into the Church in 1991. So there is a valid marriage which falls short of “full” Catholic sacramentality. Thanks for the opportunity to clarify that. But I am rapidly getting over my head, and into areas which are fit only for canon lawyers . . .

The people he was speaking to did not have “sacramental” marriages. He was making the indissoluble union based on the pattern of Adam and Eve becoming one flesh–not on Christian sacramental marriage.

These things develop, but remember, above you were making the argument that OT polygamy and concubinage suggest that divorce is ok. I think that argument is fundamentally flawed, as I have sought to demonstrate. The concubines are far more analogous to non-sacramental marriages than to “second marriages.” Adam and Eve far more approximate sacramental marriage, as there was no one else around to cause any romantic conflict! LOLOL It was either Eve or nuthin’ in those days . . . LOL

Yes, but Jesus makes his case based on Adam and Eve who only “approximated” sacramental marriage. I still haven’t been convinced that Jesus was speaking strictly about “sacramental” marriage, but marriage in general.

Perhaps. One has to factor in the many variables (who is baptized, who is Catholic, etc.). But I was simply trying to find some biblical material which gave some inkling of the notion of annulment, and I believe I have done so, whatever the Orthodox on the list think. I have answered their challenge, while they have continued to ignore my pleas for a reply to my post about the historical changes in the East with regard to the sacrament of matrimony and divorce.

It seems to me that the RCC is playing games by saying non-sacramental marriages are dissoluble, but not sacramental marriages. It is a form of legalized divorce by the legal game of saying that it never was really a “sacramental” marriage.

We make the arguments, which I think are obvious and compelling, but somehow they just don’t sink in. I have done my part. God has to show you the truth of these things, with His enabling grace. These are “hard sayings,” just like all the biblical sexual teachings are. People don’t want to believe them, by nature (Mt 19:10-12). I suppose if I was in a lousy (but valid sacramental) marriage I would be sorely tempted in the same way. You (and all of us) have to be willing to go wherever truth leads (I am not saying you aren’t — just making a general observation).

Did the couple become one flesh? If they had children, it’s sort of hard to deny that they became one flesh.

Yes, but that in itself does not make a sacramental marriage. That is just describing what sex does and is, in the spiritual realm. One can even become “one flesh” with a prostitute (1 Cor 6:16), but obviously that does not constitute a marriage, let alone a sacramental one.

What of a couple who purposefully and willingly get a vasectomy or tubal ligation for contraceptive purposes? Every act of coitus after that is a contracepted act.

Technically, yes, but if they repent, it isn’t a sin, because the evil lies in the “contraceptive (or anti-life) will”

They may later regret and repent of the sin. However, every act of coitus even after repentance is still a purposeful contraceptive act–it just so happens that repentance occurred after the purpose.

Mere inability to conceive is not the equivalent of “contraception.” If that were true, every woman not fertile (permanently or temporarily), or post-menopausal would be sinning whenever they had sex, which is absurd.

For the couple who are infertile or had some accident, the act is not a contraceptive act because the couple took no pro-active measures to avoid conception.

Correct. But that also applies to the repentant vasectomy recipient, because he no longer has an anti-life will. I would say, however, that he should abstain during the wife’s fertile period as a matter of ethical and spiritual principle, as I do (thus respecting the natural reproductive cycle of the woman). In that case, he would be ethically no different than me. If he wanted children, but couldn’t have them, that would be “penance” and punishment enough, would it not? But he would no longer have a contralife will or intent. So sex would not be evil.

In the case of a vasectomy, that is what the RCC allows a couple to do–to move on. If the church prohibited conjugal relations between a couple after a vasectomy, then that would be consistent. After someone sins by getting a divorce and remarrying and has more children, there is no way to undo the sin they have sown. In a like manner, the odds are against undoing the vasectomy. In the case of divorce and remarriage the RCC calls it sin. In the case of surgical contraception, the church calls it unfortunate.

OK, I see what you are driving at now. This analogy fails because in the case of marriage, they are either truly joined together (sacramental and indissoluble) or not (non-sacramental / civil marriage / cohabitation / ongoing fornication). If they are truly joined together, that is a metaphysical and spiritual reality which can’t be examined under a microscope. We accept that based on revelation. If that is the case, then it cannot end until death (remember that?: “till death do us part”?). “What God has joined together . . .” God – not man! That’s why a second marriagemust be adulterous, and perpetually so, by the very nature of things.

With vasectomy, on the other hand, we are not talking about an unbreakable metaphysical bond, but a physical procedure which was entered into with ill will and bad ethics (and which may in many instances, be medically reversed). But since the evil of contraception resides in the will to thwart conception, that can be changed by education and a transformation of one’s will. After that point, the recipient of the vasectomy is not sinning when he has sex any more than the recipient of a war injury, or radiation or something, is. Will, will, will! That is the key!

Actually, it is also the key to sacramental marriage, since a couple has to willfully and with full knowledge enter into the holy, grace-giving matrimonial covenant and sacrament, which has certain defining characteristics. The fact that they often don’t these days is the root cause of the increase in annulments. The very concept of sacramental marriage is being lost, as evidenced by this conversation. But it goes back to the eastern changes in civil law in the 6th century, and Luther’s lowering marriage to a mere civil contract in the 16th century (he thought it fine to marry an “infidel or a Turk” — the Turks being Muslim, of course). People have always fought against God’s most sublime and difficult moral laws. This shouldn’t surprise us.

Why shouldn’t the bishop be able to use oikonomia in the hard cases?

In perhaps most of those cases, it would be the equivalent in actuality of our annulments, anyway. The Orthodox simply misunderstand the spiritual and matrimonial realities and essences and definitions involved.

Actually the way it [annulment] is implemented makes me distrustful. If we were to go back 100 years, I would not be so suspicious of the practice.

But remember, 100 years ago, people in general had a much better notion of what marriage was about, too, and divorce was still scandalous (as it was even 30 years ago). This accounts for the rise in annulments at least as much (probably more so) than abuses. E.g., in 1898, no Christians believed in contraception. If a couple deliberately decides not to have children, and contracepts towards that end, this is contrary to Catholic wedding vows, and is itself grounds for an annulment.

Non-sacramental marriage is not prostitution or fornication. It is marriage.

Yes (that’s where I painted with too broad of a brush), but I was making the point above that having sex can make two people “one” but not necessarily married as a result.

Do you take the next step and concede that Orthodoxy has departed from the Fathers and Tradition on this matter?

I do not really believe that you proved your case here. I realize that you were trying to separate the discussion of annulments from the discussion of divorces but as a practical matter they are so interrelated I can not logically see their separation.

This is the usual Orthodox confusion (on this topic) of corruption in practice with the actual teaching of a group. I will elaborate below . . .

Without being polemical about it, if annulments were not abused as they are today your case might have some merit. Perhaps if the Holy Roman Church purged itself of this abuse, I could look at your arguments on divorce more favorably. I am not trying to be critical but I am trying to explain why I find it hard to agree with your basic thesis that the Orthodox have made major mistakes in this area.

Your entire argument here – it seems to me – is based on a series of logical fallacies:

1) Whether or not the Catholic Church has departed from Christian Tradition on this matter has nothing whatsoever to do with whether the Orthodox Church has (why is it that Orthodox peristently refuse to discuss their own Church teaching on marriage and divorce without recourse to annulments and their abuse? Are you unable to defend yourself without always switching the subject over to us?). This pronounced tendency (which we have seen repeatedly on this list) reduces a serious conversation down to the foolish level of the child’s retort, “your dad’s uglier than my dad . . . “;

2) The Fathers taught certain things about divorce and remarriage; that, too, is a matter which stands on its own (the same holds true with regard to contraception, whether or not NFP is ipso facto contraception — which I vehemently deny, of course);

3) Annulments are simply not divorce, by their very nature. My friend William Klimon has shown above that the East historically made the same distinction as well;

4) Any abuses (God forbid) of annulments do not change the essential nature of what an annulment is. An abuse, by definition, is something which is distinct from the thing which is being abused.

The end result is that as a practical matter divorces with remarriage occur within the Holy Roman Church when annulments are abused.

. . . which (whatever the implications are) has nothing to do with whether or not Orthodoxy has departed from the Fathers on this issue.

If you can show me that there is any serious move to strictly enforce discipline in the administration of this area within the Roman Catholic Church I might be willing to reconsider my position on this issue.

The two have no relation to each other, as explained above. You should change your opinion based on what the Holy Fathers and Holy Scripture teach, not because the Catholic Church has “cleaned up its act,” so to speak. If you are correct about us, and insist on equating any abuses with the teaching and essence of annulments, then at best you can only say that both our communions have departed from Tradition. But what you can’t say is that Orthodoxy has held to the Tradition while Catholicism has not. The very fact that you keep switching the focus indicates to me that you are unable to defend your own Church’s position.

Let me get to the crux of the matter: The Orthodox teaching on divorce is basically (regardless of what Stanley Harakas or Bp. Ware state) is:

. . . Yet another instance of the eternal quandary of “who speaks for Orthodoxy.” Now you are to be trusted as an authority over an Orthodox bishop . . . How is that different from sola Scriptura and Protestantism, I wonder?

1. Divorce is a sin.

Good, but of course this leads to radical and troubling inconsistencies in the Orthodox position.

2. If a couple divorces only the spouse who is clearly not at fault is allowed to remarry in a church wedding.

I think it is a fallacy from the outset to believe that one party in such a tragic rupture can be “clearly not at fault.” They may be in terms of starting the divorce procedure, but not in terms of contributing causes (at least almost always, if not always). Hense the wisdom of the Scripture and Fathers (and the Catholic Church) to disallow either party to remarry (apart from the Pauline privilege, which has to do with theological belief).

3. Both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches recognize the legal validity of remarriages even if they are not blessed by their Churches.

This isn’t true. “Remarriage” in this sense, for the Catholic, can only refer to a “civil marriage,” not a sacramental one, since the latter is by nature indissoluble.

The only difference I see between the traditional Orthodox view toward divorce and the Roman Catholic position on divorce is that :

1. The Orthodox allow the nonoffending spouse to remarry. This is a rational, just, and appropriate action since it punishes the moral wrongdoer and not the innocent party.

The two shall become one flesh . . . If in fact divorce is a sin, then remarriage cannot take place, since it perpetuates the sin indefinitely, and makes both parties ongoing adulterers.

2. The Orthodox do not have annulments. The Holy Roman Church does use annulments which I have said are ok under limited circumstances.

So Orthodoxy sanctions sin, then? To me it is simple:

  • a) Divorce is a sin;
  • b) Orthodoxy allows (or doesn’t forbid) divorce, at least in some circumstances;
  • c) Therefore Orthodoxy sanctions sin.

How can the inexorable logic of this be escaped? You say our annulments are playing around with words and pretense. I would say that — on the contrary — your allowing what you yourselves deem a sin is much more spiritually dangerous and destructive of Christian ethics.

3. If annulments are abused they in effect could allow both spouses…the innocent and the guilty one to remarry which in my opinion is not a position that strengthens morality. However, I am glad to hear that annulments are being tailed back…

Back to the distinction between an abuse and the essence of a teaching . . .

If anyone can prove to me that not allowing the wronged spouse to remarry is a bad thing or an immoral thing I will concede that my position is wrong and that the position of the Holy Roman Church is correct. Why isn’t it ok for the wronged spouse to remarry and for the lawbreaking spouse not to remarry?

Because the two have become one flesh, and took an oath “till death do us part” and “for better and for worse.” And because Jesus and the Fathers taught thusly.

Note that an Orthodox priest was asked by a list member about some of these questions. His response was helpful. There are a few points of it in particular which support my contention that the East believes in annulments in some fashion also:

The Orthodox position would best be put as follows: Divorce, indeed, is a sin. It is only permissible in the circumstances which Jesus Christ Himself stated in Holy Scripture.

. . . Which “circumstances” the Catholic Church believes are nonexistent, of course (the “adultery” clause being thought of as a state of fornication; in other words, an example of a living situation which is a prime candidate for annulment). Sin is sin. And it cannot be permitted by any Church claiming to be apostolic. I don’t think that is a difficult concept to grasp.

The Orthodox Church does allow remarriage. You get up to three chances. Why? Well, not until you get it right, but since the Church exists for the salvation of sinners, and people do sin, the Church offers the chance to relearn and recommit to what Christian marriage is.

But this disregards the “ontology” of what has happened in a legitimate marriage, where the two become one flesh. One can’t undo that by “repentance.” It is distinct from other sins, which can be viewed as “in the past.” A true marriage between two validly-baptized Christians can’t be dissolved by any power on earth, because it is a metaphysical and spiritual reality, ordained by God Himself.

The service for a second marriage is much less joyful and much more penitential in nature, asking for the forgiveness of sins, errors, etc… and committing to Christian marriage and discipleship.

We understand this (I think I do, anyway, having had this conversation many, many times now). But it disregards or has no relation to the question of ontology, which I just explained.

The Orthodox Church does not recognize other church’s sacraments or civil marriage to be Christian marriage, the holy Mystery which St. Paul writes about in his Epistles. When someone, or even a couple, enter the Orthodox faith from heretical confessions or Non-Christian religions, the Mystery of Marriage is not required because in Chrismation (Confirmation in the Catholic Church) we believe very firmly that the Holy Spirit “makes up what is lacking,” that is, fulfills the mystery, and it is sanctified in the Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ.

[emphasis added]

Good! This is precisely the same in essence as a Catholic annulment! What is regarded as “marriage” by civil authority or some non-Orthodox Christian body is in fact no marriage, from Orthodoxy’s perspective. Where, then, is the beef about Catholic annulments? What becomes of all the fatuous talk about our excessive “juridical” distinctions and abstract argumentation? In fact, Orthodox do the same thing we do: viz., make a distinction between civil and sacramental (Christian) marriage. So to my mind this undercuts completely the Orthodox argument – recently stated again – that Catholic annulments are 1) improper, and 2) no more than a rationalized and equivocating instance of divorce. And right from an Orthodox priest. I regard this as an unwitting concession of almost the entire argument on divorce, as it has progressed on this list.

Sometimes it is said that the Orthodox Church “allows” divorce. This is not true. But She does recognize that frequently no marriage exists,

Again, here is the acknowledgement of a “marriage” which may be annuled, because it is in reality no marriage. If no marriage exists, it is no sin to remarry, and to that extent our two communions are in total agreement. Where there did exist a true marriage, we think divorce is (metaphysically, spiritually, morally) impossible, and that’s where the disagreement lies.

because we see marriage as a Mystery of Martyrdom

Not sure what he means by that, but it strikes me kind of funny . . .

and not a legal or ecclesiastical contract (hence no vows are taken in the Orthodox Marriage ceremony), there is the opportunity for repentance, for turning around one’s life and getting it right. It requires obedience, and time, though, and many do not fulfill it.

This is a good point; however, I don’t think it overcomes the objection that “the two become one flesh.” However one regards the particulars of the “contractual” or “legal” elements of marriage, we still have our Lord’s rather clear words as to what happens to those two people: a mystical bond occurs which is unbreakable in its very essence. Hence to break it constitutes adultery.

Matthew 5:31-32:

It was also said: “Whoever divorces his wife must give her a bill of divorce.” 32: But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) {which would be grounds of annulment} causes her to commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

He expands on this in Matthew 19: 3-12:

Some Pharisees approached him and tested him, saying. “Is it a lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause whatever?” He said in reply, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, no human being must separate.” They saith to him, “Then why did Moses command that the man give the woman a bill of divorce and dismiss her?” He said to them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful and marries another commits adultery.”

In Mark 10:1-12 this is reiterated without the dispensation for unlawful marriages.

I thank the Orthodox priest for his clear and precise explanation. I think it shows better than ever why we disagree on this, yet it also illustrates that there is also common ground on the question of annulments (as I have previously argued). In any event — from whatever standpoint one approaches this -, it is helpful for the purpose of both sides to further clarify their positions.

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The reason I think that annulments can violate the spirit and letter of Scriptures is that when a man and woman get married and intend to get married even if it is not in a Roman Catholic wedding ceremony, once they have had intercourse they have become one flesh.

But that doesn’t mean that they are necessarily married in the sacramental sense. Otherwise every sexual act with a prostitute would constitute a “marriage” (see 1 Cor 6:13-20).

Annulments in effect also rip asunder that one flesh that has in fact come into being once the marriage is consummated.

Again, following this convoluted logic (i.e., no annulments), every time a fornicator or adulterer ceases his immoral activity he is committing a sort of “auto-divorce.” This scenario obviously reduces to absurdity; therefore the premise (“there is no such thing as an annulment”) must be discarded. You are half right; you just don’t see where the real sin lies: divorce. That is what truly rips asunder the “one flesh” because it violates the “ontological (and moral) reality” of the one flesh entailed in a valid sacramental marriage. Abstaining from fornication, on the other hand, violates nothing except the devil’s preferences . . . So how is it that Orthodoxy allows the former, yet disallows the notion of an annulment which is really simply common sense?

Above, my friend William Klimon shows how the concept of annulment has historically existed in the East as well, even in its own Canon Law, so all this squawking about it being an exclusively western “corruption” or “innovation” is so much hot air.

If I sound frustrated, I am. I’ve been through this discussion so many times on my discussion list and never seem to make any progress. I find myself posting the same things over and over, for lack of a truly responsive Orthodox reply. I guess it is analogous to Protestants and sola Scriptura: once the argument is conceded, the person finds himself in very deep waters of doubt and confusion as to the overall preferability of his own system. If the Orthodox once admits that his Church is officially sanctioning sin, going against the Bible and the Fathers alike, then where does that leave him? Not in a very comfortable place. So instead we see hair-splitting and obfuscation about annulments (usually their mere abuses at that), as if that resolves the difficulty of the Orthodox position in and of itself. It certainly does not.

Someone has to tell the Emperor he is wearing no clothes. It might as well be me, since I am accused so often of Orthodox-bashing in the first place. :-) I’m willing to take the heat on this one, since in my opinion it is a clear-cut and compelling case.

See related papers:

Divorce: Early Church Teaching

Contraception: Early Church Teaching (William Klimon)

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(culled from dialogues in 1997-1999)

Photo credit: Image by kerbstone (11-6-15) [Pixabay / CC0 Creative Commons license]

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February 24, 2018

February 24, 2018 By

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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February 14, 2018

February 14, 2018 By
Former Christian pastor, now atheist John W. Loftus is a big name now in the atheist world, with lots of books, and his popular blog Debunking Christianity. The following is drawn from remarks made on his blog. His words will be in blue. His older words will be in purple, and my past words in green.
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Here are my own shots at solving the problem. I don’t claim all that much for them, except that I think they exhibit some degree of thought and that they’re not lightweight, breezy attempts at solutions. The latter debate I consider one of the best I have had with anyone: Christian or atheist (I wonder if Mike is still around on the Internet these days?):

“Christian Replies to the Argument From Evil (Free Will Defense): Is God Malevolent, Weak, or Non-Existent Because of the Existence of Evil and Suffering?”

“Dialogue With an Atheist on the “Problem of Good” and the Nature of Meaningfulness in Atheism (The Flip Side of the Problem of Evil Argument Against Christianity)” (vs. Mike Hardie)

These constitute one Christian attempt to grapple with the problem. I am more than willing to defend my points of view and even to admit that I have no answer in particulars if that is the case (or to retract particulars if that is required, too).

Best wishes to both sides in the debate, and let it be a fair fight!

Dave Armstrong, I skimmed through the essays on your Blog and what I saw what [sic] that you simply do not understand the problem.

You can’t determine that by skimming long papers on such a weighty topic. The least you could do is show me what you claim I don’t understand: educate the ignorant and get them up to speed.

I saw no interaction with David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion on this, and that only takes you up to the 18th century.

Hume believed in a deity of some sort (though not the Christian God), so whatever he concluded about evil did not, obviously, make him an atheist (and that is far closer to my position than to yours). Many people seem not to know this, but there it is. See my paper: Was Skeptical Philosopher David Hume an Atheist?

Christian philosopher Dr. James F. Sennett has said: “By far the most important objection to the faith is the so-called problem of evil – the alleged incompatibility between the existence or extent of evil in the world and the existence of God. I tell my philosophy of religion students that, if they are Christians and the problem of evil does not keep them up at night, then they don’t understand it.”

I agree completely, which is why I made a very similar comment on this blog recently. Just three days ago, I wrote in a thread under one of your posts:

I think I glanced at your deconversion. Wasn’t the problem of evil key? I consider that the most serious objection to Christianity (though, not, of course, fatal at all, as you’d expect). So while I could still quibble with that, it would be in an entirely different league from the sort of shallow stuff that usually constitutes reasons for deconversions.

You know how that goes: there are reasons that one disagrees with, while considering them highly respectable and serious and worthy of attention, and others which are downright frivolous and trivial or plainly fallacious.

Obviously, you missed that, or you wouldn’t quote my own belief back to me. And so your next statement becomes literally, nonsensical, since you thought that I would disagree with what Sennett said, but I do not; therefore, you are the one who doesn’t understand my position on this (whatever you think of its merits). And of course, understanding of opposing positions is fundamental to any decent dialogue.

Dave, YOU don’t understand the problem. Sorry to tell you this.

See the above remarks. I’m willing to interact with anyone who wants to show me where my reasoning went astray in my long paper on the subject. If you decline, that’s fine. Perhaps someone else would be willing to do so.

I find it humorous, too, that I cited very long passages from St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. If I don’t understand the problem, then neither do they, so the result would be that two of the very greatest thinkers in Christian history don’t have a clue about the problem of evil; only atheists do. Or else they understood the problem but I didn’t, even though I cited them in agreement. That brings us back to the logical nonsense of me agreeing with and citing people who understand the problem, yet I supposedly do not.

Right. I think you need to give it another try. I couldn’t care less whether you want to dialogue with me on this subject (or any other) or not (I manage to find many dialogue partners; no problem); but I would expect of you something better than this flimsy sort of response and misrepresentation of the position of Christian opponents.

I’ll be dealing with your deconversion story (as much as I can find online), and when I do that, I won’t misrepresent or breezily dismiss what you believe. But if you misunderstand Christian doctrine (as almost inevitably happens in any such cases that I have examined), I will certainly point that out.

[see: Critique of Atheist John W. Loftus’ “Deconversion” Story [10-15-06]

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In any event, I won’t approach your writing with this silly attitude of “I skimmed your [long, involved] papers and you just don’t get it, so I won’t spend any time giving you the courtesy of showing you why you don’t understand the problem; instead I’ll quote Christian philosophers to you who say exactly what you said in a comment under a post of mine three days ago — as if you would disagree with them.”

C’mon; certainly you’re capable of much better than that . . . and if you aren’t, then hopefully someone on this blog is. I started out here in high hopes that good dialogue could be had! I haven’t given up yet . . .

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I did notice your comment about evil, but even though you said this doesn’t mean you understand the depth of the problem. 

Even if that is true (which I deny), you give me no reason why you think this is the case.

I was in a hurry at the time I skimmed through your papers. I’ll look them over again. 

Thank you.

But anyone who attempts to deal with the problem of evil who mainly uses Augustine and Aquinas isn’t caught up to speed on the whole debate since Hume. 

I didn’t primarily use them. Above I made the point that if you want to play the “ignorance” game, you’ll have to include Aquinas and Augustine and I don’t think many people will buy an interpretation that they were ignoramuses, no matter what period they happened to live in.

And anyone today who wants to comment on the debate who doesn’t take into consideration William Rowe’s, Paul Draper’s, Michael Martin’s, Quentin Smith’s, Bruce Russell’s and Theodore Drange’s arguments still doesn’t understand the problem.

This is irrational. One doesn’t have to read all the philosophers to have any intelligent comment at all on a topic. That is simply academic elitism, and I don’t play that game. I’m not an academic and don’t claim to be. I’m a Christian apologist. But to say not only that someone can’t have a constructive, decent dialogue on a topic unless they’ve read a, b, c, d, etc. but that they can’t even comprehend the depth of the problem of proposed difficulty, is sheer nonsense.

Granted, the more one reads on anything, the better prepared and informed they will be, but you aren’t just saying that: you make out that reading these guys is an absolute requirement to even have the discussion or be regarded as a worthy dialogue partner/opponent.

In effect, then, this reduces to: either one has to know all the ins and outs of philosophical minutiae or else one can’t sensibly discuss the problem of evil at all. I vehemently deny this. I may not know all the intricacies of all these arguments as well as you do (freely granted), but that doesn’t mean I can’t spot a flaw in the arguments that I can read and comprehend as well as anyone else. Since I am a Socratic in method, that’s mainly what I do, anyway.

Even Alvin Plantinga thinks it is perfectly reasonable and rational for a Christian to hold certain beliefs without knowing all the ins and outs of the current philosophical discussion. And he is no slouch, as I have heard many atheists agree. He opposes academic elitism and snobbery, as I do.

When my debate transcript and video are made available you’ll see a glimpse of what the problem really is all about.

I see. So being a Christian apologist and having regarded the problem as a very serious and worthy objection for 25 years isn’t sufficient to have any inkling of the depth of the problem. I have to see your video to get a glimpse of how ignorant I really am.

I had so much more to share if needed, too. 

I’m sure you did. So did I when I wrote my papers.

Until then I wish you well. You’re a bright thinker, and I look forward to dialoguing with you on this issue in the future. 

Not if the requirement is to read a bunch of atheists first. If you want to discuss one such paper by one of these guys, great. I’d be happy to do that, anytime. I’d even gladly read, say, long online articles by each of these folks (but not books). And I would reply to them unless I felt that it was too philosophically technical and out of my reach in that sense.

And dialogue on this issue I will. But do me the favor first in reading up on the modern debates, okay?…that is, if you haven’t already.

I’ve read plenty on the topic. One can always read more. I don’t have unlimited time to devote to one topic. The apologist (esp. the Catholic apologist) has many many issues to write about and defend. You can wait till I read the books you think I should read if you like. In the meantime, I will start responding to comments I find here. If you want to counter-respond, fine; if not, fine. It’s of little concern to me. I dialogue with whomever is willing to do so, and I critique whatever I think is worthwhile to critique, whether the person is willing or able to reply back or not. Usually people can’t defend their own viewpoints; that’s been my experience.

Dialogue it is then! Forget my deconversion story. I know what you’ll say about science and Genesis 1-11, since you’ve already written about that.

Then I’ll skip that part and deal with others, but it will be dealt with (especially after the ridiculous, intellectually triumphalistic remarks you made about it that I saw cited at Steve Hays’ site):

[I’m saying the case I make in my new book is overwhelmingly better.

Again, are you going to read it and critique it for yourself? Hey, I dare you! I bet you think you’re that smart, don’t ya, or that your faith is that strong – that you can read something like my book and not have it affect your faith.

If Christianity is true, then you have nothing to fear. But if Christianity is false, then you owe it to yourself to get the book. Either way you win.

And even if you blast my book after reading it here on this Blog, I’ll know that you read it, and just like poison takes time to work, all I have to do from then on is to wait for a personal crisis to kill your faith.

Want to give it a go? The way I see you reason here makes me think it’ll make your head spin with so many unanswerable questions that you won’t know what to do.

But that’s just me. I couldn’t answer these questions, so if you can, you’re a smarter man than I am, and that could well be. Are you? I think not, but that’s just me.]

I would reply briefly that if all it takes (in the sense of immediate cause) to “kill” someone’s faith is a personal crisis, then obviously such a person did not understand the intellectual reasons for why they are a Christian in the first place, since if they had, a mere crisis would not have the effect of transforming one into an atheist, as it is merely an emotional reaction and not a rational one. This rather proves the point that the atheist objections tend to come down to, in the end, emotional and irrational factors. That’s why they’re so big on the problem of evil. It’s a very serious objection, as I’ve stated above and have always thought, but on the other hand, it’s also very rich in possibilities for emotional exploitation, rhetoric, polemics, and so forth, because everyone feels so strongly about suffering and evil.

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[two days later]

Hitler is either “allowed” by necessity of human free will or else we have no free will.

This is a false dichotomy. 

Well, it is an argument from plausibility, based on the more involved logical background arguments of Alvin Plantinga.

Didn’t God harden Pharoah’s heart?

No. This is another instance (one of many I have documented) of atheists not properly understanding the Bible and how to sensibly interpret it. Shame on you, as a former pastor, with a multiple Masters degrees in theology, as this is a rather simple matter.

When the Bible says that God did this, it is in the particular sense of “God allowed the Pharaoh to become hardened of his own accord, then used it for His purposes, to free the Hebrew slaves.” In other words, it is a typically vivid, pungent, dramatic Hebrew way of speech: “God did it [in the sense of it being ultimately used for His purposes, in His providence].”

Because it is pre-philosophical language, all that is bypassed and the writer just says “God hardened Pharaoh.” But nevertheless, other passages give the true sense, so it can be better understood. Thus, the literature teaches by deduction what might be expressed in more logical-type language all in one sentence.

Accordingly, we have the Bible saying God hardened Pharaoh, many times (e.g., Ex. 4:21; 7:3,13; 9:12; 10:1,20,27; 11:10; 14:4,8 etc,), and even hardening the Egyptians (14:17), but it also says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart (Ex 8:15; 8:32; 9:34; 1 Sam 6:6).

Furthermore, it simply states the fact of hardening without saying who did it (Ex 7:14,22; 8:19; 9:7,35) and that one shouldn’t harden one’s own heart, as a generality (Deut 15:7; Ps 95:8; Heb 3:8,15; 4:7).

The obvious, straightforward way to interpret all this data is as I have done. It is not contradictory: neither internally, nor with regard to the problem of evil. One understands this insofar as one also is familiar with the Hebrew oft-poetic, non-literal manner of speaking.

If you want to directly compare that world with human beings, and make us merely an evolutionary development of it (i.e., in a completely naturalistic sense; I am not condemning theistic evolution), then you have huge problems of your own, since how can you argue that cannibalism is more wrong for human beings than for animals (especially in a eat-anything-to-survive environment, such as the famous Donner party)? Atheists will play games and make out that people are qualitatively different, but this is nonsensical within your paradigm, which has man evolving directly from this same animal kingdom, wherein survival of the fittest is the natural order of things.

This is irrelevant to the theistic problem of evil. It’s a red herring, for it sidetracks the problem of why God set up predation in the natural world. 

I was simply responding to your statement: “In the natural world something must be killed so that some other carnivore can eat. This is the world your God set up.” I didn’t claim that it had anything directly to do with the problem of evil. It was, in effect, a footnote.

We could deal with this issue, if you want to do so sometime, but let’s stick to the issue at hand. 

Gladly. Like I said, I was simply responding to what you wrote. It didn’t sidetrack me.

Why didn’t God make us vegetarians? There are naturally existing vegetarian animals.

He did, originally (and some Christians adopt this view on Christian grounds, though it is tough, since Jesus ate fish). Christians usually argue that meat-eating was a result of the fall and not the ideal situation. The fall was as a result of free will; hence not able to be blamed on God (that only applies to supralapsarian Calvinism: itself a small minority of a minority school).

That makes him worse than Hitler by a long long shot.

Really? I don’t see how:

1) God allows free will.
2) Free will entails the possibility of rebellion and evil.
3) Hitler ushered in one such massive societal rebellion against civilization and evil campaign.
4) God is to blame for Hitler’s evil because He allowed free will.
5) Man isn’t to blame for Hitler’s evil, even though he had the capacity to prevent it altogether.

Could God have given Hitler a heart attack and end the war? 

Certainly. The fact that He didn’t is no proof that He isn’t good, if some other plausible scenario can be imagined, consistent with His goodness.

Could utopian, naively pacifistic, Fabian socialist, occult- and sex-obsessed Englishmen in the 1930s have stopped the German military build-up, which was obvious? Yes. Can God be blamed because they didn’t? Nope. Can WWII be directly blamed on their failure to see the writing on the wall? Yes, of course.

You can’t start a war if you don’t have the military weaponry to do so in the first place, it seems obvious to me. But all you want to do is blame God because He didn’t strike down the madman. Isn’t it better for us to do that: does the parent have to do absolutely everything for his child when the child is capable? Clearly not. You act like human beings are like babies who can do nothing; hence God must do everything by way of preventing any evil.

This is a clear case where He didn’t have to do so. Men could have done everything necessary to prevent it. And in fact we did end it when we woke up to what was happening; after London was bombed, etc. Self-interest and self-defense. Pearl Harbor quickly got isolationist America in the war, didn’t it? Prior to that even London being bombed wasn’t enough. That wakes people up fast and motivates them to do what they avoided doing previously. 9-11 did the same in our own time, but it didn’t take long for certain schools of thought to put their heads in the sand again and pretend that fighting back isn’t necessary.

If so, he could’ve stopped a thousand Hitlers.

Yes; no argument there. The question at hand is whether He must do so in order to be believed to be as Christians think Him to be. We say no.

This is irrational. It makes no more sense to blame God for the evil choices of creatures he created free than it does to blame a good parent for sins of a child of his or her own volition, committed after the parent trusted the child to be responsible with its freedom. You can’t blame one being for the sins of another; at some point there is individual responsibility. That’s why it is ridiculous to blame God for Hitler.

If a mother gave a two-year old a razor blade she would be held culpable. And if she sat by and did nothing while my older brother beat me to death she could be considered an accomplice.

That’s correct. But in the case of the two-year-old, the mother is clearly culpable because the child isn’t old enough to know that it could be harmed by a razor blade (till it starts cutting, that is, then it can figure out some causal relationship, I think). That just proves my point that you are irrationally regarding the human race and adults with brains and responsibilities for free actions, as the equivalent of babies in diapers, with rattles rather than adult brains and the capacity to make intelligent and virtuous choices.

The other example at least makes a little sense (though you didn’t give an age of the brothers). There I would say that this is our responsibility as humans: to prevent harm insofar as possible. As for God in this analogy, I could easily argue that He set the world in motion and allowed free will because He wanted us to be responsible and to do good ourselves, not rely on Him to automatically make every situation we have screwed up right again. In effect, it is allowing His grown-up children to look after themselves. That’s what the analogy of God to parents involves, too.

Now God can intervene at times, but it’ll be the exception, just as a parent would assume that children of a certain age should be able to get along without killing each other. The human race knows more than enough to stop warring with each other and butchering children in their mothers’ wombs, but it doesn’t because of sin.

What’s so complicated about knowing that it is bad to start killing each other for greedy reasons or sexual “freedom” or no reason at all in many cases? We can solve that ourselves, but evil and the propensity of man for evil makes what should be simple, impossible to achieve in fact.

I don’t see that God is under an absolute obligation to rectify things that we have screwed up. He has promised a better world that He will rule, where all things will eventually be made right. That’s more than enough, in my opinion. We don’t even deserve that. We all should be condemned to hell for our corporate rebellion, but God in His great mercy gives us a chance to repent and be saved.

But even if that made any sense, why do you atheists not give God any credit for all the good which comes from free will? If you want to hold Him accountable for all the bad things that men do to each other, or the natural events that can hardly be otherwise in a sensible, orderly universe, then how come you never give Him any credit for anything?

Because there is so much unalleviated suffering in the world we just don’t think there is a God.

That didn’t answer my question. I agree there is a lot of evil and that it is a difficulty to understand. I asked why you never give God (even a hypothetical God, for the sake of argument) any credit; only blame for bad stuff that is often clearly man’s fault?

Hitler’s Germany was a Christian nation and all you can do is to ask about Hitler from my perspective?

The people may have been, but the regime was not, by any stretch of the imagination. It was a grotesque mixture of corrupted romanticism, paganism, and occultism. The Final Solution was not justified on Christian grounds.

So I suppose American slavery was not justified on Christian grounds either? 

No; it certainly was. But wrongly so. Biblical servanthood (and often, pagan servanthood) is not nearly the same thing as American slavery was. The Bible condemned the oppressive sort of slavery. Ever heard of the Exodus from Egypt? That’s why black slaves often saw that as an analogy: God desired them to be free, just as with the Hebrew Egyptian slaves. It was only the characteristic of greed that caused Christians to justify such outrages.

But that was a clever way of switching the subject, wasn’t it? Perhaps you hoped that I wouldn’t notice, or that readers wouldn’t? Ah, but not when I point it out.

Who speaks for Christianity? 

Another rabbit trail. I would say as a Catholic, that the pope does, preeminently.

You? 

I do, insofar as I am a Catholic lay apologist devoted to defending Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular, and representing the beliefs of that system to the very best of my ability, and in submission to its authority.

Based upon hindsight?

Based upon the history of Christianity, the Bible, Church authority, authoritative apostolic tradition, and reason.

If He stopped Hitler by the miraculous and abrogation of his free will, then we would have a world where no one was free, and every bad, evil thing is immediately prevented

False dichotomy. You’ve just got to stop thinking in terms of extremes and clear black and whites here. 

It’s not extreme. It is a conclusion based on an unspoken chain of reasoning (and a sort of reductio ad absurdum). You guys say God should intervene practically at every turn, and prevent all these evils. If He can do so once, then (according to you, it seems), He ought to do so massively, in every case, since why would one be more worthy of attention than another? Why should God not immediately heal a child’s scrape or a hang nail or a blister or pimple if He is required to alleviate every misery known to man, in order to be believed for what He is?

There is no sensible stopping point. So I say it is most logical to believe that He simply lets the world operate according to the laws of nature and the results of human free will, with only rare miraculous intervention (yes, even up to and including Hitler).

The other sort of world makes no sense to me. It really doesn’t. But heaven makes sense to me. That is different precisely because to enter it we had to pass some sort of test, and accept the grace that God gave us in order to be saved. Then we can have perfect happiness.

God clearly directed free willed creatures in the Bible, it’s claimed, so why not do something about the horrendous evils which lead atheists to say he doesn’t exist if God wants us to believe? 

Precisely because those same free willed creatures are able to alleviate most suffering themselves. Atheists will find reasons not to believe no matter what. We maintain that there is more than enough evidence for theism and Christianity. That’s why many thinking people accept it and why atheism has always been a minority viewpoint even in western civilization, with all its marvelous intellectual and technological, artistic and musical and architectural achievements.

God makes your task harder and harder all of the time. I don’t envy your task here. 

I’m doing fine, thank you. I’m not trembling under your supposed profundities of anti-Christian argument, as you seem to think we all will, if we read your stuff. To the contrary, invariably when I take on opposing arguments, my faith grows stronger. It happens every time, and is one of the blessings of professional apologetics. I get to make the arguments and get the added bonus of having my faith strengthened by observing how the non-Christian arguments routinely fail to hit their mark and achieve their purpose, or to see how they are downright fallacious.

But God could avert these tragedies, if for no other reason to help you out in explaining why evil exists.

I think whatever the reason is that He allows them (and I believe Christians probably have a pretty good idea at least about some possible reasons why He does so), it wouldn’t be for any reason so trivial as that.

You say my moral code is subjectively chosen? Well then, where does your God’s moral code come from?

It’s eternal. Therefore, it “comes from” nothing. It always existed in God. God is Love. Yours is certainly subjective because you can’t create an absolute larger than yourself and applicable to all, no matter how hard you try. That has to come from a Being Who transcends creation and mankind itself.

That’s of course another subject, and I consistently refuse to be drawn off-topic while an important, meaty debate is already taking place. But some day I’d be happy to.

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(originally 10-11-06)

Photo credit: John Loftus at SASHAcon 2016 at the University of Missouri (3-19-16). Photograph by Mark Schierbecker [Wikimedia Commons /  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license]

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February 1, 2018

February 1, 2018 By

Constructive, amiable Protestant-Catholic discussion on many key aspects of salvation.

[see the original, somewhat longer Facebook exchanges, with a few more helpful participants, too]

*****

This dialogue was kicked off when I cited Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman on the difference between Protestant and Catholic doctrines of original sin:

Catholics hold that Original sin is mainly an external evil, Protestants an internal. According to us, it is not propagated in the way of cause and effect, but by an act of the will of God, exerted and carried out on each child, as it is conceived. I repeat, this is not de fide, but it is what I conceive theologians teach. (Letters & Diaries, v. 19; To Arthur Osborne Alleyne, 15 June 1860)

Our doctrine of original sin is not that of Protestants. We do not hold infection of nature – but we place original sin in the absence of supernatural grace. (Ibid., v. 19; To William Wilberforce, 9 Dec. 1860)

Bethany Kerr is a very friendly and knowledgeable Protestant with whom I have enjoyed several constructive dialogues. Her words will be in blue.

*****

Can you explain what exactly what original sin is if not internal?

Big topic, so I’ll refer you to this good source: “Original Sin” (Catholic Encyclopedia).

Obviously I haven’t had time to give the article a thorough read, but from the skimming I have done, I don’t see any clear explanation of what original sin actually is. There are lots of philosophical ideas surrounding the concept of original sin, and a lot of arguments against what it is not, but I don’t see clear explanation as to what original sin is, according to Catholic doctrine. Can you help me understand, in a simplified way perhaps, what you personally believe original sin is?

Here is a more concise definition:

Either the sin committed by Adam as the head of the human race, or the sin he passed onto his posterity with which every human being, with the certain exception of Christ and his Mother, is conceived and born. The sin of Adam is called originating original sin (originale originans); that of his descendants is originated original sin (originale originatum). Adam’s sin was personal and grave, and it affected human nature. It was personal because he freely committed it; it was grave because God imposed a serious obligation; and it affected the whole human race by depriving his progeny of the supernatural life and preternatural gifts they would have possessed on entering the world had Adam not sinned. Original sin in his descendants is personal only in the sense that the children of Adam are each personally affected, but not personal as though they had voluntarily chosen to commit the sin; it is grave in the sense that it debars a person from the beatific vision, but not grave in condemning one to hell; and it is natural only in that all human nature, except for divine intervention, has it and can have it removed only by supernatural means. (Catholic Dictionary, from Fr. John A. Hardon, S. J.; hosted at Catholic Culture)

The simplest way to put it is that many Protestants believe that original sin results in a fallen nature, whereas Catholics think it is more of a deprivation than a positive and profound evil.

So would I be correct in understanding that you believe it is a deprivation of the original good nature of Adam at creation?

No, Bethany. You are still talking about natures. It is the deprivation “of the supernatural life and preternatural gifts they would have possessed on entering the world had Adam not sinned,” as Fr. Hardon stated in the linked short definition above.

To not possess something (supernatural life and preternatural gifts) is different from possessing a bad thing (an “evil nature”). That’s why the Calvinists developed total depravity from the latter notion, whereas even most Protestants (like myself, formerly), and Orthodox and Catholics reject that.

Okay thanks, I did say nature again, didn’t I? 

Why do you believe Paul speaks of the old and new natures throughout his epistles? He speaks about the old and new man, which struggle against each other in the body. From your understanding, what does that mean. Or “if any man be in Christ he is a new creature. All old things are passed away , all things have become new”. Or the passage which speaks of God taking our heart of stone and replacing it with a heart of flesh?  (All those questions are really one question.)

And my three replies are really one reply.  I think he is talking about regeneration and/or infused justification and/or the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Catholics, too, believe that men still need all those things to be saved and made whole.

Do you believe we are given the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of salvation?

No; He is given to us to help us procure the salvation that we must persevere in obtaining, always and necessarily by means of His grace and power, but with our free will cooperation.

Can you bear with me and please explain how you reconcile that belief with Ephesians 1:13 -14 which says: “In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is the guaranteed of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”

I predicted in my head that you would cite that verse. :-)

I have more! :-) But I figure you’re aware of their existence. Obviously you’ve read the Scripture. But what you’re saying doesn’t work with the Scripture I’m reading.

I have more, too: entire books of it. The same Paul warns several times that we may fall from His grace; nothing is guaranteed. We must interpret Ephesians 1 in harmony with many other of his related statements:

1 Corinthians 9:27 (RSV) but I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

1 Corinthians 10:12 Therefore let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.

Galatians 4:8-9 Formerly, when you did not know God, you were in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods; but now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits, whose slaves you want to be once more?

Galatians 5:1, 4 . . . stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery . . . You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.

Philippians 3:11-14 that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own . . . I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Colossians 1:21-23 And you, who once were estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him, provided that you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel which you heard, . . .

1 Timothy 4:1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.

1 Timothy 5:15 For some have already strayed after Satan.

2 Timothy 2:12 if we endure, we shall also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us;

And there are many more similar non-Pauline passages . . .

Remember, Jesus said He could remove folks’ names from the Book of Life:

Revelation 3:5 He who conquers shall be clad thus in white garments, and I will not blot his name out of the book of life; I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels.

Where does Revelation 3:5 say that anyone’s name will be blotted from the book of life?

If Jesus talks about “not” doing something, it’s strongly implied that the thing is possible.

Revelation 17:8 The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and will come up out of the Abyss and go to his destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because he once was, now is not, and yet will come.

“If you do X, I will not . . . ” Therefore, it seems to follow that “If you do not do x, I will . . . ”

No, it doesn’t always follow.  Look at Rev 17:8. “whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world.” When Jesus tells those who are not His to depart from him, he says “I never knew you”. He does not say, “I am saddened to say that you departed from me”.

Yes; well, God knows everything, so it’s true that such passages are anthropomorphic. From our perspective, we don’t know who is finally in the elect (even John Calvin agrees with that) or who will fall away from faith.

But that is part of my argument. We cannot know for sure what the future will bring; therefore, we can’t be absolutely*sure of final salvation. We can only examine ourselves and make sure that we are not involved in serious sin that separates us from God, and attain a “moral certainty or assurance.”

What we know for sure is that whomever God deems to be elect is elect. We just can’t know for sure who is in that category, because we’re not omniscient like God and don’t know the future. Our concern is to follow His will and do what He says.

We cannot be sure of other people’s election, but the scripture tells us to make our calling and election sure. We can know that we are elect because the Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are heirs of eternal life.  What is the will of God? To believe on Him who he has sent.

If we “know” it why do we have to strive to make it “sure”? We can know we are in God’s graces and that if we continue in those, we will be saved in the end and go to heaven. To believe in God also means to obey Him.

Well, of course. You’re obeying him by believing. What did the people who were bitten by snakes in Exodus doing in order to be saved from death? They simply looked in faith at the snake on the cross. That symbolized Jesus, who took our sin (the snake represented this) upon himself. And those who “look” on him receive life instead of death.

And faith produces works. Faith is a verb. If it is the gift of God, and God causes the faith in us, he also causes the result of faith, which is our works. We are told to examine ourselves, whether we are really in the faith. We should study and see whether our actions and thoughts line up with what the scripture teaches will be the fruit of salvation.

There is a large sense in which all these arguments are futile. All Christians agree that we must do God’s will and obey Him; we must walk with Him day-by-day and seek righteousness. Good works must be present in the Christian life. We all agree that those who are saved, are saved by God’s grace and mercy and free gift of salvation, through the atoning work of our Lord Jesus on the cross. So we do those things, and all will be well. Why argue about whether we are certain or not, and who is in and out, etc.?

Your last comment shows the essential agreement. So why argue about the elect and predestination and all that?

Because Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Hebrew Roots, Islam, etc all make the same mistake- they base at least part of their salvation on what they do. The Christian believes that you do because you believe.

What you described there is what Catholics call the “examination of conscience.”

God has given us faith, which causes our works. What are they examining when they examine their conscience? Are they examining whether they are worthy, or whether God has changed them?
*
We don’t believe in works-salvation. That is the heresy of Pelagianism, which we condemned 1500 years ago. This is your mistake. We believe in salvation by grace, and that faith without works is dead; that works cannot be separated from faith and grace.
*
Are you saved through faith? Does God give you the faith?
*
We are examining whether we are doing God’s will or engaged in serious sin that will separate us from God.
*
If God gives you faith, which produces works, how can you be stronger than God and not have works with that faith? How can you resist what he puts within you? True saving faith always produces works in the believer. But a Catholic believes that you can receive faith but not act in accordance with that faith.
*
We can resist because God gave us free will. Irresistible grace is a falsehood, as I show at length in one of my books. We’re saved by God’s grace, through faith. God enables all grace and faith. There is no difference here. But many Protestants wrongly think there is.
*
Dave, does faith necessarily produce works?
*
Real faith does. But we can rebel and lose faith and grace. My concern now is to show you that Catholics reject works-salvation. Here is the Council of Trent on Justification:
CANON I.-If any one saith, that man may be justified before God by his own works, whether done through the teaching of human nature, or that of the law, without the grace of God through Jesus Christ; let him be anathema.

CANON II.-If any one saith, that the grace of God, through Jesus Christ, is given only for this, that man may be able more easily to live justly, and to merit eternal life, as if, by free will without grace, he were able to do both, though hardly indeed and with difficulty; let him be anathema.

CANON III.-If any one saith, that without the prevenient inspiration of the Holy Ghost, and without his help, man can believe, hope, love, or be penitent as he ought, so as that the grace of Justification may be bestowed upon him; let him be anathema.

The Calvinist agrees with Canons I-III. The disagreement comes with Canon IV, because of their “either/or” thinking and denial of free will:
CANON IV.-If any one saith, that man’s free will moved and excited by God, by assenting to God exciting and calling, nowise co-operates towards disposing and preparing itself for obtaining the grace of Justification; that it cannot refuse its consent, if it would, but that, as something inanimate, it does nothing whatever and is merely passive; let him be anathema.
This is what we believe: that we cooperate with God’s free grace and can also reject it.
*
Catholics believe in a synergistic cooperative justification…Christians like me believe that justification is an act of God only,- monergism.
*
Exactly. This is the heart of our disagreement. If you deny that we believe we are “saved by works” then you have not misrepresented us (as Calvin and Luther both habitually do).
*
The Catholic church indeed teaches that by your own merits, which are not just the merits of Jesus Christ, but your own, can merit an increase of grace, and eternal life (as long as you don’t lose your state of grace).
*
Correct. But all that goes back to God’s grace, as to cause. Hence, Augustine said that merit was merely God “crowning His own gifts.” Understood in this way, it remains salvation by grace alone. We merely cooperate with God. We’re not programmed robots.
*
The bottom line is that Catholics believe in “both/and” thinking. I believe this is demonstrably biblical, as pertains to salvation and justification.
You believe in “either/or” thinking: God must do all; we can do nothing. We are not able to resist His will. Calvinism is a self-consistent system, but based on false premises. I show how these premises are biblically false in my book, Biblical Catholic Salvation. It has 115 pages (seven chapters) devoted specifically to a critique of Calvinism and all five of the beliefs of “TULIP”.

***

What does the Ephesians 1 verse mean, in your opinion?

That we are sealed with and in the Holy Spirit for salvation, as long as we “continue in the faith” (Col 1:23) and “stand fast” (Gal 5:1); and don’t become “disqualified” (1 Cor 9:27), “fall” (1 Cor 10:12), “turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits” (Gal 4:9), become “severed from Christ” (Gal 5:4), “depart from the faith” (1 Tim 4:1), “stray after Satan” (1 Tim 5:15), or “deny him” (2 Tim 2:12).

Dave, in biblical times, whenever the word seal is used, can it be revoked? Once a king sealed something, could it ever be unsealed?

Why do you believe that Paul is referring to salvation when he refers to being disqualified from the prize of the upward call in Christ? First of all, that would be saying that heaven is our reward for good works- as a “prize” is a reward. That would show that as a catholic you do in fact believe in works salvation. 

Secondly, how do you reconcile this with Paul’s claim that to die is to be with the Lord? Or his claims of his inheritance waiting for him in heaven? How could he both have assurance of these things, but also lack assurance of these things?

We have a moral assurance, insofar as we examine ourselves and are not involved in mortal sin: sins that the Bible states will bar us from salvation and heaven. I gave a link to a long paper of mine about that, above.

We lack assurance insofar as we don’t absolutely know the future. The classic observation of the error of Calvinism or eternal security is when a Calvinist falls into serious sin, Calvinists say, “he never was saved.” They don’t know that. It’s circular reasoning. Since the Bible speaks repeatedly of apostasy, it’s much more reasonable to assert that the person was in God’s grace and fell away after rejecting it.

John 6, which I know as a Catholic, you are very familiar with, gives assurance that I do not believe Catholics take literally-

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

1. His father gave Him certain who would come to him. 
2. Of those that would come to Him, He would lose none of them.
3. He will raise those the father has given him on the last day. 
4. Whoever believes in Him will never be cast out. 
5. These people will be raised on the last day. 
6. Whoever looks on the Son and believes in Him possesses eternal life and will be raised on the last day. No conditions mentioned outside of looking and believing (eating flesh and drinking blood). 

Do you believe that since you have eaten His flesh and drank his blood, that you have eternal life, that he will raise you on the last day, and that he will never cast you out or lose you?

From: Society of Evangelical Arminians: “Perseverance of the Saints Part 12: Examining Passages Commonly Appealed to by the Advocates of Unconditional Eternal Security”

Eph.1:13, 14; 4:30

“In Him, you also, after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation- having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory….Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”

Much has been made of the “sealing” of the Holy Spirit by defenders of unconditional eternal security. The “sealing” of the Holy Spirit is clearly conditional since we can “grieve”, and eventually “insult” the Sprit of Grace, which constitutes total apostasy without remedy (Eph. 4:30, and Heb. 10:29). The Holy Spirit is received by faith (Gal. 3:2, 14) and can only seal us as we remain in Christ through faith. We are, in fact, sealed in Christ, by the Holy Spirit, as a direct result of faith (Eph. 1:13). The sealing of the Holy Spirit presupposes the possession of the Holy Spirit, and only believers can possess the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:9). He is therefore the guarantee of an inheritance for believers and not unbelievers.

There may be a parallel with circumcision which was also a “seal” for those under the old covenant (Rom. 4:11). We know that that seal was broken and guaranteed nothing when those who were circumcised broke the covenant and were cut off from the people of God (Rom. 2:25). The seal was conditioned on continued faith and obedience (2:26-29). The Holy Spirit marks us as children of the new covenant through faith in Christ, but if we abandon the faith then the Spirit of God no longer remains in us and we are no longer sealed in Christ (partakers of the covenant blessings that are found in Him alone- Eph. 1:3, 7, 10,11). Only those that continue in obedient faith remain sealed (Acts 5:32, Jn. 14:15-17; Rom. 8:5, 6, 9).

Notice that the sealing of the Holy Spirit is coupled with a warning not to “grieve” Him in Ephesians 4:30. This would seem to indicate that there is danger in grieving the Spirit who seals us and the reference to sealing may be for the primary purpose of reminding the Ephesians that to grieve the Spirit is to grieve the one who unites us to Christ. This makes the warning far more emphatic and cautions the believer to watch how he lives lest the sins which grieve Him lead to unbelief through which the seal is broken and the Spirit is finally “insulted.” The sealing of the Holy Spirit, therefore, applies only as long as we do not “grieve” (Eph. 4:30), and finally “insult” (Heb. 10:29) the “Spirit of Grace” through continued disobedience, culminating in outright apostasy.

There is no Biblical reason to see the sealing of the Holy Spirit as unconditional or irrevocable, while there are plenty of reasons to see it as conditioned on continued faith. Indeed, warnings against apostasy alone imply the conditionality of the seal.

***

Philippians 3:11-14 that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own . . . I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Navarre Bible Commentary:

10–12. The calling to holiness which every Christian receives is not a reward for personal merit: it comes from God’s initiative; God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (cf. 1 Tim 2:4), that is, to know God himself. The Apostle bears witness to this when he says that “Christ Jesus has made me his own.” However, he also says that, in order to grow in knowledge of Christ and enjoy God in heaven, one needs to strive to share in Christ’s sufferings. “The Christian is certainly bound both by need and by duty to struggle with evil through many afflictions and to suffer death; but, as one who has been made a partner in the paschal mystery and has been configured to the death of Christ, he will go forward, strengthened by hope, to the resurrection” (Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, 22). This struggle, which sometimes calls for heroism, is usually pitched in the incidents of one’s ordinary day. Heroism in the everyday battle proves the sincerity of our love and is a sure way to holiness.

“Certainly our goal is both lofty and difficult to attain. But please do not forget that people are not born holy. Holiness is forged through a constant interplay of God’s grace and man’s response. As one of the early Christian writers says, referring to union with God, ‘Everything that grows begins small. It is by constant and progressive feeding that it gradually grows big’ (St. Mark the Hermit, De lege spirituali, 172). So I say to you, if you want to become a thorough-going Christian — and I know you do, even though you often find it difficult to conquer yourself or to keep climbing upwards with this poor body — then you will have to be very attentive to the minutest of details, for the holiness that our Lord demands of you is to be achieved by carrying out with love of God your work and your daily duties, and these will almost always consist of ordinary little things” (J. Escrivá, Friends of God, 7).

“That if possible I may attain the resurrection of the dead”: St. Paul is referring here to the glorious resurrection of the just, whom the power of the risen Christ will rescue from the domain of death. At the second coming of the Lord, both the souls of the blessed in heaven and the souls of those who are still in purgatory undergoing the temporal punishment due to sins they committed will be re-united with their now glorified bodies. The reprobate will also rise, but their destiny is to suffer for ever the pains of hell in body and soul (cf. Second Council of Lyons, Profession of faith of Michael Paleologue).

Man’s supernatural last end consists in knowing God as he is and enjoying him in heaven. When he attains this, man finds complete fulfilment. His life on earth has been a route leading to this perfection, a perfection which can only be fully attained by resurrection in glory. The Apostle recognizes that he needs the help of grace to be “perfect” (that is, faithful unto death) and thereby attain the prize promised by God: perseverance right to the end is not entirely a function of the merit a person has built up; it is a gift from God (cf. De iustificatione, chap. 13). However, God does not dispense man from generously responding to grace in order to attain holiness. As St. Teresa of Avila says. “It matters a great deal, it is essential […], that one have very great, very determined, resolution not to halt until one attains it, come what may, whatever happens, however much one suffers, however much people may gossip, whether I get there or not, even if I die on the way or am not able to face all the effort involved, even if the world collapses around me” (Way of Perfection, 35, 2).

12–14. Growth in holiness always demands an effort. St. Paul here uses a vivid comparison — races in the stadium. He describes ascetical struggle in terms of enjoyable supernatural sport. Realizing that he has not reached perfection, he strains to win: Christ already made him his own (cf. v. 12) by entering his life on the Damascus road; from that moment onwards he has striven single-mindedly to serve God.

Our Lord helps everyone to discover his or her particular supernatural vocation. In response to that calling a person should seek to serve God in such a way that “everything good he does, interiorly or externally, he does for the glory and pleasure of God, like a loyal slave who gives everything he gets to his master. Moreover,” St. John of Avila goes on, “even though he has worked as a servant for many years past, he is not easy-going or careless […]. He always has that ‘hunger and thirst for righteousness’ (Mt 5:6): he puts little weight on everything he has done, thinking of how much he has received and how much is due to the Lord he serves” (Audi, filia, 92).

In making one’s way towards perfection it is important to be always trying to advance spiritually. “What does walking mean?,” St. Augustine asked himself; “I shall answer very briefly: it means going forward […]. Examine yourself. You should always be unhappy with what you are, if you want to attain what you are not yet. For when you were content with yourself, you stayed where you were, because if you say ‘Enough’, you are finished that very minute. Always grow, always walk on, always advance; do not stop on the way, do not tum back, do not go off course. One who does not advance is standing still; one who returns to the things he already abandoned is going backwards; one who goes off course commits apostasy. It is better to hobble along the road than run on any other route” (Sermon 169, 15, 18).

 

As for the relationship of the Eucharist to salvation, this is from my book on the Eucharist (section: “Presbyterian Theologians Charles Hodge’s Objection: Is the Catholic Eucharist Absolutely Necessary for Salvation?”):

Charles Hodge writes,

Romanists teach that spiritual life is as necessary to the experience of the benefits of the sacrament, as natural life is to the body’s being nourished by food [Catechismus Romanus, II. iv. 40]. They further teach that baptism, which precedes the eucharist, conveys all the saving benefits of Christ’s redemption; they therefore cannot make the eucharist essential, and consequently they cannot, without contradicting Christ or themselves, interpret John 6:48-65 as referring to the Lord’s Supper. (Hodge, Systematic Theology, Vol. III, 682 ff.)

Hodge is correct about Catholic sacramental beliefs, but wrong as to the alleged contradiction vis-a-vis John 6 and “Romanist” theology. Jesus said, “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). Hodge and other Protestants argue that if this is interpreted as a reference to the Lord’s Supper, then the Lord’s Supper is necessary for eternal life, but that this idea is inconsistent with the other Catholic beliefs.

Also, Jesus said, “he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:54). It is argued that if this is taken as a reference to the Lord’s Supper, then absurd conclusions immediately follow: anyone who partakes of Holy Communion or the Eucharist has eternal life and Jesus will raise that person up at the last day.

But Hodge and those who argue as he does are interpreting Jesus’ words in an improperly universal sense which allows of absolutely no exceptions, in any way, shape, or form. Biblical language rarely works in such a woodenly literalistic way. Jesus (especially) and other biblical writers often speak proverbially or hyperbolically. This was a Hebrew use of language utilized in order to express emphasis. Thus:

Matthew 5:22 . . . “whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be liable to the hell of fire.”

Matthew 5:30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away . . .

Matthew 21:21-22 “. . . even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ it will be done.  [22] And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”

Luke 14:26 “If any one comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

1 John 3:9 No one born of God commits sin; for God’s nature abides in him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God.

Even John 3:16 and 3:36 or Romans 10:9, if taken hyper-literally, would exclude Old Testament saints and all those who have never heard of Jesus or the gospel, through no fault of their own, from salvation. Thus, Hodge’s “difficulty” vanishes. On the other hand, Protestants are left with these forceful verses, and would be well advised to take them very seriously, as the biblical text warrants.

The Eucharist does indeed cleanse us from sin (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1391-1395, especially #1393). However, it is more a “preventive measure,” so to speak. We receive grace for the avoidance of future sin. If one takes communion in mortal sin, it does not wipe out that serious sin, and in fact it is a further grave sin to partake in that state.

A Catholic must confess a mortal sin to a priest and receive absolution before approaching the Lord’s Table. It contributes to our salvation insofar as it helps (by the supernatural grace imparted) to remove the sin that bars us from salvation and heaven and a right relationship with God.

Okay; I understand your line of reasoning even though I disagree with the conclusions. I have one more question since you brought up mortal sin. 

Catholics appear to believe that baptism brings you to a state, like before the fall, except with the effects of sin remaining. You believe there is a distinction between mortal and venial sins. That the lesser sins do not condemn you, but the mortal ones would send you straight to hell were you to die immediately after committing them. 

What I’m not understanding about this is that if this were true, wouldn’t that mean God has lowered his standard of holiness? 

Adam, when in his original state, committed what to us humans seems very small- he simply ate a piece of fruit when he was told not to. I have no reason to believe his intentions were malicious. Eve gave to him, and he ate. Her intentions were that she saw it and it appeared good so she ate. But this seemingly tiny sin carried immense consequences. It brought the consequence of eternal death. And it also brought sin into the world.

The Bible says that if we keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, we are guilty of all. Yet, Catholic teaching would have us believe that certain sins do not have this effect anymore. That God sees some as not as bad as the mortal sins, and they do not carry the same consequences as mortal sins. 

Please tell me this. If someone were to sin a sin comparable to Adam’s first sin, in both intent and action, and was to carry this sin to his priest in confession, would the priest tell him he was guilty of mortal sin? 

I believe the answer would be no- it is venial. 

If not, this means the Catholic Church teaches that Gods standard of holiness has been lowered, since Gods standard is perfection in the Bible. (This is why only Jesus could pay his debt for us).

Here you are assuming that Adam’s sin was “small”; in fact it was not just eating the fruit, but choosing himself over God and His express commands. So your premise is wrong. You have an incomplete understanding of the horrendous nature of the original sin committed by Adam and Eve, and all of us “in” them, as the Bible states.

Dave, is it not true that in any sin we commit, we are choosing ourselves over God?  I am not misunderstanding the horrendous nature of Adams sin. I am saying that all our sins are equally horrendous in God’s sight.

What is your denomination?

I don’t really have a denomination but I am Reformed if that helps.

John Calvin has a far more “severe” view of original sin than Catholics, because he thinks it affected man’s very nature.But you think it was a minor thing; what we would call a “venial sin”. So you are in conflict with your own Reformed theology there. With no denomination to guide you, this is the sort of thing that can happen.

I am saying that from a human perspective it seems small. I am saying that if you were to go to a priest, he would call a comparable sin venial. I am saying that is fallacious.

If I told a priest that I rejected God’s direct command, as Adam and Eve did, and intended to go my own way instead of God’s he would certainly say that was mortal, not venial sin.

My question was not based on what my beliefs are. My question was directed to what appears to be an inconsistent understanding of the seriousness of sin by the Catholic Church. So if you told a priest that you lusted in your heart after a woman, but then felt sorry, he would say you were guilty of mortal sin? 

If it was sustained lust with full consent of the will, yes.

What if you told your priest that you lost your temper and used profanity?

I don’t want to go through a whole laundry list. Your premises are wrong. You deny that sins are lesser or greater.

No, I deny that all sins do not make us guilty before a righteous God. There are varying degrees of sin, but there is no sin that does not separate us from God, and make us worthy of eternal condemnation.

This is untrue, according to the Bible. We know that because the Bible specifically states that very serious sins (not all sins) will lead to hell and condemnation (noted above: 1 Cor 6:9-10; Gal 1:8; 5:19-21; Eph 5:3-6; Heb 12:16; Rev 21:8; 22:15). It names them, so we know what they are; and these line up with Catholic notions of mortal sin.

If what you say is true, it seems to me that the above passages wouldn’t make sense. Rather than name specific sins, it would simply say that “every sin — even a white lie about stealing a cookie — leads to hell and everlasting fire.”

Also, from my book, Bible Proofs for Catholic Truths [KJV used]:

1 John 5:16-17 If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it. [17] All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death. (RSV: “If any one sees his brother committing what is not a mortal sin, he will ask, and God will give him life for those whose sin is not mortal. There is sin which is mortal; I do not say that one is to pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is a sin which is not mortal”)

Some non-Catholic Christians think that all sins are exactly alike in the eyes of God: everything from a white lie or a child stealing a cookie to mass murder. This mistaken notion is decisively refuted by the above passage. Scripture provides several indications of this difference in seriousness of sin, and in subjective guiltiness for it:

Matthew 5:22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire. (RSV: “. . . whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be liable to the hell of fire”)

Luke 12:47-48 And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. [48] But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.

Luke 23:34 Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. . . .

John 9:41 Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth. (RSV: “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains”)

John 19:11 . . . he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin.

Acts 17:30 And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: (RSV: “The times of ignorance God overlooked,”)

Romans 3:25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; (RSV: “to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins;”)

1 Timothy 1:13 Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.

Hebrews 10:26 For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, (RSV: “if we sin deliberately . . .”)

James 3:1 My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation. (RSV: “Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, for you know that we who teach shall be judged with greater strictness”)

The Bible also refers to (mortal) sins which — if not repented of — will exclude one from heaven (e.g., 1 Cor 6:9-10; Gal 1:8; 5:19-21; Eph 5:3-6; Heb 12:16; Rev 21:8; 22:15). Objectors to these notions bring up James 2:10 (RSV): “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.” This doesn’t prove that all sins are the same, equally destructive and worthy of judgment, because the passage is dealing with man’s inability to keep the entire Law of God: a common theme in Scripture. James accepts differences in degrees of sin and righteousness elsewhere in the same letter, such as 3:1 (above). In James 1:12, the man who endures trial will receive a “crown of life.” James also teaches that the “prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects” (5:16, RSV), which implies that there are relatively more righteous people, whom God honors more, by making their prayers more effective (he used the prophet Elijah as an example). If there is a lesser and greater righteousness, then there are lesser and greater sins also, because to be less righteous is to be more sinful, and vice versa.

[see also the following related section]:

GRACE: QUANTIFIABLE DIFFERENCES

Acts 4:33 And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all.

Romans 5:20 Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:

Romans 6:1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?

Romans 12:3 For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.

2 Corinthians 8:7 Therefore, as ye abound in every thing, in faith, and utterance, and knowledge, and in all diligence, and in your love to us, see that ye abound in this grace also.

Ephesians 4:7 But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.

James 4:6 But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. (cf. 1 Pet 5:5)

1 Peter 1:2 Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied. (RSV: “May grace and peace be multiplied to you”)

1 Peter 4:10 As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. (RSV: “good stewards of God’s varied grace”)

2 Peter 1:2 Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,

2 Peter 3:18 But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. . . .

Regarding the proof text of 1 John 5:16, you must make the assumption and read into the text that he was speaking of eternal condemnation. It is simply not there. Most of the other scripture is taken out of its intended context to support what your belief, based on this one passage, teaches.

***

Sorry, I just noticed something. Not trying to be annoying. I have a million questions I could ask but trying to narrow it down because I know you are probably busy. 

You posted 1 John 3:9. Do you believe that God’s nature abides in one who is born of a God?

The believer progressively becomes more and more like God (sanctification); what is known in theology as theosis:

The chief New Testament reference to theosis or deification is 2 Peter 1:4: . . . (AV : “partakers of the divine nature”; NEB: “come to share in the very being of God). Certainly John 17:23 is to the point: “The glory which Thou gavest Me I have given to them, that they may be one, as We are one; I in them and Thou in Me, may they be perfectly one” (NEB, upper case added). This at once suggests the divine nuptial mystery (Ephesians 5:25-32; one may compare 2:19-22 and Colossians 1:26-27), with its implied “wondrous exchange.” That the final “transfiguration” of believers into “conformity” . . . with Christ’s glorious body (Philippians 3:21; one may compare 1 Corinthians 15:49) has begun already in the spiritual-sacramental life of faith, is clear from “icon” texts like Romans 8:29, Colossians 3:10, and especially 2 Corinthians 3:18: “thus we are transfigured into His likeness, from splendor to splendor” . . . One may also wish to compare 2 Corinthians 4:16 and Ephesians 3:14-19.

So you believe in sanctification as a lifelong process through which God conforms us to His Son’s image? If so, I would agree with this. I believe that faith produces an inner change in us in which we have new desires and God’s Spirit dwells in us and guides us into holiness.

Agreed 100%! But salvation can be lost, as the Bible repeatedly states. Catholics, Orthodox, and most Protestants through history (and almost all the Church Fathers, with the notable exception of Augustine) have believed that. Only Calvinists and those who believe in eternal security (Baptists, fundamentalists, etc.) teach otherwise.

I wish I had more time to discuss this but I’m going to walk out the door. Thank you for your patience and maybe we can talk more soon. :-)

Bethany, we could go round and round forever on this issue. I’ve been arguing it for over 30 years.  The Bible and apostolic tradition teach us that it is possible to fall away from salvation. It’s called “apostasy.” I’ve given tons of biblical proofs. The eternal security believer always has some reply, but I find them thoroughly unconvincing and arbitrarily [biblically] selective. I’m happy to let readers who are on the fence look over the biblical arguments I have made and compare them to yours, and decide which is more plausible and coherent and biblical.

***

I think the much more relevant and important topic is, “how can we better live day-by-day as disciples of Jesus Christ and do those things which all Christians agree are good and righteous, and avoid sin?” That is the Christian life. The other discussion is ultimately philosophical abstraction, that may be fun, but in the end doesn’t accomplish much. I’ll do it for a time, but I quickly tire of it, for those reasons.

As always, it is a rare pleasure to dialogue with you in a friendly manner. You’re a wonderful Christian, and I’m proud to be your friend. We disagree on this, but one happy day all of us will know all truth with absolute certainty, when God reveals it on judgment day.

I appreciate so much your taking the time to discuss this with me.

***

(originally 4-13-15)

Photo credit: Image by “geralt” (Sep. 2017) [Pixabay / CC0 Creative Commons license]

***

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