Lutheran Contra-Catholic Potpourri: Reply to Jordan Cooper

March 5, 2024 By Dave Armstrong

Incl. Bible-Tradition Relationship; Fathers & Conciliar Infallibility; Popes & Early Councils; Perspicuity (Luther vs. Erasmus); Communion in One Kind; “Late” & Supposedly Unbiblical Dogmas

Rev. Dr. Jordan B. Cooper is a Lutheran pastor, adjunct professor of Systematic Theology, Executive Director of the popular Just & Sinner YouTube channel, and the President of the American Lutheran Theological Seminary (which holds to a doctrinally traditional Lutheranism, similar to the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod). He has authored several books, as well as theological articles in a variety of publications. All my Bible citations are from RSV, unless otherwise indicated. Jordan’s words will be in blue.

This is my 7th reply to Jordan (many more to come, because I want to interact with the best, most informed Protestant opponents). All of these respectful critiques can be found in the “Replies to Lutheran Theologian / Apologist Jordan Cooper” section on the top of my Lutheranism web page.

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This is a response to the first 40 minutes of Jordan’s YouTube video, Sola Scriptura: Scripture Alone (The Five Solas) (2-24-24).

13:54 what we see is that the earliest Christians do use language of tradition but when they define tradition, they’re defining tradition really as things that are also clearly taught within the word of God, not not some kind of separate dogma or separate theological claims that have no basis in the word of God.

There is a middle position (which is the Catholic one). The fathers, I contend, adhered to a three-legged-stool rule of faith: Bible / Tradition / Church, in which all operate in non-contradictory harmony with each other. Martin Luther appeared to accept something like this:

I do enough if I prove that it is not contrary to God’s Word, but consistent with Scripture. (That These Words of Christ, “This Is My Body,” etc., Still Stand Firm Against the Fanatics, March 1527, Luther’s Works, vol. 37)

In almost all cases, Scripture can be brought to bear. But in a few instances, beliefs that are not explicit in Scripture, such as, for example, infant baptism, were accepted as true on the basis of the authority of the Church and apostolic tradition and succession (in complete opposition to sola Scriptura). This was St. Augustine’s view, and he also wrote more generally:

[T]here are many things which are observed by the whole Church, and therefore are fairly held to have been enjoined by the apostles, which yet are not mentioned in their writings. (On Baptism, v, 23, 31)

Likewise, Luther wrote about infant baptism:

We, however, are certain enough, because it [infant baptism] is nowhere contrary to Scripture, but is rather in accord with Scripture. (Concerning Rebaptism, Jan. 1528, Luther’s Works, vol. 40)

[C]hild baptism derives from the apostles and has been practiced since the days of the apostles. . . . It came to me by tradition and I was persuaded by no word of Scripture that it was wrong. . . . Baptism did not originate with us, but with the apostles and we should not discard or alter what cannot be discarded or altered on clear scriptural authority. . . . Were child baptism now wrong God would certainly not have permitted it to continue so long, nor let it become so universally and thoroughly established in all Christendom, but it would sometime have gone down in disgrace. . . . Just as God has established that Christians in all the world have accepted the Bible as Bible, the Lord’s Prayer as Lord’s Prayer, and faith of a child as faith, so also he has established child baptism and kept it from being rejected . . . You say, this does not prove that child baptism is certain. For there is no passage in Scripture for it. My answer: that is true. From Scripture we cannot clearly conclude that you could establish child baptism as a practice among the first Christians after the apostles. But you can well conclude that in our day no one may reject or neglect the practice of child baptism which has so long a tradition, since God actually not only has permitted it, but from the beginning so ordered, that it has not yet disappeared. (Ibid.)

Here, Luther accepts infant baptism based on ancient tradition, and states outright that “there is no passage in Scripture for it.” Therefore, he has accepted a principle utterly contrary to sola Scriptura; namely, that something can be regarded as infallibly true, not on the basis of Scripture, but rather, apostolic tradition. Sola Scriptura holds that only Scripture is such an infallible authority. Augustine and Luther in these excerpts also contradict Jordan’s claim above. Luther felt so strongly about infant baptism, that he and his successor Philip Melanchthon consented to executing Anabaptists for denying it (a doctrine and practice not even explicitly biblical).

17:10 Read Athanasius’s works against the Arians; he is just expositing Scripture. He’s looking at the text trying to explain the text, trying to demonstrate how the text shows his point.

Of course, the Bible will be his primary argument. No one is denying that in the first place. Refuting Jehovah’s Witnesses (modern-day Arians) was, in fact, my first major apologetics endeavor, back in 1981-1984 (the product of that research is on my blog today). I argued against them almost always from Scripture. I was a Protestant then. Now that I am Catholic I would do the same thing if I set out to refute them. This doesn’t prove that Athanasius had a Protestant rule of faith (nor that I do now; I argue from Scripture virtually every day in my apologetics writing). St. Athanasius also accepted the infallible authority of ecumenical councils, contrary to sola Scriptura:

. . . the Synod which was held at Nicæa. For the Faith there confessed by the Fathers according to the divine Scriptures is enough by itself at once to overthrow all impiety, and to establish the religious belief in Christ. . . . a monument of victory over all heresy, but especially the Arian, . . . (Letter #59 to Epictetus, 1)

17:59 the foundation of the argument is always the text of Scripture and other figures or authorities are used secondarily.

Largely, yes, but not always (and Jordan used the word “always” and attempted to make a universal claim. St. Basil the Great thought that the Nicene Council was infallible, and arguably inspired as well:

. . . you should confess the faith put forth by our Fathers once assembled at Nicæa, that you should not omit any one of its propositions, but bear in mind that the three hundred and eighteen who met together without strife did not speak without the operation of the Holy Ghost, . . . (Letter #114 to Cyriacus, at Tarsus)

St. Gregory Nazianzen appeared to believe the same:

I never have and never can honour anything above the Nicene Faith, that of the Holy Fathers who met there to destroy the Arian heresy; but am, and by God’s help ever will be, of that faith; . . . (Letter #102: Second to Cledonius the Priest, Against Apollinarius)

As did St. Cyril of Alexandria:

[H]e opposes the truth and the very symbol of the Church’s Faith, which the fathers once gathered together at Nicea through the illumination of the Spirit defined; he, fearing lest any should keep whole the Faith, instructed unto the Truth by their words, endeavours to calumniate it and alters the significance of the words, . . . against the holy fathers who have decreed for us the pious definition of the Faith which we have as an anchor of the soul both sure and steadfast, as it is written. (Tomes Against Nestorius: I, 5)

. . . the holy Churches in every region under Heaven, and the venerable Fathers themselves who put forth unto us the definition of the right and undefiled Faith, viz. (the Holy Ghost speaking in them) that the Word of God was made flesh and became Man, . . .(Tomes Against Nestorius: IV, 2)

19:00 The other thing that I think really important here is . . . the question of how is it that the church looked at the councils. If you look at something like the Council of Nicaea, the question is: did the church at the time believe that the Senate of Nicaea was necessarily the final arbiter of what was actually true? . . . It’s not the understanding at the time that whatever happened in this Council was necessarily declaratively true forever because of the authority of a church Council.

My citations above regarding Nicaea, from four Church fathers, contradict Jordan’s “take.” Sola Scriptura requires a denial of the infallibility of ecumenical councils. But many Church fathers agree with the high Catholic view of such councils.

20:13 the bishop of Rome actually doesn’t have really any significant role within the Council of Nicaea at all.

A plausible case can be made that he did:

Pope Silvester and the Council of Nicaea [August 1997]

Council of Nicea: Reply to James White: Its Relationship to Pope Sylvester, Athanasius’ Views, & the Unique Preeminence of Catholic Authority. [4-2-07]

20:19 It’s not really until Pope Leo with Caledon that the bishop of Rome has any significant say within these ecumenical councils.

Constantinople, 381 [no pope and no legates]

No bishops from the west were present, nor was the Pope represented. Therefore, this was not really an ecumenical council, though due to later historical confusion and the enthusiastic acceptance by the whole Church of its strongly orthodox creed, including an explicit confession of the full divinity of the Holy Spirit, it came to be regarded and numbered as such. (Dr. Warren Carroll, The Building of Christendom, Christendom College Press, 1987, 62)

With the First Council of Constantinople (381) we are dealing with another case in which there are not extant acts. This council also was convoked by an emperor, Theodosius I. [Ibid.] The language of his decree suggests he regarded the Roman see as a yardstick of Christian orthodoxy. He commands all his subjects to practice the religion which Peter the apostle transmitted to the Romans. In calling the Council, Theodosius did not envisage the assembled bishops debating Roman doctrine as thought it were an open question.

The fact that Meletius of Antioch presided at Constantinople I, and the absence of any Roman legates, might appear to be evidence against the Roman primacy. It must be remembered that the Council was not originally intended to be ecumenical in the same sense as Nicaea.

It included, after all, only 150 bishops from Thrace, Asia Minor, and Egypt and was convoked to deal with certain Eastern problems.[New Catholic Encyclopedia, s.v. “Constantinople, First Council of.”] In fact, it was not recognized as ecumenical by the Council of Ephesus half a century later, and it was left to Pope Gregory the Great to elevate it to that status. (“Papal Authority at the Earliest Councils,” Brian W. Harrison, This Rock, Jan. 1991)

Ephesus, 431 [papal legates Arcadius, Projectus, and Philip]

The pope . . . sent two bishops, Arcadius and Projectus, to represent himself and his Roman council, and the Roman priest, Philip, as his personal representative. Philip, therefore, takes the first place, though, not being a bishop, he could not preside. It was probably a matter of course that the Patriarch of Alexandria should be president. The legates were directed not to take part in the discussions, but to give judgment on them. It seems that Chalcedon, twenty years later, set the precedent that the papal legates should always be technically presidents at an ecumenical council, and this was henceforth looked upon as a matter of course, and Greek historians assumed that it must have been the case at Nicaea. (Catholic Encyclopedia: “Council of Ephesus”; written by John Chapman)

21:28 when you look at something like . . . indulgences you really have no scriptural basis.

See: Biblical Evidence for Indulgences [1996].

30:33 Luther . . . has a really great discussion of this question at the beginning of [his 1525 book] The Bondage of the Will, where [he] addresses Erasmus . . . he has a really great discussion of this and the fact that Scripture defines itself as a light which enlightens our path. It’s not just this obscure book that nobody can really understand without a proper theological degree or without the necessary authoritative tradition, as is passed down within the canons of the Roman tradition.

I’m delighted that Jordan brought this up. I have researched this very thing (way back in 2009), along with many other teachings of Luther. Why don’t we be fair and see how Erasmus responded? In other words, examine both sides for a change. . .? But first, at 30:46. Jordan stated that “Luther is maybe a little too harsh to Erasmus at some point . . .” Indeed. Here are some examples from his aforementioned book (from the 1823 Edward Thomas Vaughan translation; available online):

[Y]ou only show that you are nourishing in your heart a Lucian, or some other hog of the Epicurean sty, who, having no belief at all of a God himself, laughs in his sleeve at all those who believe and confess one. (pt. 1)

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Assuredly, any Jew or Heathen, who had no knowledge at all of Christ, would find it easy enough to draw out such a pattern of faith as yours. You do not mention Christ in a single jot of it; . . . (Pt. I)

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[Y]our words sound as though, like Epicurus, you accounted the word of God and a future state to be mere fables . . . (Pt. I)
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Nice ecumenical thoughts there, huh? But this was usually what happened whenever anyone refuted Luther. Luther wrote about interpretation of Scripture in the section of his book, “Erasmus’ Skepticism” (I cite the 1823 Henry Cole translation):

What say you, Erasmus? Is it not enough that you submit your opinion to the Scriptures? Do you submit it to the decrees of the church also? What can the church decree, that is not decreed in the Scriptures? If it can, where then remains the liberty and power of judging those who make the decrees? As Paul, I Cor. xiv., teaches “Let others judge.” Are you not pleased that there should be any one to judge the decrees of the church, which, nevertheless, Paul enjoins? What new kind of religion and humility is this, that, by our own example, you would take away from us the power of judging the decrees of men, and give it unto men without judgment? Where does the Scripture of God command us to do this? . . .

This is the distinction which I make; that I also may act a little the rhetorician and logician – God, and the Scripture of God, are two things; no less so than God, and the Creature of God. That there are in God many hidden things which we know not, no one doubts: as He himself saith concerning the last day: “Of that day knoweth no man but the Father.” (Matt. xxiv. 36.) And (Acts i. 7.) “It is not yours to know the times and seasons.” And again, “I know whom I have chosen,” (John xiii. 18.) And Paul, “The Lord knoweth them that are His,” (2 Tim. ii. 19.). And the like.

But, that there are in the Scriptures some things abstruse, and that all things are not quite plain, is a report spread abroad by the impious Sophists by whose mouth you speak here, Erasmus. But they never have produced, nor ever can produce, one article whereby to prove this their madness. And it is with such scare-crows that Satan has frightened away men from reading the Sacred Writings, and has rendered the Holy Scripture contemptible, that he might cause his poisons of philosophy to prevail in the church. This indeed I confess, that there are many places in the Scriptures obscure and abstruse; not from the majesty of the thing, but from our ignorance of certain terms and grammatical particulars; but which do not prevent a knowledge of all the things in the Scriptures. . . .

All the things, therefore, contained in the Scriptures; are made manifest, although some places, from the words not being understood, are yet obscure. But to know that all things in the Scriptures are set in the clearest light, and then, because a few words are obscure, to report that the things are obscure, is absurd and impious. And, if the words are obscure in one place, yet they are clear in another. But, however, the same thing, which has been most openly declared to the whole world, is both spoken of in the Scriptures in plain words, and also still lies hidden in obscure words. Now, therefore, it matters not if the thing be in the light, whether any certain representations of it be in obscurity or not, if, in the mean while, many other representations of the same thing be in the light. For who would say that the public fountain is not in the light, because those who are in some dark narrow lane do not see it, when all those who are in the Open market place can see it plainly?

Sect. IV.—WHAT you adduce, therefore, about the darkness of the Corycian cavern, amounts to nothing; matters are not so in the Scriptures. For those things which are of the greatest majesty, and the most abstruse mysteries, are no longer in the dark corner, but before the very doors, nay, brought forth and manifested openly. For Christ has opened our understanding to understand the Scriptures, Luke xxiv. 45. And the Gospel is preached to every creature. (Mark xvi. 15, Col. i. 23.) “Their sound is gone out into all the earth.” (Psalm xix. 4.) And “All things that are written, are written for our instruction.” (Rom. xv. 4.) And again, “All Scripture is inspired from above, and is profitable for instruction.” (2 Tim. iii. 16.) . . .

Let, therefore, wretched men cease to impute, with blasphemous perverseness, the darkness and obscurity of their own heart to the all-clear Scriptures of God. . . .

[T]he Spirit is required to understand the whole of the Scripture and every part of it. If you speak of the external clearness, nothing whatever is left obscure or ambiguous; but all things that are in the Scriptures, are by the Word brought forth into the clearest light, and proclaimed to the whole world.

Now let’s look at how Erasmus responded, with regard to Holy Scripture. I cite from Peter Macardle and Clarence H. Miller, translators, Charles Trinkhaus, editor, Collected Works of Erasmus, Vol. 76: Controversies: De Libero Arbitrio / Hyperaspistes I, Univ. of Toronto Press, 1999 (I have a hardcover copy in my library):

But if knowledge of grammar alone removes all obscurity from Sacred Scripture, how did it happen that St. Jerome, who knew all the languages, was so often at a loss and had to labour mightily to explain the prophets? Not to mention some others, among whom we find even Augustine, in whom you place some stock. Why is it that you yourself, who cannot use ignorance of languages as an excuse, are sometimes at a loss in explicating the psalms, testifying that you are following something you have dreamed up in your own mind, without condemning the opinions of others? . . . Finally, why do your ‘brothers’ disagree so much with one another? They all have the same Scripture, they all claim the same spirit. And yet Karlstadt disagrees with you violently. So do Zwingli and Oecolampadius and Capito, who approve of Karlstadt’s opinion though not of his reasons for it. Then again Zwingli and Balthazar are miles apart on many points. To say nothing of images, which are rejected by others, but defended by you, not to mention the rebaptism rejected by your followers but preached by others, and passing over in silence the fact that secular studies are condemned by others but defended by you. Since you are all treating the subject matter of Scripture, if there is no obscurity in it, why is there so much disagreement among you? On this point there is no reason for you to rail at the wretched sophists: Augustine teaches that obscurity sometimes arises from unknown or ambiguous words, sometimes from the nature of the subject matter, at times from allegories and figures of speech, at times from passages which contradict one another, at least according to what the language seems to say. [De doctrina christiana 2.6.7, 2.9.15] And he gives the reason why God wished such obscurity to find a place in the Sacred Books. [De doctrina christiana 4.8.22] (pp. 130-131)

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Furthermore, where you challenge me and all the sophists to bring forward even one obscure or recondite passage from the Sacred Books which you cannot show is quite clear, I only wish you could make good on your promise! We will bring to you heaps of difficulties and we will forgive you for calling us blinder than a bat, provided you clearly explicate the places where we are at a loss. But if you impose on us the law that we believe that whatever your interpretation is, that is what Scripture means, your associates will not put up with such a law and they stoutly cry out against you, affirming that you interpret Scripture wrongly about the Eucharist. Hence it is not right that we should grant you more authority than is granted by the principal associates of your confession. (p. 132)

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But still, if I were growing weary of this church, as I wavered in perplexity, tell me, I beg you in the name of the gospel, where would you have me go? To that disintegrated congregation of yours, that totally dissected sect? Karlstadt has raged against you, and you in turn against him. And the dispute was not simply a tempest in a teapot but concerned a very serious matter. Zwingli and Oecolampadius have opposed your opinion in many volumes. And some of the leaders of your congregation agree with them, among whom is Capito. Then too what an all-out battles was fought by Balthazar and Zwingli! I am not even sure that there in that tiny little town you agree among yourselves very well. Here your disciples openly taught that the humanities are the bane of godliness, and no languages are to be learned except a bit of Greek and Hebrew, that Latin should be entirely ignored. There were those who would eliminate baptism and those who would repeat it; and there was no lack of those who persecute them for it. In some places images of the saints suffered a dire fate; you came to their rescue. When you book about reforming education was published, they said that the spirit had left you and that you were beginning to write in a human spirit opposed to the gospel, and they maintained you did it to please Melanchthon. A tribe of prophets has risen up there with whom you have engaged in most bitter conflict. Finally, just as every day new dogmas appear among you, so at the same time new quarrels arise. And you demand that no one should disagree with you, although you disagree so much among yourselves about matters of the greatest importance! (pp. 143-144)

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Certainly no one after the apostles claimed that there was no mystery in Scripture that was not clear to him. (pp. 153-154)

You stipulate that we should not ask for or accept anything but Holy Scripture, but you do it in such a way as to require that we permit you to be its sole interpreter, renouncing all others. Thus the victory will be yours if we allow you to be not the steward but the lord of Holy Scripture. (pp. 204-205)

We were talking about your spirit and that of your followers, who profess that there is nothing in Holy Scripture which is obscure to you as long as you know grammar, and we demanded that you establish the credibility of this certainty, which you still fail to do, try as you may. (p. 219)

[I]n Acts, when Paul had taught and admonished them, they compared the scriptural passages with what had been carried out and what had been propounded to them; and there was much they would not have understood if the apostle had not supplied this additional light. Therefore I am not making the passages obscure, but rather God himself wanted there to be some obscurity in them, but in such a way that there would be enough light for the eternal salvation of everyone if he used his eyes and grace was there to help. No one denies that there is truth as clear as crystal in Holy Scripture, but sometimes it is wrapped and covered up by figures and enigmas so that it needs scrutiny and an interpreter, either because God wanted in this way to arouse us from dullness and also to set us to work, as Augustine says, or because truth is more pleasant and affects us more deeply when it has been dug out and shines forth to us through the cover of darkness than if it had been exposed for anyone at all to see . . . (pp. 219-220)

If Holy Scripture is perfectly clear in all respects, where does this darkness among you come from, whence arise such fights to the death about the meaning of Holy Scripture? You prove from the mysteries of Scripture that the body of the Lord is in the Eucharist physically; from the same Scripture Zwingli, Oecolampadius, and Capito teach that it is only signified. (p. 222)

But if you attribute a total understanding of the Holy Scripture to the Holy Spirit, why do you make an exception only for the ignorance of grammar? In a matter of such importance will the Spirit allow grammar to stand in the way of man’s salvation? Since he did not hesitate to impart such riches of eternal wisdom, will he hesitate to impart grammar and common sense? (p. 239)

If you contend that there is no obscurity whatever in Holy Scripture, do not take up the matter with me but with all the orthodox Fathers, of whom there is none who does not preach the same thing as I do. (p. 242)

See my entire seven-part series, “Luther Meets His Match,” which documents this dispute, with Erasmus’ replies (and see more from this particular installment). Erasmus’ replies are generally not available online (I had to pay good money to purchase this book), whereas Luther’s Bondage of the Will is online. So, as usual, folks are usually far more familiar with Luther’s argument against Erasmus, than vice versa (most have never heard of this book from Erasmus). And that is rather one-sided, as I think fair-minded readers would agree.

Luther never responded to Erasmus’ 1526 work in reply to him, Hyperaspistes (“A Defensive Shield”). What a surprise . . . That would have made it a true debate, where both sides interact with each other and respond to counter-replies. Luther was scarcely even capable of that: at least not when he met his match with Erasmus (considered perhaps the greatest Christian scholar of his time), and was way over his head. He could rant and rave, rail and thunder, as he always eventually did in controversy (being a rather excitable sort), but he couldn’t overcome Erasmus’ reasoning, and so once that was fully laid out, he didn’t even try. At least he had wits enough to know when he was bested in debate.

See my related article, 25 Brief Arguments Regarding Biblical “Clearness” [2009].

37:03 What Rome has often done historically [is to] say, “look, when we’ve got a competition between Scripture as the Word of God and tradition we go with [tradition].” Here’s an example . . . communion in both kinds in the medieval church . . . this is a very very late development. There was a lot of superstition that developed around the sacrament of the Eucharist to such an extent that there was this fear of spilling the blood of Christ so that it was taught that only the priests should consume the blood of Christ and the lay person should not receive it at all.

First of all, how it is “superstition” to be concerned about what both sides agree is the Blood of Christ not spilling on the floor? I must confess that I have no idea what he means here, and it’s rather shocking. It seems to me that we can agree that Jesus’ Blood spilled on the ground is not a good thing. The medieval Church was concerned about that. Secondly, Jesus can’t be technically separated under symbols of wafer and wine. Jesus is present Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in both of what were formerly bread and wine. No one need take my word for that. It’s biblical teaching:

1 Corinthians 11:27 Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.

Note the bolded “or” and “and.” The way that Paul phrases this proves that he believes that the Body and Blood are present in both species. It’s all in the word “or”. The logic and grammar require it, so that the above can also be expressed in the following two propositions:

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.

Whoever, therefore, drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord.

I’m glad both kinds are offered in the Catholic Church now, but there is no necessity to receive both, in order to receive Jesus Christ. I myself have received the cup, I think, two times in my entire 33-year Catholic life: when I was received into the Church and once when the consecrated hosts ran out during Mass. My practice has nothing to do with theology; it’s merely a “hygienic” objection. The Catholic Church makes no claim that no one will ever contract a germ, drinking from a common cup with scores or hundreds of others. In any event, no one is “missing” anything. I would throw this objection back onto Jordan, having explained our position, and ask him: what is worse: not receiving the chalice when the host contains all of Christ, or receiving no Body and Blood at all, as in Zwingli’s view, and that of most Protestants besides Lutherans?

Luther himself said he’d rather partake of the Holy Eucharist with Catholics, than drink “mere wine” with the Zwinglians and others who denied the Real Presence. He didn’t deny that Catholics were Christians, but he denied that Zwingli and his followers were. Thus, in light of these considerations, Jordan is majoring on the minors and knocking the Catholic Church, when the vast majority of his fellow Protestants don’t even believe they are truly receiving Jesus at all (and indeed they aren’t, and Catholics contend that Lutherans and the few Anglicans who still believe in Real Presence aren’t, either, since they broke the line of valid ordination). Which is the more important of the two things?

A Calvinist apologist wrote:

I openly challenge the Roman apologists to bring forth any example of a church father who says that after the consecration the bread is the blood of Christ (bolding his own)

I’m happy to oblige, by providing two examples of the logically equivalent converse: the cup described as Christ’s Body:

[W]hen the great prayers and the holy supplications are sent up to God, the Word descends upon the bread and the cup, and they become His body. (St. Athanasius, Sermon to the Newly Baptized, PG 26,1325)

So now repeatedly the bread and wine, sanctified by the Word (the sacred Benediction), is at the same time changed into the Body of that Word; and this Flesh is disseminated among all the Faithful. (St. Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism, 37)

The Catholic Encyclopedia article, “Communion under Both Kinds” makes further biblical arguments and provides a detailed history of many instances in the early Church in which the cup or the host only was distributed, such as the faithful receiving at home (thus implying indirectly that both Body and Blood and the whole Christ were contained in either kind). Example:

It is recorded of St. Basil that he received Holy Communion several times on the day of his death, and under the species of bread alone, as may be inferred from the biographer’s words . . . These testimonies are sufficient to establish the fact that, in the early centuries, reservation of the Eucharist for the sick and dying, of which the Council of Nicaea (325) speaks (can. xiii) as “the ancient and canonical rule”, was usual under one kind. The reservation of the species of wine for use as the Viaticum . . . was never the general practice. . . .

I could also bring up the issue of adoration of the consecrated wafer and wine. If indeed Jesus Christ is truly present, then wouldn’t it follow that He should be adored in the sacrament? That’s what Martin Luther — in consistency — thought:

Now to come back to the sacrament: he who does not believe that Christ’s body and blood are present does well not to worship either with his spirit or with his body. But he who does believe, as sufficient demonstration has shown it ought to be believed, can surely not withhold his adoration of the body and blood of Christ without sinning. For I must always confess that Christ is present when his body and blood are present. His words do not lie to me, and he is not separated from his body and blood. (The Adoration of the Sacrament, 1523, Luther’s Works, vol. 36)

[O]ne should not withhold from him such worship and adoration either . . . one should not condemn and accuse of heresy people who do adore the sacrament. For although Christ has not commanded it, neither has he forbidden it, but often accepted it. Free, free it must be, according as one is disposed in his heart and has opportunity. (Ibid.)

Lutherans do not, however, practice eucharistic adoration now. Why? Jesus is present, so why would they not worship Him? On what basis is the practice neglected? And is this not a far greater omission than merely partaking in one kind (when Jesus is fully present in both kinds)? Catholics worship Jesus in the consecrated elements and receive Him. Lutherans only do the second. Again, I ask: why? So they won’t be too much like Catholics?

Jordan is now almost two-thirds through his talk on sola Scriptura and he has scarcely defended it at all (so I had to change my title). Certainly nothing he has presented in the first 37 minutes presents undeniable arguments that sola Scriptura is true, and that only Scripture is an infallible authority in Christianity. But lots of potshots against the Catholic Church! This is a form of the old “your dad’s uglier than mine!” tactic. When some folks have insufficient arguments to make their own case, they go after the other guy and hope that no one notices.

37:47 This has no precedent in Scripture whatsoever. [When] Jesus talks about the sacrament what does he say?: “take eat, take drink” . . .

I already mentioned 1 Corinthians 11:27, so there is indeed relevant Scripture. And the second claim isn’t true, either. In John 6:58, Jesus mentions eating His Flesh as salvation-giving, without mentioning drinking His Blood: “he who eats this bread will live for ever” (cf. 6:33, 50-51). Nice try, though.

38:27 here is a very clear example where you have the entirety of Scripture and the entirety of the testimony of the church fathers . . .

It is true that the Church for its first twelve centuries offered both kinds. But it also offered only one kind in several different instances, as the Catholic Encyclopedia I linked to, documents, thus implying that either element is sufficient. And I have shown how this has scriptural support, in at least five passages.

40:15 You don’t find the bodily Assumption of Mary in the early church; you don’t find the Immaculate Conception of Mary in the early church; you don’t find the dogma of papal infallibility in the early church.

Most doctrines take many centuries to develop. One didn’t have the complete canon of Scripture until the late 4th century. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity was developing in key respects up through the 4th century, and in more particulars even a few centuries more. The view of religious image took many centuries to sort out (with Catholics, Orthodox, Lutherans, and Anglicans coming down on one side and Calvinists and some fundamentalists on the other). So that’s a given. And it’s true for doctrines that we believe in common.

The Blessed Virgin Mary’s Assumption and Immaculate Conception can be strongly deduced from Scripture and by analogies in Scripture. The primacy of St. Peter is very strongly indicated in the Bible and even strongly backed up in many particulars by Protestant scholars. Then we also have solid Protestant scholars noting how sola Scriptura and sola fide were both profoundly absent not only in the fathers but all the way up till Luther. See my article: Bible / Faith “Alone” vs. The Fathers (vs. Gavin Ortlund) [2-13-24]. We can defend our views on these matters (I just gave links where I have done so). Protestants can’t, and usually won’t, when scrutinized and pressed, in depth (as I am doing right now). Jordan has that choice. We’ll see what he decides.

40:27 There are many things that are declared dogma that actually don’t have any roots in Tradition. It’s just traditions that they happen to grab on to [with] many of them being very late . . .

This is one of those hyper-polemical statements that take a lot of time and effort to refute. Fortunately, I have already done so, in my 33 years of Catholic apologetics writing (now available in 4,500+ articles — on this blog — and 55 books). In all of that work I have offered biblical and traditional arguments for virtually all major Catholic dogmas and doctrines. I’ve never found a single one that had didn’t “have any” biblical or patristic support. I’d be happy to discuss any of them with Jordan or Gavin Ortlund or any other active Protestant apologist.

40:43 infallibility isn’t declared Dogma until 1870 . . .

That’s right, which means that Catholics were required to believe it after that time. It doesn’t follow that it wasn’t entrenched in Catholic tradition long before. I found a statement from St. Francis de Sales in the 16th century that is identical in many ways to the dogma of 1870. It was clearly believed. Luther makes many statements where he says that such-and-such a doctrine is good and pious but that it’s not required. That’s how Catholics were regarding papal infallibility before 1870. But then it was required, just as Luther would say about the Holy Eucharist or baptismal regeneration. It’s a debate about the precise nature of the level of authority any given doctrine has. Not one Protestant in a hundred understands these distinctions, and even Jordan seems not to (by the way he frames his statement).

One could say the same about the canon of Scripture, which was largely held with more and more certitude for 350 years, and then the church decreed that various books were certainly canonical and everyone accepted it, for the most part. It was fairly certain and then it became certain In terms of the faith of Christians). No one identified all 27 New Testament books as Scripture until 367, when Athanasius did it. Within 30 years, the Church at large agreed and proclaimed these books canon, along with the Old Testament (including the seven deuterocanonical books). So “late” dogmatic proclamations are no new concept with medieval Catholics. Protestants should be the last people to even bring such a thing up, seeing that their two pillars (sola Scriptura and sola fide) are scarcely found at all in the Bible, nor the fathers, nor the medieval Church. It’s a case of “log-in-the-eye disease.”

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Photo credit: Lutheran church in Wittenberg, Germany where the Protestant Revolt began, with Martin Luther [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license]

Summary: Lutheran Jordan Cooper makes six wide-ranging criticisms of the Catholic Church (while supposedly arguing for sola Scriptura). I methodically dispose of each one.

St. Ambrose vs. Faith Alone (vs. Jordan Cooper)

February 29, 2024 By Dave Armstrong

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+ Concupiscence: St. Ambrose’s and St. Augustine’s Views

This is my 5th reply to Jordan (many more to come, because I want to interact with the best, most informed Protestant opponents). All of these respectful critiques can be found in the “Replies to Lutheran Theologian / Apologist Jordan Cooper” section on the top of my Lutheranism web page.

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See Part One: Faith Alone in the Early Church Fathers? (vs. Jordan Cooper) — Includes Clement of Rome (d. c. 101) & Polycarp (d. 155) vs. Faith Alone [2-28-24]

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This is a response to Jordan’s YouTube video, “Sola Fide in the Church Fathers Part 2: Ambrose (A Classic J&S Episode)” (2-24-22). Originally (I assume) this talk was published around 3-27-19.

0:35 On the previous program I discussed sola fide in the Church fathers, basically trying to interact with the common Roman Catholic argument that sola fide is a theological novum, so the notion of justification by faith alone . . . it’s a common Roman Catholic claim that . . . it shows up later in history, and you can’t find it in the Church fathers at all. [They say that] Luther basically invents this brand new idea. This especially shows up in a lot of popular Roman Catholic polemics online, and I’ve made the claim that that’s simply not the case and that we can find instances of sola fide or various Protestant aspects of justification in the Church fathers.

As I noted last time, this claim about the absence profound of sola fide is by no means confined to “Roman Catholic polemicists.” In my previous critique I cited three well-known Protestant scholars, who all expressed basically the same thing (and they can’t be accused of Catholic bias). Alister McGrath, author of Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (1986; 4th ed., 2020) and similar books such as Historical Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought (3rd ed., 2022) and The Nature of Christian Doctrine: Its Origins, Development, and Function (2024), stated that sola fide, as newly formulated — not by Luther but by his successor, Philip Melanchthon –, was “a complete break with the teaching of the church up to that point.”

That’s his informed scholarly opinion. He knows far more than I ever will about the subject. I’m simply repeating and agreeing with his judgment, based on his status and everything I’ve seen myself along these lines, over 33 years of Catholic apologetics research. He agrees with the break, as a good Protestant, but he doesn’t try to deny that it was, historically speaking, a break. He was the one, incidentally, who — three times — called sola fide a “theological novum” (in the 2nd edition of Iustitia Dei in 1998, pp. 180, 184, 187) I also cited Philip Schaff, author of the multi-volume History of the Christian Church and editor of the famous 38-volume set of the Church fathers (that I regularly cite from, since it is online now).

I almost bought that set in hardcover so many times over the last 25 years! Schaff stated that “If any one expects to find in this period [100-325], or in any of the church fathers, Augustin himself not excepted, the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone, . . . he will be greatly disappointed.” Jordan Cooper disagrees with these three scholars (Norman Geisler was the third) as to the history. I don’t think he proved at all that Clement of Rome or Polycarp believed in sola fide, in his previous attempt (see my reply), and we will now examine his argument that St. Ambrose was supposedly a good “proto-Protestant” in soteriological matters too.

3:21 It’s not good to just take isolated statements of fathers apart from their whole body of work.

I heartily agree! I just as strongly disagree that supposedly only Catholic and Orthodox ever do this. Protestant polemicists do quite a bit too. I know; I’ve repeatedly interacted online with these sorts of effort since 1997, and one can read all those exchanges on my extensive Fathers of the Church web page.

7:56 The first of those fathers that I want to look at is St. Ambrose, and I just want to go through and examine some of the quotes that you find in his writings.

I’m delighted to join him on this journey. Jordan agrees with me that we need to look at an author’s entire corpus, or at least as many books as we can access (I have limited resources to buy rare books with; so thank the Lord for the thousands of online books!).

8:26 Ambrose is actually cited in the Augsburg Confession as an early testament to this notion of justification by faith alone . . . I think that Ambrose in the vast scope of his writings clearly at least in some places teaches something very much like that.

Interesting.

9:25 In his treatise on Jacob and the Happy Life he says “don’t you know that the guilt of Adam and Eve sold you into servitude? Don’t you know that Christ did not buy you but bought you back?” Those kinds of statements are all over the place, that . . . Adam’s guilt actually brings us into slavery and brings us death. There is an emphasis on guilt especially coming from Adam . . .

For a fuller quotation of this work, On Jacob and the Happy Life, see Jordan’s article, “St. Ambrose On Law And Gospel” (Just and Sinner, 6-3-14).

The Council of Trent stated in its Decree Concerning Original Sin in its Session 5 on June 17, 1546, four months after Luther’s death, in section 2, that “this sin of Adam” was “taken away” by “the merit of the one mediator, our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath reconciled us to God in his own blood, made unto us justice, sanctification, and redemption” and that this was “applied, both to adults and to infants, by the sacrament of baptism.”

So why does Jordan bring up this particular thing in the context of discussing sola fide? It’s because Lutherans and the early Protestants generally, erroneously believed that concupiscence (desire to or tendency towards sin) was itself a sin and a remnant of the guilt that we inherited from Adam. Trent condemned this opinion in section 5 of the same decree:

If any one denies, that, by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is conferred in baptism, the guilt of original sin is remitted; or even asserts that the whole of that which has the true and proper nature of sin is not taken away; but says that it is only raised, or not imputed; let him be anathema. For, in those who are born again, there is nothing that God hates; because, There is no condemnation to those who are truly buried together with Christ by baptism into death; who walk not according to the flesh, but, putting off the old man, and putting on the new who is created according to God, are made innocent, immaculate, pure, harmless, and beloved of God, heirs indeed of God, but joint heirs with Christ; so that there is nothing whatever to retard their entrance into heaven. . . .

Jordan provides an extended argument from a treatise by Ambrose that I can’t access, in which the Church father asserts that concupiscence is itself sin. Jordan then insinuates that Ambrose held to one tenet of the many involved in the “Reformation” belief in sola fide (more to do with the nature and results of original sin than with justification per se). If he is correct in his assessment (but maybe he isn’t; see more on this below), then Catholics would say that Ambrose got this teaching wrong. The Catholic Church followed St. Augustine in this respect:

Chapter 25 [XXIII.]— Concupiscence in the Regenerate Without Consent is Not Sin; In What Sense Concupiscence is Called Sin.

Now this concupiscence, this law of sin which dwells in our members, to which the law of righteousness forbids allegiance, saying in the words of the apostle, Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in the lusts thereof; neither yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: Romans 6:12-13 — this concupiscence, I say, which is cleansed only by the sacrament of regeneration, does undoubtedly, by means of natural birth, pass on the bond of sin to a man’s posterity, unless they are themselves loosed from it by regeneration. In the case, however, of the regenerate, concupiscence is not itself sin any longer, whenever they do not consent to it for illicit works, and when the members are not applied by the presiding mind to perpetrate such deeds. So that, if what is enjoined in one passage, You shall not covet, is not kept, that at any rate is observed which is commanded in another place, You shall not go after your concupiscences. [Sirach 18:30] Inasmuch, however, as by a certain manner of speech it is called sin, since it arose from sin, and, when it has the upper hand, produces sin, the guilt of it prevails in the natural man; but this guilt, by Christ’s grace through the remission of all sins, is not suffered to prevail in the regenerate man, if he does not yield obedience to it whenever it urges him to the commission of evil. As arising from sin, it is, I say, called sin, although in the regenerate it is not actually sin; and it has this designation applied to it, just as speech which the tongue produces is itself called tongue; and just as the word hand is used in the sense of writing, which the hand produces. In the same way concupiscence is called sin, as producing sin when it conquers the will: so to cold and frost the epithet sluggish is given; not as arising from, but as productive of, sluggishness; benumbing us, in fact. (On Marriage and Concupiscence, Book I, ch. 25)

He states again in chapter 27: “carnal concupiscence . . . is no longer accounted sin in the regenerate . . .” And again in chapter 28: “Carnal concupiscence is remitted, indeed, in baptism; not so that it is put out of existence, but so that it is not to be imputed for sin.” And in chapter 29: “In the case, then, of those persons who are born again in Christ, when they receive an entire remission of all their sins, it is of course necessary that the guilt also of the still indwelling concupiscence should be remitted, in order that (as I said) it should not be imputed to them for sin.” Then he provides a thoroughly Catholic interpretation of Romans 7 and 8:

Chapter 36.— Even Now While We Still Have Concupiscence We May Be Safe in Christ.

But the apostle pursues the subject, and says, So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin; [Romans 7:25] which must be thus understood: With my mind I serve the law of God, by refusing my consent to the law of sin; with my flesh, however, I serve the law of sin, by having the desires of sin, from which I am not yet entirely freed, although I yield them no assent. Then let us observe carefully what he has said after all the above: There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. [Romans 8:1] Even now, says he, when the law in my members keeps up its warfare against the law of my mind, and retains in captivity somewhat in the body of this death, there is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. And listen why: For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, says he, has made me free from the law of sin and death. [Romans 8:2] How made me free, except by abolishing its sentence of guilt by the remission of all my sins; so that, though it still remains, only daily lessening more and more, it is nevertheless not imputed to me as sin?

If Jordan’s take of St. Ambrose’s view is correct, Lutheranism followed his rather than St. Augustine’s view with regard to the nature of concupiscence). In any event, this is not all that is involved in the discussion of “faith alone.” It’s only indirectly or partially related, so that I don’t think it’s accurate to say that “St. Ambrose held to justification by faith alone” on the basis of this single (suggested) consideration. One’s opinion on the nature of concupiscence simply isn’t the equivalent of “justification by faith alone.”

But did Ambrose really hold this view (never forsaking it)? Anglican patristic scholar J. N. D. Kelly suggests that he either changed his mind or contradicted himself, as to the presence of guilt from original sin after baptism. Kelly writes:

The second of Ambrose’s texts cited above [On the Death of Satyrus, Book II, 6] suggests that the race is infected with Adam’s actual guilt. His more general doctrine, however, is that, while the corrupting force of sin is transmitted, the guilt attaches to Adam himself, not to us. . . . But our personal (propria) sins are to be contrasted with those we inherit (haereditaria); baptism removes the former, but the rite of washing of feet the latter. (Early Christian Doctrines, San Francisco: Harper, revised edition of 1978, 354-355)

The (perhaps surprising) foot-washing element was expressed by Ambrose in his treatise, On the Mysteries (ch. 6, 32):

Peter was clean, but he must wash his feet, for he had sin by succession from the first man, when the serpent overthrew him and persuaded him to sin. His feet were therefore washed, that hereditary sins might be done away, for our own sins are remitted through baptism.

Kelly continues:

This hereditary sin, he argues elsewhere [Enarr. in ps. 48. 9], is a wound which makes us stumble, but need cause us no anxiety at the day of judgment; we shall only be punished then for our personal sins. . . . It is clear that he envisages the inherited corruption as a congenital propensity to sin (the phrase he uses is lubricum delinquendi) rather than as a positive guilt. (Ibid., 355)

And this is identical to Catholic teaching on concupiscence. In Jordan’s citation of Ambrose’s book, On Jacob and the Happy Life, in his related article, he cites him as stating, “I became aware that concupiscence was sin,” in the midst of an apparent extended citation of St. Paul in Romans 7. He cites it again at 15:35 in his video. As far as I can tell, Ambrose might have been citing or reflecting Romans 7:8, which in KJV reads, “But sin, taking occasion by the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence. For without the law sin was dead.” Jordan said:

16:05 He says even the desire for sin is itself sin, and this is his interpretation of a passage like Romans 7, where Paul speaks about his understanding his knowledge of sin and what sin is. . . . at the time of the Reformation, Martin Luther claimed concupiscence was sin. The Roman church said no, the desire for sin is not itself sin; it’s only the actual act that flows out of that, that is willing, that is sin, and Martin Luther had a much broader understanding of what constitutes sin and the sin nature than Rome did. . . . there are a lot of hints here that Ambrose would take the position that Luther does, that even the desire for sin itself is sin.

The word concupiscence appears three times in the NT in the KJV. It doesn’t appear at all in the RSV New Testament, which translates Romans 7:8 as “But sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, wrought in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law sin lies dead.” The Greek word is epithumia (Strong’s word #1939: see its use and translation in English Bibles). But Jordan himself also wrote about St. Ambrose: “a lot of his interpretations are a little strange and he isn’t always consistent or on track with what the [biblical] text actually says; he often goes on tangents about whatever he really feels like teaching.” (13:02). Maybe so in the above instance . . .

If St. Ambrose denied what is the Catholic teaching on concupiscence, expressed by St. Augustine and the Council of Trent, he only did so in some but not all of his writing, and/or contradicted himself, or else thought twice about his original position and (from a Catholic perspective) corrected it.

On a web page from the Lutheran site, Fourth Century Christianity, that provides the “approximate chronological order” of Ambrose’s writings, we find that On Jacob and the Happy Life, was written in 386-388. On the Death of Satyrus dates from 379. On the Mysteries is from c. 387. Explanations of Twelve Psalms of David, cited by Kelly, where Ambrose expresses Catholic views, is the last dated work on this list; described as “Later career to death (unfinished).” So it looks like Ambrose held a more “proto-Protestant” view earlier on (379), then perhaps wavered or was unsure (386-388), and eventually settled on the Catholic view (by the time of his death in 397). The position Kelly describes is the one he held at the end of his life. This is what we can learn by examining the matter more closely.

Jordan continues on, up to the 36 minute mark, talking about this one work, On Jacob and the Happy Life, which doesn’t appear to be online, so I can’t analyze contextual elements or the entire work. Then he moves on to a “treatise on Joseph” (36:12) which is also — far as I can tell — unavailable online. And he discusses matters concerning our redemption and justification through Christ’s death on the cross, which likely are no different from what Catholics believe (though many Lutherans wrongly think that we are different), and only indirectly related, at best, to the topic of justification by faith alone.

The latter concept primarily has to do with the issue of the relation of faith and works, and whether sanctification is a fundamentally different category from justification: under which non-salvific works are categorized (in a way that the Bible never does). I waited for Jordan to get to those central disputes, as I went through his tape, but it turns out that he never did.

38:48 Saint Ambrose has a stronger view of original sin than a lot of the other church fathers do . . .

Or maybe it turned out that by the end of his life he didn’t, which was what my citation of J. N. D. Kelly was related to. It looks to me that St. Ambrose, in the final analysis, did not hold to total depravity or to the notion of a “sin nature.” So Kelly says about his fully developed view (see above): “It is clear that he envisages the inherited corruption as a congenital propensity to sin.” That’s what Catholics say: concupiscence.

Then he goes onto a discussion of Eastern Orthodoxy. He never even discusses the central question of faith and works, in a video entitled, “Sola Fide in the Church Fathers Part 2: Ambrose.” I think it’s a misnomer! He talked only about original sin and concupiscence, from basically just one work, and even then, arguably proved little or nothing, even about that specific topic, in light of Kelly’s conclusions on the general matter. Jordan virtually admitted this himself:

41:32 Oh my gosh, I didn’t get through anything that I wanted to. I went through one book of Ambrose and just grabbed quotes. I know I’m going really slow through this, but maybe this is what we need to do to show that we can do more than just quote mining from various books.

What he derisively calls merely “quote mining” is in fact what is necessary to do: locate relevant quotations from a father in order to determine his overall teaching on a given theological matter. This is precisely what we do in systematic theology, pertaining to Bible quotes. We collect relevant ones on a topic (say, original sin) and go from there, to determine what the Bible teaches about it. The more context the better (I’m all for that). Jordan is concerned about context, as he should be. I am, too, having seen what my Protestant debate opponents have too often done with context, regarding both the Bible and the fathers. But Jordan insinuates that Catholics (especially popular so-called “polemicists” like me) have a strong tendency to collect patristic quotes that are highly selective and out-of-context, etc. Some do, no doubt, and some don’t. Like most things, it’s a mixed bag and we can only examine what each individual writer does.

41:48 I do want to say for someone who’s listening to this and is Roman Catholic, I know the immediate response, especially for someone who has the volume is that, well, Ambrose also . . . says some things that may not appear as Lutheran or Protestant as the statements you read and that’s true . . .

Wouldn’t it be only fair and thorough to examine those as well, rather than only the “Lutheran”-sounding ones? I have dealt with these highly selective citations in depth in this reply. Jordan needs to do the same with the more “Catholic” statements of Ambrose. But he winds up — nothing personal! — doing largely the same thing that he claims here and in other videos, that Catholics and Orthodox do: pick out only portions from the fathers or one father that seem to support their case and ignore ones that don’t appear to do so.

St. Ambrose thinks that works indeed play a role in determining whether we are saved or not:

The deserts of each one of us are suspended in the balance, which a little weight either of good works or of degenerate conduct sways this way or that; if the evil preponderate, woe is me! if the good, pardon is at hand. For no man is free from sin; but where good preponderates, the evil flies up, is overshadowed, and covered. Wherefore in the Day of judgement our works will either succour us, or will sink us into the deep, weighed down as with a millstone. . . . Wherefore exhort the people of God to trust rather in the Lord, to abound in the riches of simplicity, wherein they may walk without snare and without hindrance. (Letter II: To Constantius, a Bishop; from The Letters of S. Ambrose, Oxford: 1881; my italics)

This entirely lines up with biblical accounts of the Day of Judgment. I’ve found fifty biblical passages, all of which make works — not antithetical to faith — extremely important as to salvation (only one mentioned faith alongside works). This is clearly contrary to justification by faith alone, in which we stand before God when being judged in the end and can or will say, “all my sins were covered by Christ’s imputed justification, so I’m saved; works have nothing to do with it!”

But Ambrose, who had a very different outlook, highlights works, works, works at the judgment. Why? It’s because it’s entirely biblical, especially regarding the Last Judgment, as I showed. Ambrose simply mirrors an overwhelming teaching of Holy Scripture. He makes the same point in an even more direct and undeniable way elsewhere (that couldn’t be more contrary to faith alone than it is):

If thou clothe the naked, thou clothest thyself with righteousness; if thou bring the stranger under thy roof, if thou support the needy, he procures for thee the friendship of the saints and eternal habitations. That is no small recompense. Thou sowest earthly things and receivest heavenly. . . . Clearly blessed is he from whose house a poor man has never gone with empty hand. Nor again is any one more blessed than he who is sensible of the needs of the poor, and the hardships of the weak and helpless. In the day of judgment he will receive salvation from the Lord, Whom he will have as his debtor for the mercy he has shown. (On the Duties of the Clergy, Book I, 11, 39; my italics)

But the sacred Scriptures say that eternal life rests on a knowledge of divine things and on the fruit of good works. The Gospel bears witness to both these statements. For the Lord Jesus spoke thus of knowledge: This is eternal life, to know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom You have sent. [John 17:3] About works He gives this answer: Every one that has forsaken house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for My Name’s sake, shall receive an hundred-fold, and shall inherit everlasting life. [Matthew 19:29]

He has further also in the same psalm stated of good works, that they gain for an upright man the gift of eternal life. He speaks thus: Blessed is the man that shows pity and lends, he will guide his affairs with discretion, surely he shall not be moved for ever, the righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance. And further: He has dispersed, he has given to the poor, his justice endures forever. (Ibid., Book II, 2, 5 and 6; my italics; Psalm 37:28 states: “he will not forsake his saints. The righteous shall be preserved for ever”: RSV)

In the faith alone view, such works are considered, in the end, optional, as to salvation. For Ambrose (and for Jesus, too, as we see above), they literally help bring about salvation (a direct relation). This is the Catholic view whereby sanctification is not separated from justification; nor works from faith. It’s not works-salvation (Pelagianism). It’s a centrality of works that necessarily flow from grace-produced and grace-enabled faith and justification, per the Bible (again, see my fifty proofs above). Ambrose refuses to separate works from faith, or vice versa:

Faith, then, has [the promise of] eternal life, for it is a good foundation. Good works, too, have the same, for an upright man is tested by his words and acts. For if a man is always busy talking and yet is slow to act, he shows by his acts how worthless his knowledge is: besides it is much worse to know what one ought to do, and yet not to do what one has learned should be done. On the other hand, to be active in good works and unfaithful at heart is as idle as though one wanted to raise a beautiful and lofty dome upon a bad foundation. The higher one builds, the greater is the fall; for without the protection of faith good works cannot stand. A treacherous anchorage in a harbour perforates a ship, and a sandy bottom quickly gives way and cannot bear the weight of the building placed upon it. There then will be found the fullness of reward, where the virtues are perfect, and where there is a reasonable agreement between words and acts. (Ibid., Book II, 2, 7; my italics)

That is not teaching faith alone and the Protestant view, folks. He reiterates the point again (repetition being a great teacher): “the blessedness of eternal life is the reward for good works” (Book II, 3, 9). Likewise, Ambrose states:

But what does it profit me, if God Himself knows all my hairs? That rather abounds and profits me, if the watchful witness of good works reward me with the gift of eternal life. (On the Holy Spirit, Book II, Introduction, 16)

. . . the resurrection brings with it either the reward of good works, or the punishment of wicked ones . . . (On the Death of Satyrus, Book II, 52)

You did not dedicate yourself to the Lord on purpose to make your family rich, but that you might win eternal life by the fruit of good works, and atone for your sins by showing mercy. . . . They attempt to take away the fruits of your life, and think they are acting rightly. And one accuses you because you have not made him rich, when all the time he wished to cheat you of the reward of eternal life. (On the Duties of the Clergy, Book I, ch. 30, 150)

Therefore, St. Ambrose did not believe in justification by faith alone. Protestant historian Philip Schaff describes the “Reformation” doctrine:

[I]t is the righteousness which God freely gives in Christ to those who believe in him. Righteousness is not to be acquired by man through his own exertions and merits; it is complete and perfect in Christ, and all the sinner has to do is to accept it from Him as a free gift. Justification is that judicial act of God whereby he acquits the sinner of guilt and clothes him with the righteousness of Christ on the sole condition of personal faith which apprehends and appropriates Christ and shows its life and power by good works, as a good tree bringing forth good fruits.

The Pauline doctrine of justification as set forth in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, had never before been clearly and fully understood, not even by Augustin and Bernard, who confound justification with sanctification. Herein lies the difference between the Catholic and the Protestant conception. In the Catholic system justification (dikaivwsi) is a gradual process conditioned by faith and good works; in the Protestant system it is a single act of God, followed by sanctification. It is based upon the merits of Christ, conditioned by faith, and manifested by good works. (History of the Christian Church, vol. 7, § 23. “The Victory of Justifying Faith”)

Ambrose clearly doesn’t believe the above, which is proven in how he repeatedly states that works play an important role in eschatological salvation (at the last judgment). To sum up, Tim A. Troutman observed in his article, “St. Ambrose on Sola Fide” (Called to Communion, 9-16-19):

St. Ambrose speaks at length about the necessary and primary role of faith in salvation. This should not be surprising since almost all of the Church fathers did the same thing and so do the Scriptures. But the doctrine of sola fide, as condemned by the Catholic Church, is not that faith is primary in salvation but that faith is the only contributing cause of salvation (to the arbitrary exclusion of other causes). I say arbitrary because they who hold it affirm its exclusion of works of charity, . . .

Troutman cited the following (very unProtestant) passage from Ambrose:

But the apostles, having this baptism according to the direction of Christ, taught repentance, promised forgiveness, and remitted guilt, as David taught when he said: Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord has not imputed sin. He calls each blessed, both him whose sins are remitted by the font, and him whose sin is covered by good works. For he who repents ought not only to wash away his sin by his tears, but also to cover and hide his former transgressions by amended deeds, that sin may not be imputed to him. (Concerning Repentance, Book II, 5, 35)

Educated Protestants could and would never frame the issue in the way that Ambrose does in all these excerpts that I have produced. Conclusion?: his views are harmonious with Catholic soteriology and not the Protestant soteriology of justification by faith alone.

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Photo credit: St Ambrose, by Matthias Stom (fl. 1615-1649) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

Summary: Lutheran apologist Jordan Cooper claimed that St. Ambrose taught “faith alone” (citing one work). I offer a counter-explanation & many other counter-evidences.

Faith Alone in the Early Church Fathers? (vs. Jordan Cooper)

February 28, 2024 By Dave Armstrong

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Includes Clement of Rome (d. c. 101) & Polycarp (d. 155) vs. Faith Alone

This is my 4th reply to Jordan (many more to come, because I want to interact with the best, most informed Protestant opponents). All of these respectful critiques can be found in the “Replies to Lutheran Theologian / Apologist Jordan Cooper” section on the top of my Lutheranism web page.

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This is a response to Jordan’s YouTube video, “Sola Fide in the Church Fathers” (3-27-19).

6:54 Let’s talk about the question of the unanimity of the fathers. This is important because when you read a lot of especially popular level Roman Catholic polemics or Eastern Orthodox polemics, you get this idea that there is this unanimous consensus of the fathers on all of these various doctrinal topics.

First of all, “unanimous” in this sense doesn’t mean “absolutely every” but a “strong consensus.” See my article: “Unanimous Consent” of Church Fathers: Not Literally All (Does the Phrase “Unanimous Consent of the Fathers” Allow Any Exceptions?) [4-29-08; revised on 10-22-18]. Nor is it just Catholic and Orthodox “polemics” as to faith alone. It’s also the opinion of three well-known Protestant apologists and scholars:

Whereas Augustine taught that the sinner is made righteous in justification, Melanchthon taught that he is counted as righteous or pronounced to be righteous. For Augustine, ‘justifying righteousness’ is imparted; for Melanchthon, it is imputed in the sense of being declared or pronounced to be righteous. Melanchthon drew a sharp distinction between the event of being declared righteous and the process of being made righteous, designating the former ‘justification’ and the latter ‘sanctification’ or ‘regeneration.’ For Augustine, these were simply different aspects of the same thing . . .

The importance of this development lies in the fact that it marks a complete break with the teaching of the church up to that point. From the time of Augustine onwards, justification had always been understood to refer to both the event of being declared righteous and the process of being made righteous. . . .

The Council of Trent . . . reaffirmed the views of Augustine on the nature of justification . . . the concept of forensic justification actually represents a development in Luther’s thought . . . . Trent maintained the medieval tradition, stretching back to Augustine, which saw justification as comprising both an event and a process . . . (Alister McGrath, Reformation Thought: An Introduction, 2nd edition, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1993, 108-109, 115; my italics)

For Augustine, justification included both the beginnings of one’s righteousness before God and its subsequent perfection — the event and the process. What later became the Reformation concept of ‘sanctification’ then is effectively subsumed under the aegis of justification. Although he believed that God initiated the salvation process, it is incorrect to say that Augustine held to the concept of ‘forensic’ justification. This understanding of justification is a later development of the Reformation . . .

Before Luther, the standard Augustinian position on justification stressed intrinsic justification. Intrinsic justification argues that the believer is made righteous by God’s grace, as compared to extrinsic justification, by which a sinner is forensically declared righteous (at best, a subterranean strain in pre-Reformation Christendom). With Luther the situation changed dramatically . . .

. . . one can be saved without believing that imputed righteousness (or forensic justification) is an essential part of the true gospel. Otherwise, few people were saved between the time of the apostle Paul and the Reformation, since scarcely anyone taught imputed righteousness (or forensic justification) during that period! . . . . . (Norman Geisler, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences, with Ralph E. MacKenzie, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1995, 502, 85, 222; my italics)

If any one expects to find in this period [100-325], or in any of the church fathers, Augustin himself not excepted, the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone, . . . he will be greatly disappointed . . . Paul’s doctrine of justification, except perhaps in Clement of Rome, who joins it with the doctrine of James, is left very much out of view, and awaits the age of the Reformation to be more thoroughly established and understood. (Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. 2, 588-589)

They said it, not me! My question for Jordan would be: how does he explain the sweeping nature of these comments? If they are wrong, how could they be so dramatically wrong? What is it that they are seeing in the fathers that he is not seeing? Catholics have been saying this all along. It’s nothing new to us. Glad to see that some prominent Protestants are now frankly and candidly admitting it.

8:10 we’ve always had this this issue that we haven’t looked at the fathers in terms of their actual context. We haven’t looked at the totality of their writings.

How are Geisler’s and McGrath’s and Schaff’s statements explained then? McGrath is the author of such books as Historical Theology: An Introduction to the History of Christian Thought (3rd ed., 2022), The Nature of Christian Doctrine: Its Origins, Development, and Function (2024), and (especially) Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification (1986; 4th ed., 2020) “the leading reference work on the subject.” McGrath thinks the doctrine of justification was established by the time of St. Augustine (including his own view), and didn’t change until Philip Melanchthon (not even with Luther), “as a complete break.”

One, then, might try to argue that the pre-Augustinian fathers thought differently. Geisler says this is true from the time of Paul to Luther, which takes it back almost 400 more years. How can this be if this sort of generalization is only made by Catholic “polemicists” on a mere “popular level”? Jordan noted later in this video (at 29:13) that in McGrath’s book Iustitia Dei “the whole pre-Augustinian era is basically ignored . . . he kind of skips over the whole era.”

McGrath thought the medieval soteriological tradition was wrong in following Augustine, but, as Michael P. Barber noted, in the fourth edition of his book Iustitia Dei he made a significant admission:

It has become a commonplace in some quarters to suggest that the dik group of terms–particularly the verb dikaioo, “to justify”–are naturally translated as being “treated as righteous” or “reckoned as righteous”, and that Paul’s Greek-speaking readers would have understood him in this way. This may be true at the purely linguistic level; however, the Greek Christian preoccupation with the strongly transformative soteriological metaphor of deification appears to have led to justification being treated in a factitive sense. This is not, however, to be seen as a conceptual imposition on Pauline thought, but rather a discernment of this aspect of his soteriological narrative. . . . Chrysostom’s account affirms the declaration or manifestation (endeixeis) of God’s own righteousness with its actualisation in the transformation of the nature of humanity. (pp. 36-37)

See also, “Alister McGrath’s Conversion on Justification,” Bryan Cross, Called to Communion, 5-5-20 and “Ligon Duncan’s ‘Did the Fathers Know the Gospel?’ “ (Bryan Cross, 7-17-10).

8:49 there are certainly areas where the fathers as a whole are in agreement.

And we think this topic is one of them. Jordan notes that belief in baptismal regeneration and real presence in the Eucharist are two issues where the fathers achieved a “pretty unanimous consensus” (10:59). We agree!

12:08 this is an issue where we do have differences of opinion and we have certain fathers that say certain things [and] other fathers that say other things and trying to kind of tease out what Paul is talking about in Romans and Galatians and Ephesians when he speaks about faith and when he speaks about works and justification by faith, not by works; trying to formulate and figure out how all of those things work together. The fathers do come to some different conclusions in how they understand those texts, so you’re not going to read the fathers and say, “oh look they’re all Lutheran”; you’re also not going to read the father’s and say “oh look they’re all Roman Catholics” or “oh they’re all Eastern Orthodox.”

Well, further below we will be examining some of the earliest Church fathers to see if they believed in a Lutheran / Calvinist / “Reformation”-type “faith alone” soteriology. Sneak preview: they don’t.

12:52 We have to let the fathers be the fathers. We can’t shoehorn the fathers into our own traditions, and I think this is what the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions are often forced to do, because they claim to be the tradition that is consistent with the teachings of the church fathers. Often they try to kind of force this unanimity among the fathers, and I think for that reason they can’t read them consistently in terms of what those figures actually really believed. They can’t read them without bias toward a belief that they already are coming to those texts — which is, “those fathers believed all the same things that we do today.”

Of course (I think it’s obvious), bias about the views of the Church fathers is not by any stretch of the imagination confined to Orthodox and Catholics. I’ve written many times about this. For example:

Lutheran Chemnitz Wrong Re Fathers & Sola Scriptura (mostly dealing with St. Irenaeus and Tertullian) [8-29-07]

Lutheran Chemnitz: Errors Re Fathers & Sola Scriptura (including analysis of Jerome, Augustine, Origen, Epiphanius, Ambrose, Lactantius, Athanasius, and Cyprian) [8-31-07]

St. Augustine’s Eucharistic Doctrine and Protestant “Co-Opting” [9-25-10]
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Jerusalem Council & James, Bishop Of Jerusalem: The Ambivalence and Inconsistencies of Protestant Thought on the Earliest “Monarchical” Bishops [1-30-24]

Moreover, Lutheran and Reformed Protestants try to claim that their views are closer to the fathers than ours and seek to show that there was patristic consensus on several issues that suggests their view over against ours. This very effort from Jordan is an example of Protestants doing that, just as Catholics and Orthodox do. All sides must guard against making overly selective and one-sided patristic citations, just as they need to avoid doing the same thing with scriptural references.

21:18 is there any doctrine of justification by faith alone in the fathers? My answer is, yes we can definitely find a testimony of justification by faith alone in the church fathers. It’s not unanimous; it’s not universal but it is there.

The examples from Polycarp and Clement of Rome that he submits do not prove his case. They support our position, as I will demonstrate below.

24:21 they’re not debating the doctrine of justification or having these doctrinal formulations of justification. They’re not going to be as careful on that issue because that’s not what they’re talking about; that’s not what they’re thinking about. They want to define who is Jesus . . . how do we deal with this Gnostic threat . . . those things don’t get clarified really until the time of Augustine.
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Agreed.
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29:53 Augustine definitely does not see the term justification as a legal term . . . he really sees it as a making righteous instead of a declaring to be righteous legally.

I agree again.

30:25 Augustine does see justification as a “making righteous” [but] that doesn’t mean Augustine is totally wrong on justification. I think just in terms of all the major points of salvation by grace not by works, the fact that righteousness is a gift of God: all of these things are very clearly similar to to the doctrine of justification that you find in Luther.

St. Augustine believed in merit and meritorious works. I have three-and-a-half pages on this in my book, The Quotable Augustine (2012). The Augsburg Confession (Article 20: Of Good Works) states:

Whoever, therefore, trusts that by works he merits grace, despises the merit and grace of Christ, and seeks a way to God without Christ, by human strength, . . . [9]

For St. Augustine, grace and merit are not antithetical to each other. Merit is “God crowning His own gifts.” But it’s ours, too, because we make it ours. I add that I have found fifty Bible passages where, in the context of the Last Judgment, works are mentioned in every case, as a crucial part of salvation, and faith only once (in conjunction with works). I don’t deny that faith is crucial, too. I am merely noting that the emphases here do not comport with the Protestant emphasis on faith over against works, as entirely prominent. Catholics believe that good works must necessarily flow from God’s grace preceding them. We merely cooperate. But the works become truly our own, too. We’re not advocating Semi-Pelagianism, yet we’re falsely accused of it in the Book of Concord. In the areas where Augustine agrees with Luther (sola gratia, etc.), so does the Catholic Church.

39:42 there are some citations in the earliest fathers that I think do point toward an understanding of justification by faith alone; again not all of the Apostolic fathers.
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St. Polycarp was a very early Church father, and he makes it very clear that he believes in the Catholic view of justification by grace alone through faith, with the necessary addition of meritorious good works: without which faith is dead, and salvation unattainable:

But He who raised Him up from the dead will raise us up also, if we do His will, and walk in His commandments, and love what He loved, keeping ourselves from all unrighteousness, covetousness, love of money, evil speaking, false witness; not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing, or blow for blow, or cursing for cursing, but being mindful of what the Lord said in His teaching: Judge not, that you be not judged; forgive, and it shall be forgiven unto you; be merciful, that you may obtain mercy; with what measure you measure, it shall be measured to you again; and once more, “Blessed are the poor, and those that are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” [Epistle to the Philippians, chapter 2; added verse numbers removed, but he cites five passages in this section; my italics and bolding]

This is extraordinary! Note the bolded “if.” Our resurrection (which means salvation, since only the saved will be resurrected to glory) is conditional upon doing various works. God will “raise us up” if we “do His will” (a work, especially indicated by the “do”), if we “walk in His commandments” (several works), and if we avoid nine different sins: the avoidance of which amounts to meritorious action and behavior. That’s at least eleven things that are necessary in order for us to be saved and resurrected, followed by five more things that are opportunities for meritorious actions leading (in faith and grace) to salvation.

If St. Polycarp in fact thought like a Protestant (in this regard of salvation), this section would have been much shorter. He would have written something like, “But He who raised Him up from the dead will raise us up also, if we believe in Him in faith alone.” All of the rest would have been relegated to a good and praiseworthy, yet optional sanctification: not related to salvation at all. But Polycarp makes our resurrection conditional upon doing all these good works and behaving the right (Christlike) way. It’s very Catholic and exceedingly unlike Protestantism.

Now, Jordan highlights the fact that Polycarp also wrote about justification by faith. In chapter 1 he states, “knowing that ‘by grace you are saved, not of works,” [Eph 2:8-9] but by the will of God through Jesus Christ” and in chapter 12 he refers to belief in Jesus Christ. Indeed, we must have faith and we aren’t saved by self-generated works. Catholics don’t believe in Pelagianism, or “works-salvation.” We believe in justification through God’s grace by faith (in its initial stage, monergistic): a faith that inherently entails good works, by its very nature, as James teaches — and actually Paul, too, if one looks close enough. These are the good works we are talking about. And Polycarp agrees, for in chapter 1 he also commends the Philippians and remarks that “you have followed the example of true love” and “because the strong root of your faith, . . . endures even until now, and brings forth fruit to our Lord Jesus Christ, . . .”

Catholics can easily harmonize works like these into a schema of justification by grace through faith (which by nature includes works); no problem! But Protestants usually try to highlight the faith part, while ignoring or de-emphasizing the equally biblical works-that-inevitably-flow-from-faith part of the equation. And it’s because they have formally separated faith and works and have (contrary to previous Christian teaching) stuck good works in the separate category of non-salvific, non-meritorious sanctification.

Polycarp expresses the same Catholic soteriology in chapter 3: “For if any one be inwardly possessed of these graces, he has fulfilled the command of righteousness, since he that has love is far from all sin.” And in chapter 4: “let us teach, first of all, ourselves to walk in the commandments of the Lord. Next, [teach] your wives [to walk] in the faith given to them.” And in chapters 5, 9, 10, and 12, he’s also far from any notion of “faith alone”:

[W]e ought to walk worthy of His commandment and glory. . . . If we please Him in this present world, we shall receive also the future world, according as He has promised to us that He will raise us again from the dead, and that if we live worthily of Him, we shall also reign together with Him, [2 Tim 2:12] provided only we believe. . . . neither fornicators, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, shall inherit the kingdom of God, [1 Corinthians 6:9-10]. [5]

I exhort you all, therefore, to yield obedience to the word of righteousness, and to exercise all patience, such as you have seen [set] before your eyes, not only in the case of the blessed Ignatius, and Zosimus, and Rufus, but also in others among yourselves, and in Paul himself, and the rest of the apostles. [This do] in the assurance that all these have not run [Phil 2:16; Gal 2:2] in vain, but in faith and righteousness, and that they are [now] in their due place in the presence of the Lord, with whom also they suffered. [9]

When you can do good, defer it not, because alms delivers from death. [Tobit 4:10; 12:9] [10]

But may the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ Himself, who is the Son of God, and our everlasting High Priest, build you up in faith and truth, and in all meekness, gentleness, patience, long-suffering, forbearance, and purity; and may He bestow on you a lot and portion among His saints, and on us with you . . . [12]

Jordan brings up St. Clement of Rome and his Letter to the Corinthians. The same “faith and works” dynamic that we see in Polycarp very much applies to him, too. In chapter 30 he writes:

Let us clothe ourselves with concord and humility, ever exercising self-control, standing far off from all whispering and evil-speaking, being justified by our works, and not our words.

In the next chapter he wrote about Abraham:

For what reason was our father Abraham blessed? Was it not because he wrought righteousness and truth through faith?

Clement teaches justification by faith in chapter 32. We totally agree, as to initial justification. We simply believe that good works (which are meritorious) are necessary after initial justification. But in talking about salvation, it’s clear that he thinks that faith and works are both required, not only faith:

For, as God lives, and as the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost live — both the faith and hope of the elect, he who in lowliness of mind, . . . has observed the ordinances and appointments given by God— the same shall obtain a place and name in the number of those who are being saved through Jesus Christ, . . . [58]

And again: “On account of her faith and hospitality, Rahab the harlot was saved” (chapter 12), and: “He [Abraham], in the exercise of obedience, went out from his own country, and from his kindred, and from his father’s house, in order that, by forsaking a small territory, and a weak family, and an insignificant house, he might inherit the promises of God. . . . On account of his faith and hospitality, a son was given him [Abraham] in his old age” (chapter 10), and: “On account of his hospitality and godliness, Lot was saved out of Sodom” (chapter 11), and: “It is requisite, therefore, that we be prompt in the practice of well-doing; for of Him are all things. And thus He forewarns us: ‘Behold, the Lord [comes], and His reward is before His face, to render to every man according to his work.'” (chapter 34). See the theme and common thread there? He’s very explicit about the crucial role of works and merit in chapters 21 and 35:

Take heed, beloved, lest His many kindnesses lead to the condemnation of us all. [For thus it must be] unless we walk worthy of Him, and with one mind do those things which are good and well-pleasing in His sight. . . . Let us reverence the Lord Jesus Christ, whose blood was given for us; let us esteem those who have the rule over us; let us honour the aged among us; let us train up the young men in the fear of God; let us direct our wives to that which is good. Let them exhibit the lovely habit of purity [in all their conduct]; let them show forth the sincere disposition of meekness; let them make manifest the command which they have of their tongue, by their manner of speaking; let them display their love, not by preferring one to another, but by showing equal affection to all that piously fear God. Let your children be partakers of true Christian training; let them learn of how great avail humility is with God — how much the spirit of pure affection can prevail with Him — how excellent and great His fear is, and how it saves all those who walk in it with a pure mind. [my italics]

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Let us therefore earnestly strive to be found in the number of those that wait for Him, in order that we may share in His promised gifts. But how, beloved, shall this be done? If our understanding be fixed by faith towards God; if we earnestly seek the things which are pleasing and acceptable to Him; if we do the things which are in harmony with His blameless will; and if we follow the way of truth, casting away from us all unrighteousness and iniquity, along with all covetousness, strife, evil practices, deceit, whispering, and evil-speaking, all hatred of God, pride and haughtiness, vain glory and ambition. [my bolding and italics]

All of this is thoroughly Catholic soteriology. Jordan refers to Clement’s statement about Abraham in chapter 31: “For what reason was our father Abraham blessed? Was it not because he wrought righteousness and truth through faith?” Yes, Abraham had faith. He’s the father of faith. He’s renowned for that. But he also had works. Jordan didn’t mention another instance (one of just three) where Abraham is mentioned, in chapter 10: “He, in the exercise of obedience, went out from his own country, . . . in order that, . . . he might inherit the promises of God.” That’s talking about works. One passage is about his faith, another about his works. Faith and works . . . We can’t only mention one and ignore the other. Jordan notes that Clement was referring to Romans 4, which is about Abraham’s faith. But James 2:21-24 is also in the Bible:

Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he offered his son Isaac upon the altar? [22] You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by works, [23] and the scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness”; and he was called the friend of God. [24] You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone.

James directly ties the “reckoned as righteous” passage to Abraham’s work of being willing to sacrifice Isaac, which “fulfilled” the other passage. It’s not just faith. It’s faith that inherently, organically includes works, which “complete” faith. Genesis also makes it clear that Abraham’s obedience was central to God’s covenant with him:

Genesis 22:15-18 And the angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven, [16] and said, “By myself I have sworn, says the LORD, because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, [17] I will indeed bless you, and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore. And your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies, [18] and by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.”

Catholics joyfully agree that Abraham had extraordinary faith. But we don’t ignore the role that his works and obedience played in his being so honored by God, and saved. The author of Hebrews also mentions Abraham’s works. He ties it together with his faith, even in the famous “faith chapter”: “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place which he was to receive as an inheritance . . .” (11:8).

For more on Abraham’s justification, see: Abraham: Justified Twice by Works & Once by Faith [8-30-23].

Jordan brings up The Epistle of Mathetes to Diognetus, written by “a disciple of the Apostles” (chapter 11). He says:

41:15 the Epistle to Diognetus is an anonymous book that is probably the best of all of them. It’s a fantastic work. First Clement is wonderful too. Those are the two that are really, I think, the most significant in terms of their evidence for justification.

This eloquent work approaches justification much as Paul does (and as Catholics do, rightly understood). He writes about initial monergistic justification — which we Catholics fully accept! But — again like Paul and Catholics — he doesn’t formally separate works from faith as Protestants do, and writes: “. . . to whom He sent His only-begotten Son, to whom He has promised a kingdom in heaven, and will give it to those who have loved Him” (chapter 10). He continues:

Or, how will you love Him who has first so loved you? And if you love Him, you will be an imitator of His kindness. And do not wonder that a man may become an imitator of God. He can, if he is willing. For it is not by ruling over his neighbours, or by seeking to hold the supremacy over those that are weaker, or by being rich, and showing violence towards those that are inferior, that happiness is found; nor can any one by these things become an imitator of God. But these things do not at all constitute His majesty. On the contrary he who takes upon himself the burden of his neighbour; he who, in whatsoever respect he may be superior, is ready to benefit another who is deficient; he who, whatsoever things he has received from God, by distributing these to the needy, becomes a god to those who receive [his benefits]: he is an imitator of God. [chapter 10]

And he writes along these lines in chapter 12:

When you have read and carefully listened to these things, you shall know what God bestows on such as rightly love Him, being made [as you are] a paradise of delight, presenting in yourselves a tree bearing all kinds of produce and flourishing well, being adorned with various fruits.

Once again, I see nothing whatsoever in this work that contradicts Catholic soteriology. But it seems to have some elements (above) that contradict Lutheran soteriology. It is what it is. I’m simply describing the nature of the work. And I submit that the same thing applies to St. Clement and St. Polycarp.

See the follow-up: St. Ambrose vs. Faith Alone (vs. Jordan Cooper) + Concupiscence: St. Ambrose’s and St. Augustine’s Views [2-29-24]

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Photo credit: see book and purchase information for this volume of mine, from 2007.

Summary: Lutheran apologist Jordan Cooper claims that some of the early apostolic Church fathers taught faith alone. I show that Clement & Polycarp do not do so at all.

Indulgences: Luther’s View & the Catholic Encyclopedia

February 16, 2024 By Dave Armstrong

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Of the famous 95 Theses of Martin Luther, posted in Wittenberg, Germany (Saxony) on 31 October 1517, 47 were devoted to indulgences. The word indulgence[s] appears 41 times in 39 of the theses, while another six of the propositions (#27-28, 35, 82, 84, 86) were undeniably focused on the concept. Several others were arguably or partially or indirectly referencing indulgences as well.

First, let’s step back and define our term. The Catholic concept of the indulgence is simple: it means a remission or relaxation of the temporal penalties for sin. It’s not “indulgence” of sin. It’s not purportedly offering salvation (let alone for money) or even absolution. It lessens temporal penances and punishments. Catholics believe that penances could be imposed for sin, and find a biblical basis for that in the concept of priests “binding” sinners, found in Matthew 16:19 and 18:18 (with “loosing” referring to the absolving of sins, or absolution). Furthermore, we find St. Paul literally granting an indulgence in 2 Corinthians 2:6-11, after having imposed penances (1 Cor 5:3-5). Therefore — no doubt to the surprise of Protestants — , it’s an explicit biblical doctrine.

Is temporal penance or punishment for sin (the premise or presupposition for an indulgence) itself a biblical doctrine? These verses suggest that, and also several actions of God Himself. For example, when Moses’ sister Miriam “spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married” (Num 12:1), God punished her with leprosy (12:6-10). That’s a temporal punishment for sin (not damnation). But it was not permanent, because Moses prayed for her to be healed (12:13). This was literally Moses praying for an indulgence. The text implies that the leprosy wasn’t permanent as a result of the prayer.

On several occasions, Moses atoned and brought about an indulgence, in terms of his people not being punished for some sin of theirs (Ex 32:30-32; Num 14:19-23). In the latter case, God pardoned the iniquity of the Hebrews because Moses prayed for them, but some penance or penalty for their sin remained: they could not enter the Promised Land. In Numbers 16:46-48, Moses and Aaron stopped a plague. That was an indulgence too. Phinehas, a priest, “turned back” God’s “wrath” (Num 25:6-13). The bronze serpent in the wilderness was an indulgence granted by God (Num 21:4-9). King David wasn’t punished by death due to his sins of murder and adultery, but he still had a terrible penalty to pay: his son was to die (2 Sam 12:13-14). In other words, part of his punishment was remitted (indulgence) but not all.

In more New Testament evidence of temporal punishment, we have St. Paul pointedly noting that those who received the Holy Eucharist in an “unworthy manner” were “guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Cor 11:27). That’s the serious sin. And he goes on to say that “many” of them received a temporary or permanent punishment as a result: “That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.” Paul describes this punishment as being “chastened” (11:32). He had stated in 1 Corinthians 5:5: “deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved.” Penance or punishment of this sort exhibits God’s holiness and just nature, whereas forgiveness and indulgences extend His lovingkindness and mercy.

I’d like to give Martin Luther credit (yes; when he is right, he is really right, and we Catholics rejoice in it!) for both correctly understanding the true nature of indulgences and criticizing the lamentable excesses that occurred in the late Middle Ages. Here are seven examples of his correct understanding of their nature:

21) Thus those indulgence preachers are in error who say that a man is absolved from every penalty and saved by papal indulgences.

27) They preach only human doctrines who say that as soon as the money clinks into the money chest, the soul flies out of purgatory.

32) Those who believe that they can be certain of their salvation because they have indulgence letters will be eternally damned, together with their teachers. [half-correct: the first part is, but not the second; this is not an inherently or objectively damnable sin; it’s ignorance and foolish presumption]

34) For the graces of indulgences are concerned only with the penalties of sacramental satisfaction established by man.

35) They who teach that contrition is not necessary on the part of those who intend to buy souls out of purgatory or to buy confessional privileges preach unchristian doctrine.

44) Because love grows by works of love, man thereby becomes better. Man does not, however, become better by means of indulgences but is merely freed from penalties.

75) To consider papal indulgences so great that they could absolve a man even if he had done the impossible and had violated the mother of God is madness.

76) We say on the contrary that papal indulgences cannot remove the very least of venial sins as far as guilt is concerned.

Luther correctly condemns (in #27 and #35 above and in the theses listed below) abuses and corruption and greed that became widely present in the selling of indulgences, and alludes to “certain hawkers of indulgences” who “cajole money” (#51):

28) It is certain that when money clinks in the money chest, greed and avarice can be increased; but when the church intercedes, the result is in the hands of God alone.

82) Such as: “Why does not the pope empty purgatory for the sake of holy love and the dire need of the souls that are there if he redeems an infinite number of souls for the sake of miserable money with which to build a church?” The former reason would be most just; the latter is most trivial.

84) Again, “What is this new piety of God and the pope that for a consideration of money they permit a man who is impious and their enemy to buy out of purgatory the pious soul of a friend of God and do not rather, because of the need of that pious and beloved soul, free it for pure love’s sake?”

In 1567, fifty years after the 95 Theses, Pope St. Pius V (a Dominican reformer-pope; r. 1566-1572) forbade tying indulgences to any financial act, even to the giving of alms. Note that this is no reversal of dogma. The Church maintains the doctrine itself because it’s biblical. But selling indulgences became so rife with corruption that it was deemed prudential by a pope to eliminate them altogether.

As an analogy, consider alcoholic drinks. They are not wrong in and of themselves, but there is a sense in which a total ban on them (prohibition, as it were) would accomplish a great deal of good and prevent many deaths or instances of ruined health, car accidents, wrecked marriages and family relations, poor work performance, etc. Alcoholism and specific instances of drunkenness are the excess or “corruption” of a thing (wine and other alcoholic drinks) not in and of itself sinful. Likewise with the selling of indulgences. Even selling them in and of itself was not inherently sinful; only abuses of the practice of selling were.

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I’d like to now offer an abridged version of the online Catholic Encyclopedia article, “Indulgences” (by William Kent, 1910). I found it very educational and helpful (I learned a ton of things), and so I wanted to pass it on to readers in perhaps a more “digestible” form. I won’t bother with ellipses (. . .) every time I abridge. I added one important scriptural “footnote” in brackets.

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The word indulgence (Latin indulgentia, from indulgeo, to be kind or tender) originally meant kindness or favor; in post-classic Latin it came to mean the remission of a tax or debt. In Roman law and in the Vulgate of the Old Testament (Isaiah 61:1) it was used to express release from captivity or punishment. In theological language also the word is sometimes employed in its primary sense to signify the kindness and mercy of God. But in the special sense in which it is here considered, an indulgence is a remission of the temporal punishment due to sin, the guilt of which has been forgiven. Among the equivalent terms used in antiquity were pax, remissio, donatio, condonatio.

To facilitate explanation, it may be well to state what an indulgence is not. It is not a permission to commit sin, nor a pardon of future sin; neither could be granted by any power. It is not the forgiveness of the guilt of sin; it supposes that the sin has already been forgiven. It is not an exemption from any law or duty, and much less from the obligation consequent on certain kinds of sin, e.g., restitution; on the contrary, it means a more complete payment of the debt which the sinner owes to God. It does not confer immunity from temptation or remove the possibility of subsequent lapses into sin. Least of all is an indulgence the purchase of a pardon which secures the buyer’s salvation or releases the soul of another from Purgatory. The absurdity of such notions must be obvious to any one who forms a correct idea of what the Catholic Church really teaches on this subject.

An indulgence is the extra-sacramental remission of the temporal punishment due, in God’s justice, to sin that has been forgiven, which remission is granted by the Church in the exercise of the power of the keys, through the application of the superabundant merits of Christ and of the saints, and for some just and reasonable motive. Regarding this definition, the following points are to be noted:

In the Sacrament of Baptism not only is the guilt of sin remitted, but also all the penalties attached to sin. In the Sacrament of Penance the guilt of sin is removed, and with it the eternal punishment due to mortal sin; but there still remains the temporal punishment required by Divine justice, and this requirement must be fulfilled either in the present life or in the world to come, i.e., in Purgatory. An indulgence offers the penitent sinner the means of discharging this debt during his life on earth.
. . . sin is fully pardoned, i.e. its effects entirely obliterated, only when complete reparation, and consequently release from penalty as well as from guilt, has been made. . . .
The satisfaction, usually called the “penance”, imposed by the confessor when he gives absolution is an integral part of the Sacrament of Penance; an indulgence is extra-sacramental; it presupposes the effects obtained by confession, contrition, and sacramental satisfaction.
St. Thomas says (Supplement.25.1 ad 2um), “He who gains indulgences is not thereby released outright from what he owes as penalty, but is provided with the means of paying it.” The Church therefore neither leaves the penitent helplessly in debt nor acquits him of all further accounting; she enables him to meet his obligations.

By a plenary indulgence is meant the remission of the entire temporal punishment due to sin so that no further expiation is required in Purgatory. A partial indulgence commutes only a certain portion of the penalty; and this portion is determined in accordance with the penitential discipline of the early Church. Some indulgences are granted in behalf of the living only, while others may be applied in behalf of the souls departed. The pope, as supreme head of the Church on earth, can grant all kinds of indulgences to any and all of the faithful; and he alone can grant plenary indulgences.

The mere fact that the Church proclaims an indulgence does not imply that it can be gained without effort on the part of the faithful. From what has been said above, it is clear that the recipient must be free from the guilt of mortal sin. Furthermore, for plenary indulgences, confession and Communion are usually required, while for partial indulgences, though confession is not obligatory, the formula corde saltem contrito, i.e. “at least with a contrite heart”, is the customary prescription. It is also necessary to have the intention, at least habitual, of gaining the indulgence. Finally, from the nature of the case, it is obvious that one must perform the good works — prayers, alms deeds, visits to a church, etc. — which are prescribed in the granting of an indulgence.

The Council of Trent (Sess, XXV, 3-4, Dec., 1563) declared: “Since the power of granting indulgences has been given to the Church by Christ, and since the Church from the earliest times has made use of this Divinely given power, the holy synod teaches and ordains that the use of indulgences, as most salutary to Christians and as approved by the authority of the councils, shall be retained in the Church; and it further pronounces anathema against those who either declare that indulgences are useless or deny that the Church has the power to grant them (Enchridion, 989). It is therefore of faith (de fide)

that the Church has received from Christ the power to grant indulgences, and
that the use of indulgences is salutary for the faithful.

An essential element in indulgences is the application to one person of the satisfaction performed by others. This transfer is based on three things: the Communion of Saints, the principle of vicarious satisfaction, and the Treasury of the Church.

“We being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another” (Romans 12:5). As each organ shares in the life of the whole body, so does each of the faithful profit by the prayers and good works of all the rest—a benefit which accrues, in the first instance, to those who are in the state of grace, but also, though less fully, to the sinful members.

Each good action of the just man possesses a double value: that of merit and that of satisfaction, or expiation. Merit is personal, and therefore it cannot be transferred; but satisfaction can be applied to others, as St. Paul writes to the Colossians (1:24) of his own works: “Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the Church.”

[Dave: we could also add:

2 Corinthians 12:15 (RSV): “I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. . . .”;

2 Timothy 4:6: “For I am already on the point of being sacrificed . . .”;

Romans 12:1: “. . . present your bodies as a living sacrifice . . .”;

2 Corinthians 1:6: “If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation . . .”;

2 Timothy 2:9-10: “the gospel for which I am suffering . . . I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain salvation in Christ Jesus with its eternal glory”;

Philippians 1:7: “. . . you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel”;

2 Corinthians 4:8-10, 15: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus . . . For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God”;

Deuteronomy 9:18: “Then I lay prostrate before the LORD as before, forty days and forty nights; I neither ate bread nor drank water, because of all the sin which you had committed, . . .”

Psalm 35:13: “But I, when they were sick — I wore sackcloth, I afflicted myself with fasting”;

Ezekiel 4:4: “Then lie upon your left side, and I will lay the punishment of the house of Israel upon you; for the number of the days that you lie upon it, you shall bear their punishment.”]

Christ, as St. John declares in his First Epistle (2:2), “is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.” Since the satisfaction of Christ is infinite, it constitutes an inexhaustible fund which is more than sufficient to cover the indebtedness contracted by sin, Besides, there are the satisfactory works of the Blessed Virgin Mary undiminished by any penalty due to sin, and the virtues, penances, and sufferings of the saints vastly exceeding any temporal punishment which these servants of God might have incurred. These are added to the treasury of the Church as a secondary deposit, not independent of, but rather acquired through, the merits of Christ.

As Aquinas declares (Quodlib., II, q. vii, art. 16): “All the saints intended that whatever they did or suffered for God’s sake should be profitable not only to themselves but to the whole Church.” And he further points out (Contra Gent., III, 158) that what one endures for another being a work of love, is more acceptable as satisfaction in God’s sight than what one suffers on one’s own account, since this is a matter of necessity.

According to Catholic doctrine, the source of indulgences is constituted by the merits of Christ and the saints. This treasury is left to the keeping, not of the individual Christian, but of the Church. Consequently, to make it available for the faithful, there is required an exercise of authority, which alone can determine in what way, on what terms, and to what extent, indulgences may be granted.

Once it is admitted that Christ left the Church the power to forgive sins, the power of granting indulgences is logically inferred. Since the sacramental forgiveness of sin extends both to the guilt and to the eternal punishment, it plainly follows that the Church can also free the penitent from the lesser or temporal penalty. This becomes clearer, however, when we consider the amplitude of the power granted to Peter (Matthew 16:19): “I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.” (Cf. Matthew 18:18, where like power is conferred on all the Apostles.) No limit is placed upon this power of loosing, “the power of the keys”, as it is called; it must, therefore, extend to any and all bonds contracted by sin, including the penalty no less than the guilt.

When the Church, therefore, by an indulgence, remits this penalty, her action, according to the declaration of Christ, is ratified in heaven. That this power, as the Council of Trent affirms, was exercised from the earliest times, is shown by St. Paul’s words (2 Corinthians 2:5-10) in which he deals with the case of the incest man of Corinth. The sinner had been excluded by St. Paul’s order from the company of the faithful, but had truly repented. Hence the Apostle judges that to such a one “this rebuke is sufficient that is given by many” and adds: “To whom you have pardoned any thing, I also. For what I have pardoned, if I have pardoned anything, for your sakes have I done it in the person of Christ.” St. Paul had bound the guilty one in the fetters of excommunication; he now releases the penitent from this punishment by an exercise of his authority — “in the person of Christ.” Here we have all the essentials of an indulgence.

Among the works of charity which were furthered by indulgences, the hospital held a prominent place. Lea in his “History of Confession and Indulgences” (III, 189) mentions only the hospital of Santo Spirito in Rome, while another Protestant writer, Uhlhorn states that “one cannot go through the archives of any hospital without finding numerous letters of indulgence”. The one at Halberstadt in 1284 had no less than fourteen such grants, each giving an indulgence of forty days. The hospitals at Lucerne, Rothenberg, Rostock, and Augsburg enjoyed similar privileges.

It may seem strange that the doctrine of indulgences should have proved such a stumbling-block, and excited so much prejudice and opposition. But the explanation of this may be found in the abuses which unhappily have been associated with what is in itself a salutary practice. In this respect of course indulgences are not exceptional: no institution, however holy, has entirely escaped abuse through the malice or unworthiness of man. And, as God’s forbearance is constantly abused by those who relapse into sin, it is not surprising that the offer of pardon in the form of an indulgence should have led to evil practices.

These again have been in a special way the object of attack because, doubtless, of their connection with Luther’s revolt. On the other hand, it should not be forgotten that the Church, while holding fast to the principle and intrinsic value of indulgences, has repeatedly condemned their misuse: in fact, it is often from the severity of her condemnation that we learn how grave the abuses were.

Boniface IX, writing to the Bishop of Ferrara in 1392, condemns the practice of certain religious who falsely claimed that they were authorized by the pope to forgive all sorts of sins, and exacted money from the simple-minded among the faithful by promising them perpetual happiness in this world and eternal glory in the next. When Henry, Archbishop of Canterbury, attempted in 1420 to give a plenary indulgence in the form of the Roman Jubilee, he was severely reprimanded by Martin V, who characterized his action as “unheard-of presumption and sacrilegious audacity”.

In 1450 Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, Apostolic Legate to Germany, found some preachers asserting that indulgences released from the guilt of sin as well as from the punishment. This error, due to a misunderstanding of the words “a culpa et a poena”, the cardinal condemned at the Council of Magdeburg. Finally, Sixtus IV in 1478, lest the idea of gaining indulgences should prove an incentive to sin, reserved for the judgment of the Holy See a large number of cases in which faculties had formerly been granted to confessors (Extrav. Com., tit. de poen. et remiss.).

These measures show plainly that the Church long before the Reformation, not only recognized the existence of abuses, but also used her authority to correct them.

In spite of all this, disorders continued and furnished the pretext for attacks directed against the doctrine itself, no less than against the practice of indulgences. Here, as in so many other matters, the love of money was the chief root of the evil: indulgences were employed by mercenary ecclesiastics as a means of pecuniary gain. Leaving the details concerning this traffic to a subsequent article, it may suffice for the present to note that the doctrine itself has no natural or necessary connection with pecuniary profit, as is evident from the fact that the abundant indulgences of the present day are free from this evil association: the only conditions required are the saying of certain prayers or the performance of some good work or some practice of piety.

Again, it is easy to see how abuses crept in. Among the good works which might be encouraged by being made the condition of an indulgence, alms giving would naturally hold a conspicuous place, while men would be induced by the same means to contribute to some pious cause such as the building of churches, the endowment of hospitals, or the organization of a crusade.

It is well to observe that in these purposes there is nothing essentially evil. To give money to God or to the poor is a praiseworthy act, and, when it is done from right motives, it will surely not go unrewarded. Looked at in this light, it might well seem a suitable condition for gaining the spiritual benefit of an indulgence. Yet, however innocent in itself, this practice was fraught with grave danger, and soon became a fruitful source of evil. On the one hand there was the danger that the payment might be regarded as the price of the indulgence, and that those who sought to gain it might lose sight of the more important conditions.

On the other hand, those who granted indulgences might be tempted to make them a means of raising money: and, even where the rulers of the Church were free from blame in this matter, there was room for corruption in their officials and agents, or among the popular preachers of indulgences. This class has happily disappeared, but the type has been preserved in Chaucer’s “Pardoner”, with his bogus relics and indulgences.

While it cannot be denied that these abuses were widespread, it should also be noted that, even when corruption was at its worst, these spiritual grants were being properly used by sincere Christians, who sought them in the right spirit, and by priests and preachers, who took care to insist on the need of true repentance. It is therefore not difficult to understand why the Church, instead of abolishing the practice of indulgences, aimed rather at strengthening it by eliminating the evil elements.

The Council of Trent in its decree “On Indulgences” (Sess. XXV) declares: “In granting indulgences the Council desires that moderation be observed in accordance with the ancient approved custom of the Church, lest through excessive ease ecclesiastical discipline be weakened; and further, seeking to correct the abuses that have crept in . . . it decrees that all criminal gain therewith connected shall be entirely done away with as a source of grievous abuse among the Christian people; and as to other disorders arising from superstition, ignorance, irreverence, or any cause whatsoever–since these, on account of the widespread corruption, cannot be removed by special prohibitions—the Council lays upon each bishop the duty of finding out such abuses as exist in his own diocese, of bringing them before the next provincial synod, and of reporting them, with the assent of the other bishops, to the Roman Pontiff, by whose authority and prudence measures will be taken for the welfare of the Church at large, so that the benefit of indulgences may be bestowed on all the faithful by means at once pious, holy, and free from corruption.”

After deploring the fact that, in spite of the remedies prescribed by earlier councils, the traders (quaestores) in indulgences continued their nefarious practice to the great scandal of the faithful, the council ordained that the name and method of these quaestores should be entirely abolished, and that indulgences and other spiritual favors of which the faithful ought not to be deprived should be published by the bishops and bestowed gratuitously, so that all might at length understand that these heavenly treasures were dispensed for the sake of piety and not of lucre (Sess. XXI, c. ix). In 1567 St. Pius V canceled all grants of indulgences involving any fees or other financial transactions.

One of the worst abuses was that of inventing or falsifying grants of indulgence. Previous to the Reformation, such practices abounded and called out severe pronouncements by ecclesiastical authority, especially by the Fourth Council of the Lateran (1215) and that of Vienne (1311). After the Council of Trent the most important measure taken to prevent such frauds was the establishment of the Congregation of Indulgences. A special commission of cardinals served under Clement VIII and Paul V, regulating all matters pertaining to indulgences. The Congregation of Indulgences was definitively established by Clement IX in 1669 and reorganized by Clement XI in 1710. It has rendered efficient service by deciding various questions relative to the granting of indulgences and by its publications.

Lea (History, etc., III, 446) somewhat reluctantly acknowledges that “with the decline in the financial possibilities of the system, indulgences have greatly multiplied as an incentive to spiritual exercises, and they can thus be so easily obtained that there is no danger of the recurrence of the old abuses, even if the finer sense of fitness, characteristic of modern times, on the part of both prelates and people, did not deter the attempt.”

The full significance, however, of this “multiplication” lies in the fact that the Church, by rooting out abuses, has shown the rigor of her spiritual life. She has maintained the practice of indulgences, because, when these are used in accordance with what she prescribes, they strengthen the spiritual life by inducing the faithful to approach the sacraments and to purify their consciences of sin. And further, they encourage the performance, in a truly religious spirit, of works that redound, not alone to the welfare of the individual, but also to God’s glory and to the service of the neighbor.

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Biblical Evidence for Indulgences [1996]

Indulgences & Distribution of Grace (vs. Calvin #58) [2012]

Catholic Indulgences: History & Myths [8-6-16]

Myths and Facts Regarding Tetzel and Indulgences [11-25-16; published in Catholic Herald]

The Biblical Roots and History of Indulgences [National Catholic Register, 5-25-18]
*

Vs. James White #11: Biblical Evidence for Indulgences [11-15-19]

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Photo credit: Posthumous Portrait of Martin Luther as an Augustinian Monk (after 1546), from the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

Summary: I note how Luther got most things right about indulgences in 1517, briefly explain the concept & provide an abridgment of the related Catholic Encyclopedia article.

Reply To Gavin Ortlund: Catholic Inquisitions; Hus

February 7, 2024 By Dave Armstrong

0 Comments

Dr. Gavin Ortlund is a Reformed Baptist author, speaker, pastor, scholar, and apologist for the Christian faith. He has a Ph.D. from Fuller Theological Seminary in historical theology, and an M.Div from Covenant Theological Seminary. Gavin is the author of seven books as well as numerous academic and popular articles. For a list of publications, see his CV. He runs the very popular YouTube channel Truth Unites, which seeks to provide an “irenic” voice on theology, apologetics, and the Christian life. See also his website, Truth Unites and his blog.

In my opinion, he is currently the best and most influential popular-level Protestant apologist, who (especially) interacts with and offers thoughtful critiques of Catholic positions, from a refreshing ecumenical (not anti-Catholic) but nevertheless solidly Protestant perspective. That’s what I want to interact with, so I have done many replies to Gavin and will continue to do so. His words will be in blue.

*****

This is a response to portions of Gavin’s video, “Why Reformation Was Needed” (10-30-23) and a direct follow-up to my previous reply to other parts of the same video, “Reply To Gavin Ortlund: Albigensian Crusade” (2-6-24).

19:33 Here’s the most important difference between [how] later Protestants engaged in violence: medieval persecution resulted from theology promulgated by the highest levels of authority within the Roman Catholic Church, including within allegedly infallible teaching, and there’s just nothing like that on the Protestant side.

First of all, by the very definition of sola Scriptura (as Gavin has discussed in other videos), in Protestantism, nothing is infallible besides Holy Scripture, so they can’t, due to this, possibly have infallible decrees regarding capital punishment for heresy. But of course they advocated it — and did it — in any event, as I documented in my previous reply to this video, with statements from Luther, Calvin, Melanchthon, and a note about Zwingli’s agreement. And they appealed to the Bible when they did so, just as Catholics did, and there is a sense in which this was correct and well-intentioned (legitimate concern for souls being harmed by false teaching, up to and including possible damnation as a result of accepting said teaching).

Secondly, if we go to the infallible revelation agreed upon and revered by both sides, the Bible, we see that it taught capital punishment for all sorts of offenses, as part of Mosaic law, given by God to Moses (“his commandments and his statutes which are written in this book of the law”: Dt 30:10 [RSV]; “This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, . . . be careful to do according to all that is written in it”: Josh 1:8). The law was given by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai. It was obviously His will. And part of that will were commands to execute those who rejected commandments, including for false beliefs and immoral practices (i.e., “heresies”).

In other words, it’s not possible, biblically, to say that capital punishment is intrinsically or inherently wrong, because if it were, God could have never commanded it, since He can never sin or command immoral actions. It follows, then, that Christians on earth can permit the same thing. Whether it is always best or good to do so, and on the large scale that has been done, and excesses and dangers of it and negative fallout from it, etc., is another huge discussion (I never favor any of this, just for the record), but we can’t make it impermissible in all times and places, because God didn’t do so.

Wikipedia has a page, “List of capital crimes in the Torah,” which lists over thirty such offenses, with the Bible passages establishing each punishment. Several of them could be classified under “heretical / false beliefs”; for example, sacrificing children to Moloch (Lev 20:1-2), worshiping Baal (Num 25:1-9), necromancy; consulting mediums and wizards (Lev 20:6, 27), and following / worshiping “gods” other than Yahweh (idolatry and/or polytheism; Dt 17:2-7). There was even a penalty of burning, such as if a man had intercourse with both his wife and his wife’s mother (Lev 20:14), or if the daughter of a priest played the harlot (Lev 21:9).

Both Catholics and Protestants also appealed to the many passages concerning God’s judgment and His commands to annihilate a certain portion of the population who were perceived to have — like Sodom and Gomorrah — sinned beyond redemption. I would say that that was a special case in the Bible, involving God’s direct revelation for His purpose of divine judgment, which doesn’t apply in later times. But I’m simply reporting what the reasoning was; how they tried to (wrongly) justify it from the Bible. In his Dialogues of 1535, early Protestant leader Martin Bucer called on governments to exterminate by fire and sword all professing a false religion, and even their wives, children and cattle. In so doing he was clearly directly following one particular biblical passage, where God states:

Deuteronomy 13:12-15 “If you hear in one of your cities, which the LORD your God gives you to dwell there, [13] that certain base fellows have gone out among you and have drawn away the inhabitants of the city, saying, `Let us go and serve other gods,’ which you have not known, [14] then you shall inquire and make search and ask diligently; and behold, if it be true and certain that such an abominable thing has been done among you, [15] you shall surely put the inhabitants of that city to the sword, destroying it utterly, all who are in it and its cattle, with the edge of the sword.

This is the same sort of thing that Catholics, in killing Albigensians, would have appealed to. Note that God provided the explanation within the command: people had been “drawn away” by the prohibited and wicked polytheism and idolatry of certain people. In order to root out that sin, they had to be killed (at least at that early stage). Earlier in the chapter, God says that if a proclaimed prophet (even if his prediction comes true) says, “Let us go after other gods and let us serve them” (Dt 13:1-2), he “shall be put to death, because he has taught rebellion against the LORD your God, . . . to make you leave the way in which the LORD your God commanded you to walk. So you shall purge the evil from the midst of you” (Dt 13:5).

God then commanded that the same death penalty be applied even to “brother, . . . son, . . . daughter, or the wife of your bosom, or your friend” (Dt 13:6-9). And the reason is again provided: “because he sought to draw you away from the LORD your God” (Dt 13:10). This was the rationale — among both Catholics and Protestants — for all coercion and death penalties concerning false religious practices and beliefs.

Hence we find Scottish Protestant leader John Knox recommending that every heretic was to be put to death, and that inhabitants of cities overrun with heresy were to be utterly annihilated. He wrote (see Edwin Muir, John Knox, London: 1920, 142): “To the carnal man this may appear a . . . severe judgment . . . Yet we find no exception, but all are appointed to the cruel death. But in such cases God wills that all . . . desist from reasoning when commandment is given to execute his judgments.”

Queen Elizabeth burned two Dutch Anabaptists in 1575 and an Arian in 1589 (Philip Hughes, A Popular History of the Reformation, Garden City, New York: Doubleday Image, 1957, 143, 274). The Town Council of Zurich in Zwingli’s time called for the “drowning, burning, or beheading” of Anabaptists. Melanchthon thought that God had destined all Anabaptists to hell. During Calvin’s reign in Geneva, between 1542 and 1546, 58 persons were put to death for heresy. Etc. etc. ad infinitum . . .

There is no difference here. Both Catholics and Protestants in the past widely believed in and practiced capital punishment for heresy. I have sought to educate as to the reasons for why this happened, and the biblical basis upon which it was rationalized. Again, I reiterate that it shouldn’t be a topic in discussions of the comparative merit of Protestantism and Catholicism. But Gavin tried to argue above that Catholics were worse in this regard, which is why I have replied with my previous related article and this one. With all due respect, in effect he’s trying to do what Jesus prohibited and mocked, in saying,

Luke 6:41-42 “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? [42] Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye.”

Luke 18:9-14 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others: [10] “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. [11] The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. [12] I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.’ [13] But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ [14] I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

19:54 so this represents a falsification for claims of infallibility.

Well, no, it doesn’t at all, for reasons already explained. The Catholic Church simply at times permitted capital punishment for heresy, which can’t be argued against in any absolute way, since God Himself did so in the inspired revelation of the Bible. If the Catholic Church was essentially wrong and wicked in so doing, then God was wrong and wicked. Since all agree that God is not and cannot be wrong and wicked (or the Bible, false), then likewise, the Catholic Church wasn’t in this instance; and if it wasn’t wrong, then its infallibility is not disproven in this fashion.

I’ve seen it argued elsewhere that Pope Leo X, in his papal bull condemning Martin Luther’s errors in 1520 (Exsurge Domine) condemned the following proposition: “That heretics be burned is against the will of the Spirit” (33). Since this is considered to be obviously wrong, so this person contended, then it constitutes a disproof of papal infallibility. At first it does indeed seem outrageous that he would condone such a thing. But as I have shown, so did God, Who commanded the death penalty for many offenses, including false belief-systems, and even burning for certain extreme sexual offenses (Lev 20:14; 21:9).

Therefore, Pope Leo’s condemnation can be defended. It’s not always, obviously, undeniably wrong. If someone disagrees, then God is wrong and that can’t be, etc. And it’s historical fact that Protestants advocated the exact same things within ten years of this document and within thirteen years of Luther tacking his 95 theses to the door in the Wittenberg church. Later, in 1553, John Calvin notoriously consented to the burning of the heretic Michael Servetus (Calvinists acknowledge this as a big stain on his record), and even mocked how he behaved when he received his death sentence:

At first he was stunned and then sighed so as to be heard throughout the whole room; then he moaned like a madman and had no more composure than a demoniac. At length his cries so increased that he continually beat his breast and bellowed in Spanish, “Mercy! Mercy!” (in Bruce Gordon, Calvin, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, p. 223; cited from Roland H. Bainton, Hunted Heretic; the Life and Death of Michael Servetus, 1511-1553, Boston: Beacon Press, 1960, p. 209)

Thus, both claims are false: 1) Catholics were not incomparably worse than Protestants in this regard, and 2) this past history does not disprove papal infallibility.

Gavin then brings up the example of Jan Hus — one of his “heroes” — being burned at the stake, by the authority of the ecumenical council of Constance.

21:25 Hus’s execution was not a violation of medieval Roman Catholic theology. It was its expression. And as shocking as that sounds, . . . it’s just true.

Sure, but as shown above, this has a biblical basis. Both sides did it. How is Servetus’ execution — also by burning — any different in essence? Protestants had clearly not learned to act any differently between the time of the Council of Constance and Hus’ execution in 1415 and Servetus’ burning in 1553. So why is Gavin still only talking about Hus and not also Servetus not to mention also men like St. Thomas More: killed for opposing King Henry VIII’s divorce, and St. John Fisher, the one English bishop who defied Henry VIII’s outrages against the papacy and Catholicism. Both were beheaded, with their bodies displayed all around London)?

There is no difference whatsoever. Luther and his even more ruthless successor Philipp Melanchthon were killing Anabaptists for simply believing in adult believer’s baptism, as Gavin does, and as I used to, as a Protestant. How is the Catholic treatment of Hus different from Queen Elizabeth burning two Anabaptists and an Arian in 1575 and 1589? I see none. Perhaps Gavin will explain if he ever replies. I hope he does, because then, maybe some real, tangible ecumenical progress can be made, and these disputes about past persecution can be put to rest once and for all. John Calvin expressed the same principle (heretics can be executed) 142 years after Hus’s death, in 1557:

I am called an incendiary for having taught that heretics are justly punished. . . . I teach that rulers are armed with the sword not less to punish impiety than other crimes. (Last Admonition of John Calvin to Joachim Westphal, Who, if He Heeds it Not, Must Henceforth be Treated in the Way Which Paul Prescribes for Obstinate Heretics [1557]; in the source, Tracts Relating to the Reformation, Volume 2; Jean Calvin, Théodore de Bèze, Henry Beveridge [Calvin Translation Society, 1849], pp. 357-358)

Calvin even claimed that protracted torture was the will of God:

One of the two men, Comparet, who had been arrested, was condemned on 27 June [1555] to have his head cut off, his body quartered, and the sections exposed in different places according to custom. His head with one quarter of his body was fastened to the gibbet referred to. . . . the younger Comparet was simply beheaded. The executioner did his work so clumsily that he added needless pangs to the victim’s agony, and the Council punished him by dismissing him from his office for a year and a day. Calvin, on the other hand, wrote to Farel on 24 July, “I am persuaded that it is not without the special will of God that, apart from any verdict of the judges, the criminals have endured protracted torment at the hands of the executioner.” [Opera, xv. 693] . . .

It was determined to get the truth out of him [Francois Daniel], and Calvin wrote to Farel on 24 July [Opera, xv. 693], “We shall see in a couple of days, I hope, what the torture will wring from him.” . . .

Although he was neither consulted as to the torture, nor was present when it was applied, Calvin certainly approved of it. . . . (Hugh Young Reyburn, John Calvin: His Life, Letters, and Work, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1914 [a non-Catholic work], pp. 202-205)

How often has anyone ever learned about this? Instead, we hear endless bone-chilling stories about the ruthless Catholic inquisitors; never about the same exact spirit (getting a charge out of people being tortured, and rampant calls for execution) among even the highest levels of Protestant leadership. One tires of the constant double standard. I really don’t think that Gavin — an ecumenical sort — even intends to do this, but it’s just so ingrained in the Protestant “psyche” that it’ll come out every time these unsavory issues are brought up.

This is what Martin Luther thought about fellow Protestant “reformer” Zwingli’s death in battle (at the hand of Catholics, by the way):

And recently God has notably punished the poor people of Switzerland, Zwingli and his followers, for they were hardened and perverted, condemned of themselves, as St. Paul says. They will all experience the same.

Although neither Munzerites nor Zwinglians will admit that they are punished by God, but give out that they are martyrs, nevertheless we, who know that they have gravely erred in the sacrament and other articles, recognize God’s punishment and beware of it ourselves. . . .

Wherefore I warn your Grace, and beg that you will avoid such people and not suffer them in your land. . . . for if you allow any to teach against the long and unanimously held doctrine of the Church when you can prevent it, it may well be called an unbearable burden to conscience. . . . For we must not trifle with the articles of faith so long and unanimously held by Christendom . . . (Preserved Smith, The Life and Letters of Luther, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1911, 291-292; letter from Wittenberg, “February or beginning of March, 1532)

This was completely unsurprising since Luther had previously called Zwingli a non-Christian (Unchrist), and ten times worse than a Catholic (March, 1528, in his Great Confession on the Lord’s Supper). Later, in his Short Confession on the Lord’s Supper (1544, in Walch’s edition, Vol. XX. p. 2195), he abused Zwingli and another Protestant leader, Oecolampadius, as heretics, liars, and murderers of souls. And how is this any different from the Catholic Church’s view of Hus? And Luther wanted to execute far more than heretics; also adulterers:

God commanded in the law [Deut. 22:22-24] that adulterers be stoned . . . The temporal sword and government should therefore still put adulterers to death . . . The blame rests with the government. Why do they not put adulterers to death? (The Estate of Marriage, 1522, from Luther’s Works, Vol. 45, pp. 32-34)

In the same treatise, Luther goes after frigid wives: “When one resists the other and refuses the conjugal duty . . .” In these instances, so Luther says, “the civil government must compel the wife, or put her to death. If the government fails to act, the husband must reason that his wife has been stolen away and slain by robbers; he must seek another.” Luther doesn’t say whether an impotent man should likewise be put away by the wife or put to death by authorities. No, only women who aren’t fulfilling their sexual duties (men always do, no doubt) are subjected to such drastic measures. Can you imagine if a pope had ever declared such a thing? We would have never heard the end of it. This is the founder of Protestantism. Early Protestant leader Martin Bucer also advocated capital punishment for adulterers.

Gavin then goes into a critique of the power of the medieval Catholic Church, citing (what else?) Unam Sanctam from 1302 and talking about how the temporal powers were wrapped up with the Catholic Church. But again, there was no difference in principle here in early Protestantism. Luther infamously gave power to German princes over against the previous bishops (a thing which even Melanchthon later bitterly regretted and lamented, as I have documented with many citations from him). For example, he wrote to his friend, Joachim Camerarius, in a letter dated August 31, 1530:

Oh, would that I could, not indeed fortify the domination, but restore the administration of the bishops. For I see what manner of church we shall have when the ecclesiastical body has been disorganized. I see that afterwards there will arise a much more intolerable tyranny [of the princes] than there ever was before. (in Book of Concord, “Historical Introductions to the Lutheran Confessions,” by F. Bente: VII. Smalcald Articles and Tract concerning Power and Primacy of the Pope: section 70)

Luther’s state-church was simply the old error of caesaropapism (rampant in Eastern Orthodoxy) introduced into the new “superior” Protestantism.

24:10 it was a Roman Catholic archbishop who’s preaching the sermon right there at the trial [of Hus] from Romans 6, that the body of sin must be put to death. This is the reigning theology of the day: the extermination of heretics.

Obviously, initial, “classic” Protestantism held to precisely the same views, 120 years after Hus. So again, I ask Gavin: why is it that he only talks about Catholic excesses and sins in this regard, while ignoring the same excesses and sins among Protestants, who were supposedly reforming Catholicism and allegedly far superior spiritually to Catholics (which they were not, even according to Luther)? Why doesn’t he examine the beam that is in Protestantism’s own eye, and engage in fair play about things that both sides did in the past and no longer do?

It seems to me that I am the one who is — in the end — exercising the ecumenical spirit, since I freely acknowledge our past sins while also daring to point out — for the sake of historical honesty — the demonstrable, undeniable fact that we were not alone in them. This is something that all Christians can and should join together in decrying and condemning, rather than using it as an opportunity to bash the other side and pretend that our side was any different.

I get a kick about how Gavin noted how they called Hus “Judas” at the Council of Constance. He should read what Protestants said about each other for the first hundred years or so after they entered the scene. I won’t even bother to document all that (this article being long enough). And what would Gavin think of the following “reigning theology” from John Calvin?:

Four months after the execution of Servetus, at the end of January 1554, he [Calvin] published the Declaratio orthodoxae fidei [footnote: “The Latin text appears in Calvini Opera, t. VIII, pp. 453-644 . . .”] . . . It is one of the most frightening treatises ever written to justify the persecution of heretics.. . . In obedience to the Old Testament it may sometimes be necessary to raze whole towns to the ground and to exterminate their inhabitants:

. . . God does not even allow whole towns and populations to be spared, but will have the walls razed and the memory of the inhabitants destroyed and all things frustrated as a sign of his utter detestation, lest the contagion spread. . . . it is here a question of rejecting God and sane doctrine, which perverts and violates every human and divine right. . . .

I ask you, is it reasonable that heretics should be allowed to murder souls and to poison them with their false doctrine, and that we should prevent the sword, contrary to God’s commandment, from touching their bodies, and that the whole Body of Jesus Christ be lacerated that the stench of one rotten member may remain undisturbed? (Toleration and the Reformation, by Joseph Lecler, S.J. [New York: Associated Press / London: Longmans, originally 1955; translated by T. L. Westow in 1960]; from Volume 1, 333-334)

After giving examples of “unbounded” Catholic cruelty, Gavin says:

27:15 People just don’t know thus stuff today, but we need to know the history of what happened, and this happened to a lot of different people.

I couldn’t agree more. But for some reason, Gavin can only recount all of these things when Catholics did them, while ignoring the fact that Protestants had the same exact view. They just happened to come along later in history and were only around 130-150 years before the time when both sides rapidly started deciding that all of this should stop. So we don’t have the many hundreds of years of Protestant horror stories.

But — as I have shown — while these things still took place in history, Protestants were every bit as much in favor of them as Catholics. And I have examined not only the fact that all sides did this when it was the prevailing view of religious dissenters, but have also examined why they did, and with what biblical rationale.; and I have shown that God’s identical commands make it impossible to take an absolute stand against it. In other words, my analysis is, I humbly submit, far more fair and much more detailed and in depth; getting to the roots of it.

31:39 what can we do but protest things like financial and physical and spiritual abuse? What can we do but stand against that?

Protestants for some 150 years after they began obviously didn’t stand against physical persecution, as I have repeatedly shown. So that’s simply a myth. They stood against indulgences, as they understood them to be. But of course indulgences were and are widely misunderstood. The notion of indulgences has an explicitly scriptural basis. There were abuses of indulgences, but these were rectified by the Church in the 16th century. For more, see:

Catholic Indulgences: History & Myths [8-6-16]

Myths and Facts Regarding Tetzel and Indulgences [11-25-16; published in Catholic Herald]

The Biblical Roots and History of Indulgences [National Catholic Register, 5-25-18]
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If Gavin insists on making financial sins a major reason for the Protestant Revolt, he ought to also shine his moral flashlight on Protestant sins in this respect. including the widespread immoral stealing of Catholic properties, in countries that adopted Protestantism: especially in England, where tens of thousands of Catholic properties were simply stolen. See:

Dialogue w Lutheran Historian on 16th-Century Intolerance [2-15-06]

16th Century Theft of Church Properties (vs. Lutheran Historian) [2-22-06]

16th c. Calvinists vs. Lutherans: Who Suppressed Catholics [3-21-07]

“Reformation” Theft of Thousands of Catholic Churches [4-12-08]

“Reformation” Anti-Catholic Theft: Apologetic “Blind Spot”? [4-20-08]
*

So Protestant “hands” aren’t clean in this area, either, and they have no business forever lecturing Catholics about indulgences (which most critics cannot even properly define in the first place); when we reformed the practice long ago. These sorts of Protestant critiques always concentrate on excesses and corruptions of the thing, rather than the thing itself. This is an old rhetorical tactic when one is opposing another group, and it’s neither fair nor historically honest and objective to analyze in such a fashion.

Meanwhile, to my knowledge, we haven’t seen the Anglicans in England — or Lutherans in Germany and other Protestant or partially Protestant countries — give back all the Catholic properties that they stole, or the capital that they stole from the Catholic Church and gave to (in the case of England) newly-enriched landowners: the origins of the gentry and wealthy aristocrats: the Downton Abbey-types. Financial mischief and sins are by no means confined to Catholics.

32:02 what happened to Hus was just sin; it’s just bad; it’s just wrong; it’s offensive; it stinks to God.

Then why did God sanction the same sort of thing? And why does Gavin (a man with a doctorate in historical theology) ignore that, and ignore all the instances when Protestants did the same thing? How is Servetus different than Hus? Why is he not righteously indignant at the equivalent Protestant sins and excesses? In Catholic eyes, Hus believed in several erroneous heresies, and by using the biblical rationale that I have analyzed, and the exact same thinking that Protestants utilized, they thought it was justified to burn him alive. Calvin did the same with regard to Servetus 138 years later. The same view held in both Catholic and Protestant circles and would continue to for about a hundred more years before it subsided.

In the rest of the tape he talks about how Protestants supposedly brought back the biblical gospel. That’s a completely different topic again, and one literally filled with misunderstanding and misrepresentation and incipient anti-Catholicism. So I will end here.

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Photo credit: engraving of Michael Servetus, whom Calvin and Calvinists burned alive for heresy in 1553; by Christian Fritzsch (1695-1769) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

Summary: Gavin Ortlund argued in a video that one of two big reasons for the Protestant Reformation was Catholic persecution. But the latter was no better among Protestants.

Lutherans & Invocation #2

January 11, 2024 By Dave Armstrong

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Definitions of Prayer & Intercession; God Sharing His Glory; Views of St. Augustine & Many Other Church Fathers

Seth Kasten (see his blog) is a member of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod. This is one of a series of replies to his book, Against the Invocation of Saints: An Apology for the Protestant Doctrine of Prayer over and against the Doctrine of the Eastern Orthodox Church (Royal Oak, Michigan: Scholastic Lutherans, 2023). I will be using RSV for Bible passages unless otherwise noted. Words from his book will be in blue.

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See other installments:

Lutherans & Invocation #1 (Intro) [1-11-24]

Lutherans & Invocation #3 (Necromancy; Can Saints Hear Us?) [1-12-24]

Lutherans & Invocation #4 (Revelation; Luke 16) [1-17-24]

If prayer is worship or is exclusively directed toward God by definition, then prayers to saints should be considered idolatrous and forbidden. (p. 32)

The premise is wrong, and assumes what needs to be demonstrated. Prayer directed to God is unique for the obvious reason: He is God, and He is the One Who ultimately answers all prayers, or delegates the answer to a messenger on His behalf. In that sense it has some of the same characteristics, but is not identical to worship and adoration, which also belong to God alone. But this doesn’t preclude asking someone else to go to God and intercede on our behalf, including departed saints and angels.

It’s simply intercession, which isn’t contrary to worship of God alone. It’s not idolatry. To assert that is simply Protestant boilerplate rhetoric, that was there from the beginning. John Calvin thought Martin Luther was “half-papist” and guilty of idolatry because Luther bowed down and worshiped and adored Jesus in what he believed to be the consecrated host. In the Apology of the Augsburg Confession [1531], Article XXIV: The Mass, it is absurdly claimed:

in the papal realm the worship of Baal clings — namely, the abuse of the Mass . . . And it seems that this worship of Baal will endure together with the papal realm until Christ comes to judge and by the glory of his coming destroys the kingdom of Antichrist. (translated and edited by Theodore Tappert, St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House / Muhlenberg Press, 1959, p. 268)

prayer is linked to worship in such a way that it cannot be categorized as mere veneration. (p. 32)

It’s not even veneration, in the Catholic view, when we ask a saint or angel to intercede. It’s intercession, which St. Paul taught ought to be “made for all men” (1 Tim 2:1). Paul takes note of Christians praying for each other (2 Cor 9:14), and he says that he is praying for others (2 Cor 13:9; Col 1:3, 9; 2 Thess 1:11), and asks for prayer for himself (Col 4:3; 1 Thess 5:25; 2 Thess 3:1). The departed saints are not excluded from the Body of Christ. That’s the other major false premise that Protestantism arbitrarily adheres to: as if all that saints in heaven do is float on clouds and play harps for all eternity, with no love or concern anymore for those on earth. It’s ludicrous.

it becomes clear that prayer is to God as an act of worship, for if it were not so, it would not be associated with burning incense and bowing. (p. 33)

This is an obvious logical fallacy. Because prayer to God is often accompanied (especially in public services) with worship, it’s wrongly assumed that all prayer must be so accompanied by worship. That’s not even true with God, since all of us pray to God while not simultaneously worshiping Him. It’s like saying, “I ate popcorn while watching the football game yesterday; therefore, everyone always eats popcorn at all times while watching a football game.” But asking saints to intercede is not technically or strictly prayer in the first place. It’s just like our asking each other on earth to pray. Protestants don’t like the fact that it is directed people who are dead.

Perhaps the closest scripture comes to giving an explicit definition of prayer is in the Lord’s Prayer, for Christ says, “In this manner, therefore, pray” (Matthew 6:9). It goes without saying that the saints are unmentioned. (p. 34)

Of course they are, because this is specifically describing prayer to God. It doesn’t exclude our asking someone else to pray for us to God. To not mention something is not the same thing — logically — as excluding it.

the kingdom, the power, and the glory are given to God, . . . To attribute such things to others would be idolatry. (p. 34)

Then Seth has a big problem, because the Bible repeatedly teaches that God shares His glory with His creatures:

Isaiah 60:1-2 Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you. [2] For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and thick darkness the peoples; but the LORD will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you.

John 5:44 How can you believe, who receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?

John 17:22 The glory which thou hast given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one,

Romans 5:2 Through him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God.

Romans 9:23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory,

2 Corinthians 3:18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

1 Thessalonians 2:12 to lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory.

2 Thessalonians 2:14 To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

2 Peter 1:3 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence,

Therefore sharing glory with God (by His express choice) is not idolatry. Game, set, match.

The fathers also give many definitions of prayer which exclude the possibility of praying to saints. Augustine and Cyprian say that in our prayers, we cannot exceed the Lord’s Prayer, which excludes invocation of saints since neither saints nor their invocation are mentioned in the Lord’s Prayer and since we are commanded to pray things that may only be said to God: Augustine:

If we pray rightly, and as becomes our wants, we say nothing but what is already contained in the Lord’s Prayer. And whoever says in prayer anything which cannot find its place in that gospel prayer, is praying in a way which, if it be not unlawful, is at least not spiritual; and I know not how carnal prayers can be lawful, since it becomes those who are born again by the Spirit to pray in no other way than spiritually.…. And if you go over all the words of holy prayers, you will, I believe, find nothing which cannot be comprised and summed up in the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. Wherefore, in praying, we are free to use different words to any extent, but we must ask the same things; in this we have no choice. [Letters of St. Augustine 130.12.22 (NPNF 1/1:466). (pp. 44-45)

No Protestant apologetic is complete without questionable claims that St. Augustine — widely believed to be the greatest Church father — supports their view more so than ours. He doesn’t. His statement above doesn’t contradict invocation of saints or angels. And St. Augustine himself taught the latter doctrine:

There was a fellow-townsman of ours at Hippo, Florentius, an old man, religious and poor, who supported himself as a tailor. Having lost his coat, and not having means to buy another, he prayed to the Twenty Martyrs, who have a very celebrated memorial shrine in our town, begging in a distinct voice that he might be clothed. . . . he, walking on in silence, saw on the shore 200 a great fish, gasping as if just cast up, . . . on cutting up the fish, the cook found a gold ring in its belly; . . . (City of God xxii, 8)

[U]pon recollection of the place in which are deposited the bodies of those whom they love, they should by prayer commend them to those same Saints, who have as patrons taken them into their charge to aid them before the Lord. . . . When therefore the mind recollects where the body of a very dear friend lies buried, and thereupon there occurs to the thoughts a place rendered venerable by the name of a Martyr, to that same Martyr does it commend the soul in affection of heartfelt recollection and prayer. And when this affection is exhibited to the departed by faithful men who were most dear to them, there is no doubt that it profits them who while living in the body merited that such things should profit them after this life. But even if some necessity should through absence of all facility not allow bodies to be interred, or in such places interred, yet should there be no pretermitting of supplications for the spirits of the dead: which supplications, that they should be made for all in Christian and catholic fellowship departed, even without mentioning of their names, under a general commemoration, the Church has charged herself withal; . . . (On the Care of the Dead, 6)

For, even when His angels hear us, it is He Himself who hears us in them . . . (City of God x, 12)

Whence, also, when the same apostle says, Let your requests be made known unto God, [Philippians 4:6] this is not to be understood as if thereby they become known to God, who certainly knew them before they were uttered, but in this sense, that they are to be made known to ourselves in the presence of God by patient waiting upon Him, not in the presence of men by ostentatious worship. Or perhaps that they may be made known also to the angels that are in the presence of God, that these beings may in some way present them to God, and consult Him concerning them, and may bring to us, either manifestly or secretly, that which, hearkening to His commandment, they may have learned to be His will, and which must be fulfilled by them according to that which they have there learned to be their duty; for the angel said to Tobias: “Now, therefore, when you prayed, and Sara your daughter-in-law, I brought the remembrance of your prayers before the Holy One.” [Tobit 12:12] (Ep. 130 [9, 18]: to Proba [412] )

Augustine infers from the interest which the rich man in hell still had in the fate of his five surviving brothers (Luke xvi. 27), that the pious dead in heaven must have even far more interest in the kindred and friends whom they have left behind. He also calls the saints our intercessors, yet under Christ, the proper and highest Intercessor, as Peter and the other apostles are shepherds under the great chief Shepherd. In a memorial discourse on Stephen, he imagines that martyr, and St. Paul who stoned him, to be present, and begs them for their intercessions with the Lord with whom they reign. He attributes miraculous effects, even the raising of the dead, to the intercessions of Stephen. (in Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. 3, 441)

And though Origen, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Cyprian, Cyril of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem [?], Chrysostom [?], Augustine [?], and Cassian all write entire works or dedicate ample portions of larger works to discussion of prayer, none mention invocation of saints in these works apart from forbidding such a practice, either by implication or by explicit condemnation, yet they speak continually of putting off all distractions and focusing the entire soul on God and of contemplation of God and of supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings being made toward God at all times. God is the recipient of prayers in all these works, without any consideration of other recipients, except when the practice is condemned. (p. 57)

I provided five undeniable proofs above that St. Augustine taught the invocation of saints and angels. Here is another proof from St. John Chrysostom (I provided two in my previous installment):

At the close of his memorial discourse on Sts. Bernice and Prosdoce—two saints who have not even a place in the Roman calendar—he exhorts his hearers not only on their memorial days but also on other days to implore these saints to be our protectors: “For they have great boldness not merely during their life but also after death, yea, much greater after death. For they now bear the stigmata of Christ [the marks of martyrdom], and when they show these, they can persuade the King to anything.” He relates that once, when the harvest was endangered by excessive rain, the whole population of Constantinople flocked to the church of the Apostles, and there elected the apostles Peter and Andrew, Paul and Timothy, patrons and intercessors before the throne of grace. Christ, says he on Heb. i. 14, redeems us as Lord and Master, the angels redeem us as ministers. (in Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. 3, 439-440)

St. Cyril of Jerusalem — contrary to Seth’s claims above — wrote:

Then we commemorate also those who have fallen asleep before us, first Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, that at their prayers and intercessions God would receive our petition. (Catechetical Lecture XXIII: 9; NPNF 2, Vol. VII)

Other Church fathers simply were wrong about this doctrine. The fathers rarely exhibit 100% universal unanimous opinions. Usually they achieve a strong consensus; other times it’s a very mixed bag. And this is because all doctrines develop; therefore are incorrectly or only partially understood by some, often more so when they lived earlier in history. At length the Church decides which strain of opinion is the correct one. The “buck” stops there.

St. Ephraim asks the intercession of departed saints, in words such as: “Remember me, ye heirs of God, ye brethren of Christ, pray to the Saviour for me, that I through Christ may be delivered” and “O holy, true, and blessed mother, plead for me with the saints, and pray: ‘Ye triumphant martyrs of Christ, pray for Ephraim, the least, the miserable,’ that I may find grace, and through the grace of Christ may be saved.” (Schaff, ibid., 438). St. Basil the Great referred to forty martyrs as “common patrons of the human family, helpers of our prayers and most mighty intercessors with God” (Schaff, ibid., 438; see another citation from him in my previous article in this series).

Gregory Nazianzen is convinced that the departed Cyprian guides and protects his church in Carthage more powerfully by his intercessions than he formerly did by his teachings, because he now stands so much nearer the Deity; he addresses him as present, and implores his favor and protection. [Orat. In laud. Cypr.] In his eulogy on Athanasius, who was but a little while dead, he prays: “Look graciously down upon us, and dispose this people to be perfect worshippers of the perfect Trinity; and when the times are quiet, preserve us—when they are troubled, remove us, and take us to thee in thy fellowship.” (Schaff, ibid., 439; my bolding)

Gregory of Nyssa asks of St. Theodore, whom he thinks invisibly present at his memorial feast, intercessions for his country, for peace, for the preservation of orthodoxy, and begs him to arouse the apostles Peter and Paul and John to prayer for the church planted by them . . . In his Life of St. Ephraim, he tells of a pilgrim who lost himself among the barbarian posterity of Ishmael, but by the prayer, “St. Ephraim, help me!” and the protection of the saint, happily found his way home. He himself thus addresses him at the close: “Thou who standest at the holy altar, and with angels servest the life-giving and most holy Trinity, remember us all, and implore for us the forgiveness of sins and the enjoyment of the eternal kingdom.” (Schaff, ibid., 438-439; my bolding)

Schaff cites the views of St. Ambrose and St. Jerome:

“The angels, who are appointed to guard us, must be invoked for us; the martyrs, to whose intercession we have claim by the pledge of their bodies, must be invoked. They who have washed away their sins by their own blood, may pray for our sins. For they are martyrs of God, our high priests, spectators of our life and our acts. We need not blush to use them as intercessors for our weakness; . . .” (Schaff, ibid., 440)

Jerome disputes the opinion of Vigilantius, that we should pray for one another in this life only, and that the dead do not hear our prayers, . . . He thinks that their prayers are much more effectual in heaven than they were upon earth. If Moses implored the forgiveness of God for six hundred thousand men, and Stephen, the first martyr, prayed for his murderers after the example of Christ, should they cease to pray, and to be heard, when they are with Christ? (Schaff, ibid., 440-441)

While later fathers, Augustine and Chrysostom included, speak of invocation of saints, it appears not in their works dedicated to the discussion of prayer. (p. 58)

This is irrelevant. What they wrote, they wrote. The discourses on prayer would obviously overwhelmingly focus on direct prayer to God. This statement is also partially contradictory to the previous section from Seth that I cited above, from page 57.

It remains on the outskirts of their theology, not central to faith and practice, nor part of instructional works for catechumens and parishioners. (p. 58)

This is merely a subjective opinion, which would be difficult to absolutely prove. But would we say, for example, that the doctrine of original sin is on the “outskirts” of St. Paul’s theology because he only mentions it briefly a few times?

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Photo credit: Portrait of St. Augustine (c. 1480) by Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

Summary: One of my series of replies to Lutheran Seth Kasten on the invocation of saints. I address his objections and biblical and patristic arguments against the practice.

Debate on Miracles vs. an Atheist

January 6, 2024 By Dave Armstrong

0 Comments

This took place on the Atheist Discussion forum and was a one-on-one debate with “epronovost” (see the link). His words will be in blue.

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None of the great miracles described in past religious and mythological text can be ascertained as real factual events. These religious and mythological texts are written decades if not centuries after the event they describe are most often from unknown author quoting unknown sources and not other intersubjective evidence can be provided as to what happened. The events are often poorly or simplistically described making and details often change from versions to versions. I other words, claims of miracles are akin to modern urban legends in terms of verifiability and quality of the description (and often much worst) and describe events even more outlandish. We have evidences and proven cases of people telling lies or grossly exaggerating an actual event for a variety of reasons and evidence and proven cases of people believing outrageous lies and claims very firmly, even otherwise very intelligent and educated people. Considering these conditions, we can use Occam’s razor to attribute all tales of miracles to exaggeration, lies, poetic license, etc.

No well established actual events or phenomenon in recorded history or contemporary is not explicable, be it only tentatively, by the laws of sciences. Furthermore, not only would an actual miraculous event would have to defy all natural explanations it would have to be impossible to explain at any point and time, no matter how sophisticated and developed sciences would be at any point in the future. Since no well established phenomenon that ever took place or is taking place can meet this absolutely restrictive criteria, no miracles can happen; miracles are thus not real, but figures of speech to describe unknown phenomenon, very improbable phenomenon or fantasy.

Here are some comments I made to kick off this debate in a prior thread where it began:

I never claimed historical accuracy proved miracles. I said that if a writer is shown to be historically trustworthy, then he can be trusted to accurately report about Jesus and Paul, etc. Then one’s view of miracles beforehand determines whether one dismisses any or all supernatural reports as fiction or not. There is no compelling argument against all miracles in all places. There is scarcely any argument at all. It’s all pretty much based on Hume’s non-argument: “we rarely observe miracles, therefore they don’t exist, and our worldview rules them out by definition anyway, so we don’t have to examine purported individual cases . . .”

David Hume did believe in God, by the way (basically a deist version); he wasn’t an atheist. This is a widespread myth.

*****

Here is a problem for you though. If you cannot prove miracles by providing basic information about the geography of an area at a certain point and time, how can you be trusted to report accurately about Jesus since Jesus does a lot of miracles according to the same source? That would make any reporting on the teachings of Jesus immediately suspicious since it includes completely outlandish elements that cannot be confirmed by anybody and are already known to be part of the legendary and mythological register of the time and era. This is but one of the reason why historians and biblical scholars agree that the Gospels are not good history and that if Jesus was a historical figure, which is still considered highly plausible by the majority of historians studying the subject, we know preciously little about what he actually preached or even his actual influence since we know him through his successors.

*****

One can’t “prove miracles” to people who are determined to never believe them, and who have ruled them out by simply claiming that they can never happen and are categorically impossible (things which no one has ever done, because it’s impossible to prove a universal negative).

What we can show (and what I think I have already done in this thread) is that Bible writers report accurate history. Then it comes down to the prior views of the reader, whether the miracles also included will be believed or not. If they are entirely discounted on entirely insufficient and inadequate grounds, as I believe, then no one can cut through that as long as the falsehood is strongly believed in, essentially by blind faith, and impervious to reason. It’s what they call in sociology a “true believer.” Tough to break through that shell.

*****

As has been shown to you with the example of the Trojan War or Spider-Man comic books, what the Bible provides as accurate history is wholly insufficient to make presumptions about it’s core narrative. It’s not like Luke is perfect on the inconsequential details either. It’s description of the Roman census is inaccurate for example. Can we thus say that the authors of Luke report accurate history? About as much as Homer or Stan Lee. It doesn’t mean we can’t glean good, useful historical information from such documents. If one day archeologists trying to piece back the history of the US stumble upon a Spider Man comic book anthology, they might gather interesting and fairly reliable the US as it describe and represent pretty well the city of New-York, tabloids and sensationalist media practices and political corruptions for example, but it would take a lot of comparison with far more valuable and verifiable documents from known authors.

*****

How can one say that miracles are “literally impossible”? [someone else made this claim] On what basis? How do you know what is “impossible”? I think you (and atheists generally) say this because your worldview is empiricism, and so miracles are ruled out categorically, as being contrary to the laws of science and uniformitarianism. But one can’t prove that the laws of science and uniformitarianism hold in all places ant all times and that there are no temporary exceptions to them. In fact, the laws of science don’t apply to the “time” before the Big Bang occurred, because that was the beginning of the universe and its laws as we know it.

Your burden is to tell us all why a miracle can’t possibly happen. Good luck.

If you guys want to keep carping on about miracles, then I will keep challenging you to prove to us all how no miracles could possibly have ever taken place. I’m interested in ultimate premises and in evidence for purported facts.

*****

What atheist here is willing to volunteer for the purpose of valiantly and triumphantly proving the proposition: “no miracle could possibly ever take place in any possible world at any time”?

Why do you believe that? How about thoroughly discussing one of the biggies of atheist-Christian disagreement and the one you guys went straight to. Very well, then, defend the premise that you are so vehement about. Display the courage (and basis) of your convictions.

And get ready for merciless grilling, a la Socrates. I don’t always just answer questions (though I enjoy that, in the right spirit). I ask them, too, but for some odd reason it’s only with extreme difficulty that I ever locate an atheist who will sit and cheerfully attempt an answer to all the “hard questions” that we have for you. Atheists love to grill Christians; they enjoy infinitely less explaining their own views in detail, under intense scrutiny.

According to C. S. Lewis’ thinking that I follow, a miracle is not “against” the laws of nature; it merely is a temporary addition to it. What you say is no proof that no miracle ever occurred; it’s simply boilerplate materialist polemics.

How do you know no miracle has ever occurred anywhere at any time? It’s intellectually embarrassing to even have to ask such a foolish question, but this is what atheist epistemology lends itself to. This is what the atheist casually assumes, which is why they reject the NT out of hand. It contains miracles, so it’s all (or almost all) nonsense or “mythology” etc., so we are told.

*****

Just to make this clear. Do you want one of us to defend the position that “no miracle could possibly ever take place in any possible world at any time?”

I may be interested in getting grilled by you on this specific issue (there is a section of the forum dedicated for one-on-one type of deal so you don’t feel like you get swarmed by answers by several people at the same time). I would just need that we agree on a workable definition of miracle (do we include massively improbable events like getting hit by a lightning with a winning lottery ticket in your pocket or just events with a supernatural bent like transmutation of matter, resurrections, walking on water, casting fireballs from one’s hand, summoning lightning down the sky at will, etc.).

Yes to the first question.

The second thing above: what cannot be explained by the present laws of science. I would quickly add that the laws of science don’t technically preclude things that are not subject to them in the first place. If miracles happen, from the Christian perspective, they are wrought by God, an exceptionally equipped Spirit not subject to scientific laws (being immaterial).

Technically laws of sciences apply to everything all the time. They are descriptive laws not prescriptive one’s, but I get what you mean by that.

Okay then.

I will defend the idea that there is no such things as miracles actually occurring or that have occurred in the past.

How do you defend that?

This is a criticism of religious texts and their accuracy (disputed because they are “late” and often anonymous and lacking extraneous objective corroboration). But those are textual, historical matters. I’m talking about metaphysics and epistemology. Your task is to prove that no miracles have ever occurred anywhere, and are (a much stronger assertion and much more difficult to prove) impossible.

The events are often poorly or simplistically described making and details often change from versions to versions. I other words, claims of miracles are akin to modern urban legends in terms of verifiability and quality of the description (and often much worst) and describe events even more outlandish. We have evidences and proven cases of people telling lies or grossly exaggerating an actual event for a variety of reasons and evidence and proven cases of people believing outrageous lies and claims very firmly, even otherwise very intelligent and educated people.

This is a variation of the above and proves nothing of what your burden is to prove. All it proves (actually suggests) is that the particular events described in these sources whatever they are, are questionable, as matters of fact, due to various alleged or actual shortcomings that you lay out. That doesn’t touch all miracles in all places or the impossibility of any ever happening.

Considering these conditions, we can use Occam’s razor to attribute all tales of miracles to exaggeration, lies, poetic license, etc.

But that’s terrible reasoning (it’s also a variation of Hume’s classic argument, which is notoriously weak and insubstantial). You can’t extrapolate from a claimed “many” inadequate reports to all for all time. You simply don’t know that, and can’t know that. You can’t prove a universal negative. You can’t go from “many reports of reported miracles are suspect, therefore all are, therefore, no miracles can ever occur anywhere.” The conclusion is false because it’s dependent on two false premises. It would be like saying, “I have seen thousands of white sheep, but have never seen a black one; therefore, none exist”.

There is even a logical fallacy of over-extrapolation. You present a version (perhaps a slight modification) of it.

Occam’s razor (made famous by a Christian philosopher) is simply the principle of parsimony or preferring a hypothesis that requires fewer assumptions. It doesn’t necessarily apply to every situation whatsoever. It’s a helpful tool that may lead to various truths, but doesn’t determine or preclude facts in and of itself. So, for example, the simplest explanation of general physics for a few hundred years was Newtonianism. That was the simplest and most elegant hypothesis. Yet it was overthrown by a more complicated version: Einstein’s relativity. And then Einstein was overthrown in some respects by quantum mechanics, which is more mysterious and complex than relativity. So in both cases, the truer, adopted theory was more complicated, not less complex and “elegantly simple” a la Occam. Not all reality conforms itself to a general principle of analysis like Occam’s razor.

Your proof (you actually think that it is a proof?) proves nothing, just as Hume’s original supposedly unanswerable argument against all miracles proved nothing. It was scarcely even a philosophical argument.

*****

No well established actual events or phenomenon in recorded history or contemporary is not explicable, be it only tentatively, by the laws of sciences.

This is technically assuming what you are trying to prove, but it’s okay to make summary statements in your opening arguments (as at a trial).

Can you name a well established as factual event or phenomenon in recorded or contemporary history that is not explicable, be it only tentatively, by the laws of sciences? My statement is not an argument assuming the premise; it’s a statement of fact no different than saying that water is composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen. It’s simply stating a fact not positing an argument. You might think I am factually incorrect, but you would need to demonstrate I am in error. You only need to provide one well established factual events that is not explicable, be it only tentatively, by the laws of sciences.

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Furthermore, not only would an actual miraculous event would have to defy all natural explanations it would have to be impossible to explain at any point and time, no matter how sophisticated and developed sciences would be at any point in the future.

This is actually something we can agree on. It’s true that science may explain what appears now to be miraculous in the future.

If it occurs such an event would not be miraculous and any attribution at any time that the event was a miracle would be an error.

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I have Catholic friends who actually view pretty much all “miracles” this way: that science will eventually explain them; therefore, they are not really miracles at all, but natural events that our present knowledge can’t yet comprehend. I can buy that, but I also think God does some straight miracles that go against natural laws, no matter how well we can explain them in the future. But as an example of what you refer to, in 1850 traveling into the future would have seemed like an utter fantasy or miracle. Now, since relativity, it’s been proven to be entirely possible.

I don’t think that time travel has been proven to be entirely possible, but this is beside the point I believe.

Christians are always being accused of “god of the gaps” (usually unfairly, I think). Atheists go too far in the extreme of trusting science to explain virtually anything and everything. We might call this “future science of the gaps.” It seems as if many atheists almost make science their god. Someone even said in this forum, “science is always right”: which is patently absurd. I quickly provided many examples of scientific folly and error.

Since no well established phenomenon that ever took place or is taking place can meet this absolutely restrictive criteria, no miracles can happen; miracles are thus not real, but figures of speech to describe unknown phenomenon, very improbable phenomenon or fantasy.

In a large sense we can only analyze based on what we know now. I concede that any miracle may eventually be explained by science. But we have to discuss according to what we presently know. One can’t assert that “one day science may explain it” (which I fully agree with) but then jump from that to saying that “no miracles can happen” (which I utterly disagree with). That’s simply explaining it away by virtue of an arbitrary category (of what “might” happen in the future). Not good enough. That’s no proof at all.

No miracles can happen because a miracle is not simply an unexplainable event. It’s true that we can’t say that all events are explainable or will be explainable by the sciences in the future now, but the events and phenomenon that are currently without any explanation are not miracles either. For something to be miraculous not only must an event defy any and all natural explanation, but it must be caused by divine powers. Nobody can say: “epronovost casted a fireball from his finger tips and incinerated a car by invoking God’s wrath to manifest itself; it’s a miracle.” without proving that it’s indeed God’s divine power that allowed me to do such things and not some other supernatural means like spell, mana, wizard tool, etc. A miracle is not even describing all supernatural events, but supernatural events caused by a divine beings for the benefit of mortals (miracles are always good things too).

Since no well established event was ever found to be miraculous in nature, we can’t claim that miracles are possible since for something to be considered possible it either need to have happened in the past or be proven to occur based on known and predictable mechanism. A thing that is possible is something that can be proven. If not, it’s what we call something conceivable; something that can be imagined or hypothesized, but relies on no actual observation or mechanistic explanation. Possible things all fall under the purview of probability; conceivable things are only limited by imagination.

Miracles are thus not possible, but only conceivable. Since miracles, by definition, require divine intervention and that nobody has ever managed to establish clearly the substance of the divine (or that there even is such a thing as divine beings or forces) or the precise mechanism such being use to alter their environment; that the divine is generally defined as transcendent and thus impossible to ascertain, study or observe. Miracles can simply never be proven. Since no miracle can be proven at best we find ourselves with an unexplained phenomenon for even if the phenomenon was actually caused by a deity and was a miracle we would have no way to make the difference between it and simply yet another unknown phenomenon that can be explained by natural explanation if we keep on digging at it or a plethora of other supernatural explanation that doesn’t involve a deity. The principle of prudence and rational skepticism would thus dictate that we cannot classify on a hunch such unexplainable event as a miracle or a rare natural event. It would remain an unexplainable phenomenon. Thus miracles are not possible. They are a matter of faith not probability and will forever only be conceivable and held as true purely based on faith in spite of any and all other conceivable explanation.

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For something to be miraculous not only must an event defy any and all natural explanation, but it must be caused by divine powers. . . . A miracle is not even describing all supernatural events, but supernatural events caused by a divine beings for the benefit of mortals (miracles are always good things too).

This is a good point and perhaps the very heart of our debate. It’s not just the event that is difficult to explain by the usual scientific means; it’s also the claim that God did it, “for the benefit of mortals,” as you say. The two must be tied together. And you claim this is impossible. I will try to build an argument that this connection is, rather, quite plausible and believable.

That would be entirely pointless. Lies, frauds, tricks and sophistries are believable; that’s the entire point of those things. You must demonstrate that those things are possible not believable or plausible. That’s what it takes to claim that miracles can or have occurred in the past.

Since I am not a specialist in mathematics, would you allow me to confer with an expert in the domain who so happen to be in my social circle to verify any mathematical demonstrations you might present (if you have the necessary education to present theoretical mathematical proofs that is)?

But miracles are not always “good things.” There are also demonic miracles, that I will get into also. There are many different kinds of miracles within the Christian outlook, and most arguably have a direct tie-in to God, and the God of Christianity: quite often, Catholic Christianity. Let’s start examining them.

The common definitions of miracles state that miracles are always positive and welcomed events and occurrence. Nobody would say this innocent little child was incinerated by devil worshiper; this is a miracle! I think we should stick to welcomed events and occurrence as miracles instead.

1. Life After Death Experiences.

We just saw a movie about this recently. I’ve been fascinated with this phenomenon for about fifty years, and read the bestselling book, Life After Life way back when, before I had any serious Christian commitment at all, and wouldn’t have given a moment’s attention to thinking about miracles. We have thousands of case studies whereby a person experienced a “heaven”-like place, with God as an intense light, senses extraordinarily heightened, seeing departed loved ones, Jesus-figures, feeling extremely happy, peaceful, and fulfilled, etc. This all corresponds with the Christian belief regarding an afterlife. But it’s not only the heaven-aspect. These people also report details of what was happening on the operation table, etc., while they were “dead” that they couldn’t possibly have known. They are able to explain little details of what occurred, because, typically, they report that they were “hovering” over their bodies and observing what was going on. This is also some sort of evidence for the existence of souls independently of bodies.

Lastly, a certain percentage (I think it is something like 10-15%) report a “hell”-like experience, with all the hallmarks that we would expect from that: a nightmarish, terrifying, hopeless place. This also corresponds with the Christian notion that certain folks are on the way to hell, so that if they died this instant, they would go there. This would be an example of God in His mercy “shocking” them into reality; to get their act together, lest they wind up in hell.

For more on this, see:

“What Can Science Tell Us About Death?” (The New York Academy of Sciences, 9-30-19)

“Agnostic Psychiatrist Says Near-Death Experiences Are Real” (Bruce Greyson, Mind Matters, 6-5-22)

“People describe near-death experiences in an eerily similar way” (Aria Bendix, Business Insider, 6-8-23)

“Near-death experiences tied to brain activity after death, study says” (Sandee LaMotte, CNN Health, 9-14-23)

Life after death and near death experiences are not without scientific explanations and the vast majority of such experience are not well established credible events. There are several cases of lies and fraud surrounding near death experiences the most famous of witch is that of Alex Malarkey since the book retelling the visions of heaven Alex had while he was supposedly dead became a best seller and made millions.

Near death experiences are thus not miracles since there is a host of credible scientific explanations and mechanism to explain them. They are not miraculous in nature either even if there was a life after death. Since death is a normal natural process and not an event or phenomenon actively and positively changing the normal state of affairs. There can be a god and an afterlife yet no miracle since the process of dying and going to heaven or hell is basically as mundane a baby being born. A resurrection, cheating death by way of magical divine intervention, would be a miraculous occurrence, not dying and going to the afterlife. Thus any discussions of life after death is pointless to the establishment of miracles even if they were completely exact and could definitely demonstrate and prove the existence of divine beings (which they can’t since NDE have credible explanations that don’t require such a thing).

2) Scientifically Examined Cures At Lourdes

I submit the following scientific study of the purported cures at Lourdes, from the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (produced by Oxford University): “The Lourdes Medical Cures Revisited” (2012):

Conclusions:

The least that can be stated is that exposures to Lourdes and its representations (Lourdes water, mental images, replicas of the grotto, etc.), in a context of prayer, have induced exceptional, usually instantaneous, symptomatic, and at best physical, cures of widely different diseases. Although what follows is regarded by some as a hackneyed concept, any and all scholars of Lourdes have come to agree with one of two equally acceptable—but seemingly conflicting and irreconcilable—points of view on the core issue: are the Lourdes cures a matter of divine intervention or not? Faith is set against science. . . .

After many mental twists and turns, we reached the same conclusions as Carrel some eighty to hundred years ago: “Instead of being a simple place of miracles, of interest only to the pious, Lourdes presents a considerable scientific interest,” and “Although uncommon, the miraculous cures are evidence of somatic and mental processes we do not know.” Upping the ante, we dare write that understanding these processes could bring about new and effective therapeutic methods.

The Lourdes cures concern science as well as religion.

In my own library I have a book called The Miracles (1976), in which purported cures were examined by a medical doctor. One Amazon review explains:

Dr. Casdorph did a wonderful job medically substantiating the miracle claims of these people including X-rays, bone scans, medical reports and interviews with medical personnel involved in each case. There is no hearsay or second- and third-hand accounts. The evidence stands for itself.

Other such books exist; for example: Modern Miraculous Cures – A Documented Account of Miracles and Medicine in the 20th Century (Francois Leuret, 2006).

Atheists have to explain all this. Again, at Lourdes, people (usually) of religious faith go to seek miraculous cures and some of these purported cures have been painstakingly examined by scientists, who can’t explain them by virtue of scientific knowledge alone. We say it is a function of prayer and faith and God performing miracles in our time, just as it is believed that He and His followers did in Bible times.

I actually don’t need to explain this. An unexplained event is not a miracle. A supernatural event is not necessarily a miracle either since miracles are only a subset of supernatural events. It suffice not to claim that science, at this moment, cannot explain such phenomenon to claim they are miracles. I am perfectly fine with granting you the fact that at Lourdes there were numerous unexplained by medicine healing events recorded prior to 1976. Can you prove that this was done by a deity and not some other supernatural or natural means?

3) Incorruptible Bodies of Saints

This ties right in with the atheist demand to connect seemingly miraculous phenomenon to God. There are hundreds of bodies of persons whom the Catholic Church has declared to be saints, that have not undergone the usual process of decay that dead bodies go through. Therefore, as a Catholic I would argue that this is evidence of the miraculous, and also evidence that God did it, since it happened only to extraordinarily holy people. It’s a confirmation of Catholic teaching. Here’s an article describing it, and a page of photographs (see also a second page of photos). It has to be explained somehow. If you have a dead body sitting there and it hasn’t rotted after 50, 100, 200, or 500 years, something very unusual is taking place. I know how I explain it. How does an atheist do so? We have a case in the Detroit area with our local “saint”: Blessed Solanus Casey, a Capuchin priest of great holiness, who died in 1957. Sure enough, when his body was exhumed in 2017, it was in a remarkably preserved condition. The world-renowned pathologist, Dr. Werner Spitz, was involved, and reported:

I am not sure I would call it a miracle. I would call this unusual. I was really amazed when I saw the body. This man, this gentleman had been buried for 60 years and I cannot say he looked like he died the day before but he certainly could be identified by anyone who knew him during his lifetime. . . . I am looking at this from the scientific angle. I am not looking at it from the religious angle. It may very well be that this is something more than we normally see. Why? Maybe there is something out there that did it.

Again, there is numerous explanation for natural mumification processes where bodies are preserved intact or quasi intact for decades, but this is beside the point. Again, an unexplained phenomenon is not a miracle. Even a supernatural event is not, by necessity, a miracle. Can you prove that God casted a spell on these corpses to preserve them?

It’s not just Catholics either. The body of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, who was murdered in 1963, is said to be incorrupt or remarkably preserved, according to several accounts.

The guy has been buried in Arlington Cemetery. His body has been embalmed and buried a short 6 and a half days after his murder late on the 12th of June. The idea that is body could not decompose and represent a case of miraculous preservation is completely absurd. A body in the morgue preserved for such a short period of time has no time to decompose.

4) The Shroud of Turin

This is another thing that has fascinated me since 1978, when I saw a TV special about it and bought a book. The obvious connection to Christianity and God here is the striking similarity of this image and its various characteristic to the crucified Jesus. It has been subjected to hundreds of scientific analyses. Many of the scientists freely admit that they can’t explain some things regarding it. One of the remarkable things about it is that scientists, by and large, aren’t sure how the image even came about in the first place. See further articles and books (which include a debunking of the supposed carbon dating disproof in 1988):

“New evidence supporting Shroud of Turin is too strong to ignore, says journalist” (William West, The Catholic Weekly, 4-5-23)

[T]he image on the Shroud has never been replicated by science and that’s because the evidence suggests it can’t be. It is a high-resolution, photographic-negative, 3-D image caused by a discoloration of a uniform layer of microscopic linen microfibres – something that could only be caused by a finely tuned burst of electromagnetic radiation that came from the body itself.

“New Scientific Technique Dates Shroud of Turin to Around the Time of Christ’s Death and Resurrection” (Edward Pentin, National Catholic Register, 4-19-22)

“Is the Turin Shroud real after all?” (Paola Totaro, The New European, 6-28-23)

In 1978, a multi-disciplinary scientific group known as the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP) was created and a team of 33 American and European scientists spent five 24-hour shifts studying the linen first-hand. Their report, published in 1981, concluded the image was of a scourged, crucified man, that blood stains revealed haemoglobin and tested positive for serum albumin and that these were “not the product of an artist”.

“We can conclude for now that the Shroud image… is an ongoing mystery and until further chemical studies are made, perhaps by this group of scientists, or perhaps by some scientists in the future, the problem remains unsolved,” the report concluded.

“Scientists Suggest Turin Shroud Authentic” (Sergio Prostak, Sci News, 12-21-11)

“For sure, none of the hundreds attempts to obtain a shroud-like image by using chemical contact techniques – i.e. adding chemical substances like colors, powders, etc. – has achieved good results. Usually, the chemical approach gives similar macroscopic results, but it fails when analyzing the coloration with a microscope. At the microscopic level, the contact chemical approach does not give Shroud-like results. On the contrary, attempts using various radiations (vacuum ultraviolet photons, electrons from a corona discharge) give a coloration that looks shroud-like even at the microscopic level,” concludes Dr. Di Lazzaro.

“Peer-Reviewed Papers on the Shroud of Turin – a Bibliography” (Joe Marino, Academia, 2021)

Is well known hoax. Dating on the material of the Shroud revealed that it dates back to the 14th century and all challenges towards these findings failed. The image also was found to contain no trace of blood and iron oxide based pigments which was used to produce brownish red blood color in the medieval era. The Shroud of Turin is widely considered as one of the many fake relics of the Catholic Church along with many other of it’s kind. The Catholic Church has a long history of pious fraud and traffic of false relics for money. It was such an issue that some of the most vehement critique levied against it by the Protestant movement were concerning these cases of frauds; even people in the Middle Ages knew or suspected that many of those relics were a complete sham to extort money from gullible pilgrims. There was a lot of money to be made there.

5) Stigmata

It’s very difficult to explain this phenomenon, too, and it appears with very holy people. See:

“Stigmata in the history: between faith, mysticism and science” (S Gianfaldoni et al, Journal of Biological Regulations & Homeostic Agents . 2017;31(2 Suppl. 2):45-52)

“Religious stigmata: a dermato-psychiatric approach and differential diagnosis” (Elio Kechichian, Elie Khoury, Sami Richa, Roland Tomb, Int J Dermatol . 2018 Aug;57(8):885-893)

Abstract

Background: Stigma refers to the wounds reproduced on the human body, similar to the ones inflicted on the Christ during his crucifixion, on the palms, soles, and head, as well as the right or the left side of the chest, the lips and, the back. Whether they are genuine or fabricated, stigmata are still considered a medical enigma. . . .

Results: Around 300 cases of stigma have been described since the 13th century. . . .

Conclusion: Stigma remains an example of the intricate relationships existing between medicine, psychiatry, psychology, spirituality, and the human body.

“Doctors and Stigmatics in the 19th and 20th centuries” (Gabor Klaniczay, The Religious Studies Project, 11-18-19)

I suppose you can now guess what I am going to say, but I will say it again. An unexplained phenomenon is not a miracle.

Also most cases of stigmata are not well reported and very much open to hoaxes (there were some that were demonstrated to be as such). Stigmata are rather rare and have never been subjected to extensive scientific scrutiny either. What has been found is that people with stigmata are almost all women (87% of cases are women) and most of them are extremely religious, often nuns. It’s also a very Catholic thing. There is no case of stigmata reported in non-Christians as far as I am aware. Some scientific explanations have been suggested though, most notably unconscious self-mutilation episodes which do happen in patient suffering from PTSD, epileptics, schizophrenics, bi-polar disorder or people prone to strong autosuggestion. Painful bruising syndrome has also been suggested since the symptoms are so similar though painful bruising syndrome can produce bruising and wounds in other area of the body than hands/wrists and feet/lower legs like stigmata do.

In other words, not only are stigmata unexplained phenomenon at the moment, but it seems medical science could shed some light on it as it’s advancing credible hypothesis on the subject even though, due to it’s rarity and the common refusal of the victim of stigmata and their family to subject the victim to careful study and analysis, the subject has been studied very little.

Robert A. Larmer is the Chairman of the Philosophy Department at the University of New Brunswick (see his Curriculum Vitae and his books) and a specialist in the philosophy of miracles. He wrote the article, “C.S. Lewis’s Critique Of Hume On Miracles,” Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers: 1 April 2008. Vol. 25: Iss. 2, Article 3. I will be heavily excerpting it.

For those unfamiliar with the issue, Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) was a deist (not an atheist!) who produced what is considered the classic argument against miracles. He’s also wrongly thought to have destroyed the theistic teleological argument (argument from design), but he only dealt with one form of it, while actually espousing another form himself. See: “Hume on Religion” (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). It states:

While Hume may be a hard skeptic about robust theism, it does not follow that he is either a hard or a soft skeptic about thin theism. Against views of this kind, it has been argued by a number of scholars that Hume is committed to some form of thin theism or “attenuated deism”. (See, e.g., J.C.A. Gaskin, Hume’s Philosophy of Religion, 2nd ed., London: Macmillan.)

See also: “David Hume: Religion” (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy), which opines:

There is, therefore, support for interpreting Hume as a deist of a limited sort. Gaskin calls this Hume’s “attenuated deism,” attenuated in that the analogy to something like human intelligence is incredibly remote, and that no morality of the deity is implied, due especially to the Problem of Evil. However, scholars that attribute weak deism to Hume are split in regard to the source of the belief. Some, like Gaskin, think that Hume’s objections to the design argument apply only to analogies drawn too strongly. Hence, Hume does not reject all design arguments, and, provided that the analogs are properly qualified, might allow the inference. This is different than the picture suggested by Butler and discussed by Pike in which the belief is provided by a natural, non-rational faculty and thereby simply strikes us, rather than as the product of an inferential argument. Therefore, though the defenders of a deistic Hume generally agree about the remote, non-moral nature of the deity, there is a fundamental schism regarding the justification and generation of this belief. Both sides, however, agree that the belief should not come from special revelation, such as miracles or revealed texts.

Now onto Larmer’s 19-page treatment of C. S. Lewis’ critique of Hume on miracles. The following is all from his article. I will omit footnotes, which can be looked up by following the link at the top.

*****

Despite his popularity as a Christian apologist and despite the fact that one of his major works is Miracles: A Preliminary Study [read online], C. S. Lewis is virtually ignored in contemporary discussions of miracles. When he is mentioned, he is usually quickly dismissed as displaying a superficial understanding of David Hume’s famous criticism of the possibility of rational belief in miracles based on testimonial evidence.

My contention in this article is that such dismissals are unjustified. Although he did not write as a professional philosopher and did not direct his writing to specialists in philosophy, Lewis was well trained in philosophy. While a student at University College, Oxford, he received a First in Greats (Philosophy and Ancient History) and, as a young man, served as philosophy tutor at University College. While at Oxford, Lewis served as the first president of the famous Socratic Club founded by Stella Aldwinckle in 1941 as an “open forum for the discussion of the intellectual difficulties connected with religion and with Christianity in particular.” . . . Lewis regularly read papers at the Socratic Club and engaged in dialogue with Elizabeth Anscombe, A. J. Ayer, Antony Flew and Gilbert Ryle, to name only a few of the philosophers that contributed papers. The fact that philosophers of this stature took Lewis seriously suggests that his critique of Hume’s “Of Miracles” deserves more attention by professional philosophers than it typically receives. . . .

Lewis’s interpretation of the argument of Part I of the “Essay” is the traditional one that it is intended to demonstrate that belief in a miracle can never, even in principle, be rationally justified on the basis of testimonial evidence.3 He summarizes the argument as follows:

Probability rests on what may be called the majority vote of our past experiences. The more often a thing has been known to happen, the more probable it is that it should happen again; and the less often the less probable. . . . The regularity of Nature’s course . . . is supported by something better than the majority vote of past experiences: it is supported by their unanimous vote, . . . by “firm and unalterable experience.” There is, . . . “uniform experience” against Miracle; otherwise, . . . it would not be a Miracle. A miracle is therefore the most improbable of all events. It is always more probable that the witnesses were lying or mistaken than that a miracle occurred.

[. . .]

Lewis develops, very briefly, an ad hominem argument that Hume’s assumption of the uniformity of nature in the “Essay” is inconsistent with what he says elsewhere regarding induction. Lewis writes,

Unless Nature always goes on in the same way, the fact that a thing had happened ten million times would not make it a whit more probable that it would happen again. And how do we know the Uniformity of Nature? A moment’s thought shows that we do not know it by experience. . . . Experience . . . cannot prove uniformity, because uniformity has to be assumed before experience proves anything. . . . Unless Nature is uniform, nothing is either probable or improbable. And clearly the assumption which you have to make before there is any such thing as probability cannot itself be probable. . . . The odd thing is that no man knew this better than Hume. His Essay on Miracles is quite inconsistent with the more radical, and honourable, scepticism of his main work.

This criticism is hardly unique to Lewis. There is no way of knowing for sure, but Lewis may well have been aware that C. D. Broad had made this point at much greater length in an article published in the 1916-17 volume of the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. Broad writes:

Hume has told us that he can find no logical ground for induction. He cannot see why it should be justifiable to pass from a frequent experience of A followed by B, to a belief that A always will be followed by B. All that he professes to do is to tell us that we actually do make this transition, and to explain psychologically how it comes about. Now, this being so, I cannot see how Hume can distinguish between our variously caused beliefs about matters of fact, and call some of them justifiable and others unjustifiable. . . . Hume’s disbelief [in a miracle] is due to his natural tendency to pass from the constant experience of A followed by B to the belief that A will always be followed by B. The enthusiast’s belief is due to his natural tendency to believe what is wonderful and makes for the credit of his religion. But Hume has admitted that he sees no logical justification for beliefs in matters of fact which are merely caused by a regular experience. Hence the enthusiast’s belief in miracles and Hume’s belief in natural laws (and consequent disbelief in miracles) stand on precisely the same logical footing. In both cases we can see the psychological cause of the belief, but in neither can Hume give us any logical ground for it.

[ . . .]

The issue is not whether Hume could have developed a concept of the laws of nature consistent with his treatment of induction and causality or whether such a concept can be found elsewhere in his work but whether the concept actually employed in “Of Miracles” is consistent with his treatment of induction and causality earlier in the Enquiry. . . .

Once one accepts Hume’s denial of necessary connections and his reduction of causality to constant conjunction, it becomes impossible to argue that the fact that certain events have been constantly conjoined in the past provides any reason for thinking they will be constantly, or even probably, conjoined in the future. As Hume comments, “it is impossible . . . that any arguments from experience can prove . . . resemblance of the past to the future; since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of that resemblance.” . . .

What Broad and Lewis recognize . . . -and what must be taken into account in any discussion of whether Hume’s treatment of miracles is consistent with his sceptical treatment of induction and causality-is that Hume’s argument is directed not at demonstrating that it is irrational to believe that unusual events of a certain conceivable type, that is to say miracles, violate the laws of nature, but at showing there could never be sufficient testimonial evidence to justify belief in the occurrence of such events. . . .

Lewis’s second explicit criticism is that Hume’s argument is viciously circular. Hume writes that “a firm and unalterable experience has established the laws of nature” and since “a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature,” “there must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation.” Lewis responds that this argument begs the question, inasmuch as it assumes what needs to be proved. He writes,

now of course we must agree with Hume that if there is absolutely “uniform experience” against miracles, if in other words they have never happened, why then they never have. Unfortunately we know the experience against them to be uniform only if we know that all the reports of them are false. And we can know all the reports to be false only if we know already that miracles have never occurred. In fact, we are arguing in a circle.

As in the case of his previous criticism of Hume’s argument, this objection is not unique to Lewis, but was made by earlier writers. One of Hume’s early critics, William Samuel Powell, asserts that Hume’s claim that “nature . . . is uniform and unvaried in her operations . . . either presumes the point in question, or touches not those events which are supposed to be out of the course of nature” and William Paley, writing in the nineteenth century, makes essentially this point against Hume, when he claims that for Hume “to state concerning the fact in question that no such thing was ever experienced, or that universal experience is against it, is to assume the subject of the controversy. . . .

[W]hile it seems true that Hume did not take himself simply to be exploring the implications of a definition of the laws of nature, what he in fact says about the laws of nature seems to imply that they must be defined as exceptionless regularities. We are told early in the argument that the laws of nature are based on “infallible experience” and a little later that they have been established by “firm and unalterable experience.” Lest we misunderstand what is meant by the phrase “firm and unalterable experience” Hume tells us that “it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country” and that “there must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation.” Further, when Hume is faced with what would seem to be extremely strong evidence for the occurrence of an event plausibly viewed as miraculous, he is prepared to assert either that the event could not have occurred on the basis that miracles are absolutely impossible, or, if the event occurred, it must not be a miracle. It thus seems that, although Hume may have not noticed that he ruled out the occurrence of miracles by definition, there is good reason to think that this is in fact an implication of how he conceives the laws of nature. . . .

I think a good case can be made that there are conflicting lines of argument in the “Essay.” Although Hume’s official stance seems to be that miracles are logically possible but that there are insurmountable difficulties in justifying belief in their actual occurrence, the claims he makes at several points in attempting to develop his argument imply the stronger conclusion that miracles are logically impossible. It is this conflict between his official stance and what he actually says in attempting to justify it that enables authors such as Johnson to suggest that Hume’s goals are so confused as to make it impossible to determine what his argument is. What is clear is that, unless he is simply willing to suggest that the concept of a miracle is logically incoherent, Hume’s talk of “firm and unalterable experience” as ruling out the possibility of belief in miracles leaves him open to the charge of circularity. . . .

[I]t is significant that all the responses made to the “Essay” during Hume’s lifetime took him to be arguing the impossibility of testimony justifying belief in miracles, but Hume never suggested that these critics misunderstood the intent of the “Essay.” . . . Hume’s silence is inexplicable if he felt that his respondents fundamentally missed the point of the “Essay,” but makes good sense if he intended to assert that no amount of testimonial evidence could be sufficient to justify accepting a miracle report.

That Hume does in fact intend his argument to be taken as an a priori demonstration that belief in a miracle can never, even in principle, be justified on the basis of testimony seems clear. Fogelin is wrong, therefore, to suggest that Lewis’s objection that Hume’s argument is circular can be simply dismissed on the basis that Lewis does not understand what Hume is trying to show. There are conflicting elements of argument in the “Essay,” but at least some of these strongly suggest that the charge of circularity is well grounded.

We have looked at Lewis’s explicit criticisms of Hume’s argument, which occur in Chapter XIII, “On Probability.” I think, however, that a more important criticism is implicit in Chapter VIII, “Miracle and the Laws of Nature.”

Hume’s argument in Part I of the “Essay” can be summarized as follows:

The testimonial evidence in favour of a miracle inevitably conflicts with the evidence in favour of the laws of nature.

The testimonial evidence in favour of a miracle cannot exceed, even in principle, the evidence in favour of the laws of nature.

Therefore, belief in the occurrence of a miracle can never be justified on the grounds of testimonial evidence.

Critics of the argument have almost exclusively focussed on the second premise. Accepting Hume’s claim that a miracle must be conceived as violating the laws of nature and thus that any evidence for a miracle must conflict with the evidence for the laws of nature, they have left the first premise unexamined. This is unfortunate, since accepting the first premise means that even if, contra Hume, there exists in some cases sufficient evidence to justify belief in a miracle, this evidence must be viewed as necessarily conflicting with another body of evidence we are strongly inclined to accept, namely the evidence which justifies belief in the laws of nature. Thus Hume insists that

the very same principle of experience which gives us a certain degree of assurance in the testimony of witnesses gives us also, in this case [reports of miracles], another degree of assurance against the fact which they endeavour to establish; from which contradiction there necessarily arises a counterpoise and mutual destruction of belief and authority.

The view that a necessary condition of an event being a miracle is that it violates the laws of nature, arises out of the assumption that divine interventions in nature would necessarily involve violating the laws of nature. One of Lewis’s greatest insights is that this assumption is mistaken. That it is mistaken can be seen if one reflects on the fact that laws of nature do not, by themselves, allow the prediction or explanation of any event. Scientific explanations must make reference not only to laws of nature, but to material conditions to which the laws apply. Thus, although we often speak as though the laws of nature are, in themselves, sufficient to explain the occurrence of an event, this is not really so. Any explanation involving the laws of nature must make reference not only to those laws, but also to the actual “stuff” of nature whose behaviour is described by the laws of nature. As Lewis notes,

we are in the habit of talking as if they [the laws of nature] caused events to happen; but they have never caused any event at all. The laws of motion do not set billiard balls moving: they analyse the motion after something else (say, a man with a cue, or a lurch of the liner, or, perhaps, supernatural power) has provided it. They produce no events: they state the pattern to which every event—if only it can be induced to happen—must conform, just as the rules of arithmetic state the pattern to which all transactions with money must conform—if only you can get hold of any money. Thus in one sense the laws of Nature cover the whole field of space and time; in another, what they leave out is precisely the whole real universe—the incessant torrent of actual events which makes up true history. That must come from somewhere else. To think the laws can produce it is like thinking that you can create real money by simply doing sums. For every law, in the last resort, says “If you have A, then you will get B.” But first catch your A: the laws won’t do it for you.

If we keep in mind this basic distinction between the laws of nature and the “stuff,” call it mass/energy, whose behaviour they describe, it can be seen that, although a miracle is an event which would never have occurred without the overriding of nature, this in no way entails the claim that a miracle involves a violation of the laws of nature. If a transcendent agent creates or annihilates a unit of mass/energy, or if he simply causes some of the stuff to occupy a different position than it did formerly, then he changes the material conditions to which the laws of nature apply. He thereby produces an event that nature on its own would not have produced, but He breaks no laws of nature. To use Lewis’s example, one would not violate or suspend the laws of motion if one were to toss an extra billiard ball into a group of billiard balls in motion on a billiard table, yet one would override the outcome of what would otherwise be expected to happen on the table. Similarly,

if God creates a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any laws. The laws at once take it over. . . . Pregnancy follows, according to all the normal laws, and nine months later a child is born. . . . If events ever come from beyond Nature altogether she will . . . [not be] incommoded by them__ The moment they enter her realm they obey all her laws. Miraculous wine will intoxicate, miraculous conception will lead to pregnancy, inspired books will suffer all the ordinary processes of textual corruption, miraculous bread will be digested. The divine art of miracle is not an art of suspending the pattern to which events conform but of feeding new events into that pattern. It does not violate the law’s proviso, “If A, then B”: it says, “But this time instead of A, A2′” and Nature, speaking through all her laws, replies, “Then B2′” and naturalises the immigrant, as she well knows how.

The importance of Lewis’s insight is that if miracles can occur without violating the laws of nature then the testimonial evidence in favour of miracles need not be conceived as conflicting with the evidence which grounds belief in the laws of nature. This means that Hume’s argument in Part I of the “Essay,” depending as it does upon the assumption that these two bodies of evidence must conflict, cannot even get started.

*****

Near death experiences are thus not miracles since there is a host of credible scientific explanations and mechanism to explain them.

Cool. Please explain to me, then, specifically how these people can give accurate details of what was happening when they were unconscious and in a state of temporary “death.” I’d be most curious to see what you can come up with. You claim there are explanations. Very well, then, document these and/or summarize them, so we can see how strong the “con” arguments are.

Why would I need to do that? As we have established before an unknown event or phenomenon is not a miracle.

Plus, considering that neither you or I are medical doctors who are perfectly fluent when it comes down to reading and understanding in depth neurochemical models or the fine point of anesthesiology, I think we will hit the limits of our respective knowledge and education well before we can actually make a sound evaluations of the neurochemical models for explaining NDE.

None of my arguments will be mathematical . . .

The presence of fakery doesn’t disprove real events, anymore than counterfeit money disproves real money. There have been, for example many fake Bigfoot stunts. If they ever find a body of one of these things and prove their existence with hard evidence, then at that point it would be clear that the fakers never disproved Bigfoot, because it would have actually been proven to exist.

I actually don’t need to explain this. An unexplained event is not a miracle.

But it’s consistent with a possibility of it being a miracle,

Absolutely not. A possibility is something that can happen. Possibilities are things that have either already happened in the past as a matter of fact or things that can be shown mathematically to be capable of occurring by use of probabilities. It’s possible for me to roll a 1000 sixes in a row with single correctly balanced six-faces dice. The likeliness of such an event is so infinitesimal we would call this impossible in everyday languages, but I can show you that even though this never happened as a matter of fact in recorded history that it’s possible by the use of mathematics. A possibility is not something that is conceived or fantasized. It’s something that can be demonstrated.

Everybody can imagine all sort of explanation and depending on how you present them you can make them plausible. Lies, frauds, tricks, sophistries, fabulations etc. are all plausible things. Plus explanations to unexplained, rare and bizarre events tend to be equally esoteric and thus anything and everything may seem believable when faced with such bizarre events. Thus “believable” in such circumstances is such a low bar to clear it might as well be completely meaningless. If something thought to be impossible happens, any explanation, no matter how ridiculous can sound believable.

. . . just as the notion of a God Who put into motion the Big Bang is consistent with Big Bang Theory (I’m not saying that the latter proves God). Nothing in that scenario would be inconsistent. God would have started the “ball in motion” so to speak, whereas atheists don’t have the slightest clue how or why it started, and what caused it. They rule out God by definition, which is incoherent and a category mistake, since science deals with matter, and can’t speak to the question of an immaterial God. The fact remains, moreover, that the Bible taught creatio ex nihilo thousands of years ago, and it turns out to be correct.

A supernatural event is not necessarily a miracle either since miracles are only a subset of supernatural events. It suffice not to claim that science, at this moment, cannot explain such phenomenon to claim they are miracles. I am perfectly fine with granting you the fact that at Lourdes there were numerous unexplained by medicine healing events recorded prior to 1976. Can you prove that this was done by a deity and not some other supernatural or natural means?

It’s not a matter of “proving” everything. That’s kindergarten philosophy. The question is which explanation that we can give at present is more plausible, and whether the phenomena are consistent with a possible divine, Christian explanation. The cures at Lourdes fit that bill, and as I argued earlier, the fact that they happened to (usually) believers who went there seeking God, is quite consistent with a view that God performed the miracles. In other words they didn’t happen randomly to folks on the street.

Cases of spontaneous healing have been observed in all sorts of places and in various circumstances. We have cases of spontaneous healing all over the world and in various settings too. The overwhelming majority of those cases are very poorly known and recorded though. Lourdes has the advantage of being a place famous for it’s healing property so people pay extra attention to it and study it a bit more closely. It was even so before Christianity arrived in the region since remains of a temple dedicated to a water deity were found there.

Meanwhile, science can’t explain them. And that’s exactly what we would expect of a real miracle.

But we can’t convince an atheist of anything like this. Your prior biases and hostile premises simply don’t allow it. I knew you would simply blow these off with a few words, as if there is nothing here that is worthy of the slightest consideration. It’s all fake or irrelevant. But I will challenge you to do more than merely that. You don’t get off that easily.

How do you explain an incorrupt body? It’s not as simple as spewing out “mummification”: for the simple reason that it can easily be determined if there was any mummification applied or not. If not, then there goes your “quick, elegant” supposed disproof. You have to explain this unnatural thing. We say God did it and that it is a miracle, and that it correlates with these people being saints. And you say?

Mummification processes are numerous and not all are well known (I am talking here about natural mummification not the ceremonial one developed by the Egyptians or ours). Do you know if any of those bodies were analyzed by teams of experts in such processes and the conditions in which the body were kept closely monitored? I personally doubt you have access to such detailed information.

Also it’s entirely possible that in those bodies there is something to learn about natural mummification processes. It’s not like we know everything about the decomposition processes either. By studying rare and well preserved body we know actually get to know more about these processes and circumstances.

In the end though, saying this is consistent with miracles means absolutely nothing since there are no known miracles attested as facts we can base ourselves to make such a statement. How can you know the difference between an unknown phenomenon and a miracle exactly?

Also there is still the good old fashion hoaxes as a possible venue for explanation. We know that the Catholic Church has a long history of producing hoaxes like these, the Shroud of Turin being the most famous. Can we discount the idea that those bodies are actually wax or silicone statues (or some similar props like the one used for Lenin’s body). Has there been genuine forensic research on them at all like there was for the Shroud? I could not find any for the cases you presented.

A body in the morgue preserved for such a short period of time has no time to decompose.

Medgar Evers’ body was examined in 1991. He died in 1963. So we’re talking about 28 years (there’s some high math fer ya). Nice try.

That’s true and his body was very well preserved, but it was clearly decomposing at that point. Note that while his decomposition process was slow it wasn’t exactly completely marvelous either. In an oxygen deprived or sealed coffin and embalmed body can decompose very, very slowly. In the link bellow you will see a short pdf that discusses his autopsy in 1991. [link] You will also see pictures of other bodies exhumed for autopsy. While his body is surprisingly well preserved, it does show some signs of decomposition around his mouth and right cheek and is fairly comparable the young women in the picture bellow (skin discoloration shows much better on pale skin than black skin though, especially with black and white photography of fairly low quality and even worst reprograhy). There is even a spectacularly well preserved corpse of a woman who has been intombed for 145 years and represent an excellent case of low oxygen decomposition.

You did provide some good counter-argumentation as to the incorruptibles. Kudos.

***

Why the hell are [you] arguing against Hume’s work? How does this long, long post respond to any of my point or argument? Do you want to provide a new definition of miracle than the following:

“a surprising and welcomed event/phenomenon that is not explainable by natural or scientific laws and is the work of a divine agency?”

Would you like to provide another definition than this one? My entire argument relies on this definition of the term though.

As I made very clear in all of my references to Hume, his is the classic argument against miracles, that atheists think is so compelling. In fact, it is not at all, and has very basic flaws, as my article shows. It shows why I say you haven’t proven the proposition that no miracle could ever possibly take place. You haven’t come within a million miles of it. The extremity of the claim makes it virtually impossible to prove.

I did not present Hume argument against miracle though. While we arrive at a similar conclusion, I did not formulate my argument like he did. Don’t you want to attack my argument and force me to defend it? What specifically in my argument do you want me to defend?

You could have chosen to argue for the proposition: “no purported miracle I have yet read about provides sufficient proof of extraordinary divine intervention.” Then you could just do the atheist hyper-rationalistic, relentlessly and irrationally skeptical routine, as you are currently doing with my examples.

Well if you want to demonstrate the possibility of a X, you need to either prove X occurred for certain in the past, is happening right now or provide mathematical models that demonstrate that X can happen. That’s what everybody has to do. Is it long and hard? It can be. The more elusive and mysterious a thing the harder it is. The problem you have created yourself was to define the divine as a transcendental being that cannot be ascertained, studied or observed. The transcendental nature of the divine means the divine is believed to be both impossible and real at the same time; that’s what transcendental do. Since the divine is impossible; it cannot be. Only faith can make the divine be.

A pantheist would have smashed my argument to pieces in two seconds as would a Sun worshiper. These theists would have no problem to demonstrate any number of miracles, but you don’t have the luxury of their position. Deists and some pantheists could also argue the same position than me too; it’s not specifically “an atheist thing” either.

But your burden is to prove that no miracle can ever happen, or has ever happened. My article about Hume destroys that, because it’s based on Hume. That’s basically where atheists got this notion.

Your definition is fine, and perfectly harmonious with that of Lewis and Larmer.

Glad to hear it. Then my defense and position stands.

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Atheists have a bad habit of always challenging theists to the hilt and then wilting whenever they are asked to provide a superior explanation. We’re always forced to explain; you guys never seem to have to do so. Seems a bit unbalanced, wouldn’t you agree?

That doesn’t really matter either. I have made a defense of my position clear I believe. I don’t see why I would need to demonstrate any explanation as to what scientific explanation NDE have or spontaneous healing events or any other phenomenon of the sort. These phenomenon could easily be classified as unknown and unexplained phenomenon and my conclusion that miracles are not possible would still stand strong as I have explained in my second post. If I had argued that science can explain everything, I would indeed have to defend scientific explanations for these phenomenon, but I am not an idiot and I do not defend such position thus I don’t have to do it.

You’re the one who made the statement, “there is a host of credible scientific explanations and mechanism to explain them.” Okay. Unless that statement has no substance, then you can go get some of these explanations and present them to me. You don’t have to be an expert; you merely have to cite experts (just as I cited a philosopher to critique Hume on miracles). Tell me what they are saying, by presenting some of these explanations. I’m not even asking about the “heaven” experiences; only the ones where they knew what was happening when they were “dead.”

I already did. Did you read the article on Wikipedia on NDE? It does contain a summary of the carious explanations offered by medical science so far. What do you think about the neurochemical model for explanation of NDE? Though, before you answer, I have to ask again, what’s the point of it?

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Looks like we’re pretty much done, then. We’ve presented our cases and the dialogue is rapidly breaking down. Let the open-minded and fair-minded reader make up their own minds. We can have more debates in the future. Thanks for your willingness to do so. It was fun!

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Post-debate discussion took place in a separate forum thread.

The debate exhausted itself. He kept refusing to answer my questions and he apparently thinks I am not answering his. He didn’t even see the point of my long critique of Hume, whereas I think it is central to the entire discussion, so we were at great odds even concerning what we were debating. When that happens it’s time to move on.

The atheists will say I lost and “ran” no matter what happened in it. That’s not my concern. I couldn’t care less about the inevitable reactions. I wanted a good presentation of both sides for my blog, and I got that. Christians will say I won the debate. That’s how it always is. Occasionally a person comes around who thinks the person who argued against his own position provided a better case. Those are the only interesting cases: the ones who are willing to at least entertain an opposing position.

I think Dave Armstrong is disappointed because what it seems he really wanted to have is not so much a philosophical argument about the possibility of miracles, but a debate and an exposé on the capacity of atheists to explain, using natural and scientific laws and principle various events many have attributed to miracles like the Lourdes cases of miraculous healing, the bodies that don’t rot as well as NDE (even though they are not miraculous in nature per say). I think that this is a very different kind of debate though. I did not formulate an argument that relied on explanations of mysterious phenomenon or pseudo-probability akin to: “this half-baked scientific explanation is more probable than magic thus I win!”. Thus, the debate went side-way really fast.

I wanted the first of your two choices above, of course. My view is that David Hume’s argument against miracles is so fundamental that it must be addressed — at least acknowledged — in any general debate on miracles. But you thought it wasn’t even relevant. That explains in a nutshell what happened here. It turns out that we didn’t agree what was important to discuss. No one in philosophy that I’m aware of questions that Hume’s treatment is the classic one, and what needs to be addressed by any proponent of miracles. So I did. But you didn’t want to touch my critique of it via C.S. Lewis.

I brought up my five examples of miracles precisely because you asked me to do so. That is, I was actually answering your counter-replies . . . My original idea was not to bring them up at all, because I suspected that once they were brought up, that would be all that was talked about, and that’s precisely what happened. This was what made it go off the rails. I wanted to primarily discuss premises and Hume. I always go after initial premises, as a socratic in method. But because you asked me to give examples, I did, and that was my mistake in retrospect. I should have refused.

I think [Dave] is much more comfortable in argumentative essay format than debates; it might also be a case of being out of practice.

We ended up just talking past each other, which is very common in atheist-Christian attempted dialogues and debates.

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“Deesse23” wrote: “One does not just posit that miracles are possible because no one has proven them to be impossible.”

Actually that was the core of the debate and of my only actual argument. I made an attempt at proving that miracles were impossible, but it relied on defining “possible” as something that happened as a matter of fact in the past or something that can be shown mathematically to be possible. It also relied on defining “miracle” as a surprising and welcomed event/phenomenon that is not explainable by natural or scientific laws and is the work of a divine agency. Since there is no event in the past that is considered as a matter of fact that matches this definition nor any way to mathematically show them as possible, I thus declare miracles as impossible.

The problem that Dave immediately encountered is that he didn’t argue against the argument, but instead fell face first in it’s smoke screen. He immediately tried to prove that miracles happen which is impossible to do due to how he, as a Catholic, defines the divine. He then got quickly frustrated at my refusal to provide accurate scientific explanations for miracles (which I did not needed to do for my argument to stand) and by his failure to prove miracles (he knows he cannot prove them).

What Dave seemed to have wanted is to have the luxury of playing the skeptical position for once because it’s much easier. He wanted someone to make a positive claim and then poke holes in it using the Socratic method. Basically he wanted a debate in which he could not lose because the other party would have such a heavy burden of proof no matter their genius and erudition, they would never be able to carry it. He did not expect a simple semantic argument and completely fail to force me to justify my definitions. Worst, when I basically asked him if he wanted to contest my definition of miracle at post 16; he refused and accepted it fully at post 19 thus signing his failure.

Ironically, I believe that a theist with a little bit more education when it comes to theology and philosophy like SteveII for example, would not have fallen for my little trick and would have been able to poke holes in my definitions and basically have the “easy debate you virtually can’t lose” that Dave wanted. He basically admitted in post 26 of this very thread that he wanted to debate someone who was basically defending two of the most stupid and weak argument anybody could present against miracles; the sort of argument an arrogant 16 years old atheists would have made.

You needed to deal with Hume and my critique of Hume via Larmer & Lewis. You refused. You didn’t even see the relevance of it. That’s the debate at the level of fundamental premise, which is what I was interested in. We apparently misunderstood each other as to exactly what we were debating. You say that I “immediately tried to prove that miracles happen.” As I already noted, this was not my original intention at all. It wasn’t the essence of my argument. I wanted to see you prove your contention. I don’t think miracles can be proved: certainly not to any atheist’s satisfaction. I simply provided some examples when you asked me to do so, because I actually respond to my opponent’s challenges (I’m weird that way).

But that was my tactical mistake, as I see it (especially in retrospect, given these new revelations about yourself), because it enabled you to sidetrack the discussion to the usual atheist polemic that’s all my example were fakery and only an idiot would believe in them, etc., rather than deal with your contention that miracles are impossible. I knew better than that, because I knew — from long and almost universal experience — that atheists always want to throw the ball into our court and never have to defend their root premises. It’s the pathetic game that they play; relentless double standards.

You were simply employing debating tricks, as you now admit (“little tricks”). I, on the other hand, was trying to have a serious philosophical discussion, and to do that with regard to miracles, one has to address Hume. You refused. Because of that, there was nowhere to go with the discussion, so I left it. I refuse to be subjected to a double standard of having to always defend, while the atheist never has the burden of defending his position. One doesn’t do serious philosophy by utilizing debating tricks. It’s a search for truth. The word means, literally, “love of wisdom.” At best, all I could hope to achieve (and this was my goal) was to get you to admit that you can’t rationally claim that all miracles are impossible. To do so entails no downfall of your atheism, so there is nothing at stake. You would simply assume an agnostic position towards miracles.

But I guess that’s too much to ask. Most atheists are far too dogmatic to ever admit that. To me it’s pretty clear that they have to.

You can continue the postmortem if you like. You know you’ll have almost 100% support here. Again, philosophy is not about cheerleading and groupthink. It’s about ascertaining what we can establish by virtue of reason and logic alone. Now that you have openly admitted that you were using a “smokescreen” and a “trick”, this proves that you employed sophistry and that you weren’t interested in a serious debate. My mistake was in assuming in charity that you were. But you now reveal your motives and your tactics. I wouldn’t have thought this. Thanks at least for the transparent honesty. You explain a lot, and my readers will see what you have done here, too.

*****

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Photo credit: Socrates by Leonidas Drosis, at the Academy of Athens [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license]

Summary: I engaged an atheist in debate about whether miracles have occurred, or ever can occur. It was good for a while, but then we disagreed on what should be discussed.

Vs. Turretin #5: Communion Of Saints 5 (Relics)

December 27, 2023 By Dave Armstrong

0 Comments

François Turretin (1623-1687) was a Genevan-Italian Reformed scholastic theologian and renowned defender of the Calvinistic (Reformed) orthodoxy represented by the Synod of Dort, and was one of the authors of the Helvetic Consensus (1675). He is generally considered to be the best Calvinist apologist besides John Calvin himself. His Institutes of Elenctic Theology (three volumes, Geneva, 1679–1685) used the scholastic method. “Elenctic” means “refuting an argument by proving the falsehood of its conclusion.” Turretin contended against the conflicting Christian perspectives of Catholicism and Arminianism. It was a popular textbook; notably at Princeton Theological Seminary, until it was replaced by Charles Hodge‘s Systematic Theology in the late 19th century. Turretin also greatly influenced the Puritans.

This is a reply to a portion of Institutes of Elenctic Theology (Vol. 2, Eleventh Topic: The Law of God, Eighth Question: The Worship of Relics). I utilize the edition translated by George Musgrave Giger and edited by James T. Dennison, Jr. (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, Phillipsburg, New Jersey: 1992 / 1994 / 1997; 2320 pages). It uses the KJV for Bible verses. I will use RSV unless otherwise indicated. All installments of this series of replies can be found on my Calvinism & General Protestantism web page, under the category, “Replies to Francois Turretin (1632-1687).” Turretin’s words will be in blue.

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Should the bodies of saints and relics be adored with religious worship?

No. They should be venerated, not worshiped, like all holy things. As we have explained till we’re blue in the face (some folks are dense or slow, I reckon), adoration is for God alone.

We deny against the papists

No, he denies against a straw man, not what the “papists” actually believe. You would think that an educated man could get it right. But that’s too much to ask. Where anti-Catholicism is concerned, straw men, ignorant, misguided insults, and non sequiturs rule the day, along with ignoring large portions of the Bible.

Although indeed the Sophists of the present day . . . deny that the adoration due to God is paid to them, but only veneration and honor; still it is certain that it was sanctioned by the authority of the Second Council of Nicea in these words: “Adoring bones, ashes, garments, blood, and sepulchers, still we do not sacrifice to them” (Actione 4, Mansi, 13:47).

Denzinger’s Enchiridion symbolorum is the official source for Catholic dogma. #600-603 in the 2012 edition are from the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. The Definition concerning Sacred Images from Session 8, on October 23rd referred to such images or relics twice as “venerable” (#600, p. 207), and believers are urged “to give them salutation and respectful veneration. This, however, is not actual worship, which, according to our faith, is reserved to the divine nature alone. “Honor[ed]” and “venerates” are both mentioned twice more in this section (#601, p. 207). Further statements of the council from the same day refer to “veneration” (#605, p. 208) and “honor” (#608, p. 208). No adoration or worship seen here.

The older 1955 version (#302; see online on page 121; cf. #306, p. 123) is very similar. #302 states that “to render honorable adoration to them, not however, to grant true latria according to our faith.” Precisely. Why can’t Turretin get it right? There are many more Catholic decrees about it that Turretin could have consulted. Pope John XV wrote in 993 (Encyclical Cum conventus esset), that Catholics

venerate and honor the relics of the martyred and confessors in order that we may venerate him whose martyrs and confessors they are; we honor the servants so that honor may redound to the Lord, who said” Whoever receives you, receives me” [Mt 10:40] . . . (#675, p. 231)

It’s very clear what is going on. Something might be made of the fact that adoramus is the original Latin for “venerate” in this statement. But according to a Latin-English dictionary, the word can mean “reverence, honor, worship, adore.” In other words, it’s just like the Greek and biblical word proskuneo, that is applied both to God in the Bible and also many times to persons. Context determines the meaning, and it’s made very clear in the above statement. There is no usurpation of the Lord’s sole prerogatives; no idolatry or blasphemy. It is believed that the veneration of saints is a form of thanking and worshiping God, by Whose grace they are what they are. Turretin has no case against us.

Pope Martin V in 1418 referred to relics being “venerated” (venerari): #1269, p. 333). This word has a range of meaning, just as adoramus and proskuneo do. So we must go by context and what the Catholic Church decrees as proper belief and practice with regard to relics. Nowhere do we teach that they ought to be adored in place of God, as idols.

The Council of Trent on December 3, 1563, stated that relics are to be venerated and honored (#1822, p. 429; cf. #1867, p. 436), because “Through them many benefits are granted to men by God.” That’s not idolatry. God did many things through St. Paul, for example, that the great evangelist often refers to in his epistles (including “saving” others, many times). Was he trying to make himself an idol, equal to or above God, in so writing? Of course not. What he was saying applies to all saints, especially the following, which perfectly typifies biblical and Hebraic paradox:

1 Corinthians 15:10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me.

Scripture has sanctioned such worship nowhere either by command or promise or example.

Relics has to do with the principles of sacramentalism: grace conveyed by physical things (e.g., water, the Eucharist), and the belief is part and parcel of the reverence that Scripture extends to all holy things. Hence, King David says, “I will worship toward thy holy temple in the fear of thee” (Ps 5:7). The temple is holy, so to worship towards it or in it is a good thing. And it’s holy because of its connection to God, as His special dwelling place on earth: especially in the Holy of Holies at its center (Ex 25:21-22).

The ark of the covenant was so holy it could not be touched, and hence it was transported with poles that ran through rings on its side (Ex 25:13-15). In fact, on one occasion, when it was about to fall over while being moved, after the oxen stumbled, one Uzziah merely reached out to steady it and was immediately struck dead (2 Sam 6:7). Mt. Sinai was holy due to God’s tangible presence there, in the burning bush (Ex 3:5). Just before the Hebrews were to receive the Ten Commandments, God charged the people to not even touch the mountain, or its “border,” on pain of death (19:12-13). Even animals were included in the restriction! God’s special presence – considered apart from the fact that He is also omnipresent – imparts holiness (Deut 7:6).

The New Testament continues to refer to Jerusalem as the “holy city” (Mt 4:5; 27:53 above), and Jesus spoke of the Holy of Holies as “the holy place” (Mt 24:15; cf. Heb 9:2, 12, 25). St. Peter calls the Mount of Transfiguration “the holy mountain” (2 Pet 1:17-18; cf. Mt 17:1-6). Protestants widely use the terms “Holy Bible” and “Holy Land”. In so doing, they tacitly acknowledge the notion of “holy things”: even though, if pressed, they may argue against it, as I once did myself. If something is holy, then it can and should be reverences, including the bodies of holy people who have died.

Someone might agree with all of the above but note that it is not directly pertaining to relics. Well, the Bible has a lot about them, too, which is better understood in light of the above underlying principles. The Bible provides examples of relics having power to heal or bring about other miracles:

2 Kings 13:20-21 So Elisha died, and they buried him. Now bands of Moabites used to invade the land in the spring of the year. And as a man was being buried, lo, a marauding band was seen and the man was cast into the grave of Elisha; and as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood on his feet.

Methodist Adam Clarke, in his Commentary on the above passage, admitted the validity of the principle involved here, even though his subsequent remarks reveal that he doesn’t personally care much for it:

This shows that the prophet did not perform his miracles by any powers of his own, but by the power of God; and he chose to honour his servant, by making even his bones the instrument of another miracle after his death.

2 Kings 2:14 Then he took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water, saying, ‘Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?’ And when he had struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other; and Elisha went over.”

Acts 5:15-16 They even carried out the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and pallets, that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them. The people also gathered from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all healed.

Acts 19:11-12 And God did extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that handkerchiefs or aprons were carried away from his body to the sick, and diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them. (cf. Matthew 9:20-22)

Elisha’s bones were what Catholics classify as a “first-class” relic — a relic from the person himself. These passages, on the other hand, offer examples of “second-class” relics — items that have power because they were connected with a holy person (Elijah’s mantle and even St. Peter’s shadow) — and third-class relics, or something that has merely touched a holy person or first-class relic (handkerchiefs that had touched St. Paul).

God said to Moses regarding the body of a lamb offered at the temple: “Whatever touches its flesh shall be holy …” (Leviticus 6:27). So now we again have a dead thing (like Elisha’s bones) imparting holiness. How is that any different from Catholic relics? Likewise, the same was said even of the cereal offering (Leviticus 6:14-18).

Protestant critics of relics will ask where we should draw the line between a proper use of relics and a corrupt, idolatrous one. If they become idols in place of God or are used for financial gain, or are thought to be magic charms (superstition), that’s wrong, and the line has been crossed. The understanding of them has to be sacramental and incarnational, and grounded in a proper biblical understanding of the veneration of saints.

Superstition and idolatry are — like lust or pride or greed — erroneous and wicked attitudes that reside in someone’s heart. We don’t usually know if this is what they are thinking simply by observing outward actions. Two people could be bowing before a relic. One is in fact (if we knew their inner attitude) viewing it as a charm or an idol, and is gravely sinning. The other is venerating it, which is perfectly biblical and Catholic. So the lines are difficult to determine, based on these inherently subjective factors. It’s not a simple matter.

If God wanted human beings to bow before and pray to God and worship Him before inanimate objects such as the ark of the covenant and the temple, because it was thought that holy things gave special power and efficacy to prayers, how much more should we venerate bodies of saints?:

Joshua 7:6 Then Joshua rent his clothes, and fell to the earth upon his face before the ark of the LORD until the evening, . . .

1 Chronicles 16:4 Moreover he appointed certain of the Levites as ministers before the ark of the LORD, to invoke, to thank, and to praise the LORD, the God of Israel. (cf. Deut 10:8)

2 Chronicles 7:3 When all the children of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the LORD upon the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the earth on the pavement, and worshiped and gave thanks to the LORD, saying, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures for ever.”

Psalm 138:2 I bow down toward thy holy temple and give thanks to thy name for thy steadfast love and thy faithfulness; for thou hast exalted above everything thy name and thy word.

King Solomon prayed before the sacred altar: both standing and kneeling (1 Ki 8:22-23; cf. 8:54 [kneeling]; 2 Chr 6:12-14; the Jews swore oaths by the altar in the temple: 2 Chr 6:22). The prophet Daniel prayed to and thanked God in the direction of Jerusalem, three times a day, even from Babylon (Dan 6:10; cf. 1 Ki 8:44, 48; 2 Chr 6:20-21, 26-27, 29-30, 32-34, 38). Levites talked to God before the ark as well (Dt 10:8; cf. 1 Ki 3:15; 8:5; 1 Chr 16:4; 2 Chr 5:6). So how — in light of all of the above — can there possibly be an objection to praying in conjunction with relics?

The principle is precisely the same as what we have in the Bible, as far as I can see. Jesus exhibited the same sacramental principle, in using His saliva to heal someone, and by His robe healing a woman, or telling the blind man to go wash in the Pool of Siloam (after which he could see). He took a girl by the hand before He raised her from the dead (Mt 9:25), and touched blind people’s eyes before healing them (Mt 20:34), and touched a person’s hand before healing a fever (Mk 1:31), and touched an ear before healing it (Lk 22:51). The question is: why did Jesus do that when all He had to do was declare a healing? He did so because it was one of many examples of the sacramental principle behind relics.

And what He said about the woman being healed by touching “the fringe of his garment” (Lk 8:44) is remarkable with regard to relics. He referred to “some one” who “touched me” twice (Lk 8:45-46), and Luke reiterates that “she had touched him” (Lk 8:47). But literally speaking, she had not touched “Him” at all. She merely touched “the fringe of his garment”. Therefore, Jesus was equating His power with His own garment, and in a certain qualified sense, even Himself with it, in saying, “I perceive that power has gone forth from me” (Lk 8:46). The power went out from Him, through His garment, to the woman, and caused her to be healed. This is the Catholic doctrine of second-class relics, right from the mouth of Jesus.

It was the same with the apostles:

Acts 5:12 Now many signs and wonders were done among the people by the hands of the apostles. . . .

Acts 19:6 And when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them; and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.

Acts 19:11 And God did extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul,

Protestants will, furthermore, object to pilgrimages to relics in order to have more meritorious and efficacious prayer. This is little different from all the Israelite pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the feast days and to offer sacrifice in the temple. Holy places and holy things in the Bible have power, and this power can transfer in some supernatural way to Christians. Protestants object that paying a lot of money to do so is improper.

But I counter-reply that we shouldn’t object to a pious Catholic (now or in the Middle Ages) paying a lot of money to make a pilgrimage to a holy place, including seeing and venerating relics (it cost a lot of money for me to go to Israel), when we have no objection whatsoever to folks going on expensive vacations on yachts, or flying all around the world, spending multiple thousands of dollars (not to mention a host of other arguably materialistic things). If we can go see the wonders of nature or man’s architectural masterpieces, why is it immediately thought to be a “problem” if someone pays money to go on a religious pilgrimage?

Even Martin Luther (who started the Protestant movement) advocated the goodness and propriety of relics after his 95 Theses (October 1517) and even after the pivotal and famous (or infamous) Diet of Worms (January-May 1521):

[W]e ought to encase the bones of saints in silver; this is good and proper. (Sermons I, ed. and tr. John W. Doberstein; Sermon on the Man Born Blind, 17 March 1518; in Luther’s Works, vol. 51)

Many make pilgrimages to Rome and to other holy places to see the robe of Christ, the bones of the martyrs, and the places and remains of the saints, which we certainly do not condemn. (Explanations of the Ninety-Five Theses, Aug. 1518; tr. Carl W. Folkemer; in Luther’s Works, vol. 31)

These many years your Grace has been acquiring relics in every land; but God has now heard your Grace’s request and has sent your Grace, without cost or trouble, a whole cross, with nails, spears and scourges. I say again, grace and joy from God on the acquisition of the new relic! (To the Elector Frederic of Saxony, end of Feb. 1522; in Luther’s Correspondence and Other Contemporary Letters, Vol. II: 1521-1530; translated and edited by Preserved Smith and Charles M. Jacobs [Philadelphia: The Lutheran Publication Society: 1918] )

Luther’s 95 Theses never even mentioned relics, which makes sense, since he wrote all three of the above statements after the time of the 95 Theses.

A Protestant might object that people in the Bible didn’t collect and venerate bones; they simply buried people. But of course, a proper burial is honoring a person, and visiting gravesites (as every Protestant has done) is not wholly unlike giving homage to holy persons and saints and making pilgrimages to their gravesites or relics connected with them. This is nowhere more evident than in the extreme reverence that Jews to this day give to gravesites of their heroes of the faith. I observed this firsthand in Israel in 2014 at Rachel’s tomb and King David’s. These are very holy places, and they are acting just as their ancestors did.

Protestants object that human beings tend to become idolaters, including of relics. The solution to that is to reform hearts and transform souls by the power of God, prayer, grace, and conversion of heart. The answer is not to eliminate every practice — including relics — that might lead to idolatry in such people. Lots of people make the Bible an idol, or find doctrines in it that simply aren’t there. Does that mean we get rid of the Bible, which arguably “caused” all the false doctrines floating around? No, we correct and educate such people and push them in the right direction.

It’s no different in Protestantism. Sola fide (faith alone) is sadly all too often corrupted into antinomianism. Love of the Bible becomes bibliolatry or a radical Bible Alone position. Private judgment devolves into rampant sectarianism and denominationalism. The various denominations don’t teach these things, but they are rampant “on the ground”: just as Protestants complain about Catholicism and relics. We don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. We reform the practice and foster a right understanding of the essential meaning underneath and behind it.

As often as in the Old or New Testament the examples of the dead are commemorated, their bodies are said to have been committed to the earth without any ostentation or religious veneration. Thus dying Jacob and Joseph ordered their bones to be carried out of Egypt to Canaan that they might rest with their fathers; but nowhere do we read that they were adored or kissed, nor were they placed in a tabernacle or carried about in processions or placed upon altars (all which are constantly practiced in the Roman church).

That’s right. But we do read about God commanding manna (a second-class relic of God Himself, so to speak) to be kept:

Exodus 16:32-34 And Moses said, “This is what the LORD has commanded: `Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations, that they may see the bread with which I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.’” [33] And Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar, and put an omer of manna in it, and place it before the LORD, to be kept throughout your generations.” [34] As the LORD commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the testimony, to be kept.

Why? What was the purpose? Why wasn’t the written biblical record enough? Why did God also command Moses to keep Aaron’s staff (Num 17:10), to also be kept in the ark? That was a second-class relic of Aaron. Both, along with the tablets of the Ten Commandments (a second-class relic of Moses, and written by the finger of God: Ex 31:18; Deut 4:13; 10:1-4), were kept in the ark of the covenant (Deut 10:2, 5; Heb 9:4), which we have seen was regarded as a great aid in prayer, praise, petitions to God, and the holiest item in the Jewish religion, just as the Wailing Wall is today, because it was connected with the temple; and they pray there as a result and believe that the prayers will be especially efficacious. I was honored and privileged to do the same.

Imagine, all of this is in the Bible, and yet the learned Turretin, blissfully ignorant, stupidly asserts: “Scripture has sanctioned such worship [what we say is, rather, veneration] nowhere either by command or promise or example.”

And how could the Israelites be induced to kiss or carry about relics when (according to the law of Moses) he was considered polluted who had only touched a corpse.

Well, Turretin needs to answer this himself, since God commanded the Israelites to carry around and venerate His own relics; things directed connected with and caused by Him (manna that He sent — Ex 16:29; Deut 8:3, 16; Ps 78:24; Jn 6:31 — and the tablets of the Ten Commandments that He wrote on).

God himself is said to have buried and concealed the body of Moses (Dt. 34:6) in order that the Israelites might not abuse the relics of so great a man to idolatry.

Really? Who “said” this? It’s not in the Bible that I can find. If not, it’s merely a bald unsubstantiated surmise or speculation of Turretin, that has no authority and is irrelevant to the present dispute. But I am making biblical arguments, not just pulling thoughts out of a hat like a rabbit. But assume for a moment that God did do it for that reason. Why, then, wouldn’t He do that with anyone else? Joseph’s and Jacob’s bones were carried from Egypt. Why didn’t God take them and bury them secretly, for the same supposed reason that Turretin makes a wild guess about? King David was buried, so was Rachel. I visited their tombs in Israel. We know where Abraham was buried (in Hebron). Their bones could have been improperly venerated (from the Protestant perspective), just as Moses’ bones may have been.

It is very consistent with this that there was no other cause of the contest between Michael and Satan (mentioned in Jd. 9) than that Satan
wished to draw forth the dead body of Moses, which Michael wished to conceal and keep hidden.

More groundless thoughts of Turretin’s overactive imagination . . . Jude 9 no more supports his interpretation than Deuteronomy 34:6 does. Neither says a single thing about this supposed reason of God’s.

Christ rebukes “the Pharisees and scribes, hypocrites, because ye build tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous”
(Mt. 23:29) in the meantime despising their doctrines. No less are they to be censured who worship and venerate their dead bodies lying in sepulchers.

This is a truly dumb and clueless argument. Context plainly proves that this statement from Jesus had nothing whatsoever to do with relics. It had an entirely different target and meaning:

Matthew 23:29-32 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, [30] saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ [31] Thus you witness against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. [32] Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers.

It’s nothing new for anti-Catholics to utterly ignore even the immediate context of a Bible passage, in their rush to mock and “disprove” Catholicism. It happens all the time. This is an absolutely classic example of it.

The miracle divinely performed at the bones of Elisha (2 K. 13:21) confirmed the faith of his preceding prophecy concerning the coming
irruption of the Moabites, but does not favor the religious worship of his body.

The miracles shows that the presuppositional Catholic principle is correct: holy things, including the bodies of holy people, carry spiritual and potentially miraculous power. From this it follows that they can and should be venerated, the basis of which has already been abundantly shown above. All Turretin has are his own hostile man-made traditions, which are neither biblical nor in accord with the development of the doctrine throughout Church history.

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Photo credit: Elisha dividing the waters of Jordan with Elijah’s mantle, by Jean-Baptiste Despax (1710-1773) [Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license]

Summary: As part of my series of replies to Calvinist expositor Francois Turretin, I address the communion of saints, particularly relics, which are quite biblically based.

Vs. Turretin #4: Communion Of Saints 4 (Invocation)

December 26, 2023 By Dave Armstrong

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This is a reply to a portion of Institutes of Elenctic Theology (Vol. 2, Eleventh Topic: The Law of God, Seventh Question: The First Commandment), in which he addresses the communion of saints, including the invocation and veneration of saints. I utilize the edition translated by George Musgrave Giger and edited by James T. Dennison, Jr. (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, Phillipsburg, New Jersey: 1992 / 1994 / 1997; 2320 pages). It uses the KJV for Bible verses. I will use RSV unless otherwise indicated. All installments of this series of replies can be found on my Calvinism & General Protestantism web page, under the category, “Replies to Francois Turretin (1632-1687).” Turretin’s words will be in blue.

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Gregory Nazianzus calls idolatry “the transference of adoration from the Creator to creatures” (metathesis tēs proskynēseōs apo tou pepoiēkotos epi ta ktismata, Oration 38, “On the Theophany,” 13 [NPNF2, 7:349; PG 36.325]), and Thomas Aquinas defines idolatry as “the giving of divine honor to a creature” (ST, II–II, Q. 94, Art. 3, p. 1598).

Exactly. Catholics agree 100% and this is what we teach, too. After all, both of these saints above were Catholics.

Nor can the idle distinctions and incrustations obtruded by the papists remove so great a crime. . . . The worship which the adherents of Rome pay to creatures does not differ from divine worship, neither as to the internal worship of confidence and hope, which they place in them, nor as to the external worship of adoration and invocation, which they offer them, . . . Hence if they make a distinction in words to deceive the more simple, nevertheless it remains really the same in practice.

The “more simple” person here is Turretin, who can’t being himself to accurately understand Catholic doctrine. He’s certainly capable of it. Once again, having correctly stated Catholic doctrine (citing two Catholics), he immediately pretends that we believe something differently from what he just described. This is sheer foolishness (and that’s a mild description).

Fifth, the invocation of the saints rests upon a doubly false foundation. The first is that they are our mediators and intercessors with God, who can obtain temporal and spiritual benefits for us not only by their prayers but also by their merits. Since this is most false and most dishonoring to Christ (as we will show in the proper place), whatever is built upon it must necessarily be false and fictitious.

I’ve already disproven this in past installments. We need only note Moses, Elijah, and St. Paul, among many others. Turretin contradicts — or rejects, we should say — plain and repeated biblical teachings.

. . . sacrilegiously to constitute himself the distributor of heavenly blessings, is a pure imitation of impure Gentilism and Jewish superstition, having no foundation either in Scripture, or in pious antiquity . . .

I have previously shown how this is untrue as well, with dozens of biblical examples. Does Turretin not even read Holy Scripture? If so, how is it that he misses so much of it?

XVII. Sixth, the invocation of saints was unknown to the apostolic church and to the first ages of Christianity. It is evident from the testimonies of the most ancient fathers. . . . And that the saints were . . . [not] invoked by them at that time can be proved by various arguments. . . . they did not (like the Romanists) make equal mention of religious prayers to the departed . . .

He cites eight fathers or ancient Christian sources (most of whom were not the “most ancient“) asserting things with which Catholics are in perfect agreement: we don’t adore or worship creatures, etc. Not a single one of his eight sources mentions the words “invoke” or “invocation.” All eight statements are non sequiturs. Must anti-Catholic apologetics always battle straw men? I get so incredibly tired of this. But then, it immediately shows that they have no case, if they have to pretend that Catholics believe certain things, and then go on to absurdly oppose those. It’s a joke.

Invocation of saints is one particular thing. It’s not worship. And it was massively taught in the fathers. I have fourteen pages documenting this in my book, Catholic Church Fathers: Patristic and Scholarly Proofs (Nov. 2007 / rev. Aug. 2013), and more proofs in my books, The Quotable Eastern Church Fathers: Distinctively Catholic Elements in Their Theology (July 2013) and The Quotable Augustine: Distinctively Catholic Elements in His Theology (Sep. 2012). I shall now quote several of the abundant proofs, and opinions of renowned Protestant patristic scholars.

Protestant historians J. N. D. Kelly and Philip Schaff provide an overview of what the early Church believed about the saints:

A phenomenon of great significance in the patristic period was the rise and gradual development of veneration for the saints, more particularly for the Blessed Virgin Mary. . . . Earliest in the field was the cult of martyrs . . . At first it took the form of the reverent preservation of their relics and the annual celebration of their ‘birthday’. From this it was a short step, since they were now with Christ in glory, to seeking their help and prayers, and in the third century evidence for the belief in their intercessory power accumulates. . . . By the middle of the same [4^th] century, according to Cyril of Jerusalem, the patriarchs, prophets, apostles and martyrs were commemorated in the liturgy ‘so that by their prayers and intercessions God may receive our supplications’. (Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, San Francisco: Harper & Row, fifth revised edition, 1978, 490)

In the numerous memorial discourses of the fathers, the martyrs are loaded with eulogies, addressed as present, and besought for their protection. The universal tone of those productions is offensive to the Protestant taste, and can hardly be reconciled with evangelical ideas of the exclusive and all-sufficient mediation of Christ and of justification by pure grace without the merit of works. . . . The best church fathers, too, never separated the merits of the saints from the merits of Christ, but considered the former as flowing out of the latter. (Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. 3, fifth revised edition, 1910, chapter VII, section 84, 438)

[Appealing to the three companions of Daniel] Think of me, I beseech you, so that I may achieve with you the same fate of martyrdom. (Hippolytus, On Daniel, 11:30)

“Remember me, ye heirs of God, ye brethren of Christ, pray to the Saviour for me, that I through Christ may be delivered from him who assaults me from day to day;” and the mother of a martyr: “O holy, true, and blessed mother, plead for me with the saints, and pray: ‘Ye triumphant martyrs of Christ, pray for Ephraim, the least, the miserable,’ that I may find grace, and through the grace of Christ may be saved.” (Ephraim, in Schaff, ibid., 438)

Basil the Great calls the forty soldiers who are said to have suffered martyrdom under Licinius in Sebaste about 320, not only a “holy choir,” an “invincible phalanx,” but also “common patrons of the human family, helpers of our prayers and most mighty intercessors with God. (M. Hom. 19, in XL Martyres; Schaff, ibid., 438)

Gregory Nazianzen is convinced that the departed Cyprian guides and protects his church in Carthage more powerfully by his intercessions than he formerly did by his teachings, because he now stands so much nearer the Deity; he addresses him as present, and implores his favor and protection. [Orat. In laud. Cypr.] In his eulogy on Athanasius, who was but a little while dead, he prays: “Look graciously down upon us, and dispose this people to be perfect worshippers of the perfect Trinity; and when the times are quiet, preserve us—when they are troubled, remove us, and take us to thee in thy fellowship.” (in Schaff, ibid., 439)

Gregory of Nyssa asks of St. Theodore, whom he thinks invisibly present at his memorial feast, intercessions for his country, for peace, for the preservation of orthodoxy, and begs him to arouse the apostles Peter and Paul and John to prayer for the church planted by them (as if they needed such an admonition!). . . . In his Life of St. Ephraim, he tells of a pilgrim who lost himself among the barbarian posterity of Ishmael, but by the prayer, “St. Ephraim, help me!” and the protection of the saint, happily found his way home. He himself thus addresses him at the close: “Thou who standest at the holy altar, and with angels servest the life-giving and most holy Trinity, remember us all, and implore for us the forgiveness of sins and the enjoyment of the eternal kingdom.” (in Schaff, ibid., 438-439)

May Peter, who so successfully weeps for himself, weep also for us, and turn upon us the friendly look of Christ. The angels, who are appointed to guard us, must be invoked for us; the martyrs, to whose intercession we have claim by the pledge of their bodies, must be invoked. They who have washed away their sins by their own blood, may pray for our sins. For they are martyrs of God, our high priests, spectators of our life and our acts. We need not blush to use them as intercessors for our weakness; for they also knew the infirmity of the body when they gained the victory over it. (Ambrose, in Schaff, ibid., 440)

At the close of his memorial discourse on Sts. Bernice and Prosdoce . . . he exhorts his hearers not only on their memorial days but also on other days to implore these saints to be our protectors: “For they have great boldness not merely during their life but also after death, yea, much greater after death. For they now bear the stigmata of Christ [the marks of martyrdom], and when they show these, they can persuade the King to anything.” He relates that once, when the harvest was endangered by excessive rain, the whole population of Constantinople flocked to the church of the Apostles, and there elected the apostles Peter and Andrew, Paul and Timothy, patrons and intercessors before the throne of grace. (John Chrysostom, in Schaff, ibid., 439-440)

You say, in your pamphlet, that so long as we are alive we can pray for one another; but once we die, the prayer of no person for another can be heard, and all the more because the martyrs, though they cry for the avenging of their blood, have never been able to obtain their request. If Apostles and martyrs while still in the body can pray for others, when they ought still to be anxious for themselves, how much more must they do so when once they have won their crowns, overcome, and triumphed? A single man, Moses, oft wins pardon from God for six hundred thousand armed men; and Stephen, the follower of his Lord and the first Christian martyr, entreats pardon for his persecutors; and when once they have entered on their life with Christ, shall they have less power than before? The Apostle Paul says that two hundred and seventy-six souls were given to him in the ship; and when, after his dissolution, he has begun to be with Christ, must he shut his mouth, and be unable to say a word for those who throughout the whole world have believed in his Gospel? (Jerome, Against Vigilantius, 6; NPNF 2, Vol. VI, 419-420)

Jerome disputes the opinion of Vigilantius, that we should pray for one another in this life only, and that the dead do not hear our prayers, . . . He thinks that their prayers are much more effectual in heaven than they were upon earth. If Moses implored the forgiveness of God for six hundred thousand men, and Stephen, the first martyr, prayed for his murderers after the example of Christ, should they cease to pray, and to be heard, when they are with Christ? (Schaff, ibid., 440-441)

Augustine infers from the interest which the rich man in hell still had in the fate of his five surviving brothers (Luke xvi. 27), that the pious dead in heaven must have even far more interest in the kindred and friends whom they have left behind. He also calls the saints our intercessors, yet under Christ, the proper and highest Intercessor, as Peter and the other apostles are shepherds under the great chief Shepherd. In a memorial discourse on Stephen, he imagines that martyr, and St. Paul who stoned him, to be present, and begs them for their intercessions with the Lord with whom they reign. He attributes miraculous effects, even the raising of the dead, to the intercessions of Stephen. (Schaff, ibid., 441)

Nor if deceased saints now possess greater love, do they on that account wish to be invoked by us . . . since they now know more perfectly that such honor is due to God alone.

I have already shown earlier in this series that Abraham (Luke 16) and Samuel (1 Sam 28:15-16) did not rebuke their petitioners (the “rich man” and King Saul) for requesting things of them; they simply refused the particular petitions (as God sometimes does with our prayers). A refusal (just as in cases of petitioning God, where he denies a request) is not the same as saying that the petition should and could have never been made to them. An angel was also petitioned by Lot, with no rebuke seen; and in that case, Lot’s two petitions were granted (Gen 19:15-21).

If these things were in fact impermissible and immoral, as Turretin asserts, then in all three cases, the ones invoked would certainly have rebuked that practice. But they don’t. There is no hint in any of the three passages that the practice was impermissible, let alone “idolatry” and “sacrilege” et al. Catholics are following the biblical models in this; Turretin and Protestants reject the biblical teachings, which is no small thing. Turretin’s false accusations towards us are also mortally sinful: a violation of one of the Ten Commandments.

We also have a biblical example of an angel talking “from heaven” to Hagar (Gen 21:17-18). If an angel can communicate with a human being from heaven, the implication — or plausible analogy — is that we can do the reverse and communicate to an angel in heaven. We just saw how Lot petitioned (in effect prayed to) an angel on earth and received his wishes. Seeing that the angel in Genesis 21 talked to a human being from heaven, then we can logically talk back to the same angel, or angels in general, by extension, and we can ask for angelic intercession, per the example of Lot in Genesis 19. Systematic theology flows from cross-examination and harmonization of relevant passages.

And if they could be addressed by us either by the voice or by letter (because they were with us sojourners in an earthly country), they
ought not to be invoked in their heavenly country, which is far distant from us.

Why? There is no reason for this reluctance, and as just seen, the Bible teaches otherwise. Turretin gives us unsubstantiated, arbitrary traditions of men only.

If there is the same reason for the invocation of the saints and the salutations of the living, why did Paul (who so often orders some to pray for
others) never command us to invoke the saints?

I don’t know. I would ask that he never taught faith alone or sola Scriptura, either; nor did he or anyone else in the Bible list the biblical books (the canon). Protestant scholars Alister McGrath and Norman Geisler wrote about the lac of an historical basis of sola fide (faith alone and extrinsic, imputed justification), one of the pillars of the Protestant Reformation:

Whereas Augustine taught that the sinner is made righteous in justification, Melanchthon taught that he is counted as righteous or pronounced to be righteous. For Augustine, ‘justifying righteousness’ is imparted; for Melanchthon, it is imputed in the sense of being declared or pronounced to be righteous. Melanchthon drew a sharp distinction between the event of being declared righteous and the process of being made righteous, designating the former ‘justification’ and the latter ‘sanctification’ or ‘regeneration.’ For Augustine, these were simply different aspects of the same thing . . .

The importance of this development lies in the fact that it marks a complete break with the teaching of the church up to that point. From the time of Augustine onwards, justification had always been understood to refer to both the event of being declared righteous and the process of being made righteous. . . . (McGrath, Reformation Thought: An Introduction, 2nd edition, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1993, 108-109, 115; emphasis in original)

For Augustine, justification included both the beginnings of one’s righteousness before God and its subsequent perfection — the event and the process. What later became the Reformation concept of ‘sanctification’ then is effectively subsumed under the aegis of justification. Although he believed that God initiated the salvation process, it is incorrect to say that Augustine held to the concept of ‘forensic’ justification. This understanding of justification is a later development of the Reformation . . .

Before Luther, the standard Augustinian position on justification stressed intrinsic justification. Intrinsic justification argues that the believer is made righteous by God’s grace, as compared to extrinsic justification, by which a sinner is forensically declared righteous (at best, a subterranean strain in pre-Reformation Christendom). With Luther the situation changed dramatically . . .

. . . one can be saved without believing that imputed righteousness (or forensic justification) is an essential part of the true gospel. Otherwise, few people were saved between the time of the apostle Paul and the Reformation, since scarcely anyone taught imputed righteousness (or forensic justification) during that period! . . . . . (Geisler, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences, with Ralph E. MacKenzie, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1995, 502, 85, 222; emphasis in original)

Yet Protestants believe all those things, anyway. It may be that Paul knew that this was already taught by Jesus in Luke 16, and so didn’t need to necessarily be reaffirmed in his writings. But he prayed for a dead person, Onesiphorus. If he can pray for a person who is dead and have an effect, then I think it follows by analogy and plausibility that he likely also believed that we could ask the departed to pray for us.

Moses does not address Abraham, nor fly to his protection (Ex. 32:13), . . .

He may have, and it was simply not recorded, or he may not have known of this theology at that earlier stage of the history of salvation. But the rich man did “fly” to Abraham, according to the words of Jesus. So we know that it is both possible and permissible.

It is evident that no father can be found in the first three centuries as a patron of this invocation.

This is untrue. Anglican patrologist J. N. D. Kelly states (see above) that “in the third century evidence for the belief in their intercessory power accumulates . . .” That is referring to the years 200-300, whereas Turretin claim that it can’t be documented till after 300. I also noted Hippolytus above, invoking saints. He died around 236 AD. I suspect that inscriptions in the catacombs offer more very early proofs, too. The Bible wasn’t formally and finally canonized until the late 4th century. Do Protestants not believe in a canon, as a result: because it was such a late development? No. But when it comes to Catholic beliefs that they object to, they inconsistently play this game. And as I just showed, even Turretin’s factual claims as to the dates of the first documentation of invoking saints, is false.

I agree that the doctrine developed (i.e., human understanding of it continually grew), like every other doctrine believed by Protestants or Catholics or Orthodox. What is unacceptable is to argue that it ought to be rejected because it had a relatively late development (greatly expanding in the 4th century), even though many things that Protestants have no difficulty whatsoever accepting have very little historical pedigree at all (sola fide and sola Scriptura, or are dated in the late 4th century (the biblical canon).

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Photo credit: sciencefreak (12-27-14) [Pixabay / Pixabay Content License]

Summary: As part of my series of replies to Calvinist expositor Francois Turretin, I address the communion of saints, particularly the invocation of both saints & angels.

Vs. Turretin #1: Communion of Saints 1 (Preliminaries)

December 21, 2023 By Dave Armstrong

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Is God alone to be worshipped and invoked? Or is it lawful to invoke and religiously worship deceased saints? We affirm the former and deny the latter against the papists.

As Turretin was well aware, Catholics distinguish between adoration, reserved for God, and veneration, which is more or less honoring the saints. “Worship” has a range of meaning in English. So, for example, in the ceremony of matrimony in the 1552 Book of Common Prayer (Anglican), are the words, “With this ring I thee wed: with my body I thee worship . . .”

I. By the first precept “thou shalt have no other gods before me,” the true object of religious worship is sanctioned.

Yes, of course. Christians are to be monotheists and adore God alone and accept or believe in no other (nonexistent) gods. Since there is no disagreement here, Turretin, in the final analysis, presupposes that any veneration collapses into (or at best “interferes” with) adoration meant for God alone. But this is untrue and is the fundamental error in play. It’s part and parcel of one of the most basic and repeated errors of Protestantism (especially Calvinism): its relentless “either/or” false dichotomies. In this instance, the mentality is seen in the belief that “if we worship God we can’t even honor or venerate anyone else, lest they become an idol. And we can’t invoke anyone but God.” I’ll be more than happy, as we proceed, to explain, with support from the Bible, why these premises are untrue.

Turretin shortly after brings up Galatians 4:8 (“. . . you were in bondage to beings that by nature are no gods”). Again, this is rank idolatry: making that which is not God in effect function as or replace God in ones religious practice, or as Turretin describes it: “what is not God is esteemed and served as God.” But the Catholic communion of saints is not the same thing as this blasphemous idolatry, because we simply aren’t replacing God with anyone or anything else. He mentions the “faith, adoration, and invocation due to God alone.” We agree that the first two are for God alone, but we deny that He is the only one who can be invoked, because the Bible teaches otherwise. Turretin assumes that this is the case, but what is his biblical proof for it? Perhaps later he attempts to produce that. I am answering as I read.

The papists sin in many ways about this: by the religious worship of creatures, angels, saints, relics, the host of the Mass, and of the pope himself. Thus they are guilty of not one kind of idolatry.

Where to start?! We don’t worship (in the sense he means: adoration) any of these persons or things, except for the consecrated host, which we believe to be Jesus Christ Himself. Jesus being God (as both sides agree), that’s not idolatry — it can’t possibly be idolatry — , because it’s directed at God Himself. So the argument there comes down to whether Jesus is truly, substantially present in the consecrated host and thus properly worshiped via the host as an image to focus attention on.

Even if the truth of the matter (assuming for the sake of argument) is that Jesus is not present in the consecrated host, it’s still not idolatry, because that sin has to do with the interior intentions of a person. He or she must be intending to place someone or something in the place of the true God. The Mass is not doing that at all. We’re not worshiping bread and wine. The whole point for us is that they miraculously transform into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. No Catholic who knows anything ever intended to, or actually did, worship a piece of mere bread or a cup of mere wine as God, which would indeed be idolatry.

Thus, this entire line of argument, insofar as it is applied to the Catholic Mass, is wrongheaded and a complete straw man. The statement above is a non sequitur, because the non-host items are never idolatrously worshiped by Catholics as God. Turretin seems confused about the very definition of idolatry. And this is elementary, so I must say that we appear to see an irrational and unbiblical bias affecting his thought processes. As so often with anti-Catholics, he is more so overreacting to Catholicism and its falsely alleged errors than arguing from the actual Bible.

Nor is eucharistic realism or adoration solely Catholic, by any stretch of the imagination. Martin Luther believed in the eucharistic real presence and even adoration of the consecrated host (he would bow before it), and regarded those who denied it, like Zwingli (and by logical extension, Calvinists and Turretin himself) as non-Christians and damned (e.g., “blasphemers and enemies of Christ”: Luther’s Works, Vol. 39, 302). This is why Calvin once referred to him as “half-papist,” and why Luther stated, “sooner than have mere wine with the fanatics, I would agree with the pope that there is only blood” (Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper, 1528, in Luther’s Works, Vol. 37, 317).

II. The question is not whether the saints piously dying in the Lord are to be held in any respect and honor. We do not deny that they are to be honored by us according to the degree of their excellence, both by thinking highly of them as servants of God most happy and admitted into the fellowship of the Lord and by cherishing their memory with a grateful and pleasant recollection (Lk. 1:48; Mk. 14:9), extolling their conflicts and victories, preserving their doctrine, celebrating and imitating their virtues (Heb. 12:1), praising God in and for them and giving him thanks for raising up such for the good of his church. Rather the question is whether they are to be reverenced with religious worship properly so called.

Here we see a classic methodological and presuppositional error of anti-Catholics that I have observed a thousand times. They will accurately describe what we actually believe (the above virtually is a definition of Catholic veneration of saints), and then without missing a beat go on to falsely describe what they vainly imagine “Catholic beliefs” to be, and pretend that our actual beliefs are not what they are. In other words, they prefer to war against a straw man. It’s almost as if they want there to be more differences than there actually are, and to refuse to admit common ground when it exists. So they quixotically battle against fictional windmills of their own making. It gets very tiresome as an apologist having to deal with such nonsense over and over, even from very sharp and learned men like Turretin, but the good news is that it fully and decisively demonstrates the great weakness of the anti-Catholic polemic and enterprise.

. . . we think that care should be diligently taken that they be not worshipped to the injury of God.

No disagreement there. What we differ on is the definition of “injury of God.” We say that honoring God’s creatures is, in fact, ultimately honoring Him as their Creator and enabler — by His grace — of every good thing that they do. The praising of a masterpiece of art is the same as praising its creator. If we praise the Mona Lisa, we praise da Vinci, etc. But Protestant “either/or” thinking can’t comprehend this Or rather, precludes it), oddly enough.

Nay, we think grievous injury is done to them by those who turn them into idols and abuse the friends of God to provoke him to jealousy.

He’s assuming what he needs to prove. I await such proof as I read on, but doubt that I will see it. I’ve been through this routine many times before. Anti-Catholic polemics is usually like an onion. One keeps peeling it, hoping to get to a core, only to find out that there is none. Catholic apologetics has a core, like an apple. The anti-Catholic slings around the word “idolatry” so ubiquitously, yet often neglects proving what he asserts by rational argument and example. He knows his readers will accept without question any accusation levied against the Catholic Church, and this is a large part of the problem. Not enough critical feedback is received or interacted with. Consequently, the methodology and the thinking become very sloppy, and is, therefore, easily refuted.

The question is whether they are to be reverenced, not with that respect of love and fellowship exhibited to holy men of God in this life on account of imitation, but with a sacred worship of piety on account of religion . . .

Turretin refers to “the sacrifices and invocations presented to” saints and then cites St. Augustine, from Contra Faustus, Book XX, 21. If we take a look at that, we see that Augustine is a good Catholic, as always (even though Calvinists invariably pretend that he is “one of them”).

Augustine states that Catholics are “paying honor to the memory of the martyrs” over against “the accusation of Faustus, that we worship them.” Faustus is arguing just as Protestants do. The heretic is analogous to Protestants, as Newman famously argued in his Apologia pro vita sua. Turretin claimed that Catholics make “sacrifices . . . to“ the saints. Augustine refutes this false accusation:

It is true that Christians pay religious honor to the memory of the martyrs, both to excite us to imitate them and to obtain a share in their merits, and the assistance of their prayers. But we build altars not to any martyr, but to the God of martyrs, although it is to the memory of the martyrs. No one officiating at the altar in the saints’ burying-place ever says, We bring an offering to you, O Peter! Or O Paul! Or O Cyprian! The offering is made to God, who gave the crown of martyrdom, while it is in memory of those thus crowned. The emotion is increased by the associations of the place, and love is excited both towards those who are our examples, and towards Him by whose help we may follow such examples. We regard the martyrs with the same affectionate intimacy that we feel towards holy men of God in this life, . . .

Augustine then distinguishes between adoration and worship of God and the veneration of saints:

What is properly divine worship, which the Greeks call latria, and for which there is no word in Latin, both in doctrine and in practice, we give only to God. To this worship belongs the offering of sacrifices; as we see in the word idolatry, which means the giving of this worship to idols. Accordingly we never offer, or require any one to offer, sacrifice to a martyr, or to a holy soul, or to any angel. Any one falling into this error is instructed by doctrine, either in the way of correction or of caution. For holy beings themselves, whether saints or angels, refuse to accept what they know to be due to God alone.

[T]he question is whether they are to be invoked as our mediators and intercessors. Nor only as intercessors who may obtain for us by their prayers and merits the blessings asked from them; but as the bestowers of them . . .

This gets into the massive scriptural motif of the prayers of righteous men having greater power (Jas 5:14-18), which I examined at great length. This is why we ask saints in heaven to intercede, because their prayers to God have a far greater effect or efficacy than ours do. I summarized the biblical data as follows:

We conclude that it’s best to “go straight to God” in prayer, unless there happens to be a person more righteous than we are, who is willing to make the same prayer request. Then the Bible recommends that we ask them to intercede for us or any righteous cause, rather than asking God directly.

Turretin questions whether anyone but God can be involved. The Bible contains a very clear, undeniable example of this, straight from the mouth of Jesus. It’s in the story (not parable) of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16). It presents the rich man making two petitionary requests to Abraham, not God. I recently summarized what is to be concluded from the information we have in this remarkable passage, and it is very unProtestant indeed:

Luke 16:24 And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy upon me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in anguish in this flame.’

Abraham says no (16:25-26), just as God will say no to a prayer not according to His will. He asks him again, begging (16:27-28). Abraham refuses again, saying (16:29): “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.’” He asks a third time (16:30), and Abraham refuses again, reiterating the reason why (16:31).

How this supposedly does not support the principle of saints interceding and being able to intercede is a mystery to me. If we were not supposed to ask saints to pray for us, I think this story would be almost the very last way to make that supposed point. Abraham would simply have said, “you shouldn’t be asking me for anything; ask God!” In the same way, analogously, angels refuse worship when it is offered, because only God can be worshiped [I cited Rev 19:9-10 and 22:8-9].

St. Peter did the same thing [Acts 10:25-26]. So did St Paul and Barnabas [Acts 14:11-15]. If the true theology is that Abraham cannot be asked an intercessory request, then Abraham would have noted this and refused to even hear it. But instead he heard the request and said no. Jesus couldn’t possibly have taught a false principle.

Game, set, match, right in the Bible, from Jesus Himself. . . .

It’s not that Abraham couldn’t intercede (if that were true, he would have said so and Jesus would have made it clear), but that he wouldn’t intercede in this instance (i.e., he refused to answer the request). Refusing a request is not the same thing as not being able to grant the request. Otherwise, we would have to say that God is unable to answer a prayer request when He refuses one. . . .

Luke 16 (from Jesus) clearly teaches them. Hence lies the dilemma. It matters not if both men are dead; the rich man still can’t do what he did, according to Protestant categories of thought and theology.

Whether Dives [the “rich man”] was dead or not is irrelevant, since standard Protestant theology holds that no one can make such a request to anyone but God. He’s asking Abraham to send Lazarus to him, and then to his brothers, to prevent them from going to hell. That is very much prayer: asking for supernatural aid from those who have left the earthly life and attained sainthood and perfection, with God. . . .

Jesus told this story, and in the story is a guy praying to a dead man, to request things that the dead man appears to be able to fulfill by his own powers. That is quite sufficient to prove the point. . . .

In fact, God is never mentioned in the entire story (!!!) . . .

So why did Jesus teach in this fashion? Why did He teach that Dives was asking Abraham to do things that Protestant theology would hold that only God can do? And why is the whole story about him asking Abraham for requests, rather than going directly to God and asking Him: which would seem to be required by [Protestant] theology? . . .

This just isn’t how it’s supposed to be, from a Protestant perspective. All the emphases are wrong, and there are serous theological errors, committed by Jesus Himself (i.e., from the erroneous Protestant perspective).

In another similar paper, I described the import of this story as follows:

Abraham is not supposed to be able to fulfill intercessory requests in the manner of Jesus, according to Protestant theology.

Why, then, does Jesus describe Dives praying to Abraham for precisely that? Note also that Abraham in turn never rebukes Dives, nor tells him that he shouldn’t be praying to him; that he should only pray to God. He merely turns down his request (which in turn proves that he had the power to do it but chose not to). Otherwise, he would or should have said (it seems to me), “I can’t do that; only God can” or “pray only to God, not to me.”

Turretin brought up his objection, and I just refuted it. I would give up a lot if it were possible to bring back Turretin for an hour and persuade him to try to refute what I just wrote. Protestants rarely do that because they simply ignore most of our best counter-arguments against their endless criticisms of Catholicism. So, by and large, we don’t know how they would answer. They love to throw out accusations. They do not like at all having to deal with the best Catholic apologists’ replies to same. That’s not part of the plan. It doesn’t work that way. It sure doesn’t. Their anti-Catholic and anti-traditional arguments are weak and easily refuted, and from Scripture, as I just did (or the Church fathers, as the case may be). Protestants don’t own Scripture or biblical argumentation and exegesis. Often, their exegesis is quite shallow, especially when it comes to what I have called the “Catholic verses.”

Turretin makes reference to the “hope of salvation . . . placed in” saints and states, “Thus they are invoked, not only as intercessors, but also as protectors from evil and bestowers both of grace and glory.” This is eminently scriptural as well. But thus far, Turretin has not many many scriptural arguments. He simply rails about what he seems to think is self-evidently false (no biblical proofs needed, I guess . . .). The Bible refers to others besides God spreading His grace. In Revelation 1:4, grace is said to come from God and also “from the seven spirits who are before his throne.” God gives us partial credit for spreading His grace:

2 Corinthians 4:15 For it [his many sufferings: 4:8-12, 17] is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

Ephesians 3:2 assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you . . .

Ephesians 4:29 Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for edifying, as fits the occasion, that it may impart grace to those who hear.

1 Peter 4:10 As each has received a gift, employ it for one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace:

Yet Turretin denies that anyone besides God can distribute His grace. Why? Was he unfamiliar with the above passages? Or did he choose to ignore them, since they are so unProtestant? How about creatures assisting others in being saved, though? That’s quite biblical as well:

Romans 11:13-14 . . . I magnify my ministry [14] in order to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them.

1 Corinthians 1:21 . . . it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

1 Corinthians 3:5 What then is Apol’los? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, . . .

1 Corinthians 7:16 Wife, how do you know whether you will save your husband? Husband, how do you know whether you will save your wife?

1 Corinthians 9:22 I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.

2 Corinthians 1:6 If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; . . .

1 Timothy 4:16 Take heed to yourself and to your teaching: hold to that, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.

2 Timothy 2:10 Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain salvation in Christ Jesus with its eternal glory.

James 5:19-20 My brethren, if any one among you wanders from the truth and some one brings him back, [20] let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 3:1 Likewise you wives, be submissive to your husbands, so that some, though they do not obey the word, may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives

That’s ten biblical passages. Was Turretin unfamiliar with all of them, too? If men on earth can help in bestowing God’s gift of salvation, how much more can saints, who are perfected in heaven and without sin, do so, because their prayers are unimaginably effective, per James 5. Turretin then mentions two Catholic prayers:

Thus invocation is directed to all the saints: “Also ye happy hosts of souls in heaven; Let present, past and future ills from us be driven” (cf. “Festa Novembris: Ad Vesperas,” in Breviarium Romanum [1884], 2:817). And to the apostles: “O happy apostles, deliver me from sin, Defend, comfort and lead me into the kingdom of heaven” (Hortulus Animae [1602], pp. 450–51).”

Yeah, that’s biblical too. Moses was able to do that:

Exodus 32:30 On the morrow Moses said to the people, “You have sinned a great sin. And now I will go up to the LORD; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.”

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Numbers 11:1-2 And the people complained in the hearing of the LORD about their misfortunes; and when the LORD heard it, his anger was kindled, and the fire of the LORD burned among them, and consumed some outlying parts of the camp. [2] Then the people cried to Moses; and Moses prayed to the LORD, and the fire abated.

Numbers 14:13, 19-20 But Moses said to the LORD, . . . [19] “Pardon the iniquity of this people, I pray thee, according to the greatness of thy steadfast love, and according as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now.” [20] Then the LORD said, “I have pardoned, according to your word;

Numbers 21:7-9 And the people came to Moses, and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you; pray to the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. [8] And the LORD said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and every one who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” [9] So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it on a pole; and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.

He can do this by the power and will of God, but no one in heaven can? That makes no sense. Of course they can do so. We ask them to pray for our deliverance from sin, and their powerful prayers help make it possible. This is how God designed things. Otherwise, all of these “Catholic verses” simply wouldn’t be in the Bible in the first place. Turretin doesn’t refute them; he ignores them.

Moses’ brother Aaron atoned for his people and stopped a plague (Num 16:46-48). Phinehas likewise atoned and prevented God’s wrath from “consum[ing] the people of Israel” (Num 25:11-13). But Turretin denies that this could happen (these are his false premises, before he even gets to saints in heaven), and appears to think that only God can do these things. God says otherwise in His revelation!

Also: “I seek to be saved by you in the last judgment.”

Ho hum. Paul casually noted at least four times that he “saved” people (Rom 11:14; 1 Cor 9:22; 2 Cor 1:6; 2 Tim 2:10: all seen above). James wrote that “whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way” will do the same (Jas 5:20). Paul told Timothy that he could “save” his “hearers” (1 Tim 4:16). These Catholic prayers are to be understood in the same sense: a biblical sense. It’s not rocket science. Turretin is the one being unbiblical, in denying clear biblical affirmations.

To Peter: “O Shepherd Peter, mild and good, receive My prayers—from bonds of sin my soul relieve; By that great power which unto thee was given Who by thy word dost open and shut the gate of heaven” (“Festa Junii: SS. Petri et Pauli,” in Breviarium Romanum [1884], 2:499).

The apostles (including Peter: Mt 16:19) were given the power to forgive sins and relieve people of their sins (what we call absolution):

Matthew 16:19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Matthew 18:18 Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

John 20:21-23 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

This was later delegated to the “elders of the church”:

James 5:14-15 Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; [15] and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.

Where’s the beef? All of this stuff is so eminently biblical that no Christians should have to argue about it at all. But because Protestants ignore or seek to rationalize away all of this Scripture (and it’s a lot, as we see above), we have to engage in these should-be-unnecessary conflicts, in order that the Bible doesn’t get trampled underfoot and neglected: ironically by those who always claim to be its exemplary expositors and champions.

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Photo credit: Landauer Altar (1511), by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) [public domain / Wikimedia Commons]

Summary: As part of my series of replies to Calvinist expositor Francois Turretin, I address the topic of the communion of saints, particularly their powerful intercession.